New Year's in Wales

Sarah and Andy were kind enough to convince friends James and Louise that Matt and I would be a good addition to their New Year's tradition. Not sure what tactic they used, but it worked, and we all had an excellent time.


James and Louise own a cottage in a tiny village in Wales. The village (the name escapes me, but suffice it to say it has lots of consonants in a row) sits a few minutes from the coast and only about 30 minutes from Snowdon (the highest peak in Wales). Their cottage sits a few yards away from a pub. Bottom line, the location is absolutely perfect for activity and/or relaxation. Focusing on the latter, we filled our days with endless amounts of cheese consumption, lengthy debates about the world's most inspirational hero (i.e. Lance Armstrong, obviously) and his sell-out TdF predecessor (i.e. Lemond), rounds of the Name Game (revealing some gaps in my cultural awareness), and entertainment from the fiery and intimate relationship between the pups Badger and Bailey. We did muster up the energy to take a walk along the beach, with a quick pub stop.






New Year's eve was non-stop entertainment filled with a few hours hanging out in the cottage, to a few hours in the pub for a dose of the locals, to the midnight celebration on the beach in the rain. Needless to say, the beach idea was heavily influenced by the evening of beverages.

Caythorp 10 km run- ouch

A gentle reminder that I need to get my butt into training gear, I completed a 10 Km run on 30 December.

Sometime in early November, my colleagues Jim, Cath and I decided that it would be a good idea to run a 'flat, fast,' race. We had all just started to focus a bit more on running, and thought that the Caythorp 10Km would be a perfect race to gauge our efforts. Why we we ever thought that attempting to run hard in the middle of the biggest eating, drinking, lazing around the house week of the year, I'll never know!
Regardless, we all committed and none of us would let the others down.



With an Ironman on the horizon, I know that a 10km run shouldn't be a major concern. That said, the race was painful...I certainly have my work cut out for me. Jim, Iain, Cath & Matt managed to look slightly more composed than me at the finish line!









Of course with a few sips of water, a quick stretch, and shared stories with fellow runners, the previous moments of pain were forgotten and we were soon discussing the next 10 Km we wanted to tackle.

The highlight of the race was Cath's expression as she crossed the finish line over 6 minutes ahead of her goal time!

Bad hair day

What should have been a routine, basic, uneventful trip to the hair salon turned into a fairly dramatic, expensive, appearance changing experience!




Lesson #1- Experimenting with new restaurants, music, movies= good idea, experimenting with new Hair Salons= bad idea
In my defense, the website looked reputable and the salon itself look quite upscale

Lesson #2- Although it may seem rude, confirm that your stylist has more than 1 experience with doing hair
As I was well over 50% done with highlights, the woman styling my hair drops in the fact that this is her first day at the salon!! Uh-oh.

Lesson #3- If you think your hair is turning orange, you're probably right
As I sat in the chair, admittedly a bit uneasy after hearing that my stylist was conducting on the job learning on my behalf I observed my bangs as the morphed into an interesting shade of orange. Despite attempts to convince myself that it was the lighting, or the orange painting on the wall, or my imagination, I finally acknowledged that I was beginning to sport a nice shade of tangerine on my head.

I called the stylist over and she assured me that everything was going just fine. To my horror, after my hair was washed, it was in fact orange. The poor woman did everything she could to resolve the situation, but after many attempts my hair became too 'stressed out' (yes, those are the official salon terms) to take any more change. The final resolution was to dye it a darkish brown in an attempt to cover some of the 'warmth' (aka orange/red).










Luckily, I have very supportive people around me- I was only called Cindy Lauper once. Matt spent the following 3 days referring to me as 'ginger'. He also amused himself by taking a picture with me and my 'ginger siblings'!

Consequently, I spent the following 72 hours wearing a hat, and found a salon in town to fix my hair once it had calmed from the stressful experience.

Christmas in England

For the second time in 31 years, I spent the holidays away from family and outside of Colorado. I was very well taken care of in England with an action packed month thanks to friends, Matt and his family.

While Matt suffered a serious case of 'man flu' during the entire month of December,

I managed to keep myself entertained with Christmas parties and holiday gatherings. Leave it to Capital One to have a 'Moulin Rouge' themed Christmas party where spouses/partners are not invited!











Despite Matt's illness, he mustered up the energy to drive to Castleton to enjoy mulled wine, a pub dinner, and a stroll through the village.

Apparently in England the traditional way to spend Christmas Eve is in the pub rather than church. Willing to adapt to the English ways, while upholding my family tradition, I arranged to meet our friends Sarah and Andy for a few drinks, followed by midnight mass with Matt, and his mom and sister.

Christmas Day

I found that culturally the English and Americans are very much aligned in their Christmas day activity: food, gifts, food, naps,(a quick run), food. The only difference, really, is the funny hats that everyone wears that come out of the Christmas crackers.


Boxing Day
Still unclear on the meaning behind boxing day, I have been able to conclude that 1) it doesn't have anything to do with boxing such as punching each other, and 2) it is a public holiday where little is open with the exception of pubs (of course).

In attempt to counteract some of the damage that we had done with food consumption the previous day (the previous month, to be fair), we spent Boxing Day hiking in the Peak District.