Week 6: 4.5 freezing cold miles

So you may have noticed that week 5 is mysteriously missing -- this is what happens when you try to keep up a blog as a parent!  Grammie and Grampa S were up for a visit, so I did my short, 2.5-mile run without Liliana, and then didn't have time to write about it because Liliana and I both came down with colds at the beginning of the week.  It was a rather uneventful run anyhow.  We're both feeling better, though I swear the exhaustion from a cold lingers on forever when you don't get enough sleep to begin with!

We had a great Halloween -- Liliana was in love with her puppy costume and was so excited to wear it out for her first time trick-or-treating.  Dressing up with her reminded me so much of skating on the ice with Caitlin.  Every season, we'd dress up on the Sunday closest to Halloween, usually over warm gear so we wouldn't freeze while we skated.  One year we both dressed up as pirates and didn't even plan it!  The special skate days like those were the ones I loved most because they were just so much fun.  Here's a picture of Caitlin and me during one of those Halloween skates.  I still can't believe she left us nearly three years ago -- I look at these pictures and they seriously feel like just yesterday.  It's a great reminder to me as to why I'm running.

I was definitely more in the mood to go back to bed than run on Saturday.  I'd gotten to bed a bit later than I'd wanted to, and Liliana was up bright and early at 6.  The whiner in me came out, and I moaned and groaned about how impossible it was going to be to run 4.5 miles in the cold, with the threat of rain, when I'd only managed to be well enough for one mid-week run, on next to no sleep.

Thankfully, my husband has the patience of a saint and let me complain it out for an hour.  I don't do caffeinated drinks, so my only real option was to load myself up on sugar, get myself on a sugar high, and hope I could sustain myself through the run. Halloween candy to the rescue!

When I stepped outside as I was getting ready to go, the cold almost hurt.  Silly me didn't learn from our last cold run, and still didn't have anything reasonably appropriate to wear.  I decided to try wearing a lightweight fleece jacket, and bundled Liliana up in her winter coat, hat, mittens and blanket.  I wish I'd been awake enough to think to take a picture.  She looked so snuggly in her stroller!

Our coach said she thought the route would be less hilly than our last runs, but that was terribly inaccurate.  I think it may have been worse.  I've found that when stroller running, any significant hill just kills me.  I recover quickly and can get back on my way, but I definitely had to walk up a couple of the hills because running would have been exerting more effort for about the same speed.

At about a mile and a half in, I was way overheated in my fleece jacket.  I ended up doing the rest of the run in my T-shirt.  It's difficult to explain, but it was both cold and not cold at the same time.  I get very warm when I run, so my core felt fine, but at the same time, I could clearly feel that I was underdressed.  I'm definitely getting to a store this week to pick up some better running gear for cooler weather.  I think I was somehow convinced that the temperatures would stay moderate through late-November.  I'm not really sure what I was thinking there!

The run is coming up later this month -- I can't believe it's almost here!  Next Saturday is our longest training run, the full five miles.  Please consider making a donation to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society this week to support our team and the many patients they help every day!