The crazy yet healthy things we do in wintertime

We are having a real cold spell in Europe this year. But that doesn’t mean we put our health on freeze mode. Sometimes we do seemingly crazy things (at least for others) to keep a healthy lifestyle. For us, it’s just natural.

Run in the cold

It is -8°C outside at 8:30 am this morning. The sky is overcast, promising more snow later in the day. This is on top of the 15 cm we had last night. I just came back from my morning jogging run in the fields behind our house. I know that this may sound crazy to some people. At a school party yesterday, some moms were talking about all those seemingly crazy people walking their dogs in this weather. When I told them about my evening run the day before, they looked at me and said “Now, that is crazy.” (Or is she just bragging?).

Run in darkness

Now, those who know me very well or those who read this blog regularly know that I am an avid runner and I do run even in the wintertime. But running in the dark sounds crazy indeed. Well, I usually don’t like running in the darkness but after working onsite at the client last Tuesday from 8 to 3.30, then spending another 1.5 hours in front of my own computer to take care of other projects, I decided I needed a well-deserved “me” time. So I jogged my way to pick my kids from the after-school care (which is just 5 minutes away on foot) but taking a long detour to get there after 30 minutes. And for those who live down south, it gets dark here at 4 pm in the winter time so that jogging at 5:30 pm is practically night jogging. I did remember to put a green reflector band around my arm though so the motorists could see me.

Run with the baby

Now, back to my jogging run this morning. Here is something even crazier. I saw a lady jogging – pushing a jogger-stroller in front of her. Boy, some people would think she is a lunatic. I think she’s great. I did run pushing a twin jogger in front of me when my kids were little but never in the snow. The funny thing is that I never saw her before and after years of jogging this stretch I know most of the joggers and the dog walkers in the area by sight. Or maybe I’ve seen her before but without the baby. Anyway, whoever you are, hats off to you, jogger mom.

Open the windows wide open

For 10 minutes every morning in the winter time, the windows of the 3 bedrooms of our house are wide open. The bathroom windows are open more often, usually after showers. For many people, this is a crazy practice, not to mention expensive, worse, non-ecofriendly and wasteful in terms of energy. You see, most houses in Switzerland have centralized floor heating so you just can’t turn it off during the airing session. But for health reasons, we do need to air our houses to get some fresh air in and get some toxic air out. Our windows are usually wide open the whole day in summer. Wintertime is another story. 10 minutes is, I believe, the middle ground, where we can air our domicile without wasting too much energy.