Terribly strange resemblance
1/17 – Arvada
Started the week with a flat run, as I was still in the ‘burbs. Eyed the lone hill from my run the day before and thought, “There’s really no way anyone else should have a faster time than me on this thing”, so I made up a segment, and went for it. Surprise, surprise, I now own that segment. Somewhat embarrassingly, I beat up a commuter cyclist up the hill, and then once the hillclimb was over, I really needed to find a bathroom, as the Mongolian BBQ from the day before did not want to play nice with me, anymore. Ahh, running, who doesn’t love this most wonderful pastime?
1/19 – Green
Thankfully, back at it in the Boulder OSMP, with a run up/down Green. I probably had more planned for today, but got a somewhat late start.
1/20 – Bear/Sobo
Talk about late starts – this one started at almost 7:00pm. What was going to be a run at around 2:00pm, after working a bit, transformed to, “I don’t wanna run at all!” to, “Well, just on the roads near the house” to, “screw all that, we’ll run whenever, wherever!” – so, I battled the winds to get up to Leghigh as the last rays of daylight faded away and made my way to Shadow Canyon to summit Sobo and Bear. The wind up there was incredible, and I found myself unnaturally afraid that I was going to be killed by a tree blown down by the wind. Sounds silly, but the evidence of micro bursts doing just that were everywhere. Everytime I slipped and turned my ankle (I’m clumsy), I thought, “Well, this is it!” Tons of fun.
1/22 – Green/Bear/Sobo
Ran up Green, then back to Mesa, then up Bear via Fern. Fern was a slippery trail of Doom, so my initial plan of going down Fern, to continue S. on Mesa to Shadow Canyon and then up to Sobo (and then back down Fern) were quickly scratched, and I opted to just go up Fern once (instead of going up once, and down twice), and take my chances going down Shadow. Shadow was almost without ice at all, so it was a good call, even though I missed out on some elevation/mileage. Started out the day actually slow, and had a ton of pep to make the slog from the end of Shadow, back to Chautauqua, without any problems.
The scene in the park on Saturday is sort of a shit-show of a Lot of People doing Questionable Things. I can’t wait for summer. I’m one to talk with the whole, Questionable Things, but usually I only do it once and learn my lesson, but I’m very curious how one goes up an icy, treacherous trail without any sort of traction for their feet and think, “Well, I’m sure going down will be better/faster/easier/safer!” I’m falling on my ass with all the help I can get. The bummer thing about being silly this way is that the trails get cut left and right, which is contributing badly to the erosion of the trails. Bear after the saddle on Fern is about 4x as wide as it should be (and I remember it being, way back when), and it ain’t gonna get any better.
All and all, a fairly OK week, one road run, and 3 pretty good trail runs, a coupla times bouldering. Friday’s session left me pretty destroyed and tired, so we’ll see how two days away will make me, as I get up to Movement to work on my amazing toproping skillz.
For the next week, I’m holding out that I’ll get some sort of weather window to develop where the wind isn’t at hurricane speeds and/or the avalanche forecast isn’t, “just stay at home, dude”. Wed. looked to be that day, but waiting a little while longer seems to be the way to go. Need to tune up/replace almost everything on my bike because running is sort of getting boring and I’m not too fast. If the snow stops falling, I’ll try doing some more flatiron scrambles.
Week total on my feet: 41.4 miles, 12,845 feet of elevation
Week total on the bike: 0
