'TIS THE SEASON...

...for challenges:

Holiday challenges: getting the shopping, wrapping, and baking done; trying not to consume too many goodies; dealing with crowded malls and online shopping pitfalls; not drinking copious amounts of wine to escape from all of this.

Seasonal challenges: bad weather; snowy and icy roads; cold temperatures that make your hands and nails crack; flu and colds at every function you attend it seems; no sunshine for days on end; grumpy moods (from a lack of sunshine no doubt); weeks and weeks of staying indoors too much.

Workout challenges: Combining all of the above and trying to get workouts in or trying to get quality workouts in, despite the challenges of the weather.

So today, that's what I did with my run. All week it has been extremely cold and this morning everything was coated in ice, a payback it seems for one brief sunny afternoon. I am trying to run outside as much as possible as long as possible, and have pretty much worn my Yak Trax every time since we've gotten snow a couple of weeks ago. Today, with the early morning temp actually hitting around 30 degrees, the dreadmill was not an option. I know there will be enough of those days, but also didn't realize it was as icy as it was.

I was forced to run mostly on the main street, where it is mostly clear, but traffic started picking up after a few blocks so I turned off onto a side street by a school, figuring it would be more cleared. It was, but there were still patches of ice, and I found myself going gingerly over these to avoid any falling. Once I was away from the school, however, you could see the glare ice on the streets and I actually felt like I was skating, even with the Yak Trax. With the extreme cold temperatures, road salt does not work.

For the next couple of blocks I was forced onto the sidewalk, which while treacherous enough, at least there was some old snow cover on most of it giving better footing. Then it was back into the street again for several blocks. So it seemed like an on-again off-again type of running but that got me thinking of just looking at this kind of running as interval running: pick up the pace when its clear, slow down when its not. I guess that was a good way to make the best of a not so good situation.

Hope you're all getting your workouts and your shopping, baking, wrapping or whatever done!