The wind, it blows...

This speech is my recital. I think it's very vital. To rock a rhyme that's right on time, It's tricky is the title. Here we go. ~ Run. D.M.C.

If you close your eyes, take a deeeeep breath and relax, you can practically see all the awesome shots I have taken over the past few days of skiing and running. Just picture the most amazing photo and video ever produced, then up that by 23% and you'll be in the ballpark. Unfortunately, this is the best I can do for you at this point, since I donated my camera to the Brainard Lake wilderness on Sunday afternoon.

Yes, I have been busy training. Even did a 15-miler on Friday in the Boulder drizzle. Luke and I went out Sunday afternoon in gale-force winds to hit up the north-facing chutes on Niwot Ridge. Did I mention the gale-force winds? Yeah. We dropped down D2 (funky snow but fun) then jammed back to the RockShot pitch in the Rabbit Cages. Really funky snow in there. Wet slab conditions prevailed. At some point between the bottom of D2 and the parking lot I lost my faithful camera. The shots on it are award-winning.*

*Proclaimations of awesomeness are contingent upon the discovery of said camera at which point the author can not be held responsible for any lack of photographic awesomeness. But until the camera is found, the author is sticking to his story that the author composed and captured the best images ever created in the history of digital (or non-digital) photography.

Tuesday, I ran 8 miles north of Boulder. Seems the theme for the week is huge headwinds that suddenly die once they become tail winds. I put in the time on Foothills Trail then transitioned over to the trail system west of the Res. Didn't feel great but after Sunday's 6-hour trudge and a short, recovery run on Monday, that was to be expected. Stus and heat still don't mix.

Luke and I headed back out this morning to an abandoned attempt to ski one of the couloirs off of Audubon. Today's wind made Sunday look like a crappy Nichole Kidman/Billy Zane movie. The weather station at D1 said 80mph gusts and I believe it. It took us an hour to get up to Brainard where we decided that we just weren't into getting blasted off the Audubon ridge and headed back over to the Cages. Dropped RockShot modified (hit the really steep drop in) but conditions were like Cold Medina with a slippery top layer of relatively fresh on top of a weird crust layer with slush underneath. Tricky.

As I said, it is good to be out there regardless of the munkiness of the skiing and bead-blaster conditions. Figuring out the rest of the week but I suspect it will be more of the same. Good times.

~stubert.