Midweek, Year's End

Morning weigh-in: 178#, 12.5% BF

 

No ride last night: I got home and just felt too tired/drained -- not so much physical as just ....bleh... Spent the evening playing with GRASS, putting a few more trails into my Sals database. I read about some people who use their Garmin's "Saved Rides" feature, without actually following the saved ride, to show trails etc on the map display, so I created a GPX file of the trail system so far, but my Edge doesn't seem to be able to understand multiple-track GPX files. Oh well, that would have been pretty useful... that's on my to-do list though, generate a Garmin-compatible trail map of Sals.

 

Early bedtime last night, reading in bed by 9:30, and probably lights out within a half hour. Slept like a log, which was good because we got up early and ran this morning: 3.2 miles, 35 minutes, nothing special but I'm happy to note that the leg/ankle pain is a thing of the past. We'll be doing the First Night 5k, and, even if I don't break any speed records I know I can at least get that far.

 

The Weekend: Friday night was Porters; I caught up with Anne & Judy and a bunch of others. Haven't been there in a while, pretty nice to be back even if we were at the "cold table" by the door. We hit brew Works on the way home, saw Doug & Lori.

 

Saturday I did a long-ish ride. It was supposed to be 60 miles, but a late start & an early sunset made me cut it down to 45: I went over Blue Mountain at Little Gap, then came back over Smith's Gap, which was a lot harder than my original plan but probably cut off 15 miles, and maybe an hour, from the ride. Steep, icy in the turns, and unpaved on the south side of the mountain, Smiths Gap was actually pretty scary, especially with all the hunter's cars parked along the roadside (and the gunfire in the woods). The scariest part of the ride though, was back in civilization on Grouse Rd, when a few deer ran into the road and almost took me out on a downhill. I was pretty awake after that...

 

Anne and I joined Debbie and Donna for some window shopping and a Christmas Luminaria walk after dark, then we all crossed over to Southside and had dinner at La Lupita -- once again, we couldn't even get in to General Zapata, and once again our second choice was probably better -- and then crossed back over the river for drinks at Brew Works, where we ran into a whole bunch of other people. All of Main Street was a Christmas Madhouse, by the way: tourists, shoppers and other pedestrians, buses and cars and even horse-and-buggy traffic, and every store was a mob scene. (I posted photos of the luminaria walk.)

 

Sunday I was supposed to go help map a new park, but blew it off, which was good because the ride was canceled due to freezing rain. We walked over to Blue Sky for breakfast (met Donna, her son and his girlfriend, plus of course the usual crew). The rest of the day was reading, cooking (Anne), playing with the computer (me) and movies: we watched Bad Santa (OK), The Virgin Suicides (really good but disturbing), and finally You Can't Take It With You, a madcap romantic comedy (with social overtones) from back in the day.

 

Tonight is the gym, followed by Two Brew Taco Night, and tomorrow is the last work day of the year for me.