week in review

Mon - 2.5 mile dog hike, bike commute 41, CityRock 101.

Tues - 2.4 mile dog hike, run commute 43, CityRock 102.  The morning run included 3 x 1 mile repeats.

Wed - bike commute 42, CityRock 103.  The afternoon ride was a 15 miler with a chunk of that in Ute Valley Park.  My tech skills on the bike are shittier than usual right now, not boding well for the upcoming Royal 50.  Ended at Red Leg to see an old buddy of mine from San Antonio and we drank way too many beers.

Thurs - nothing all day due to a hangover.  Did manage to squeak in a lousy four miler in the Garden in the evening.

Fri - 5k dog hike.  Then 15 miles to Barr Camp and back.  Time was a little slow due to this guy blocking the trail at Bob's.

weekend update

After the Incline on Friday some friends showed up to mooch free booze, and then we all went over to Trails End for Woodshed Red.  Love that band, though it says a lot about the local COS music scene that the most popular band in town in a cover band.  Had a great time and especially enjoyed the $5 pints of Blood Orange IPA from Deuces Wild.

On Saturday I got up to Rampart Res for a loop.  Started as a run, turned to a run/hike, and became just a hike the last two miles.  Capped off my second consecutive 40 mile week though.

Relive 'Lunch Run'

       
About the worst weekend ever for Pittsburgh football as Pitt got destroyed by PSU on Saturday night and then the Steelers tied the damn cleveland brownies.

Also hit Patty Jewitt Porchfest on Sunday, had a fantastic time over there.  Probably need to give my liver a bit of a break after this weekend.

incline 15

Third consecutive Friday incline.  Was in a hurry to get this done as the Woodshed Red show was beckoning, and it was my quickest incline in a long time.  31:20.  Came straight back down.

Relive 'Afternoon Run'

       

CityRock 100

Big milestone as I had a great climb over lunch today. 

Cancelled my accolade membership this morning.  Was always a pain in the ass trying to schedule time to get to that gym.  And after most workouts there all I would think was, "I would have gotten a better workout by climbing."

labor day

Busy labor day weekend.

Incline on Friday after work.

On Saturday I did a quick run in the Garden followed by a longer ride over in Cheyenne Canon.

Relive 'Morning Ride'

       
Back in time to watch Pitt crush Albany.  So happy college football is back!

Then we got to meet our AF cadet.  We had her and her family over for supper.

Early Sunday we left for Estes Park.  Had hoped to visit Rocky Mountain NP but hot damn was that place packed.  So we bailed and hit up two new breweries (for me) in EP, Lumpy Ridge and Rock Cut.

Sunday afternoon we got to Fort Collins and $100 got her new bike, a New Belgium Cruiser.  We immediately broker her in with a pub crawl.  O'Dell's, Equinox, Town Pump, Road 34.  Plus some brews at a friends house.  Despite the late night I still ended up running fairly well at the Fortitude 10k on Monday (see below).

Tuesday - nada.  Drove to work, did not work out at lunch, ate a ton of junk food.  Hangovers suck.

Wed - run commute 41.  Included 3 x 1 mile with half a mile RBI.  Roughly 6:40s.  Easy four miles back home.

Thurs - run commute 42.

Fortitude 10k

Despite late nights on Saturday and Sunday the Fortitude 10k went as well as I could hope.  40:52.  Would have been nice to slip a sub 40 in but I ran as hard as I could so I'm pretty happy.  Really struggled the second half and a few times I thought about giving up but I held it together.  Also chugged a mimosa about half a mile into the race.

The mile splits:

1 - 6:35
2 - 6:24
3 - 6:37
4 - 6:40
5 - 6:35
6 - 6:41

Good enough for 171st place overall.  And I beat nine other runners from the A wave.  Although for a full minute, until the AB wave started, I was in dead last place.

Relive 'Morning Sep 3rd'

       

incline 14

Trying to fire up the Friday night incline once again (did it last Friday as well).  Got over there after work for a nice trip up the hill.  Took my sweet time as strava reports 42:13 from first step to last.

run & bike commute 40/upcoming weekend

Finally feel like I'm getting back into a routine after our hike.  Took a while.

Mon - run commute 38.  Actually mooched a ride downtown to Kings Chef with Bob, but I did run home. 

Tues - run commute 39.  The run to work included 3 x one mile with five minutes rest in between.  I do these on the roads and I don't really pay attention to the time, I just make sure I'm running hard.  They were all well under seven minutes depending on traffic and stoplights and whatnot.  CityRock 94 at lunch.

Wed - bike commute 40.  Straight to CityRock in the AM to throw some weights around and do some bouldering.  On the way home I climbed Cheyenne Canon, which I am not in shape to be doing but with the Royal 50 looming I need to pedal more.

Thurs - run commute 40.  Through Sondermann Park.  Included 2 x 20 minutes pretty hard.

