A giant sleet storm put a damper on my running for this weekend. I've never so much of the little balls of ice. It sleeted from Friday morning all the through the night piling up a few inches of heavy wet guck when it was all said and done.

Friday quickly went out the window and instead of running I walked to the local bar with everybody that lives in my duplex. We drank many beers and ate greasy food. I don't often do that during marathon training and it was nice to just not think about running and relax for a Friday night.

I planned to run later in the day Saturday, after a lot of melting had occurred in the strong March sun. Heather and I drove down to the Art Museum and I could quickly see that the river path wasn't in great condition for running. It's normally cleared soon after a storm but not this time. Heather didn't look to excited to slog through the uneven footing, and icy patches and I wasn't to keen on the idea myself so I came home to the hated treadmill.

5 miles with most coming in at 7:30 pace. I did 5x400 at 6:00 pace somewhere in the middle just to break the monotony and I was done. It sucks just as bad as I remember but I was happy to at least get a few miles in.

This all meant that my long run got pushed back to Sunday. Figured I would get out the door at 9:00 am and just deal with the conditions. By that time the sun would have started melted things and hopefully I could get some clear path.

Things definitely didn't look to warm and melting when I left the house. I drove to the St. Joe's boathouse and I could see that the river path didn't look any better than it had the day before. This was going to suck just as much as I imagined. The path looked a little better heading towards the museum so I set off in that direction not knowing where I was going to find 18 miles of road but I had to start somewhere.

The path was a mess but the sleet had formed a frozen sheet on the grass that wasn't to slippery and I stayed on that for as much as I could. I had to run on some fairly bad footing occasionally but overall it wasn't to bad. I wasn't breaking any land speed records but my pace was steady. When I got to the Art Museum I did two trips up the steps and decided to just run this route back and forth to my car for 18 miles.

Not to exciting but I at least knew what I was in for. With each pass the sun melted the ice more and more to the point where the path was runnable just about the entire way by the end. It went by more quickly that I would have thought and before I knew it I was on my last 3 mile return from the Art Museum. 18 miles in 2:20.

Hopefully this will be the last of the nasty weather. Things are looking up for next week and then we are practically in April.