A new season begins

The final Vakava rollerski time trials of the year were on November 9th, and that evening it began to snow, about as good of a seasonal transition as there could be. With the roads less suitable for bike riding (although by no means impossible, I have seen evidence of several bike riders still out and about) I decided to switch over to run commuting. Running to work is nice in the winter, it is warmer than biking, but keeps me cool enough that I don't arrive at work sweaty as long as I keep the pace in control. I do have to wake up a bit earlier to make it to work at the same time, and carry a headlamp for the run home, but it is great to be outside enjoying the weather. The Salomon Speedcross shoes I won at the Birkie Marathon this fall have made great snow shoes so far, the traction is great and my feet stay pretty dry as long as snow doesn't go over the top of the shoe.

Great snow runners

While these shoes work decent for snowy roads, they really shine on the trails. Northfield is fortunate to now have some pretty fun singletrack trails thanks to the Cannon River Offroad Cycling & Trails (CROCT) group. In the last couple months they've built several miles of fun trails in Sechler park. I've been running these trails every chance I get and since there has been snow it's been great to see lots of bike tracks out there too.

CROCT volunteers trail building

I've been stepping up my cleaning efforts at home the last couple weeks to try to cut down on the amount of random rabbit fur laying everywhere, but there is an amazing amount of it everywhere. With no rabbit running around I'm not sure where it keeps coming from, but I'm making progress. I also had to break down and turn on my heat. When the temp outside sits below freezing for days on end I begin to fear for my pipes, and I have to admit that coming in out of the cold to a warm house is a nice luxury. It is now a balmy 56 degrees in my house when I get home. I have on occasion had guests complain about the cold, so if you are coming to visit give me a heads up and I'll heat the place up a bit more.

I did have one occasion to turn the heat up already. With snow on the way I had a bunch of EMXC folks over for a Fast Wax Party. There was a lot of ski waxing, pizza eating, and FIS World Cup race watching. It was fun getting everyone together to talk skiing and get the boards ready to go.

While there is enough snow around Northfield to ski on, I took the opportunity last weekend to head up to my parents and get some ski time on the already groomed Balsam Branch Trails. The conditions up there were good when I started skiing, and the groomer was out the whole time I was, so by the time I left the trails were gorgeous. It was hard to leave conditions were so great, but figured since I made the trip up it would probably be a good idea to actually spend some time with my parents.

Back in Northfield the EMXC crew has made it out skiing a few days this week in the Upper Arb. There is no grooming and limited options that aren't gravely, but it is great to get out anyway. There is one decent hill for specific strength, so I gave that a try one day. It's really fun to see the newer skiers picking up pretty much right where they left off last season. I'm excited to see how they progress as the ski season goes on.

Jeff came down to Northfield to run with Nichole today, so I joined them and got my first chance to try pushing the jogging stroller Nate and Nichole got. It does roll much easier than the walking stroller Nichole had been running with, especially through the snow or into a headwind. Little G seemed fine, she was snoozing pretty much the whole run, although she started to get chatty the last couple miles. The pacing worked out pretty well with me getting the extra bit of work pushing the stroller, Jeff and Nate running, and Nichole getting a little bit of a pull from Mesa. I'm sure we made quite the spectacle rolling around town.

The middle of the end

So I left off my last post still in Ohio, but I did eventually work my way back to Minnesota. The timing worked out amazingly well so that I could attend my friend Rob Nichol's wedding on my way back through Wisconsin. My original plan was to stay with Sharon on my way back through, but crappy stuff at her lab made that not look like a good option, so I ended up just stopping by for supper on my way through and staying with my friend Bjorn in Milwaukee the night before the wedding. I stopped to pick up a wedding gift and card in West Lafayette and got back out to my car to find the door locked and my keys sitting on the car seat. I called Sharon to come to my rescue and tried to figure out a way to break into my car. Luckily Sharon had AAA (not an organization I approve of, but that is a story for another day) and after we wandered over to Applebee's to eat they showed up and got me back into my car. Not at all the afternoon I had planned, but at least it wasn't boring.

