A Lean and Hungry Look

Between kids, work, and church obligations, this has been a tough week for running.  As a result, I resorted to stranding myself again by bringing my gear to Extra Space and running home, which forces me to run back there tomorrow.  After last Saturday's 13-miler on the treadmill, which felt like an ultra in terms of the mind-numbing boredom of running in place for an hour and a half, tonight's run home felt like a dream.  The sun was shining, the temperature was probably in the mid-30s, and each step took me forward, with something different to look at.  It made me remember why I normally run outside through the winter, no matter the weather.

I noticed soreness in my calves about halfway home, and I wonder if it's because I haven't been doing much with grade on the treadmill, or simply because running on real surfaces uses different muscles. 

Ran back to Extra Space pursuant to my stranding strategy.  The run wasn't quite as enjoyable as last night's, and I felt a little fatigued, but it was a great way to start my Friday and left me feeling slightly less guilty about the horrible week I've had in terms of getting my workouts in.

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.