The latest polar vortex and the mild (single-digit) weather between vortices have curtailed my running. Yesterday the mercury rose to a torrid zero. I observed a woman running down McLeod Avenue against the wind of fifteen to twenty-five miles per hour. The chill was in the minus twenty-five to minus thirty-five degree range. The woman was thinly dressed in tights and some kind of light parka, a ski mask over her face. I don't have any tights and my parka is military surplus survival gear so I don't run when the wind chill has reached insane proportions. My last run outside about a week ago was in sixteen degree weather with light winds, ideal running weather.
My polar vortex running is done inside, in the Memorial Building, Ironwood's crown Jewel. I train in a subterranean gym, constructed in the early 1920s. It has a balcony for spectators and the floor is a regulation basketball court. An adjacent locker room facilitates a change into shorts and a t-shirt and a hoodie until my body warms up. I store my snowmobile bibs and survival parka and heavy Sorel boots in my favorite lockers. Yes, I have a little OCD that makes it important that I use 2 particular lockers, sixth from the end, one locker above the other.
This morning the gym was illuminated by the cloudy day showing through windows on the west and north sides of the gym. The windows are about fifteen feet above the gym floor. The east wall separates the gym from the swimming pool that has been inactive since economic conditions prohibited its continued use. Above the gym and pool, in the first floor is the auditorium with a stage and a hardwood floor. The balcony is wonderfully appointed by stained-glass windows and individual armchair seats.
I had tried to pace off the boundaries of the basketball court but I didn't think that my pacing gave an accurate judge of the distance covered with each workout. I had initiated a routine of running the gym floor seven times, with each run a little closer to the opposite sideline. I judged that if I repeated this nine times (63 sprints the length of the court) I had covered a mile. I finally remembered to take my twenty-foot tape rule along and measured the court which turned out to be 40' by 80'. A little math showed that it took 66 sprints to a mile so my estimate was close. I ran a total of 198 sprints, equivalent to 3 miles. I ran 2 miles , then played basketball, shooting until I made a shot then running to the other end and repeating for fifteen minutes. then I ran another mile and the estimated equivalent was four miles including the basketball interlude.
It was chilly in the gym due to the brutal conditions outside. Even with the overhead heaters blowing it was still cold so had had my hoodie on for the first half-mile.
When the Memorial Building was constructed in 1922, I think, there probably would have been intramural games, as the present high school hadn't been built yet. Maybe the St. Ambrose catholic high school played there. At any rate I envisioned the facilities, pool and gym used with great enthusiasm when this building was new.
The whole building was renovated several years ago and the basketball floor refinished. Modern basketball goals replaced the 1920s goals.
I love the quietness of the gym. The sounds of city administration and the Social Security office do not reach down the two flights of stairs and 33 stairs to the gym. Sometimes I sit on a sideline bench, enjoying the solitude. sometimes I pray. The quietness makes my workout a calming mini-retreat.
Strange that I should find running as one of my passions. As a kid I struggled through gym class with an asthmatic wheeze. Even as a young adult I did not have the stamina for basketball or for running one city block. I'll give science part of the credit in developing medicines that freed me from my asthmatic burden. Working only two or three days a week gives me the time to run.
There's a thrill in hearing my footfalls on the hardwood court as I accelerate and decelerate. I'm challenging myself with more speed bursts and longer runs and I've grown to love the burn in my calves early in each run. This burn tells me I can't go another step and somehow in the first half mile the muscles warm up and oxygenate and I'm in overdrive.
It will probably be brutally cold again tomorrow, so I'll be back, Lord willing.
No comments:
Post a Comment