I am a New Englander, born and raised. But enough is enough with the winter weather already. This winter has been cold, snowy, icy, windy, cold, colder and cold.

Sunday morning we woke up to about 10 inches of snow dumped on the South Shore of Massachusetts and a 9AM start time for the 2nd Annual Frozen Pilgrim 10k meant the driveway needed to be shoveled bright and early to make the trip down to Plymouth, Massachusetts to line up at the starting line. The roads weren’t too bad getting down to Plymouth and race time temperatures were in the mid 20’s with the sun shining on the freshly fallen snow. Once the parking lot to the Plymouth Boys & Girls Club was fully plowed runners were allowed to enter the club for registration.

Runners lined up at the starting line and were warned of the road conditions. The race took place in an industrial/office park so the roads were rather free of traffic however the freshly fallen snow left several stretches of the race with a good couple of inches of packed snow underfoot. Couple that with some icy corners, significant puddles and overall less than ideal running conditions, it was abundantly clear that any PR for runners was quickly out of the question. Several runners had Yaktrax on, but for me the normal running sneakers with a healthy helping of caution was my strategy for the day.

Having not run this course before, I was warned prior to the race of the significant hill along the way that for this race needed to be conquered twice. Making the right hand turn and having the hill in front of me just shy of the 1 mile and 3.5 mile mark it was soon realized that the hill was more along the lines of a small mountain rather than a hill.

I finished the 2nd Annual Frozen Pilgrim 10k with a time of 56:03 which equates to a 9:02/mile. Though this is off pace for a normal run, given the treacherous conditions yesterday’s run was not about time, it was just about getting to the finish line in one piece.