10 miles in the snow

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Friday morning run - only a few inches

We have been pretty fortunate to have a pretty mild winter in Portland so far, it has been so nice in fact that it almost felt like spring. But that all changed on Thursday around 11am, snow started to fall and hasn't stopped much since. Susan and I had a 20+ mile run planned for Saturday, which I wasn't sure was going to happen or if it would just turn into a snowshoe trip.

Friday 
Friday

Since I live a 1/4 mile from a trailhead I did a quick trial run on Friday. The snow was light and fluffy and a lot to run in, though I was wishing I was snowboarding in it instead of running. Forest Park being covered in several inches of snow was gorgeous, my own private winter wonderland. I knew we would have a lot of fun on Saturday, as long as Susan could make it to my house.
Friday morning - you can still see the
pole for the trail sign
Saturday morning - the pole is almost
completely covered with snow

Saturday morning I got the text from Susan that she was on her way to my house. Yay! I took a quick glance outside and realized a lot more snow had accumulated over night and that our run was going to be quite a bit different than my Friday run in 2 inches of snow. There was probably 6-7 inches of snow on the trails and only one other crazy person ahead of us breaking trail. The uphills felt like they took 3 times the effort than normal, maybe the whole run did but the uphills really stand out in my mind. We decided to only do 10 miles instead of 20 because of the amount of snow and the difficultly running in it. And I swear that running 10 miles in that amount of snow is like running 20+ miles normally. As soon as we got to the 5 mile mark and started to head back the snow started coming down pretty steadily, which really validated our decision to cut the run short.

Snow selfie

We had a lot of fun on our 10 mile snow slog and stayed warm enough for most of the run. I am happy that we don't have to do this every weekend in the winter but once or twice a year it is fun. But I am looking forward to snowboarding in the snow tomorrow instead of running in it, again.

Susan getting snow out of her shoe






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