A Lesson Learnt

On Saturday I received a timely reminder of exactly where I am living. I've gotten a little casual about the climatic conditions here and potential consequences. We have a warm apartment, a warm car with good winter tyres, and I have good warm winter clothing. I rarely get cold as a result, so it's not something I think about especially often.

On Saturday I decided to go to the gym. The handy thing about the public gym is that it is literally right across the road from our apartment building. If I think that it might be a bit busy I can look out the window and count up the number of bicycles parked below. I had a quick look out before getting changed and saw only a couple of bikes parked up. That got me a bit supicious that the gym wasn't yet open, they have strange hours at the weekend. It wasn't a horrible day outside, a bit drizzly, wasn't windy, so I made the last minute decision to train outside instead. I was already kind of half dressed but I changed my gym shorts for my normal outdoor training tights. If you'd asked me 4 years ago if I'd be wearing tights, my response would probably not have been printable here. Still, I didn't know then what I know now. Anyway, I kept my gym  shirt on as I figured I would warm up pretty quickly. I put on a light rain jacket and a cap, and away I shot.

As a right idiot I made a couple of stupid novice mistakes: I looked at the weather outside and forgot that we had gotten through 3 days of rain and a week of cooler temperatures; I was planning to run along some gravel back roads in the forest and thought about how those would be during the same season in New Zealand; dumbest of all was that, because I wasn't initally planning to be outside, I forgot to check the outdoor air temperatire. Absolute rookie mistakes.

Starting out in town it was exactly as I was expecting. I warmed up quite nicely. The footpath was a bit damp and there was the odd patch of ice which I could happily avoid. It was all looking pretty good. After about 4 km I was in the forest area and turned off onto one of the lesser travelled roads. This is my favourite road as it's a real test and you are completely alone for a good hour. First there's about 3 kilometres of winding road, a bit up and a bit down. Then there's 2 kilometres of steep climbing. It's a pretty even climb, so if you can find the right tempo it's still hard going but manageable. After the climb you are right up on the top of the hill and it's a 3km trip which connects on to the more populated trail. From there it's about 6km home. The whole trip, with all the climbs should take about 2 hours. Apart from the first and last 3 km, it's all on gravel roads. So it's quite low impact. You get the picture now.

So anyway, starting along the gravel road I suddenly encountered sheet ice. I wasn't expecting that as it had been dry in town and I just wasn't used to gravel roads freezing. Not when it was dry in town. What I had forgotten was that these roads wouldn't have seen any sunlight for several weeks, so they had no chance to thaw. But it was actually ok on the sides, I found a half metre strip which was dry and continued onwards. I did think about turning back but figured it would be easier to take the hill road where the earlier rain would have drained away immediately. Coming to the hill, I realised that wasn't the case. The road here was also frozen. However, the snow from the previous fortnight was also still evident. Running on snow is no worries. It took a bit more effort with the snow and I was already quite tired when I came to the top. At this point I'm about 10km from home, miles away from anyone or anything, and about 150m higher up than when  started. At this point I hit trouble. The snow was gone, and now there was just sheet ice over the entire road. Running was no longer an option. I restorted to gingerly moving from side to side everytime I spotted a few grains of gravel above the ice. At one point I had to resort to the forest itself, although here there was about 30cm of snow to deal with. And then, I started to feel cold. Very cold. I had put on a pair of light training gloves, so my hands were ok. My rain cap was helping a little bit, but I knew my head was starting to cool. The tights, while ok in town, weren't good enough for the top of the forest hill, where the temperature was now at least 10 degrees colder. Worst of all were my arms and feet as I stupidly still had my gym T shirt and thin training socks. I had a rain jacket, but that was designed specically to help expel body heat. Not what I needed. I actually started to feel quite nervous. The thing about being miles away from everything and everyone is that you're miles away from everything and everyone. I had run in cold before, both here and in NZ, but each time I was always in populated areas. Up here, there was no help. I took every opportunity I could to run. Just to get some heat in. It wasn't much, maybe 100m at a time, where I was sure I wouldn't slip and break something. It was a 3km stretch which felt like 30km. I was never so glad as I was when I came back to the road where I knew that I had a reasonable chance of seeing other people.

A long hot shower and several hours warming up in my thermals, no long term harm done. But it reminded me that it could easily have ended much worse. The stupid thing is that I have the right gear to run out in exactly those conditions. A timely lesson to always be aware of where I am, prepare accordingly, and never to take nature for granted. Hopefully not one I'll need to learn again in a hurry.