bike commute 61

I was a physical mess up through Wednesday.  Recovered enough to go crush myself on the Alpine Loop on Saturday.  Good times.

Mon - 5k  hike with the dog on the flattest route I could find.

Tues - bike commute 60.  Six miles to work, eleven back home.  Easy climb over lunch.

Wed - run commute 51.  Four miles there, 3.5 back.  Still sore as fuck.  CityRock 48 at lunch.

Thurs - bike commute 61.  Ten to work, eleven back.  CityRock 49 with $100 at lunch.  Finally starting to feel normal again.

Four day weekend, taking the van down to Lake City through Sunday morning, then Salida Sunday and Monday.  I'll finally get to ride the Alpine Loop, $100 will get in some fly fishing and a ride on the Monarch Crest.  The dog will do a lot of napping and hiking.

6:00:37

I mean, at least we got to run, right?

Not a bad day on the mountain.  Smoky and hot, but not as bad as it was on Saturday.  Weird at the start for sure, but fitting for 2020.  Disappointing at the finish, with no beer garden and no real chance to see a ton of friends.  But it is what it is, and the run itself was a lot of fun.

The splits:

No Name - 60:51

Barr Camp - 1:45:15

A Frame - 2:35:24

Summit - 3:51:51

Descent - 2:08:46

Little slower than I wanted to the top, just couldn't get much going from treeline to the top.  Can't complain too much as this was the fitness I had coming into the race.  As the legend-in-his-own-mind Keith G once said, "never let a poor performance stop you from talking shit to your friends," and luckily for me a ton of my friends also had mediocre days and I ended up beating a lot of them.  I stopped to chug a beer with less than a mile to go, without that I may have cracked six hours.  The beer was worth it though as I believe it was approximately 250F coming down Ruxton canyon.  My legs are still wrecked two days after the race, so I ran as hard as I could.

Hopefully next year the new Garden to Peak Challenge (Garden 10 miler, Barr Trail Mountain Race, and Pikes) goes off without a hitch, I'd like to concentrate on that, including the Pikes Double.

I'll try to keep the running fitness around as I have two long ones in October - the rescheduled Salida Marathon and the Cheyenne Mountain 50k.

64

Picked up bib 64 this morning.  You can usually see Pikes from that view above.

Socially distanced shitters this year.

run commute 50

Thurs - bike commute 59.  Ten miles to work, eleven back home.  CityRock 46 at lunch.  Been getting on the wall a lot more (vs. bouldering) lately.

Fri - run commute 50.  Easy four miles to work.  Was almost mauled by a homeless guy's dog over near Benny's.  Yay.  

I have a downtown office and could not see Pikes today due to all the smoke.

track

Sun - nice ten miler in the heat of the afternoon, five miles up Barr and back down.  Caught the Joe Johnson show at Pioneer Park in the evening.

Mon - track.  6 x 400m, none of them anywhere near 12:35 5k pace.  Loving my shitty Holmes track even more after this:

Tues - easy day.  Dog hike and guitar practice in the morning, CityRock 45 at lunch, some trail work in Red Rock Canyon with Medicine Wheel after work.

Wed - run commute 49.  Easy 41 minute five miler to work.

I have not put in the work for Pikes on Sunday and I will suffer as a result.  I'll be shooting for a sub six, roughly 3:45 up and 2:15 back down.  Could probably still manage a 5:30 had I been a bit more focused on hills and longer distance, but it's too late to worry about that now.

Lindsey

Bagged 14er number 39 for me on Saturday,  Mt. Lindsey.  Hiked with my CityRock buddy Mike and a guy I hiked Sherman with a week earlier at the Pitt climb, Steve.  Awesome route with some solid rock scrambling towards the top.

Drove down Friday evening after work and slept in the van.  Stepped off at 5:15AM.  The hike ended up being 13.8 miles and took just over 7.5 hours.

Hoping to sneak in a weekend down to the Sangres in September for an attempt on number 40.

 

run commute 48

Thurs - nice 7.4 miles to work through Sondermann.  5.8 miles back home.  Pizza and Umphrey's that evening.

Fri - nice three mile family hike in Red Rock Canyon.  Took us significantly longer than 12:35.  

Off to the Sangres.  Tackling Lindsey on Saturday.

run commute 47

 Wed - run commute 47.  Good five miles there, four miles back.  Got to spend a chunk of my day crawling around a big homeless camp next to a landfill transfer station.  Fun.

