Call me crazy, or maybe just call me a Sagittarius, but my favourite running season has always been autumn. I don’t abide much for the astrology aspect, but I think being a November child born and raised on the Canadian prairies with our bitter cold winters has also left me at my age with an affinity for cooler weather.
Autumn is a special sliver of time here.
By late November we are lucky if the temperatures are still above freezing and even luckier if there isn’t the first few falls of snow mucking up the paths.
As I write this in mid-September, the summer heat has seemingly dissipated. There are scattered warm days that creep into the forecast, but mostly its become jacket weather, cool and occasionally drizzly, as the daylight hours shorten up and the evenings become hauntingly eerie and wild colourful sunsets a regular evening event.
The trees oblige. We have this local network of amazing trails through our river valley, a park system that is often cited as world class municipal park (though it is pretty much just a lot of interconnected wilderness with a ribbon of asphalt running through it.) The forests of the river valley spend a splendid few days turning from green to oranges and yellow and reds. They drop those leaves shortly thereafter, but for a few days running those autumn trails is like being transported to some kind of kaleidoscope of otherworldly magic.
The cooler weather means more comfortable runs. I know some people love running in hotter weather, but give me single digit Celsius any day. They say you feel ten to fifteen degrees warmer than the ambient air when you’re deep into your run, so a ten degree jog is almost spot on room temperature math for me personally. And I can run all day in that vibe.
It’s autumn as I post this. And again, call me crazy, but my season just began and I’m lacing up.
Definitions
- Canadian
- I write this blog from a small city in the middle of the Canadian prairies. It means I use terms like kilometres and celsius and you're just gonna need to deal with that. I run four seasons long, from blisteringly hot summers through icy cold winters. I've encountered moose, beavers, and snakes on our trails. And we're proud of it all.
- september
- The days are noticeably shorter when we realize that September is upon us. The post-summer routine kicks in and people are back to regular work schedules and kids are back in school. It can still be warm, but the hottest days are behind us and most of the biggest races of the year are in the rear view. We savour September knowing winter is too soon to come.
