What!? Writing that title feels blasphemous. As a kid growing up in Colorado, snow days were something that were dreamed about. Basically they were a spontaneous Christmas. Whenever big snow storms came in, I remember listening to am radio stations, watching the bottom line of news stations, calling friends with parents that worked in our school district; all hoping that Poudre School District would be one of the districts that would have a snow day.

One of my favorite memories of growing up was the snow days we got in my junior year of high school. We had just had our week of spring break and had gone back to school Monday. Then a huge snow storm rolls in Monday night, and Fort Collins gets around 2 feet of snow! The next two days, school was cancelled. That meant instead of going to school, I was meeting up with friends to have some snow ball fights, build huge igloos, and play some epic snow football games. What else could you wish for during the school year? Then when we were prepared to go back to school Thursday, we found out that because the snow was so wet and heavy, some of the roofs in local schools had begun to sag! Thus with safety in mind, both Thursday and Friday were cancelled as well. Basically we had 2 weeks of spring break!

Well now that I’m an adult, and a runner; snow days don’t have the same appeal they had growing up. Now a snow day just means that I won’t be able to run on the beautiful trails of Flagstaff for a while. This usually means running on the treadmill the first day. Then once the roads have been plowed, running on those, hoping that I won’t get run off the road by a salty dude who thinks runners should stay on the sidewalks (even though they are rarely cleared.)

Well this past Monday, the kids of Flagstaff were ecstatic to have a snow day caused by the storm that came in Saturday night, and was off and on until early Monday morning, resulting in over a foot of snow. When I heard the snow was coming, I decided I would try to take advantage of some connections and try to out-smart this snow storm.

Thanks to a connection with Team USA Arizona and Bill Lacy; Annika, Makenzie, Danny Mercado and I went down to stay in one of Bill’s beautiful houses in the Cornville/Page Springs area. There was no snow collection there, so Danny and I were able to get in a couple good easy runs Sunday; then went a little further south to Camp Verde Monday morning to do a hard workout.

Danny did a 9 mile steady state. I did 4 miles with him at steady state pace, 2 miles at tempo pace, 1 mile at 10k race pace, then a few fast finishes; each with 2 to 3 minutes recovery between them. It was so nice to get in a good workout in great weather before returning to the winter wonderland that Flagstaff had turned into since we had left.

So at least this time, snow days didn’t suck too badly.


Where we worked out in Camp Verde


Compared to what we came back to in Flagstaff