Staying Outdoors

January, for some runners, is a stage where a genuine struggle with the cold takes place.  It's one thing to run in the 30s and 40s, another to get outdoors at all when it drops below freezing, even plunging into the single digits as it is predicted to do tonight.  In what our local weatherman describes charmingly as "the wee hours," the temperatures will become "wee temperatures," too, dropping to only 2 or 3 degrees with sub-zero wind-chill.  If any runners in Boston or Minneapolis are reading this blog now I know they are howling with laughter.  Being a wimp is not an option in Boston.  (I grew up in Connecticut and I do, honestly I do, remember what real winters are like.)

Monday morning found me running six miles up in Highlands, down Main Street, passing the friendly waves and greetings from the Town's electric crews as they removed the holiday decorations for storage until next year.  The leaves of the rhododendron were beginning to curl up tight, and there was a serious patch of ice on Wilson Drive just below Satulah Ridge Road.  But the wind had not yet mounted its mighty steed and I was dressed warmly, and by mid-morning the sun even made me a little warm. 

This morning is another story - the wind is howling, the tall trees all around are swaying dizzyingly all around the house, the rhododendron leaves are curled up as tightly as No. 2 pencils.  It is a good day to go to the gym and cross-train.  I have run in single digits before - as low as 8 degrees on one memorable run with Art - and it does not do a runner any good to plod along in such conditions, risking frostbite or a fall on a patch of ice, simply to prove one's hardiness, or driven by a compulsive feat of missing a day or two.  It is far better to wait a day or two until it warms just a little.  And a little core work might do a runner some good after all.  Let the temperatures climb up merely into the teens and you will find me outdoors, nature all around me, the winter sky resplendent with color, simply soaking in the glorious tableau of winter.  I may not be a Boston runner, but I am a mountain runner.

I found this quote on J. P. Krol's wonderful blog, High on Mt. LeConte, this week (http://www.highonleconte.com/daily-posts:

"Such feeling, such longing, most of us have experienced in passing moods; but in the highlander it is a permanent state of mind, sustaining him from the cradle to the grave. To enjoy freedom and air and elbow-room he cheerfully puts aside all that society can offer, and stints himself and bears adversity with a calm and steadfast soul. To be free, unbeholden, lord of himself and his surroundings - that is the wine of life to a mountaineer."   Horace Kephart