The passing days have seen the snow lingering rather longer than I’d like. My ski-slope-like street has insisted on maintaining an awkward balance of gritted, mostly dry concrete and the thickest, most compacted ice I’ve ever seen. I got back home late last night and, realising that the sharp incline of pavement from street to house was slicked with a film of freezing water, was forced onto all-fours. Distressingly, I’d spotted an idle smoker leaning from an illuminated window a few moments before. He presumably witnessed the sorry episode as I flailed around on hands-and-knees in an undignified moment of hopelessness.
I’ve managed 3 runs this week (after a week’s break due the conditions) and they’ve all involved some manner of trudging through snow and ice. This hasn’t actually been as bad as I perhaps feared, although steeper hills do tend to feel like, as my housemate put it, ‘running up the travellator in Gladiators’. As the feet search for grip where there isn’t any, there’s a fairly frustrating feeling that you’re not really getting up the road as quickly as you should. The conditions didn’t stop one of my running-mates tearing off at high speed through a snow drift on a gruelling seven-miler we completed yesterday. As we thumped down a particularly sharp hill, I felt myself concentrating on form and balance more than I ever have while running before. In a sense, this takes the mind off the fatiguing aspects of the enterprise, but it also feels like you’re about to go careering under the nearest car.
Amidst all the snow fun of last week, I managed to join the gym on some kind of off-peak deal. This means I have to go in the morning before I head to my University department, but I can now drop certain runs if my shins/knees start giving me a hard time again. Good news on that: the legs seem to have returned to their former glory after a week’s break.
Anyway, time to head out in search of fish and chips. All this talk of exercise is making me hungry…
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