January is almost over

I will have to admit that my last entry was slightly more than a "little" backstory. The scary thing is that I could've gone on longer. Now I've probably thoroughly scared many away for fear of reading paragraph after paragraph, but I can assure you that will not often be the case. The fact of the matter is that I am coming to the end of a recovery week and I need something to do with the extra free time that is normally swallowed up with endless swimming, biking and running.

So now that I've gotten my apology out of the way I can get on with it. It is January 3oth and the coldest month of winter is almost over, not to be confused with December, which is the darkest. I was actually amazed yesterday when I saw the fading daylight out the window and glanced at my watch to see that it was nearly 5pm. Yes, nearly 5pm and still light out! It is amazing how your perspective can change on things. It was just around Christmas when I had to finish all of my runs by 4pm or wind up running in the dark. Not only that, but the sun is going to start coming up just before 7am, which will also be a nice change. Not that any of it really matters that much since it is still going to be just plain cold out.

Now, I don't hugely mind the cold. At least I don't think I complain about snow and winter quite as much as others I know who live here in New England and just love to whine about it. Seriously, anyone who lives here should know what they are getting into. Although I will admit that it seemed like years where we were blessed with milder winters and certainly a lot less snow, recalling plenty of days when I would be heading up to the mountains to go skiing and not pass a single spot of snow-covered ground on the way, only to be saved by those snow-making machines. It also seems like even when it would snow it would usually have a chance to melt between each storm so at least maybe I'd be able to see the driveway, but that has not been the case recently.

I spent the winter of 2007 living and training in Phoenix to escape the cold. The funny part was that for the first few weeks in January when I was there I would talk to my parents and it was actually warmer in New Hampshire than it was in Arizona. There were a few mornings below freezing, a couple of long bike rides in drizzly rain and temperatures in the 40's and even the slightest bit of wet snow on Superbowl Sunday. That all changed starting sometime in February when winter finally showed up in NH and the heat showed up in AZ. In fact, in March we nearly set some record highs in the upper 90's, but you know, it was a dry heat.

Then last winter it snowed more than it has since something like 1880 and I got to live through all of it. I also got to shovel all of it. Well, at least until sometime in late February when I wound up with some sort of weird back spasms after trying to chip away at about 6" of ice on the front steps for 20 minutes and barely making a dent. When I woke up the next morning, I decided that I was done for the year on clearing the front walk. The garage door was going to have to be good enough.

This winter is not nearly as bad as last winter thus far, but it is also snowier than most winters I've experienced here. It snowed in December and we haven't seen the ground since. It hasn't gotten above freezing really either, and I don't remember what the driveway looks like. We had some much colder days this year, the worst morning I saw was -18, but in all honesty, without wind, once you get down around 10-15, it doesn't tend to feel that much worse. I'm not kidding, either. So far I've gotten in one day of skiing and hope to squeeze in some more in between a demanding training schedule. But I am definitely getting sick of winter.

One thing about it, is that if you are running outside, which I always choose over the trainer except for one particular day in December when an ice storm knocked down about 50% of the tree limbs all over the state, you are going to have a heck of a lot of laundry. I mean, run in the summer, shorts and a t-shirt. Run in the winter: tights, winter socks, hat, gloves, base layer, jacket, maybe a few extra things here and there depending on just how cold it is. I've actually run on a couple of days that were so cold that I wore an entire load of laundry for that one excursion. At least I wasn't cold out there. Swimming doesn't change, it's just colder walking to and from the pool at the gym and obviously no open water. But biking is reduced to entirely indoors.

I don't really mind riding in the cold, but I won't do it if the roads are likely coated in ice and snow, as they have been consistently now for about 6 weeks. So I've been on the trainer in the basement. A lot. This has some advantages, such as being able to line up all of your nutrition and fluids next to you and not having to worry about carrying them, having a bathroom right there and always knowing what the temperature is going to be. You also get to watch a whole lot of TV and movies. That can actually be the hardest part for me, deciding what I'm going to watch. This year has been a bit easier because I joined Netflix thanks to a gift certificate from my brother, so it's obvious enough just to watch whatever the latest movie is I've received. Mix in the DVDs of "The Office" which I had never watched but now find hilarious and I'm pretty much covered. It'd still be nice to actually get somewhere in when I ride though.

All of this cold or indoor training is a pain, but I actually think it can give me a bit of an advantage. I think it can help prevent burnout. I'm doing a lot of training right now and it will only get longer later on, but instead of being sick of it when the time comes I'll likely just be so excited to actually get to ride outside that I won't even care that I'll be gone for 6 hours. It also feels like lifting off a huge weight when you no longer have to wear so many clothes when you run. These are the things I try and tell myself, anyway, to make it easier to get through.

It's supposed to be in the 40's on Monday, it might as well be a regular heat wave. Excellent.