Running in the Cold
I wrote a separate posts about Tips on Training in the Cold.
I trained through two winters here in Boston and have a lot of experience running in the cold. The only issue is to acclimate to the cold before Antarctica. The coldest I’ve ran ever was 17F at night, which should be about the same as on Antarctica. At least the sun would be up at that time.
Luckily, this winter it has been super cold. I took a long and miserable long run at about 15F and a decent long run at 10F. Those two long runs really showed me that another 10F makes a huge difference. It also tells me to wear a bit more in case I’m forced to walk.
I am most concerned with the ground conditions. I am afraid it may be too warm and we would be running through some mud and wet ground, which would get my shoes wet. From a previous Twitter chat, there is a shoe called Asics Ghost GTX that is waterproof. I have ran with the ghost previous and found the padding to be insufficient for training up to 400 miles. It definitely felt like a lighter and faster shoe and had no problems otherwise, but found the Mizuno Wave Rider to be a better trainer.
In my experience, the ghost would be better for half marathons while the WR would be better for full marathons. Another runner told me she buys a different insole when she wears the Ghost.
Training
So I ran the Hong Kong Marathon a few weeks before so it is hard to train much in between races. I was hoping to train in Jan/Feb but I got sicked part of the way through January which cut my training down. Now I’m trying to get a few long runs in (12-15 miles) before the race and training as much as I can. Its hard, especially when we’re going to spend a few days in Buenos Aires and another few days on a boat. I hope to get a long run in this weekend and then a few shorter 10k runs in next week.
I’ve spent most of the two weeks acclimating back to the cold. I spent about a week in summer weather (90-95F) so coming back to the cold took a few days to adjust. However, a couple of cold runs got me acclimated quickly.