La premiere semaine

Phew!  Week one is done, and I'm considering it a success!

I started the week by swapping a longer (5 mile) run with a shorter (3 mile) run to get it out of the way in what I knew would be a busy week.

Thank goodness!  I knew it was going to be busy, but I didn't know it was going to be snowy!  Tuesday morning, I woke up to a foot of snow after a month long "drought."  Still, I was determined to run.  It was too snowy to get my car out of the driveway to get to the gym, so that wasn't an option, but I optimisitically thought that the road might be in better shape than my driveway, bundled up, and headed out.  When I got to the end of the driveway, and saw that my street was unplowed, I thought the main road off of my road, might be in better shape and gingerly tried to run in tire tracks without twisting an ankle.  The main road hadn't been plowed yet either (this, at 3pm), but there were wider tire tracks and I gave it a go.  3 leaps into calf-deep snow in the ditch to avoid cars and 850m in, I decided to turn around.  I guess 1 mile is better than no miles, but a busy work day had me really wanting to run.  I did 30 minutes of pilates to take a longer break from the computer screen in my  home office before returning to work.

By Wednesday, the roads had been plowed and I'd moved 120 kms north for work.  It was another busy day, but I was determined to get my run in.  And I did, plus a little bonus mile to make up for some of the missed run the day before.  It was slow going, because even though the road had been plowed, it was still snowing and a bit slippy in some places and I only averaged about 6:15/km, but it was a really pretty loop in the snow and I just enjoyed it.

We had a new group of youth arrive Wednesday night (hence the busy-ness) so Thursday was the full on Amy Show as I presented the program orientation in both official languages (et je ne suis pas bilingue).  To get my day off to a good start, I decided to go for a run.  On the way out the door, a jet lagged east-coaster who was up early asked if he could join me.  Glad for the company, and eager to get to know one of the newbies, I welcomed him to come along.  Unfortunately, he wasn't able to keep up, so my 5K run turned into more of a walk/run, but looking at my Garmin stats, I figure we ran at least 2K total, so it wasn't a complete loss.

Friday, Le spectacle d'Amy continued, and I took a scheduled rest day. 

As a side note, I'm really proud of how my French has improved in the past couple of years and how much more confident I feel speaking in my second language.  I am not bilingual, my accent is terrible, I make mistakes in almost every sentence, but I get my point across, and that's what matters.

I was supposed to bus home in the afternoon, but a few things came up and I stuck around to give support to the group leader, putting me on the 11:15pm Greyhound, making that a 14 hour work day, until we got stopped on the highway behind a nasty looking accident.  What should have been a 1.5 hour bus trip turned into a 4 hour bus trip, complete with a near brawl between 3 women on the bus over what was an appropriate volume at which to hold a conversation.  (Tabernac!)  I said it was long, I didn't say it wasn't entertaining.

Needless to say, I slept in on Saturday and did not feel like doing a long run.  It had snowed some more, and was so windy that it was hard to tell if the snow was falling from the sky or coming up from the ground.  I opted for the treadmill, and one mile at a time got through the 9 mile run on my schedule, plus a little extra to make up for more of those missed miles.

On Sunday, it was an absolutely beautiful day and the BF and I went out for a hike in the snow. 

What is normally an easy 40 minute out and back walk in the woods, took us well over an hour in the snow.  Climbing the hills were a real workout and good cross training!  At the end, I flopped in the snow and made an angel!