Blue Monday In The Sunshine

Getting up at 4 in the morning for work has its advantages.

I need to remind myself of this each night when, at around 6:45, I start to get cranky and tired. Getting up at 4am means I need to be in bed by 7:30 starting to read or just getting ready for bed. I have lights out by 8pm.

But going to bed at 8 and getting up at 4 does have its advantages, namely being done work very early in the day.

Hosting a morning radio show means being on air from 530am to 9am. That’s not all I do, but that’s the meat of my daily routine. The rest of the day is researching for the next program, which I can do whenever I want. So in the summer, I take advantage of midday midweek tee times, and in the winter, I’m learning to take advantage of midday midweek ski times.

This past week I escaped for a Monday run out to Sunshine Village in Banff National Park. Less than 90 minutes from my house I figured I could be on the hill by noon, cut up 2 hours of trails, and be back at home before the kids walk home from school.

It was stunningly perfect.

Sunshine Village is an alpine meadow sitting in a valley on the Continental Divide. Lookout Mountain, Goat’s Eye Mountain, and Mount Standish all have runs that feed down to a central area meaning you have acres and acres of choices for where you’d like to ski.

I chose Lookout, with its wondrous view of Mount Assiniboine in the distance and the Rocky Mountains displaying their jagged teeth wherever you looked.

It was Blue Monday, supposedly the saddest day of the year. With bills mounting, winter stretching on, and dark days continuing, it’s supposed to be a sad time of year. I plugged in some Depeche Mode (yes, I realized afterwards that I should have had New Order blasting) into my headphones and bounced for 15km of runs over just about two hours before my thighs gave out (I love the Trace Snow App to measure my runs)

Normally I’d buy in to the Blue Monday hype, but not on this blue sky day. Not everyone is “done work” by midmorning on a Monday to escape to the mountains for some snow time.

Getting up at 4 in the morning for work has its advantages. And I took advantage of it.