Sunday Afternoon

Falling Frost Rainbow

Saw this going while running across the bridge to Saint Albans this morning. I guess the fog from the river was rising then freezing and falling back down. It was 14 degrees. Pretty neat.

Olde Main Plaza

Another...

...cat picture.

I just got back...

...from my double secret weightlifting program at my friends house. We did a 1 rep max today. The weight on the bar in the photo of me (top) is 240 lbs (we use a 50 lb. squat bar). The 240 was my second lift. My 1 rep max was 250 lbs. I don't have a picture of that lift, so you'll just have to take my word for it. That's pretty good for me.

Travis (middle) did 255 lbs. and Emmit (bottom) did 215 lbs.

Joe (the guy that's spottin') is almost 63 years old and can still bench over 300. We were missing one guy today, so he'll do his next week.

The Mighty Kanawha...

...is up today and just about to take our city's boat dock.

Depot Windows

Friday Morning

Haz Mat Training

Today we did some training with the A, B, and C chlorine emergency kits. The A kit is for leaks in a 150 lb. chlorine cylinder. The B is for a one ton chlorine cylinder and the C is for chlorine rail cars.

New Gas Station

Bought gas at the new Kroger gas station today. Got it for $2.64 a gallon, 15 cents off per gallon with my Kroger card. Woo hoo!

Frozen Rivers

Kanawha
Kanawha
Coal

The Mighty Kanawha...

...is almost frozen over. 18 degrees this morning, we'll see how it looks tomorrow. It's supposed to get really cold tonight. 2 shot panorama, click for a better view.

Truck 311

The great white mid-atlantic. 14 degrees.

Saint Albans Station

Ridenour Lake

Olde Main Plaza

Frozen Sasquatch 25k and 50k Trail Run

This morning at 8 o'clock with the temperature at 17 degrees and some light snow falling my friends Kenny and Randy Wheeler and I started the Frozen Sasquatch 25k (15.5 miles). It's a new ultra in Kanawha State Forest.

They also had the FS 50k but I wasn't in shape enough to run it. In fact, there would've had to been a huge sum of money offered for me to start another loop. Nobody offered so I just did the one loop.

It's been a while since I'd done an ultra. I think the last one was what me and my running group called the Lake to Lake Fat Ass 50k. A Fat Ass is a run with no entry fee, no aid (we had a little), no t-shirt and no whiners. The Lake to Lake is an unofficial run from Ridenour Lake in Nitro, WV to Wine Cellar Park in Dunbar, WV and back. The only aid we had was my wife and daughter meeting us at Wine Cellar with the standard aid station fare ( mtn. dew, water, cookies, chips, cheese, m&m's and other junk). We're unsure of the mileage, but since it always took us just a little over 6 hours to run it we call it a 50k. It could be a little bit more than that 'cause back in the day my personal best 50k was 5 hours and 50 minutes.

The way my legs feel this evening got me thinking about what kind of shape I used to be in when I could run The Mountain Masochist 50 Mile Trail Run and the Highland Sky 40 mile (my favorite). I may try to run one of my other favorites this spring. The Promise Land 50k, "The toughest 50k you'll ever love." We'll see.

Today's run was awesome. The weather, the snow, being with friends and seeing some you haven't seen in a while and just being able to get out and do it was great. My goal was to run it in less than 4 hours and I made it at 3 hours 57 minutes. Thanks Mike and Ashley Dolin and all the volunteers for making this a great run.

First Snow

Some of my wife's family from southern Georgia came in for a few days last week just to see some snow. I got 'em all lined up for a picture out in the woods. The three big ones on the back row are Holcombs. From left to right they are, Bonnie, Kim (my wife), Allie (Bonnie's daughter), Connie and Molly (our daughter). This is the first real snow that Allie has ever been in. I think she's seen some flakes before but hasn't gotten to play in any. When they got here there was still a lot left from the big snow we got right before Christmas, so they made some huge snowmen. Then yesterday when we got up there we rolled them over the hill. That was fun. On our way home yesterday evening we dropped them off at their other cousin's house, and on the ride over Allie asked, "is it really 22 degrees?'' It was snowing petty hard when we left last night and it was gonna get down to about 15. Hopefully Allie got to go sleigh riding this morning. We sure were glad we got to see them before they had to go back.

Cold, snowy graveyard

Happy New Year!!!!!!!

Now I know that these aren't fireworks from tonight, but you've gotta have fireworks for New Years. We hope and pray that everybody has a blessed and safe new year.