I ended up taking another day off yesterday in the hopes it would cure my high HR woes. Besides, it was rainy and crappy yesterday and it's a little hard to motivate oneself to run. So I saved up my run for this morning. I woke up several times during the night and kept looking at the window. Still no snow. Despite the fact that everyone was claiming 10-24 inches. I was thinking that I might luck out after all - the storm wouldn't come and I'd be able to ride outside this weekend.
No such luck. The alarm went off. Still no snow. But I really didn't want to get out of bed. I decided to reschedule for lunchtime. Since there wasn't any snow, it was pretty unlikely that we'd get all 10-24 inches by noon. It was still raining at 11:30 when I started to psych myself into running. I checked the weather. About 2 miles north of me, there were 20 mph winds from the north. About 2 miles south of me, there were 2 mph winds from the west. Why are there 2 weather zones between north and south Boulder?
My team looked at me like I was nuts. They didn't even want to leave for lunch. I put on all my layers and headed outside. My Garmin could not find a signal and I didn't want to stand out in the wind and rain waiting. Besides, 2 Garmins's ago, I ran in the rain and the whole thing steamed up and started to fill with water. I didn't want to take that chance again (they'd replace it, but I just don't want to waste 2 weeks waiting for the new one). So back inside I went and dropped it off with my clothes. I left the heartrate strap on because it was too many layers to get through to take it off. Finally I was off and just as I started, it turned to snow. I appreciated this. Somehow it just doesn't seem as awful - running in the snow versus running in the rain. I headed south and sure enough, the weather changed. The snowflakes were HUGE and the slush was starting to accumulate. I was kicking up water with every step and could feel it seeping through my shoes. I saw my first partner in insanity around mile 3. Another runner sloshing, slipping, and splashing by. By this time, every step had my foot submerged in slush. I could feel the sloshing in my shoes. But there wasn't much I could do about it at that point. It was really so bad. I wasn't cold, so it was almost a little fun. And then I turned around. I had forgotten the winds from the north thing and was promptly reminded as soon as I turned around. Snow whipped my face, painful at times. It was hard to see and I was starting to get cold. It wasn't so fun on the way back. I only saw 2 other crazies out after the first guy.
Had I been home, I would have weighed my clothes to see how much extra weight I had picked up. I probably also would have wrung my clothes out into a bowl just to have that visual comparison. But I was at work, so I had someone take a picture instead. But it really doesn't capture it. My gloves were so wet at the ends, it was like the tips were weighted with lead. I had to kind of hold my hands up or they would have fallen off. The bottoms of my pants were so full of water that I slung water with each step. All 3 layers were soaked through. My cheeks and chin were red from being pelted by the northerly snow.
But I got almost 7 miles in and at a nice pace (all estimated of course). I have no idea how my HR was behaving but I didn't feel like I was working too hard, so I'm hoping it was back to normal. And because I braved the weather, it made it a whole lot easier to blow off swimming tonight. Especially when it looks like this (it's much nicer to stay inside by the fire and just look at it):
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