“The Boston Buildup 15K has been rescheduled due to icy conditions on the roads of Connecticut”, was the message I received yesterday in my e-mail. Immediately I was on the phone and on Twitter letting folks know that with snow expected, there was only one place to go in the morning, Rockefeller Park in Sleepy Hollow, NY.

Rockies is a State Park about 25 miles north of Grand Central Station that was deeded by the Rockefeller family and has become known as the singular best place to run around New York City. But because it requires a train ride, it is also the most underused running resource in the state.

This morning I was joined by my friends Josh, (@speedysasquatch), Jackie (@jackievny), and Farrah, who is smart enough to not have a Twitter handle.

(Press the visible arrow to show the photos and then press the arrow at the bottom left to play the slide show)

This is what running is all about. As you can see from these photos, we had an AMAZING time, and got in an absolutely fantastic 12-mile run without running into or on ice due to the fresh powder that fell last night and was deep enough to create a perfect surface to run on. Farrah and I recently participated in a focus group with our good friends from Suunto where they asked us what we enjoyed most about running. Today, we looked at each other and said, this was it. Fresh snow, pure nature, good friends and miles and miles of unobstructed trails. We all agreed that our upper hamstrings and gluts got a serious workout from having to lift our legs out of the snow in a much more pronounced manner that we are often used to doing, even though we know that we should.

The temperature was absolutely perfect and allowed me to run in shorts, a long-sleeved t-shirt, a buff, gloves, and a cap. Because of the fresh snow, I wore Get-A-Grips for additional traction and gators to keep the snow out of my trail shoes.

We often get complacent in our daily patterns, and getting onto a Metro North Train for 40 mins to head up north from Manhattan may seem like a lot of effort. But like most things in life, it’s embracing the experiences that are outside of the norm that make our lives worth living.

Hope you’ll join us the next time.