This morning I did a 14-mile long run in 30-degree weather, which was easy compared to some of the workouts I've done lately. Almost all of them have been done in uncomfortable conditions, some of them unseasonably so for this part of the world and this time of year. There was the morning track workout I did the Wednesday after the Downtown 5k, a 20-min. tempo run with warmup and cool-down in near-zero-degree wind chill. Then there was the two-mile jaunt on the slushy streets of my neighborhood the following Friday (which admittedly, was fun except for the puddles of ice water that soaked my shoes and prompted me to cut the run short). And the three other tempo runs done in whipping wind and temps hovering far south of comfortable. This winter, I've had more runs during which I was forced to wear hats and layered clothing than the other three winters in which I have been a runner put together.
Lately when we've gotten severe winter weather like this (and ours hasn't been nearly as severe as the weather in the northeast and midwest), some people have cited it as evidence that global warming is not real, when it is actually yet another symptom of global warming. What it seems like we have gotten this year is three months' worth of winter packed into a month, as the warm currents from the Pacific managed to keep all that arctic air bottled up for weeks on end, until finally the dam burst and it all came spilling south.
But enough amateur meteorology. Training in winter sucks, but I'll still take it over summer training anytime. I'd much rather deal with an itchy head under a wool cap, wrestling with the buttons on my GPS with gloved fingers, and downing cold gel packs left on my front porch to chafing, the sickening squish of sweat-soaked shoes, and that nasty woozy feeling at the end of an 18-mile run done in 80-degree weather despite getting up at dawn to escape the worst of the heat. No, this is better, hands down.
