My family hates winter. Son hardly ever goes outside from December to March, except for the obligatory journey from home to the bus stop on weekdays. His brother is in winter dress denial, with his basketball shoes worn for any occasion, snow or not, regardless of sudden drops in temperature. The toque seems to them an exotic object. Gloves, don’t even think about it.
Posted at 1:00 p.m.
Their mother hibernates, neither more nor less. She claims that her body is not adapted to the climate, which her white knuckles tend to show, with a lack of blood circulation as soon as she leaves the warmth of the home. Her father and grandmother were born in Africa, which explains that, according to her.
I would like to claim that I was better prepared than my sons to face the rigors of winter at their age, but that would be a lie. I shivered more often than not, too, while waiting for the bus as a teenager, not wanting to sacrifice my look.
One popsicle walking around in my white Stan Smith shoes, my plain jeans and my felt hockey coat with faux leather sleeves. Islands of ice forming in my long hair, still damp after the shower. I don’t think I wore a tuque all through high school and all through CEGEP. Boots ? Do I look like Agaguk?
Although I was born in Gaspé, I am desperately urban.
A city dweller down to his fingertips (who don’t suffer from Raynaud’s disease, in my case). I’m bored in a cabin after two days. I’ve only been downhill skiing once since I was a kid, almost 30 years ago.
“There is no bad weather, only bad clothes,” said my former office neighbor Audrey Ruel-Manseau in the report by my colleague Ève Dumas. You will never see me surfing like Audrey or diving like Ève in the icy waters of the St. Lawrence.
The “polar baths”, very little for me. This week, I heard a report on Radio-Canada radio on Torontonians who bathe in Lake Ontario in the middle of February in order to derive physical and psychological benefits. I worried about their mental health. I prefer to find other ways to recharge, invigorate and invigorate myself. I can’t even tolerate a lukewarm shower.
The perception of cold, it seems, varies greatly from person to person and is linked to a genetic variation that dates back 80,000 years, the BBC reported last March. A protein, alpha actinin 3, absent in 1.5 billion people, would make them more resistant to cold (and more efficient in endurance sports).
I don’t know if I have alpha actinin 3. I’m neither very resistant to cold nor very good at endurance sports. The fact remains that in my family, I am the exception that proves the rule. I learned to love winter. Or rather to reconcile myself with winter.
There is nothing that allows me to reconnect more with the winter pleasures of childhood than finding myself on an outdoor ice rink, my cheeks rosy from the cold, a puck on my palette, zigzagging towards the opposing goal, taking me for Wayne Gretzky or Mike Bossy.
On a beautiful winter day like today, cold but sunny (according to the weekend weather forecast), I happily anticipate the prospect of getting some fresh air and endorphins. First by adopting Audrey’s maxim – there is no bad weather, only bad clothes –, then by finding an activity that makes me appreciate the snow and the cold.
For the past fifteen years, I have been running in the winter. You won’t see me sweating it out on a gym treadmill. And not only because they are more often closed than open for two years. I run outside, year round, rain or shine.
It’s not a second best. It is a free and informed choice. I’d rather run in slush in January than in rain in November. Between a wet July run at 30 ohC and a February run at – 25 ohC (when it’s dry), I quickly chose.
Among my most precious running memories, there are outings in Mount Royal Park, ending alone on weekday mornings, the day after a storm. The steady creaking of footsteps, the heavy snow on the branches, the magical landscape.
I often suffered from the heat wave while running (I finished my first marathon at 29 ohVS). I have never been too cold. I remember a race in polar weather in the P’tit Train du Nord linear park. It must have been -30 with the wind factor. The Executioner of Nouveau-Bordeaux, alias my brother-in-law, had to twist both my arms for me to accompany him. My neck warmer had frozen in less than two, simply in contact with my breath!
The body adapts when it moves in the winter. It regulates itself. The heat it releases is immediately reinvested. I am my own source of thermal energy, my dynamo. Provided, of course, that you are well dressed with appropriate clothing (insulated cleats, cross-country ski pants, base layers and windbreakers).
“What’s wrong with your chin? Sonny asked me last weekend as I was returning from a race. Ice cubes had lodged in my beard. I never said winter sports were chic. There will always be time, later in the evening, before or after the Super Bowl, to review the exploits of the Olympians in Beijing. This morning, I’m going for a run. We may meet in the mountains.