Slushy...but perfect!

There's a saying here in CO that goes something like this, "if you don't like the weather wait 10 minutes."  The weather here is so unpredictable.  One day it can be 19 and the next 40...it's crazy!  So, when we found that the high today was 54, which is amazing in Jan., my husband and I decided to take advantage of the warmth (because we know it won't last for long!) and go for a run outside with our dog and two boys in the BOB jogger.   We decided to try out a new portion of the Highline Canal, which is a gigantic multipurpose trail system that goes all around Denver and the surrounding cities.  You can literally start from anywhere along the trail and run how ever many miles you want...3, 10, 20, and beyond and rarely have to run on the streets...it's amazing!
  Well, because the weather has been sunny these last few days all of the snow and ice that has been accumulating has started to melt.  When we got to the trailhead, this is what we found:

Yeah...you're seeing that right...a muddy, slushy mess!  I guess we should have anticipated this, but we had never been on this portion of the trail and didn't know if it was paved or not.  Obviously it is not paved!! We hesitated for a brief second and decided to run anyways.  We weren't going to let a little mud/ice/slush/snow stop us from enjoying this beautiful day!  So, we strapped the boys in the jogger, got Sidus, our dog, on the leash and headed out. I have never run with Sidus so I started out pushing the jogger while my husband took him.  
  Right away we realized this wasn't going to be a "fast" run for either of us.  Because the ground was so moist the jogger's wheels literally sunk into the ground making it soooo hard to push.  I was breaking a sweat in the first 5 minutes!!  While I felt like I was having a heart attack from exerting so much energy, it was worth it because my boys were absolutely loving it! They loved going bumpity-bump over the uneven terrain and sliding every once in awhile when we hit slush over ice!   I checked my Garmin and saw that we were going at a 10min/mile pace..yikes!  Our normal pace is usually around 8:45 when running with the jogger, so we were definitely not going to get a PR on today's run...ha ha!  We ran for 17 minutes and decided to turn around.
 At the turnaround my husband took over pushing the stroller and I got to run with Sidus.

One of my new years goals was to run with him more and today I got that chance!  He wasn't exactly used to running with us so my run went something like this...."heal Sidus"....run 4 steps..."heal"....run 5 steps..."heal"....run a step then get pulled hard to the left because he needed to sniff something...run 3 steps..."heal"...run 1 step then have to stop so he could do his business...run 5 steps..."heal"....etc...  This went on for another 10 minutes or so until he finally understood that I wanted him to run next to me not in front of me (either that or he was just too tired to care anymore!).  We settled into a nice pace until we reached the car.  My shoes were wet and dirty, but thanks to my new Smartwool socks that I got for Christmas my feet stayed dry and warm.  Hooray for Smartwool running socks.  They rock!

  I am so glad that we didn't head home when we saw that muddy mess!  Although it took us 34 minutes to run a little less than a 5K we didn't care.  We got to be outside enjoying the sun, our boys' laughter, running with Sidus, and each other's company...it was perfect!