It is caused by the blood vessels constricting and limiting blood flow to the extremities. The crazy thing about it, was that this picture was taken inside my house, after I got home from my 16 mile run this past Saturday. The temps were in the 20s. My hands were nice and toasty warm while I was running, as blood was pumping hard. However, once my heart rate slowed down and my core became chilled after stopping, the vessels started to constrict. It doesn't take super cold temps to do this either. For instance, in the summer, after a cold lake swim, my hands will turn this ghastly pale color after I am out of the water, especially if I am holding a cold water bottle, if my body is starting to get cold. It has also happened inside an air conditioned building before in the summer, when typing at a cold computer. It doesn't hurt, but it does cause me some dexterity issues. It used to affect my feet too in gymnastics, but they are not affected as bad anymore. I have had this since I was a teenager, perhaps even earlier.
For more information, please check out the Arthritis Foundation's web page, and perhaps you can include a Jingle Bells Run for Arthritis on your 2011 race schedule. I didn't realize it was considered arthritis until this past year, although I did know the name of it.
As far as running goes for this week, I had 3 days of cross training- SKIING! We put both kids on skis this year, Keira (4) was in lessons, and Soren (2) was in the harness. Skiing the kids down the hill was actually much more strenuous on the legs than any of the other runs, I felt, since I had to snowplow most of the way down to control my/their speed. We spent a lot of time on the bunny hill with the kids, but did get to do the harder runs. Skiing in Michigan isn't anything like our ski trips pre-children out to Utah, but they are still very fun. I sometimes feel bad that I don't have Keira in dance or gymnastics, but watching her ski down the beginner hill all by herself made me so proud, and realize that I am not depriving her at all, but just providing her with different experiences than many of her peers. What other 4 year old has been in 2 mountain bike races and skied 3 seasons?
I did hit the treadmill did 6 miles at slow marathon pace of 8:20 (as opposed to goal marathon pace 8:00), swam 1.2 in 48:07, blech- SLOW, and plan to run 17 tomorrow at a more reasonable pace than last Saturday's 16 miler done pretty close slow race pace at 8:34. What was I thinking? Oh yeah, it was FREEZING and I just wanted to get it done, plus I was pleased that I had found a snow free path at Kensington, and so it felt way easier than running on snow or a treadmill.
1 comment:
Creepy. I remember learning about Reynaud's in massage school, but I've never known anyone who has it until now.
Post a Comment