As much as I can't stand children under the age of 27, the wife and I have done an old college roommate of mine a favor and adopted his niece under the Air Force Academy cadet sponsorship program.  We are having her and her parents over on Saturday after the Air Force/Stony Brook football game.  I am going to try to get her to transfer to Pitt, or at least Army if she doesn't have the qualifications to get into that prestigious school.

On Sunday we are going to head out early and take a drive (no hiking as we'll have the dog) through Rocky Mountain National Park before heading over to Fort Collins for a brewery tour and the Fortitude 10K on Monday.  We are planning on a late lunch Saturday at Lumpy Ridge Brewing and a brewery tour in the Fort on Sat evening if anyone is around.

Red Rock Canyon climbing

Took a class on lead climbing from the Colorado Mountain Club and it went well.  My two biggest days of outdoor climbing yet.  And I didn't fall to my death.  I can't wait to climb something that isn't slab.  Everyone on the ground yelling, "trust your feet," but I don't trust my feet (which will stick) and I don't yet trust the gear to keep me from falling (which is bombproof) so it's just a constant raging fear of impending painful death for me.

accolade 31

Mon - bike commute 37, including a longer ride home to stop by Garage Run.  CityRock 91 at lunch.

Tues - bike commute 38.  CityRock 92.

Wed - run commute 37.  Legs still sore from the Double, mostly from running down the mountain.

Thurs - bike commute 39, CityRock 93.

Fri - drank a few too many beers at Fossil on Thursday night but I still forced myself out of bed for a 1:15 dog hike in the Garden and a trip to Accolade.

Going climbing this weekend.  Red Rock Canyon on Saturday, and then possibly Shelf Road on Sunday.

so how much did it all cost?

First off, I want to point out that this is what we spent and it is not at all a guide to what it costs to do the Colorado Trail, or any thru-hike.  I counted the price of gear as brand new, even though I had most of the stuff already and continue to use almost everything.  The high costs of zero days were often two or three nights in a nice hotel, eating at restaurants three or four times a day, often footing the bill for friends who had helped us out.  And the bars, well, we drank a lot at times.

The approximate breakdown:

big four - $756
base weight - $287.99
mail - $117.05 + $28.85 (Salida box) = $145.90
trail food - $1036.91.  About six thousand calories per day for the two of us.

Total for that, which is all you'd need to do the hike, is $2226.80.  $4.45 per mile.  Probably not a whole lot a normal hiker could do to get this cost significantly lower.  Big four and base weight was for me, mail and trail food was for the two of us.

Of course there were the zero days.

Breck - $818.18. 

Leadville - $760.98

Salida - $1165.01

Creede - $169.83 (no hotel costs as we stayed with a friend)

Silverton - $406.26

Durango - $664.62

And $119 for a rental car to get back to COS.

The zero day total comes to $4103.88.  Obviously there might be some ways to trim this part of the budget down a bit.  Not going to every town, not spending multiple nights at every town, not trying to drink all the beers and eat all the pizzas and cheeseburgers at every town, I could see this number drop to under $500 pretty easily.  I'm sure some spend much less that that.

The grand total comes to $6330.68.  $186.19 per day.  Approximately $12.66 per mile.  Livin' large, even though most of it was living in a tent and reeking of BO. 

Pikes

Pretty good weekend for me and much better than I expected it would be.

Still in shape from the Colorado Trail so I knew finishing wouldn't be an issue, I just thought it would be slower than usual.  Told $100 to plan on four hours on Saturday, then another four hour ascent followed by a three hour descent on Sunday.

Saturday, of course, was a wash as they ended the race at Barr Camp.  I was pleasantly surprised at how my day went though.  I was able to run around 70% of the course, much more than I thought I'd do.  I ran 1:49:55, though that includes a ten minute break when I stopped about 100 meters from the finish line to have a beer.

On Sunday things went well once again.  Got to the summit in 3:47.  The downhill hurt like hell as I have not done any downhill running in a long time, but my down split of 2:17 was not my worst ever.  Finished in 6:03.  For some reason I'm already excited for next year.

Relive 'Morning Run'

       

accolade 30

Still trying to transition back to a runner from a hiker.  Been spending a lot of time in the gym, whether Accolade or CityRock.  Plus the usual running/biking to work.

$100 and I caught David Lowery and Johnny Hickman (half of the band Cracker) at Bristol on Sunday.  Great show.

Hit the DIM hash on Monday.  It had been quite a while since my last hash.  Short but fun trail through Red Rock Canyon, beginning and ending at Fossil.

beard

At some point I will post some more stuff about our Colorado Trail shindig.

I went about seven weeks without shaving.  Here's the final result.  My selfie game is only slightly stronger than my beard game.

Still took a while to shave it all off.

Being summer I was not able to achieve a life goal of posting a pic on the ice beard runners FB page.   But I did get to drink a few beers with the king of bearded runners, who wasn't very impressed with my facial hair.

