THUNDERHAIL!

When you read the title of the post, it's very important that the voice in your head sound like the deep, dramatic, wrestling announcer voice: "Noooowww, entering the ring.... THUNNNDERRRHAIL!!"  Sounds much more impressive. 

Well, I made it through the ten, and it was actually really fun.  As fun as running outside while getting pelted in the face by ice chunks can be... 

I woke up really early on Sunday (before my kids, which is a first), and got my stuff together.  I was really excited to try out my new Camelback handheld water bottle:

                                                 

It was awesome.. I totally recommend it.  My old bottle would always slip out of the sleeve, and it wasn't insulated, and the water tasted like old dishrags... so yeah, it's safe to say I love my new bottle.

Anyway, I wrote out the directions for our new route, and "laminated" them with some Scotch tape.

                                  

                                     

I picked up Matt, and we drove twenty minutes to get to our run, and the weather was bad.  It was about 30 degrees, sleeting, and pretty windy.  Honestly, I wasn't looking forward to it.  I do NOT like being cold, and I'm not particularly in to this kind of masochistic behavior.  But, we had to get the run in. 

We parked, and I snapped a quick picture through the windshield:

                                    

 We started running, and it actually wasn't too bad.  Once we got wet, we weren't cold and didn't really notice the rain much.  The first few miles passed pretty uneventfully, but I could tell Mattie wasn't feeling it.  He ended up peeling off a couple of miles early, but still made an awesome effort. 

Around 4 miles, it was sleeting pretty hard, and our necks and faces were stinging from the little chunks of ice.  Luckily, we had worn hats with brims, so it wasn't so bad as long as we tilted our heads in the right direction.   By about 6 miles, it started thundering and lightening...  Bad.  With one particularly terrifying crack of thunder, the hail started streaming down, and that was when I started seriously questioning finishing up early.  But, I was still four miles away from the car, and I figured running would get me out of the hail quicker.  It did, and I was super happy to be done when I saw my car. 

Me, at home post-run, very very happy to be done.

Our deck an hour after the storm... the hail melted somewhat, but it still looked cool.

As a treat, I picked up Subway on the way home... it was SOOO GOOD.  Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki on Italian Herbs & Cheese bread with provolone cheese, extra spinach, lettuce, onion, tomato, green pepper, banana pepper and sweet onion sauce.  mmmmmmmmm

                                   

Coming up for this week:  cool track workout on Tuesday, tempo on Thursday, and a six on Saturday.  Next week, half marathon!!  Hope you all have a great Monday!