Happy New Year!

Well the new year is almost here so I suppose it is time for those new year's resolutions. My biggest goal is just to stay active this year, and I am striving for some sort of activity every day, even if it is just a family walk. My running goals are a little more concrete, I am hoping to train semi-seriously for the Bolder Boulder in May, and perhaps tackle a half-marathon in the fall. But the biggest goal I have is to run 1000 miles in 2007. I am going to maintain a running total of my miles on this blog to keep me on track. While it may seem like a lot, it's not really that bad, just an average of 20 miles a week. Now all I need is for all this damn snow to melt so that I can run outside again.

Day 2

Well we made it through another day of the blizzard and it was not all that bad. We only woke up to about 3 inches, so I shoveled that in the morning. Then through the day we got about another inch so I shoveled that at 5. Still no trash pickup for us, but the mail is becoming more reliable again. On the whole this blizzard has not yet been as debilitating as the one last week. Because the storm is moving fairly slowly the city seems to be able to keep on top of things pretty well. While some flights have been cancelled the airport has stayed open, which gives me hope for Melissa's return on Sunday. Unfortunately we are due to get another bout of snow tomorrow evening into Sunday morning, so we'll see how the conditions hold up.



Elijah and I beat the cold this morning by making biscuits with my new biscuit cutters. They were really good, so I'll have to make them again when Melissa is here. Well I have to go now, I'm learning how fiberglass insulation is made and the cat wants to be fed.

Blizzard 06.2

Well with Melissa off in sunny California for a few days I suppose it's up to me to keep updates going on the second blizzard of 2006 in as many weeks. Elijah and I took a nice long walk up to Smoky Hill road this morning before it started snowing. By the time we got back at 10:30 the first flakes were starting to fall. When Elijah got up from his nap at 4 we both went out to do the first shoveling of the day. We shoveled 2 inches or so but it was really starting to come down and by the time we got our snow gear off you couldn't tell we had done anything. Elijah went to bed at 7 and I noticed that our neighbor had done a run down our sidewalk with her snowblower, so I decided to brave the elements once again so that I'm not overwhelmed tomorrow. I shoveled another 3 or 4 inches but I was encouraged by the fact that the snow had let up a little bit. If the weather is correct though I'll have another 6 inches to do tomorrow morning. The hardest part of the job is the fact that I have to shovel our driveway halfway across the street to get to the ruts. Well, to be continued...

Back to Work

Today I was finally able to venture back to work after being snowed in over the holiday. The neighborhood streets are still really bad, but everywhere else is in pretty good shape. I was able to get everything ready for my absence over the next few days. I took advantage of being out of the house finally to hit the gym and get a workout in. I threw my back out on Friday shoveling snow for a neighbor so it hasn't been too bad that I have had to take it easy. But I could not take being sedentary for much longer. I ran on the track for 10 minutes, but I found that was aggravating my back by running. So I hit the pool and did some laps for some no-impact exercise. A trip to the hot tub later and my back was feeling much better. Tomorrow we are going to try to spend some time as a family out of the house, I'm looking forward to that.

Man what a week!

Well this week has been pretty crazy so I've been keeping active where I can. We took Elijah to the pool on Sunday and I took a few minutes to do a few laps, so that was good. But then Monday and Tuesday I was slammed at work and I did not get a chance to go running. It's too bad because those were probably the only nice days of the week. Last night I decided to hit the gym after dinner just in case the weather was too bad today to run. Boy am I ever glad I did that. It is crazy snowy today and I was super bummed that I had to go into work to put a new sample in the magnet. The morning drive wasn't bad but I knew it would just get worse as the day went on so I was trying to get out of there as soon as I could. I ended up staying until 12:30 to get the experiments started, then I started the trek home. The drive was pretty bad and it took me over an hour to get home, but then I got stuck trying to pull into the driveway. Thankfully there was a guy with a big truck passing by who had just pulled someone else out of trouble up the street and he offered to pull me back out into the street. Once I had shoveled out the drive and street a bit I took a run it at it. This time I got stuck only once, for a minute or two, then I peeled up the driveway into the garage. I can do most of my work from home now, so I'll probably be taking a snow day tomorrow as well, but it will be tough to get a workout in. I guess shoveling will have to be my exercise.

Improvement

I did not do a run today, opting instead for a bit of a recovery with a trip to the pool. My swimming is showing signs of improvement and I can already do much more than I could when I first went a few weeks ago. As anyone who has ever "cross-trained" before knows, being relatively fit does not translate into being able to do any activity you want really well. So I have been taking it pretty slowly with the swim. Today was the first time that I stopped because I was a little bored rather than stopping because I am bushed. I find that much like the treadmill swimming laps is a little dull, but I love the low impact workout. I did 20 minutes today, which consisted of 2 laps each of sidestroke and breaststroke to warm up and then did a bunch of laps of front crawl (or freestyle). I lost count of how many laps of that I did, it was at least 10. Then I did 4 laps of back crawl and a cool down of 2 laps each of just kicking on my back, breaststroke and sidestroke. I don't know exactly how long each lap is, it's certainly not an olympic sized pool so it's probably 25 yards. I'm also kind of wussing out as I haven't got up the nerve to do any turns at the end of my lap, so I stand up and take a few breaths before turning around. In thinking about it it probably costs me more energy to do it that way as I have to find my rhythm all over again each time.


