Snowy Spring Weekend

This is what I woke up to on Saturday...Yeah it is pretty, but seriously not good to see on April 26!! Anyway, it was pretty much melted by midday, but it stayed chilly all weekend.

I went to the gym Saturday morning (didn’t make it Friday like planned). I finally gave the new Serena Williams “Spontaneous Speed” workout a try. I really like her first interval workout, so I had high hopes for this one. Honestly, the music was pretty good but I felt like I was constantly changing the speed on the treadmill. I guess that is the point – there are lots of intervals of varying lengths, but I just felt like the people around me must have thought I was crazy and couldn’t figure out how fast I wanted to run. Some of the intervals must have been about 30 seconds with a 30 second recovery then one minute interval etc… Whatever, I did get a couple mile speed workout in.

Sunday was my first planned “long run” in months. I mean, I have been lengthening my runs, but there hasn’t really been one run that was significantly longer than the others. I went to the Lakes area in the afternoon. It was a little chilly (around 40 degrees) so I just wore pants and long sleeves. I started out on Lake Calhoun and then connected to Lake Harriet after the first 2 miles. I figured it would be just under 6 miles (Calhoun=3.1 miles, Harriet=2.8 miles, thus total=5.9 miles, right?) Well, I didn’t account for the distance between the lakes. I looked it up this morning and found a site that has the total Calhoun-Harriet loop to be 6.8 miles. Well, I overlapped a little at the beginning (changed my mind on which direction to run) and at the end my Nike+ said I had run 7.14 miles! That is a distance PR for me!! My previous longest run was 6.3 miles.

But can you believe it…the last mile or two was run in the snow!!! And since I was just wearing a long sleeve t-shirt, I was wet and cold by the time I got back to my car. I was still trying to shake the chill an hour later.

I couldn’t believe how many people were out in the chilly weather though. There were runners, lots of walkers, bikers, rollerbladers (I didn’t know so many people still rollerbladed). It must be hard to get around when the weather is better. I think I am going to have to check out some of the other Twin Cities running routes. I am thinking maybe downtown along the Mississippi will be next. I found a website that has a good list of running routes.