AM: I went to the gym with Catherine before she went to work. Four miles on the treadmill in 30 minutes while watching Dreamgirls. I like the AF gym's system of running the same movie all day in the Cardio Cinema, but not when the movie isn't a great one for the treadmill, which has been the case for the last couple of days. not bad movies, just not good treadmill movies.
PM: I took a break from the unpacking and headed to Grove Creek for a run up the canyon. Down low the trail was great, and where there was snow it was well packed. But the further up I went, the fewer footprints there were and the sketchier the footing became. It was never treacherous, however. After a while, I was following a lone pair of footprints (Brooks Cascadias), and the person who had made them passed me on his way back down at about 1.6 miles. It turns out he had turned around almost immediately before that, and soon I was breaking fresh trail. Here things got tricky, because the trail had been traveled by others, but since the last time it had been covered by a couple of inches of snow. The result was that the ground was uneven, but I couldn't see the unevenness--I could only feel it as my feet broke through the snow. I reached the bench at exactly two miles and decided to sit and enjoy the view. After a while I decided to follow through with my original plan and try to reach Indian Spring. I left my jacket and my beanie on the bench and headed up the trail, but it seems as through few people have traveled past the bench this winter. Soon, I was running on about a foot of soft snow covered by an inch or less of icy crust. That meant that with every step the snow would support me for a fraction of a second before I would break through. This was annoying, and it slowed me down, but it caused a bigger, unexpected problem. Because tall-size tights aren't, and because I was wearing low-cut socks (a poor winter choice when your tights are too short), I had several inches of exposed skin on my lower leg. As I would break through the crusty snow on the surface, it would scrape my legs, and it wasn't long before it broke the skin and my ankles were bleeding. So, I decided to turn around a little more than a quarter mile past the bench. (Also, I saw some large paw prints that may or may not have belonged to something man-eating. Yikes). The run back down was fun but uneventful. The end.
| 