Road Rage - Heidi

It really has been a great winter to train for Boston. But after the temperature was up to 74 on Wednesday, it seemed a bit cruel to have to deal with ice and snow again this weekend. Martha and I strapped on our crampons again (little metal spikes to give us traction) and headed onto the road a little after 9:00 am Sunday morning. We typically run on Saturday, but nature wasn’t in favor of that plan. I must confess it felt heavenly to sleep in until 8:30 am Saturday morning – haven’t done that in a million years. I got some cross training done in the form of shoveling ice, snow and slush at our home and then rode an exercise bike for forty minutes later that day.

Sunday morning dawned bright and crisp and we had another beautiful run. We chose 9ish in hopes that some of the overnight ice would have melted and that the traffic would still be light. We picked back roads in Needham and Dover to minimize the traffic we’d run into. We stuck to the far left side of the road in bright clothing and ran toward traffic so that we’d be safe and visible. This plan worked for 99.9 percent of our ten-mile course. Most cars gave us a wide berth or the two of us would slow to a single-file walk. We were doing all of this to be safe given the fact that we were sharing the roads with cars (as we had no sidewalks or other places to call our own). I was therefore shocked and horrified when a driver in a white van/SUV lay into his horn while passing us. This person had two lanes all to himself as no other cars were anywhere in sight but obviously felt that we were in the road just to annoy him. (Martha, you can see that I still haven’t gotten over this!) While driving back from Martha’s house after we completed our run, I made sure to give as much room as possible to the runners and bikers that I saw. Thank you to all the drivers who do the same!