Ground Hog day all over again.

January 28, 2019 - February 3, 2019

Holy cow January was creeping along and now its gone?  Krikies.

Monday (3 + 2) - After my success of running a 5K road race, ok for most of you 33 minutes for a 5K includes your warm up and cool down, it's all a matter of perspective, anyhoodles I didn't feel the run in my joints, so I debated what I'd run today.  I had success with that distance so I did it again.  It honestly felt better than walk/run.  Other than the run back to campus uphill into the north wind it was a fun run.

Dave and I took Jax to Burlingame for a hike, some trail some roads.  It was a clear night quite a few stars through the leafless trees.  Are we ever going to get snow?  The 20 bog bridge section of the NS Trail was squishy, guess that didn't refreeze as quick as the rest of the trail.  Jax was on the scent of someone or something and was pulling us along pretty briskly.  Either that or he knew there was chicken skin in his dinner bowl.

Tuesday (3 + 2) - Met up with Mikey on the elliptical, he stuck around for an extra 1/2 mile.   Gak that thing is so boring with no one to talk to.  Booty Core day #14 sounded like all upper body and while I can barely do a push-up anymore and should be trying, I really wasn't all that into it so I skipped ahead to #15.  Besides I'm not doing this every day and I think that workout was meant as a 'break'.  Clearly not something I needed.  This one had more band work.  Whatever is going on in my left hip from my hammock injury is still niggly and annoying and sometimes leaves my leg weak.  Weird.

Back to Burlingame with the Little Black Dog, he looked bummed when we parked in the same spot (Giz's spot) as last time but we didn't do the same hike, so that was good.  Jax got to meet Jeff.  Dave said 'Biker Up' when he saw the headlamp, I said that it didn't look like a biker it looked too low it must be a runner and it was.  Even in the dark, a familiar runners cadence is easy to pick out!   Jax was pretty cordial, and at least didn't hide behind me and let Jeff pat him on the head and didn't growl.  Boxers really are odd creatures, they don't meet other dogs or humans particularly well.  Gus was the best at meeting strangers.  Gizzy barked at them, Diesel tried to hug them, Sage gave them the stink eye as she wiggled her entire ass. We won't go into the crew of fosters, but Lola used to try and eat people.  All except for the couple we disturbed on the beach one night.  I think when she tripped over them it scared her more than them and I saw her flashy light galloping towards me as I heard the couple exclaiming 'what the f was that'.  Anyhoodles, we ventured on our hike and Jeff on his run, Jax was torn about which direction he wanted to go.   We went back via the VG and the NS Bog Bridges.  Eventually, we saw Jeff's red flashy light along the bog bridges and then off into the campground as he ran off in the distance.  Plus there were some workers there with trucks making quite a racket.  It was a very popular night to be in Burlingame.

Wednesday (5) - Yeah it's hill day I ran around the hills instead of running them.  I was more curious how I'd do with a solid 5-mile run.  Ok, I walked twice but not for long.  I did well and didn't seem to feel it in my joints after the run.  The west wind was strong I was glad to get out of it on the way back to campus.  But boy I was overdressed.  I had a warm shirt and a jacket.  I could have left the jacket in the locker room.  Better than being frozen, right?

Went out for a night hike and experienced a snow squall in the woods.  That was SO COOL.  Well a little scary because we couldn't see a thing with the snow swirling around and a little snow blindness with the headlamps, luckily it was a familiar and easy (virtually no rocks and roots) trail and Jax's vest has reflective material on it so we could see him ahead of us so we had something to follow.  By the time we got back to the car, it was over very little snow on the ground.  A very fun hike.

Thursday (3) - Met up with Mikey on the elliptical for his last 15 minutes the next 15 minutes were horribly boring.  Oh well.  Booty Core day #16.  Finally feel like I am balancing, not shifting my weight, on the donkey kick, and fire hydrant type exercises, the trainer, Beth, gives great clues if your wrists are hurting you aren't keeping your core tight.  AH HA!!!  That helped greatly, once I tightened up my core my wrists stopped hurting.  Honestly, this sounded hokey, 21-day booty fix, it really has been good and I've learned more about how the muscles function than I have in all my PT classes or reading about exercises.  I feel like a big dork plugged into my iPhone for this, it is working and I'm feeling less dorky.

