One Thousand Sixty-Five

January 31, 2020
6.69 Miles in 1:07:41
Mood: Trying not to slip.
Soundtrack: TV on the Radio "Seeds"

After running around Southglenn on Tuesday by choice, I felt almost forced to do the same this morning. For the past two evenings it has snowed for about an hour at around 7:00. This isn't a lot of snow, but somehow it had fallen hard enough to cause almost almost all of the sidewalks in our neighborhood to be quite icy. Even the usually well manicured sidewalks of The Streets at Southglenn were a little treacherous for awhile this morning. The good news is that it's supposed to get close to 70 degrees as a high on both Saturday and Sunday, so this slipperiness should be a thing of the past quite soon.

One Thousand Sixty-Four

January 28, 2020
8.40 Miles in 1:24:21
Mood: Blue skies and resupplies.
Soundtrack: The Head and The Heart "Let's Be Still"

Look at how blue that sky was this morning! That's not a camera trick, it looked awesome! Meanwhile I spent all morning circling Southglenn for Pokemon reasons, and regret nothing, because I needed items, and I actually had a good run.

One Thousand Sixty-Three

January 26, 2020
7.68 Miles in 1:14:26
Mood: Toughing it through the cold of January...unlike those resolving punks!
Soundtrack: Radiohead "In Rainbows"

I think that the New Years Resolutions people are fading out. Sunday morning at Wash Park was very quiet by Sunday at Wash Park standards. Part of the reason for that was the freezing temperatures, sure. However, a few weeks ago it felt much busier even on the cold days. It'll start getting more and more busy come spring, but for now, I think the bump of resolutioners is over. I, meanwhile, went over 100 miles for the month on this run and have now extended my streak to 6 straight months. Still a long way to match my 51 month streak, but I'm now over 10% of the way! Yay me!

Also, I listened to "In Rainbows" by Radiohead, an album that I listened to a ton back in 2007, mostly at first because it was free to download, which was attractive to me, but then because I started to really like it. Hadn't heard it in a few years, so I decided to give it another listen. I still like it. I then tried to listen to "OK Computer" an album which many music snobs consider one of their best. My lack of familiarity with it surely didn't help, but EGAD did I hate it. I got about two and a half songs in before I bailed because I couldn't take it. Maybe I need to give it a more fair listen, but I am not feeling that adventurous just yet.

One Thousand Sixty-Two

January 24, 2020
7.73 Miles in 1:18:21
Mood: Loving the pink skies, regardless of where.
Soundtrack: The Lumineers "III" and The Avett Brothers "I and Love and You"

Somehow there was no pink in the sky on the side of the sky where the sun comes up, it was completely boring in the east. Yet in the West, everything was pink and pretty so that I got pink clouds over the mountains. I didn't think that was how sunrises worked, but it was how it happened to work this morning.

One Thousand Sixty-One

January 21, 2020
8.43 Miles in 1:26:34
Mood: May as well get an early start.
Soundtrack: The Avett Brothers "True Sadness"

I woke up at 5:09 this morning, and stared at the clock for about 30 seconds. The advanced calculus that I was doing in my head was that if I stayed in bed until my alarm went off, I'd only get another 24 minutes of rest. I was instantly wide awake, and didn't think I'd  fall asleep asleep even a little, and the idea of just lying there for 24 minutes annoyed me, so I got up early. This led to getting out on my run early, which meant I spent a lot more time than usual in the dark of the pre-dawn morning. Being up that early is peaceful, but it's a little weird. Plus, with so much ice on the trails, it made me a little worried that I had a harder time seeing. Still, I managed to do just fine and was able to get in a long run and still arrive back home earlier than usual.

I also saw more geese lying in ice water at Ketring Lake, and have just come to accept that geese are insane.

The photo from today is an art installation at Gallop Park called "Skip to my Lou" it was installed in 2003, and I rather like it.

One Thousand Sixty

January 19, 2020
8.02 Miles in 1:16:32
Mood: Glove birds and the insane sleeping habits of geese.
Soundtrack: Bad Veins "Bad Veins" and "The Mess Remade"

The photo from this run is a glove in a tree for some reason. I took a picture of it, because from a slight distance, I thought this was some very interesting bird, and briefly I was excited to get close to it so that I could see what type of unusual bird it was. Then I realized it was a glove and had a good laugh at myself.

I also noticed geese that were just sleeping in the water that was sitting on top of the ice of Smith Lake on the north end of the park. It was freezing cold, around 15 degrees when I began the run, and yet these crazy birds were literally napping in ice water. Geese are nuts, man.

Finally, The reason why my map looks different below is because my Nike running app freaked out, and I had to uninstall it after the run and reload things because for whatever reason it wouldn't sync my Sunday morning run. Rather the app would just freeze up and crash every time I clicked on this run. So I had to manually enter the numbers and I didn't get a larger map, because computers. Oh well, at least I was able to screen cap a tiny version of the map (as seen below) and more importantly capture the numbers to enter in once I got the app working again.

