New Years and A "Little" Race

Our New Years was pretty low key this year. We road tripped it up to New Hampshire for some skiing, hiking and relaxing...we accomplished 2 out of 3. Unfortunately, there was not great snow and it rained on us the day we would have skied, so we passed. We met up with our friends Nate and Jenny who rent a winter home near where we stayed, and took the dogs (our 2, their 2) for a fun hike right by their place. We couldn't find the trail, so we just climbed straight up the mountain, which proved to be very entertaining and much more fun than just following the path (hmmm, possible story of my life?). That night we all just chilled in an empty bar in our hotel playing cribbage and watching Ryan Seacrest. I'm good for a big New Years Eve about once every 5 years, and last year was that year. It was so much fun just hanging out with these three goofballs.





The next day, Doug and I left Mt. Washington and headed down to Hanover, NH to visit Doug's college stomping grounds. We bummed around town, had a great dinner at Simon Pearce in Quechee, VT and then headed all the way back to NYC the next day. It's always baffling to me how many states you drive through on the East Coast in 6 hours (and how much crap 2 people and 2 dogs need for a 4 day road trip)!

In other exciting/crazy/ridiculous news...I have signed up for the Hagg Lake 50K Trail Race (www.haggmud.com/) on February 18th...yeah, like February 2012, like next month, like in 44 days!! To say I am ill prepared is the understatement of the year (let's count last year too since this year is only 5 days old). The longest run I've done since the NYC marathon is 13 miles...and it hurt. Ruh roh.

Why put myself through this? Well, my good friend Courtney is a bit of a long distance running masochist. Last year she did one marathon every month of the year (in the midst of a very difficult year). This year, she wanted more of a challenge and is doing a series of trail races with the shortest distance being a 50K. She threw the idea of me coming out and joining her for this race and after milling it over for a bit, I made a hasty, late night decision and bought a flight, signed up and called her to tell her I'm coming! She's promised me that we are not doing this for time, only for fun and to finish. We'll check out the scenery (nature and I'm sure some pretty fit other runners) and catch up on life. We'll have more than enough time to catch up on life...I figure we'll cover a year every mile or so.

I'm not as nervous for this as I think I should be. I guess it's just calming to know that I get to run through the woods (for a really long time) with a friend I don't get to see very often!

Ciao...off to run...cramming applies to running too right?!