My first cold run of the season....

Well, the southeast is frigid - at least by our standards. We were running down at Wrightsville Beach tonight with a temp in the mid 30's and a wind chill of 26. Nice.

I had planned well and had multiple layers ready to add and subtract as necessary. I had my Asics running pants, a compression short sleeve t-shirt, a long sleeve tech shirt and a plain old cotton sweat shirt along with gloves and a hat. Standing around before the run, it was cold, cold, very cold. We started the run right on time and our warm up run was an easy 1.75 miles to the north end of the island. I was sweating like a pig by the time I got to the end of the island. Thankfully Kristen was there with the truck, so I dumped my sweatshirt and gloves. From the end of the island we had a 3 mile tempo run - one long straight shot down the island. Our pace was to be 8:50 to 9:00 min/mile. Our first mile was 9:06, a little slow but in the cold, I will take it. Our second mile was about 9:00 even. I was running with a buddy, Doug and we began to pick up the pace for the last mile. We finished with a total time of 26:45 - yah.

We had a cool down run back to the car - about 1.3 miles. I have to admit that is when I started to get cold. We got back to the cars and had to do 4 sets of strides - about 60 meters. I grabbed my sweatshirt and gloves, finished the strides and did a quick stretch. Now I was cold - I turned the heat all the way up for the ride home. It was a good night - ran with friends, held a good pace, and was home in time to kiss the kids goodnight.