The Weekend

My friend Shanna from Aspen came down to Boulder for this last weekend, an infrequent occurrence for the most part. I think the last time she was down this year was for the Bolder Boulder at the end of May (which, despite being out here for three years at this point, I still have never been healthy for). In any case, we went for a run along Mesa Saturday morning/afternoon.

Saturday morning dawned bright. And cold. When I got up at 8AM it was around 20. Fortunately, by the time we met up around 11:00, it had warmed considerably, and ended at just about the perfect running temperature. Naturally, we ended up a little bit overdressed, but not terribly so.

The run itself was phenomenal. It's just fun to run with somebody as (supposedly) crazy as I am. We were alternately bounding and flying downhill, and pushing a bit uphill, passing other people and all the time keeping up a constant stream of conversation. This particular run just felt a lot freer than some I've done lately. It felt almost effortless, though given how my legs felt the next couple days, that obviously was not the case.

Being a sunny Saturday, naturally the trails were crowded. This led to a few interesting encounters with dogs that did not seem to realize that getting in the way of a runner on the trail was just not a good idea. One particularly small dog forced me to do a bit of acrobatics as it decided that right where my foot was going to come down was a good place to run to. Shanna had an encounter where the dog did not seem to realize that, if you put yourself in the way of a runners foot, you're going to get hit. But the dogs, and the runners, were none the worse for wear for the incidents, thankfully.

We ended up adding on the Flatiron loop to the end of the run. When Shanna said "Can we take my favorite way down?" I knew precisely what was coming. And, sure enough, after bombing down two more trails, startling a few more people, we ended up back at the trailhead, and within minutes were calmly sitting on a fence chatting again...

Once again, I brought my camera on the run only to completely forget to take any pictures. I was really not interested in stopping on this run.

More to come on the weekend topics later.