Cold Feet

...No, really. We have had six days (seriously six days straight) of snow and rain. My house has been buried in snow and I've spent a lot of time shoveling out cars and pulling friends out of ditches in their cars.
I drove down to lower ground on Saturday for a wonderful, but wet, run with my Wife and Father-in-Law. Today, I went alone. Carolyn dropped me off at a trail-head and I took off running. I met back up with her an hour later, much happier, very wet, and extremely cold. I love running in nasty weather. I'm not sure why, but it seems like more of an adventure. I ran through puddles that I couldn't avoid, through a creek that overflowed the banks, I stood and watched a waterfall. I slipped around in the mud and stumbled around fallen debris from the storms. After 3.2 miles, I felt good, except for a nagging little pain in my heel.
I've been noticing the irritation more as my runs get longer, but the pain goes away soon after running. I decided to stop into Auburn Running Company (a local proprietor) and ask for some advice. The staff was great and they helped me figure out that the problem had an easy fix. I needed new shoes. Normally, I would have thought that they were just trying to get me to spend some money in their store, but there was a lot of evidence to the contrary. The new shoes feel great and wholly different from my last pair. I cannot wait to try them out tomorrow night; which is convenient, because it is probably going to take my old pair a week to dry out. :))