2013 In Review

2013 was one of my most (if not the most) inconsistent running years of my life, with a variety of circumstances derailing running plans.  But! It was not a complete disaster by any means.
First, the numbers:

• total mileage for the year: 2055 (lowest annual mileage since 2005)
• mileage by the end of May: 1071.5 - already 52% of my annual mileage
• highest mileage month: March (258.5 miles)
• lowest mileage month: August (92 miles)
• longest run: 16 miles (January 9th)

hmmmm.... yep, really a rather pathetic year of running.  But let's move on to some of the many many highlights!

A sunrise run, on the first weekend of the new year, on one of the newer trails in Boulder County - a trail that is quickly becoming a favorite:

February: Roadtrip! to Arizona for some CU Women's basketball and a visit with Kendall's cousin and aunt. Bonus feature: warm weather running!

Cousin Martha and her pack of dogs - Tucson

Aunt Virginia

In March I treated myself to a new (to me) trail - Big Dry Creek.  15 miles out and back-ish ending at bro/sis-in-law's house and a lovely brunch.  New trail, lots of miles, can't beat it!

April: the snowiest of months. Multiple dumps of mega-inches of snow - totaling 47.6 inches for the month in Boulder -  made training for Memorial Day's Bolder Boulder very tricky. Kendall and I decided to road-trip out of snowy Boulder and go to Petoskey to visit my mom ....where it snowed on Mother's Day!




The highlight of the May running scene in Boulder is, of course, the Bolder Boulder held annually on Memorial Day.  It was a bright and beautiful Colorado day, which was happily shared with running buddies Connie and Anita putting the frosting on the cake of our spring training regime.

Anita, Connie & me - all smiles after the Bolder Boulder

June had multiple highlights:
Putting up the Little Free Library that Kendall and I had built and which now stands, well-used, by our neighborhood school, through floods, frost, and furious winds.

Picnic at Chautauqua

Cousin John and his wife Marcie visited Boulder during their trip to Colorado for an architecture conference - which meant we had the pleasure of playing tour guide!



My grad school study buddies had our first ever reunion 33 years after graduating!  The reunion, held in Telluride, was great fun - and the running up there wasn't too shabby either.

July was also action-packed, including:
A visit from cousin Dan and his wife Yi Lu - another opportunity to play Boulder tour guide.  Woohoo!

Dan & Yi Lu during a stroll along the Boulder Creek Path

And on one outstanding weekend, the last weekend of July, we had a Miller family reunion (in Tabernash, Colorado) and a wedding of family friends Shahara and Eddie (in Vail, Colorado).  A whole lot of fun in a whirlwind few days!

A passel of Millers

Cousins (Kendall, Martha, Keith, Jack, Andy, Steve, Sarah & James)

All dressed up in go-to-wedding garb: Devon, Corinne, Paul, Paula, Kendall, Dave

 August brought us trails, music, and another visit to the glorious Great Lakes all via a leisurely road trip across the northern plains from Boulder to Petoskey.

Fiberglass model yard - & Kendall

Prairie flowers

Petoskey Steel Drum band - drums at the ready

Sunset over Little Traverse Bay

 

Paula and mom

September was 

The Flood.

October had a highlight that actually included running!  Up the Manitou Incline with running buddy, Connie, to celebrate her 60th birthday.  Here's to adventurous running buddies & birthdays!

Connie at the top of the Manitou Incline

November was a blur, moving mom into Independence Village so she would be able to live in a nice warm apartment this winter surrounded by folks and festivities - and with someone else doing the cooking and company for her meals - followed shortly thereafter by a grand Miller Thanksgiving.

December brought frigid temperatures to Boulder.  This photo was taken at the end of a 9-degree run.  December 4th.  The same day my Aunt Helen, my dad's little sister, died at age 99 and almost one-half years old.

This past weekend we were in Ann Arbor to celebrate her life with my cousins and many friends from all walks of her life.  She was a marvelous woman who lit up every room she walked into with her smile.  She also brought a smile to my dad's face every time he saw her as they would grin at eachother with matching twinkles in their eyes.  I was lucky to be her niece.

Pop and Aunt Helen, 1995

Me and Aunt Helen, 2005

Cousins Dan, Jim, Kathleen, Carolyn & John Murphey

Why take on those frigid temperatures?

Another cold day. Another lack of gumption. Yet again I bundle up and go out into the frigid world to log a few more miles.  Why oh why?  Well.... perhaps to see the magic spun by the frost giant during the night:

Our Little Free Library - offering a warm read on a frosty day

:

And now it's shorts weather!

After our deep freeze, the temperature pendulum took a big swing.  Today, 'twas shorts running weather!  Because I've been skimping on my weekend long runs, I decided to go big with today's midweek run.  First up, a hill workout with Connie and Anita.  From there I ran about 4 miles to an appointment and from there, another roughly 3 miles to a haircut.  From there, a leisurely walk home completed my outing.  Upon arriving home...but what did I see?!  Santa?! Putting on a chimney cap?!  Say wha?!

Once the chimney project was completed,  we moved on to some real decorating - and tonight we have this!

14

Layered up while volunteering at the Colder Boulder on Saturday. -3 at the start, +7 at the end. Note the ice columns in the pond behind me!

