Ice, Ice Baby

Okay, sorry about the cheesy Vanilla Ice reference...actually, I'm not sorry. Let that song stick in your heads, kids! :-)

On Day Two of the Great Ice Storm of 2007 (that's what they say on the continuing "Stormwatch 2007" coverage, anyway), the roads up here in the 'Hood cleared enough that I felt safe to go out for a nice hour run this afternoon. It was a fun morning, with the power popping off a few times (2 hours the first time, then 30 minutes, then 10 minutes), but the icicles are melting off the eaves of the roof, and the frozen back patio is slowly melting, so normality is coming back to us. With that being the case, I bundled up a little bit, and headed out for some running fun. I've been a slug the last 3 days since the fun rain run, and I needed this little outing just to shake loose some athletic cobwebs, so to speak.

The roads weren't too bad, but there were some spots that I had to slow down and carefully step through some ice still unmelted. I learned my lesson from last year, and stayed off the painted white lines on the street, since they stay frozen longer than the asphalt. The most frozen spots were actually when I got on the water tower trail. With no traffic on those gravel and dirt roads, the ice is hanging in there pretty well. In fact, I had to turn around earlier than I had thought, right at the water tower, because the ground from there on seemed a solid sheet of ice (thin, but solid). It was a dicey turn getting around and headed back to the house, that's for sure. Not too many cars out this afternoon, and not too many pedestrians, either, but you can tell that people are getting ready to rejoin the real world tomorrow.

Safely back at the house, I'm glad I got out there. It was a nice 33 degrees, but dressed properly, that's not such a big deal. I hope we're able to get down off the mountain tomorrow morning so I can rejoin the Gazelles for speedy stuff.

For the day, 6.6 miles, just over an hour. 9:09/mile pace. Oh, yeah, I did Core II at the house afterwards and got in some stretching and foam rolling, just because.