Butts Are Here To Stay

No ifs, ands, or butts. No excuses, this week, despite the cold weather I got my butt out the door, froze it off each time, but I must have plenty of butt because it seems like I can always go out the door the next day and freeze more of it off. I guess I shouldn't be concerned since butts are so "in" these days.

Wrapped up the week with a big 33.6 miles. Three miles of that with the tire. I haven't had much trouble getting motivated because there were a lot of running club group runs to get me out the door, despite one of the coldest weeks I can ever remember in the 25 years or so I've been around Fort Collins. It got down to seventeen below zero the other day, and this morning at 9 am it was one degree above zero when I left the house to join the group from the Fort Collins Running Club at Dan's house for our Sunday run.

We took off toward the bike path and ran west along the Spring Creek Trail. I ran most of the way with David from the club, we seemed to be running the same pace, so that worked out well. I didn't feel like killing myself to try to stay up with the fast group, either. I wanted to get a good two hours in plus drag the tire after the run. I ended up with 11.4 miles for my run today, ending with about 20 minutes with the tire. My legs were already toast when I started, so by the time I got home I was worthless. The temperature was up to 14 degrees with the sun shining.

Saturday morning the club was meeting at Fort Collins Brewery for the beginning of the Running U session 2, in which I am a mentor. They were doing a 5 mile run on the Poudre Trail from the Brewery. I ran the 5K distance from my house to the brewery and got sweaty enough that by the time I met everyone at the Brewery I was soaking wet and froze my ass off waiting around, I got going, and some of the bike path was snowpacked and made it quite challenging for my wimpy trail-naïve legs.

I made it back and we did our thing at the Brewery, it was a fun social event, I got to talk to a lot of people I hadn't seen in a while since I missed almost all the club events in December due to being sick. It was time to leave and I didn't realize the temperature had dropped and it started snowing. Fortunately Deb and her family gave me a ride home so I wouldn't freeze trying to run home.

It sure has been nice not having an agenda, I can go out and run on Sunday for a couple of hours with other people, instead of squeezing a ton of miles in all the time.

The Buffaloes aren't too excited about the cold weather this year. They like going out but sometimes it's too cold even for them. Isabelle used to love to sit outside in the cold, even in a blizzard. This year she's not so into it.

Yesterday I did yoga for an hour, and it felt good, even though I can tell how tight I am and how uncomfortable it is to have experienced the partial return of my mountain bike tire around my waist. At the same time I've had low motivation to work out, I also continued to eat like I was still working out, so three months of that caught up with me, about ten pounds worth. I am aware of it and starting to nudge myself gently toward reducing my calorie intake, but I haven't been very strict or disciplined about it.

I'll get there, but...

Tomorrow it's back to work, I have a few extra things on the agenda this month so I'll be busy. I just need to keep getting my butt out the door.