One Clydesdale’s Journey

It was -4 this morning with a wind chill registering some where in the neighborhood of -20 to -30 degrees!

And what did I do??? I went with Shelly and we ran a 5k at the Zoo!

If you would have told me a year ago that I was going to get up at the butt crack of dawn on one of the coldest days of the year and go for a run I would have laughed in your face!

It was the 28th annual Sampson Stomp at the Milwaukee County Zoo. Shelly’s uncle Dave was also there and he told us that it is a bit of a tradition that the weather is nasty for this run. Oh goody!

Well I put on my base layer and several other layers after that just so that I could get out the door and get there, so did Shelly. Dave took a look at us and said you guys will be sweating when you are running. I thought he was crazy, but surprise, surprise we were sweating like crazy even in the bitter cold! That of course made it feel even colder when we went back outside after the snacks and being inside for awhile.

As for the run itself; it was brutal! There’s no other way to describe it. It was too cold to run without having the face shield over your mouth and nose. Problem was, that caused the sunglasses to fog up and freeze. So I ditched the sunglasses.

The air was still so cold that the face shield up that it made it seem like it was hard to take in a deep breath.

I should point out that I’m still pretty out of shape. It’s all I can do on a nice sunny day to run for the entire 5k distance. So this was particularly taxing on my big frame!

Well, I ended up doing a lot of walking and jogging over the entire length of the course. But, I just kept going and I made it to the end.

Okay, so I didn’t tear up the course or anything. But I did finish in 37:02 which is 2 minutes better than my last official 5k and 3 minutes better than my training time.
We’ll see how I feel tomorrow!

The good news; it’s now 4 hours after the run and I’m finally warm again.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training