Does a winter half marathon sound appealing to you?  If the weather is perfect it sounds like a great idea to me.  But… if it is icy or if there are gale force winter winds I am not convinced a 2 hour run would be fun.  Throw in the fact that the course is that same rolling golf course that I ran in the fall and I am left wondering if I should register.  But there is a little part of me that thinks if I really want to consider myself a true winter runner ( or perhaps a true Canadian runner?) I should have one winter half marathon medal.  Particularly if it looks like this:

Now throw in a full brunch for the price of registration, and access to lockers, showers, indoor bathrooms and no lining up in an corral for ages before the race.  Those are a lot of perks that could outweigh the weather.

Average temperatures on February 7th here in Ottawa is a reasonable -8 C (about 17F) but lows of about -30 C (-22F) have occurred on that date.  The course is also very open, any kind of wind would definitely be felt.  Here is a picture from the website of what it looked like one year at the race:

Note what looks to be ice on the path.  But did I mention the brunch???  You also get these in your kit, neither of which I really need but it is always fun to get stuff:

If I ever manage to start my Prague Half Marathon training schedule (I should be in my third week but have done virtually no running due to being sick) I would only be scheduled to run a 16k on the Sunday of the Hypothermic.  This would be a much longer, tougher run than I would really need to do.  But I could treat it as a training run, keeping it slow, which let’s face it, if the footing is awful I won’t have a choice!

One way or the other I will have to make up my mind…believe it or not I think this race actually sells out.  Yes, there are that many crazy winter runners out there!