Time Flies...

Yeah, yeah...I know. It's been a very long time since I've posted. I thought that I'd have more time after running the JFK50 but silly me went and signed up for the Bel Monte 50K which is at the end of March. So other than about a month or so of low mileage, I'm back to running long on weekends. It also doesn't help that I've been extremely busy at work so the last thing I want to do when I get home is to get back on the computer. I figure 10-12 hours a day at the computer is plenty. Tom also convinced me to join Facebook, so there's another time suck when I am at the computer. Sheesh!

Anyway, I'm still knitting. I'm just knitting excruciatingly slowly. The current project is the Cloning Anemone socks from the 2008 Rockin' Sock Club. The colors in the yarn are gorgeous and remind me of the colors on a coral reef (Tina was actually inspired by tidal pools). There are so many colors in this yarn: yellow-green, brown, blue, purple. It keeps the knitting interesting. When I knitting the earth tones, I imagine walking along a rocky shoreline. When I get to the blues and purples, I'm watching the ever-changing color of the water as the sun hits it. I can almost hear the waves crash on the shore. (Okay, that last bit might be somewhat of an exaggeration. But not much.)

The knitting is slow because there are two rows where the stitches cross. Since the yarn is thin, I'm working without a cable needle. It's tricky and I'm terrified that I'm going to drop a stitch and not be able to recover it. At the rate I'm going, I suspect it will take me close to a year to knit one sock.

The Joy of Trail Running
Our long run last weekend was on the Appalachian Trail, going from Bear's Den south to Morgan's Mill, about a 13-mile round trip. However, those 13 miles are incredibly difficult. That section of trail is very rocky and tends to be steep (my little GPS thingy recorded over 5400 feet of ascent. Imagine our surprise as we were driving to the run to see snow. We didn't get any snow at home, although it did look like it had rained a little bit. The snow didn't make the running any easier (fortunately, the ground was frozen, otherwise it would have been quite muddy), but it did make it more enjoyable. The leaves on the laurels were capped in white. There were places where the sun hit the trail just right, causing the snow crystals to act like prisms. We were running on flecks of rainbows.

Those moments of beauty transcend the really low points: the crushing fatigue on the return trip, the despair upon realizing that in six weeks you have to run more than twice the distance on similar terrain, and the embarrassment of tripping on a perfectly flat, rock-free section of trail and eating dirt. But even that is preferable to running on the road with cars whizzing by.

I'll be running 19 miles tomorrow (on the road, not on the AT). With any luck, we'll be running in snow. And with more luck, it won't be windy.

Once again, winter has been a big disappointment with very little snow, although we certainly seem to have our share of cold weather (lots of morning temperatures in the teens) and wind. Now that the days are getting longer, I'm ready for winter to just take a hike. I don't even care about getting snow anymore. I just want warmer, sunny weather.

That's it for now...this post is sort of disjointed (kind of like Sheepish Annie'sWednesday Night Bullet Points, except that it's not Wednesday and there are no bullet points!