Stopping By The Woods

I was debating what to title this post. I thought about “Staying the Course,” but that phrase has already been hijacked and overused by politicians. Instead, I named it after a Steven Seagal movie that always makes my friend Reid and I laugh because of one particular scene, one of the worst movie scenes of all time. (Yeah, I have a strange sense of humor. Don’t click that link if you haven’t seen a Seagal movie and chuckled.) Anyway, on deadly ground is kind of how I felt running this morning. We had a little bit of snow, but it was just enough to make my subdivision a little treacherous.

The area where I live has a lot of underground springs and karst geographic structure beneath it. Consequently the streets are often cracked and pot-holed, and there is always pooling water in some spots year-round. So when it snows or just gets really cold, it can indeed be deadly ground for a runner, especially in the dark.

So this morning’s training run wasn’t about distance or speed or anything else other than just me getting acclimated to another type of outdoor running condition that I had not encountered in all those years of being a world class couch potato. My pace was slow. Hey maybe I should run this pace all the time, because I actually felt I could have carried on a splendid conversation with a running partner, had I had one with me today. And I didn’t do my normal distance, which calls for me to repeat a few cul-de-sacs in my neighborhood. I figured I made it through all of them safely, why push it?