Winter Running 2005

After twenty years of spreading the gospel, I am still amazed at how few people run outside in the winter. Maybe that’s a good thing, because it helps to keep the best running courses relatively uncrowded and allows the serious runners a better chance of keeping out of harms way.

This article is being written under the best of conditions. I just completed my weekly Wednesday night group run and it was uneventful which means it went just fine. The old rule of being cold for the first eight minutes worked again and except for the excessive darkness in places was as good as any run I have done all year. After 19 inches of snow in 2003 before winter even started, this December has been most kind to runners with nary a flake or ice patch on most parks and roads.

What makes these runs even better is drying off and cooling down at our health club where we were not competing for precious treadmill time. Still, a huge percentage of the exercising population has yet to learn about winter running. Once I was one of them, having been badly initiated during indoor track practice in the 70’s when all we had to fight the elements were those dreadful cotton sweat suits. You were warm for a while but once you started sweating, you procured a case of non stop chattering teeth until you removed your garments.

Gore-tex , lycra and polypropylene were nowhere to be found and for many years I sought the safety of indoor running facilities, rarely venturing out to exercise in winter.

My first running club meeting in February of 1985 was a catharsis for me. Seeing all those happy, fit people in the dead of winter talking about their just completed races and the ones upcoming made me a natural magnet to learn how they did it.

That night the guest speaker taught the unwashed like me about the importance of dressing correctly for winter and soon after Runner’s World also had their usual story
about the same subject, talking about how Minnesotans survive real winter weather.

It was my good fortune that soon after my introductory course, the area’s leading running store had huge sale on winter running gear and I overstocked my coffers on poly-propylene shirts and tights.

That first winter, which according to my running diary was pretty mild, I used my new attire at every chance but in each succeeding winter, I have come to use them less and less so amazingly enough I still have most of my original stash. I have found that for most winter days a good old cotton long sleeve training shirt works just fine, especially if I’m able to change out of it quickly.

So in a sense, I’m almost back to square one as far as winter fashion, except I have yet to again run in sweats. And all that high tech equipment I own continues to gather dust waiting for those days of use. And there’s always the treadmills, just in case.

Writer’s note: Between the time this was written and the time we went to press there was the first vicious Arctic cold snap of the winter season. It actually happened in fall but it grabbed the headlines as weather anomalies are likely to do. On Monday December the thermometer dropped below ten and with the wind howling it was not a day to be outside running. I had known about thi8s forecast several days in advance and planned my schedule so I could have a needed day off. But Tuesday morning, the first day of winter,
I was back out and despite the 18 degree temperature(thankfully no wind) I was out enjoying the huddled masses in their cars and SUV’s, while I chugged along.