Trail/Snow Run

It was the first run after tweaking my knee a few weeks ago and today seemed as good a day as any to get out there and test out the healing progress. I bumped into Chris and Paul in the locker room at lunch and was goaded into joining them on an infamous 5K run. It never ends up being 5K, but I was partial to that knowledge before walking out the door. I wasn't really prepared for an outside run (bringing only shorts and a tshirt), but Paul had an extra long-sleeve shirt that I borrowed and there were some extra gloves in my bag. Extra gloves?...

I thought at least that we would stick primarily to the roads, considering it there is a fresh layer of approximately 12-16 inches of heavy, wet snow on the ground, but of course I was misinformed. We spent about a half mile on the road before venturing into the un-plowed silent serenity of the quarry. I tucked in behind Paul and shortly it became a game of matching his footsteps in the deep snow in order to keep my effort level sub-maximal. This was futile, and soon I felt myself red-lining just to keep the slow pace they were setting. The snow brought down a few trees along the way and the hundreds of vines, bushes, and shrubbery that is usually thin enough to squeeze through was now almost impassable. I say almost because in order to pass through, we often had to resort to crawling on all fours. The woods were dense enough so that even if Chris and Paul stretched their lead out to more than 20 feet, I couldn't keep a line of sight on them. Eventually I had to follow the sound of their sarcasm and make sure I was following the right set of footprints.

Needless to say, I quickly lost their trail, although thankfully I have been down this way several times and knew how to make my way back. Chris had some "meeting" to make at 1PM, so his final 1.5 miles turned into a tempo run. I opted for the recovery style pace and the 5 minute tardiness that went along with it.

It was actually one of the best runs I've had in a while. The snow was heavy enough to still be clinging to the bare tree branches, even after almost 48 hours since the snow initially fell. There were also plenty of deer tracks along the way, some of which seemed to start up various hills and then U-turn right back down. Hill-arious.

Let's optimistically call it 4.5 miles in 55 minutes.