Winter, I'm Just Not That Into You

What if you're a warm-weather person and don't feel the stoke of the snowy season?

Welcome back. While this newsletter focuses on life in Colorado, my thoughts this past week have been with California as I watch and read about the storms and flooding there.

Although my family roots stem from Colorado, and I was fortunate to spend every summer here as a kid, California shaped who I am. I grew up in Ojai (inland of Ventura and Santa Barbara), went to college in Santa Cruz, started adulthood as a newlywed in Sacramento, then settled into the East Bay Area (the stretch between Berkeley and Oakland) for grad school and raised our kids there until we made a home here in early 2016.

Since new year’s, California has received too much of a good thing in amounts virtually no one predicted. On the ridge above my old hometown—a mountain range I used in 2016 to train for the Western States 100 because it’s so hot, dry, and steep—an onslaught of 16 inches of rain poured down in just two days, all of it streaming into Ojai and Santa Barbara, triggering slides and transforming creeks into raging rivers that closed all roads and highways leading to Ojai. Up north, aerial footage of Santa Cruz and Sacramento showed those towns looking like brown lakes with floating rooftops.

I feel incredibly sorry for and concerned about those communities and people I know who are shoring up their homes. The flooded buildings, ravaged beaches, and toppled trees make me feel something akin to mourning for the Golden State I knew and love.

We’re universally struggling with weather, amped up by climate change, because it’s often unpredictable and always uncontrollable. It makes me and probably most people feel vulnerable.

It also makes me daydream about warm, mild, calm days, like the perfect-weather day in Santa Barbara I experienced with heightened appreciation in November, after messed-up travel plans left us stuck in Southern California for Thanksgiving. Just as I’ll never take a blue sky for granted after too many late-summer days choked with wildfire smoke, nor will I take a blissful just-right weather day for granted.

A perfect beach day—warm but not hot, a gentle breeze but not windy—last November in Santa Barbara.

Lately, I’ve been getting excited about two upcoming ultras that take place in Arizona: the February 19 Black Canyon 60K and March 11 Antelope Canyon 50 Mile. I find myself thinking not so much about a strategy for running the miles, but rather, eagerly anticipating the desert scenes and sensations—the pebbly sand footing, the tall saguaro cacti, the sun warming bare arms. Although I know strong rains could hit the desert then, I’m holding out hope it’ll be sunny and that I’ll get to bask in desert dryness.

All of which leads me to this week’s topic: winter, and how I struggle with feeling inadequate as a Coloradan in this winter wonderland that so many envy.

Let’s face it, I’m a winter wimp

Yesterday, Outside Magazine ran a rather useless article on “How to Learn to Love Winter,” as if being a winter person is something that can be taught and developed. It basically advises to wear more clothes, have child-like fun outdoors, and make your home cozier.

I have tried all those things, and I am still chronically chilled and still “meh” about winter sports and activities. I can, however, vouch for the last point. I am more of a homebody during these months, content to cook, read, and work indoors. I’ve found a newfound joy and motivation from exercising inside, thanks to a treadmill with the iFit app and its high-def videos. The setup enables me to simulate running in Utah’s Bryce Canyon or Australia’s Blue Mountains while dripping sweat and wearing shorts, which would be impossible if I stepped outdoors in the freezing snowscape.

Believe me, I want to feel the winter stoke and celebrate powder days like everyone else around here, including my husband and kids—I want to feel like I belong in the San Juan Mountains during these snowy months. I follow Instagram influencers such as Caroline Gleich, plus lots of locals who skin up and ski down the mountains and preach avy awareness, hoping their enthusiasm and know-how about snow will inspire me. I make myself try ice climbing and Nordic and downhill skiing. I pause to marvel at the beauty of clumps of fresh snow weighing down dark green pine branches and the always-changing sheet of ice curving off our roofline and dripping icicles.

I got back on Nordic skis last week, with mixed results. It felt fine, not great. Mostly I enjoyed the scenery.

Now, partway through my fifth winter since moving here year-round, I am ready to admit and try harder to accept the fact that I don’t handle winter well. I am not a cold-weather person. I am not a good or eager skier, and I haven’t gotten around to trying ski mountaineering (although everyone says I should) because getting all the gear, handling the cold, and learning how to rip off skins from the bottom of a ski or how to test an avy beacon isn’t my idea of fun.

I barely tolerate running during winter. The extra layers feel cumbersome, temperature regulation takes constant adjustment of those layers, and the traction devices (usually Katoolah Exospikes) create a drag on each stride.

A “run” last week on this challenging singletrack turned into mostly hiking and slogging, though I ran some good miles on plowed roads.

The other day, I had my best run of the new year because I drove to lower-elevation Ridgway to run on a snow-free path. With the temp a relatively balmy 38, I could ditch the parka and feel warm enough with only long sleeves and tights. Feeling liberated from extra layers and traction devices while traversing dry footing, I positively zoomed and celebrated the escape from snow.

Maybe I’ll get through winter better if I stop trying to force enthusiasm for it. Maybe I need to stop trying to be like my peers and stop comparing myself to others. Maybe it’s OK to be more of a hibernating homebody and less of a mountain athlete for part of the year.

