Snow days

The whole "winter wonderland" experience was in full effect today. Yesterday's snowfall still coated the trees, and the sun came out intermittently and patches of crisp blue sky were visible behind the high, patchy cloud cover. Man, it was gorgeous. It was cold (about -10 c) but not unbearable, so I decided I had no good excuse not to go running. I'm training, remember? I headed out along the Canal (which is closed to skating right now because the weather's been so mild over the past week) and was enjoying the scenery so much that I extended my run for an extra 15 minutes. I ended up going at a steady pace for 45 minutes, covering somewhere between 7-8 km. That's the longest run I've done in quite awhile. I felt pretty good overall, but my hip got sore after 30 minutes--my IT band syndrome making its expected appearance. No big deal.

Even though it was cold and icy, I crossed paths with a couple dozen other runners and a few walkers. You just can't keep people inside around here. At least 90% of the runners I saw, including me, were wearing one of these jackets. I swear we looked like a high school cross country team or something.