Nokomis travels

Ahh!  A leisurely weekend morning that includes a long run is one of my favorite things.  Winter introduces many challenges to the weekly long run, but one distinct upside is that the season's temperatures mean you can head out anytime in the morning - or, heck, live extra-dangerously and go out in the afternoon - without suffering heat-related consequences. (On especially hot summer weekends, my alarm has sounded before 5 a.m. in a futile effort to beat the heat.  Blech!)  Molly and I planned to meet at 9:00 this morning, then pushed it back to 9:30 when we saw the forecast was a little chilly.  That plan turned out to work perfectly, because the sun popped out literally a few minutes before we started!

As I was enjoying my grapefruit, oatmeal with peanut butter, and coffee (sound the "creature of habit" alarm!), I noticed that a very light snow was falling very gently.  It was snowglobe snow.  It had stopped by the time Molly and I started running, but it piled up smartly on the sidewalks and looked like cottonwood seeds or cattail fluff.

We set out for our loop, which took us over to Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis.  I've really been sightseeing around metro area lakes lately!  Last week, it was Como; the week before, Calhoun and Harriet.  This week, we had another running buddy along for the trip: Molly's pup, Rachel!

Besides being cute and furry, Rachel was an invaluable asset because she practically pulled Molly and me up the 1.5-mile hill that's right at the end of our route.  And then she got tuckered out at the end of the run, just like Molly and I did.  Now that's an evenly matched running buddy!  We finished with just under 14 miles.  Next week is 15, the longest we'll run before our half-marathon on St. Patrick's Day!

And now, some recovery, special-ordered for a Saturday afternoon: rest-burrito-water-TV-sleep-read.