My Guilty Pleasure

We always have our long runs on Sundays. We start running at 8:30am and, depending on the run, I get home around 11am. The first thing I have to do, once I get back home from my run, is taking a shower. It is the only way my body can compensate from the extreme cold it has been exposed to. Even though it is cold, and therefore I dress for the weather, after running 5 kilometers our bodies are already sweating. This sweat wets our clothes and, with the cold weather, these wet clothes become very cold.

The wet clothes don’t affect me during the first half of the run. My body is still producing a lot of heat and the temperature exchange between body-environment is still working. But when the sweat has damped my clothes, and they have become cold and wet, I start feeling colder and colder. Eventually, the heat my body produces can’t warm me up at the same rate my clothes are cooling me down. This means that by the end of the run I am cold, very cold (we are talking about running during the winter months), so this is why taking a hot shower helps me regaining that lovely, warm body temperature.

And here it is where my guilty pleasure comes: I leave the bathroom and walk straight to my bed, get under the covers and fall asleep with a smile in my face (true story, my husband can testify to it). I take a long, reconstructive, guilt-free nap. After a couple hours I wake up recovered, happy and super hungry.

I have to confess, one of my favourite things about my Sunday runs is the nap that follows them!

My Animal Lover Note