Winterizing

Time to break out the cold gear, the gloves, the balaclava but more importantly, time to recompute what an "easy" pace is.

One of the things that's not always obvious is that really your run pace is about effort and training your cardio and energy delivery systems more than it is about how fast you are really traveling...that part of the training is, comparatively easy. That's why I love wearing my heart rate monitor when the seasons change, my new "easy" pace is almost 40 seconds faster than it was.

Some of the other challenges of winter running are hydration and nutrition. I still haven't figured out how to keep the water from getting insanely cold or solid. So far the best I can come up with is bringing very warm water. The bottles are so poorly insulated that this only buys me half an hour or so. I had come up with a solution to nutrition but I didn't like it. The cold tends to thicken up gels and it's hard to get them out of the package or the gel bottle. I went to the Clif Bloks. I'm usually a GU guy and like the flavor of the Chomps better BUT the packaging is stupid. Trying to dig a single Chomp out of the bag with a gloved hand and then reseal the pouch while on the run is trying. I like that I can just peel open the wrapper on the Bloks when I want another. I accidentally found a third way that I'm trying tomorrow. I forgot that I am out of gel for my long run tomorrow but we were on our way to the grocery store, I went over to their aisle where they have nutritional supplement type things and I was just looking for anything. I could make 9 miles un-fueled so, maybe even a Clif Bar. I was looking at their offerings and noticed PowerBar Energy. It's in similar packaging to a gel but it is obviously a lot wetter. I looked on the back. Hmmmm, caffeinated, two sugar sources, sodium and potassium...sounds like gel! If this stuff will flow out of the gel bottle, I'm going to be VERY happy, unless it tastes terrible.