The most Brutal run of my life!

Today was one of those runs, one of those "never done that before" runs. After months of mild warm winter, the reality of an Austrian Winter came back this week Tues and we have been having some snow and gale force storms around here, which of course is great for the coming Ski Jwoc, but rubbish for running.

Today took the cake though, blizzard going like crazy, snow falling horizontally, icy roads (and I mean reallllllly slippery), snow drifts! I've done some tough runs in my time (some of them with D, but many of them since I moved to Austria), but I'm sure this was the toughest I have ever done. I recon the wind chill factor took the temperature way under - 30 degrees. Adding layers and layers of clothes doesn't help either (2 hats, 3 shirts / jackets, 2 long tights), must have been 1 kg more than normal plus the added resistance of the extra layers.

Every ten steps or so was a slip, every third step was fired out backwards. Although I had APP for the entire run, I was still 40 s slower round the loop this week (Warti was 6 min slower), but the extra power certainly paid off as I was able to out sprint Warti at the end. Certainly running into the wind Aisha is not affected, so I was able to keep those heavy wind KM's around 4:45 to 5:00 - poor Warti died! I know I'm getting fitter and faster, so just shows what a difference the weather really can make to any running (if you compare it to last week).

Whew, not fun, but in the end great for the mind. If I can train in this weather, then I can train in anything :) Hope not to have many more runs like this in my life! Greetings from a cold, windy and snowy Austria (thank god some things have gone back to normal *grin* )