The 10K at 10,000 Feet

Sunday we traveled to Vail to run a 10K at 10,000 feet.  The day started with scraping a pretty good layer of frost from our windshield...in August!  By the time we got to Vail the sun was shining and it was promising to be a great day.  We boarded the Eagle Bahn gondola and began our ascent to the starting point.  It's always exhilarating to be at the start of a race.  People are pacing around, some go for warm-up runs, others stretch.  At 8:45 we made our way down to the official starting area.  We dropped our bags and found a spot in the crowd.  I like to begin near the back; I know there's no need to try and keep up with the elite athletes who hover at the front.  The announcer counted us down ten seconds  and we were off.  I found it hard to find my pace.  The nervous energy, the people in front and back, the sound of their breathing made me start off at too quick of a run.  I like to start pretty slow, allowing for a good long warm-up and then I pick it up a bit.  Not in this race.  After bottlenecking at the first entry into a forested area, the trail sloped down and down and down.  Again, hard for me.  I'd rather climb and climb and climb right away.  So I got fooled into thinking I could go fast.  When we did get to the climb I walked.  I didn't feel too bad since all of the people I could see in front of me were doing the same.  At mile 4 the descent began again and not any time too soon.  I thought I was going to puke for most of miles 2 and 3.  I finished 10 minutes slower than my 10K runs out on county road 25 but that's okay.  The views from the top of Vail were stunning.  The flowers still showed their colors and the sunny day was the real draw of this race.  What a fun time.  And by the way, 10,000 feet is no joke.  It's hard.

Getting Back Into a Schedule

The last few weeks have been a hodge podge of workouts and runs with not a lot of thought.  Two weeks ago I helped the volleyball girls with conditioning and working out with them was a lot of fun.  Yesterday was the first day of school with kids and I began with what my school year schedule for exercising and movement will be:

• 20 minutes of yoga while coffee is percolating (thanks to yogaglo I can do a search for twenty minute sessions that fit my needs)
• Walk to and from school (one mile each way)
• Run or workout after school (last night I ran four miles)
• My goal is that all of this movement will add up to 14,000 steps that are counted on my handy dandy New Balance BodyTRNr in bright orange.  Yesterday that happened.

As with any schedule the "sticking to it" is essential.  It's my plan to do so!  

Returning to the High Country

I've been out of town for the last few days to an elevation near sea level.  I ran a few days in the humidity and loved the total sweat factor.  I always feel like I'm getting rid of all sorts of things through my skin cells when exercising in humidity.  Luckily, the temps weren't that bad and it was a great visit to my brother's in Virginia.  The twenty burpees for twenty days challenge is over.  Admittedly, I didn't do a great job of completing each day's burpee goal.  Two of the six days that I didn't do burpees were followed by days that I doubled up on the burpees.  The other days...I just didn't do them.  Some of those days I did do strength exercises, just not burpees.  Today we went on our favorite trail run in the high country.  We started at the trailhead to the Devil's Causeway at Stillwater Reservoir outside of Yampa.  Instead of going right up the steep, at times perilous trail that is always super busy, we stayed left.  This trail takes us along the shores of the reservoir and to the headwaters.  We follow that water the entire way up to a few high mountain lakes.  That's our turn around.  If we continued on the trail, we could go back over the Causeway and down (this loop takes about 3 1/2 hours) or we could go up and over, ending up at Trapper's Lake.  After a short breather at the lakes and talking about the trail's highpoints (nice undulations, beautiful flowers, stunning scenery, hardly anyone on the trail) we started back.  That's when I heard the splash of something big moving in Bear River.  I turned towards the noise and saw a bull moose.  No less than about 30 feet away.  Wow!  He moved out of the water, stopped, turned and looked at us and that's all I saw.  Because I didn't stop running.  I kept going.  Welcome to the High Country!