On Monday I was in Cancun, Mexico with sunshine and 87 degrees. When I woke up this morning (Wednesday) in Huntsville, Texas, it was also sunny. The difference is that it was about 35 degrees with a strong north wind.

I decided to wait for the weather to warm up before I ran. Yesterday I ran the treadmill because it was raining, so I was looking forward to today's run. The forecast said it would be 53 degrees this afternoon – good, but not great!

In fact, it peaked at about 44, just after I finished my run. Since I had run an easy treadmill run yesterday, I decided to go for a PACE today. If you have been following my blog for a while, you'll remember that this is Al Sears' invention – a short workout with intense bursts alternated with recovery walks.

You can read more about his program in the blog at http://halftrainingschedule.com/blog/weight-loss-and-exercise. I use it also to practice increasing my stride rate as part of my program to run faster. There are several articles on How to Run Faster in this blog.

My quandary on cold days is what to wear. I'm inclined to overdress and get too hot, but sometimes that awareness causes me to under dress and get too cold! Today I wore my Opedix tights layered under a pair of running pants with a T-shirt, a fleece and a light windproof jacket, topped off with a cap and a pair of socks on my hands. (For some reason I always lose my running gloves between seasons, so I end up wearing a pair of socks instead – they work like fingerless gloves! The gloves will show up in the spring, of course.)

I found out the best thing about the PACE run – it's an ideal cold weather run! It's strenuous, but mercifully short. This means that if you overdress you won't too hot, and if you under dress you don't have long enough to get really cold!

In fact, my legs and feet were comfortably warm and my top half was comfortably cool: perfect! With the workout being short (less than 20 minutes) my clothes were still dry at the end, rather than wet with sweat like they usually are.

My conclusion is that if you occasionally get really cold weather (40-45 is really cold for me!), choose those days to do the short PACE workouts. You'll work harder than normal because you'll want to generate the heat, but you won't get either too hot or too cold. Best of all, you'll still be dry at the end of the run, rather than wet and chilled.

By the way, the next newsletter in the members' area will answer some of your questions about nutritional supplements, following the article in the previous newsletter on that subject. If you are not already registered, you can sign up now to insure that you will receive it and all the other valuable newsletters I provide (at no charge) in this service. I promise I will never spam you -- I hat spam just as much as you do.

Disclosure: to ensure compliance with the FTC regulations, I need to disclose the fact that the Opedix tights were provided by the manufacturer in return for my reviewing them. I had no problem with this, especially since I found them to be excellent for running in! I also need to disclose that the nutritional supplements articles contain a link to my USANA associate site. Again, I really do take the products and would not recommend them if I did not believe in them. There, I think that meets all the legal requirements, except to mention that the advertisers on this page also may pay me an advertising commission! All these help to defray the costs of maintaining this website and allow me to continue providing you with good information based on my own experience and research.