272: Allegory of the Cave?

Well, I survived the first month. Of course, most of that was just short mileage aimed at getting my body ready for the upcoming months, but it felt good to get it under my belt. One of the benefits of taking almost 2 whole months off after last season was that my mind is fresh and motivated, so there hasn't been a day yet where I've felt like blowing off a workout.

Until last night, that is. The problem with getting 30" of snow is obvious for someone who refuses to use a treadmill...where to run? I sat at my desk trying to figure this out yesterday, just as it was announced we are expecting another 10"-20" of snow tonight. I am ok with missing one workout a week if it's early in the year, but I can't miss 2 run workouts. What to do?

As I ran over the possibilities in my head, I remembered that my summer loop runs through a tunnel on the Capital Crescent trail in Bethesda, that's probably 700-800 meters long, well lit, and stays dry. All I had to do was get there. So I pulled on the layers and treked lightly across barely shoveled sidewalks whenever possible, or the street whenever there were no cars coming. It was about a mile away from my house, but I just took it nice and slow, and survived. Once I got to the mouth of the tunnel, I stepped around the gate, and realized there were more than a few souls of the same mind as myself. Maybe another 6-8 runners were in there, doing repeats to get the miles in. It was a pretty funny scene. And as boring as running back and forth in a tunnel for 30 minutes could have been, it was a welcome break from the weather.



Into the black...


In other news, I'm heading up to Cadence in Philly this weekend to finally get my bike fit. I have a bag full of different sized stems, saddles, and aerobars just in case (I've been waiting to sell off all this stuff, since I wanted to make sure I wouldn't need it first). We shall see how it goes.