Mark and I decided to celebrate Valentine's Day this year by getting up early (6:30 AM), driving for over an hour to the east side, and running a trail run in the beautiful North Chagrin metroparks. We both signed up for the 15K, but after crossing the 2 mile mark with a time of about 25 minutes (due to the deep snow and hills, I was just not used to this type of running!), I told Mark to go ahead & finish the 15K on his own and I would just do 1 loop. After all, we had to be in Beachwood for a team triathlon before noon, and I was seriously worried about whether I could make it or not. I have NEVER run that slow before, and underestimated the effect all that snow could have on my run. Mark said he figured out the trick - just RUN FASTER. That way, your feet aren't on the ground long enough to slip! Anyway, I finished the 5 mile loop in a little over an hour and waited for Mark with a cup of hot chocolate. Mark did pretty well once he figured out the trick to running in the snow. We didn't hang out long at all, but jumped in the car for the 15 min drive to our indoor triathlon. Our friend, Mike, was waiting for us. The team tri worked like this - Mike would swim for 15 minutes and a timer would log how far he got in that 15 min. We then had 10 min for transition, and Mark would hop on a spinner and log how far he could get in 20 min. The problem here was each rider did not have the option to change the tension on the bike. So Mark was literally "spinning" - very high cadence with no tension for 20 min. Then we had a 10 min transition, and it was my turn to run on the indoor track - as far as I could get in 20 minutes. I ended up doing 33 laps at an average pace of about 7:45 per mile. It was actually a lot of fun, and great to see Mike, his wife Marjan, and their 2 kids (Luke & Julia). We haven't seen them since the summer, so it was nice to catch up! We got home in time to get ready for our dinner at Salmon Dave's - a nice end to a really nice day! Happy Valentine's Day!
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