Running-In Spite Of It All

   We had a blizzard hit southwestern Ontario last night, continuing on in through most of the day today. It dumped a whole bunch of snow on us in a very short time.
   It would have been very easy to look out the window and say to myself well, no running today! Today, however, was a scheduled run day. More than that, though, I had been looking forward to running and so I ran.

The view from my garage, as I set out to run.

   By the time I had done a few things around the house and was ready to run, the sidewalk plow had been through and cleared a bit of a path. I set off with snow falling steadily but not violently enough to affect the running. In actuality, running this soon after a snowfall was actually an improvement over what some of the running's been like the past couple of weeks. We have gone through some temperature extremes in these parts and this has produced a pretty wide range of running conditions--from dry pavement to ankle-deep puddles to rivers of slush to sheer ice. Quite often, I found myself running into combinations of all of these. The blizzard, once the plow had gone through, produced a very level, consistent and cushioning running surface. Apart from having to negotiate the tricky areas where the plows criss-crossed each other, the running was wonderful. Due to the weather, the traffic was minimal and I pretty well had the route to myself. The scenery looked like something out of a Christmas card.
   Awhile back, I wrote a blog entry called "Am I a "real" runner...?" At the time, the running was pretty new and I was all involved with comparing myself to other runners I had seen out there. I came to the conclusion that I was a real runner at the end of that post. Today, running through the remnants of a blizzard and enjoying every moment of it only confirmed the fact that a real runner, in spite of whatever an obstacle there might be, is what I am!