I should know better than to let myself get scared by our local weather reporters. Last Friday evening all the stations predicted that there would be 1"-3" of snow on the ground by sunrise on Saturday. They were telling parents to get their kids up early and go play in the snow. They were warning about horrible road conditions. They ran a ticker of all the meetings and events that were being closed over the weekend... (the monthly Meeting of Jesters and the Barry Manilow concert were both cancelled!)
While it was bitter cold this past weekend, the actual conditions were nowhere near the biblical scale that had been forecasted. The dawn light of Saturday morning showed no trace of snow nor any rain. It had sprinkled a little around 5am, but then let up.
At 7am, I began to curse myself for getting duped by those weather reporters. I rushed to get dressed in appropriate running gear (2 layers of running pants, sports bra, 2 cold-weather technical shirts topped off with a kangaroo pocket rain jacket, a face warmer, hat, ear muffs, gloves that convert into mittens, socks and shoes - I was dressed like I was ready to lose every hand of an all-night game of strip poker).
8-9am Saturday was perfect running weather. No rain, cloudy and cool but not cold yet. I stripped off the face-warmer, ear-muffs, and gloves and put them into the kangaroo pocket. 9-10am, the temperature dropped, sprinkles of rain fell and I put the face-mask, ear-muffs, and gloves back on and pulled the hood of my rain jacket over my head. 10-11am, snow. Lovely, puffy snow. I warmed up a bit again and had to pull the ear-muffs and face-mask back off.
I never loved my kangaroo pocket rain jacket as much as I did Saturday. In addition to the above mentioned items, the following also found their way into the pocket by the end of the run. 2 vanilla-flavored cliff shot wrappers. 1 heavily used snot-rag. 1 empty water bottle. 1 set of keys.
Can I blame all that extra weight for the really slow pace that I ended up doing?
The next long run will be a stark contrast to this one. Flat and sunny Florida awaits!
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2 comments:
Good on ya for getting your run in! (and for using snot rag in a blog post)
I too ran Saturday with a kangaroo-pocketed rain slicker. It contained my iPod and gloves in case they were necessary.
I'll keep hopes for warmer weather in Florida as well. I'll be in Gainesville doing some recruiting so I'll have to get my training runs in down there.
I get tired of the alarmists as well, but like a good little Georgian I trot off to the store and stock up along with everyone else. My husband and I were actually a bit disappointed we didn't get more snow.
I guess the feelings of concern go back to the early 70s when we had a whopper of an ice storm. I was a little girl and we had it easier than some in Atlanta. People were stuck at work or on the road and couldn't get home. People were having to take strangers in off the street for a couple of nights. Many people were were without power for several days in the freezing cold. I just guess my generation doesn't want to get caught like that every again.
...how I run on....sorry
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