Are you a warm-weather person in a cold-weather climate, feeling a bit of imposter syndrome as your closeted Californian (or Texan or East Coast) self endeavors to be a full-fledged Coloradan? I know, this is a nice problem to have, and I’m not expecting any sympathy. I’m just putting this feeling out there as a step toward self-awareness and self-acceptance. When it comes to shoveling snow, driving on ice, and skiing fresh powder, I am still a square peg in a round hole.

I feel like my horses

This winter angst also has to do with missing our horses and relating to them.

If you know me or have been following this newsletter, you know I value a horse routine as much as a running routine. Each morning, I walk to the barn just as dawn starts to silhouette the mountain ridges, and I slide open the tall wooden door to greet two equine noses that gently whicker and probe my hands and pockets. I hand them a carrot, which they munch greedily, and they pace impatiently until I toss them thick flakes of hay and stroke their sides. Later in the day, I roll the wheelbarrow into the paddock to fill it with manure, then put halters on their heads to lead them out for brushing and hoof-picking. I either turn them loose to graze or tack them up to ride so they get their exercise. At day’s end, I bring them back from pasture and feed and check on them before saying goodnight.

Bringing Cobalt and Maverick in from pasture one day early last summer. I feel safe and comfortable enough to ride them bareback with only halters.

The relationship with the horses and routine of their care fulfills me more than I can articulate and is almost as much a part of my identity as being a parent and runner. Everything I do for the horses, I receive back in the form of purpose, structure, calmness, clarity of mind, and most of all the joy and satisfaction of communicating with a large animal, working together to improve their (and by extension, my) behavior and movement.

But it’s winter, so that routine has fallen apart. In winter, Cobalt and Maverick go to a barn in Norwood, 45 minutes away, where they move around freely in a pasture with a run-in shelter and a large indoor arena where we can ride. We can’t keep them here at home because there’s no place to exercise them, given the snow-filled arena and paddock, snow-covered trails, and icy roads. I visit and exercise them only once or twice a week due to the time-consuming commute.

They grow thick coats and sleepily hang out in their pasture, turning their hind ends to the wind. They carry a thicker layer of fat (which is good, as a layer against the cold), and they basically hibernate most hours of the day until perking up at feeding time or when I visit.

Cobalt in his scruffy, thick winter mode.

I feel like Cobalt and Maverick, biding my time until temperatures warm, the high country melts, and I can shed layers to enjoy the outdoors.

Of course, I would not feel this way without the changing seasons. As much as I yearn for mild summer weather during violent wind or blowing snow, I recall my brother, who lived and taught on the Big Island of Hawaii for several years, describing the downside to island life: it’s always in the 70s and always feels like August. I would not trade that for the variability and extremes of mountain life.

Shoveling snow today and mucking through mud in May make the transient beauty of summer’s wildflowers and fall’s golden hues more poignant. During summer, I’m willing to pay the price of afternoon monsoonal downpours for green hillsides, sun-drenched mornings, and healthy streams and aquifers.

The horses in their sleek, fit summer shape, mowing the grass.

If only we could regulate the amounts and severity, as if we had a knob to turn down the weather volume. Of course we can’t. From California to Colorado to the South and East Coast, there’s no escaping severe weather, only adaptation and resourcefulness to cope with it.

I wrote this to face and accept wintertime discomfort and wimpiness, and to put it in perspective. Bundling up and scraping snow off the car certainly seems easier now than being on the coastline and bracing for the next surge of the atmospheric river.

Meanwhile, my husband is getting all his clothes and gear ready to get up to the mountain for some runs in fresh powder, snow falling in gray low light. It’s a lot of work. When he tries driving out the driveway through a half-foot of fresh snow, his truck tires spin, and he has to back up, fire up the skid steer, and plow the driveway. I admire but don’t share his determination to get out there.

Instead of feeling like I’m missing out, I’ll choose to stay home and be cozy. I’ll run on the treadmill and wait for a bluebird day to ski groomed runs, because that’s the kind of fair-weather skier I’ve always been and probably always will be.

Accept where you are

In his newsletter this week, Mario Fraioli gave a training tip that resonated with the theme and quest for self-acceptance, so I’m sharing it here. I recommend his Morning Shakeout newsletter for weekly doses of training wisdom and inspiration. Mario wrote:

As we dive into the new year and start working toward our training and racing goals for 2023, it’s important to remember that developing fitness is a patient process that is not to be rushed. Step 1: Accept where you are right now. Step 2: Start there. Step 3: Don't get ahead of yourself. Step 4: Go back to Step 1. All too often as athletes and coaches we have a tendency or inclination to train where we want to be, or think we should be, and not necessarily where we are at the time. We end up skipping the most important step. Always be honest with yourself about where you’re at, proceed with patience and persistence, and in due time you’ll get where you want to go. 

This is so true! I could have used this advice last week on my long run. I started out thinking a 21-mile route should be “no problem” because my 60K (37 mile) race is in six weeks, so 20+ miles should feel manageable at this point if I want to run the 37 well next month.

In fact, it was humbling because my long runs until recently have only been in the teens, so I started to feel frustrated. Letting go of expectations and frustrations, endeavoring to be in the mile I was in and accept my condition with self-compassion, and letting myself take more hiking breaks, helped me settle into the run more patiently and go the distance.

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What are your thoughts on winter vs. summer? Do you identify with and get excited about one more than the other? You can share your perspective in the comments below or on the chat thread.

Related posts:

• Running Against the Wind

• Going Home for My Last Marathon