Bring On Spring

Favorite book ever...Giraffes Can't Dance

What happened to spring? motivation? mileage? February has been nothing short of a struggle. I knew the beautiful 70F week in January would come back to haunt me and it certainly has. It's now the middle of the umpteenth snow storm in as many days, its cold and foggy and the motivation to keep the mileage up has been going by the wayside. The positive though is that I've really stuck to keeping my priority runs. So the last couple weeks I have gotten in my long runs and speed work....its just those moderate in between runs that are falling by the wayside. 


Despite my lackluster running my speed work still seems to be improving. And my long runs getting a bit easier. Its amazing how hard a 20 mile run seems to get when you take 2 months off from them. In the middle of summer 20 miles sounds easy, just another day at the park. Lately 20 feels like a colossal effort. That might also be due in part to the fact that the summer trails for 20 milers aren't so runnable right now. Longs runs now are mostly on Green Mountain or at Bear Creek. Or this past week I did repeats on the hill in our neighborhood. I got 20 miles and 3000 ft of vertical but that was a lot of laps and most of the neighbors probably think I'm absolutely crazy by now. 

Aside from that we now have a mostly remodeled master bath (we still have to redo the tile), I repainted my desk, baked an ungodly amount of cookies and loaves of bread, cleared out the arts and crafts aisle at King Soopers for snow day activities which led to a massive pile of paintings laying on my desk, have had daily dance parties and are finally through February. Not that March means less snow, but it usually means more sunshine and warmer temps. And maybe a few more open trails!

Remodel fun

I think James took February just as hard as I did. He's an outside kid and even the indoor playroom I built isn't doing it anymore. He's ready to get back to playing in the park and going for family runs. I have also been working really hard with him at learning to 'dip' his food. I know that sounds like such a small thing and it is. But don't all kids dip chicken nuggets in ketchup? Its a kid thing he should learn to do it. Well as is James we finally learned to dip our food...but oh no not ketchup. Sour cream please! Apparently sour cream goes well on everything and is even good enough to dip your thumb into and lick it off. Now I can officially check off dipping foods from the bucket list! The best part of the last couple weeks was James and I made heart shaped cookies to send to Auntie Cait, sorry Cait we ate them all but I promise to make more and really send you the next batch. James of course refuses to eat them because they're made with sugar, but he held one up and out of nowhere goes haaa-rrrrt, haaa-rrrrt.  I figured they were talking about hearts for Valentine's at daycare because we don't really use the word heart too much. So add heart to James' list of verbal words. Its an eclectic list and there are a few words like heart that you just look at and go really?

Week February 16 - 22

Miles Running: 50.8
Hours Hiking and Running: 8.0
Vertical: 6875 ft

Week February 23 - March 1

Miles Running: 36
Hours Hiking and Running: 5.0
Vertical: 5300 ft

Boo...

Face painting

Winter Park fun

Too cool for school