Feets of Pedestrianism

Memorial Day Weekend Fun

A local radio station was doing a promo called “Barrel of Monkeys” all weekend. It’s a good description for my weekend as well. My running has been all over the place lately. I had just finished a 50M the weekend before, a 50k was on the agenda the next weekend, and I have a 100M in a month. So I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to recover, taper, or train hard. I decided just to do whatever seemed like fun.

Saturday:

I was supposed to do some sort of hill repeat workout thing on Guanella Pass with some running buddies on Saturday. We figured we’d drive as high as possible, then run down and back up and such. Surprisingly, we reached the top of the pass & Mt. Bierstadt was within sight only 3M away, with what looked like a manageable amount of snow on it. Our trip quickly turned into a summit trip instead of a run. We quickly found out that the snow might not be so “manageable”, but we stubbornly hiked, ran, post-holed, crawled, crab-walked, and butt-slid (glissaded for you stuffy mountaineers) up and down the peak. We had the summit to ourselves and were soaking wet upon our return to the car, but it might possibly have been one of the funnest 14er trips I’ve ever embarked on.

Becca and Leila rationalizing that the snow doesn't seem too bad

Becca and demonstating that, in fact, the snow was that bad

Thumbs up to snowy 14er summits to yourself

Sunday:

14er fever took over and I decided I should knock off another early season front range peak. The plan was to drive to Echo Lake, run 9+ miles a bit past summit lake, then strap on some snowshoes to hike up the steep 1+ mile snowy NE side of Mount Evans. However, I decided to sleep in a bit too late and didn’t get up to Mt. Evans Road until noonish. Plan B was to drive to the nature center three miles up the road, cutting six total miles off the round trip. Plan B went off without a hitch. Again, I had the summit to myself. Lots of cars though, and lots of snow. Some of the ledges from the snowplows were over 15 feet high. For my “glissade” down the snowy slope, I put my snowshoes on my hands for steering and breaking. I may or may not have walked around talking to myself pretending to be Edward Snowshoe Hands. High on life, I made it back to Denver and imbibed in several drinks until the wee hours of Monday morning.

Steep Snow slog up the NE side of Mt. Evans

Taking a breather near the top

Mt. Evans Summit

Obligatory "Lot's of snow on the roads" shot.

Monday:

Man, I’m dumb sometimes. I grew up in Boulder, therefore I feel the need to run the BolderBoulder if I’m in town. The race starts at 7am in Boulder, and parking and a bus ride are involved to get to the starting line. What this all boils down to is a 4:45am wake up call. Needless to say, I was in bad shape. Luckily I had a carpool set up, otherwise I would have stayed in bed pouting. We stopped by a Starbucks for coffee, and as we left, the barista’s parting words to me were: “Have fun at the BolderBoulder. You’ll be fine, even people in wheelchairs finish it”.

EDIT: I've been told to mention that I assumed an alter-ego for this race. His name is Reuben. He's kinda surly and rude, and apparently isn't a very fast runner.

Prerace Warm-up. (Backseat napping, Iced Coffee, Gu Chomps)

I won’t get into the details. I didn’t have a watch or anything. I ran 39:30, though it felt like I ran 37:30. I did not puke, which I am quite proud of. It was speculated that I may have had some beer or even donuts during the race. Unfortunately, I have to deny these claims. The mere sight of beer during the race made my stomach turn. I was well enough to get part of my pre-8 o’clock Michelob Ultra down though after the race. But no scotch. Then I laid around by a pool all morning and afternoon moaning.