Birthday Trail Run....

Today is my birthday...I won't tell you exactly how old I am. Suffice it to say I am old enough not to get carded with great frequency & young enough to not start a big house fire with the candles on my cake ;- D

Ready to hit the trail!

Snow shoes! (yeah, I'm a comedian;))

Hill repeat hill looking all nice and innocent

I'm not a big birthday person, but I did want to go for a run today...and not just any kind of run.  I wanted to get out on the TRAIL! I have MISSED it SO SO much! But alas, I'm not a lone trail runner (I have a bit of sense in me...or rather, I know how clumsy I can be)....so as I was trudging through a yucky weekend at work I sent Trail Buddy an email pleading for her to go running with me.  She said YES!  YAY!!! I am pretty sure our last trail run was The Trail of Terror. The fall was nice, but with triathlon and marathon training and organizing (Trail Buddy is a fall marathon race director), the fall just slipped by & who would have thought that winter would actually come this year?!? When I asked, it was cold, but with the warm weather last week, all the snow had gone so I thought it would be clear in the woods.  Ha! Silly me...mother nature had other ideas and spent the weekend dropping just enough snow to leave a decent layer on the ground.  Not to be deterred, we layered on all our best running gear and headed out.  It was A-MA-ZING!!!! The trail had a couple inches of fresh snow, which turned out to be nice to run on. Not too slippery at all! Except the downhill....that was a little slippery. I love the woods...the look, the feel, the peacefulness of it.  It was even better with snow! So pretty! And best of all, no chance of snakes or bears!

What is she doing????

Yeah, I work out... ;)

Lumberjack????

We visited the fireplace

So pretty!

We were slow, we walked in places...and just generally caught up.  Before we knew it we had done almost a 5 mile loop and were out over an hour and a half!  Just a little cold but not bad really.  We could really tell that the weather has been harsh over the fall/winter.  There were trees down, and part-way down all over the place! Of course Trail Buddy always is the trail sweeper, clearing branches as she goes....she can't help herself...I think it may be an illness ;)...so I looked back several times to find her lumberjacking trees trying to move them. LOL! We are hoping our good trail friends the mountain bikers bring their chainsaws back this spring to move some of the bigger trees from the trail!

....and in case you were wondering, you know you are a trail runner that has met critters in the woods when you get a BEAR BELL for your birthday!

Mmmm...chai tea & a bear bell