A Great Day

Today was a perfect example of why I LOVE being in Colorado Springs. My entire day was great...from the moment I woke up this morning until 10 minutes from now when I climb into bed and fall asleep! I'm so glad that I came out here and visited my favorite city for a few days in the middle of winter...and I'm so glad that I'm only visiting and I can be back in the south in a few days. Swim practice started at 8am today...but I'm still on Florida time so that wasn't early to me. Fortunately, I managed to sleep past 5am and my stomach only forced me out of bed at 6:30am. I ate a relaxing breakfast in the cafeteria before wandering over to the pool. My plan to do some core exercises for 20 minutes before swimming was scrapped when I saw Sharon in the locker room...I haven't seen her since I left COS in November and she was still preggers:) We chatted until it was time to start swimming and I had a great long course practice. It was a pretty hard workout (actually, any workout I do at altitude after spending four months at sea level is going to be hard:) and everyone swam tough (good job Tim!). After swimming, I had Nate adjust the shifting on my new Blue Bike while I completed another 3 mile run on the treadmills. My run was solid (again, the effects of altitude are being factored into my 7:45 mile pace:) and I finally got my core exercises completed in the gym. I thought it would be a good idea to take care of my foot immediately after my run so I stretched, strengthened, and iced before changing into cycling gear. Yes, real cycling gear...the sun was shining in the middle of the day and the air temperature wasn't too bad. I did make sure that I wore 3+ layers just in case one of those surprise snow storms rolled into town during my 60 minute easy spin through downtown:). I enjoyed seeing all the familiar sights of COS on my bike…the cute houses on Boulder Street, the snow on top of Pike’s Peak, the rude drivers scrapping my left elbow, etc. Everything on my new bike worked like a charm and I practiced using my new Sram shifters…I don’t want to make a mistake during the important rides (like April’s race in Tuscaloosa).
After my ride I took care of some emails, plunked down in front of the TV for a few minutes, and got cleaned up and pretty-smelling (ie, took a shower). I made a few calls and rounded up a few of the troops (Tim, Jill, and Matt) for an evening adventure downtown for dinner. We rolled out of the OTC around 7pm in the midst of a light splattering of snowflakes! They were not sticking and it didn’t last very long, but I can say that I saw it snowing this winter!
We made our first stop at Poor Richards for a pizza dinner. The steaming pie didn’t take long to arrive at our table and it didn’t take long to disappear! Our choice of the evening was whole wheat crust with spinach, green peppers, mushrooms, sausage, and pepperoni toppings…good combo. The night wasn’t complete without a visit to Josh and John’s Creamery (my ultimate FAVORITE place in COS) where I was pleasantly surprised to see Pumpkin Pie on the list of flavors in stock. As we were savoring our cups of freshly churned desserts, in walked Cliff, Sam, Nate and Sarah after their own pizza dinner down the road. We had a good laugh and wished each other a pleasant evening.
As we headed back to our respective rooms, Tim mentioned that he TiVo’ed the NBA All Star’s Slam Dunk contest so I whipped up a steaming cup of hot cocoa and joined him to watch some of the coolest dunks and the competition was won by an Orlando Magic player! That concluded about 10 minutes ago, and as I mentioned earlier in this post, I was going to be sleeping in 10 minutes so that is the conclusion of a GREAT day for me in COS!