Running in the heat of the day

Today was my first run in a whole week!!! This week has just whizzed by, being busy at work and some evening work functions too, so I had hit the gym a few times but everything kept conspiring against me to get a run in. The temperatues have been pretty cold too and yesterday I spent the day skiing at Lake Louise with a group of British travel agents. All I can say is that they were a lot tougher than me - it was about minus 28 at the base and they were raring to stay on the mountain all day, fortunately there was an inversion so at least it was a little warmer higher up on the mountain :) So today was my only free day this weekend which meant my only chance for a daylight run and I thought the forecast was for slightly warmer temperatures....hmm, think I read the wrong forecast! I checked the temperature when I got up this morning and was dismayed to see it was minus 35 - whaaat! Not even colder :( So as I have often done since moving to Banff I left my run until the middle of the day when hopefully it would be warmer. I set out at 1pm when it was a mere minus 26.

I was bundled up from head to foot and actually kept warm for the whole run. I had to be pretty careful to keep my face covered so my cheeks wouldn't freeze but for the most part I got my gear sorted and on with my run. The only real trouble I had was breathing, I was breathing in through my mouth which meant cold air sucking into my lungs, which was made doubly worse when breathing hard on the uphills. I tried to do my yoga breathing through my nose technique but to be honest it was impossible - either my nose was streaming or it was frozen up and no way could I get in enough air that way! Oh well, humans are so amazingly designed I am sure we can cope with breathing in cold mountain air through our mouths!

It took my quite a while to get into the run but I got 2 hours in which although it not crazy long (I'm beginning to get seriously worried about Orca's 50km at start of February!) is good enough given the weather and how tired I was. A few thoughts kept me smiling and laughing at myself throughout the run - 1) Fellow VFACer Rick completed the Honolulu marathon yesterday and I am sure is busy sunning himself and drinking mai thai's today! 2) My friend Drew would be thinking I have gone totally mad - he's a runner but is from Africa and is currently sunning himself in South Africa, 3) Mike and I did a training run in Squamish in August - 5 hours in 35 degree sweltering heat - wow, that's a whole 60 degrees warmer than today! (photo here to reminisce of those hot hot days!)