The new GPS came in the mail today. The mailman helpfully crammed it in our mailbox so tightly that I had to get out of the car and brace against the row of boxes to get it out again. I appreciated his efforts, though, because it meant I could use it today instead of having to wait to go to the post office tomorrow.
With new lithium batteries (supposedly better in the cold, but as far as I'm concerned the jury is still out) installed, I stuffed the the toy along with a chemical hand warmer into a dog bootie and strapped it on the sled handlebars. Despite the temptation, I only consulted it once but was excited to see all the data on our run when we got back. We ran on the mostly flat south-valley trail, looped around via a very sketchy creek with a massive drop off that we managed to navigate without any injuries, and came back on the north-valley trail. In all, we ran 12.2 miles in an hour and forty seven minutes with a moving average of 6.9 mph (although if you do the math, that's 8.7 mph all told.) Not super speedy, but a solid long run for this little pack. Although this unit is an updated version of my old and very faulty one, it has lots of new bells & whistles that will take a while to learn. Supposedly it will interface with google maps. Not much real work is going to be done here for awhile with this on the table.
The other thing of note from this run, besides that the dogs were running strong all the way home and Pico and Leo particularly seemed to perk up when we hit new (to Leo, at least) trail, is that I got cold, really cold, for the first time this season. We started late, less than an hour before sunset, and I knew it was twenty below when we left, but I didn't double up socks or long-johns and I didn't take the good arctic parka, opting instead for layers of fleece and a shell. All my layers were too much on yesterday's zero-degree hill run, and I was glad to be able to strip bit-by-bit as I got hot then, but today on the flat with only a little work for me to do here and there and much colder temps, my toes and fingers were numb after about seven miles and never really warmed up, even when I got off the sled and ran.
Figuring out how much to layer and which layers to use is an ongoing process, especially when we do new trail (like Eldorado Creek or further down Wickersham) when I don't know the terrain and therefore how much work I'm going to have to do. I wore the good parka on Eldorado Creek (when we started at -15) and ended up taking it off pretty quickly due to the hills - and by then it was soaked through with sweat and took hours to dry out at home.
Anyway, more to think about and plan around. In the mean time, here are some clips from Wickersham yesterday along with some spectacular (as usual) Abe Quigley music.
Also, I think I figured out whose truck we borrowed: Sven Haltman. At least, that's my best guess. I hope he doesn't mind that I used four of his drop chains for a few minutes. For that, I'll be cheering him all the way through the Iditarod this year.
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