Trying to settle back into a Colorado routine

I admit it's a bit depressing going from warm sunny Arizona, where I could run outside barefoot and wear tank tops every day, back to the on-again-off-again snowstorm of Colorado.

I love Colorado most of the time. The mountains call me, and I've had more joyous adventures with friends than I can count.

But early March is not the ideal time for Colorado trails, in my opinion. Allow me to preface this by stating that we had a snowstorm three days ago that dumped at least 8 inches around the Colorado Springs area. But temperatures of 50 to 60 degrees over the next days melted off most of the town thoroughly.

I decided to loop around all of Palmer Park by trail alone. I started with the Templeton Trail. On the south side of the mesa, where I began, the trail was clear and completely free of any moisture. I was actually surprised by how good the trail conditions were.

Well, it wouldn't last. As soon as I began to get to the west side of the mesa, I encountered thick, sloppy mud. Whole sections of unavoidable sticky goo. Soon enough, the north side of the park brought slushy ice, followed by ice covered with water, followed by icy ice that was so packed down and so slick in places that I had to actually crawl through a small section.

Yep, that's definitely spring conditions in Colorado!

I don't think I've ever done a full loop of the Templeton trail, even though I've seen almost all the sections of it on various trail runs, beginning at the time I was in high school and running trails for cross country. Although the conditions were nasty in places, I stuck it out and looped the whole trail.

And because that wasn't enough punishment for a day, I then crossed Paseo and went back up the muddy trail to the other large mesa that makes up Palmer Park, opting for a shorter loop this time, including the Cheyenne, Grandview, and Kinnickinnick trails.

I ended up with over 9 miles, but due the trail conditions, and the fact that I ascended and descended the mesa twice (plus all that up-and-down action on Templeton trail), this run was downright tough. I landed right around 2000 feet elevation gain. And my legs were toast afterwards.

The only upside was that this trail run fit perfectly into my training for the Pikes Peak Ascent. My mantra when I encountered the bad patches was "train for any possibility on race day."

But honestly, I can't wait for summer to come to the mountains.