Mist season

It's been one of those perfect weeks of spring, where decidedly "Un-Colorado" weather settles in for a few days — long enough to saturate the dry ground, but not so long as to wear out its welcome. Some of the "300 Days of Sunshine" proponents might disagree, but I enjoy this short season of gray mist. It reminds me of my favorite long runs in California, or the rose-colored glasses I now have for Juneau. I loved this misty weather even when it was 38 degrees and pouring, and I opted to go to the gym instead of enduring a sloppy bike ride — because you don't need to get needlessly coated in cold mud to appreciate spring hydration.

 The animals seem to be enjoying spring as well. Deer and turkeys have taken over the place, hummingbirds returned in force, our outdoor goldfish are full of vigor after their winter stupor, and neighbors are posting photos of a mountain lion family on the prowl all over the neighborhood — which may explain why the deer are bedding down so close to the house. I also encountered my first black bear of the season, while driving home on Thursday. A small bear, he appeared to be hanging out more or less in our driveway before I startled him, and then watched his adorable bear paws bound along the edge of the road before he veered into the brush. My parents were visiting at the time, so I went inside to warn them — just in case they had any food in their car.

Our friends Dan and Amy from Alaska visited earlier in the week. So it was a busy week where the weather was often rough and I didn't get outside all that much, except for the afternoon before my parents arrived on Wednesday, when summer made an appearance. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and temperatures nudged past 80 degrees, so I slathered on multiple applications of sunscreen — still not enough to avoid second-degree burns along my wrist, arm, and a sliver of my lower back — packed three liters of ice water and a sandwich — which I neglected to eat after getting too wrapped up in making good progress over a six-hour ride with a deadline — and borrowed Beat's cross bike for a blistering fast ride on still-muddy gravel and gravel-strewn pavement.

It will probably surprise no one but myself that I fell in love with the cross bike. Beat has owned this bike for more than a year, and I'm just now trying it out. I've always been a cross/gravel skeptic because they seem like bikes that are just a little worse at everything. A road bike is better on pavement, and a mountain bike is more fun and comfortable on dirt, even non-technical dirt. Shortly after we moved to Colorado, when my breathing issues were at their worst, I abandoned my road bike because I physically could not pedal it up some of the steepest grades near our home. Back then, even my low-geared mountain bike would stall out on the Flagstaff Road grinders, and I'd crawl into a nearby ditch to catch my breath and sometimes cry a little bit. These were bad times. I didn't talk about them widely, because I was ashamed.

My sometimes-decimated and still-unpredictable fitness is the reason the road bike hasn't been ridden in two years. Now it needs new tires and a little work before it can reasonably be used again. After two years of grinding away on knobby tires and studded tires and loaded fat bikes and bikes with suspension, the cross-bike intro has been a startling revelation. This bike demands so little of me to fly up gravelly hills and 25 miles of rollers along the Peak-to-Peak Highway. There was a 12-mile descent where I could pedal much of the time — my mountain bike is geared so low that I usually have to lazily coast, often while freezing my butt off because it's winter, for 45 minutes. I was buzzing by the time I met Beat in town, because it's not every day I can enjoy so many miles and so many hills with so much scenic goodness for so little effort.

The following morning I was sporting an embarrassing patchy sunburn to meet my new primary care physician. The physical went well — most notably, my blood pressure has dropped to 108/68 after regularly hitting 138/100 for much of February. When I mentioned this to an observing nurse practitioner, she said, "Well, you're probably more active now than you were during the winter." Yeah, about that.

But, really, it's satisfying to identify as healthy ... for now at least. The doctor graciously agreed to examine the toe I broke three weeks earlier, and concluded, "you're probably okay to run." I expected more caution than that ... I'd been dutifully limping around in my orthopedic sandal until recently, and the toe still hurt. These doctors I manage find ... always encouraging me to go wild and take chances. Where are all of the supposedly conservative medical providers all of my athletic friends seem to complain about? Anyway, since removing the buddy tape, I've noticed that my previously curled and crooked pinkie toe has actually straightened a bit. The once-sideways nail, which is already ruined from constant pressure against the side of my shoes, now faces upward. Genetics left me with bad toes, and injury actually fixed one of them.


With the doctor's blessing, I was able to squeeze in one hike with my dad — a conservative five miles along the gradual west ridge trail to Green Mountain, walking slowly while wearing my ancient hiking boots. Dad was patient with me as I ambled along, grumbling about toe pain. Only later did I realize that if I remove the buddy tape, my toe doesn't hurt at all — I was probably wrapping it too tightly. But it was nice to spend a couple of days at home with my folks, even if our adventures were underwhelming. It seems as though I'm either injured or sick or recovering from surgery every time they come to visit.

 Beat went out for a long run on Sunday in prep for the Bryce 100 in two weeks. I was filled with FOMO — last spring I was doing my own long runs before the Bryce 100, and I admittedly miss compulsory adventures. The optional ones are okay, I guess. The weather had again turned sloppy and cold, so I donned the big boots for a hike up the west ridge to Bear Peak. At the summit, I felt so good that I continued down Shadow Canyon to wrap around the Mesa Trail to Fern Canyon, having forgotten how long that route really takes — it turned my one-hour hike into almost four. But my toe felt fine, and it was fun to splash through ankle-deep mud in the big waterproof boots and breathe in cool, humid air.

Fern Canyon, with its 1,800 feet of climbing in 0.85 miles, is always a fun fitness test. I pushed it a little and missed my PR by just five seconds. Five seconds! This was intended to depict tired satisfaction ... yay, I haven't been running in a month, and it's wet and muddy and I'm wearing heavy boots, but I almost got it.

As this cold front came and went with the lowest temperature registering a balmy 37 degrees, it's time to accept that winter is truly over, and the window for hopeful instances of late-spring snow has closed. This is always a somber realization for me ... summer is coming. But it's nice to head into the hot season feeling healthy, if a bit aimless, for now.