Valentine’s 10K, forget the heart, what about my eyes?

I ran the Valentine’s Day 10K today, February 11th.  (Note.  Not exactly on Valentine’s Day.)  Well, I’m not gonna lie about the race.  It sucked.  I woke up and the temp was 18 degrees with the wind out of the North.  I didn’t bother looking to see what the wind chill was.  If I hadn’t already pre reg’d earlier this week, I probably would have been a “no show”.  As it is, I didn’t want to waste an entry fee.  If there is one thing I absolutely loathe, it’s cold weather.  I showed up with two layers on my legs, three layers on top, one being a wind proof vest, a stocking cap, and wind proof gloves.  On my feet were wool socks.  I was attempting to warm up and thought, forget it.  I’m going home.  I’m frozen solid and my digits had that painful frozen feeling.  This is when I ran into Donna, who just finished the 5k.  She told me it wasn’t that bad once you warmed up.  So, I stayed.  After the first mile, the next two weren’t too bad because the wind was at my back.  The second half was absolutely miserable.  The wind was head on and cut like a knife.  My eyeballs literally were frozen.  No kidding.  I have never experienced that before.  My eyes felt like they were swollen and in lots of pain.  I could only see about 2 ft. in front of me.  I was actually wondering if I was going blind.  Besides that, the rest of my face was in pain and my body was in chills.  I was 2nd female overall going into the last 1/2 mile.  One woman passed me, and to be honest, I was so worried about not being able to see and my eyes hurting so bad, that it didn’t bother me that she passed me.  I ended up finishing 3rd female overall.  Afterwards, I walked straight into the building and covered my eyes with my hands to try to warm them up.  By the end of the race, I could barely see.  I must’ve looked pretty bad because someone came over and gave me a hot cup of water.  They informed me that I looked the coldest out of all the racers they had seen that day.  After my eyeballs defrosted, I went to the bathroom and took off my underlayers to get the sweaty clothes off my body.  The other females in the bathroom looked at me like I was crazy.  I suggested to them to take their wet base layers off so they would warm up quicker.  I just got wierd looks.  Oh well.  Suit yourself.  I tried to stick around for the awards, but after 30 minutes all I could think of was a hot shower and sweat pants, so I took off.

Lesson of the day:  Even when it is cloudy, I need to wear clear glasses to protect my eyeballs or else they’ll freeze.

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