Since starting school at Georgetown in 2004, I had successfully run and biked through 5 winters in Washington D.C. without much consternation... until the winter of 2009/10 arrived. On the night of Friday December 18th, the weather forecast was calling for a massive snowstorm of 18 inches or more starting after midnight and continuing all day on Saturday. Sure enough, come midnight the snow starting falling. Excited to go out in some fresh powder before it all melted, I laced up my running shoes that night around 3:00 a.m. and set out on a quick 6 miler out-and-back on MacArthur Blvd. There were a good 4 to 5 inches on the ground already. It was so much fun slip-sliding through the fresh powder. Turned out to be one of the most fun runs I can ever remember. Got cheers and honks from the many snowplow drivers - I felt like I was Rocky Balboa training for a prize fight through the streets of Philadelphia. Little did I know when I went to bed that night that this was not to be the last run through the snow this winter.
When I awoke on Saturday December 19th, the snow was NOT melted. Rather, the previous night's snowstorm had turned into a raging blizzard and more than a foot and a half of snow had already fallen. And of course I went out for a run.
