Adventures in Snowshoeing

Today we got even more snow, but around lunch time the sun came out and the "feels like" temperature was above zero (ok, it was zero).  Since the roads were way too snowy, I decided to try out my new snowshoes that I got for Christmas.

My XC skiing pants and Running Room jacket that I bought for the Polar Dash also came in handy today.  So…snowshoeing is hard!  The snow was really deep and there were huge drifts on the golf course.  But it was very peaceful and pretty out there today!

I wore my Garmin and HR monitor just out of curiosity, and I did about one mile in 30 minutes!  My HR was in zone 2 most of the time, so it wasn't quite giving me a great workout and when I was finished all I wanted to do was go for a run.  It was a little different and frustrating moving so slowly on the snowshoes, but sort of fun at the same time!  This winter has not been a good one for running in Minnesota, so we do what we can.  I'm really looking forward to warmer temps, whenever they decide to show up.  

I'm (sort of) training for my next race, the Get Lucky half marathon on March 15.  I have been trying to follow a higher-mileage plan, but I have not been getting my long runs in at all due to this crappy weather.  I have been hitting the treadmill a lot and doing some speed work from my latest metabolic test, so hopefully I will be ready to set a PR in March!  For the rest of the year, my race schedule looks like this:

March 15 - Get Lucky half marathon

April 19 - Lone Star half marathon in Luckenbach, TX (I just registered for this today!)

June 1 - Minneapolis half marathon

October 5 - Twin Cities Marathon (!)

October 25 - Monster Dash half marathon

I'm sure I will sprinkle some 5k races in there too, and I would really like to run a 10k since I have not raced that distance yet and I love that distance!  But the highlight of the year will hopefully be Twin Cities, more on that decision in an upcoming post...