Saturday, June 25, 2011

Sweat Your Thorns Off 5k

So when some guy on the internets says "Hey, you should run a 5K on June 25th, then tell me how fast you went, oh, and it should be hot", I'm totally in! Even better, there could be prizes. Even better, I'm back in marathon training so Hoff and I decided to run 10 miles. And once again, even better, we ended up running around 12 miles. Oh, and it was hot too.

It was hot today, did I mention that today? It was close to 80 when we finished our run! But back to the start. The initial plan when we talked last night was that we would take a car downtown, then come back home and run to my car. After thinking of how much driving that would be, we decided to instead run around the Garden of the Gods and up Mesa, and decide where to go later. So that's what we did.

We got started, and headed up Flying W, down Flying W, then passed the Garden of the Gods and ran up Mesa. It turns out, after 5 miles in the heat, my math skills drop down a little bit. We decided to take a new route back home, and adding up the mileage from where we were back up, sounded like we would end up right around 10 miles. Whoops, off a little bit.

In short, we ran back in the heat (did I mention it was hot?), got back home, drank a lot of water, and took a nap! It was great!! I forgot to bring the camera, or you'd see some cool shots of the the GOG and bunnies and such. Oh well. Here is a nice picture of my elevation profile:



So anyway, back to what I mentioned earlier, about the random race some guy was talking about. The Boring Runner, who is normally called Adam, held a "virtual" 5K race today. Essentially he asked people to run 3.1 miles from where ever they happened to be, email him the time and he'd collect them all and do neat things with them after that. I picked my three fasted consecutive miles (plus one tenth), which weren't all that fast because of the hills and such, and sent them in.

Unfortunately I forgot to print out the "race bib" to wear for the run. Oh, and I forgot the camera as well. Hosed. Anyway, here is the bib:



On the bright side, my knee felt great with no pain and although tired, I felt like I ran the right distance today.

Thanks for reading, and expect more updates in the next few days, as I am out of school for a few weeks! Woo-hoo!!!

Monday, June 6, 2011

Teva Mountain Games in Vail



We went to Vail for the Teva Mountain Games, which is a festival-type thing which celebrates mountain sports, music and art and such. Last year we went up there and I did the half-marathon with a friend and Julie did the Mud Run. The Mud Run was a 5k-ish run which has a mud pit that they make you crawl through. The half marathon was really hard last year (it runs up Vail Pass to the top), and Julie and Kim didn't want to get as dirty as they did last year, so we all decided to do the Spring Runoff 10K. Of course, it was a very hard run, and it got us all very dirty. More on that later.

To start of the weekend, we got up to Vail early in the day to check into our hotel and check out the day's events. We started off with the dog jumping competitions, which involved a dog jumping off a long platform into a long pool, with the object to either jump the furthest or the highest to grab a target. The long jumps went to around 20 feet or so, but the action was truly in the high jumping.

Midair jump:



This dog, named Yeager, tied a world record by jumping 8 feet!!!!


We decided to wander around the town a bit and see some other events and all the vendors who were giving away stuff. That turned out to be exhausting, so we went back to the hotel to clean up a bit, and headed out to a fancy pants Italian dinner. We left the restaurant after a bottle of wine, some desserts, and no pictures of our food. So we strolled back to the hotel to sleep well for our big race in the morning.

Our bib numbers are all in a row, how cute:


The run was supposed to have some uphills, then some downhills, and then be done. This year, however, there is still quite a bit of snow and mud around, and they decided to make us run through every bit of it that was left on Vail Mountain. We ran uphill through a large mud pit, then through some snow, downhill on an oddly dry road, then up again through snow and mud, then downhill on a large snow field, followed by running through the streams caused by the melting snow. When we were down, there was mud up and down our legs, my socks were soaking wet, and all of our shoes were a uniform brown color! It was great!!

Here's a great shot of the Gore range behind Julie.


I wasn't kidding about the snow fields:


So, as you can tell, Julie's plan to stay dry and clean this year didn't quite work out. But after cleaning our shoes in the river (while still on our feet, of course) and a shower we were back down in town and looking for more swag! There was more dog jumping, which included the furriest dog I have ever seen in the water. He took forever to swim out!





They also held an event which involved three rafts at a time coming down Gore Creek in the middle of Vail, and each of them having to negotiate an obstacle course to hit targets. It was chaos, it resulted in a lot of pushing and shoving, and lots of people out of their rafts!



This guy jumped into the river from the bridge (you can see part of the bridge on the right) in an attempt to retrieve his raft. He eventually fell off the raft, but got a nice round of applause for his efforts.



4 rafts stuck there, crazy!!!



Thanks for reading! We had a great time, and can't wait to do it again next year!

Everything we missed in May!

So, while writing all the posts about our trip we didn't write anything about what happened in May... so here's a quick recap, because I am sure you all are wondering what we have been up to!

The first of May, we both ran a half marathon in Fort Collins, CO. It was down through the Poudre Canyon. We didn't take a single picture while we were there, we were too busy running and then sitting in a hot tub! We both did pretty good in our races and we were really sore afterwards. 13 miles is a long way!

Then not much went on in our lives... we went to a Rockies game one day, it was pretty chilly out, but we had a good time. The game started a little bit late because of rain and then we even left a little early because they were up by 9 runs.



Then over Memorial Day weekend we got to go camping with Andy and Pam and some other friends. We had a great time while we were camping, but it took a little while for us to get to that because on our way out to the land we were camping on, we got two flat tires at the same time! Not just one flat, but two!! We don't know how that happens, but it did. We ended up having to have Andy so kindly drive us back to Woodland Park to get two new tires, it was frustrating to say the least, but we got new tires and were sitting around a campfire before we knew it! We had a great time cooking over the open fire and goofing off with friends! The view from campsite we picked was wonderful, and it was so relaxing to be in the woods away from town for the day! Here are a few pictures!

My poor Jeep after popping two tires:


The Jeeps, including my recently repaired Liberty:


The view from the campsite, thanks Pam!


Everyone brought their guns, so there was a lot of shooting, unfortunately not many pictures of shooting, but these are some of the guns. Not pictured: assault rifles and handguns


Making breakfast the next morning: