Spring in January, Told Ya So...

Sunny and 57 degrees, right now, going on 4 pm. It is spring, and the Great Antarctic Ice Sheet is retreating from our neighborhood streets. I no longer have to drive put of the neighborhood to start running, to avoid risking my life.

This afternoon I am kicking back after a nice long run. Long in time, not in distance. It was warm, almost 50 degrees when I woke up this morning, and windy. I needed to get at least two and a half hours in, preferably more. I decided to do a run on the Spring Creek and Poudre Trail bike paths, then followed it up with a half hour with the tire east of town.

I wore shorts! My legs are about as white as they ever get, they never get quite pale enough to blind anyone, but they haven't seen the sun in months. I got more than 15 miles including the tire pulling, in 3 hours. Slow overall pace but fighting the wind for half my run and then the tire, with the hill, so that was pretty good. Longest run since October for me.

Now I'm in the woman cave drinking a Stranger Pale Ale from Left Hand Brewing, in Longmont. They make good beer there, even if they're not in Fort Collins. The other day I made a huge pot of green chile and some refried beans, we've been living on that with tortillas all weekend.

The sun came back on Wednesday morning, Cat called me and we met up at Horsetooth for a late morning run. It was the best thing I could have done. Just seeing the sky and the scenery, instead of cold, gray ice in town, was enough to pick my mood up out of the winter depression that was setting in. I have been in a major hole this winter.

Interesting thing I found out this past week. Last year's U.S. performances in the 24 hour were posted for men and women. I managed to miss the top 25 list by just a hair. The 25th place performance was 112.9 miles. I am not sure if there's anyone else between me and her, but I ran 112.29 at Cornbelt. Damn. Not that it matters, but I guess I could feel pretty good about it given that there were not that many other women 50 or older on the list. There were a few, but most were much younger. Not bad for an old fart. I think I can still do better, but I'm not sure when or where I might do my next 24 hour. My buddy Hung Ng ended up just out of the top 25 too. We met when we suffered together at North Coast in 2013.

Here in Colorado we are spoiled, we are used to having sunshine most days, and when the sun doesn't shine for more than two days in a row, we get GRUMPY.

The girls got grumpy, too. It was cold and so icy that I didn't want to walk them, because I was afraid they would hurt themselves. Old dogs don't need soft tissue injuries. So they went without walks for a couple of days and by Wednesday Iris was bouncing off the walls, and Isabelle was ready to go first thing in the morning.

The Great Antarctic Ice Sheet has been worse this year than most, we got all that snow, it started to melt, and then we got the deep freeze. The water was higher than the sidewalks and spilling over the curbs. When it froze, the sidewalks were skating rinks. The usual ice dam at the end of our street is deep enough that if a car without much clearance tries to go over it, it scrapes the bottom and makes an awful noise. The city hasn't figured it out that every year they end up having to bring the big equipment in to chip the ice away from that same spot.

We've had some nice sunrises with all the clouds, but it's hard to not see the mountains for days on end. Grumpy. Finally today from the bike paths and the east side of town, I got some good views.

The geese were hanging out along the Poudre River, which is almost free of ice.

After the first 2 and a half hours I was starving. I stopped by the hosue and grabbed a snack, then quickly got into the car and drove over to Strauss Cabin, where I did a quick little jog to re-warm up, then I got the tire and did 35 minutes with it.

West of the cabin, off the paved roads of Horsetooth and Ziegler, there is a nice little hill where the road isn't paved, perfect for the tire.

Nice day for a tire. I hope the sunshine lasts a while...it is spring.