Happiest U-Bahn ride and I nearly died (again)

Things are slowly getting back to normal here, thanks for bearing with me.
On Sunday morning, I went on my happiest U-Bahn (subway) trip yet and picked up Nick from the hospital. There is nothing I am more grateful for than the fact that I was able to walk out of that place with him alive and "well." He is still recovering from his surgery, but all in all, we have plenty of reason to be thankful.

I'm obviously not going to share details or private pictures from the hospital on this blog. Just this much, when we were sent from the doctor's office to the urgent care clinic, I had my first sense of "this is serious" when we were waiting for the doctors to let us know what's happening.

It all looked very medical and scary to me. 

Then, they even took both of us in the ambulance to a different hospital. I had never been in an ambulance and hope that neither of us will never have to do that again. Or any of you. Nobody should ever be in that position.

Never knew before that every item is numbered.
Makes sense though.

Aside from the temperatures in the back of the truck being just around -80F, it felt as if we were going 120mph. I guess it's because you can't look out, but with every corner, I was certain we were about to tip over.

While spending most of my time at the hospital, I still managed to somewhat stick to my training plan. Trust me, there were plenty of times when I thought that forgetting about the half-marathon would be a much better choice, but in the end, it was a lot healthier for both of us that I went to run off at least the tip the mountain of worries. There is really something to gaining strength through running in order to keep it together and not fall apart.

The schedule for last week looked like this:

Tuesday: 3 mile run
Wednesday: 4 mile run
Thursday: 3 mile run
Saturday: 6 mile run
Sunday: cross

This is what I actually did:

Tuesday: -
Wednesday: 4 miles (@9:42)
Thursday: 3 miles (@something terrible)
Saturday: 6 miles (@9:42)
Sunday: -

Nick's surgery was Tuesday morning, so obviously I didn't run that day. I moved my 3 miles on Thursday to the treadmill, because it got really cold here in Berlin. However, the running at the gym  is still as awful as it was before, which brought me to the conclusion that I can't possible do 6 miles on the treadmill on Saturday. So I moved my long run outside. Where it was 9F (about -12C). I'm convinced it was still the lesser amount of pain, but I still nearly died. Needless to say, my water was completely frozen by mile 4. Just like my fingers and my upper thighs.

I missed to take a more telling picture
So here is just the cap.
(You can see it a little bit... the shaking during running
caused it to freeze to to the sides in one thick layer.)

This is how much I hate running in heat/ stuffy air that I would rather freeze to death. I really don't know how other people do it. I know a few runners who live in the southern states where 100% humidity combined with the burning sun brings the heat index up to well above 120F. These people must be the toughest ones on the planet.

In the meantime, Lucy is loving the winter. I mean LOVING it! She can't get enough of this furry, white, cold toy that all of the sudden kept falling from up there.

I can't see! This is awesome!

Maybe if I dive in sideways, I can completely disappear in this inch of snow!

So that's what walking her looks like now. We take 3 steps and then she throws herself onto the ground and rolls in the snow until she is completely tangled up in the leash. It's almost hard not to do the same thing when seeing how much fun she's having.

(We have gotten about 6 more inches of snow since I took this picture... She can barely handle her happiness.)