Winter running

I'm skipping the obligatory first post and instead going to wax poetic about winter running. I started running this past March, frankly because my sister-in-law, who had recently had gastric bypass, was planning to run a 10K in October. Since I'm a former college athlete, I determined that if she could run a 10K, I sure as heck better be able to run a 10K. So, I started run/walking and worked my way up to running, and suffered through one minor injury setback and ran the 10K this October. I really love it, although I'm never going to run competitively and I struggle to fit runs in unless I run right away in the morning. Which brings me to my hatred of winter running.

Winter running sucks. Or, to be more precise, dark, cold running sucks. I did recently run during my lunch hour, and while it was cold, it was still fairly enjoyable. But for some reason, getting up when it is pitch black and leaving my cozy home for 10 or even 30 degree weather is just not too enjoyable. Plus, the places to run in the pitch black are severely limited - I can't run on the wooded trail I normally run on during summer mornings because there is no lighting. I'm trying to convince myself to become a treadmill runner, but since I signed up to run a 4-mile run in December, in Minnesota, I need to keep training outside for the time being. Or rather, get my ass outside once in a while to still run, because so far I've been failing miserably. I'm trying to power through my first winter as a "runner" but it's not working very well so far.