Dashing Through the Snow...

I'm a homeschooling mom, so my time for running is either early mornings or weekends.  And seeing as how it's the middle of winter and the temps are in the single digits and the sun doesn't come up until nearly 8 am...I'm often using the treadmill.  Except Tuesdays.  Tuesdays the kids go to their aunts house for school, things like music, art and foreign language.  It's fabulous.  This tends to be the day when I get outside and do my long run.  This week was crazy in terms of weather, and we got at least 6 inches of snow on Monday night (this is on top of what we already had!).  I debated and debated on whether or not to take my run outside, but since the temperature was warm (and by "warm" I mean mid 30's) I decided to go for it.  Well, most of the neighborhood must have missed the memo telling them that it snowed and they should shovel their sidewalks.  And the roads weren't any better!  So, needless to say, it was a challenging run.

See!  I wasn't lying!  But, despite the crazy amount of snow, it was a great run.  It was gorgeous and quiet (I seemed to be the only person out on the trails. Odd), and the weather was great.

I did a 15 min warm up followed by 45 min of keeping my heart rate under 140, and then a 15 cool down.  Oddly, between the several inches of snow, leaping over mounds left by snow plows and patches of ice, it was kind of hard keeping my heart rate under control!  But I was pretty happy to see that my pace was a little better than I expected.  My last outdoor run was an average pace of 22:44 (on completely clear trails), so I was expecting this one to be worse since there was all the added snow challenges, but I ended up with an average pace of 21:40!  I know, I know...still super slow, even for me...but it's an improvement!  So not only is my pace decreasing, but it even decreased with all the added elements.  

I'm nearly done with my "pre-training" plan, and I'm excited that I'm seeing improvements.  The "official" plan kicks off on the 9th!