It's been a while since I posted on this running blog. I've started a few but they've all kind of just felt flat while I was writing them. That and I was just not in a good place at all for a long while and posting just felt like one big endeavor to share my depressive mood. I wasn't having that! Hence the unpublished posts.
So, here we are now entering another season of cold weather running. It's always bitter sweet. Like most folks, when I began running, I scoffed at the idea that there could possibly be anything enjoyable about running in sub-freezing temperatures. That is until I became an established runner and entered that first serious cold winter running season. I've never felt so alive as a runner. I was following a Hal Higdon winter training plan and as I remember it, it alternated between 45, 60 and 90 minute runs. 90 minutes! Out there in the freezing cold for 90 minutes! Except, it wasn't freezing cold. First of all, I had the right cold weather gear. Secondly, I discovered what a lot of other runners have discovered: When it's cold outside and you go for a long run, your body heats up quite nicely as you hit the heart of your run and you don't feel cold. You feel so invigorated to be free from those warm days where it felt so good to start a run but after a few miles your body would heat up and sap your strength and you would just feel totally spent. As I wrote, beginning a summer run feels very nice. However, beginning a winter run is somewhat opposite. Even with the right gear, it is often a bit frigid for the first mile or so and just knowing this creates a psychological barrier to forcing oneself out the door. So, the getting out the door is the hard part. For me, I have to remind myself that getting out that door is the most difficult part. I have to force myself to feel the chill and force my way through it. Sometimes it's more difficult than others. It's especially difficult when the sun has gone down as it often has by the time I am able to get out the door in the early evening. Some days, you just have that winter chill in your bones and the thought of heading out into that cold is about the last thing you want to do. Once out there though, it's a magical, crisp, quiet other world and that experience is what keeps getting me out there.
