One way I acknowledge the transition into winter is through my running wardrobe. The basketball jerseys, mesh shorts, and hair elastics that reliably took me through the spring and summer give way to the long sleeves, colorful gloves, and thick headbands required for running through the cold, snowy Boston winter.
I heard once that runners should account for how their body heat rises during a run by dressing as if the temperature were twenty degrees higher. I started using this rule of thumb a few years ago when I was just out of school. Initially, the method worked just fine for me. Most of the time, my summer outfit of shorts and a t-shirt sufficed. If the weather was cool, I would add a sweatshirt. I got a pair of sweatpants involved when the temperature dropped below freezing. The gloves and hats I owned were kept reserved for walking.
Early one fall evening, I went out for a run in a hoodie and shorts. It was unseasonably cold, a notch above freezing - but only just - and I remember pausing briefly to consider going back inside to change into sweatpants. I didn’t bother, though, and headed out into the cold. This was partly because I intended for the run to be short and mostly because I was confident. The week before, I’d done something resembling a personal best – a nine mile run on a hilly course in the Adirondacks, completed in just a minute over an hour – and I figured I could simply outrun my outfit before the effects of the cold could punish me for my mistake.
Ha, ha, ha…
I left my apartment in Southie, made my way to L Street via East Broadway, and turned north. I was cruising and, as us weekend warriors say, working up a real sweat. I didn’t feel the cold anymore, just the elation of skimming over the pavement at top speed, the freedom earned from effort and exertion, the briefest respite from the pressures of errands, emotions, immortality. As I approached the Seaport, I wondered if maybe I could run a little longer than I’d initially planned.
I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my left knee. At first, I thought I’d run into a bench. I slowed to a jog, then walked, then stopped. I looked back and saw only the empty sidewalk. The problem was with my knee, in my knee. I felt around the leg but didn't notice anything unusual. Pressing on the knee did not cause more pain. I walked a short distance and felt a little better. Maybe I could run it off.
I started again, made it a half-block, and almost fell over when the pain returned. This time, I thought someone had hit my knee with a baseball bat. The pain made my entire body unstable. I threw in the towel for the first time ever and walked home.
I learned later that the injury I’d suffered was known as iliotibial band syndrome. Or as we runners casually refer to it, I was ‘having an IT band’. Maybe I’ll go into all the details another day. For now, let’s just say ‘having an IT band’ is what happens when you run too damn much and your hip announces a month-long vacation via the sudden, unnecessarily painful mechanism of making your knee hurt, a lot. It’s one of the most common overuse injuries for runners in my particular subgroup – know-it-all amateurs with a high pain threshold and a stubborn, reckless determination to eliminate our knee cartilage as quickly as possible.
So, lesson learned, right? Why would anyone run again after an experience like that? Why would I want to risk such an injury again? Surely, having placed my knee on the hot stove, I’ll make sure not to repeat the error? Well, life’s not so simple. This lesson, perhaps, is one I will learn in the future.
However, I did learn a different lesson, reader, and it's one I’ll apply every time I run this winter. After I stopped running that day, I walked home. The run had taken me about thirty minute walk away from my apartment but with the injury factored in the trip took me closer to an hour. I was cold the entire time. It didn’t help that I’d worked up a little sweat or that I was only in shorts and a hoodie in the near-freezing temperature.
There is one moment from the walk I’ve yet to forget. I bet I'll never forget it. It was about forty minutes in and I was somewhere on D Street. Back then, there were no buildings or even foundations on this stretch of the road, just ideas for foundations, and the openness allowed the biting October wind to whip back and forth across the no-man’s land between Southie and the Seaport, between the past and the future.
During one especially chilling gust, I had a sudden understanding of what it must be like for those stranded, maybe in a desert or a forest or a mountain range, waiting quietly to learn the consequences for their miscalculation. I felt a new sensation, a feeling much like regret, because I knew I would do it differently next time. But it was a heavier feeling, weighed down by knowing I wouldn’t have that second chance. I heard the echo of nature’s indifferent gavel and understood the judge would rule on my case one day and intuited that my appeal of this verdict would go unheard. I wondered, briefly, if those stranded in their own damaged, disintegrating bodies felt the same way.
As soon as this came, it was gone. I was rushed back into Southie, into myself once more, cold and limping and safe. When I got home soon after I resolved never to feel this way again. I wasn’t thinking about my knee.
When I run in this winter, people will ask me if I’m overdressed, just like they’ve done for years. I’ll tell them I am. I’ll point out the ‘dress for twenty degrees warmer’ rule of thumb but add that I want to dress warmly enough to walk home comfortably, you know, just in case. And this is the fact because I do want to walk home comfortably and this answer is acceptable because everyone knows we run until we cannot.
But this is not the truth. I can stand the cold if I need to. The truth is that I felt something once and I don’t want to feel anything like it again.
