Shawarmas and night running

Today started out every bit as dreary as the past two have been, but then around noon time our famous Colorado sun came out to and allowed us to play. Chris Lieto flew into town for a 3D bike fit with Todd Carver today at our Retül studio in Boulder and after three hours of fitting with his Trek TTX and Madone 5.5, it was time to show him Flatiron's outdoor heated pool. By chance, Dave Scott was catching some rays and hitting the laps hard, and assigned he and Chris a 20x100 set. I did my thing, which usually consists of a mixture of 100 and 200 IM's. We were budgeting our time as Chris needed to get out to the airport to catch his afternoon flight but once they had completed their set, Franko showed up with video camera and me, Laura Tingle, Dennis Meeker and Lieto all raced a 50 freestyle to cap it off. I'll let the suspense build as to who won this hotly contested race, but to find out the winner, check over at the new Retül blog later this week (http://retul.blogspot.com).

The days continue to get lighter but I was on grocery duty tonight, so after Emily and Thor got back from a short run, I took off for an out and back on the Wonderland trail. I truly love doing this one in pitch black and letting my eyes adjust to the dark. Once that happens, it's like running in the middle of the day. Well, except all other senses are also on high alert. We've had a few mountain lion spottings in North Boulder lately so I made sure to run on the crunchy part of the trails and not the packed down snow, but if a hungry cat was out there preying I'm sure that wouldn't have stop it from striking. Running at night usually also motivates me to work in a series of harder intervals too (pretending to run away from mountain critters, etc).

We capped the night off with our most recent favorite meal, shawarmas! Growing up in Saudi Arabia, my parents would always treat us to chicken shawarmas in Khobar on the weekends after baseball games or even during the week in the neighboring town of Rahyimah. In fact, Em and I are looking into a reunion trip of sorts back to Saudi early in March so I can try to explain to her a bit more in depth as to why I am the way I am:) All kidding aside, my best friends from childhood, the Benchich brother's will be going back as well, so we are looking to take a trip down memory lane!