Never let anyone tell you that seasonal weather changes don’t slow them down. If, once upon a time, before climate change and after catalytic convertors, modern runners could enjoy seasons that slid slowly from one into the other, languid in pace and gentle in their caresses, well, that sounds nice. No more.
These days the changes in weather usually feel more like a slap in the face than a naturally occurring rhythm. Case in point: a couple of weekends ago, the temperature in the City of Los Angeles spiked to 90 degrees, up from around 72-74, over the course of only two days. Those daytime temperatures hovered for a couple of days, then plummeted back down to the more seasonal 70s. What a trip.
During that two day heat wave, I rifled through drawers and found my shorts again, burrowed my runs deeper in the evening, and came back remembering why I started running with handkerchiefs for my sweat. I was as slow as a tortoise. I was as inspired as an over-baked chicken. Growing up in the killing heat of Georgia summers taught me to put up with a lot, but quick changes have always knocked me back a bit.
On the other end of the year, the first cold jams up my muscles like the Tin Man himself. I can never get through the first chilly runs feeling good. Even though the days usually bounce back towards Keats’ season of mist for at least a little while, that first cold snap makes me feel like I’m starting my training all over again, and not in a good way.
Change is not easy. And the mounds and mounds of advice on how to deal with it only signals its difficulty, its resistance to acceptable answers. Epictetus told us that we have to focus on controlling our minds, since we can’t control events around us. Herclitus told us that nothing endures but change, so we must move from resisting it to accepting it. Marcus Aurelius told himself that change is the joy of nature, and so it should be a joy to him as well.
True, all true—but they don’t really answer, do they? If they did, we wouldn’t still be asking each other how to deal with it all.
For this reason, when I’m plodding along, baking, in the grip of an unseasonal, unfair, manmade heatwave or creeping through a slow, sniffly cold snap run, I turn to a slightly more modern, slightly less high minded philosophical choice: the 1989 movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In the opening sequence, a teenage Indiana steals a crucifix that some graverobbers have dug up. He thinks it should go in a museum; they point out that they found it, so it’s theirs. The sheriff agrees with them. As the gang of robbers leaves with the crucifix in their possession, the leader of the group turns to Indiana and says
“You lost today, kid, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it,”
*******End Scene*******
We know that the seasons are going to wobbly wildly, hot and cold, rainy and dry, spring into summer (or winter directly into summer, sometimes), but just because it will and it is doesn’t mean you have to like it. It doesn’t mean you have to jump happily into your shorts and summer hats and love getting up earlier or going out later to miss the heat. It definitely doesn’t mean you have to enjoy sweating. You’ll adapt; you always have, and you always will. You’ll get used to it until the next change comes. But that doesn’t mean you have to like it.
The Stoics don’t have a monopoly on wisdom, after all. Go run.
Thanks for this. My running is going well at the moment. But it’s been pretty perfect weather, temp-wise. I know hot days are around the corner.