By Christopher Cudworth

Temps below zero have to be treated with respect

I’m not being facetious when I say that I will not run in extreme subzero temperatures because I am concerned about freezing my nuts off. I have run next to a fellow for 7 long miles as he gingerly held his family jewels with a semi-warm hand stuffed down his shorts because he had failed to wear a layer of windproof clothing when it was -10 outside.

Running in extreme cold is serious business as my friend so desperately learned. You can get frostbite in very inconvenient and possibly life-changing locations. You can also burn your facial cheeks, ears and toes, forehead, fingertips, and nose.

Talk about cold

Less serious, but just as strange was the day that I ran with a teammate in -13 degree conditions. The windchill was in the -30 degree range and when I turned to talk to him, my voice box failed. I was talking but nothing came out. It was like a freaking Silent Movie. He would have fallen over laughing had we not been so eager to keep moving and take the left turn down into a valley and out of the wind.

Cold warnings

Ice and cold can lock you up for good. Or bad.

Cold is indiscriminate and far-reaching. You can’t run away from it. You can only get out of it if you want to avoid the burning pain of deep cold.

As a little kid I almost lost my life in the cold. We lived in Upstate New York outside Seneca Falls. The weather was often numbingly cold, and snow fell deep. My brothers had built long tunnels in the roadside ditches in which you could walk along standing up. For a kid at 5, this was an absolute Winter Wonderland.

But I stayed too long, and I’m not sure whether my brothers sent me home on my own or I took off with that determination of mind that only a 5-year old trying to prove himself can muster.

At any rate, the tunnels were interesting along the way, blue in winter light, but the half-mile journey home on my own quickly became a dangerous chore. My skinny little body had little insulation at that age. Hypothermia had begun and I did not know what that meant. But I kept going. Step by step through the snow tunnels, shivering and dull-headed.

Warmups

Winter’s chill can be daunting

By the time I got inside the house my hands and feet were numb and my bony chin was chattering. My mother immediately recognized my condition as serious. She grew up on an Upstate New York farm south of Bainbridge. She knew the signs of extreme cold exhaustion and that meant taking action.

Within minutes of getting inside and out of the cold my thighs and calves started to ache. The deep pain in my toes and fingers my mother called “chilblains.” I can still hear her voice, somewhat distance and hushed, as I struggled to stay awake. She peeled off my clothes. Working like only a mother can, she held my feet in her hands and warmed my fingers too. Mercifully there was no frostbite. All I knew was that it hurt. Bad. She heated up soup and warm lemonade, as I recall. I could feel life surging back into me.

Consequences

I think she chewed my brothers out for sending me home alone. I don’t precisely recall all the events that followed. Soon a deep sleep came over me, interrupted only by the occasional shooting pains in my joints and extremities. The deep ache in my thighs and arms soon passed as the warm liquids I ingested were able to bring the core temperature down.

Significance

We two-legged and four-legged creatures have varying cold tolerance. Our little pup Chuck can only take the cold for a little while.

Strangely I do recall the determination I felt walking home that day. Something in the act of trudging along on my own sank deep into my subconscious mind. Whether that day forged the will to survive or the will to survive forged my actions can never be known. All I know is that I made it, and I knew I had to make it.

Salvation from the cold

I recall a story shared with me by a very wealthy man who found religion the day that he fell through the ice of a rushing river and was forced to swim underwater pounding at the base of the ice trying to find a weak spot to break through. He emerged 50 yards downstream freezing and close to death from both the cold and the possibility of drowning. But he survived, and his commitment to God never wavered after that. To a fault he was obsessed with his relationship with God, but he died of a disease that literally hardened his heart. I’ve always thought that was a set of strange metaphorical bookends in a life well-lived.

Will in the chill

Later in life I would test my own will in seemingly foolish ways. During one of the last extremely cold winters in Illinois in 1982, temps dropped to -27 but I was determined to go outside to run. My concerns over fitness leading up to an indoor 2-mile race took over my common sense. So I bundled up the best I could and took off on a loop that would give me four miles for the day.

There was just one problem: My eyelids froze shut in the first half mile. In a panic I reached up with gloves to warm them, but that only worked part way. My moist breath had risen up past the scarf wrapped around my face (it was 1981, equipment sucked back then) and little balls of white ice had locked onto my eyelashes.

Being cold sucks unless you’re a snowman. Then it rocks.

That meant I had to un-freeze them somehow. So I took my gloves off in the -56 degree windchill and pinched the eyelashes to get them open again. It worked.

Then I turned around and ran home again. Every footstep sounded like an avalanche as new snow crunched underfoot. It felt like my feet were prescription drug pestles crushing white powder.

I wrote down “One Mile” in my journal that day. It may have been the craziest mile I’ve ever run, or ever will.

Indoor time trial

Two weeks later I ran an indoor two-mile in 9:30, taking 2nd place at the beautiful Sterling, Illinois indoor track where a talented jumper named Mike Conley and I guy I think was named Tim Weatherspoon won the field events and sprints. I was captivated thinking about how different our respective roles were in the sport of track and field, and how odd it was to push ourselves to the best we could do in the middle of a fearsome winter. But we did.

Why those details are important is simple. We push ourselves to both to compete and observe others who excel in competition. That’s human nature. Not all our endeavors make sense, and what seemed so important years ago may not register as sensible now. But I for one would not trade any of those experiences. Not the running I did or the excellence I observed that day.

And that is why…

My somewhat faster former self is frozen in time. And that’s okay.

I don’t feel the need to compete with that crazy young kid who ran in -27 temperatures. I’ve been there and done that. There is a gym with a treadmill waiting for me tomorrow, or a bike on a trainer in the basement. Perhaps I’ll even hit the pool for a swim. Talk about arrogance in the face of the cold!

Riding in snow and cold

I’ve also ridden my bike in crazy conditions. Three winters ago I wiped out on my mountain bike while trying to navigate a 400-meter section of solid ice covered with water. I thought it was a shortcut. Well, think again buddy. When I went down my cell phone when shooting out of the pocket of the jacket I was wearing, but I didn’t know it. By the time I got home and realized it was missing, I figured the phone would be dead. Still I raced up there by car to find it and located the poor thing in an icy puddle. I picked up the phone and dialed home and it connected, but that was the last call that phone ever made.

Still, I like winter riding and if the roads clear a bit after 10″ of snow the mountain bike always feels good. Even the road bike comes out of the basement come February and temps over 30.

No harm done

Still, for all my craziness running in bone-chilling weather (I still do, just not -19 below and -50 degree wind chills) I have never gotten frostbite or hurt my lungs, as people frequently propose. Even on the coldest days, our bodies typically warm the air reaching our lungs to more than 80 degrees before you breathe it in.

Which means that if you are moved to head out into the severe chill my admiration goes with you. May you get home safe and sound, and not freeze your nuts or boobs off because that would not be a good look no matter how you look at it.

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