Baby it's Cold Outside

   After writing about how cold it was going to be over the weekend the other day, I had to go experience it for myself.  And, yup, it was cold.

My longtime running partner Rick and I decided the footing would probably be best in Barrington.  I gave him an out, offering to go another day instead, but he would have none of it.  "I kind of like running on these kinds of days", he said.  It's really the challenge, and the opportunity to say "I did it" afterward.  He recalled the day a few years ago when the snow forced a closure of Lake Shore Drive, and we were the only people on it, running.  Those are the kinds of days that make for memories, so running in a deep freeze was not something we were going to pass up.

When we arrived in Barrington the thermometer on Rick's car read -8.  That qualified as a record for us.  We've run in -5 before, and we thought that was a memorable day.  It was, but this was even better.  When we pulled into the parking lot, there was just one other car.  Usually on Saturdays there are at least a dozen cars parked there, and runners out on the roads in various groups.  Not this last Saturday.

We started off, and felt a bit cold.  My feet were numb for the first couple miles, but it really wasn't that bad.  I believe we've run in these temperatures enough in the past that we've learned how to dress properly.  I had two layers of tights, three layers on top, two pairs of gloves, and a neck gator to go with an extra thick ski cap.  My cheeks were cold for about ten minutes or so as well, but as we got a little way in, they were fine as well.  You can see from the pictures we took after the run that we got a little condensation built up that turned to ice, but we never really felt it until we stopped.  And by then we were able to get into a warm car and go home to hot coffee!

Rick has been running in Barrington for more than two decades, and he knows a lot of the runners out there.  He used to coach many of them.  We always see a number of those runners when we run in Barrington.  On this day we saw two.  They were the only others crazy enough to brave the conditions.

But what they undoubtedly experienced, like us, was that it was actually a beautiful day to run.  There's something about being almost the only living creatures out in the elements on a beautiful, sunny day.  Ok, it was extremely cold, but that only made it seem more pristine.  And we were dressed for it.  We went out into the wind, and had it at our backs most of the way back to the school. 

We gave ourselves the option of cutting the run short if it seemed too bad, but when we got out a little ways, we found were actually enjoying the run quite a bit.  We even worked up a pretty good sweat, which is hard to imagine with temperatures that cold.

So now we can brag that we ran in -8 degree cold.  But the truth is that it was pretty fun.  I'm sure we'll do it again.  But if we return to the mild winter we were enjoying before this weekend, I also won't complain!

See you on the roads.