The Windy City

Since moving to St. Charles, I don’t play basketball twice a week like I did in Midland.  Insert frowny face here.  (My computer says that ‘frowny’ isn’t a word, but suggests I use ‘frowsy’.  I googled that (I was worried that google would say “did you mean frowny?”; also, why doesn’t my computer recognize ‘google’ as a word?) and frowzy means “scruffy and neglected in appearance”.  I suppose that’s a good sort of face to insert there, too.)  The cultural hall in our church is carpeted (yuck), and we have about half the LDS population density as in Midland, so basketball probably isn’t going to happen.  Basketball at a non-church place probably isn’t going to happen either.  So where does that leave me?  Running!

With two days suddenly freed up, I’ve been running a lot more since we’ve gotten settled in here.  Specifically, in the last 67 days, I’ve run 171 miles.  I set several personal records in November, most notably, getting out 18 times for a total of 95.2 miles.  I was a little bit bummed that I came that close to 100 miles without hitting such a nice, round base-10 number, particularly because I probably won’t be getting back to that level any time soon.  Why?  Because it’s cold here! (And running in the cold is less fun leading to less running (and less frostbite), in case you couldn't quite connect those dots.)

I don’t expect a whole lot of sympathy here, because I know that much of the US is having a very cold week this week, but I don’t know what I’m going to do all winter if I’m faced with days like next Tuesday, where my morning run is projected to be 3° with a windchill of -14°.  I’m just having a hard time wrapping my brain around going out running in conditions where one pair of gloves just isn’t enough.  My coldest run ever so far is 8°, which was pretty darn cold.  My long run this Saturday is scheduled for the afternoon when it might get all the way up to 20.  But my weekday runs pretty much have to be in the morning.  I have a rough running schedule for the month, wherein I might be able to get to around 85 miles, provided I don’t lose more than 6 days due to weather.

Theories abound as to the source of “The Windy City” as a reference to Chicago, but it’s certainly the windiest place that I’ve ever lived.  I suppose my options are to either sit at home and be lazy, or grow my beard out extra long, put on an extra 2 or 3 layers and keep running.