The Few, The Proud, The....Totally Nuts?

Anyone who lives in the Midwest or Northeast and has a window knows what the weather has been like for the past day. Why, here in southeast Michigan we got over a foot of snow from this, the Blizzard of December 2007, which is unusual for this area.

When I got up this morning and peeked out the window, I saw a landscape not conducive to anything but donning flannel and sitting on the couch all day preferably with an endless mug of hot Irish whiskey. (See picture at left. That's John trying to clear the driveway.)

Snort. Yeah, if you're TOTALLY WIMPY!

However, if you're TOTALLY HARDCORE, you look at the snowy world and think, "It's a GREAT day for running!" Undeterred from plans made earlier in the week, myself and Tina agreed to give it a go, each of us armed with many layers of clothing and a set of Yaktrax. Never mind that I almost didn't even make it out of Chelsea after getting nearly stuck in the snow at one of the intersections downtown. (Sometimes I miss my Jeep with its four-wheel drive. But then I think, "47 mpg" and all is well.)

We met at Hudson Mills Metropark in Dexter, a little more than a month ago the site of the Ann Arbor Turkey Trot. There were other people at the park, too, including one other runner, so we weren't as insane as I thought. Though, oddly enough, most of the other people I saw were on cross-country skis...hmmm...

We did two loops of the park path for a total of about 5.3 miles, which was probably enough given the conditions. Fortunately the path had been cleared recently so we weren't breaking a trail through over a foot of snow. The Yaktrax worked beautifully and I was warm and dry from head to toe though the occasional cold glob of snow blew into my ear. Sometimes the wind blew fiercely in our faces, other times it was at our backs. After our second circuit of the path we decided to stop because the path was becoming drifted over due to the incessant wind.

A few hours later, the snowstorm ended and this was the view from my front window:


Damn! If only we'd waited until the afternoon to go running! Now it's a beautiful day! Then again, there's something to be said for really braving the worst of the elements, for getting out there when normal people hide indoors, for being not normal enough to think that running during a blizzard is fun, and for finding someone to do it with.