After being sick off an on for a month, I am finally feeling healthy and hitting the road again.
Tonight I ventured out for my first subzero run. The bank sign on my drive home read -3 degrees. I've run in the cold and snow before but never this bitterly cold. Part of me was really excited to try out my Smartwool samples that were sent to me as part of the Smartwool Ambassador program. I was pretty much covered from head to toe in Smartwool like a kid playing with his new toys the day after Christmas. I set out for the run and it was awesome.
It was so quiet out. Since this was the first sub zero temps of the year, everyone was staying in (except yours truly). The only noise I could hear was my shoes crunching over the snow covered road. I don't know about you but my entire body gets the shivers when I hear the sound of snow crunching. I am typing this as fast as possible because just thinking about it is making me shiver. It's like nails on a chalk board to me.
I finally decided to put in my headphones to drowned out the crunching snow sound. I try to maneuver them and they won't bend. The rubber had tightened up and they were as stiff as can be in the freezing temperatures. I finally shove them in and get moving. As I work my way down the road I can start to feel ice forming on my eyelashes. Between my hat and my face mask, my eyes are the only thing exposed to the elements. I decided to leave the ice crystals so that I can see what it looks like when I get back.
The most impressive thing during my run is that I don't fall once. Training for a marathon this past year was disastrous when it came to catching my foot on uneven sidewalks, or wooden planks sticking up on pedestrian bridges, or slipping on the wet wood at railroad crossings. The snow and ice were not issues. Believe it or not I had to stop and strip off a layer because I was getting too hot at one point.
Toward the end of my run I can feel my self finishing a bit stronger in anticipation of looking in the mirror at the ice crystals that have formed on my face. When I got inside I looked like I had just climbed a mountain. It made the run that much more rewarding.
