Ok, this snow has become a regular feature

It's Sunday evening, the end of week 2 of the Hal higdon plan. It started snowing on Tuesday, and today it's been snowing non- stop since this morning. This has meant a great opportunity to sample my trail shoes, and now they're well and truly worn in, as I've done most of this week's mileage in them.

Saturday was 5 miles in the evening, it was still a bit icy underfoot and I did go over on my ankle, but otherwise a fairly uneventful run.

Sunday and I went for my 9 miles. It had already started snowing before I set off, and I thought it would be fun to run in the snow. I now know I should have worn sunglasses as the small snow drops in my eyes was quite irritating. I decided to go the trusted route of the Wivenhoe trail, hopefully this would mean running on snow rather than ice and for the most part this was true. As I went through the lower part of castle park, the usual lake where the ducks swim had frozen over, so the ducks were stuck in the small part that remained unfrozen, though there were many other birds on the "lake"

Around mile four, I heard a squeaking sound and wondered what it was, I looked to see a small bird flying. It reminded me of the baby skimmer birds I'd seen on Africa earlier this week (pic 3)

On the way back home, I saw a snow man :-)

I'd read a lot online about how a snow run is much like running in the sand. I have to say when I was out there running, I didn't understand what the fuss was all about, however, when I got home and thawed out a bit, I realised I had quite sore knees, and my legs definitely feel like they've done a lot more work than usual.

So I'm sitting here feeling rather proud of myself that I did the 25 miles set for this week, despite the weather.

Next week is a step back week, down to 22 miles, so hopefully a good opportunity to rebuild and gain the fitness from the last 2 weeks training.