Christmas Run With Snow

What could be better than a Christmas run with snow falling? Well, besides sitting warm inside the house with my family… but if you are going to have to run on Christmas… having it snow isn’t a bad deal. It sounded rather simple… 9 miles… no problem. I decided to run from the house… so that would leave me without and fuel or water (didn’t take my belt). Again… no problem… I do that a lot.

When I stepped out the door the weather was quite blustery. Bad sign. Wind… snow that would melt on contact with my face… for a minute I considered heading back inside. The gym was not an option (closed on Christmas I am sure) It was either brave it… or bag it. With Bill Bowerman’s quote “there’s no such thing as bad weather, just soft people” in the back of my mind… I headed out. Besides… I just finished 5 weeks on my training schedule and hit every single run on every day. No way I could break the streak just for some bad weather.

Bowerman was Oregon’s famous track coach… and if you know Oregon weather, you can understand why he had to have a nifty quote about the weather… because frankly… the weather sucks a lot here. If you can’t change the weather… I guess he had to change the opinion of it. Well… it worked for me… but I can say that Bowerman, in this particular case, was wrong. There is such a thing as bad weather.
My run called for 9 miles. Even in bad weather I can hold my body heat for 6 miles. Rain, snow… whatever… six miles and I am OK. After six miles is where it gets tricky. On long runs I can stop at the car on a loop and change my shirt or socks. But yesterday was an out and back… and when I started back… I was heading right into the wind… with a full gale of snow blowing right into my face. (And umm… other body parts)

I was dressed in my typical cold weather outfit. Runderwear shorts and tank top, long sleeve poly pro shirt, running shorts, a very light semi-waterproof jacket, light wool knitted runner gloves and a nice warm hat. Again… this is just about guaranteed to keep me comfortable for 6 miles. In heavy rain or snow I can start having trouble after that.

My face and ears were of course quite frozen with the wind and snow blowing. Expected… nothing different than a trip down the slopes while skiing. I was completely soaked however. Then… it started. At first I thought I was having friction pain. Nothing new there… happens a lot when a lot of water and running are involved. But the umm… location was quite new. As I meandered back into my neighborhood with about 1 mile left on the run… the pain grew quite extreme and the only thing I could think about was getting back home to get a sit rep on what the heck was wrong.

When I finally burst through the door… one quick check and it was obvious what my problem was. A particular body part that was quite useful in producing a baby girl (did I mention before it was a girl?) was quite frozen. If you’ve ever had your fingers or ears partially frozen… you know the pain when they start to defrost. Well, take that pain and multiply it… and you get an idea of what I was feeling. Ouch.

So… Bill Bowerman was definitely wrong on one particular subject. There is such a thing as bad running weather… and I am pretty sure I have experienced the worst it has to offer.