February 2012 – Page 2

50 Words For Snow: None Of Them Printable

Reading other blogs written by runners in colder climes, I feel like a wimp for complaining about the cold. It is almost as common and dull as moaning about having a cold, but I must get it off my chest.

Thursday’s and Friday’s runs were done at -2 degrees C and -4 degrees C respectively, and Sunday’s 12 miles were slugged out through 4 inches of wet snow. I thought I had something to complain about after Friday morning’s run – in Alexandra Palace Park the freezing fog was like having a bulldog clip clamped to each ear – but after Sunday’s nightmare all is forgiven.

It was, quite simply, the hardest run I’ve ever done. I cried for the whole last mile. I screamed with frustration as I plunged ankle-deep into my 15th icy puddle of meltwater. I was still cross about it when I went to bed last night. It was 1 hour and 55 minutes of hell, if hell is London streets covered in a sloppy swamp of slush. And it is.

You may be wondering why on earth I ran at all. I had three reasons:

I love snow. It’s so pretty. I went for a few snowy runs last winter and the winter before and they were gorgeous.
We left the house early thinking we would avoid any slush, as it was snowing all night.
I couldn’t run on Saturday so I really had to get the miles in.

Unfortunately, it did snow all night but the temperature rose, meaning that new snow was already soft and wet. Even areas untouched by the late night clubbers, kebab eaters and random salt-scatterers of North London proved tough-going. There was none of the lovely crunch and scrunch you get when it’s cold; my feet went straight through the white stuff to the squelchy slime beneath.

In summary, it was like running in mud for two hours. Not as dangerous, perhaps – I didn’t fall over – but, because it took as much energy to pull my legs forward as is it did to push them back, just as exhausting.

My rage knew no bounds. Poor Mr Notajogger got the worst of it. He runs in a very upright way, with a short gait and straight stride. I do not. At the end of every step on the slushy bits (ie half the run), my right foot slipped off behind me and had to be reigned in before the next step, making me very slow. Mr N trotted away, unperturbed by the shifting ground. This made me cross. All the other runners (there were surprisingly many of them) looked jolly and rosy cheeked and bouncy. I felt like I was running at half-speed, stuck in a slow-motion crime scene reconstruction. I was certainly feeling murderous.

Totals for the week:

Monday: 7 miles (un-steady)
Tuesday: 6.5 miles (hills)
Wednesday: (5 miles easy)
Thursday: 7 miles (steady-ish)
Sunday: 12 miles (very very slow indeed)

Total: 37.5 miles

The Anti Freeze

It’s great weather for running at the moment. I confess I wasn’t thinking that at 6:30 last night, hopping about in my bedroom putting my running tights on under my coat because I was still so cold from the journey home.

When I was outside pegging it down the freezing streets, however, I had a revelation. At 7:00pm in London yesterday it was -2 degrees C, but the pavements were firm and safe. No frost, no ice. On the BBC forecast this morning they said that the air is so dry at the moment that we’re getting all the cold of a cold snap with none of the crunch of frosty grass or slide of sneaky ice. And that, for a runner – especially one with poor vision – is great news. I even managed a hill session last night, without falling over once.

This cold dry weather means I get to witness skies like this from my office early in the morning:

Sadly, however, my view while running is still like this:

I want to put more pictures on this blog, but the sad fact is that I’m going to be running in the dark for a good month yet. Roll on March.

Making a Spectacle of Myself

I am short-sighted. I wear glasses all day, every day.

I squint with envy on those who can wear contact lenses. I do have some but unfortunately my eyes are too dry for me to wear them for long. I save the lenses for special occasions: a long weekend run, a race, an event where people are likely to take photos and put them on facebook without my knowledge. For everyday running I am ashamed to admit that I wear an old pair of glasses, the right lens of which has a big scratch, and which I keep in place using a red rubber band. Like the ones that postmen use to bind letters (because it is one).

In my defence, the band is usually kept hidden a cap, or at least by my hair. No doubt there are proper running glasses and/or bands to keep them in place that I could buy, but I am too tight-fisted and more importantly too lazy to do this when I already have something that works perfectly well.

Well, perhaps not perfectly. Last night my home-made running glasses let me down. Literally. It was cold and I was running a 7 mile “steady run with a few fast surges”. The glasses were fixed tightly in place. Leaving the office, it was easy to pick up the pace just in order to warm up in the freezing air. Twenty minutes’ in, I was averaging 7:20 miles and feeling good. The trouble started at Old Street tube station, where wandering pedestrians forced me onto the road a couple of times, then brought me to a dead stop. Waiting for an opening to push past them, my steaming breath fogged up my glasses. This happens quite a bit, but usually clears once I’m running again and the wind hits my face.

Heading up City Road, it seemed very dark. I was struggling to make out the edges of paving slabs. I’m not sure what happened next, but one minute I was bounding past a bus queue and the next I was lying face-down on the pavement, legs akimbo. It was more embarrassing than painful, though my right knee and elbow were bleeding. I levered myself up, limped for a few yards, then jogged carefully home.

On entering the flat, I took off my glasses. They looked strange. I have quite long eyelashes, and their mascara-ed lengths had obviously been brushing up and down against the lenses, combining with the foggy air to create black inky patches in front of my eyes.

Perhaps it’s time to invest in those proper running specs?