Brooke and I had carpool duties for Jacob's 6th-grade ski group today, and there were enough boys going that both of us had to drive. Since the air quality wasn't great in the valley, we decided to drop the boys off at The Canyons, then go for a run together in Park City. Unfortunately, the conditions up there weren't ideal for a 15-mile run--blowing snow and very few areas where you could run without being in the middle of the road or on unevenly packed trails (the Rail Trail was gorgeous, but 15 miles of trudging through semi-packed snow would have killed us). We eventually decided to start at the Newpark rec center and ran east along the frontage road, Highland Drive), which has no shoulder and is heavily traveled. After a mile of that, we decided to turn off onto Old Ranch Road, which was part of the marathon course when I did it in '06. That was much better, and we enjoyed the next 4 miles, except for a stretch of 1-2 miles where we were running into a stiff headwind. Since we were running together, though, the pace was slow and I had Brooke drafting behind me. We could see a snowstorm up at the resort, from which direction the wind was blowing, so I knew we had a little trouble headed our way and decided to turn around at 5 miles instead of 7.5. I did not realize how bad it was going to be, though. Shortly after we turned around (we finished with a quarter mile or so on the equestrian trail that eventually makes its way to the Big White Barn), the snow started flying. It got steadily worse until we were in a full-blown blizzard, with the snow flying horizontally from the left side and freezing our faces off. The wind was blowing so hard and the snow was coming down so fast that the road was quickly covered, and we had to step off the road when the few cars on the road came by in hopes of not getting run over. That lasted for about 2 miles, and it was pretty miserable. As we turned back toward the north on Old Ranch Road, though, it started to let up a little. With about 2 miles to go, the snow had stopped almost entirely, and by the time we made it back to the frontage road, the sun was shining. The effort felt more like a 13-14 miler, but we were just grateful to have made it back safely. | 