I thought I’d seen the last of the snow. After being plagued by it for large parts of December and January plus a bit of February I dared hope that was it for this winter.
Ohhhhh no … that wouldn’t do, would it? The so-called ‘Beast From The East’ weather system hit the British Isles this week and whilst most of the impact was borne by England/Scotland it did cross the Irish Sea and hit good old Ballymena. Again.
Look, I know snow is pretty and all that but, seriously, can it just do one?
Anyway, this is a running blog so let’s blog about running.
Given the snow overnight and the forecast for today I seriously doubted whether I could get out for a run. I was a bit miffed because I had targeted today as my last shake out ahead of The Big Half on Sunday. I know I had the option of the gym/treadmill but it’s not the same, not really.
Happily, the anticipated snow that was forecast didn’t materialise and, indeed, it turned out to be a pretty decent day albeit a bitterly, bitterly cold one.
So, after a positive phone call regarding a little project I’m planning (more soon), I decided to layer up and get out for a run while I could, just in case the weather turned.
There were still plenty of patches of snow and ice around so I decided to restrict myself to the playing fields close to home, they promised more grip and stability (and a softer landing!) than the footpaths plus being within sight of my house I wouldn’t have had to far to go should the conditions have worsened or, being more honest, if I just got fed up with the cold!
I had to do at least 6km to reach my 100km target for the month to earn the Virtual Runner February medal so that gave me something to aim for.
Given the conditions I started off very tentatively but after a few metres I realised that it wasn’t too bad underfoot. It was a different matter when I did venture briefly onto the footpaths but the little trail-like tracks around the football pitches were good despite appearances.
I wanted to go slow and take it easy. My body was still in bits after two exercise classes and a decent run already this week but fairly soon in I felt myself loosen up considerably and actually found myself settling into a very reasonable pace which I managed to maintain generally for the entirety of the run.
Except I can’t prove it. The gremlins appeared to get into my Garmin when I tried to sync the run and after a couple of attempts the watch decided to shut itself down it, duly deleting my entire run history in the process. Disaster!
Thankfully my Garmin Connect account had everything stored so the only stats I had lost were from today’s run although, luckily, I had remembered my time and distance so at least I was able to manually enter that.
Tech problems aside (no route map, no stats, no Relive) it was a good last proper run before leaving for London. I felt good, I felt fluid and didn’t detect any niggles or worries. A pretty decent outing, and one I was pleased with.
HUFF, PUFF AND SHUFFLE 