It beats watching football

That is what D said as we were suiting up for my 40km training run. He is right, and I thought about it several times out on that run. As I was being pelted with blowing snow, running in ankle deep powder, fighting with frozen water bottles and jumping in the ditch to avoid oncoming traffic, I kept thinking "I would still rather be doing this than sitting on the couch watching football". I hate football.

The day started with preparations of epic proportions.

Well not really, but D took his support role very seriously and had the cooler ready with an assortment of beverages and snacks. The plan was to do a 30km highway loop with D parking along the way to be my support/ aide stations. He would drive about 8km, park and then run back to me before turning and running back to the Jeep to wait for me to follow. It was awesome, I have to say. If it weren't for him and H-dog out there I couldn't have done it today. For starters, my legs felt tired from the get go. Usually if I start with tired legs they come around after 5-8km. Today at 8km I felt done. But seeing the boys and knowing at each 8km interval they would be waiting really kept me trudging along. And a trudge it was. It has been snowing and blowing for the past couple days and the shoulders of the highway were covered in a couple inches of powdery snow. It was like running on sand-except under the sand there was ice! And speaking of ice, within the time it took me to run the 8km sections my water bottle would freeze to the point I could no longer drink. Thankfully D would swap out my bottle at each 'station'. He also forced food into me- important since last week my demise came from only consuming 100 calories over a 35km run. Dumb. So today his line was- eat this, eat that, you need to eat, are you eating, you need to eat..etc. And it worked since I managed to take in 500ish calories- a big deal for me, especially in this kind of weather when my face/mouth are covered and the last thing I felt like doing was chewing.
I hit the driveway in 30.4km which worked out perfectly as it left me with exactly 6miles to go. (the treadmill is in miles) Once again D had my back and had everything set up for me!

I was a bit horrified by how much it hurt, but I managed to get the last 10km done in 57mins. I was so tired, stiff and hungry I felt like..I'd just run a marathon. Except I was 2.2km short of that :) I don't normally go into marathons with the kind of mileage I was carrying in my legs so I guess that evens it out.

D took a couple of shots of me out there (you are right Jenna, no one out there to sneak up on!) before the camera died. Probably for the best since things only got uglier ;)

Thanks to my husband extraordinaire who really was the wind beneath my broken wings today! I couldn't have done it without you (and H-dog), babe.
Tomorrow I somehow have to coax another 16km run out of this old bod. Pray for me.