From the Pitt Sherman hike.  At the bottom:

At the top:

track

Sun - easy evening five miler.  A hangover and Moose watching crushed me.  Did get through almost all of Dishwasher by Pete Jordan.  Awesome book.  My first ever job, at the age of 13, was a dishwasher.  Not surprisingly, that's when I started drinking.

Mon - track.  Windy up on the mesa.  2 x 1 mile, 600m RBI.  6:09, 6:01.  Hard effort, but not all out.  I recently entered the 45-49 age group, so these were more impressive today than had I ran them last Wednesday.  Also did 4 x 200m untimed.  Good evening bike ride in Red Rock Cayon and up High Drive.

Tues - bike commute 58.  Easy ten miles to work on the COVID loop.  CityRock 43 at lunch.  Really good session, think I'm close to making a breakthrough on the wall.  Good ride home, up Cheyenne Canon and High Drive for the first time in a while, then the Chutes, over to Fossil.  17 miles in two hours.

My cadet got me a killer gift for my b-day.  My first Space Force shirt.  I'm not a trekkie by any means, but I swear this was the same logo used in Star Trek.

Sherman

Bolted right after work Friday for the Mt. Sherman trailhead.  Quick stop at South Park Brewing for a beer and some eats, then found a pretty sweet place to park the van for the night.  Strummed the guitar for a bit before turning in early.

Met the Denver Pitt Club at the start of the hike.  We ended up getting 30 Pitt grads on top of the mountain that day.  I was one of the old farts there so I enjoyed telling stories of the good 'ol days of Zelda's (now a five guys burger place) and CJ Barney's (now a dunkin' donuts) and Peter's Pub (now closed, probably becoming a chain coffee shop).  Sherman is one of the easier 14ers, and with some great weather we made quick work of the hike.  My third summit of that mountain.

 

Apparently there are over 1000 Pitt grads in Colorado.  I know of three others in COS.  This was the first Pitt alumni event of any kind since the COVID started, which seems like 100 years ago but I count it from Salida marathon weekend in mid-March.  (Yes, the virus was here much earlier and in hindsight we should have all acted a lot earlier than we did, but mid-March was when most people realized shit was going to get shitty for a while).

Had to get back to the house after the hike as we were Moose-sitting and he is a lot for $100 to handle on her own.  Spent a lot of time this weekend at the dog park.

bike commute 57

 Lot going on this week so the workouts suffered.

Annual Jerry Garcia hash on Monday was a blast.  Had a buddy from El Paso up for that.  Made for a hungover and lazy Tuesday. 

Did get a run commute in on Wednesday.  Solid effort on the way to work.

Bike commute 57 on Thursday.  That evening we took the dogs (we're currently watching Moose) over to a local park for a socially distanced blues show.

Headed out to Mt. Sherman for the annual Pitt 14er hike after work.

Signed up for the Cheyenne Mountain 50k.  Should probably start putting in some work for that.

incline 20

Friday - bike commute 56, then I rode my bike over to the base of the incline for a quick up and down.  Then biked back to Fossil.

Sat - nice twelve miler through Red Rock Canyon and Section 16.  Hit the hash Saturday afternoon.

Decent week.

run - 43 miles, eight hours

ride - 69 miles, 6.5 hours

hike - 17 miles, 6.5 hours

Sun - a bunch of biking.  Did the COVID loop in the AM, then biked over to Red Leg that afternoon.  Joe Johnson show up in Pioneer Park Sunday evening.

new ride

Mon - it's been raining a ton here and the track was a hot mess, so I just did a nice loop on the Garden roads.  6.5 miles.

Tues - more rain.  14 miles to/from work on the bike. 

Wed - run commute 15.  Five miles in just under 40 minutes to work.  Easy four miles back home.  Guitar lesson in the evening, followed by my weekly trip to Benny's.  Benny's got a nasty letter from the health department and you can't sit at the bar anymore.

Thurs - bike commute 55.  Ten miles to work on the bike path.  13 back home on the world's greatest commute through Bear Creek and Red Rock Canyon.  On the new bike.

My brother recently got a new bike and was going to get rid of his old Kona Unit X.  So I had him send it to me.  Loving it so far.

Salida/BV/Leadville

Had you asked me I would have predicted a really good Classic 10k followed by a shitty Salida 5.5 miler.  Just guessing based off the work I've been doing lately.  And after choking at the Classic I just assumed I'd have two bad races.

But the thing in Salida went pretty alright!  Started off strong, climbed well, and held my own on the descent.  And I ended up outkicking this eleven year old girl at the finish.

I finished 27th overall in 41:05 for the 5.4ish mile course on the S mountain trails.  Really happy with the effort.  My last race in the 40-44 age group.

