I can't believe it! It's January and it's so nice outside. According to the Weather Network, it was -5*C/23*F with no wind. I must admit, it felt downright tropical. I know that's sad to say, given that it was still -5*C, but for the first time in a long time, I went outside and thought "warm". With that, I took my 9 miles outside today.
No complaints on the weather-front but I am still so bored with the local scenery. My two options for running: a) the 2-mile loop in my neighbourhood, or b) the 2.5 mile, straight, flat county highway that is immediately beside my neighbourhood. (I suppose there's also the base but it's about a 1.5 mile loop in some sort of wind vortex that involves taking the tunnel to cross a highway.) So for my 9 miles, I did 2 miles in the Qs, 5 miles out-and-back on Grande-Anse and then 2 more miles in the Qs. Boring.
I think next time I might have to drive somewhere to run. There's a bike path that I know of in Jonquiere, but I highly doubt it's maintained in the winter. The other thing I've noticed is that there aren't very many large residential areas. There are just small pockets of houses tucked between major streets that are too dangerous to run on (heck, too dangerous to drive on most days). I also don't want to drive 20 minutes somewhere to discover that the road conditions are awful for running.
Next week's long run is only 6 miles (cutback week), so I'm sure I can manage that, whether it be outside or on the treadmill. On the schedule for tomorrow is an easy 3 miles plus the Bodyrock workout I missed on Friday.
Looks like you have some scouting to do before your next long run. Though I'm not at the 9 mile marker yet, I'm already having to consider what I'm going to do for run that are longer than 5 miles. At least I have a lot of options for city street combinations, and I can drive to quite a few different trails/tracks that are in decent shape (though not maintained during the winter). I have considered making 2, 3, and 4 mile loops so that as I add distance, I can just combine and arrange the loops to get the total distance I need. We'll see how that goes. At any rate, I'm glad you got a great 9 miler in outside!
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