Icy Run

As you saw a bit at the end of yesterday's post, we got some heavy wet snow on Sunday afternoon. And then the temp dropped into the mid-20s overnight through mid-day Monday. So I knew my Monday morning run could spell trouble.

I LOVE winter running/racing, but I learned about 2 winters ago that I don't do well on the ice. I run "tight" with improper form, and it's affected my knees. So I learned to love the treadmill (especially last winter when I was doing 10-11 mile long runs between classes while just staring at a wall).

When I stepped outside yesterday, our sidewalk was full of rock-hard frozen-down chunks of snow:

Not a fluffy ball of snow in this pic. They're all ice chunks.


Again, this looks like it could be slushy/fluffy, but it's all HARD and ICY as it was 24 degrees.

I also didn't know if my ankle/foot would be OK running on something so uneven. So my only plan for the run was to run wherever the sidewalks were good. My route would be whichever street looked good. I quickly headed down Cleveland and ran in the bike lane against traffic. The sidewalks mainly sucked, and the roads were mainly GREAT (as there was enough heat trapped in the asphalt as it was snowing that nothing stuck), so I tried to stick to the bike lane where there was room for me.

I ran down Cleveland a bit, but turned around early because Summit looked good while I crossed it. So then I did a little down Summit in 2 directions:

Running in the bike lanes.

Summit is a FANCY road, so there were hardly any cars parked on Summit. That screen shot above was next to the University of St. Thomas, so that shows lots of cars, but now the only cars are construction workers as schools are teaching remotely. And off to the east, it's big fancy homes with big driveways and nice garages for their Land Rovers, so I had a whole parking lane and bike lane to myself. I thought about running on Marshall, but that's busier (a route straight into MPLS), denser (more "normal"-sized family homes and a fair number of apartment buildings as well), and not as rich (so more cars on the street vs off-street). I have no actual data to back any of that up, but locals know I'm 100% right.

Oh, and this is the first satellite view of the St. Thomas construction that started last summer.
A few buildings are still pictured here that have since been torn down.

So running in the parking/biking lane was fine! I didn't know if I'd even be able to go 3 miles when I started, but I went a "normal" 4.3 miles. Whew. Now I can't wait for this to all melt!