Woodland run at 6°C

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Sunday turned out to been a pretty good day. A few days ago I had decided to ask both my 2 running mates if they minded me running shirt free this winter so that I could get my cold fix, to cut a long story short I received the reply "Shut up you tart! we don't care what you wear, or don't wear! we love you just the way you are, why should we care what you wear? do what you want Rob".    

I now had a bit of a personal dilemma to deal with. Firstly I had to go through with it, I had told my 2 mates I wanted to do it therefore I have to do it. And secondly I needed to build up the courage to actually do it. 

If you have read my intro posts you will understand that I'm not the most confident person especially when it comes to taking my shirt off. I always worry what people might think of me which I know is silly, I know I need to get over that and deal with it, who cares what people think.

I formed a plan in my head, I had made the decision to run shirt free on Sunday so I spent 3 days psyching myself up for it, telling myself I COULD do it.  Sunday arrived and it was about 6°C, I wore a hoody with no t-shirt underneath so that all I needed to do was remove the hoody. Matt picked me up and off we drove to a local forest. 
We parked up and the moment had arrived, a little dithering and delaying and I suddenly plucked up the courage and the hoody came off. 
There I was shirt free in the car park, it was nippy but it felt good, I was nervous, a few dog walkers around and I avoided all eye contact, I needed to get moving.  After a short warm up walk we started our running and boy did it feel great, within minutes I had acclimatised to the temperatures and I was feeling very comfortable, the many dog walkers didn't seem to care and we ran 5km, I was so happy. 

About half way through the run Matt joined me in being shirtless too, he said he enjoyed it thoroughly. I often think I run better without a shirt on, I'm not sure if that's true but it sure feels the case. Being out in the fresh air like that felt so great and it was a fantastic first winter shirtless run. I know the drive back home had me buzzing with happiness all the way.

As I move forward I need to keep working on the courage, its only going to get more difficult as we move into winter, It's easy to say "yeah I can do that", actually doing it is another story. 

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