Outdoor Long Run and NASTY TOE!

We had a snowy December where I didn't do any long runs outside because of potential slippage. My last long run outside was before Thanksgiving!! But it was 16 degrees and calm on Monday morning, so I wanted to go out.

The only issue was that we just had 1-2 inches of snow, so I needed to find a clear route. I took what I learned on my 2 other outdoor runs last week and decided to run around the St. Thomas campus because they usually clear their sidewalks NICELY. And I'm also still fighting with this butt injury, so I didn't want to be 3 miles from home and realize I had to stop running. So laps around St. Thomas it was! I'd never be more than 1 mile from home, and I'd have decent footing.

Clear in spots, but a lot of this.


I could often run on the far edge and keep my footing a bit better.

I wiped out rounding a corner just after a 2 mile warm-up right as I was picking up the pace for 4-6 miles. But it wasn't hard. I tried to hit River Road, but it was snow-packed and slow. After a few laps around campus, I took off down Summit, but that was snow-packed and slow as well - I thought that because they were "fancy" homes that they'd take better care of their public sidewalks, but they didn't (they weren't bad, but my sidewalk was much clearer than any of those).

I finished 6 hard miles around campus before easing up for a 2 mile cool-down. Here's my route, and note that those numbers are all half-mile splits, so notice all the laps around St. Thomas:

See split #10 to the east down Summit Ave? That was me trying to break up the monotony of looping around campus, but I found some slower sidewalks as you can see in the middle of the "harder miles" in my pace chart:

The dip around 33 mins was heading off campus.

Then one of my toes started to ache more and more as the day went on. It was PERFECT when starting the run, but something about the slippage on the snow and all of the turning made a big blood blister develop underneath. It looked like this in the evening:

I sterilized a needle and poked it just after taking that photo. It didn't work at first, so I tried another poke 1/8" to the side, and it squirt lots of blood. My youngest watched in slight horror.

I might just hit the treadmill this morning for some easy miles on this sore toe!