On skating in the cold

Having made two posts on the fact that The World is frantically running out of oil what does Google do? They post an add for jobs in the oil patch, sigh. Anyway I dug up another piece of Tom's art, I am going to include it and then discuss inline skating in the cold.

Before I discuss cold weather skating I better explain the picture. A variable in computing can only take up so much space. For example in the C programming language an unsigned short integer can only take integer values between 0 and 65,535, if for example we had an unsigned short called x and it had a value of 65,500 and we added 36 we would have a variable overflow error, if we then output the value of x instead of getting 65,536 we would get 1.

Anyway enough on computing.

So this afternoon I went skating and ran into Mike Lin (to my knowledge no blog or web site). Curiously although there was less wind today than yesterday my top speed today was considerably slower (about 10km/h slower) than yesterday. As well, I stayed closer to my bottom speed then top speed for most of the skate, yesterday I stayed almost right in the middle, yet I only skated 5 km further today than yesterday, total distance today, 26km, yesterday, 21 km. Yesterday I did wear tights, today I wore sweat pants, who would have thought that sweat pants would make such a difference?

It has been bitterly cold lately. I wonder if that is a factor.

I know in Duluth during the North Shore Inline Marathon, the cold got to me. My lungs filled with phlegm and my back was in nine kinds of pain, still it was a wonderful feeling, getting a reasonable time, not the back pain.

On an unrelated aside, I just went to the NSIM website, for the link and noticed a TISC skin suit, Mike Lin is right, if you want to stand out in a photo make sure to wear your TISC colours.

Another aside, I had to Google North Shore Inline Marathon, its not like I type that URL every day, one of the first hits, after the official web site is a You-tube video that was put together by none other than Peter Doucet of Speed Skate World (see the Blog Roll on the right). When it comes to inline skating it seems either Peter, Morgan or Herb have to be involved, no matter if its just a casual photo or its a race to the finish. Okay from time to time double-A (see aaronarndt.ca by Aaron Richard Arndt) kicks in A2A or the time Jesse Pauly did the most amazing hawk I ever saw to get second place in the Mississauga Criterium... alright but it seems to me that someone from the Toronto club just has to be in every single photo or photo finish, or You-tube video of a North American inline event. So to keep a good tradition, this is a warmer weather photo with a bunch of people you wouldn't want to meet in the dark, or buy a used car from.
From left to right, Morgan Williams, Mike Lin, Myself (idiot with the whistle... actually on the trail not such a dumb thing to have), Herb Gail.

Anyway I was going to talk about how to dress for the cold weather and still enjoy a nice trail skate, but the fact is, I really have no idea. Every time I try a different permutation and the best I can come up with is really tight fitting clothing seems to trap heat better than loose stuff. Beyond that I don't know what to suggest. But it is really really cold and I wish it were April, I want warm dammit! I like warm weather.

Oh incidentally, for all you TISCers, Lowblaws has a sale on, Chocolate Milk is still $6 ($1.50 off regular price until the end of November). And register now for the NSIM is only $55... I will once my wife gets back from China, have to get permission first.