One long run at a time...

My Friday night meal to fuel me up!

Joy here...With my new dedication to make sure that I make at least three runs per week, I was all set and ready for Saturday's long run.  As I headed out the door into the bright, wintery day, things began to change.  About 20 minutes into my run, the clouds began to roll across the sky.  It was as if the sky were a big, blue cup of coffee, and someone was slowly pouring milk into it, and as the milk ballooned across the sky, it washed out the blue, leaving nothing but a milkwater grey behind.  And as the sky turned grey, the snow began to fall and fall and fall.  I found myself running in a blizzard where I could barely see ten steps ahead of myself.  Just as I was about to despair, about to reconcile myself to the fact that my long run would be plagued by this kind of weather, the skies opened up, and the clouds just blew away.

Running in my head were the lyrics:  I can see clearly now the snow is gone, / I can see all obstacles in my way / Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind / It's gonna be a bright, bright Sun-shiny day!

My Saturday morning, pre-run breakfast!

So on I ran, singing in my head with the snow twinkling in the sunlight like a bed of diamond chips.  Of course, I would have given anything for the snow to be as hard as diamonds, as that would have been much easier to run on.  Instead, I was running on newly fallen snow that wasn't the consistency of sticky mud, nor the consistency of sand, but rather like flour or icing sugar.  The snowstorm was like some mad, giant baker dusting the whole world with his baking supplies, and then letting me run around in it.  Not fun.  But persevere I did.  I persevered for 2 whole hours!

Pre-run muffin snack!

Instead of running a long out-and-back route, like my previous long runs, I decided to run two one-hour loops of the canal path close to my home.  The psychological benefit of this one is that at the one-hour mark at the start of the second loop, it sort of feels like I'm just starting my run, because I'm at the starting point of the loop.  It's almost as though I can block out the first hour at that point and convince myself that I'm just starting out a nice, fresh one hour run from that point onwards.  Hey, any little mind-over-matter trick that works is worth trying, right?

So here are my run stats for my longest winter run so far:
Ran for a total of 2:00:00 for a distance of 19.46km with an average pace of 6:10min/km.

Now all I need to do is figure out how to run for a whole extra hour in order to finish that 30km race in a month and a half.  I guess I'll just take it one day at a time, one long run at a time...

Over and out,
Joy