I Probably Should Make My Blog Public again

I'll take that weather! it is 25 with the windchill right now at 7:30. I figure I would wait another day for my knee and hopefully the streets are a little nicer too. I too did not feel super safe last week running in the dark and not being able to run on the dirt shoulders (they are filled with snow right now) and no one including me shovels their sidewalk!

I tend to stick to the sidewalks and get nervous when I'm forced to run in the road, particularly if the shoulder is snowy. I wear both a reflective vest and a headlamp. The headlamp helps me a see a little, but mostly it helps me be seen.

Congratulations on the potty training. That's a big milestone.

Get the reflective vests. It's definitely easier for cars to see you if you are wearing the vest and/or reflective tape. I drove past 4 runners this morning when it was still dark out: 2 were shadowy figures, but the 2 with vests really stood out.

Also, don't use an ipod if running in the street with traffic; you need to be able to hear the cars coming because they might not see you. A runner in our state was hit last month - she was using an ipod, not wearing reflective clothing and crossed the street in front of a car that did not see her. . .

Congratulations on your running, tho. I hear the conditions are mighty bad back there!

Thanks Carolyn and Cookie! I think I'll give the vest a try. I have definitely not been using my ipod at night and have been super cautious when running in the street. Last night it I saw a car coming and there was not enough room, I actually jumped into the snowbank until the car went by because I know I was not visible. I had reflective stripes on my top and bottoms, but I know they were not really visible (and then I realized when I got home that there was nothing reflective on the back of my shirt.

How expensive are the headlamps, Carolyn?

April, no one in my neighborhood shovels either. We shovel in front of the house, but we are bordered on the north by a field and we get so much drift that we stopped shoveling the last 100 feet of the sidewalk to the north.

You can get a decent headlamp for $30 or $40. The brand name of mine is Petzl.

Sweet you got to run outside today! Sounds like quite an adventurous run. Glad to hear potty training is going well, as it is not going well at all with my 2 year old:P

We started off just putting him in underwear and he just kept peeing and peeing and peeing. We would maybe catch him once a day (this was when we were home for break). Then we couldn't let him pee all over the place at my mom's, so we put him in pull ups and really no progress was being made. Then when we came back our baby-sitter had a genius strategy. Put on a pair of underwear and then a pull up over it. That way the kid isn't just basically wearing a diaper and it's cleaner than just putting him in underwear. Now he's mostly getting the hang of it.