Coldest Run So Far

My running group gets together at 8am every Saturday morning, winter and spring. I love it when I can make it, even though I'm always trailing the pack, even though a lot of the time they've lost me by the halfway point. They're consistently encouraging and friendly and more than a few of them really push the envelope, either by running several marathons in a season or by moving past marathons and into ultras & adventure racing. We meet at a local park, which is about a 10-minute jog from my house and makes a great warmup and cooldown.

Yesterday's run: 7 miles. A lap around a local lake, then an out-and-back on a paved riverside trail.

I mixed gatorade for my camelbak the night before. I'm always on the dry side these days (the pellet stove in the basement and the fireplace in the living room suck pretty much all the moisture out of the air), so running in the cold air makes me thirsty as all get-out.

It was 4 and snowing when I left the house. By the time I'd gotten to the park the gatorade'd frozen in the camelbak tube, and my Garmi couldn't sync up. Damn.

My friend Michelle was there so she & I ran together. Talking really made time pass more quickly. I ducked into a porta john at the north end of the lake and reworked the camelbak so the tube was under my shirt next to my skin, hoping that'd thaw things out a little.

No go. There was still a small section of tube exposed to the air. Damn.

Barring that one break, I/we ran the entire distance. That made me happy. I've been worrying about not running as much, and wondering how undertrained I'll be on April 26. This weekend will probably be a cutback week with the group (maybe not for me, though), and Gayle's traveling so I'll have to get creative when it comes to fitting in midweek runs.