After my race I played some guitar in the van while the wife went for a run, then we headed north.  Dropped by Buena Vista to visit some old Austin friends - Paul and Meredith - before heading up to Leadville to see another old Austin friend - Mr. Sharp.  Need to note here that on Saturday for breakfast I had Moonlight Pizza, lunch was the Buena Viking, and dinner was High Mountain Pies.  Quite the day of food.  We also hit up Leadville's newest brewery, Two Mile Brewing.  The Camp Hale Pale wasn't half bad.

Rained damn near the entire weekend, so nights were spent just chilling inside the van.  Sharp and I did meet up to run the Leadville Mineral Belt loop, a 13.1 mile loop if you start from the start line of the Pb100.  Surprised they don't have a half marathon race there.

We ran into Bigfoot over near the Colorado Mountain College

It's been a while since I've been to Leadville so this might be old news, but there are two memorials to Super Dooper at City on a Hill coffee.

Took the long way back home, dropping by Outer Range and Broken Compass.

climb

Mon - track.  8 x 200m.  Very uninspiring.  Like my 10k, but at least today didn't have a ton of people getting to witness me shitting the bed.

Tues - bike commute 53.  Four miles to work as my AM guitar practice went long.  Four miles home as it looked like it was going to flood.  CityRock 37 at lunch.

Wed - run commute 44.  4.2 miles to work.  Short as once again my guitar practice was longer than planned.  Back home was an easy 5.5 miles through Sondermann.  Added a new buckle to the collection:

Thurs - nice ten mile run on the Garden roads, which has yet to be uploaded to Garmin due to their hack.  The wife and I then went over to Red Rock Canyon for our first climb in a long time.  The route we wanted to do was occupied, so we found a new-to-us route and made it happen.  A few sketchy moments while I was trying to set up the toprope but I'm still alive.

Classic 10k

Thurs - bike commute 52.  10.9 miles there, 14.6 back home.  CityRock 36 at lunch.

Fri - rest day.  Nice 5k Garden hike with the pup in the early AM.

Sat - CMC anchors class up at Cottonwood Canyon state park.  Learnin' shit.  Hit 105W Brewing on the way home.

For the week:

run -22 miles, 3.5 hours
ride - 56 miles, five hours
hike - 23 miles, nine hours

Sun - hey, I ran a race!  The Classic 10K.  It is usually a fast course and my original goal was sub 40.  They changed the course due to COVID, it was not a much slower out and back.  Changed my goal to 42 due to the harder course.  But it didn't matter, I still sucked.  45:31.  Went out a touch too fast and was just done by the turn around.  I was actually slower coming back, which was downhill.  The race was waves of five runners every 30 seconds.

After the race a bunch of friends and I rode up to Pikes Peak Brewing.  49 miles total, it finished up my virtual Colorado Trail bike ride.

Dinner on Sunday at Colorado Mountain Brewery with the cadet, her boyfriend, and her parents.

Big topic of discussion was the starting QB currently listed as "no longer a cadet in good standing."  Not sure what he did, but apparently there has been quite a bit of cheating as everything has switched to online classes.  No idea if that's what happened.  It would really suck to get booted from the Academy your senior year.  No college degree and you owe the gov't a cool quarter million.

CityRock 35

Mon - early AM uninspiring 8 x 200m at the Holmes Middle School track.  Did a 13 mile ride later in the evening.

Tues - bike commute 51.  Eleven miles to work, 4.8 back.  We've been having some crazy but short storms here, and I tried to beat one home.  It didn't work.  After ten seconds I was soaked to the bone.  Good climb over lunch with my buddy Mike.

Wed - run commute 43.  5.1 miles in 39:19.  Good climb at lunch.  Easy run home, 2.5 miles to meet up with $100 at Smiling Toad.  We got beers to go from Front Range on the walk back home.

PowerStop/Chicago cancelled

Friday - a rare rest day.  Was hoping to bail from work early to meet $100 down on the CO trail.  I was unable to pull that off, so I just picked up Moose and we chilled at the house.

Sat - another zero.  Left at 5AM to drive to Eddysville.  Saw Connilee and Amanda finish up a solid chunk of the Colorado trail.  They should finish the thing next year.  Then $100 and I drove into Gunnison for lunch.  I highly recommend the PowerStop Gas Station in Gunny.  Great burgers.