One Thousand Fifty-Nine

January 14, 2020
8.01 Miles in 1:22:31
Mood: Feeling more lively than this goose!
Soundtrack: Mumford & Sons "Delta"

I came ever so close to staying in bed this morning, but thankfully I managed to find it in me to pull myself out of bed, because it was a lovely morning run! The most memorable thing from this run was when I ran next to Ketring Lake and found this dead goose lying in the grass. It looked incredibly odd, like it was sleeping with it's neck in a very uncomfortable position. No idea how it died, but it has not decomposed at all, and no living thing had messed with it, so it looked almost peaceful. Naturally, I had to take a picture.

One Thousand Fifty-Eight

January 12, 2020
7.36 Miles in 1:09:33
Mood: Good run, bad blog post.
Soundtrack: Of Monsters And Men "FEVER DREAM"

I have very little to say about this run. It was Wash Park on a Sunday and it was really nice (although pretty cold.)

One Thousand Fifty-Seven

January 10, 2020
6.98 Miles in 1:10:41
Mood: So tired I'm seeing dragons.
Soundtrack: Ben Folds Five "Whatever and Ever Amen" and "The Sound of the Life of the Mind"

I was so tired this morning. I was really dragging, but I feel pretty good about the almost seven miles I managed under circumstances where my body was clearly not feeling it. I took an unusual route north on University, which I rarely ever do, and I found a cool dragon mural on a stairwell in an Art Center that I had never seen before. I am very fond of it, as it's a cool dragon.

One Thousand Fifty-Six

January 9, 2020
8.28 Miles in 1:24:59
Mood: How far did I run?
Soundtrack: Trampled by Turtles "Stars and Satellites"

I feel like I've done this route hundreds of times, and yet, somehow it was over eight miles long this particular time. I'm not sure how I managed to get so many miles out of what feels like a seven mile run, but that's the magic of small difference, I guess. By far the coolest thing about this run was the pink and purple sky. It lasted for a very short time period, but the colors were incredible.

One Thousand Fifty-Five

January 7, 2020
7.49 Miles in 1:17:55
Mood: Loafing around.
Soundtrack: Jack Johnson "All The Light Above It Too"

I enjoy when my runs are also able to serve productive purposes other than just keeping me fit. We were out of bread, and if I wanted to eat a sandwich for lunch (which I did) I would need to buy a loaf, so I decided to make the first half of my run a trip to the grocery store. Then, I decided I may as well make that the photo. So I did. These are the shelves from which I purchased bread. It's all very exciting!

One Thousand Fifty-Four

January 5, 2020
7.51 Miles in 1:15:35
Mood: Time to check in on art.
Soundtrack: Urban Denver Street Sounds

I got through half a song before my earbuds died on me. Wireless earbuds are amazing when they work, but when they don't, it is a bit annoying. So, despite having no music, I pressed on from City Park towards RiNo to check out the walls which are constantly changing into new and awesome murals. I was not disappointed, as I saw so much cool stuff, including this amazing skeleton, which looked very much like it was checking out that BMW closely. I thought it was a longer run going from the park to Larimer Street, so when I arrived back at the park, I was only about four miles into my run, so I decided to get a few more miles by looping through the very fine City Park. It was a lovely morning, even without music.

I was also briefly offended by a guy who clearly didn't mean to offend me. As I was running back towards the park on 35th Ave, a biker headed in the opposite direction yelled encouragingly to me, "Way to go, guy! Get that New Year's run in!"

I'm pretty sure he thought I was engaged in my New Year's resolution of going for a run, and all I wanted to yell back was, "I do this all the time, the fact that it is a new year is immaterial!" However, I just smiled and kept running.

One Thousand Fifty-Three

January 3, 2020
7.21 Miles in 1:08:20
Mood: All by myself!
Soundtrack: Father John Misty "I Love You, Honeybear"

I took off for work on the week of New Year's, so it was a Friday morning, but I was able to sleep in and then head up to Wash Park for a rare run there on a weekday. It was rather chilly, and as I'm mostly used to being here on a Sunday morning, the lack of people was jarring. There are so many more people at the park on a Sunday. This is not surprising, but it still feels weird when you're used to a much higher rate of foot traffic. I felt like I was alone.

One Thousand Fifty-Two

January 1, 2020
7.52 Miles in 1:12:36
Mood: Let's not fall down.
Soundtrack: Freelance Whales "Weathervanes"

Snow was everywhere on the streets, so on the first day of 2020, I decided to run in circles in the one place where snow would NOT be...The Streets at Southglenn. I'm just over trying to run on streets that are so slippery that I am drastically increasing my likelihood of falling down. I get less elastic with each passing year, so the recovery time on a fall becomes more annoying as well. Solution: Don't fall down. This photo is a bit of a lie, it was taken on January 5th because I totally forgot to take a picture on New Years Day, but I DID most definitely run through this section and it looked very much the same, but probably a bit more snow.