Runner's World magazine says runners should always dress as though it's 10 to 15 degrees warmer than it is.

Good advice.

My internal temperature rises dramatically somewhere between a half-mile and a mile. You'll see me losing the headband and gloves in 20 degree weather --stuffing them down my running tights -- which is probably a funny look -- because I'm too dang hot.

I began racing again in 2004, a decade and a half after the end of my high school track and cross country days. My debut race was the Race for the Place on the Michigan State University campus. It was mid-April. April 18 to be exact. It wasn't supposed to be the first 85 degree day of the year. I, being out of it for so long, did a couple of really stupid things. First, I wore all black. Yeah, it was a tank top and shorts, but it was all black. And black retains heat.

Second, I went out too fast. Adrenaline, you know.

By mile two, I was dying. Of heat. Of fatigue. Of just sheer misery. I slowed down. A lot. My first mile clocked at 8 minutes 25 seconds. My average pace, I found out after the race, ended up being 9 minutes 39 seconds a mile.

Today, my average pace in a 5k is under 8 minutes per mile -- in fact, I averaged 7 minutes 44 seconds a mile at last weekend's Race For The Cure and that's nowhere near my personal record (hey, having a baby slows you down for a little while!)

Back to that hellish race. At two and a half miles, I was not only dying, I was on fire. I take that back. I was a nuclear reactor. I was so hot, I moved into an instinctive self-preservation mode. I tore my black tank top off, a la Brandi Chastain and stuffed it down my shorts. (What, was I going to carry it? I think not. And yes, I was wearing a sports bra.) Ah better. But not great. I was still hot, still tired,still slowing down, desperately dizzy and thinking about throwing up.

I rounded onto the bridge, coming into the last stretch of concrete, when a runner who'd long since finished, caught his breath and planted himself on the sidelines to cheer other runners on. He screamed, "C'mon. You can do it! It doesn't feel that bad!!!!" I summoned up enough energy to give him a really really dirty look. And muttered something that would have gotten me suspended if it had been on air.

Feeling better, I jogged into the finisher's chute. My time? A non-world record setting 29 minutes and 55 seconds.

The weird thing is I found the experience --although painful -- completely addictive. I don't know if it was the sense of mastery over myself or the simple act of moving forward or the sense that no matter how fast I ever ran I could do better -- I was hooked. I don't know if my little running hobby explains what makes me tick or not, but I do know one thing: I find my Zen in a pair of running shoes and a stretch of pavement. And on the days that working and mothering and everything else I do gets to be overwhelming, that piece of Zen is what keeps me upright.