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Saturday, January 15, 2011

Running-Walking in the Snow . . . .


I have to admit that the past few months my passion for fitness walking/jogging has diminished.  It's hard to get your walk/jog on when there are eight inches of snow and ice on the ground, the temp is below 30 and the wind is blowing at 25 mph out of the north.

And I hate treadmill walking.  I get bored.  I stop.  It doesn't work.

I've been trying to fill up my walking time with other fitness pursuits.  Things like Zumba, yoga, Highland Dance, Jillian's 30 Day Shred.  With mild success.  I'm keeping active at the very least.

But I've been worried.  It's like a month away to the Disney Princess Half Marathon that I've signed up for.  And my training is WAY out of line!  Now, I'm not planning on actually running much of the Half, but perhaps a few stretches here and there.  Mostly just fast walking.  There is a 16-minute mile cut-off.  It's a bit scary.  In the summer, I was hitting about a 13-14 minute mile.  Pretty good.

So with that in mind, I set out on Friday with high hopes of getting a good walk in.  The sun was shining, the snow stopped blowing and the temp was 34.  55 minutes later I was back home, cold, but feeling great.  I put in 3.34 miles.  It was a bit slower than the cut-off time, but considering the terrain, not too shabby, I feel.

You see....I was walking on snow covered country roads.  The roads that don't get plowed until we reach about 12 inches of snow and even then are only plowed after everything else has been cleared five times over.  Welcome to living in the Michigan countryside in winter!

But I discovered something.  Walking in snow is kind of like walking on the beach.  My shins and ankles say so.  They got quite the workout for sure.  My bottom sure feels it too!

I didn't attempt to jog.  I was worried about slipping and falling.

But I got out and did it. Yay me!

1 comments:

Meredith said...

You are awesome. Getting out in the snow is something that (you know) I can't do. Thankfully it's not an issue I have to deal with very often!

You will do fine at the Princess. We have 5 more weekends to get ready. (Yikes!) and we'll just have to make the most of them! And, at least for me, there will not be much running involved at all. I'll just walk like there's no tomorrow. (We're going to have to sneak as far forward in the corral as we can get to get a head start! *laugh* )

I'm really looking forward to it!

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