Have you ever had one of those days when life attempts to distract you enough that you don’t want to run? That was the story of my morning and yet, somehow I managed to still get in 5.0 miles.

They weren’t great miles, in fact, one of them rather sucked badly, but these are the kinds of days you look back on and tell yourself you done good. 

Yesterday’s freezing rain, which turned to ice when it hit those frozen surfaces, caused a pretty good mess around here. Lots of accidents and driveways that looked more like skating rinks by the end of the storm and then the temps got cold enough to freeze everything up pretty good overnight.

Sometimes you don’t realize how bad things are until you attempt to walk in the dark on an icy driveway. Especially, when attached to a dog who was in a hurry to go do his business. The bad part about sanding the driveway is that I only have three 5-gallon buckets of sand and have to be judicious in how much/where I use it before running out, plus it is all thrown on the ground by garden trowel and hauled around on a dolly. 

Manual labor at its finest.

After dealing with the driveway (yep, I used all three 5-gallon buckets and threw the sand with a garden trowel), running errands, getting more sand, and then doing SD2’s driveway also. I wasn’t in any mood to run.

My plan was to run 5-6 miles and work on running tall and getting it done. I also wanted to try out the Skechers Forza 4s that I got for Christmas, they have a wider forefoot that might work better with my merino socks.

While the roads were a LOT better than they were earlier, if you got into any place that had been shaded earlier, there was still black ice in those areas. Once I figured that out (the hard way), when I got shady areas, I slowed down or went more into the road to avoid the ice.

Going down the hill I never felt good with my stride. I was tired and the new shoes needed some breaking in. When I got down on the flats, my stride seemed to settle in a bit, but I still wasn’t what I would call comfortable in the Forza 4’s.

I headed down towards the Fire station and I could feel the wind at my back, (it was picking up quite a bit). When I turned around, the wind slammed into me, and going back toward Pepin was like running into a wind tunnel — definitely not fun.

Pepin was probably the worst place that I ran on this morning there were several areas that were still iced over. I came very close to kissing the tar when I got to the end and attempted to turn around and didn’t realize how much black ice was underfoot. I think that I was also a bit preoccupied with the idea that I needed to find a private patch of woods at the same time.

Once, I found that and had a timeout, I was feeling a lot better. One of those things that seem to happen all too often on my morning runs. Even though I was feeling better and the Forza’s were doing better, I was getting tired.

By the time I got back to Philbrick Hill, I really didn’t feel like battling the hill this morning and walked a couple of times before getting to the top. The last mile was okay, but it was more a slog to get it done than a great finish to a tough run.

The Forza 4’s did okay, nothing special, but this run wasn’t really a good test of how they will do for me. I had too much other stuff on my mind, was already tired, and wasn’t able to maintain the stride I want for very long. There will be other runs over the next few weeks where I will have the opportunity to find out how the Forza’s work for me going forward.

No, I didn’t feel like running after playing around with a couple of driveways and errands this morning, but at the same time, I knew that I wanted to get a run-in. It became more of a mental training session than anything physical, so that was good.