When Sam and I moved to Minnesota in 1999, we were coached on survival strategies. Everyone said to gear up, plan regular winter getaways and find a way to ’embrace the cold.’

While we enjoyed annual cross-country ski trips with dear friends for more than 10 years, I had never truly followed the ’embrace the cold’ advice. Over the past 5 years, I’ve been a fair-weather runner. I typically avoid running outdoors from October to April.

When you are marathon training, it’s not wise to try and do all of it on a treadmill. I leveraged every warm weather work trip possible, but eventually, I had to run outdoors in the Minnesota winter.

My 15 mile run was scheduled for a weekend when the wind chill was a chilly 5 degrees.  I wore every layer I could think of: 3 tops, 2 pairs of pants, 2 pairs of socks, a hat, gloves, neck warmer and earmuffs.

It was still ridiculously cold, and the run was not pleasant, but I survived it.  As I said on FB, the lack of hypothermia, frostbite or a slip on the ice put this one in the win column. If I can run in 5 degree windchills, I think I can handle whatever London has to throw at me!