Week in Review (June 6 - June 12)

Tuesday (11,090 steps) - Somehow, I actually woke up with enough time to get a ride done before work. I don't think I've done this in probably a year.

Work in the office. Went for a walk and did the rest of my cross training at lunch. Also - I "accidentally" realized that there were still charity bibs available for Cocodona?! The page said that they were "sold out" but when I went through the process, it actually let me. So I guess I am committed to raising $5,000 for my entry in 2024. I am raising money for Bigger Than the Trail through the Wander Project - donation link HERE. After work made a quick run to Costco for a few things. Yes, I still drink V8. (Fun fact, even in when I was 11-12 years old I used to have one in my sack lunch).

Met Ben for a beer.

Wednesday (17,041 steps) - Work in the office. I had a dumb mandatory meeting during lunch, so I had to put off my run until after work. It was raining all day, and I had initially planned on going to Big Dry Creek to run, but then I was scared that it would hail on my car, so I went home and did my run in a much hillier than ideal area. 

It ended up being fine and I did not get rained on at all. Also had fun making this connection with Olive:

Thursday (20,057 steps) - Work from home! I had another easy run on schedule, with strides. Went really well overall.

Took Olive for walk. It was REALLY humid, especially near the water. How am I ever going to survive when it finally stops raining and actually gets hot?

Met Ben at 4 Noses - he picked up dinner at Hops & Drops - so good! Really cool sunset - and very shortly after the rain started. Again.

Friday (15,351 steps) - Wash Park and coffee. Work was REALLY busy and actually went by fast. Have no idea what happened.

Saturday (20,973 steps) - Ben and I had a plan to get some climbing in. He suggest Mt. Victoria, which we did a few years ago. We actually got out the door on time - which is shocking. So headed out at 8, no traffic. I believe we were parked and ready to go around 9:30. A bit of a surprise to arrive at a full lot, but we DID have a later start. I've done this lower section a few times, and it never gets any easier. Over 1,000' climb in the first mile - and it actually eases you in. Woof.

Shortly after the turn off for Mt. Royal the trail gets a little "easier" - at least in terms of incline. Ben didn't super love having to crawl under this. Much easier for someone tiny.

We didn't get super high up before we realized that there was LOT more snow on the trail than in years past. (Even when we did this the first week of May years ago). We encountered a few hikers that indicated that we would be losing the trail a bit, and just to keep the snow line on the side and we would be fine.

We definitely had some sections where we were off trail - but we were able to find some footprints and other clues as to where everyone else was going.

Seriously, so much snow.

We hiked a bit more and... started to get snowed on. I did take some videos of it. Maybe it was more graupel than snow, but it did make the temperature drop quite a bit. I didn't put on my jacket, because I knew as soon as we moved faster I would get hot. I don't know where it came from, but I started saying "snow bah bah" and Ben said it sounded like something the Minions would say, so I made a meme.

Once we got past the radio tower we could finally see Peak One. See? Storm completely over with already.

Ben spent a few minutes trying to convince me that we should just go to Peak One. It had taken us longer to get up than I expected with losing the trail, and I was getting hungry so I said we should head down. 

Once we got to the radio tower, we made a mistake. And this is how lessons are learned. Even though we had come up "off trail" we opted to go a different way down - staying on the trail from the top until we lost it. From there we did actually end up "lost." Lost in the sense that we lost our sense of direction and had to pull out Gaia to figure out how to get back to the trail when we got low enough. This was very frustrating for me. There was way more snow on the mountain than we realized and we ended up at least a quarter mile off "course." So lesson to be learned - download maps on Gaia for any area you are in - just in case. Luckily we were in a section that had phone service, so we were ok. Anyway, took a lot longer overall to get down, but once we found the trail again, felt pretty good and jogged down. (As much as you can jog a really steep & technical descent anyway).

Headed to Outer Range and they still had glasses left for the "Keep the Glass" event. Surprising, since it was hours after they opened. We sat on the patio and it was pretty chilly. We were hungry, so also got some Birdcraft so we didn't starve before getting home.

Ben suggested that we stop at the Crocs store "just to look" and I walked out with these. I'm still anti-Croc and swore I would never get a pair. No comments necessary, I am embarrassed enough for meyself.

