Wine Lovers 5K- The Time I Almost Got Frostbite (Not Really)

I have run cold races before. If you tuned in last week, you'll remember that every Arctic 5K I've done so far has been below freezing. The discomfort of those 4 races combined had nothing on this weekend.

This weekend turned out a lot different than expected. This was supposed to be the weekend that I ran Holiday Lake 50K. I made the decision about 2 weeks ago to drop out. The decision was personal, and I actually don't regret it at all. After all, I only wound up freezing this weekend for 3.2 miles instead of 32 ;)

So with my weekend having been freed up, I found myself wondering, "What shall I do now?" Then a friend mentioned this race and I thought, "Why not?" and signed up last weekend.

Fast forward to around Thursday when we had a pretty accurate forecast and I began pre-complaining about how cold it was going to be. (I'm sorry to any of my coworkers who may be reading this.) I decided to just go buy some Hot Hands at Walgreens on Friday night and suck it up.

Saturday morning my friend Susan, who was running it with me, picked me up and we rode the hour to Cardinal Point Vineyard. When we got there, I checked my weather app, which informed me that it was 18°, but the windchill had it feeling like 5°. It was safe to say that it was the coldest I had ever raced in.

Us before the race, wearing tons of layers (I have on 3 tops)

I'll skip over the boring pre-race stuff and skip to lining up at the start. One thing I thought was a little weird about the whole event was the lack of timing chip. I can't even think of the last race I ran that was timed but didn't have chip timing. There also wasn't a formal start line when we were asked to line up, just a cone on either side of the road. It felt a little sketchy to me, but I tried not to let it bother me too much.

The race official had us get out of the cold and line up about 8 minutes before the start and I was convinced that I was going to freeze to death. The wind was tearing through my 3 layers, I couldn't feel my toes, and I'm pretty sure that was the coldest I had ever been in my life. When we were finally able to go, I couldn't feel my feet at all. It was really weird, but I figured the faster I ran the faster my blood would start pumping and the faster I could feel my toes again. So I did.

The course was boring and I liked it that way. It was a pretty straight shot, out 1.6 miles and then back the same route. There were "hills" but they were nothing like anything in Lynchburg and none of them bothered me until the biggest right before the turnaround. At that point we were running into the wind which was cutting through all my layers (even my windbreaker) and I felt like I was going nowhere. Once I turned around, it was smooth sailing to the finish.

I clocked in at 26:15, which gave me a new PR! However, I think the best part of finishing was actually being warm for the first time all morning. And I could feel my toes again!

The finisher award for this race was a custom wine glass, which I couldn't wait to snag to add to my shelf of memorabilia:

The back says "Running never tasted so good"

Overall, it was a nice race. Not something I'm dying to do again, but definitely one I would do again if given the opportunity.If nothing else, the freezing start was totally worth the new PR. Corkscrew Racing did have good organization, even if I found their timing system a little outdated. 

I would definitely give their other events a shot, though!