I got stuck in some traffic in Chicago but still got to Bjorn's before it got too late. We spent some time catching up since I don't get to see him often, and headed to bed so we would have time to adventure in the morning. We decided to go running. Bjorn hasn't been doing many long workouts, so I was counting on something short and fun. I had 2 hours before I needed to leave to get to the wedding on time. The run did not end up being short or easy, but boy was it fun. Bjorn has a few great trail routes figured out around the area, and we ran for 1:30 with almost no pavement along the way. There were some great views of downtown, riverside trails, and old buildings. It was also great to chat with Bjorn because he has always been someone I looked up to, and is also one of my only remaining single friends. Relationships have always been a struggle for me, and I have basically no dating experience, so it was good to have someone in a similar place to commiserate with, although Bjorn is far more gregarious than I am. (He's also a doctor, an amazing athlete, and a fearless adventurer in case there are any single ladies reading this blog looking for a good catch ;)

I made it to the wedding with time to spare. It was a great ceremony. Rob is an amazing guy, and Katherine has seemed like a pretty awesome person too the couple times I've met her.

Rob & Katherine Nichols

I spent a long time talking to Ben Kirmse, a River Falls alum who I've had some good PR battles with over the years. We've done similar races, but I'm not sure if we've actually raced head to head before. He did Boston to Big Sur a couple years ago, so I was picking his brain for recovery tips before I try it next spring. They had 13 days between the races the year he did it, so a whole extra week more than I'm going to have.

The next morning I got a nice rollerski in to explore the roads around Marshfield, joined some wedding folks for brunch, and headed back home. I stopped in to say hi to baby Greta, and deliver some very small clothes Garrison and Kristen sent back for her and then happily parked my car for about a week.

The next week was fairly uneventful except for Halloween. I didn't get many trick or treaters, but I headed up to Erik & Elspeth's for a S'more party on the 1st. I was still in a Halloween mood, so I dressed up as a s'more for the party. It wasn't a great costume, but it took all of 5 minutes to put together, so well worth the effort I would say.

Emily took a picture of my S'more costume, I was the chocolate

The next weekend I jumped into the Arctic Commando 5k at Battle Creek. Having just run a pretty decent half a couple weeks before I figured I was in pretty good shape. The hills on the Battle Creek course proved otherwise. I still raced well and won by nearly 2 minutes, but it was barely under 20 minutes, and it was all I could do to keep myself from walking up several of the hills, in a 5k! This was enough to get my motivation for training back up, and I got some good rollerskiing, bounding, and running in the next week. 

Then the snow came. Tune in next time where I will hopefully get this blog caught up to the present day and leave the past in the past.

The beginning of the end

I've been up to all kinds of crazy adventures since I last posted. I'll give a quick rundown of them here. I had this post ready to go last week, but put up the Mozzarella post instead.

After Grandma's this summer I was dreaming of continuing to build on the great spring of running to try for a fast half marathon in the fall. I decided on the Columbus 1/2 because it has a fast course with good competition, my friend Sharon grew up near Columbus and offered a place to stay before the race, and gave me a great excuse to visit my friends Garrison and Kristen out in Ohio who just had a lovely baby girl this spring.

Long story short, my awesome summer of running never quite came together right. I was trying to juggle too many things training and racing wise, plus had my whole schedule periodically jostled around by the study I was participating in, so I never really got in a good training groove. I held on to my spring fitness pretty well though, so I was hopeful that I could still throw down a PR.

I started the long trek out to Ohio with my running gear, bike, and a bunch of stuff for baby Maggie. Before we get to that part of the adventure though, something else really exciting happened. Nate & Nichole gave birth to their first child, a super tiny little girl named Greta. Since this was a pretty big occasion I deemed it cow suit worthy, and suited up to go to the hospital and pay the new parents a visit.

Saying Hello to baby Greta!

Then I headed home to do some last minute baking so I would have a snack supply for the long drive ahead. I made it out to Garrison & Kristen's in time to take a quick nap and visit with them before Sharon and Erin picked me up to head to Columbus. We got to Sharon's parents and pretty much went straight to bed. The next morning we drove into the city to pick up packets and get a bit of a look at the race course. Sharon and I got our shake out run in, Sharon's folks made a good pasta diner, we did some race/cheering strategizing, and that was the day.

I couldn't have asked for much better conditions than greeted us on race morning. It was just a couple degrees above freezing with little wind and clear skies. Sharon's folks drove us down to Columbus and Sharon and I took off to find some porta potties and get a warmup in while the cheering crew headed out to find a place on the course. I packed a lot of warm clothing anticipating a cold race and cold biking while I was visiting Garrison, but besides gloves and arm warmers I didn't need much. Erin ended up wearing most of my warm weather gear for standing out cheering.

