Monday, February 10, 2014

Getting It Done

(2 blog posts in a row? It's a February miracle!)

Remarkably, I haven't had to add an awful lot to my winter running wardrobe to survive outdoors in a Colorado winter.  I had tights, long sleeved tops, gloves, I just learned how to layer them. But thanks to Tea, I did pick up one huge winter running tip: Ice Spikes.  What a great, effective and inexpensive way to turn a pair of running shoes into shoes that will keep me upright on ice and snow (and snow on top of ice) without a lot of advanced gadgetry.

My Sunday long run in the ice and snow was at a far faster pace than I could have done without added support - it was slippery out there with a layer of fresh snow on top of the old frozen-melted-refrozen stuff.  I'm getting better and better at identifying non-human footprints in the snow too :)  Tromping around our future property last week, Jeff and I saw lots of deer and rabbit tracks, as well as some coyote poop.  On my long run on the trail, I saw more deer, bunny, lots of dogs (of course), and some very clear raccoon prints (shown below).
Jeff has gone back to Arizona until our closing date on the house. In the meantime I get to ride out the last 6 weeks of winter here and coordinate the small stuff, like movers, renting a PO box for our future house (no mail delivery out there), etc.  Boulder winters are mostly quite enjoyable, with lots of sunshine and reasonably warm days even after a dump of snow (a FAR cry from my days in Chicago). We've only experienced 2 weeks of stupid-cold temps (one in December and one this last week) - my threshold being that when it's so cold the dogs can barely walk much less do their business (the day of -10 degrees, everyone went on poop strike) and I get close to frostbite no matter how many layers I wear, this is no longer fun.  Thankfully we don't get a lot of that here and I'm hiring a voodoo priestess optimistic that we'll get through the next month and a half with pretty snow and more moderate (i.e. highs above 15 degrees) temperatures.

2 comments:

Tea said...

I am so happy that your craziness is coming to an end. Soon...you'll be back to a more normal life.
I've been so impressed with how you have been able to manage so much.
Bring on Spring! And new beginnings!

Meredith said...

Doing a happy dance for you that everything is falling into place so nicely!