When I looked out the window this morning, it looked like typical PacNW winter weather: cloudy, a bit rainy, some fog thrown in for good measure. What it didn't look like until I was actually out the door in my bicycling gear was cold. Although it wasn't actually snowing, it somehow felt colder than snow. A peek at weather.com shows it was only 34, but it was that damp kind of 34 degrees that chills you to the insides of your molecules.
So I was biking down the street and ran into a friend of mine. We stopped to chat and that was when I realized that my face had gotten so cold I couldn't speak. It was like I had been to the dentist and gotten twenty shots of novocaine or something. The muscles around my mouth were completely numb. My friend and I had a few giggles at my hysterical drunk-sounding slurred speech, and I was off and on my way to the pool. I've done a lot of cold weather biking, but I don't believe I've ever actually frozen my mouth before. Time to pull out the balaclava I guess.
All I can say is thank heavens the pool has a hot tub. After biking there in the winter, my standard warmup is a good 5 - 10 minute soak before I even hit the lap lanes. Which is good, because this is week 2 of Tough New Coach, and the workout this week wasn't any easier than last weeks. This guy has a penchant for sprints and breathholding laps, and with my chronic anemia, it's one thing that I really stink at. Worse still, I got bumped up to the fastest lane, which meant I was hanging on by my fingernails and trying to just Stay In the Bubbles.
By the time I biked home, the sun had come out and it's simply gorgeous today. My face didn't freeze again, though my body was thrashed. And now I've got a cord of wood to move (thankfully I didn't have to split it), so I should fall into bed tonight without a peep.
No comments:
Post a Comment