Crestone Peak

Hit the road in the van with $100 and the dog on Friday and we headed back down to Westcliffe (night outside #34).  We met Kircher down there, and he and I were going to hit a 14er or two on Saturday.

We decided to do Crestone Peak and Crestone Needle.  Crestone Peak ended up kicking our ass pretty good and we ended up doing just that peak.  Not a bad way to spend a Saturday though, getting your ass kicked in the mountains.  My watch ended up clocking out at 19 miles and eleven hours, and we still had at least another mile to go.  Other than a 45 minute break at the top, we were moving the entire time.  My 34th Colorado 14er.

The long approach.  That's Kircher leading the way with Crestone Needle in the background.  

Saw a bunch of mountain goats on our way up to Broken Hand Pass.  Another 14er, Humbolt Peak, in the background.

The top.  Helluva climb to get here.  Really pushed the line between steep scrambling and actual rock climbing.

Another view from the top.

On the way down. 

You can see a red streak going up the mountain, that's what we went up and down.  Crestone Peak just to the left as you look at this pic.

Broken Hand Pass.  Sketchiest part of this hike, of which there were many sketchy parts, was the climb just to the east of this pass.  Lots of potential to get skulled by falling rocks.

run commute 35

Not that I had a choice, but I dove headfirst back into the real world and am slowly getting back into a routine.

Sunday -  very hungover, but did get outside.  2.2 mile dog walk, 7.3 mile run on the Garden roads, accolade 28 and an hour of hot yoga with $100.  Also did some meal prep for the upcoming week and was around normal food for the first time in eight weeks.

Monday - bike commute 33, narrowly missing the hail storm that crushed certain spots around town, including our zoo and O'Day's new Tacoma.  CityRock 86 at lunch.

Tuesday - 2.3 mile dog walk followed by run commute 34.  The run to work included 2 x 2 miles with a five minute jog in the middle.  CityRock 87 at lunch.  More hail today, though not as devastating.  Note that the westside didn't get any of the damaging weather that has been reported on around Colorado.

Wednesday - bike commute 34, including 14 miles home.  Was hoping to hit Red Rock Canyon but the trails are pretty muddy.  CityRock 88 at lunch.

Thursday - run commute 35.  Threw in some two minutes on/two minutes off.

With the help of a friend we are hoping the van is back up and running and plan on heading to Westcliffe this weekend.  Then Pikes.  Then I have a class through the CMC on lead climbing, including placing the gear required to stop a fall.  So I'm keeping busy.

back to the grind

It's been a fantastic six-ish weeks but I return to work on Monday. 

The week off was a blast, but I spent it eating junkfood and drinking way too much.  So it will be good for me to get back into the routine of hour long workouts before and after work and climbing over lunch.

I did get up Pikes on Saturday, via Elk Park.  It wasn't pretty.  I'll get the double done but it's going to take a while.

The focus now is to get ready for the JFK 50 in November.  23 miles running last week.

done!

Bucket list item completed, $100 and I completed the Colorado Trail after 34 days of hiking and visiting mountain towns.

More updates later.  Rented a car in Durango, drove to COS, and it's back to DGO with the subaru and dog today.  Staying at Pagosa Hot Springs tonight, then doing a brewery tour back home.

Salida

Probably my last update while still on trail.  We are over halfway and taking two zero days in Salida.  Things are going great, we are having a blast, and we got word yesterday that the entire trail is open so it's Durango or bust!  Sunday we leave for Creede, then Silverton, then Durango.

For some reason, this has become the official song of our hike.

update

Quick update from out zero day in Leadville.

First off, we had to make the rough decision to send the dog home in Breck.  I thought about dropping with her, grabbing the jeep, and crewing for $100 but she talked me out of it.  Dog is living the life with my sister or Amanda.  She is currently here in Leadville and we miss her terribly, but believe we made the best decision.  The dog wasn't injured, but we knew with another day or two of big mountain miles she would have gotten hurt.  The brightside to this is that I feel my pack weight has been cut in half now that I don't have to carry food and water for the pooch.

Other than the dog issue, $100 and I are loving the trail life.  The simplicity is awesome.  Get up, eat, pack up, hike ten to twelve miles, eat, hike another few miles to a great campsite, eat, sleep.  Repeat.  We are still on somewhat of a schedule due to Salida, but after that we will probably start to crank out some bigger mile days.

Meeting all kinds of characters on the trail and it's been great.  We are currently on a 200ish mile stretch that is part of the Continental Divide trail and we love seeing and chatting with those guys.

We are coming to terms with the fact that our hike will more than likely end at Molas Pass near Silverton, as the CO trail is currently closed south of that due to fires.  Doutbful it will open by the time we get there.  We will be content with a 400 mile thru-hike and will return to finish the trail in the future when the trail is open.