Outfoxed by Snowfall 50k

Our daughter Cecilia loves snow! It never outfoxes her!

What a month January was! 271 miles of running! A new record perhaps. Or slightly less than what I ran in college when I was in marathon training. I logged miles then but didn’t really care about the quantity of miles so much as long as I completed my long runs, it was more about running quality then for me.

My official running goal for January was 200 miles so I smashed it.

On Saturday, Jan. 31, I did the unthinkable, running a 50k in five segments. Mostly on the treadmill but also some outside. The first leg I ran was in Niagara Falls, NY.

Niagara Falls run

Then Rimavska, Finland.
Finland run
Then somewhere in western California.
Segment 5 in California
And a short run in Dublin, Ireland.
Dublin, Ireland run (the treadmill was getting tired by this point)
When I reached 19+ miles on the treadmill, boredom was beginning to set in and I longed to run in the slushy snow I saw outside.
My dream of running a 26.2 on the treadmill was clearly not exciting me like running in snow was. I realized I could either allow the snowfall to outfox me by falling short of my running goal for the day. Or to try to outfox the snowfall itself by running carefully and slowly through and in it.

Originally, I was going to just run 26.2 and walk to 50k after that. But my legs were still (somewhat) fresh, so I spontaneously decided why not run a 50k?

So I laced up and ran outside for 12.07 more miles.
Final blast outside, a slow but successful slog
The amazing highlight of the outdoor part of my run was spotting a fox in the forest. The fox crossed the trail in front of me, not looking to even see if it was clear or not. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a fox in the forest on this trail. Usually I only see birds or deer there. Sorry no photo of the fox, he was running so fast and it was so slippery he was gone before I reached that point on the trail.

It was a challenging cold run, snow in my face and underfoot, slushy, huge unavoidable puddles. I was completely soaked, especially my feet, from the precipitation and snow, slush, and puddles, but I was happy.

Why did I run a 50k in January? Perhaps to see if I could. I had never run a January marathon before. Due to my parental responsibilities, I had to break up the runs a bit to check on my daughter every once in a while. (My wife was working last Saturday all day). All in all, a 31.61 mi run, my longest ever. Longer than my 50k last October. And slower too because runstreaks require energy.

Do you like running in snow? Why or why not? Do you let winter weather outfox you? Or do you find ways to outfox it?