The race started well, I dropped right into 5:35 mile pace. Around mile 5 though the pace started to seem like a bit of a struggle. I held under 5:40 pace until about mile 9, then started to fade. The lead women caught me at this point, and I picked up the pace for a couple miles to give them a good pull, but around mile 11 I just couldn't hold pace anymore. The legs didn't hurt all that bad, they just felt blocky and sluggish. I kept all of my miles under 6:00, but ended up running a 1:14:40, less than 10 seconds from a PR. It sucked not hitting my goal, but coming so close at least reaffirmed that I'm holding on to my fitness well, a good sign for ski season.

The rest of the week went by very quickly. Garrison and I got out road biking one day and only got a little bit lost. We mountain biked one day on some fun trails, but the wet leaves made for treacherous going. I rollerskied one day while Garrison biked with the baby trailer and Kristen and her sister Haley both biked along too. That was a merry adventure, there aren't many rollerskiers around Dayton I'm sure, so I got many strange looks. We played a few fun board games as well. Betrayal at house on the hill, Elder sign, and Level 7, which we spent as much time looking at the rule book for as actually playing I think, but which has a lot of strategy to it in addition to a whole lot of rules.

Garrison homebrews, and while I was out there we started his first ever recipe that he created. It will be a Milk Chocolate Russian Imperial Stout, and we decided to call it the milk chocolate caucus, because it is heavy, very black, and uh, the caucus mountains are in Russia. Yeah, lets go with that.
It was fun learning a bit about homebrewing, and this recipe used a lot of materials. We used 20lb of various grains, cocoa nibs, and lactose for the milk flavor. I'm excited to try the finished product out when he is home for Christmas.

This post is getting longish, so I think I'm going to break it off here for now. Tune in next week (or at least not today) for the exciting conclusion of my Ohio road trip and the weeks that followed. One last note though, it is starting to snow here and I'm super stoked for that! Not much in Northfield yet, but the cities are getting dumped on.

Goodbye Mozzarella

Yesterday was a dreary day. The weather was damp, there was no sign of the sun, and I got home from work and there was no Mozzarella there to greet me. I wasn't too surprised by this, I had fed her when I stopped home for lunch and figured she was sleeping off an early supper. I didn't see her out on her rug however, her favorite sleeping spot as of late. I went in my room to change clothes and head out rollerskiing and found her on the floor at the head of my bed. That is her safe spot where she goes if there is company or anything that spooks her. She was not sleeping in a normal rabbit pose however. It was pretty obvious right away that she was dead.

Mozze right after I got her.

I was surprised at first. She had seemed fine when I was home at lunch, she had eaten her breakfast apple core and seemed excited about getting supper early. There were no obvious signs of distress or that anything was out of the ordinary. I wasn't sure how to process this, so I put on my rollerskis and headed out to meet Nate, figuring the workout would give me a bit more time to come to grip with things. This summer Mozze developed a tumor that turned out to be a pretty aggressive cancer, so I knew her clock was ticking down quickly, I just didn't expect her to go so suddenly.

First time out on the lawn

I decided I would bury Mozzarella under the apple tree I had planted a couple years ago, so I wrapped her in an old T-shirt and put on my headlamp to go dig the hole. The cold, dreary weather seemed fitting for this activity.

Out exploring the snow. Mozze loved being out in the cold, my kind of pet!

The rest of the evening and still this morning I was surprised by how empty the house felt without her. I have lived by myself for a number of years now and always been fine with it, but I really loved having Mozzarella around. She was never the most cuddly pet, she wasn't a big fan of being picked up, but she loved to be around me whatever I was doing. She would wander around the kitchen while I was cooking, sleep by my feet while I was on the computer, and sprint laps around the living room while I was reading. She always slept at the head of my bed and almost always sprinted out to greet me when I got home from work. I loved watching her hop around and explore, always carefree and inquisitive. I got used to routines like leaving my apple cores or carrot tops for her when I was making my lunch or closing the door to my office when I wasn't home so she wouldn't go in and chew on my computer cables.

Trying to figure out how to get to her apple

I'm glad that at least she passed quickly and didn't suffer much pain from her cancer. She was cheerful and peppy right up to the end, so I'll always remember her as being excitable and full of life. I'm glad I got to share my home with her and will miss her dearly. Goodbye Mozzarella.