Neon green.

Stopped by the house to get Olive and my car and went to 4 Noses for one more beer. 

Sunday (26,515 steps) - Didn't especially want to get up early, but MORE storms were in the forecast, so we tentatively had made plans to be out the door by 9. We met in Boulder for the loop I like to do on Wednesdays. I don't typically run in Boulder on the weekends and forgot that nine million people go out and hike. At least these trails don't allow bikes so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

It looked like it was going to rain the entire time, but it never did, thankfully. 

I hadn't been intending to "work hard" during this run, but apparently we "ran" pretty fast. We also managed to run into Tyler, who had summitted Bear Peak earlier and made plans to meet up after. About a mile from finishing we also ran into our neighbor Kevin and his wife. Funny to see multiple people we know - and they all live with a tenth of a mile of us. The guys decided on Murphy's for a snack and beer. They were still serving brunch and I got this delicious bowl:

Took Olive for a walk and saw an owl! (Only the second one so far this season).

I think I did some deliveries? Picked up a slice of pizza at Costco for dinner since Ariel was working. Ben and I had a movie watch party and watched "Thirteen Lives" - which was REALLY good.

Monday (21,737 steps) - Work from home. Yay! Shockingly, it was supposed to RAIN, so I actually went for my run really early. I had 7 miles easy on schedule, and it didn't necessarily FEEL easy, but HR says it was, so I'll take it. I got drizzled on starting about 3 miles in, but it wasn't a true downpour, so it was ok.

Ariel went with me for a quick Olive walk. Did some driving after work, and another slice of Costco pizza for dinner. Another watch party - this time "Memory" (Liam Neeson) and it wasn't as interesting as his movies normally are.

Stats:

• 132,764 steps
• 33.13 miles run
• 30 minutes of cardio
• 50 minutes of strength training

Week in Review (May 17 - May 23)

Tuesday - Up early for a Def Leppard Peloton ride, upper body and core. Work in the office, going for a walk at lunch. Literally nothing else, other than watching the finale of Ozark. Complete garbage.

Wednesday - My (44th!!) birthday! Unfortunately, I woke up feeling like garbage. My arms (especially my triceps) were super sore from the upper body workout I had done the day before. I was sneezing and coughing. Ben took a COVID test and it came up negative and my symptoms seemed more like allergies. I wasn't sure if I was going to do my run (mostly climbing goal), so I texted my coach to let him know I was going to play it by ear. Work was pretty busy, especially since I'm covering for Nicole all week. By the end of the day I wasn't feeling up to it, so I headed home after work. Ben invited Kristin, Doug, Jeramiah and Tyler over for pizza, cake and beer. Since we had cold-like symptoms everything was done outside. Hurray for finally some nice, spring weather.

Thursday - Definitely was feeling congested and tired, so I was glad I was working from home. Once again, skipped my morning run. Didn't seem like a lot of fun to run 8 miles without being able to breath without coughing or sneezing. A was playing at the graduation, and we got 2/3 of the way there when she realized she had forgotten her viola (d'oh) so we had to go back to get it. I ended up being "late" for work. Work was relatively busy, and other than taking Pika for a (shorter than usual) walk, I did nothing.

Friday - We had SNOW in the forecast. We also had plans to go on our first camping trip of the year - which included allowing A to have a friend join her. We had packed everything up and figured we would make a last minute call if we thought it was a "good" idea to head up to the mountains or not. My drive to work was REALLY fast, there was no traffic, and it was only raining. It didn't switch over to snow until mid afternoon. We decided we would go for it... A's friend came over when she got off work, and we got out of the house about when we thought we would - and it was snowing pretty good, although not sticking to the roads. The drive out of town wasn't bad, and even the lower foothills were ok, people weren't driving too crazy but speeds weren't really that slow. AND THEN. We hit a slowdown right before the Georgetown exit. We sat and sat. There were no updates on any of our apps, and we couldn't figure out what the issue was. FINALLY, after about 90 minutes, we started to crawl forward, only to find out we were being route into town and off the highway.

"Luckily," Cabin Creek was still open (it was 9 pm by now).

