An exercise in patience (or futility)

Yesterday, we got our first snowstorm, which dumped anywhere from 5-10" in the area (O'Hare had ~6", but Midway got 10" and had a freak accident with a plane ending up on the road outside the airport). Unfortunately, the storm hit right at the start of the afternoon commute, which bascially induced mass chaos on the roads. I live about 25 miles from where I work, and the commute that normally takes me about an hour at that time of day took me a whopping 3 hours and 40 minutes.

By the time an hour had passed, I had already checked my email (God bless mobile web) and scrolled through the usual suspects to chat the time away (unfortunately, most of the friends I called weren't around). By the time 2 hours had passed, I was grateful that I had stopped for gas the night before, that I had used the restroom before I left work, and that I had a stash of pseudo healthy snacks in the car. By the time 3 hours had passed, I was mad at the world and at every slow car in front of me, and by the time I finally made it home, I was just bitter beyond belief. It took a big bowl of Edy's Slow-Churned ice cream, a glass of wine, and another glass of egg nog (complete with a little Captain Morgan's) to bring my blood pressure out of the stratosphere and to start restoring that part of my stomach lining which seemed to have started digesting itself at some point along the way. Patient has never been a word that is readily used to describe me, and boy did that hold true last night. But, I made it--I guess in the end, that's what counts.

As if the longest commute I've ever experienced weren't enough fun for the week, tonight I did my 8-miler on a treadmill. I had toyed with the idea of getting it in this morning and doing it outside, but I had an early meeting (that ended up getting moved anyway) that I wasn't prepared for, so I pushed my workout back until this afternoon. Between the temperature, the snow, and the fact that it seems like it gets dark here at 2 in the afternoon these days, I decided to work on my mental stamina and duke it out with the treadmill. It's always fun to hit the 60 minute mark and have the machine stop automatically, then have to reset it and keep going. At least we had the "Friday Flicks" playing in the fitness center--today was "Meet the Fockers", which helped kill some of the boredom. At least the drive home today was short...if I would've had to deal with yesterday's commute (or even half of that) today, I'm pretty sure I would be a road rage case study by now.

Tomorrow morning, I'm meeting Erin and Julia (another co-worker) for a 12-miler near work--should be fun to see how much snow we end up running through. Erin has already informed me that I will not be in charge of pacing, as she's pretty sure I'll go too fast (probably true) and since she isn't training for a marathon but is just running for the heck of it, she's setting the pace. Fair enough--I'm trying to take it as easy as possible this week and still hit my mileage, so that works for me.

Onto the next adventure...