Changing brand

w/u 4k
3 x 2.1 hill w/ jog to start
c/d 4k
TOTAL: 20k

I woke up and it was snowing. It was not too bad, we did not have a lot of snow but just enough to cover ice on roads. It has been raining the whole day yesterday and everything froze over night. I had hill workout planned for today and I wanted to do it on one of those steep long streets in a nearby town, which was of course not possible to do in these conditions.
But as I was eating breakfast, sun started to shine and all clouds were gone and I saw that the snow was starting to melt. We have not seen sun for few weeks now, so I was pretty excited about that and decided to try to do my hill workout on trails because roads were too slippery.
I ran 4k to trails and did some stretching. I have run this hill once before, I knew it was not too steep but long and my plan was to do 3 hills with jog recovery inbetween. I started pretty conservative because I did not know what to expect and it turned out pretty well. I got to the top in 8:35 and Mr. Garmin showed the distance as approximately 2k. Well, that's long enough...
1ST hill: 8:35
jog down in approx 10:35.
2ND hill: 8:22 I started little faster this one but I met bunch of kids on ponies close to the end and since I was coming from behind I slowed down because I did not want to freak out those ponies and cause the tragedy. I jogged slowly along them when suddenly they turned left and crossed my path. So I had to stop, I stopped the watch and waited until they passed. Noone cared about me standing there and it would have been so simple to stop one pony and let me pass through. I finish the rest of hill but was pretty pissed.
3RD hill: 8:14 I felt awesome and really strong on this one. I knew I was running faster that the first two but it felt better and easier than the second one. BUT I met kids on horses this time at the same place:) This time they were coming towards me so I did not have to slow down as much as before but I still decrease the speed because you never know what can happen. I finished strong.
I jogged to the start of the hill and then 4k back to school.
Trail runs are so much fun and I enjoy running on trails so much therefore I have decided to do the 16k trail race April 11. It is the same day as Paris Marathon which I wanted to watch but I would rather run a race.

After making this big decision, I went to the mall to get some proper trail sneakers (and some extra chunky Skippy peanut butter Made in USA!!!). I got New Balance shoes (because they were 40% off).
I am Asics and Adidas girl but 40% off is 40% off. I have never had NB before so I am excited to try them.
I had always used Adidas before coming to the US. But I soon realized that they are not very good for road running and for long distances because they seem to be harder and I feel to have better "push" on track with them but they made me feel tired sooner when running on road. In Slovakia, Adidas were perfect because I never ran on roads and basically did track workout 4-5 times a week and my mileage was like one third of what I did at Brown. So I changed the brand and used Adidas for track workout and Asics for long runs and have sticked with this until now. Now it's time to try something new...Balance

By the way, mall is like 9k from school. So on top of those 20k running this morning, I also walked another 20k (to the mall, in the mall and back to school). I did 40k today!!!