Week 9

Monday

This morning I woke up to another scattering of snow on top of the iceL.  I felt guilty for only having done 3 runs last week and only earning our Jantastic group 75% that I had to make amends by doing 5 runs this week.  Since it was out of the question to do a run outdoors with thin snow on top of ice; it had to be done on the dreadmill.  3 miles made up for not doing parkrun so at least I feel like I’m on course again.

Tuesday

Kath and I discovered a path from Festival Park to Cobridge and along the side of it was a large field which we could run around safely even though it was covered in deep snow.  Ha ha, Kath nearly scared the life out of me when she asked me if it could be a pond we could be running on as there were no trees, bushes or stones in the middle.  I had this horrible thought that the ice might be strong enough to hold the weight of the snow but what about our weight?  Anyway, when I looked down to Festival Park and towards ASDA, I realised that if there was any water here; it would run down anyway.  It did make us think how easily you could get into trouble running in areas you don’t know.

Thursday

There was absolutely no change on the snow front.  If anything the pavements were probably even more lethal tonight than they were on Tuesday.  I nearly went flying outside my house by just getting in the car.  Good job we found our nice field. We ran another 4 miles in the deep snow which we thought would easily cover the 5 we should do

Friday

Oh no, even more snow fell over night and continued to fall until mid-morning.  Still, I managed to get my extra run in because I guessed that Parkrun would still be off; just less than 3 miles around Westbury Park and Seabridge.

Sunday

Yesterday’s rain had removed most of the snow and ice off the pavements around Stoke.  Kath and I had a 12-mile run to do and we decided to run from Festival Park to Longton and then up the dreaded Anchor Road to Bucknall and along Leek Road to the Station and back to Festival Park.  It was a mild, sunny but very windy morning and to my surprise Anchor Road didn’t seem anywhere near as bad today as it was last time I tried it.  I ran all the way up with relative ease.  Afterwards I realised that this was due to the strong wind pushing us from behind.  It was completely different matter running on the flat along Leek Road.  The weather changed at the heavens opened and this time the wind was coming towards us.  It suddenly so awful that after 9 miles we decided to take a short-cut through the park which was just as well; if we had stuck to the original course, we would have gone too far.  Our short-cut through the park made the run nearly 12 miles