Windy season

Track season has arrived.  In southeastern Idaho, this means the winds start howling.  Wind can seriously effect your times when running, so when planning workouts and races, it helps to know what kind of weather you are facing.  Instead of investing in some fancy schmancy wind meter, I have devised some ways of determining how wind will affect my run for the day. 

#1: Most effective in the early morning, I call this the donut detector.  There is one grocery store in town, and depending on how many blocks away and in which direction I can smell the donuts, I can easily estimate in which direction and how strongly the wind is blowing.  

#2:  The fried chicken check. Similar to the donut detector, but it works in the afternoon.  

#3:  The pony tail windsock:  this is the most reliable and specific of my wind meters.  If you want resistance training, you want to run so that your ponytail blows straight behind you, so you are running directly into the wind.  If you are doing an out and back run, you want your ponytail to be blowing sideways, so that you never have a direct headwind, but you will have cross wind the whole time.  If your ponytail is blowing directly into your face, you have a killer tailwind, and you will run your fastest times. However, you may want to phone a friend to pick you up at the edge of town rather than turn around and run back. 

If I am feeling wimpy, I usually plan my hard days so I warm up into the wind, run repeats with the wind behind me, then recover into the wind again, so all my fast running is with the wind.  If I'm up for a challenge, I run on the track where it all balances out.  If I were really tough, I would do all my running into the wind, but that is just exhausting.  

Whichever way you run, you are now tougher for doing it, and therefore, more awesome. 

 Happy running.