Gimme Five (Degrees)!

The mercury read about 5 degrees Fahrenheit this morning at the start of training. I have done TNT five times since 2005, including one season as a non-participating mentor, and have trained in the months of December, January, and/or February every time, but this set a low temperature record by a good 10 degrees. As cold as it was in Ole Virginney, I can't imagine what TNT athletes up north were facing today.

I wore briefs, long underwear, and my running pants on the bottom, and two long sleeved shirts, a tee, and a fleece on top. I had a winter hat on my head, gloves, and a turtle fleece around my neck. I had hand warmers in my gloves, and it still took about two miles before my finger tips were not feeling frozen. It was just plain cold. Despite running shoes and one pair of socks, my feet never felt cold.

Because we had both walk coaches and a walk mentor show up, I decided walk the whole 12.5 miles. One coach and my mentor did about half of that, so after that point it was Coach Kristi and me. Theresa, my awesome mentor, gave us a bag of gummy worms when she left us. Coach Kristi is a Hodgkin survivor like me, although unlike me, she was pregnant at the time of her diagnosis. She is also a faster walker than I am, even though I can book along at 13.5 – 14 minutes per mile. So that pushed me a little bit to go faster, and there were some miles that we averaged a 12.75 minute pace, which was great.

The route today is so nice, with beautiful river views for much of it, and interesting neighborhoods to walk and run through. Originally, I planned to bring my camera but it was just too cold. We saw some cool woodpeckers, a large flock of some kind of diving duck, other types of ducks and geese, and some other songbirds. It is a very hilly route, which is good preparation for Nashville, we hear.

The Gator Aid we left out turned to slush, my water bottle froze, and my power bar felt like a piece of iron when I tried to bite it, even though I had it in my pants pocket right against my thigh. I put it inside my second shirt, and after about 10 minutes, I could gnaw small pieces off of it. The pace we set let to a feeling reasonably warm, other than my fingers at times and my face. I would periodically take off my glasses and pull the turtle fleece over my mouth and icy nose. Leaving my glasses on and trying this caused them to totally fog over. The fast pace led to plenty of sweating, and my four layers soaked through, then the sweat froze on the back of my fleece with a white frosting. Kristi drew a happy face in the frost at one point.

It was not very windy, which was a blessing. Despite the cold, it felt great to be alive and to be healthy enough to go over 12 miles over a very pretty route. Several teammates went 14 miles and two of them, Rose and Nicole, did their longest distance ever, which was exciting. We were all cold but no one froze, and Jamie made double fudge brownies for the team – that alone was worth going 12 miles for!