A Little Snow, A Lot of Wet

I ran with Mike again this morning. We decided to run a single looper out by his house in East Troy early int he morning. We started at 6:37 AM and it was snowing some. It had snowed about a 1/2 inch over night so not enough to really bring out the plows or the salt trucks on the county roads.

I was feeling sluggish and mike didn't want to run too fast because his knee was bothering him. It was slippery out so we really didn't get moving too well over the hills. Then at about mile 9, a small white "yip yip" dog comes out and runs after us and in to the road. There were a few cars around so we stopped running for a bit to make sure the dog would not keep following us. I thought if we kept going, there would be a good chance a car would hit it. So I walked back toward the house and had to wait until the owner walked through the snow to get their dog. It kept barking and circling me but I figured it would not bite me.

After we started again, I looked at the Garmin and it showed we were at an average of 9:09 pace so far and Mike said we needed to get back as he was going to work on his basement and his Dad was coming over. So I told him I would try to suck a little less.

We turned onto a a busier highway for the final 2 miles and they salted this road pretty good. So good that it was very wet and slushy on the sides. Not a half mile into it and I felt like I had 2 really big soakers in my shoes. The next problem was that it was a COLD soaker. This made me want to finish even quicker because it really wasn't all that comfortable. Mike pulled away some from me, maybe 30 meters or so, but made me want to catch him. I did near the end and we did indeed pick it up. We ended the final 2.64 miles with times of 8:02, 8:03 and 6:52 (pace). The downhill at the end really helped.

The run was only 11.64 miles but I am OK with that. I won't be doing any long runs before the Albany Marathon which is 2 weeks away. I didn't even get in that many miles this week. What can I say, I like a good taper :).

Time for me to watch some more Winter Olympics. These are the best Winter Olympics I can remember. (I don't remember 1980 very much).