Gray Saturday

Occasionally in February, we start to get "glimpses" of Spring time weather in the Rockies, and sometimes a downright warm day here and there.  Not this year.  Local weather morons people are saying we are on par for one of the coldest winters on record, partially because the darn thing started so early!  Add to that watching a family member struggle to live, and it has been a mental beatdown this winter. Then, just when you think that the dark night of the soul might be lifting, you wake up to another 6 inches of snow and sub-zero temps....

 

Happy Friday - 6" of Prime Colorado Champagne Powder! (2 feels like -14.)

  

Kathleen would forego a run on Friday morning and take the sweet Miss Sage for a nice walk in the snow - what a photogenic girl!

  

Got out early this morning for a run as Kathleen had to head to the office for a bit.  It was gray and cool, but we are so used to those conditions it seemed normal.  Strong Sunny afternoon Friday relieved us of some of our snow, which was nice.  There are two ways to climb the trail along Flying W - north to south and you get .5 mile at ~10% grade, or south to north and you get 1.5 miles at ~5% grade.  So we started north/south and ran into a group of gals out for their breakfast at the top of the hill!!  We passed within 10 feet of a couple of the fawns and they did not even flinch - fairly used to runners.

 

We hit the bottom of the south side at 30th street and turned around to head back over south/north.  Nice little hill work on a Saturday morning.  Kathleen cruises along Flying W trail with a cold Pikes Peak in the background.  With the earlier light, we were able to squeeze in a bit over 9 miles before the sweet half of HappyTrails had to head off to work for a bit.  

Shoes - K Asics 2150 Trail

S Brooks Cascadia

After a bit of recovery (aka, sitting on my duff catching up on blog reading/olympic results/etc.), I headed out for run #2 as I got NO mid-week run in this week.   Going for the boredom route award for the day, I ran the Flying W Loop and was rewarded with a third climb of the day to the top of FW road.  It warmed up to near 40, so mud was abundant on the second time around the trail.  In fact, I must admit that I ran about one third of the loop on the road in protest of running on packed snow and mud.  Tired of it, but it is Mud Season - woohoo!  Brought the iPod along to keep somewhat motivated to run alone - some fresh tunes from Thousand Foot Krutch, Red, and Seventh Day Slumber really helped toward the end of the run.  Don't use a pod much but today it was worth having it along.  Also enjoying the fact that REI started to carry the Chocolate Mint GU gels - ummm.  It's like eating Andes Mints or Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookies on the run - tasty!  Logged another 6 miles and called it a day.

Shoes -  Brooks Ravenna

 

In other "exciting" news - we both are signed up to do the Greenland 25K trail race on May 1.  It was getting close to capacity, so we had to go ahead and get our names in.  I want a chance to redeem my second half cramp/meltdown last year and Kathleen will be running it for the first time as she was sick last year.  Should be good fun!  Looking like snow again tomorrow - we're rooting for March to come in "like a Lion" and then, winter can take it's sorry behind elsewhere...