[S]he Conquers Who Endures

12 hilly, slippery, easy miles through Newton. The weather report warned there'd be black ice, and by golly about 90% of this route was a sheet of black ice! I decided to go ahead with the run because it would force me to slow my pace and because I really need to accumulate some downhill mileage in these 4 mm drop shoes if I am going to run Big Sur in them (I have been running in a 12 mm drop shoe). I'm so glad I ran this!! These shoes are awesome on downhill and I can actually midstrike in them!! The first half was a net downhill running the reverse BM course and modifying the route to include a 135 ft downhill/uphill and I ran the second half faster than the first. The black ice sure was a blessing on this run, it also caused me to modify my gait overstriding on black ice will knock you on your bum! Hopefully my legs will remember this form.

Even though my pace was slow (8:50 min/mi AP), I'm pretty happy about this run. I lost track of which Newton Hill I was on because I couldn't tell if I was running uphill or downhill sometimes (based on effort) and my legs felt like jello but not strained at the end. I could tell which hill was HH though! Try running up that one on ice!! :)

Elevation gain: 558 ft