faster with age

     I think it's winter again. There was snow on the roads this morning with temps at 25 deg with a strong wind. I went 6 1/2 miles at 8:52 pace. The footing wasn't the greatest but it wasn't terrible. I just took it easy and took a 7 or 8 min break halfway.

     PM   Ran 4.2 very easy miles at 9:05 pace. The snow was melted from the roads.

     Went for 25 miles on the mt bike this morning. It was windy and snowing a little. The wind seemed to get stronger as the time went on and unfortunatly the last 7 miles were mostly directly into the wind and the gravel is still a bit loose from being graded a couple of weeks back which made for a long slow ride of about 1:50  but a good workout.

     PM   Ran 5.7 miles slow and easy.

     It seemed more like Jan. than April this morning. Temps were in the lower 20s with a very strong north wind blowing and the roads covered with snow and ice. My first 2 miles were into the wind. The wind was so strong and the footing so poor [even wearing shoes with screws in the bottom] that I was barely running under 10 min. pace with about an 8:30 effort [according to HR]. After that it didn't get a lot better with 3 inches of fresh snow [instead of ice from being driven on] which I enjoy but it is slow. I went 7 miles with an 8 min. break halfway through at 9:03 pace.

      I know spring is coming. I had a flock of 12 swans fly right over me low yesterday on my bike ride [There is about 300 that just returned to Swan Lake up the road in the last 2 weeks]  and I heard a frog croaking in the pond a couple days back which seemed odd with a lot of the ground still snow covered [ it was a warm day] But there was no sign of spring today.

     PM     Ran 4.6 miles easy. Picked it up the last .25 to probably low 6 min pace. Overall pace 8:27

     My son was out of school for spring break this week so he and my wife and I left for southern Utah. We drove down to Arches National park where we met up with my parents. We got one nice hike in before dark.

I was hoping to get a run in this morning but the wind flapped the tent so bad all night that I didn't sleep much until it had calmed in the morning and then I just felt like sleeping in. I sleep well in a tent with the sound of rain or a nearby creek but not in a strong wind. We had a few off and on rain showers but the day wasn't too bad. We did some more hiking including the hike to Delicate Arch.

     This morning we woke up to 3 or 4 inches of snow in the Arches campground. The tent was really sagging under the weight. I was planning to run this morning but the warm bag was just to hard to get out of in the cold tent and I was still tired from not sleeping much the night before. The Moab marathon was supposed to start this morning not too far away and I guess it was canceled but  a couple of guys on the blog [Bill Mandler and Nate the Great] ran it anyway. It sounded like quite an experience from reading their race reports.

      We left camp early and drove down to Canyonlands National Park for the day. Fortunatly it was lower elevation and we eventually got down out of the snow. We did a lot of four wheeling down there including driving over the famous Elephant Hill which is like rock climbing in a jeep. We did a lot of exploring old Anazazi ruins and rock climbing. We got back to our camp up in Arches late after dark.