About that half marathon training...

So, it hasn't been a great week of marathon training. If you saw my last post, you'll understand why. Snow. Ice. More snow. More ice. Freezing winds. I'm soooo tired of running in crappy weather.

I know, I know. "Winter runs make summer bodies." And it's true. I am getting back into shape - in the sense that I'm building muscle and shedding fat - but I'm tired of wet shoes, treacherous footing and too tight muscles.

Normally, even when I don't run much during the week, I manage a longer run on the weekend, but that wasn't an option yesterday. With rain in the forecast last night, Husband and I figured we'd better deal with the snow piled on the roof and cut new trenches through the ice dams to prevent water backing up into the house again - not a small operation.

First, there was the small matter of digging out the ladder, buried under 30-40 cms of snow.

Then, Husband shoveled enough snow to let us position the ladder. (Husband's been doing a LOT of shoveling this month. That snow bank to the right is almost entirely his creation.)

While I steadied the ladder, he climbed to the edge of the roof and used a shovel and hatchet to cut trenches through the dams to let water run more freely off the roof.

Oh, and did I mention we both spent an hour or so shoveling snow and ice from the lower roofs? Husband's pile was a good metre high while mine was only half that.

When we finally finished the roof clearing operation, I donned my running gear and headed up the road for a short run. My goal was to work out the kinks caused by all that shoveling but I can't say it worked awfully well.

Needless to say, we both slept long and soundly last night.

This morning, Husband hustled us out the door while it was still relatively warm and sunny in hopes we'd manage 8k, but we gave up after 6k. We were both too tired to do more - especially, given the lousy footing.

We decided to make up for the shorter-than-planned run by heading out to Rissers' Beach for a snowshoe, stopping at Lahave Bakery en route for a low cal brunch (not!). (BTW, that's eggs benny with locally smoked salmon, wonderful local sausage and fried potatoes with homemade catsup. Delish!)

By the time we reached the beach, the wind was howling, more snow was falling and temperatures had plummeted but we still managed to snowshoe along the trail behind the dunes for about a kilometre, before heading down to the beach for the return journey. The waves were spectacular so I stopped to take a few shots with my Nikon. Unfortunately, I had the settings on the camera all wrong so didn't manage to get any photos I really liked. However, I hope these give some sense of what it was like.

All in all, we got heaps of exercise this weekend - though not much that will help us run a half marathon in May. Here's hoping Winter moves on soon so that we can get some serious training done.

Happy running and writing, friends.