Awesome ice helmet

Saturday's run was exactly as I expected: cold and wet.

But it was also something else that I didn't expect: pretty freaking awesome.

It was snowing and 16 degrees out when I got out of the car, and I felt drastically unprepared with my non-waterproof gear. But, I was out there, running in the elements like one of those really hard-core people you see on the pages of Runner's World.

Well... not exactly like them, I guess... I was still slow.

I only had to do 6 miles on Saturday, since the Denver Half Marathon is coming up this Sunday. I found a knitted ear warmer and a cheap pair of gloves to wear, and I ended up deciding at the last minute to wear my fleece under my non-waterproof windbreaker. I was cold, dude, I thought the extra layer would help.

In the early miles I had a few slips on the sidewalk, but nothing dramatic like a real fall because I was taking every step quite gingerly. By the third mile, though, I was sort of just trucking along not worrying about slipping anymore. The snow kept getting caught in my eyelashes and at one point I reached up to find the entire top of my head frozen solid (seriously, it felt like an ice-helmet). But I kept on running, with that image in my mind of all those really tough runners I see out every winter... When I'm safe and warm and being lazy in the car on those winter days, I always say "Man, I'll be they're totally hatin' it!"... But in reality, they probably aren't. They're probably just as smug as I was last Saturday thinking "Damn I'm tough."

All in all, the run wasn't my fastest ever, but it wasn't my worst, either. It was one of the ones where I felt the strongest, though. I probably was slightly distracted by the weather and I probably could have pushed a little harder, but hey, I used to be distracted to the point of not even running at all in the rain and pushing harder might have led to a serious fall that would have kept me out of the race this Sunday. I'm glad I was out there. Cold and all.

And now, as the race comes up on Sunday, I'm still not really sure it's hit me that it's actually this weekend. I'm starting to get nervous, but I've not yet reached that point where I'm not able to sleep and I feel like I might puke, so there's still a ways to go.