14: the number of articles of clothing I don when going out for a run in this multi-day "deep freeze" that Boulder is experiencing.  Today's run to my volunteer job was done in an absence of degrees - a nice round zero was proudly displaying itself on our thermometer this morning.  I must say, the novelty of this frigidness is wearing very very thin.

The clothing, bottom to top:

• trail shoes (a tad warmer than road shoes and definitely grippier on what are now snow-packed-so-hard-and-cold roads that slick is the word of the day), 
• socks (one pair if one of my two extra warm pairs are clean, two pair if not...today my smart wool socks were at the ready), 
• one pair of underwear (Paul didn't think this should count as a layer but can you imagine how cold you'd be 'down there' without the undies?!), 
• two pairs of tights/leggings, 
• a jog bra (see underwear note), 
• two long-sleeve running shirts, 
• one LL Bean made-in-Canada-so-it's-gotta-be-warm-right? warmer layer athletic shirt,
• one neck warmer - one of the best winter running clothing  purchases I have ever splurged on,
• one polypro running hoodie and boy that hoodie makes a difference
• one LL Bean jacket that is the warmest jacket I've ever run in - pretty much only wearable if below 10 degrees. My folks got it for me.  I'm guessing when they ordered it they told the person they needed a warm running jacket and the person saw they were from Petoskey, Michigan and - voila! - warmest running jacket on the planet was shipped out.  Although I seldom wear it, I am oh-so-glad I have it on these below 10 degree days!
• one pair of Saucony two-layer mittens, the race giveaway for the Fast and Flurryous cross-country race a couple of winters ago and the warmest hand-wear I've ever run in,
• one Colder Boulder roasty toasty hat (if it's windy, I also wear a thin winter hat under the Colder Boulder hat - today all sun, no wind - weehaw!).

A Run for the Vaughans

Pop & Aunt Helen 1995

My dad was one of six kids of a coal-mining father - and the last of those kids, my dad's little sister Helen, died this week at the age of 99 and nigh onto 1/2 years.  She invariably had a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye - and brought that out in anyone she happened to be with, most particularly my dad.

All the Vaughan kids were full of life, ready to take on an adventure and find the joy in most anything they did.  (In the case of my Uncle Porter, maybe a little too much adventure.)






Today as I ran, reminiscing about my dad and aunts and uncles, I was thinking I'd do a fairly routine loop in deference to the 6 degrees and ice/snow-packed roads.  Then I saw the view and just had to follow it.  'Twas up on the trails for me - the first time since the September floods - and it was glorious.  Up up up over snow and rocks and through trees.  Living life to the fullest.  Like a Vaughan.

Skunk Canyon, December 6, 2013

Plan versus Weather

Just back from my nine-degree run

Running reality has been following the running plan quite well lately.  Easy days are easy, hills are climbed repeatedly once per week, and long runs highlight the weekends.  Best of all: feet, joints, brain and spirit are all happy!  Then, after a number of balmy days - including a run in shorts a few days ago -  the weather took an extreme turn.  Yesterday's run was in snow and a temperature all of nine degrees.  Today's run was in very welcome brilliant sunshine which made every one of the six degrees feel all so toasty (ha!).  But ya' know, with enough layers, the cold temps really are quite manageable.  I also recently treated myself to a new pair of Brooks Adrenaline trail shoes which have proven to be nicely grippy over the packed snow.  I did skip this week's hills, though...the shoes aren't quite that grippy and I didn't think the huffing and puffing that typically accompanies our hill workouts would be particularly beneficial to my lungs given that the huffing would be of extraordinarily frigid air.  So - it's been loopdy-loops of quiet neighborhoods as we hunker down within this deep freeze.  The mark of a good plan is its flexibility, eh?!

Wintry mornings

So it's dark when I leave the house.  So the temperatures are in the teens. So there's snow and ice on the ground.  Ah....so what when you've got views like this.  Let's run some more!

Looking west from the Meadowlark Trail, November 23, 2013

17?! Snow?! Say wha?!

I waited and waited and waited today but the temps refused to climb out of the teens and the snow refused to stop flying.  Thus I had to refresh my memory about just how one dresses for this kind of weather:  w
hich tights or tights combination, which socks keep the tootsies warmest, which shoes best grip the snow, how many layers on top, which jacket fits over all those layers, don't forget the neck warmer, where are my toastiest mittens. Quite the production!

No such questions for Taz.  Put on the harness and leash and the pup is ready to go - and lovin' it!

DANK Loop

After September's floods and widespread trail destruction, creativity was required to find good locations for hill repeats.  We seem to have landed upon a winner - nicknamed DANK in my log since it follows DArtmouth-Norton-Kenwood streets.  It is located in a quiet neighborhood in southwest Boulder, near NIST, and measure out to a .7247 mile loop that goes up up up then down down down, which we run over and over (and over and over and over) again (5 loops is our tops so far). On some mornings, we're lucky enough to get a dose of extra inspiration from the CU ski team doing much of the same loop on their roller skis.  On other mornings, we've learned the hazards of talking basketball (running buddy Connie and I are both avid followers of the CU women's basketball team) while running the loop. ( Loop time while talking basketball: 8:40s; time on final loop when we quieted down: 7:53.)  We were out there again this morning, running beneath a blue sky and setting moon - with very ominous clouds hanging just over the Continental Divide; supposedly  a snow storm is moving in tonight.  The next big test for the loop is whether or not those streets are plowed in the winter!