20 Mile Run In Ice and Snow
I ran 20 miles at Mercer County Park with Bill Scannon this morning. It snowed yesterday into the evening, even though Halloween hasn’t come yet! This caused more than 600,000 power outages across NJ including my home which slightly affected my punctuality for the 5am run.
So that made today’s training run tough, not because it was 20 miles but because the Mercer County Park bike/running path was frozen over with ice and snow. It was particularly difficult to see where the ice and snow were on the path at 5am, even with my headlamp. So my plan of running consistent 8:30s was crushed. I had to slow things down to about a 9:00 pace for the first ten miles because of the conditions.
This run was not ideal for marathon PR training, but it was a tremendous workout for all my stabilizer muscles. Even after ditching the path and running the roads, we still encountered lots of frozen spots, much of it black ice. When we met up with the rest of the Sunday morning distance runners at 7am in the East Picnic Area, we recommended they skip the path and stick to the roads. Once the sun rose things got a little better (note: a little, not a lot better). So we managed a few 8:30s and 8:40s in the last ten miles. This was to be my last long distance training run before the Philadelphia Marathon three weeks from today, but now I’m tinkering with the idea of a second long training run later this week.
Nice running with you today Mr. Scannon.