out in the cold

My parents were visiting this week, and since it's been absolutely frigid in Montreal, they were marveling (a little too much!) at the "balmy" and "tropical" Boston weather--it's been around -10 to -15 C instead of -25. Balmy indeed.

Running in this weather has been less than ideal, even though I prefer this to training in the heat and humidity of July. Last weekend, we had 11 miles of Newton hills ahead of us. I was doing fairly well, well enough to drop my windbreaker at the first waterstop after I started to warm up. The hills themselves were ok, but when we turned around at the foot of Heartbreak, the wind picked up and was blowing in our faces. I always find it harder to breathe when there's a cold wind blowing down my throat, but I was also sweaty at this point, and the wind was chilling me to the bone. I couldn't wait to get back to the water stop where I had left my jacket. Once we got there (I was running with Amy), I asked for my jacket, and was told that Kelly, our coach, had brought it back to the Wellesley community center! At this point, all the muscles in my upper body were tense and stiff with cold, and I actually started to cry--there was no way I could make it 3 more miles without a little relief from the cold. Kelly was called, and said she would head over with the jacket, and that we should start running and she would meet us. In the meantime, Amy gave me her jacket (a superhuman move), and I started feeling a lot better. Kelly found us, Amy took my jacket, and all was well...until Amy's knee, which had been bothering her the whole morning, really started to hurt. We had a major hill ahead of us, and I just wanted to get back to the warmth of the community center as quickly as possible, but Amy was in fairly dire straits with her knee, so we walked up the hill (I wasn't complaining too loudly--it is a giant hill!).

My run to work last week was great, but instead of running on Thursday, I spoke at another Team in Training info session--the first one in a long time. I always try my best not to sound like a cheesy motivational speaker, but that's really what I am. I do enjoy it, though, and I think I do an ok job. This week, Amanda Post had her transplant, so I had that to think about. I also met another long-term survivor who was signing up to do her first event. She expressed the same kind of emotions that I felt when I started--cancer is just not part of her life anymore, and the process to get there was really difficult, but now she's making the choice to bring it back in, in a very different capacity. It does feel odd.

I was hoping to bring my dad to practice this weekend so he could have the chance to run on the course before the race, but given the temperature, practice was canceled. It was cold, colder than I'd like to run 12 miles, but now that there's all this snow on the ground, I'm not sure when I'll be able to do it. We decided we'd drive out to Hopkinton on the Pike, and drive back into the city along the course. I had never seen the first 10 miles or so, and it was really cool. We stopped at a tiny Brazilian deli in Ashland (or Framingham, i forget!), saw the beautiful old houses in Natick, and I almost bought a life-sized cardboard Obama in Wellesley. Dad got out at the bottom of Heartbreak to run up it in his jeans and sneakers--no big deal, he said. Of course, he hadn't run the previous 20 miles, but still!

That just about brings us up to date--I've been doing some more strength training, and I'm still stretching every day, but my back has been giving me more grief than I'd like it to. My chiropractor says I'll be fine for Boston, but that if I plan to make a lifelong habit out of running marathons, I should probably have an MRI of my back. No thanks.