Snow Business

Like the rest of the nation, everyone’s gone a bit crazy about the snow in Sheffield. Thanks to the sharp gradient of the city’s hills, buses, cars and people appear to be sliding around/getting stranded/generally finding things difficult.

Perhaps understandably, although it was ‘scheduled’, I didn’t run last night as the snow, which had ground London to a halt earlier in the day, journeyed upward to torment those residing in the North. I guess I did get a bit of exercise, as at 11:00 my house and I embarked on a guerrilla offensive on a number of crazed snowballers below. As they hid behind cars and other assorted objects, we covertly projected lumps of snow gathered from window frames and roof tiles from an attic bedroom. It was a frenzied half an hour as those gathered below, at first confused by the attack from above, began to hoist chunks of snow up at our open window. There was lots of running up and down stairs and general adrenaline-fuelled activity, so let’s just say I did a couple of miles and be done with it.

As for my actual running, I have been having further issues with my legs. After resting for a few days, my knees (or top of my shins, I can’t quite work it out) began to hurt again after a number of miles on the concrete. It’s an incredibly frustrating feeling to want to run and not be able to. But it’s something, after last year’s ridiculousness, I’m determined to treat with care and consideration this time. So, this morning, I headed along to the gym and signed up. While there’s no real replacement for road running in training terms (the treadmill somehow fails to emulate the more draining aspects of ‘pounding the pavement’), I can at least replace some of my runs with other cardio activity. I’ll see how this goes, anyway…

All this snow is therefore a good excuse to rest the joints. When it melts, I’ll try the streets again and see how it feels.