“Get out of the road you f-@$%#g idiot!”

It was snowing again this morning. A fresh couple inches of powder on the road for most of the trip. It’s been a long week of dealing with the elements. Starting with the blizzard last week, and then facing the single digit temps and polar winds, I have had my plate full of physical challenges. Despite our office being practically closed for 2 days last week, I haven’t missed a single day of work and have ridden my bike in everyday. Even people with 4 wheel drive were staying home. There is substantially more physical exertion in riding a bike when the conditions are like this. What is normally a 25 minute trip has been more like an hour or sometimes longer. The trip home in the peak of the storm last week took 2 hours! I normally spend 5 hours a week commuting but the past week was in the range of 11 hours which would explain my abnormal sluggishness.

There have been a couple of spills. As usual, no injuries as the falls are normally low speed slide outs that are fairly controlled. My tailbone is a little sore from one incident but nothing major. These falls rarely occur in the fresh soft snow. It’s always on the areas that have thawed and refrozen numerous times into lumpy sheets of polished ice. I think this is my 4th winter of riding and we seem to have had many more slippery days this year. It’s been enough that next year, I think I will fork out the money for a good set of studded tires.

I have been feeling guilty about the paltry amount of running miles in the last week and a half but I guess considering the extra time spent riding it’s not like I have been lying around being lazy. The few times I have gone out to run have been more harrowing than the bike miles. Of all the roads I normally traverse, maybe 200 feet of sidewalk has been shoveled. I pass many driveways that have been immaculately kept but only a precious few landowners have performed their legal obligation and cleared their sidewalks. This leaves me with 2 options, take to the narrowed streets with the cars or hike over and through the snow banks and drifts piled on the sidewalks. One woman felt so compelled to inform me of her disapproval of my running in the road that she stopped her car in the middle of a busy road full of traffic to roll down her window and yell, “Get out of the road you f-@$%#g idiot!” She got a smile, my middle finger, and then the sound of honking horns from all the vehicles that had to stop behind her while she shared her wisdom.

I’m sure it is because of the weather, but I have received more admonishments from friends than I usually get over the past week. Most of them come with the line, “you’re crazy!” Really, am I crazy? What is crazy anyway? According to Dictionary.com, crazy is:

1. Mentally deranged; demented; insane.
2. Senseless; impractical; totally unsound: a crazy scheme.
3. Informal. Intensely enthusiastic; passionately excited.

Okay, maybe if you go all the way to the third and informal definition then yes, I am crazy. I am crazy about health and well being. I am crazy about living my life to the fullest extent possible. Deranged or insane, I don’t think so. To me, deranged and insane is living with an overweight and out of shape body and not doing anything but complaining about it. In my humble opinion, that is the true crazy that is weighing on people these days. Pun intended. I would also define crazy as stopping your car and holding up traffic to scream your opinions at strangers. But you know, keep pointing out the window and calling me crazy while you drive yourself as close to the door as possible so you don’t have to walk too far to your next seated position all the while wondering how you got so out of shape.

Week of January 17 – Bike 80, Run 25
Week of January 24 – Bike 80, Run 30
Week of January 31 – Bike 80, Run 10