Treadmill Miles

I'm not proud of it, but I've piled up almost 40 treadmill miles in the last two and a half days.  The weather here in Central Oregon has given me a real head fake.  Normally, I don't plan to be in "marathon" shape as early as March, but with the lack of snow (read:  good skiing) in the Cascades since early January, it's been easy and fun to start to build up (ok, for us ultra marathoners, it's build down) to the marathon.  I've had my eye on Napa Valley Marathon, being held March 6th this year.  Everything was going great until the weather karma changed from west to east, and a huge dump of wet snow arrived on Tuesday morning, about a foot at our house and three feet in the mountains.  The storm was enough to cut the power - which is not that common in our area because most of the power lines are underground.  For my house the power was out only the day, but for others, I think they are still without electricity.

As if it wasn't bad enough...the snow plows pile it on parked cars...(photo from the Bend Bulletin)

I would gladly trade no power for clear roads and trails.  The porch can serve as a refrigerator, candles and headlamps work fine, and toilet flushing, well we won't talk about that.  My priorities being what they are,  I can not train for a marathon on snowy and icy roads.  Thus the treadmill.  During the power free time, I had to head to a gym and suffer the embarrassment of trying to get in an interval workout surrounded by others trotting along on the treadmill.  Intervals are never pretty.  There is plenty of heavy breathing, possibly some other bodily sounds, and then the stop and go nature of going hard for a couple miles, taking a recovery, then going hard again.    Anyway, I suffered through it.

The good news is that I was able to touch foot to asphalt this afternoon.  Not dirt - that is a long way off right now, but at least asphalt.  The sun has come out and is nicely warming up the roads.    Sometimes you take what you can get, and the roads are looking pretty good to me right now.