A flying start to 2010

Wow! That's more like it! Not even 2 days of 2010 gone, and already I've done a decent 9 mile tempo run on New Year's Day and a hill session today (yes, you heard correctly - a hill session) with the 2 Phils. 8 x 2 minutes up a snow covered hill, with a jog back down to the bottom as a recovery. It means I've now done more hill sessions in 2010 than I did in the whole of 2009. I'm sure I need to do more sessions like this if I'm going to start improving my times - even though it just about killed me, leaving me coughing and spluttering for what seemed like hours afterwards. However, with the benefit of a few hours recovery, I think I might actually have enjoyed it - the memory does play funny tricks sometimes, however...

We had even more snow here today. I'm starting to get fed up with it now. A couple of weeks ago when the snow first arrived it was very nice to see and good fun to play in or go walking in with the dogs. That was in spite of the fact it created havoc on the roads: it took us almost 6 hours to travel from Kilmarnock to Perthshire on the Sunday before Christmas (normally a 1 hour 15 minute journey), due to a lorry jack-knifing and leaving the A80 (the main road north out of Glasgow) shut for 4 hours with us stuck in the queue. The A9, which is just beside us, was also closed on a couple of occasions last week, again due to lorries jack-knifing in the snow and ice. Just a thought to all lorry drivers out there: why don't you go a bit slower in these tricky conditions, like everyone else does, rather than continuing to drive like total ars*holes? Maybe then you wouldn't jack-knife and cause chaos for others... grrr....

Anyway, we had a further foot of snow fall on the Sunday after Christmas, making it impossible to travel anywhere and leaving my car completely stuck in the drive. (It's still sitting there now - there is no chance of it moving anywhere until some of the snow melts). As I've been on holiday for the last couple of weeks it hasn't mattered too much, but I'll soon be back at work and will need it to get to the station. I also want to get running properly again. The conditions make that very difficult to do - we still have about a foot of snow on the moor, so it's impossible to run there, and a lot of the back roads have turned icy which is no good for running either. That only leaves the main roads, which are generally clear but have too many cars on them or are dark. So to sum up, and in case you hadn't guessed, I've had enough of the snow. Let's hope it goes away soon.