Midnight Mountain Massacist, or something like that.
I spent all of about 15 seconds at the summit...my toes were going numb in just my FiveFingers and 6 inches of powder, so I looked out into the cloud I was surrounded in, couldn't see much, and turned back down the trail.
All day I was itching to go run Green Mountain again, but the day was too busy. But I used my desire to get out and run as a motivator to get my tasks done for the day, so as soon as the kids were in bed, I was able to knock out some property research in about 1/3 the time it normally takes me and I threw on my running clothes and headed to Boulder at 10:45 pm
I ran most of the way to the peak this time, if I walked it was only scrambling or pulling myself up the steepest sections. But despite this, it took me longer than Monday because it was much more slick due to 4-6 inches of snow on the trail and it was dark. It took me exactly 1 hour to reach the summit compared to 55 minutes on Monday.
When I was about 40 minutes into the run, my toes were pretty cold and numb, and I was seriously questioning whether I should go on. But I really wanted to make it to the summit. Also, I knew from experience that my feet get cold for some reason when I'm going up steep trails, but going down they almost immediately warm up. I was hedging my bets and hoping that was the case, but having my doubts and wondering if I was going to get to the top with numb feet and still have an hour of freezing to do on the way down.
Sure enough, almost as soon as I started going down hill the blood started flowing in my feet. Within minutes my feet were completely comfortable and stayed that way the rest of the run down. I don't fully grasp why it makes such a big difference in warmth of the feet going down hill, but I'll take it! Toward the bottom, my feet were sweating and it actually felt refreshing to hit the powdery sections again...weird.
6.47 Miles - 1:49:04 - 16:51/mile - HR: 143 - Ascent/descent: 3300 ft (apparently the gps isn't completely accurate/consistent since it said 3600 for the same run on monday, maybe there are less or more satellites in range at that time of night.)
What a fun run. Just like on Monday when I turned the final corner and saw my car I was kind of bummed that I was back already.
I took a few pictures at the trail head, and it was pretty interesting to me to see what happened when I adjusted the shutter speed and let in more light...check it out...all these were taken within seconds, at about 1:30 AM...funky how it looks like sunrise in some of them eh??
