10 miles in Sh*tty Weather

I have a regular 8-5 job Monday-Thursday, but on Friday I get to leave work at 3pm. Now that it's not crazy hot in Las Vegas anymore and  the fact that I don't pick up my son from daycare until  5:15pm,  I have made a commitment to run long on Friday afternoon. I figure that this will help me train for the Rock n Roll LV half marathon next month, because this race is run in the evening.  Three weeks ago I ran my hilly 10 mile route and it was hot! I had to pour ice water over my head and stuff ice cubes into my bra half way through the run. The Las Vegas area has about two seasons hot and cold.  We go from hot to freezing in less than a month. I kept looking at weather.com to give me an idea about how chilly it might be. Daytime high was 63 degrees with lows in the 40's. Not too bad. I was so grateful that I remembered to pack a long sleeve top in my bag.

I took off at about 3:15pm and it was windy.  There were 20-30 per mile headwinds and it had started to rain. I knew that this run was going to be a test of how tough I was mentally. The first 5 miles of my route climb 600ft. I wore a hot pink shirt because I was worried in that grey foggy drizzle that cars wouldn't see me. On days like this you can't worry about running fast. The roads were like a slippery ice rink and I had to be extra careful with my footing. As I was running up hill I was hit with stinging cold wind and rain. The strangest thing happened. I kept thinking about how hard this run had been in the hot temps. The heat sucks a lot of energy out of you. But the cold wind seemed to cancel out the burn of climbing uphill, and the burn of climbing uphill seemed to lessen the bite of the cold wind.

When I hit the 5 mile turn around I crossed the street in the crosswalk and I had the right away. I still felt like I was playing frogger with cars because of the low visibility and then the rain stopped. I had three awesome miles of downhill cruising. I still had to be careful with my footing because of the slippery roads.  About two miles from the finish the rain started up again. This time it was a bit more steady, I was so grateful for the wind to be at my back.

These runs are great for mental toughness. The weather for the half marathon could just as cold maybe even colder. I ran the RNR LV full in 2009. It was 31 degrees at the start. Brrr. I'm glad today was a good day.