Day 2,601: A winter wonderland

Today's run was to be a 7-mile tempo run, including a mile each for warm-up and cool-down. Since it had snowed a day earlier, I did my best to try to think how I was going to accomplish such a feat. In the end, I decided to put the YakTrax on and see how far I could get.

But I also wanted to see the road conditions, so I followed a route that went around Emory University. Part of the run reminded me of the Atlanta 10-Miler in October, as the course comes up on Johnson to Briarcliff. At this intersection, it was really novel to just cross it and not see a single car in sight.

It had been a while since I ran up the big hill on Clifton to what's now the Emory Point development. This hill is so large that I immediately felt like I was overheating and took my windbreaker off. After that it was a nice downhill jaunt to Lullwater Preserve, a beautiful little retreat on the grounds where the university's president's house is.

Although there were lots of footprints in the snow, it was wonderful to run on. There were only a few people

out along the snowy paths. I made a mile detour to run along these paths before continuing on along Clifton to North Decatur Road.

It's pretty much downhill through Emory Village and then the road picks up a hill as it approaches Briarcliff. I decided to see how the other side of the road (Rock Springs) would be and ran down the road's steep slope. I don't know if I'd ever run up Rock Springs to North Highland Avenue before but this was the second largest hill of this run! And by hill, I mean hills that I won't want to do again for a while.

The YakTrax were great but running in them slowed my pace by about a minute a mile. I did notice that one issue with them involved crossing a snowy field in Lullwater Preserve -- a bunch of snow will clump on the bottom of the YakTrax/shoe like a clump of mud will, making things a little awkward. But it doesn't take very much to clear off the snow.

On Clifton, the bottom of part of my running pants got caught on the bottom of my YakTrax, making it really difficult to remove the fabric. I finally did and I have to make sure I don't wear running gear too long for me in the future!

It was extremely fun to tromp around in the snow on what became an 8.5-mile run. Those huge hills will probably keep me from doing the same course again for a while.

Time: 9:39 a.m.
Temp: 32 degrees
Gear: Technical T-shirt, long (x2), Nike windbreaker, running pants, Solomon Ultra X2/13.