Watching Winter Fly

This morning when I woke up it was 50 degrees. By the time I took Iris out for her walk it was 54 degrees and when I came home with her, it was 51.

Lucky girl, she got a taste of her favorite delicacy for the first time this year, fresh seasonal goose poop. It's goose poop season again. They're back...

Then I went out for my own run, and when I left home the wind was just starting to pick up. I took a fleece jacket with me, good idea. By the time I circled Warren Lake and headed home, it was 38 degrees and dropping.

One I got inside the house, it started snowing, and I watched winter move in over a period of an hour and a half. Typical Colorado weather.

Tomorrow the running club group meets at the high school track and I am going, even if I have to wear six layers. I will not let cold weather defeat me.

Sort of looking forward to the coming week's temperatures in the single digits, that means the mud will freeze. Better footing at the lake.

What else is good about winter? Getting to wear some of my favorite articles of clothing, all piled on top of one another in layers.

No more yard work, except for occasional snow shoveling, and keeping up with the dog poop in between storms.

Night running. More of it. Night running is even better in the winter. I better enjoy it, because there are only 52 days until spring...

The End of Color

Today we gathered up all the leaves in the yard and I cut back the flower garden for winter. Nice weather couldn't last forever. The wind is supposed to pick up tomorrow and the coming freeze will drop the few remaining leaves hanging on our maple tree and our neighbor's cottonwood tree.

I have a few scattered appointments this week but hope to get some good productive work done before Thanksgiving. I'm wanting to start on a few work projects over the winter and get some help from students in the spring semester so I need to get all that organized. On my writing project, which is ongoing, I have made good progress in the past month. Cold weather is perfect for holing up in the woman cave under blankets with the heater cranked and pounding away at the keyboard, after I get a good run/bike/swim/workout in.

With the cold weather arriving, I need to make sure I don't wimp out, given my recent history. I have no excuse, really, I have all the warmest, highest-tech Pearl Izumi gear I need. Getting my butt out the door will be the challenge. I can't remember ever being this unmotivated for so long. And here it's only been two months since early September when I first started tapering for nationals. And I have put in some decent runs since then. Really it's only been a month of being a slug.

I did get on the scale and 4 1/2 pounds have piled on since the end of September. I guess that's not too bad for not working out and eating everything in sight. Time to start moving in the other direction. The mountain bike tire is threatening to return.

The gray skies and bare gray tree limbs will be the colors we get to look at in town, all in a monochromatic landscape. Fortunately the higher elevations have pine trees and red rocks up at Horsetooth. I'm looking forward to running the trails at Coyote Ridge and Blue Sky again this winter, and at Horsetooth and Lory State Park. I need to keep working on my hip strength to keep my ankles from rolling over, and pick up my feet!

Sunset in the foothills tonight. When I wake up tomorrow, it will be winter.

Three In A Row: The Charm

YESSSSS!!! I did it, ran three days in a row, to wrap up the week with a total of 24+ miles and 2400 feet of vertical.

This morning I left the house at 8 am, before I could lose my motivation, and I drove over to the stadium and ran up the A Trail to the top, where I took pictures of Arthur's Rock with the nearly full moon setting behind it, Horsetooth Rock, and Hughes Stadium (soon to be the former CSU stadium).

I felt so much better today, my legs weren't creaky or whining. I had no problem running the uphills all the way to the top, and even threw in some surges of fast running on the way down, on the smoother parts of the trail.

I wanted to run for a full hour, so when I got down to the parking lot I finished up with an extra mile or so on the trail around Dixon Reservoir just to fill in the time.

I finished at my car at an hour and then pulled out the tire and ran up the first hill past the Pineridge sign on the road going up to the reservoir. It's a good 100 foot climb and I did about 0.8 miles with the tire, powerwalking up and running down. I felt good and was able to maintain good form with the tire.

I feel so much better today. I think maybe I flushed out whatever it was that was stuck. I must have had running constipation.

For some reason I can't even motivate myself to run the roads, all I want to do are trails right now. Except we're about to have a major change in the weather...hopefully not a lot of snow, but it is supposed to get COLD within the next 48 hours, down to single digit cold. That will be a shock to everyone who has been running in shorts through today. Tomorrow is the big change.

I think I will still need to do trails for my sanity, and as long as we don't get anything too messy on the ground, the trails will be there, I'll just have to bundle up. Fall, it's been nice knowing you. At least I know that winter will only last about 8 weeks. January 1st is right around the corner!

Little Miss Wildpants and Fall in the Fort

Finally got my butt out the door today, I ran 6 miles. It took me a solid hour plus a few, but I did it.

Every step was a struggle mentally. My legs don't feel all that great either, but I think my brain was worse. I have what I call "elephant legs". It feels like every step is such an effort to pick each leg up and put it down.

But I did it. I deserve a beer after all that. But I haven't cracked one open yet.

Two days in row, I ran. Amazing. We'll see what happens tomorrow. If my legs are dead tomorrow, I'll know it's my legs too, not just my brain.

Iris keeps following me out to the woman cave. Little Miss Wildpants. She tells me what to do. I wish I could get some of this 13 1/2 year old dog's energy. I did text Wheaties Boy for a shot of motivation before I got out the door. He's the only creature I know who has more energy than Little Miss Wildpants.

Isabelle after a walk. She's not Miss Wildpants. She's toast.

Looking out the woman cave now, this is what we see.

