A Perfect Weekend

The weather in Denver has been unseasonably warm for the last few days. That's all about to change, and we'll be paying for it with single-digit high temperatures by mid-week. But whatever the week turns out like, this weekend has been just about perfect.

Friday night my wife and I went to see the Colorado Symphony Orchestra perform Mozart's Requiem. We met up with our friends Jody and Hayley at the concert hall. Afterward we went out for drinks at Baur's Ristorante, where the wine list was impressive, the food was great, and the service was amazing. It isn't very often that my wife and I are able to get out without the kids. I think we got the most out of the time that we had.

Saturday morning I got out and ran my first (unofficial) half-marathon. CardioTrainer (a workout-tracking app for Android phones) said it was 13.2 miles. The CardioTrainer website has this map with a circle on it with a radius equal to the total mileage that you've logged, and centered on whatever location your last workout was in. The run on Saturday was enough to finally push my circle beyond the borders of the USA, both into Canada and Mexico.

Total (mostly running) mileage since August 26, 2010

Later in the day on Saturday, my boy and I did some running around while my wife and daughter were at a birthday party. I scored a new pair of boots for snowshoeing on clearance at Marshall's for $25.

Sunday I headed out early to meet a coworker at the Longs Peak trail head for a bit of snowshoeing. The trail was packed down pretty hard, and a pair of crampons would have been sufficient much of the time. There are several places where the switchbacks of the trail have been bypassed and folks have cut a trail straight up the side of the mountain. We took every one of those that we saw. So while it wasn't a terribly long a hike, it certainly got my blood pumping. We went up as far as the tree-line, which afforded a really nice view of the diamond on Longs Peak.

So now it's Monday, I've returned to the bike trainer in my basement for my workouts, and we're bracing for the snowy cold weather that's settling in as I type this. But it is winter, after all, and it was a really good weekend.