In case you have been under a rock, or outside of the UK, you may not be aware that yesterday a whole 2 inches of snow fell on Manchester! There are some pictures here that the local paper slurped off the T’interWebz.
I’d love to know whether the captions were from the paper’s lowest minion who had to work this weekend, or from some person who put the slideshow together. Either way the spelling is shocking, so click at your own peril.

But back to running. Did I let the snow stop me? Did I feck!
I was up about 7 and took ages to get ready because I thought I had some spare headphones somewhere but after much rummaging I had to accept the fact that I didn’t.
My usual headphones shuffled their mortal coil yesterday. They were a pair of Sennheiser that I had bought in July when I started running again after the house moves, and frankly they were rubbish. Philips used to make hook-in sports headphones that could withstand years of daily use, but they don’t anymore.

Anyway I decided to venture out without them. I like an early-morning long run without music or podcasts. It makes you notice things. It clears your mind even more than one with sound.

And today there was plenty to notice: I cycled back to Sale, my old address soon to be my new address, and my favourite road running spot. It is there that I took up running in 2007, when I use to try out new routes and painstakingly chart them in Google Pedometer to find out how many miles I had covered.

I parked my bike in front of the local supermarket, and set off on my tried and tested 5-mile loop with a mind to doing it twice. In fact I stretched the first repeat to just under 6 miles, to make the second lap feel easier.

I saw houses that were being built the last time I was going down that way -now finished and sadly empty. I noticed missing trees, new businesses taking the place of old ones, gardens that had been neatened, doors and windows that have been painted much brighter colours than before.

I tried to keep mostly to the roads since they were clear, unlike the pavements which still had a lot of black ice and snow.

I struggled a little bit around mile six, but when I got to mile 10 I could easily have gone on and on. That tells me that I should probably attempt a Half Marathon sooner rather than later, but more importantly that I need to work on pushing myself a bit more.

The average speed is 11:31 min/mi, which is not as good as my usual 10:15 for a long run, but hopefully there won’t be much more running in the snow this year!

The real hard part was the cycling there and back in the snow. The roads were mostly clear, but the quickest way from my current house to Sale is via pedestrianised areas and bridges and cycle paths, which were full of snow. There were also two cars who drove past me and sprayed me with snow (must be a temperature thing) which was definitely an experience!

That’s what this week looks like:


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|  M  | Tue |  W  |  Th |  F  | Sa | Su  | TOT  |
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|     | 6.5 |     | 2.8 |  3  |    |  10 | 22.3 |
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I am extremely pleased with my 22 miles this week, and breaking the psychological barrier of the double-digit distance.

I am going to sign off now and go back to my evening of mindless telly, food and more mindless telly.
Next week is StepBack Week – and not a moment too soon! This here lassie needs to concentrate on core strength, the house move, and rest!