Last week I reported that we were all set for our first Holiday Lights run on Wednesday this week. Well, 6-8 inches of new snow overnight Tuesday shortened that run to 5 miles, and also turned my solo day off into a snow day for my husband. I was so looking forward to our long run and then a quiet day to myself. Guess the snow gods were worried I'd be lonely. At least the snow wasn't enough to keep me from getting to the beauty salon to cover the random tinsel in my hair (sparkly grays!). The five mile run was pretty good, all things considered. We've been running in the same community for so long that we quickly came up with a game plan to try to find mostly plowed roads that were fairly quiet. I was so thankful to run with a friend because my internal dialogue was so very noisy that morning. For some stretches, I just couldn't wait to head back telling myself this was making my legs tired, I'd probably fall, I could just run later, etc. Other stretches I was feeling content and comfortable to find a snow track and simply follow along in both a mental and physical groove. On these stretches, I was joyful not to have to find my own way. On some of these, Deb opted to just join in the same path behind me and let me use my headlight to find us a good route. By myself, I'm sure the negative voices might have gotten persuasive enough to turn toward home too early. At the end, we decided to try again for the lights on Saturday morning. Well, Mother Nature is trying to pull another fast one on us by dumping more snow on our area. When I saw a potential for up to 4" by Saturday morning, I texted Deb on Friday to propose a Friday evening run. In case it hasn't already been apparent, we are quite set in our ways. The two of us have been running together for somewhere around 13 years and I could probably count on one hand the number of times we've run later than 9:00am. Almost always, we run at 5:00am on Wednesdays and maybe as late as 6:00 on Saturdays, so 5:00 was definitely out of our zone. These lights better be good! We took off at 5:00pm and quickly noted that we seemed to feel alright other than dodging occasional snow piles at intersections. We were even so bold to cut behind the grocery store to get to the light show faster, then remembered that there was a murder back there a number of years ago, but continued on the same route. (The murder was a drug deal gone bad; no random creepy dudes back there.) . We got to the community center at 4.9 miles ready to do about 1.5 laps of the trail and head back for a total of 9-10 miles. Imagine our dismay when the light trail was totally dark! We went inside to ask when the lights would start and were told December 7!!! Have you ever seen the movie Vacation with Chevy Chase? The movie centers around a family road trip to Wally World. When the Griswolds arrive, they discover that Wally World is closed for repairs. How disappointing! That is how we felt with no Christmas lights to run through this evening when we'd made such efforts to beat the storm out there. I've felt this way once before. My family and I drove to the Wisconsin Dells for a marathon in about 2010. When we arrived, we drove into a parking lot not unlike the Wally Word lot in the movie and were the only car there. Fortunately we did find right lot and the amusement park and the race were on as scheduled. My family tends to do things the hard way often...we like to say there is an Anderson adventure everywhere we go. For this reason, my dad has nicknamed us the Griswolds. We always have a good time, just maybe not the good time we went there to have. While we did not meet our goal of seeing the holiday lights this Thanksgiving break, we did indeed beat the snow and got 9.25 miles in and proved to ourselves that we wouldn't somehow melt or implode if we tried to run in the evening. I believe we both still will prefer morning, but it's good to know that we can step out of our zone, even literally, and it's all good.
We will try again next weekend for our holiday lights...simply having a snowstorm and the lights off will not deter two ladies who love their Christmas lights. Stay positive and happy running! Missee
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AuthorMissee and Stephanie are two Minnesota sisters and moms who love to run. We are not experts in running, parenting or anything else, but we do have years of experiences that may be helpful or entertaining to others. Archives
May 2020
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