My first run in the snow!

With January well under way, Hannah and I are now making a concerted effort to get out for a mid-week run every week. There's notes in calendars and everything!! As such, despite it being rather cold and having been snowing during the day, we set out on a 7.5km run round Helmdon. This is a bit farther than I wanted to go for a mid-week run, but we're planning on doing a local Parkrun on Saturday and they're only 5km. So going a bit longer today wasn't a bad idea.

The route in question is a loop that starts and ends at the pub. Unfortunately that means it's uphill from the get go. And it really was cold. My car suggested it was 1C when I arrived, and the wind chill must have dropped it well below that. Because of this, I was struggling a little at the start with my breathing. But we soon crested the hill and things levelled out. It did leave the roads icy in places so we had to be careful.

This was also the point where it started lightly snowing. I had joked during the day that I quite liked the idea of running in the snow. Turns out to be less fun than I had thought!! It's a bit like running into the old windows screen saver, only colder and it sticks to your glasses. Thankfully, it let up after a few minutes and left the cold wind blowing instead. But we had turned off the first section of main road at least.

The road was now fairly level, and with almost no traffic. We were passed twice by the same car, but that was it on this section as it's a quiet back road that is little more than a track that goes on for 3km. In the daytime the view would be great across the valleys, but at night it means you get to see all the house lights glowing instead. This section of road also ends with a nice downhill section. On tarmac this isn't as relaxing as doing it off road as I find it makes my lower back ache. I have to hold myself back from charging off down the hill and the strain isn't helpful.

What's even less helpful is the almost 2km uphill stretch back to the edge of the village. This was also the point at which it started snowing again. Up to this point our pace had been fairly even, hovering around the 6mins/km mark. However, the cold wind was really starting to take it's toll on me. Every time I managed to recover my breathing pattern and get things back under control the wind would blow, chill my chest and bugger it all up. This made keeping up a rhythm really hard and it slowed me down no end with the pace dropping off by 1min/km. Given the horrible noises I was making, that wasn't too bad in hindsight. By the time we crested the rise into the village, the wind had dropped and I had managed to recover enough to get the pace back to 6mins/km.

From here it was pretty much downhill for the final Km. This meant the pace picked up, helped along by Hannah pushing me on to the end. By the end we were at almost 5mins/km. This helped get our average pace down to 6:02mins/km, my fastest so far for any reasonable distance! It also turns out that the 7.5km run was nearer 7km. Hannah's phone disagrees a little, showing 7.3km.

After all the hard work, and since we finished at a pub, we decided to celebrate with a pint! I can see this becoming an obligatory end to runs in Helmdon. One thing it has shown me is that I need to wear more layers when running in the cold. I hadn't realised that Hannah had 4 layers on, whilst I only had 2. So it was no wonder I was getting cold!! She also looks annoyingly good for someone who's just finished a 7km run in sub-zero temperatures and snow.