Skating under a full moon

Since doing the resolution run on New Years Day, I have been totally lax about running.  Yesterday it was half snowing/half raining as I left work so I thought I would skip skating and get back to running...that was till I opened the car door and slid.  All the sidewalks were covered in a sheet of ice.  No way I could run on that.

Today everything was frozen solid, sidewalks and streets had been salted to the extent that I could rim my Margarita glasses on them. Nothing to keep me from running....but I chose to skate instead.

For the time being I have to say that my favorite place to skate is at the Shops of Don Mills skating track.  It is small but not many people utilize it.  There are the residents of the condos or the shoppers or people like me.  For the time being that is a small demographic. Because it is a track instead of a rink the intent is to skate in circles no hockey sticks are allowed, no chairs for rugrats to lean on as they learn the basics.  No room for fancy twirlers.  Just straight skating counter clockwise and I have seen these rules enforced. 

Because it was so cold tonight the rink was pretty empty, I got to skate full out (pretty much) for my entire allotted hour.  While lacing on my skates I had sat on a bench covered in a block of ice....the heat of my bum melted the ice and....honestly I did not pee my pants!!!!! But I was left to skate in sub zero temp with a damp bottom.

In the hour that I skated I covered 8.6 km and used 353 calories according to Runkeeper.  But most impressive of all I breathed in fresh air and for half of the time watched the full moon rise in the frigid night air.