Oh, baby, it's COLD outside!

The majority of the United States has been hit by something called an polar vortex.  I don't know weather terms... what I do know is that it's frigid outside.  Cold enough that school has been canceled for the past two days.   And, needless to say, cold enough that *this* runner has not ran outside for a few days.

 

Honestly, it takes a lot for me to stay in.  On Christmas Eve, my friend Jeanne-Marie and I ran 10.5 miles in temperatures that had a "real feel" of -2 degrees. It was cold, that's for sure... but we made it through unscathed.  However, yesterday the temperature with the wind chill was down to -42 degrees.  Um, NO THANK YOU VERY MUCH!  That's too cold even for this bad@ss mother runner.

Thankfully, I have a membership to a nearby gym, Fitness 19. I joined last winter, when I was much less hardcore about running outside and in the dark. I did most of my runs on the treadmill at the gym until it got warm (and light) outside.  Let's make this clear: I am not a big fan of the treadmill. I don't hate it with a passion like some people, but I'd much rather run outside.  I've found ways to make it tolerable, including running intervals (e.g. 3 minutes hard alternating with 2 minutes easy, repeated x times) and running progressive-style runs (increasing the speed every so often).  

I came down with a 24-hour stomach bug (given to me so graciously by my 3 year old son) late Saturday night, and sadly that sidelined me for my planned 10-mile run with my awesome running buddy Jen.  I was so upset... I really look forward to our Sunday long runs.  Jen is awesome and we talk the entire time.  She is my Claire (read this awesome article if you have time to understand this metaphor).  Anyway, there was no way I could run... except for to the toilet every 15 minutes :(  So I took it easy and was grateful to feel back to 100% yesterday morning.  Unfortunately, not only did I miss my planned run, but I also missed the final day of temperatures and wind chills above zero. So yesterday, when I was feeling better, I went to the gym to gut out 10 miles on the treadmill.  Yikes!  My PR for distance on the 'mill was only 5 miles, so I wasn't sure how 10 would go.  The first 5 flew by.  I was listening to an interesting podcast from Another Mother Runner, and it was like we were just running along and I was listening to them chat.  Not quite as fun as chatting it up with Jen, but definitely better than nothing. However, after the podcast ended, I turned on my music.  I downloaded a new playlist and it was good, but two annoying things happened during the final 5 miles.  One: the treadmill stopped.  They time out after 1 hour.  Ugh!  So I had to restart it and that was just really... well, annoying. And two: I started to feel my skin chafing on my inner thigh. Ouch!  So I just started increasing the speed so I could be done with it.  Today I'm no worse for the wear, except for two sore pinky toes (first time for that).  And I do feel pretty bad@ss for running for over 1.5 hours on the treadmill! 

 

I am excited to get back outside tomorrow with my crazy 4:30 AM running friends!  Okay, maybe "excited" isn't the best word for how I feel.  It's going to be difficult to pull myself out of bed, and it's still going to be around 0 degrees for the windchill.  I am just happy that it won't be on the treadmill!