How cold is too cold? And how do you deal with the snow? Is this when you switch over to road running? Do you decrease your weekly mileage and pick up other activities? How do you cold?

The Suffer Club crew said that it’s not really cold until you start to feel the snot in your sinuses freezing, a sort of mentholated sensation. My own rules about when to go and when to stay are less governed by temperatures and more dependent on motivation. I can go out in sub-zero temps if I can convince myself it’ll be some sort of fun, or if my mental health needs drive me out. In my experience the cold isn’t too cold until your exposed skin stops stinging and starts feeling warm again, but the wrong kind of warm, the kind that says maybe you’re causing damage.

Here it is, Friday morning, and we need to hatch a run plan. Really, we should have hatched it yesterday, but we couldn’t really decide what to do. The woods are foot-deep in snow. Where our fellow humans have already been, the snow is stomped and icy and uneven. Do we snow shoe instead?

Or do we punt and just log some road miles now, waiting for the trails to get more hospitable?

So many questions.

I said, “Well, we can see what the woods are like. We can take snow shoes. If that’s not enough, we can road run later.”

What would you do?