Wind Swept

It’s has been a wild and windy weekend of weather weirdness, here in Banff. And yes, that’s a long winded alliteration. Whoa.

We had wind storms and were pounded by gusts relentlessly for the last 2 days. At one point, I thought my canoe in the backyard was going to blow away. It was lifting away from the fence with each wind gust and I had visions of me chasing it down the street. It was a good day to sit in the sunbeam in my favorite chair, with a cup of herbal tea.

I enjoy this little room each and every day, it’s my favorite spot in my home. Of course, I couldn’t just sit there and eventually I headed out the door for a little windy adventure. On Friday, I enjoyed a nice 3 hour run and was surprised to find this little viewpoint completely scoured of snow.

On Saturday, the evil wind continued and I decided to stay in and do something completely different. I did a brick workout, with my friend Michelle the Iron-Woman-In-Training. We have an outstanding set-up of bikes, trainers and large screen television in our basement garage. We pedalled like crazy for an hour and a quarter and then went outside and braved the wind for a short, sweet, windy 30min. run. Fun!

The wind let up for a little while yesterday, long enough for me to enjoy my long run. I went up and down Sulphur Mountain for 2 hours and than ran out on the Spray River for another 2 hours. When I hit the flats after the 7km descent off the mountain, the transition was a little tough. This should be a great training run for Diablo. It starts with 8 miles uphill, followed by almost the same downhill. It certainly is nice to be able to do these things out the back door!

This week should be a bit of a whirlwind. We got some working and pre-holiday organising to do. We are off to Sorceror Lodge for a one week backcountry trip, leaving on Friday! Woooohooo!