Beauty is in the Eye of the Glove Holder

 The ugly days ARE the beautiful days.

Susie

Slightly bored this Saturday morning of mini-taper, I made a monster smoothie, sold some crapola on Craigslist, and made a special drive to get a pair of running glove for tomorrow's 16 mile trail race, The Stone Steps 50k/27k. Traditionally, I've never made a big deal out of gloves, certainly never buying any. Gloves are, after all, like umbrellas and pens, karmically arriving when and where you need them via the great cosmic river.

Unfortunately, they also disappear just as quickly, so now, I'm left with just a bunch of left-handed garden gloves. All of a sudden, we've gone from summer to winter in Cincinnati, which means my only shot at staying sane through the cold dark days is by playing dress up like Michael Jackson and/or by trail running. And the only way to do that is to really embrace the ugly days (which are many). And the only way to do that is with proper running gear. And the only way to do that is by cashing in my gift certificate-- YAY-- free gloves! 

Thanks for the gift certificate, Teresa.

By some quick napkin math, I figured my glove trip wasted about 1/5 of a gallon of gas, which is ~20,000 BTU of fossil fuel, which is equivalent to about 5000 food calories (kcal), or about 1.5 days' worth of food. Had I run the four mile round trip to the running store, I would have burned not even 300 calories (~3 bananas' worth). So, I was feeling a little guilty about pushing a 2000 pound car filled with junk up a hill to a place I could have easily run or ridden. Then I felt guilty about making the common mistake of discussing energy in terms of over-simplified equivalences-- as if double A batteries can be compared to raspberries can be compared to gasoline can be compared to Fukushima nuclear power.

To assuage my guilt, I decided I needed to know how much energy I'd be saving over the life of the gloves, which the store clerk assured me would be at least three years, if I could stay clear of the karmic river serpent's thievery.

I figured that by wearing gloves, I will retain the metabolic and mechanical "waste" heat that would otherwise be lost from my hands to the surrounding air, having to be fueled by eating unnecessary extra calories. (But I always reserve the right to eat extra calories).

I estimate my whole body is about 2 square meters of surface area from which I could lose heat. Since I eat about 4000 kcal per day, that's about 16,000 kJoules of energy given off per day as "waste heat".
Since one day is ~80,000 sec,
Energy lost to surroundings = 16,000 kJoules/80,000 Sec = 200 J/s = 200 Watts

I also estimate that each hand is about 100 square centimeters of surface area. So hands are about 1% of my total body's surface area.

Thus, energy lost through my hands = 200 Watts/body x 1% of body = 20 Watts ...or ~10 Watts per hand!! That's kinda cool to think about-- each hand being heated by a 10 watt light bulb like you might find in my dining room's chandelier. 

So, how much energy am I saving by wearing 200 square centimeters of fabric with about R-2 quality insulation (an attic has about R-30)? Can we say 10 watts per hand? So, if I'm running 10 hours per week through the winter, that's
20 Watts x 10 hrs/wk = 0.2 kilowatt-hours per week = ~700 BTUs per week.

Since I used ~20,000 BTU during my car trip to get the gloves, to save the energy it cost me to get the gloves, it would take
20,000 BTU/700 BTU/wk = ~28 weeks.

As long the new gloves hold up for at least 28 weeks, I may not go to hell for destroying the planet. But the more I ponder the question, and the errors of my ways, the more distracted by the thought of calories, I get.  
Mmmmmm, calories.

The bottom line is that with a few algebraic manipulations, some plugging and chugging, I now have some sweet gloves that will go well with my zebra pants for the race tomorrow. The result will be a comfortable, enjoyable run. So here's to keeping the nerves in the hands from popsiclizing and keeping the nerves in my brain in cosmic happyland.

New gloves make me feel like this while running with my friends through the woods.

In the whole history of the world no one in zebra pants has ever had a bad day, unless they also forgot their gloves.

Race report to follow...maybe. Stay tuned.