The only ones to show up today were Rebecca, Martin and me. I wasn't sure how far to go considering the cold (-10 degrees, not including the wind chill). Rebecca planned 4-5 miles; Martin wanted 9-10. Rebecca's toes were pretty cold and she decided to run around town closer to her car just in case of weather related issues. That was probably the smarter choice.
I tagged along with Martin, thinking I'd turn around at some point. But, it was sunny, I was toasty warm in all my gear and blissfully ignorant of the route Martin chose, so I continued on. He took me on a loop that eventually climbed up to some really amazing snow covered views. My only moment of doubt was when I saw the yellow "steep grade" sign and realized we were going up, up, up. Martin is always good at providing hills for us! I appreciated the fact that he included me in this run, slowing down for my pokiness on the uphills. We ended up doing 11 good miles.
A few strange things that did happen:
1) Even though I had on running tights and my Pearl Izumi Alpine pants, a couple areas of my derriere ended up with what seems a bit of frost nip. I got a little cold when I slowed down during the climb up, and the area was painful and a little funny looking when I got home. No serious damage - it was fine after a hot shower. Just a little weird.
2) My eyeballs froze! During much of the run, I had icicles on my eyelashes, but the entire last mile, my vision was considerably blurry. I kept trying to blink, thinking it would clear up, but it didn't. I had read about frozen eyeballs somewhere, so wasn't really worried, but I was happy to get to my car and turn the heater on.
3) My bottle of Heed turned to slush. That's not so bad, but the bite valve froze solid, so I kept having to unscrew the lid to drink. Under the lid was an entire shelf of ice with a tiny hole through which to drink. Interesting. I'm going to have to do some serious reconfiguration if winter keeps throwing me below zero temperatures.
I would have taken pictures, but it was too cold to stop for that. Thank you to Rebecca who actually got me out of bed and outside this morning, and to Martin for the company on a beautiful run!
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