What a strange week. On Monday morning, I woke up to no power and everything coated with ice. Definitely pretty, but also extremely dangerous. Then just as the snow was melting late Thursday night into Friday morning Cleveland got SOCKED with 9" of snow. What made it worse was the wind was blowing at 50 miles per hour.

Needless to say, I did my long run inside on the treadmill. 16.2 miles including six sets of 4% grade hills. By the way, NBC, when it is near white-out conditions Al Roker living it up at some conference in sunny South Beach isn't exactly what I -- or anyone else who lives in Cleveland -- wants to see. (For control of the darned remote at the gym ...)

I ran outside yesterday and today, but with all the snow there isn't really any good place to run. The sidewalks are impassable and the street shoulders are very narrow due to the snow piles. However, tonight we are supposed to get rain -- which I am hoping washes ALL of the snow away. If the Weather Channel's hour-by-hour holds true, it should be fifty and pouring rain for my run tomorrow.

Which is ok, actually.

Because I am tired of snow.

Some winters are known for big storms. Others for extreme cold. Others for being mild. This winter has been known for being simply RELENTLESS. The Cleveland Plain Dealer had an article that said since the first snow fell on December 1st,

• We've had snow underfoot for 76 of 87 days since that date, the day of the first snow of the season.
• That means we've had snow on the ground over 92% of the time.
• We've had snow three out of every four days

The good people of Cleveland will be pleased to know that I have vowed never to train for another spring marathon. It's just way, way too hard here. If I ever do another marathon it will be in the fall!

Woke up this morning to no power. (This is why it is good to have an alarm clock on your battery powered cell phone!) Reason: Ice storm. The trees were coated in ice. The power lines had huge icicles hanging down from the wires.

I ventured out wearing my headlamp. I've been running for over a decade, but every so often I have a run that is different and unique. This was one of those runs.

It was pretty. It was also dangerous.

There were tree limbs -- BIG tree limbs -- down everywhere. Every so often I could hear the crack and break of a limb far off in the distance. When I'd run underneath a tree that overhung the sidewalk, I'd instinctively duck. The street lights that were on would flicker from time to time. It looked almost like summer lightning. The sidewalks were covered in crunchy ice with a thin layer of snow.

Dangerous.

Everything was encased in ice. The trees were beautifully coated in white. The street lights (when they were working...) reflected off the ice. It made the individual branches look like they were coated in a thin sheet of glass. (I bumped into a bush and it shattered like glass.)

Pretty.

Pretty dangerous.

I did my Friday long run - a 17.2 mile run including down Detroit Road hill into the Valley and up Rock Cliff Hill at 8:51 pace - in shorts and a t-shirt. It was almost 60 degrees with bright sunshine. It was almost too good to be true.

Which in a way it kind of was. Tomorrow and Monday we are supposed to get freezing rain. But for now all the snow and ice is GONE! It was nice not to slip and slide my way through the run.

What I didn't like was how hard it was going up Rock Cliff hill. Big Sur is a super hilly course and I've been VERY short on hill work lately. My problem is I tend to ATTACK the hills -- I may slow down a little, but I basically ATTACK and go HARD the entire way and then recover on the flat. That strategy is simply not going to work at Big Sur. There's no way I can realistically expect to attack, attack, attack a 2 mile monster hill. But ... I am not sure how to teach my self to stop attacking and slow down. I tried to slow down going up Rock Cliff, and I just went right back to the usual pushing my way up ...

In other news, I have a new photography site! Please go check it out: My Portfolio. I still have to add captions to the photos, but the new design is otherwise up and running. I added some photos to the raptor section today.

There's just seventy days to Big Sur. Seventy days to make myself into a good hill runner ...