The post in which I regret this morning's run

This must be the treadmill gods' way of getting back at me for my disparaging remarks yesterday. Some sort of mechanical karma, if you will.

I was determined to get outside to run today, mostly because I didn't want to shovel the snow off my car again, but also because I felt like I need to run on pace or something close to that for my 5 miler.

Temperature check at 6:30 AM: -5 degrees

I can still run in that, right? Right?!?!

Being the idiot that I am, I assumed I would warm up as quickly as I normally do and everything would be fine after about a mile. Oh how wrong I was.

I headed in the direction of Mica's place so I could retrace the good running routes that she'd led me on before today. I figured I could kill some meters in Champaign by running up and down side streets. Immediately upon hitting the West Side Park, I could feel myself starting to sweat. Unlike most times, however, it froze to my face.

Is this how frostbite works?

In my infinite stupidity, I kept on going, determined to get five miles in today, so tomorrow's six miles wouldn't seem so bad. I'll spare you the details from the rest of the run, because aside from getting it done, nothing else really happened. I felt like I was working so hard, so I was surprised to see that Garmin had my average pace at 10:26. Eh...what are you going to do?

By the time I got home, I felt pretty bad. 5.33 miles covered, hopefully not at the price of my fingers or toes. When I got in, I took this picture:

You can't see the frost beard that had formed on my cheeks. Actually, I looked more like this when I got back:

Ewwwww...so I guess being away from Chicago combined with the fact that I really didn't run last Winter has dulled my spidey senses when it comes to running outside. Here's hoping tomorrow won't be quite as bad!