I just got home from the coldest run I’ve ever been on. Judging by the weather report this morning I knew it would be cold, they said it was supposed to be 24 f (-4 C). But that’s nothing too bad so I couldn’t figure out why I had icicles on my eye lashes before I even made it the first mile and my balaclava had caked with so much ice by the second mile I couldn’t breathe through it anymore – especially when we hadn’t been running into the wind yet, it was cross from the right. I can tell you for sure that my cycling jacket is absolutely hands down the best cold weather running gear that I own. I only wore that jacket, a heavy Under Armor long sleeve and another light long sleeve over that and was completely comfortable from the waist up the whole run. We had to run pretty slow to keep upright with the ice though. I don’t wear the clamp on cleats so it was a precarious go at best.
At about the 7 mile mark my legs started seizing a little bit so I was really worried that I’d overdone it between my run last week and then an attempt at 9.2 this week – after all, that kind of thing only happens in temperatures much colder than 24… I ended up resorting to stomping my feet every half mile or so to get my legs moving better, and that worked pretty well, though I ended up at a crawl in the home stretch.
After our 9.2 mile trek on absolutely nasty roads, I checked the current temperature on my phone. 9 degrees F (-13 C) with a wind chill of -7 degrees F (-21 C). 
This made all of my trouble make sense. If I had to guess, it would have been around 1 or 2 degrees F (-16 C) when we left with a wind chill of around -18 F (-27 C)… This explains; why the roads were so nasty – too cold for salt to work so it makes no sense to apply it, why I had icicles on my face, why my balaclava froze up and why my legs seized up at the end (I feel fine now).
Thank goodness, I’m in my warm home, I didn’t sit today out and that the kids are down for a nap – now it’s my turn.
As a P.S. I was about to throw in the towel when I went out to start the car – my hand stuck to the door handle – but I thought, if you don’t get this run in, you lose a week off your goal. Just get it done, and I did. In the end, I’m glad I went. I kept telling myself in those last two miles, this is how it’s going to feel when you’ve only got two miles to go in September – if you can make it through this you’ll make it in September. And I made it.
Fit Recovery 