OK, there may have been "some" snow

The kitchen was unfortunately closed, and we ran into the same general "rudeness" from staff that we have encountered the last few times we were there. We knew we weren't going anywhere at this point, and "luckily" we have Shelly and a cover on the truck, so it wasn't a huge deal to end up camping in the parking lot...

Pika was a tad stressed out about this, I think mostly because A and her friend were staying in the truck

Saturday - I'm actually surprised that I didn't wake up at the crack of dawn. Maybe the stress of travel and last minute changes had me sleeping ok? It didn't take long to get everything ready to head out.

It was snowing, but nothing crazy and very little traffic getting into Frisco. All of us were hungry, so we stopped at Whole Foods for a burrito. Poor Shelly:

By now the skies were clear and it wasn't snowing, and looked really pretty out! We arrived at the campground and noticed it was "fairly" empty. The hosts found us immediately and were very nice and welcoming. (Also, they said they were from Georgia and this should have been declared a state of emergency, haha). We ended up with a REALLY pretty campsite!

The girls took Pika for a walk. Our site was right by the perimeter trail, and even though we were the first people on it since the snowfall, we had no problems finding it. Pika was SO happy being out!

Once we were set up we decided to head out and actually DO something while the weather still looked clear, since there was MORE snow in the forecast. First, we headed up to Breckenridge to visit Isak. They DEFINITELY got a TON of snow. The hike up was single track through about 18" of snow!

Then, we headed back to Frisco to pick up a handful of groceries we had forgotten, and a visit to Outer Range. The girls went to Whole Foods for pizza.

Back at the campsite to start getting ready for dinner. We planned (and by we, I mean Ben) on hot dogs and potato salad. The weather held up right until it started to get dark out.

Temps really dropped, and since there were no fire restrictions, we made a huge fire! A is pretty proud of her fire-making skills - thank you, Girl Scouts!

We roasted some s'mores, although that proved a bit problematic since the marshmallows were partially frozen, haha. 

The snow really started to pick up again and it was getting cold, so we all retreated to the camper. Somehow all four of us PLUS Pika were able to fit on the bed for a few wild rounds of Uno. 

Sunday - Somehow, we ended up sleeping until 8?? Crazy. The sun was shining when we exited the camper and Ben and I took Pika for a short walk.

Ben and I headed into town to get coffee, and stopped at the store to pick up a few more ingredients for breakfast. Ben made burritos! By the time we finished eating it was unfortunately already time to start packing up to leave. We opted to stop at Outer Range for another beer (and more Uno) on our way out of town.

Since the weather had been so icky all weekend there was ZERO traffic getting home, which was nice. We unloaded everything and investigated the small amount of damage we had from the storm. We lost a small branch off the tree in our front yard, but most of the debris was actually from the neighbor's tree. We unpacked and popped some pizzas into the oven for dinner. We tried to finish off the s'mores with a campfire but all the wood was damp and it was SUPER smoky, so we gave up.

Monday - Time to get back on track with training after being sick for a week. I'd already talked to Greg about not doing as many miles as was on schedule (9 seemed like a LOT), so he lowered it to 5. 5 sounded reasonable. I didn't have to get up crazy early because A's friend had spent the night and said she would take her to school. I finally saw one of the owls!!

I was taking it easy, and the run was going fine until I really had to use the bathroom. Luckily, this seems to happen to me fairly regularly when I get up early to run, so I plan my route around a bathroom, haha. Once that was out of the way the rest of the run was pretty good. It had been sunny when I started but gradually got cooler and the clouds started to roll in. I was a bit worried I was going to get rain on! 

LOTS of damage from the heavy, wet snow :(

I am LOVING this new Garmin graph!! I only wish this update would have happened before Cocodona, so I could have an actual visual aid of how much time we were stopped at aid stations...

I got home with enough time to take a shower before logging in for work. Ben headed to Dunkin to pick up my free birthday drink. Managed to get laundry done and the house cleaned up. After work we headed to the school for A's end of year track banquet. We were bamboozled into thinking there was food. All they had was desserts. Boo!! We had to improvise dinner and didn't eat until 9. Ugh!! 

Stats:

• 5.6 miles run
• 30 minutes of cardio
• 30 minutes of strength training