Cold-weather Wuss

Something happened between high school and now. Back then, I headed outside with the track team in the worst of upper midwest winters. We'd have sideways snow and bitter cold, so we layered up with t-shirts, sweatshirts, tights, sweatpants, hats, gloves, whatever else we could find in the mud rooms of our nondescript split-level homes. It was actually kind of fun, and we felt like we were doing something no one else was, notwithstanding our competition being in the same state. So perhaps I overstate a bit.

Now? I wake up hearing my screens shaking in the wind and say, hell no. I look outside at my world awash in a fresh coating of white and figure I'll just hit the treadmill after work. Oh yeah, there's the fact that the sun doesn't rise until 7:15 or 7:20 a.m., which precludes running in the morning, and it sets before 5 p.m., which rules out running after work, to say nothing of the brutal winds coming off the mountains wets of town. The streets barely get plowed and never get salted (Salt doesn't work at high altitude or when the temperature is less than 20 degrees, which it was for much of the past two weeks), so I don't want to take my chances at hitting a patch of ice and hurting myself.

None of this was ever a concern when I was at Apollo High School in St. Cloud, Minn. Of course, I had a coach telling me to get out and run or don't be on the team, and I had teammates telling me to stop being such a wuss. No wonder I'm so anti-coach now.

Some might say I'm just looking for excuses to not work out, but I have been getting in my training, just inside. Tonight I rode my bike for 1:16 on the trainer in front of the 2006 Ironman World Championship, and tomorrow I'm running in the gym for 50 minutes in preparation for 10 days of running outside in decent weather. Then again, the "scenery" in the gym is not to be underestimated, nor is running in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt in the middle of winter.

Onward I go, dodging the high-plains cold for the antiseptic indoors, still raising the heart rate and sweating out the demons of a heavier diet and the burgeoning spare tire around my middle.