krnaturalphoto's Blog 
50k Training: Week 2 Long Run
The winter weather in Upstate, NY has been a bit brutal in January. I was really hoping for a milder winter like we have had the past few years during which to train for my first trail marathon and 50k. Last week I ran my long run of 14 miles on a treadmill. Something I never thought I would do.
This week I was determined to run outside. Yesterday the temperature was around 12 degrees and it was the morning after our region was hit by a snow storm. The roads were still covered in snow. Barely a snow plow in site. But I remained determined to run outside. I layered up my clothes, put on heavy socks, and laced up my trail shoes. I treated it like a trail run, but on snow covered roads.
Since the roads were in bad shape I couldn’t travel to somewhere where I could run 14 miles on an out and back our loop course. I have a route where I can run down into town and around back up to my house, but I thought it best to stay away from areas where there might be more traffic.
I have a loop route that I run from my house of 7 miles, so the decision was to run 2 loops of the 7 mile course. I have never run that loop twice in a row. It is fairly challenging since I live on a hill and it creates any course of significant distance with a good amount of elevation gain. Running this loop twice generated nearly 1,800 feet of elevation. This combined with the snow made it particularly challenging.
The cold as also a factor. During the first five miles I felt pretty warm. There were times when the wind started whipping and it penetrated my layers of clothes and I was cold, but overall I think I had the perfect clothing on. That made me pretty happy because one thing I worry about as a relatively new runner is not knowing how to dress appropriately for the weather. Especially in the winter. I’ve only done much running in the winter for the last couple years.
One thing that really helped me with the struggle on this run was taking my GoPro out with me and photographing the scenery and photographing myself as I ran. It helped to take my mind off grinding out the miles and all the miles still to go. Having two loops of the same terrain to run was actually nice from a photography standpoint because I could try a couple of different things out on the spots that I really wanted to photograph. I created several different time lapse videos and a short regular video along with the photographs featured here.
You can check out the videos I created on this run on my YouTube channel: Kyle Reynolds
Wow! 14 miles on a treadmill! Have a great running week!