Winter Running

IS IT SPRING YET??

I am starting to lose my patience here. Don't get me wrong, I do love winter and snow, but when it messes up with my training and my longing for the outdoors, I am going cuckoo. We had enough of this already!

So far I've only been able to go outdoors for my long runs and while they have not been too miserable per se, I just wish I could spend more time breathing the fresh air. The treadmill is nice and predictable, convenient too, I can hop on it without wasting too much time at lunch, but constantly staring at the outside while I do my runs, it wears off my little fuzzy brain faster than my soles.

Ok, I know, I know, I am full of it, I COULD go outside if I REALLY wanted to. Coach has been giving me some specific workouts such as hill repeats and tempo runs, but finding the right places outside my office to do those looked pretty impossible to me, and I just didn't want to leave them for the evenings, it's dark and cold and all that meh.

The trail outside my office was in this shape until very recently, I guess, so without YakTrax it's useless. The time I went out for a walk and took the pictures below I almost broke my neck thrice.

However, it did the job and brought back my sanity, at least for a little while. I have the smile to prove it:

I tried though, now look at this messy sidewalk. This particular run was constant jumping over slushy puddles and tip toeing on ice patches, as well as on and off the road because the sidewalk itself had 5 inches of frozen snow on it, harder than a block of concrete (I don't have proof, but you gotta believe me, I almost sent a letter to the city).

We had nicer ones too, thank goodness, but far too few. And the sidewalks were FINALLY cleaned. See the difference with the one below and look at my hubbs go up the hill!

There is hope though, it seems to be thawing little by little and soon there will be no more. Right, RIGHT?? Some people even took their toys outside, for good juju. Look how the snow melted all around it. I think it's getting the message, slowly but surely.

As for me, I am trying to keep a positive attitude, what else can I do? Have you seen this bright sunshine? At least it's not always grey and gloomy. I even got to wear a sweater instead of my fleece and replaced my wool hat with a buff. Can I say hip hip hooray?

Last  but not least, the snow seems to have its advantages too. Instant ice bath, half the soaking! I swear I laid there motionless for about 10 minutes and I could not get enough of it. It's only when my butt froze completely and I could no longer feel my belly button that I decided to go inside and stretch.

The morale of this story? Some days, winter is great, some days, it's a real bitch, but in the end, it shall all pass. When it comes to biking, I am still in the honeymoon phase with my trainer, when I run I am thankful for at least being able to look outside, the pool is warm, most of the times, so triathloning in winter is doable. It's only the times when you want to break the monotony that get to you.

So, Mother Nature, please, please, with a cherry on top, hurry the fuck already and put on your bikini and stop all the crying before I lose it again.

Enough with this, even if it's pretty:

And definitely no more of this!

Mmmkay? Peace out!

Running blind

Another week of so-so workouts, the motivation was there, but the body not so much. I didn't get in a pool or on the bike at all, but managed to run a few times. I hope to run again tomorrow, there is a 14k scheduled with the tri club. Today I am taking it easy as I try to relax and rest from a week of stress at work, which seems to have become the norm lately. I also took on a photography gig tonight, despite my reticence in touching the shutter button in almost a year. I am nervous, but it's never too late to renew my love with "professional" photography. I also updated my portfolio website as the folks at 500px released new themes and I found one that works well for my stuff. If you've never visited my photography website, take a look here, I am pretty proud of it. I've been shooting as "Still Memory" since 2002, holy cow that's 10 long years. It doesn't make me feel any younger. At least the photos never get old, right?

But back to running, here's what happened. On Monday, I felt like going for a minimalist run before my Yoga class and I didn't regret it. Zero pain so far, despite increasing the time to almost 25min. On Tuesday I went out with hubbs who is still nursing an injured knee, so we played tag. It was a bit of a run/walk which still felt like a workout, so... in da bank! Walked for over 1h on Wednesday and on Thursday we went out for my younger son's birthday and got food poisoning, so I missed the tri club swim again because I spent the evening agonizing in bed with horrible stomach cramps. Last night I was really craving a run, but the weather was just miserable. The whole week Mother Nature had been very temperamental: foggy and wet in the morning, gorgeous sunshine and temperatures during the day, freezing at night. The pictures below should sum it up.

Yesterday it brought us a horizontal blizzard and that's exactly when I decided to finally go out. Not sure whether the picture below makes it justice, but it was NASTY. REALLY NASTY.

 I just didn't know what I was in for until I started running and then I went blind. All the snowflakes were smashing against my eyeballs and I had no visor, just a hat and a turtle neck that I pulled up as high as possible, covering my face right up under my eyes, ninja style. Alas it didn't give me any superpowers and for about 15 minutes I had to run with my eyes closed, not sure whether I was crying or bleeding. It was definitely the worst feeling ever. At the same time my Raynaud's came out of deep sleep as well and made my hands scream in pain. 15 minutes were almost enough to make me turn around when... miracle, the blizzard stopped, or maybe I just ran away from it far enough. I finally opened my eyes and assessed the situation. I could do this.

Continued running south, hoping for my hands to start feeling alive again, which they did eventually. I was going to run in front of the hospital, so worst case scenario, I'd go straight into ER. I had my RoadID, check. Passing out was not going to be a problem, they were going to know who I am. But by the time I made it to the hospital, I was actually feeling pretty awesome and was wondering how long I could go on... I didn't want to go back into the blizzard for sure, so I took my time to enjoy the feeling of running happy and relaxed.

I ended up doing a bit longer than 8km, 55 minutes in total. That was enough fun for the day. Jumped straight in the shower to warm up (wait, this sounds just like my previous post - am I a broken record?) and then in bed because I was pretty much done.
I woke up like this:

So far, the only workout I did was to walk to the near coffee shop in order to replenish my caffeine reserves. Oh, I also drove to the hairdresser because if you hadn't guessed yet, it was definitely time for a haircut. And then I watched the Expandables 2 on my couch, which most likely didn't count for anything other than laughs.

I hope to do better next week. Who knows, I may get better luck at staying in the groove and actually dragging my ass to the gym and the pool. Yeah, whatever I said. Is it spring yet?