4 Degrees out. No problem!

Thursday, January 03, 2013 · Mike Davis

Today was the 2nd day of the New Year and my goal (which is not a resolution) of at least 15 minutes of exercise each day was put to the test. My plan was to run at 5:15pm with a client so I was somewhat committed but man was it cold out! I checked the weather forecast a couple of times hoping that somehow a little global warming would sweep through by late afternoon. Instead it held steady with a wind chill temperature equaling 4 degrees! Not exactly motivating conditions, but I focused my mind on my goal and a belief that once I was running it would be fine. Sure enough 5:00 rolled around and as I left my building to go to my truck, I thought it was colder than the North Pole! My drive was a short one so thankfully I didn’t have the chance to get too warmed up. Sometimes I even keep the heat off in my truck so as not to get so comfortable that I don’t want to go out in the cold. My client was only a couple minutes late thankfully as it would only get tougher. Soon after my client pulled in to the snowy parking lot, my wife pulled in as well. I quickly got out of my truck and said let’s go! No standing around and cursing our stupidity! Off we went and quickly I was confident that it would be a good run. The wind was rough on my face and a few times I held my mittens up to cover it and blew some hot air into them. Doing this every once and a while keeps the face from any possibilities of frostbite. Maybe wouldn’t have gotten frostbite but it felt like a possibility. The rest of my body felt fine, the roads were clear, traffic minimal so all was good. My wife and Jaime (client) were a few steps behind me so I just kept my steps short and relaxed moving along at a comfortable conversational pace. The wind was biting at times, but the run was moving along at a nice pace and the three of us felt better running than we did standing. The goal was 45 minutes round trip so I watched my Garmin for the 22:30 mark that we would turn around at. After turning around we picked up the pace though I’m not sure if it was because we were feeling strong or because we wanted to get back. I was enjoying listening to Jaime and Kathy talk while keeping us at a steady pace. We had to run past where we started as we still have 2 minutes of our 45 minutes left. So we ended up running 45 minutes and 4.4 miles. Not bad for the weather conditions with a goal only of running at conversational pace. The beauty of running for time let us relax and just run and that’s what we did! Day 2 of my 15 on 13 is accomplished, but I was never worried it wouldn’t be!