This is my blog version of the propaganda and middle-of-the-magazine inserts in the December editions of running magazines. You know, where you are supposed to buy expensive things made from research in secret labs with Willy Wonka fabric to make you warm and good looking while you sweat -- to make you dream of easing into sub 6 per mile pace and waving to the cameras while dropping down cold hard cash. Here's what I strongly advise you buy for winter running. Your run times will improve. You'll look AWESOME, plus I get all sorts of perks if you mention me to the manufacturers which is why I'm posting this. Lets start from the bottom to the top. 1. Cossack running hat. Won in a raffle at a race in Vermont. You can fold the edges into stiff, straight rectangles to look like a Russian peasant. You can then pretend as you run that you are him and spout Dostoevsky quotes without reading Dostoevsky past the quote from the website the night before the Leslie Stahl interview and look all trans-Siberian-ish at the same time. 2. Ranger Joes polypropylene undershamour shirt complete with 2 molten solder holes. Ranger Joes label is faded. Ranger Joes is a store outside the gates of Fort Benning that sells marked up 'Army things' to scared 2nd Lieutenants thinking that the glow-in-the-dark protractor will get them brownie points with the Ranger Instructor. The shirt still smells like it was rolled into a ball and stuffed in my A bag for 5 years --which it was and has been extracted because of Sears Woebucks. The holes facilitate ventilation and serve as vivid reminders that propane torches should not be stuffed outside of visible reach and that guesstimate and soldering are not synonymous. Also they act to remind one of the thermonuclear capability of melted solder. 3. Dollar store gloves. $1. Not warm enough? Pay one more dollar and layer them! They have a special snot gasket which gets larger the more you wear them. The gasket is one of those accidental designs that the Chinese engineer didn't plan for. If you mention my website to the dollar store, I get 1000 free crates of trade-deficit, plastic Chinese shit. 4. Amphipod. A nice thing you can find at an expo marked up 400%. It's a great ID/Credit card holder for those runners that now lock up even their Hannaford grocery supersaver cards because of poverty-stricken Blue Velvets in search of flatscreens and kickass stereos in historical parks. There you have it fellow runners! Stay warm this winter. Spend money and look the part.