Beat the November blahs. Or maybe just stay inside, watch TV
- Details
- Created on Thursday, 17 June 2010 23:04
- Written by Nathan
By ANDREW WINEKE, The Gazette
November is no month to be outdoors.
It’s cold. Everything is brown. Except the trees, which are gray. And bare. And dark. Even the places that are pretty under a blanket of snow or adorned by spring flowers are stark, ugly and grim.
If April is mud season, November is “meh” season. Apathy reigns.
There’s little snow in the mountains for skiing, but somehow there’s no shortage of slush and ice on the hiking trails.
If you run, your feet slip on the ice. If you ride, your fingers freeze to the handlebars. If you ski, the one blue run that’s open will shred your base.
It may not be doom, but November is a month with plenty of gloom.
So what to do? Stay at home, watch football and wait for Breckenridge to open Imperial? Well yeah, actually, that’s a perfectly reasonable option.
Hitting the treadmill at the gym is a possibility, but watching the news while you run will probably raise your heart rate for the wrong reasons.
At best, November is a training month. It’s a month where you persevere and push on through, keeping yourself tuned up for the turns ahead. You don’t get out during November because you enjoy it, you get out because it’s there and it needs to be done.
It’s the time when you remind yourself that if you don’t stay in shape, that Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas candy will still be with you come May.
None of this is to say there aren’t a few pluses to the month:
• The dog poop is usually frozen until after lunch.
• No one sneers at your rock skis.
• Long sleeves and running tights hide the fact your summer tan didn’t outlast daylight savings time.
• You can find a parking spot in the Barr Trail lot (on weekdays, when it’s below freezing).
• Daylight saving time ends and gives you just enough light in the morning to see the mountain lion tracks on the trail.
It’s November. Time to grimace and bear it.
NEVER MIND NOVEMBER
How to get out when the getting isn’t good? Here are some ideas to keep you moving as fall turns to winter:
— Lower your sights. Even if the higher ground is not snow-covered, it’s really cold up there! This is a great time to head to the Calhan Paint Mines Interpretive Park, try a new trail in Bear Creek Regional Park, or bundle up and take your road bike for a spin around the Air Force Academy. Use Out There's trail finder.
— Organize. Try an organized run instead of striking out on your own. The wind is not quite so biting nor the night so dark when you’re competing against your fellow man. Or woman. The crowds thin (ever-so-slightly) this time of year at the Tuesday night Jack Quinn’s Running Club (jackquinnsrunners.com). There are still 5k and 10k races, too (find a few options at the Pikes Peak Road Runners web page, pprrun.org).
— Invest in liner gloves. Bunches of them. Anything thicker takes up too much space when you warm up and pull them off. Anything less... well, nobody likes cold fingers.
— Make your own running spikes. Screw a half-dozen (or a dozen) 3/8ths-inch hex-head self-tapping sheet metal screws into an old pair of sneakers. They’re cheaper and more durable than YakTrax — although the screws can poke if you land wrong.
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