July Updates

I've been up in the mountains almost every weekend since my last post. With the exception of a long weekend on the Virginia shore to see my family. Despite all my marathon training, I'm still not faster than my sister, who was a college XC runner, but I was able to thump my 58 year old dad. While that statement doesn't sound impressive, a few years ago he ran a 3:48 marathon at Big Sur.

I've had some good car camping trips and started to pick up some better gear that makes things a little more comfortable. We spent a nice weekend up around Buena Vista, Colorado fishing and hiking the trails around Missouri Peak.

The weekend of the 10th a few friends and I met up in Crested Butte, the mountain bike capital of the world, and rode a really nice 20 mile trail called reno/deaddog if I remember correctly. Again, I have no pictures of these events.

Last weekend, my buddy who I did Quandary with earlier and I did an evening ascent of Torreys and Grays peak. This was incredible. We left work on Friday around 4, bolted up to the trail head and beat feet up the peaks. The round trip on this was ~8.25 miles and we did it in 3:12. The pace was about .25 miles/hour faster than the quandary trip and we were pretty happy.

The plan is to get a group together this weekend to do Longs peak and I have some 4 wheeling trips in the works. I'm pretty excited for this summer. As far as long run plans, I don't think I'll be doing a marathon any time again this year. I still don't feel like my feet are up to another run like that, and the training is just too much when it's 90+ degrees outside every day. I'm planning on picking up a nicer camera and I might start back with some more frequent updates. We'll see.