Friday (0) -   Someone left a paper flower doused with perfume for Jackass.  I spent the day with watery eyes, a headache, and sneezing.  Took me quite a few hours to figure out why I felt like shit.  Once I put that in the trash I started feeling a bit better.  Hopefully, the gift giver will forgive me for trashing her gift but seriously I was miserable.

Saturday (7 + 1) - Went out to Woody Hill to see how I could manage to get myself lost in the spaghetti bowl of trails.  I managed to get stuck in a loop and the 4th time I went over the same spot all I could do was laugh out loud and say "Well it is groundhog day."  I supposed if I was smart and opened up Trail Forks and started that when I started my ride I would have more success.   There was a group of 3 guys riding, I'd say they were older but I think they were closer to my chronological age (I still think I'm 30) so slightly older, they were going the opposite direction on the trail as I met up with each of them they pulled off the trail to let me pass by.

Jax has been sad lately.  Could be the weather, could be he misses having a friend, could also be he has been eating paper. If he was better with other dogs we'd try and find him a friend, but he's a typical inappropriate boxer when he meets new dogs.  Sarah seems to think he and Tuck would do ok because Tuck is so mellow.  I dunno.  So anyhow, the Little Guy was ho hum about a hike, perhaps it is also the chilly weather we have been having?  Dunno.  We went out for a short hike to a new to him part of Woody Hill and wandered around. 

Sunday (10 + 3) - My bike group, which I belong to and have showed up to like 5 rides over the last few years, did a ride in new place so I went out the next day to check it out.  My fitness is getting back to a point where I may venture out and bike with the group again.  It was a good ride, I mostly followed their GPS track, the first part of the ride I was spot on the second I missed a turn pretty early on, so did most of their route backwards. Definitely easy trails, not a lot of roots and maybe 10 rocks, very odd for New England.  I got out of my saddle a bit more, and by that I mean staying on the bike out of the saddle, not hiking my bike over obstacles I'm not quite ready to navigate or simply can't, by that I mean bunny hop over a 2 foot high log, which is usually what it means for me to be out of my saddle.  HA!  It was nice to pick up some speed and work very hard at laying off the breaks and going with the flow of the trail and the slight downhills.  Those disc breaks stop you on a dime which is freaking awesome till it isn't and I throw myself off the bike.  It happens, I don't know how it does but it does.

Scrolling through FB I found a hike in a new to me preserve, and it is actually a newer preserve, I did some investigating and found they had a good map and a nice 2.3 mile 'easy' loop.  Dave hates most preserves so I billed it as 'you are going to hate this' and we went to the TriTown Forest part of the Avalonia Land Conservancy.  It was super cool!!!  A bit over 400 acres of old farm land, complete with the bazillions of stone walls (and at some point the farmers must have got sick of building walls so they just piled them up) common in New England and very undulating terrain, not very common here in Southern New England, we had over 300 feet of gain in a 2.7 mile hike.  The glacier must have stopped there for a while, leaving ledge and rocks and hills.  Very cool piece of property with well marked and interesting trails.  Jax was totally back to himself, so it was either a doggy flu or paper.

Knitting:

I finished one of the socks, started the second.  Decided to do a big no no and changed how I was knitting it.  I went from two circular needles to one circular needle and ended up knitting it much tighter...  I pulled the second sock apart and it will sit there for a while till I decide what to do about the whole thing.

Started with the Rue yarn, it knits up beautifully.  I made a mitten on Sunday and will wash it and see what the fiber does when it gets wet.  Will it shrink, grow, felt... it's hard to tell.

Reading:

"Grant"
by Ron Chernow

I am enjoying this and the author is very delicate with Grant's 'drinking' problem.  He seems like a very intelligent thoughtful leader.  I'm enjoying this although not as much as Washington.  I think my brain needs some fiction to level out all this non-fiction.

All in all a good week.  Got in my 10 miles of running in two runs, maybe I'll try for a third.  I just wasn't into anything but having a headache and feeling crappy on Friday.   A few miles on the mountain bike was also great.  I need to get a better clamp for the seat post, it's on the list just like taking off Ruby's chain and giving that a through cleaning has been on the list since July.

Sincerely,
Beth, who should consider checking items off the to do list not adding to the list.