Kitrin - Still keeping fingers crossed re the job for the Hub. Chris - I never did ask you how that all night run went for your group. And you have a running club with 1500 members?? Nice!!

The all-night run was a blast! We wound up starting about 11pm and finishing a little after 5am. I think we did about 30 miles. Good group of people... odd too... only in a place like Boulder would 8 folks show up in 20 degree weather, on a weeknight, to run all night. Yeah, our "club" is really just a big email list... 1440 people as of today. http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/BoulderTrailRunners/ No dues or officers or anything like that. If you lead a run you're a list moderator... that's about the extent of our leadership. :-) We have about 6-8 runs a week. There are some stellar people on the list too... like Dave Mackey, Anton Krupicka, current and prior Olympians, world trail running champions, etc. Humbling group for a slow fat guy like me, but very very very friendly people. The website is a work in progress, still rough around the edges: http://www.bouldertrailrunners.org/ - Chris

Uh, what the hell is your avatar?

Uh, what the hell is your avatar?

Anti-Monkey Butt Powder. Too funny!

Uh, what the hell is your avatar?

Greg, This link will school you (it did me): http://www.antimonkeybutt.com/ Kitrin

Speaking of avatars-what's the name of yours? Kelly

That's Will I Am or Wee little William, William, or Will. One of my boys. He made that face without cue while at Disney On Ice on New Years Day. I don't know where he gets his silliness from. Both my boys tell me I'm their favorite dad, and call me Crazy for a nickname or proper name: "Hey Crazy, what are we doing today?" I love it. We are their fourth or fifth placement in foster care in the last 2-3 years. They're both great guys and we love them. I'll probably change it over to the other guy sometime in the near future. They're half brothers having differnet fathers, though they don't know it. They are both real good looking and are going to wound some girls hearts for sure. His brother is Andrew, blonde, blue-eyed, extremely intelligent. Monkey Butt Powder. I can dig it. Seem like my kind of guys. Chris-stay safe around that fire. That stuff can move fast and in an unpredicatble manner. Kelly, did you reach your mileage goal? 2700, right? Leslie- I sympathize with your nausea and pain. I've been sick for a couple of weeks now. Everthing seems to make me nauseous on some level and twist my lower gut into knots. Cutting back on carbs helps some, but I think I got some parasite or food poisoning over the holidays. I'm leaning towards parasite as it's stayed with me. Honestly, I think I had both over the holidays, first some bug, then food poisoning as my whole family got sick on the second episode. I heard on the news yesterday that there has been a samonella outbreak in 42 states this last week and the FDA doesn't know where it came from. I haven't been running for the last week or so. Got my focus all on the wrong stuff. I'm going out for a lunch time run today as it's clear and windy out. I got off into the lifting thing again, wrestling over my priorities. I realized I started running and doing chins and dips as a way to minimize my focus on exercise. Alas, that overwhelmed my focus as well. I'm going back to run today and keep the workout stuff to a needful minimum.

Looks like Kelley was noticed this year. Great job and here's to another outstanding year. http://blog.irunfar.com/2009/01/best-debut-100-mile-effort-of-year.html

Fires are now out. Burned about 3700 acres, I think... and 4 homes and 3 barns. Not bad, all things considered. The firefighters did an amazing job...those folks are just awesome. Thankfully, I don't live anywhere near the fires. I'm about 10 miles southeast, away from the foothills. I can't afford to live that close to the mountains... my house would cost 4 times as much! January fires are very unusual, but there's essentially no snow in Boulder foothills right now, which is fairly odd for this time of yea. We tend to not get nearly as much as the mountains just west of us though. It's been a pretty dry winter so far and we've had a bunch of "Chinook winds" that are warm, extremely high winds. Native Americans used to call them "snow eaters" because they could melt snow so fast (I've heard up to 2" an hour, but that seems like a lot). Buddo: That's really cool that you're a foster parent! What your provide for those kids is so critical... so that's just awesome! Leslie: Hope you keep feeling better. That long slow road to recovery is a pain sometimes, hang in there. Kelly: Awesome job on the debut performance award! I noticed my friend Andy Skurka is in there too! - Chris