This fall has been spectacular. Here are some photos of the flower garden in the front yard and the tomato boxes after the first hard frost we had.

Earlier ths week I was out at Horsetooth and climbed Horsetooth Rock, instead of doing rock Repeats, I took the trail from the top of the Rock Repeat course and climbed to the top of the rock, then took off on the Audra Culver trail for a brief little run back to the service road. I wanted to share some of the photos from that day.

Longs Peak from partway up.

There were flowers still blooming near the top, at 7000 feet, in November!

Views into Redstone Canyon on the other side of the Rock and looking out at Longs Peak, below.

Looking out over Horsetooth Reservoir and Fort Collins to the east.

This little guy was at the top waiting for me to take out some food.

Views of the Audra Culver trail.

I am so lucky to live here.

Cat Saves The Day

I have had absolutely ZERO motivation to run lately.

I did make it up Horsetooth Rock on Wednesday, mostly hiking and ran the Audra Culver Trail section to come back down for a grand total of maybe 5 or 6 miles. Tuesday I went to the track at noon and ran for 20 minutes before I called it a day. I don't know why, I hit the 20 minute mark and I just didn't feel like it anymore.

I don't have anything physically wrong with me, except maybe still some fatigue, but I can't seem to get myself going. I can walk the girls, I can go out for walks, but no cross training or running appeals to me.

The one thing that did appeal to me, temporarily, was when I was up at the rock and I had a brief fantasy of being able to run trails again and go do the Grand Canyon R2R2R again or do some of those beautiful trail runs like Paatuwaqatsi on the Hopi reservation next fall. But the thought didn't get me any more motivated to run.

Then Friday morning I was trying to figure out how to get my lazy butt out the door when Cat called. I only had a little time because of an appointment later, but it was enough time for us to go for a short run.

What a concept, we could just get together and run for an hour. No need to run a gazillion miles!

And we did it. We dragged our bodies around Warren Lake, and I joked that crossing the street we looked like two little old ladies, and we commiserated about our mutual lack of motivation and menopausal mood disorders among other things. It was the perfect match. It got me out the door, even though I feel like I was waddling. If I can actually get my butt out the door today and/or tomorrow, I will be ecstatic.

It's always harder to get through the first few runs coming back because I feel so clunky. It doesn't help that I've been eating everything in sight lately. I can tell I've packed quite a few pounds back on. I am a fat magnet right now since I haven't been working out. Just gotta get moving again and maybe the appetite will go away, too.

I had a very busy week, work-wise, and Monday is busy, but after that I will have a little time to relax and re-focus.

Thursday I did a webinar with Kate from Pennsylvania. Similar discussion to my previous self-produced video, but it went in different places. We had some technical glitches and it's even longer, about 47 minutes. But my own videos will be much shorter as I go forward.

I have a ton of work to get done in the yard this weekend. The leaves have been slow to fall this year and we always wait until they are all down so we only have to pick them up once. But it's getting deep out there in the yard and there are still more leaves on the trees! The weather has been perfect. Next week it's supposed to get cold, anticipating snow. Maybe. It looks like November, but it doesn't feel like it yet.

As far as I'm concerned, January 1 is the first day of spring, it's coming soon!

Celebrating A Year: Something Different

This is a video I made today as I was preparing for an upcoming set of online interviews. I was out in the woman cave playing with the webcam and of course I did not do hair, makeup or professional dress etc.

This is just me, raw footage, speaking about my transition from traditional nursing to having a nurse-owned business, what I do now, and why.

It's pretty long, nearly 30 minutes, but if you care to watch the whole thing, you'll learn more about the AleneGoneBad outside of running, nursing, and gaps in cancer care in our health care system.

It's been nearly a year (November 16th to be exact) since I left my nursing job and started my business. That calls for a party!!

On the running front, today I could not motivate myself to run. I'm not worrying about it. I'll get back to it when I'm ready.

If you do watch the video, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Obesify Fort Collins...

So the big news this past week was that Dunkin Donuts opened in Fort Collins. Midtown Fort Collins, only about a mile from my house.

For a town that has so many mediocre restaurants and franchise chains, you would think, no big deal, just another restaurant with crappy food.

Well I found myself in a traffic jam while trying to cross College at Harvard, at mid-day in the middle of the week, so I made the mistake of trying to turn up the frontage road along College to escape the traffic jam.

Bad idea. It turned out that the traffic jam was cars lined up and wrapped around the entire block and blocking the frontage road both ways, trying to get in what appears to be a drive-through window at Dunkin Donuts!!!

Excuse me, that's spelled "drive-thru". This is Amurrica.

Hell, you would think they were giving away an iPhone 6 with every dozen donuts, or that Black Friday was moved up by four weeks. Haven't you people ever seen a donut before?

Once again I take refuge in my woman cave...

This morning I ran the Tortoise & Hare 5K with the Fort Collins Running Club. My third run this week. My hips and knees ache, I feel stiff and old. I did not go there to run fast and I stuck to my plan, which was to run at a leisurely pace and cheer for all the runners. There were well over 100 runners this time. I had to run to the bushes too because I drank too much coffee this morning, and still managed to somehow run it in under 29 minutes even with the pitstop.

I ran there and ran home, and then spent the rest of the day working on various writing projects and preparing for a webinar this week. Having to turn on lights in the woman cave now, since it's getting dark so early after the clock change last night.

Maybe this week I will be a little more active than last week. Right now I feel like I need about a year off...