A Frozen Top Ten

 ‘Dick’, that’s what a colleague called me this week when I announced on Monday that I had to cut my long run short the day before due to the cold. ‘Dick’ he repeated when I mentioned I misjudged the temperature and went out for a run in shorts. – In 2°C.

To put this advice in context, my colleague is also a triathlete, and as he commonly reminds me ‘8^th Best age group 70.3 Aussie in Europe’. Unfortunately to support his claim, he also regularly smokes me out on the bike, weighs 20kg less than me and finished a half iron race TWO whole hours before me. 

Although i normally dispute his hate of training in cold weather, unfortunately this time I had to agree with him. Im not a fan of short loops, so when I go for a long run I try to go for a one large out and back loop, in particular there is a long route from my house to my work and back, which conveniently places a toilet stop half way.

Normally this route is good as it keeps the scenery changing and is not too demanding mentally. However, this last Saturday although the run started warmish (well not minus temperature), the wind picked up around halfway and as the old ladies would say ‘chilled me to the bone’.

Once cold, I struggled to warm up, even when increasing the pace, and after my legs became numb, they began to hurt. A lot. 6 miles from home.

Now was the time to delve back into the depths of the sport science knowledge and work on those mental techniques the lecturers talked about.

Firstly I tried focusing on form…which today, sucked, so then tempo…which again, sucked. So next came the distraction techniques; I tried picturing ending the run, finishing the marathon, the Champs d’Elysees, all the positive sporting scenarios i could muster. These didn’t work either. So like any red-blooded male, I distracted myself by rating things…in particular the top ten girls on TV.

Unfortunately this only lasted another couple of miles (For those wondering, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis drew top spot). And after momentarily being spurred on whilst focusing on pretty ladies, the pain returned.

In the end, every step involved a jolting pain in my knee and in reflection I wisely decided to pick up the phone and called to be rescued. Although I cut the run short, I still managed 14 miles in just over two hours so a fairly solid run. Once defrosted, i reflected that it was a decent run, in particular after a week off training. More upsettingly was the fact i was so cold i forgot about including Megan Fox in the list...nightmare! (food for thought for the next run)

To make me feel a bit more positive, I PB’d on the run to work this morning by 5 minutes, and it didn’t require a head torch or a jacket. Lovely.