Running In A Winter Wonderland

Saturday morning arrived and it was supposed to be the day of my last long run before the Disney marathon. It would also be my final run in Kelowna. When I woke up it said it was -20C out there. Brr! I was tired of feeling like a wuss for avoiding these really cold temperatures so I got dressed and headed out. It was a happy surprise that it wasn't nearly as cold as I thought - only -11C!

My final run was supposed to be somewhere just over an hour and would have 3 x 8:00 Zone 3 intervals. If I could pop up into Zone 4 and hold it then that would be fine too. Because I needed to run according to heart rate zone I wanted to avoid the hills in the neighborhood and figured I'd head out to the Mission Creek Greenway where it would be a bit flatter. I ran out here a couple of times this summer and it was beautiful. I wasn't sure what to expect with all of the snow, but I found out they plow the trail so you wind up running on packed snow. With my Yak Trax on traction wasn't an issue and I could try to be speedy on my intervals.
There was the odd runner out and I saw a couple of cross country skiers. Otherwise it was pretty quiet on the trail. I started off on my warm up and the cold weather must have given me some incentive to go faster but since my heart rate was low I just went with it. The intervals went really well. I was able to hold it in a high Zone 3 and into Zone 4 for all of them. Afterwards I ran for a cool down to stretch the run out into an 1:10. The temperature was pretty comfortable the whole time, although my behind was a wee bit cold towards the end.
It was so beautiful out that it is too bad that I only managed one run at the greenway on this trip. There are definitely some amazing places to run out here in Kelowna! Tonight it is back to Calgary...tomorrow back to work!