Thank you Marcus!

When I woke up this morning, there were two things that I knew I had to do. One was to run in the afternoon (which I hate) and the second was that I had to run in the bitter cold.

I checked the temperature and soon found out that it was going to be -21 with the wind chill. As soon as I got out of the house and dropped my sons off to the babysitters, I immediately felt the cold wind. I turned to my youngest son Marcus and said that maybe Daddy should just ride the bike today instead. Without missing a beat, he turned to me and said, "Dad, don't you remember you told me that you run in any weather?" He was right, of course, and it is something that I'm very proud of. Hearing it from his lips though, made me realize that I really had no choice. I won't be able to run much this week and I knew that if I didn't run today I'd regret it until next week.

I had a very small window of opportunity to run of about 1.5 hours so when I got home from my work at 12:30 I had a quick tea and a small piece of banana and off I went. I made sure to layer appropriately and as soon as I started to run I once again felt like I had made the right decision. I cut the route a little short because of my time constraints but still was able to get in about 11 K's. The sun was so bright this afternoon that I barely noticed the cold.

What made my run fun today was seeing the looks on so many people as I ran by them. I could see how cold they were just standing around. I got a few nice smiles in return and one high five from one man. The one thought that kept running through my mind, though, was what my son had told me this morning. It's amazing where we can find inspiration from if we just open our eyes and ears.