As a side note, I received a comment about my recent goose related blog post that I did not know whether they were in fact "Canadian" Canada geese, and not "American" Canada geese. The geese that I observed were in fact "Canadian" Canada geese as they were clearly gathering to discuss the merits of a centralized health care system before they were interrupted by my run. Just to set the record straight.

Just me and my thoughts

Today I did my 5 miles around Bluff Lake all on my own, no major epiphanies although I did have Supertramp stuck in my head for a while (I have no idea why). It was a hard effort so I'm kind of looking forward to a rest day tomorrow. If my meetings in Boulder don't go too late I may try to hit the pool on the way home. Tomorrow there is a scheduled power outage at work so I have to be there at 7 to make sure that everything works as it is supposed to. It's going to be long day!

Company

Today I had company again for my run and we went for a few loops around Bluff Lake. Ended up being around 7 miles. It was supposed to be fairly warm today, but for some reason a big cloud was stuck over the whole city which made it feel much colder. But after a few minutes I warmed up and it ended up being really nice. The deer were out again today, and one bounded across the path as we approached. It should be a good day for a run tomorrow, but Thursday may be tough with all I have to get done.

Weekend Workouts

I did my Saturday run with Elijah this weekend (and got another flat tire), and went to the Trails yesterday for a 15 minute jog and 15 minute swim. It was a nice break from the sidewalk runs I had to deal with last week. Today I felt pretty good, and I kept off the sidewalk as much as I could. Ended up going 5 miles up to Bluff Lake via a slightly different route. The trail has dried out pretty well now so it's smooth sailing.

On the psyche of geese

It was 59 degrees today, so I did 6.5 miles in shorts and a t-shirt. The Canadian geese seemed to have all decided to congregate around the trail today, so as I was running they would take off all at once and move a safe distance away. All the geese seemed to be on the north side of the trail, with the path cutting between them and the creek. As I was running back, however, the geese had made their way back to the trail, but were now on the south side. As I was running towards them I hypothesized that the geese would not fly away due to the fact that this time they had a clear escape route available to them. As I ran past the geese waddled off, but did not take flight. I was just patting myself on the back for having made such astute observations of goose behavior, when I came upon another small gaggle of geese on the north side of the path. These geese did not fly away either. I realized that I had forgotten the first rule of scientific observation: in observing any event, you fundamentally change its outcome in some way. In this case my hypothesis was proven wrong by a "control gaggle" of geese. Evidently the behavior of the geese did not have anything to do with which side of the path they were on, just the fact that they had seen me run by before and decided that I did not represent a threat.


Some may in fact question why all of these thoughts would be going through my mind at a time like that, in which case this post may be more appropriately titled "On the psyche of Geoff."

Muddy

I couldn't bear another day of running on sidewalks so I decided to venture out onto the trails. I ran around bluff lake and on the whole it wasn't too bad. But there were a few pretty muddy spots that were tough to get through. Nothing like getting hit with chunks of mud that are flying off your shoes. No deer today, I found out yesterday that they have moved up the creek a little bit as I saw them on the other side of campus. It was a nice 4.5 miles despite the mud, but I'm hoping for drier conditions tomorrow.

Slushy

Well my schedule has not been the best the last couple of days but I have managed to get out running. With the warmer temperatures though it has been hard to find routes that aren't really muddy. Yesterday I went for 6 miles or so, and today I did a faster 4 miles. They were all on sidewalks though. Ideally things will have dried out enough to hit the trail tomorrow.

Weekly Mileage

Well I woke up to light snow and cold temps so I decided to forget about running today. I'm still pretty creaky from these last few days anyway. So I imagine that will cap my weekly milage at 23.5. Maybe tomorrow I will hit the pool!

Dentist

I went to the dentist this morning. I remember the last time I went to the dentist it was a hot summer day and I was supposed to do a 10 mile run for my marathon training. I was only able to run 6 because of the heat of the afternoon! Quite a difference 6 months makes, there was still lots of snow on the ground and unfortunately today it was accompanied by a cold wind. But with the sun it wasn't too bad and I ended up doing the same 6.5 mile route as yesterday. I've got my shoes all opened up now and hopefully they will dry out by tomorrow morning. Elijah will not be coming with me as the snow is still too much to push a stroller through. Ideally it will warm up enough to melt it off next week.