Unless I am skiing or snowshoeing, I want to stay indoors if the temperature is below the legal drinking age. Makes sense, really. But this?! This morning's temperature was just barely the age required to drive. Who in their right mind says, "It's only sixteen degrees. Sounds like a great time to spend an hour and a half outdoors without wearing a jacket"?
Oh wait. I say that.
Not only did I run in the bitter freaking cold on Saturday, but I did it at ten in the morning. (I just checked Hell. It has not yet frozen over. I was surprised, too.) This is all James' fault. James is one of my Tenacity marathon teammates who happens to live relatively close to me. Just over a week ago, we pegged Saturday as the day we would meet up for a training run. I know this is winter in New England and the cold is something to be expected. I get that. But it's always a shock to the system when you are mentally prepared to do something outdoors, but, in the short time required to take your dog out in the morning, your wet hair freezes into curly icicles. Not cool. So yeah, that's kind of how it was on Saturday.
In hindsight, I'm super glad James and I had planned to run together. There would have been at least a 50% chance of me bailing on the run if James wasn't keeping me accountable. Running partners help-- especially in crappy weather. Good to know. Also, running in the morning is not the worst thing ever. It's still not the greatest, but maybe it's a habit I should get into. I probably won't do it, but it's a thought.
I enjoyed my run with James a lot, despite the weather. First of all, James is a great dude (despite the fact that he graduated from Boston College) with a ton of marathon experience. He's a chronic over-planner when it comes to marathon training. I, on the other hand, am taking the hippie non-planning approach to this whole thing. It was good for me to talk to James and basically learn that I am at a fine place with my running mileage and splits. Also, James is way faster a runner than I am. Like, way faster. This is a good thing because it pushed me more than I would have otherwise. We started off running kind of slowly (9'24" split for the first mile) and then stepped it up each mile after that. We totally crushed the last mile, doing it in a 7'39" split. Do you see how that first digit is a seven? A freaking SEVEN. Whaaaaaaatttt? (Side note: I also learned this is called negative splits when you go faster each mile. I now know a running term. Thanks, James!)
While we were running around Castle Island, James noted, "Wow. It's only the hard core runners out here today." He was right. There were a lot of people in techie-looking gear and flashy, neon sneakers. Also, most of these people seemed to be running really quickly and totally knew what they were doing. They had clearly run in the freezing cold before and probably liked it, too. Jerks. Nevertheless, the hard core runners gave us the friendly head nod as they jogged by. I appreciated that. Their gesture prompted me to ask James, "Are we hard core, too?"
You know what? Maybe we are just a little hard core. I don't know if I will ever love running in temperatures under legal drinking age, but I certainly don't hate it. At least now I know a less-than-desirable weather report won't demote me to the treadmill. (Unless it's icy. I'm way too clumsy to navigate around ice without totally busting my ass.) Saturday's run was the first time I ever felt like a legitimate runner. Maybe it was the weather, or the negative splits, or the hard core simply acknowledging my presence (could be that I'm training for the Boston Marathon) but yeah-- I'm a runner. Crazy.
Data from my lazy week:
Distance Monday (12/09): 6.0 miles (on a treadmill)
Time Monday: 54 minutes (9' splits)
Distance Tuesday (12/10): 1.4 miles (with Sole Train youth running group)
Time Sunday: 30 minutes (too slow to even calculate splits)
Distance Saturday (12/14): 9.92 miles (with James)
Time Saturday: 1 hour, 25 minutes (8'32" splits... with a PR mile pace!)
Cumulative Distance Since Blog Started: 133.97 miles
Cumulative Time Since Blog Started: 21 hours, 53 minutes
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