This winter has been harsh. With long stretches of cold, treacherous storms and several weeks of gunky inversion, it wasn't a surprise to find out that January was the coldest month on record in Utah since 1949. For some runners winter is a time to relax, take it easy and recover from nagging injuries, but I've been inspired watching my fellow Refuse2quit homies get out repeatedly at odd hours, often 7 days a week regardless of the weather and last week was no exception.
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| MattW and AaronW in Farmington Canyon |
Matt Van Horn hit it hard running every day of the week and had some impressive totals: 76 miles, 2 peaks and over 17,000 feet of vertical gain or as he would say vertical smile. He has been spending a lot of time running up Farmington Canyon aka his treadmill, and who can blame him? The canyon is in great shape right now with a nicely groomed track, that allows you to get some mountain vert and miles on a trail that is 100% runnable.
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| Craig sporting his blaze orange on Lake Mountain |
Craig also ran every day last week, netting 65.5 miles and almost 11,000 feet of vertical gain. The most impressive run of the week was a 3am wakeup call to meet MattW at the City Creek Canyon trailhead to run 21 miles on the downtown BST before work. Maybe the most impressive thing about Craig's week though was that he was coming off the previous week where he ran every single day as well and netted 58 miles and 13K vert. Awesome!
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| MattW and Craig did a 21 miler on the BST |
MattW had another killer week (He's been racking them up lately) running 44 miles with 9500 feet of vert. He's been hitting Farmington Canyon with the local Davis County crew at least a few days per week as well as tagging peaks and doing long runs with the Refuse2quit crew.
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| Scott doing a summit jump on Lake Mountain |
My week wasn't quite as impressive as the other guys, but I still hit 3 peaks, ran 35 miles and had 7600 feet of vert. I ran Lake Mountain with MVH on Sunday and then again with Craig on Wednesday. I also got up the Ave Twins with MVH on Friday, just beating the storm that rolled in later in the day.
Collectively we have certainly hit it hard this winter, but we are all ready to trade in our tights and jackets for shorty shorts. I have heard each of the guys recently say how much they miss running on the dirt. We're all ready for spring, but in the meantime we will keep getting up early and often to hit the trails regardless of the weather. I like to think that getting out running regardless of the cold and grizzly elements is in a way figuratively flipping this winter the bird. We will keep on doing that.
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