Surviving Winter

Mark Dayton, the governor of the great state of Minnesota, has officially declared this the coldest winter in the last decade. 10 years? What did we do to deserve this? Also, apparently it is colder in Minnesota right now than it is on MARS. I knew I moved to a foreign and sometimes strange land, but I had no clue that Minnesota is an entirely different planet. 

This is what I wished our winter looked like. Pretty, no? Sunny skies, fluffy snow hanging from the trees. The catch is that when it does look this pretty out, the cloudless sky gives up all our heat like $2 hooker and the temperature dips far below normal. 

But we're surviving. Our furnace pretty much runs all the time and we wear a lot of layers. There is no partaking of outdoor activities for anyone. You run from your house to the car to give it a start and let it warm up, then run back into the house to minimize frostbite exposure. Wait 15 minutes. Run back to your car to drive to work, then run into the office building like you're being chased by a rabid T-Rex. Follow these steps backwards for the journey home. 

I'm still running, but on the treadmill. Or dreadmill...

Isn't this great? Pretty much how I feel. Courtesy of KathieOnTheRun

In attempts to not fall off on purpose and let my head bash in against the wall behind me out of boredom, I've started watching TV shows on the Wii while running, and movies for my "long runs" on Sundays. Right now, I'm in the middle of Season 2 of Revenge. A full episode is 43 minutes worth of running, so I add a few minutes on and that's about how long it takes me to run 5 miles. However, I'm only half sure of what's going on because I can't get the TV loud enough to hear everything clearly over the treadmill. But this morning I discovered subtitles!! Sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake...

For motivation, I picked my first half marathon of the year, a trail race in the middle of the state called the Sour Grapes Half & Half. It's a trail race, so when the snow finally melts (May), I'll have to do a couple of trail runs or something. Although my first half marathon was on a dirt trail and I managed just fine with all road runs in training, so we'll see. 

This race originally began with some runners who were disappointed that they didn't get through the lottery system to run Grandma's Half Marathon (technically the Gary Bjorkland Half), so they created their own race. They literally had sour grapes. I love it! They limit entries to 500, as opposed to 4500+ for Grandma's half. A race that large kind of intimidates me, purely based on the logistics aspect. Having to get there, get to the right start, find port-a-potties, having something for Travis and Emily to do, getting home, etc. I like the idea of a smaller race much better. I'm saving my first "big" race for the St. Louis Rock n'Roll half marathon in October. I haven't registered for it yet, but there's still time. So, in the meantime, I booked a room at a fun hotel with a water park for the weekend of June 14th, and off we'll go! 

Now that snow just needs to start melting. It is January, after all. Spring has got to be just around the corner...