We picked up a hitchhiker as we were leaving Gunnison.  Figured he was a hiker needing a lift back to the trail.  But it turns out he was a homeless kid out traveling and he was heading to Salida.  We parked at Soulcraft and pointed him towards Tenderfoot Hill.  $100 and I hit Soulcraft and Tres Litres and camped up near the Cottonwood TH. 

Sun - left Salida fairly early and I got in a good run on the Garden roads.  Nine miles.

Another week in the books.

run - 26.6 miles, four hours
ride - 86 miles, just over seven hours
hike - 23 miles, 8.5 hours

Should finish up the Tennessee run this week, as I type this I have less than ten miles to go.

I have two races coming up.  The Classic 10k on Sunday, and the National High School Trail Champs 5.5 miler on July 25.  I'm in the citizens race obviously.  But I'm not the oldest guy running!  My endurance is shit but I think I'm in decent shape for some of this shorter stuff.  That being said, Chicago just cancelled.  Instead, I'll spend that weekend in Salida buying Kieran some pizza.

KOM fail/bike commute 50

Sunday - easy 7.4 mile run on the Garden roads followed by a nice 28 mile bike cruise around the local paved trails, ending at Fossil.  Pretty tore up from the long mountain days on Fri and Sat.

Mon - 5.4 mile Garden road run in the AM, 14.6 mile COVID loop bike ride in the PM.

Tues - bike commute 49.  10.7 miles to work, 11.2 miles home.  Good CityRock session over lunch.

Wed - run commute 42.  I have never had a strava KOM in my life, but there is a segment on my usual run to work, on the Midland trail from 25th (Smiling Toad Brewing) to 8th.  I decided to go for it.  I went as hard as I could.  Literally thought I might pass out while crossing 8th street.  And I fucking whiffed.

I'll keep trying but I'm not really sure how to get those seven seconds.  I ran as hard as I could.  It's only a 1.1 mile section and I was running 5:34/mi pace.  And I was lucky enough to have zero traffic at the street crossings.

When I use my strava douchebag filter I feel much better about myself.

I was a hot mess for a while at the office after the effort.  Did run home but it was super slow.

Thurs - $100 and the dog are down helping out some friends on the Colorado Trail, so this morning was an easy (I was still sore) 4.5 miles in the Garden, some guitar practice, and bike commute 50.  And another lunch hour at CityRock.

San Luis/Challenger/Kit Carson

Finally got a few more 14ers done over the long weekend.  Solo trip, I left right after work on Thursday and made it down to Dome Lakes State Wildlife Area for the night.  Up early on Friday to finish the long drive and finally bag San Luis Peak.  14 miles in just under five hours with 3497 feet of climbing.

On my way out I decided on a whim to head up to Cochetopa Pass.  Had no idea of how the dirt road was, which is taking a chance with a low clearance vehicle.  But it was a great drive and a cool part of Colorado I'd never been to.  Saw more bikepackers than cars.  Also went over a milestone in the van.

Hit Three Barrel Brewing for beers and pizza.  Desert at Square Peg in Alamosa.  Then it was off to Crestone to rest up before a big day on Saturday.

Alpine start, up at 4AM and running by 4:30AM.  Knew this was going to be a long day and it didn't disappoint.  But I was able to bag the Challenger Point/Kit Carson double.  I'm now up to 38 Colorado 14ers.  And one California 14er if you're keeping score at home.

On the ridge leading to Challenger, Kit Carson behind that:

Taken from the Challenger summit, this is the route over to Kit Carson.  Can't find a pic that doesn't make this look sketchy, but it's actually not that bad.

That section after I completed it:

The summit of Kit Carson.  Hard to find a bad view when you're in the Sangre de Cristo range.

Didn't see this sign on the way out, maybe a good thing.

Willow Lake, five miles from the trailhead.  A lot of people do this as a two or three day hike, setting up camp at this lake.

Very long day, 16 miles and 9.5 hours. 6362 feet of climbing.  Made for a great weekend in the mountains for sure.  I skipped Salida on the drive back because it was so busy, but Florence Brewery made room for me to enjoy a few celebratory beers.

Awesome couple 'o days in the mountains, and I even made it home in time to watch some rock and roll livestreams.

The peaks capped off a solid week.

run - 37 miles, 15.5 hours
ride -  57 miles, 5.5 hours
hike - 18 miles, seven hours

Tennessee virtual run - 556.5 miles down, past the town of Chuckey.  87.7% finished.  78.5 miles to go.

CO Trail virtual ride - 371 miles down.  178 to go.  I have until the end of September to finish this so I'm not in a big rush.  Plus I got word that the Lake City Alpine 50 will be happening, so at some point I'll have to start riding more miles.