I didn't know it was THAT cold

Like many of you, the Saturday runs are getting longer and ramping up. I really wanted to do 20 miler today, and did not have time to go to Afton.

The forecast looked for a cold morning but "only" around zero. It was 9 last Saturday, and I was fine without too much winter bundling.

I woke up for a 5 am run, checked the weather, the tv said -1 (obviously somewhere other than where I was). I put on my ninja mask, and added glove liners as my hands are always cold.

I had two water bottles, so I put 2 s-caps in the one I would use second to prevent it from icing up.

I should have figured something was up by 1/4 mile when I already had ice on my eyelashes. Oh well.

3 miles in, my water bottle was already icing up. The Ultimate Direction bottles have a retractable nipple that was full of ice already. I was getting to the point where I could not drink out of it.

I smartly took a route where I would pass a gas station and a Cub Foods in case I ran into problems. I quickly realized I needed to make a pass to the gas station for some "wardrobe maintenance"

The lady there looked at me funny. She let me use the sink to run warm water over the spigot of the bottle. The bottle was now completely iced up. Darn, I thought, 10 degrees less sure makes things problematic.

She said "are you running?" I said yes. She said "but its -11 degrees!" I replied "Ahhh, that explains a lot." That also explained why I was still cold.

I decided to change my route to run by a Starbucks where I know the staff. I basically did the same thing there, the helped me thaw my gear which was frozen again. I decided a coffee was in order. I sipped some, and then threw it in my bottle. Not quite how you make iced coffee, but it worked.

I did manage to get the whole 20 miles in without any near death experiences. I checked the temp when I got home and it was 1 degree (a while after I got home). Looks like the whole run was zero and below.

I am done with this cold crap.

20 miles. 3.5 hours. avg hr 136.