Let it Snow

There was talk several weeks ago about a storm front coming in to Salt Lake that was going to be for the record books.  Some called the Katrina of Utah, and others called it the Storm of the Century.  It ended up being a pretty mild storm that left us with 4-6 inches of snow and some big wind gusts.  I ran that night, right as the worst of the storm hit us.  I believe I went 8 miles and the only really tough part was the wind coming north on State Street.  Last night, it started snowing about 3:00 and by the time Dave and I headed out around 6:00, there was already 4 inches on the ground.  I was dying to try out my new CW-X tights, so waiting another day was out of the question.  The tights were awesome.  I'm not sure how much they helped my knees, but they were warm and very comfortable.  Actually, I was way too hot during the run.  There was a pretty stiff breeze, so I wore a long sleeve Under Armor shirt, a polyester mid-layer and a windbreaker, plus my balaclava.  I thought about wearing ski goggles, and wished I would have on the last two miles with the wind pelting snow into my eyes.

We moved along pretty well, especially considering another 2 inches dumped on us during the 40 minutes we were out there.  Dave got these snow traction things for his shoes for Christmas, which can only be used on heavy snow/ice days, but I think they helped him a lot.  I couldn't push off at all without slipping in the areas that were plowed, so I stayed more in the deep powder.  It was like running on sand, but I wasn't sliding all over the place.  As we were running passed a parking lot, I heard a guy tell his buddy, "now that is hard core."  I think a lot of people could have used the weather last night as a reason not to run and that was part of what made it such an intense thing to do.  Running 4 miles at night is not that big of a deal, but doing it in 6+ inches of snow, during a blizzard...pretty sweet.  I need to get some sort of traction device for the next one though to make it a little bit easier.