Mellow Four

I headed over to the bike path this morning for a mellow four mile run. After the 12+" of snow we got over the past few days, the roads are still a bit of a mess, and more importantly the shoulders have sort of disappeared, at least for the moment. And while going out for a snowshoe run in all this deep powder might have been fun, I'm trying to at least give myself the benefit of mostly fresh legs for Sunday's Mid-Winter Classic, so I'm keeping the next few days pretty mellow.

I had the bike path all to myself, well, except for the friendly Brunswick Parks & Rec guy who was driving up and down the path, plowing and clearing things out. In fact, I think I saw him about 6 times over the 4 mile out-and-back, since he was working hard to clear out the stretches of the path that back almost right up to Rt. 1. He had done a great job already though! The path was down to a nice even, packed layer of snow that crunched beneath my feet. I didn't even need screw shoes. The new pair of 282s I was wearing worked perfectly! I've been wearing the 282s for both my road and trail runs these days, which means the pair I wore for Stonecat has been racking up some decent mileage. Last night, I asked Ryan to make that pair into screw shoes, since my beloved 315s, which I had been using as screw shoes, really needed to be retired - they were over 500 miles and the heel fabric on both shoes had some serious holes in it. I realized the potential folly of this decision this morning, when it occurred to me that turning my broken-in 282s into screw shoes meant I was likely going to be wearing new shoes for the 10 miler, but luckily, there isn't too much break in time for the Inov-8s!

It was a beautiful morning, bright and sunny, and without any wind, and a nice way to start off my birthday. Although, I have to say, I am not quite sure how I feel about now officially being closer to 40 than 30. How did I get to be so old?! I don't *feel* old... :-)

Flora and fauna notes: I saw a huge flock (40 to 50 birds) of Waxwings as I was nearing the end of the run. They were calling and flittering around the tops of a few trees close to the river's edge. Although I was only 1/4 mile from the end of the run, I stopped to watch them for a while. They are just such cool birds! I assume that they were all Cedar Waxwings, but who knows. Maybe a few Bohemian Waxwings were in the group too? I wish I had had my binoculars and the chance to watch them a bit longer. I also saw a Bald Eagle flying over Pleasant Bay on my way to work. Cool.