WEATHER OF THE DAY.

Isn't that a colorful sight?? The different colors denote the variations in precipitation, from the green/yellow being rain/thunderstorms, to pink being freezing rain/fog, to blue being snow/ice. Like they say, you never know what you're going to get with Michigan weather. I live in the pink area.

But I did get my run in today--and outside no less. I was packing up the car to head to the gym but realized it wasn't all that bad out at 6:20 am--no wind, fairly mild temperature (under 30 degrees but above 25), and nothing coming down at the moment. So I took my stuff back in the house, put on some outside running gear (couldn't find the YaxTrax though) and off I trotted, carefully at first, to be sure there was no black ice under the layer of snow that had fallen overnight. Very easy footing. And most people so far have been keeping up with their shoveling, so nothing piled up to trudge through yet.

I hadn't gotten more than a block when I realized "if its Tuesday, that means hill repeats!" And while there are a few hills close by my house, the better ones are over a mile away. So I decided instead to stay closer by and do the longer gradual hills instead of the longer steeper hills, for convenience, and because I wasn't sure if the steeper hill would have a shoveled sidewalk.

Since I've been doing 5 repeats, today I had to do 6. I started up easy enough and it was nice because the snow was just a light covering on the road, no big ruts from cards yet, and no traffic AT ALL on that hill. In fact, I only saw one person out walking the whole time so I could enjoy my pain in privacy.

By the third repeat, it was starting to get a little more difficult, but I always love that "free falling" sensation going back down, giving me a chance to recover. And let's face it, no speed records were broken, so I was only out of breath and not dying yet. Two more repeats and I could sense a change in the feel of the snow under my shoes--it was starting to get slightly mushy--causing me to slip a little bit in spots. The last hill was going to be the last hill before heading back to the house, so before I did that I decided to circle the block to get back to that spot, only to realize that going around the block was hilly too and a much longer incline than the first five. By the time I got to the top of that one, I was slightly gasping, but again, I had a nice downhill to recover. The snow now was really getting mushy under foot, meaning it was warming up. This makes it harder to get your footing, and putting more strain on muscles unaccustomed to the lateral and back and forth movement in the mush.

I started seeing only my footprints again as I approached the last hill to home and had to laugh when I realized that they resembled the shape of a rabbit--not rabbit footprints but like a Peeps marshmallow bunny. I did see rabbit footprints also and a cat's that seemed to wander aimlessly (or maybe with a purpose) through the darkness.

Finally, the last hill, and it was becoming a slight struggle on the snow, but I was almost done and was pleased at my effort and getting out there. And looking at the rainbow of colors above, tomorrow is likely to be an inside day again.