Go Where The Lights Turn Dark: The Six Hours of Serpents Trail

"The lights were golden.....off!"

Last weekend, an event came to pass that started as nothing more than a cool idea born out of casual conversation during an early morning run. While there had indeed been some sort of race on the Trail of the Serpentine, or Serpent's Trail, just inside the Colorado National Monument near Grand Junction at one point, it was not a regularly occurring event. We also set out to make this more of a highly organized training run or hike open to any friends who would like to participate.

No fee would be charged, but optional offerings to the Mesa Land Trust for the Three Sisters Land Purchase, something from which all trail runners, hikers, and mountain bikers will benefit, would be accepted. No official timing would take place, but total laps would be counted. There would be no official aid station, but water, oranges, and other treats would be available just in case participants needed hydration and a bite to eat. No official awards would be given, but our friend Ray offered up the shirt he won the last time there was an official race here as a traveling trophy of sorts. I was not a race director or anything else in official capacity, but more of an event host, letting people know ahead of time about the event, and organizing little details. We had no idea what we were doing and this was okay; after all, this was NOT a real race. A number of us do Serpents Trail on our own or in small groups to enjoy the night skies and stars, sometimes able to run sans head lamp when the moon was bright enough and skies clear. This was just putting everyone together for good times...six hours worth.

Saturday started early for me, and was pretty hectic throughout the morning and afternoon. By late afternoon, I was feeling kind of beat and wondering how I'd make it through until midnight. Then I snapped out of it, and started gathering up my small assortment of non-race gear and supplies, including a dry erase board and markers for tracking laps, a "ring bell for service" bell to be rung following completion of each lap, some door prizes/donations supplied to us by Single Tracks, the mountain biking and running store in Fruita, and donation envelopes for Three Sisters. Upon arrival to the Serpents Trail parking lot, it was obvious that everyone was running a little behind schedule after busy days. About six of us were there to start, but my phone was buzzing pretty regularly with texts from people saying "on my way!" or "won't be there 'til after X time, but I'm coming!" I wasn't sure if there'd be more than two or three of us, so this was exciting that enthusiastic participants were here already with more on the way. We chilled out, took a few pictures,

and casually prepared to run, feeling no pressure about starting a few minutes late. Suddenly, I wasn't tired anymore. The six of us decided to start lap one as a group, and hence the Six Hours of Serpents Trail was underway at 6:10 Saturday evening.

On the first climb, none of us were out to hammer up the hill hard. We mostly stuck together as a group, and already saw a few more participants pulling into the lot. Our friend Greg had started early and turned in two repeats already, so there were a lucky seven us out there. I didn't feel so bad, and by the time we made it to the top the first time, I felt like I'd warmed up without too much agony from the 1.75 mile distance and 900 foot ascent.

What goes up must come down, and we took the opportunity to really enjoy the first downhill.




I knew I planned to run until the end, so I kept a steady pace but didn't push like I would if this was a regular double-up, or three-peat. On the way back down, we encountered a few more friends who arrived a bit late but were underway with first laps now.

Getting to the lot at the bottom, we all rang the bell and signed in our times for the first lap. Continuing onward for the second lap, we settled into our own paces somewhat, but there was still a very social aspect to this event that made it exactly the non-race we were calling this. Most of us were adjusting paces-picking it up a bit, or slowing down a bit-to be able to chat and run with others. It was nice, and made the climb go by easily. The next downhill was a lot of fun with the body fully warmed. Several more folks had arrived now. I rang the bell, recorded my lap and found my head lamp. The fun was about to begin now; we were going to need our head lamps on the descent this time around. We were going where the lights turned dark. That's where the magic is on Serpent's Trail; the almost magical feeling of running in no specific time or space. The hill fades away from view, and all one notices is the night skies.

On the third climb, I was feeling a little tired, and ran much of the way, but did take time to hike a few spots. I kept the pace up, though, and when it was time to come back down, I was ready to run. On this downhill, I ran into our friend Bryan near the bottom. He said his wife Elizabeth had a little "treat" for me. I don't want to say much, but it was a Kentucky specialty in liquid form. She was also playing tunes from the car, which made things a lot of fun. This break between laps wound up being somewhat long, and by the time we were ready to go, the group decided we'd power hike together to the top. This was great; we joked around, and also discussed the Imogene Pass Run. Perhaps we'd hold one of these endurance runs the night before registration is scheduled to open, and then get online at midnight to register. The moon, cloaked in layers of color, was rising in the night sky. The city lights were twinkling. It was indeed pretty magical out there.

Finishing the fourth lap, several of the participants were ready to call it a night. It was great...a few had never done Serpents Trail before, and one had done a double-up, so this was twice what she'd ever done. There were stop-ins and visits from other friends who were not running, but knew we'd be out there, which provided additional motivation and good energy.

I was still feeling like I could keep going slowly, and so did Carson, so we committed to wandering up again. Our friend John, who is getting ready to run the Hardrock 100 later in the summer (and who had already run a bunch in the morning) was out here now, and doing a quick lap or two just to be able to join in on the fun night. Now that Marty was running solo after several medium-hard laps with Grayson, he was up there really hammering out the late laps. Carson and I realized on this uphill that the legs knew what was going on, and didn't necessarily want to be out there any more. We were so close to midnight it was pretty easy to keep pushing along, though. Along the way, we chatted about the Leadville Trail 100, where we'll both be pacing this year, kids, general running, and other stuff. The legs were starting to yell at me, so moving along with someone else definitely made things a bit easier. We headed back down, and still had a bit of time before midnight. We decided that we'd start again, and knew we should reach Marty not too far up the hill, and then come back down to the finish together. About a quarter of the way up, we found him, and came back down shortly after midnight. The first annual unofficial SHOS had finished, and nobody had been maimed, injured, arrested or killed. On top of that, the weather was great and everyone seemed to have had a great time.

We concluded with a VERY elaborate awards ceremony, and gave Marty his traveling trophy as the runner with the highest lap count-eight times up and down the hill, or roughly 30 miles.



The same three of us who rode up to the start together had finished together, and we allowed a few minutes to enjoy the effort and check out the night skies before leaving. Failing to do what I call the Idiot Check before pulling out, we almost left behind some of our race gear, but realized it before pulling all the way out. Then we drove away, leaving nothing behind, and things as we'd found them.

Though this was a fairly low-key event, and nothing reaching the level of "structured race," the turnout was encouraging. Things fell into place fairly well. We collected a nice little bit of change for Three Sisters, including some donations from two fellow yogis who just treated it as an excuse for a night hike during which they could also donate to the land purchase. Better yet, fellow runners seem to be rather interested in doing more of these group run/endurance events. We'll likely head back to the drawing board soon, and plot out a day, time and location for another such event.

I'm now two weeks away from the Desert R.A.T.S. 50-miler. While on one hand I'm feeling a little under-prepared, I think I've done enough to get through and finish barring unforeseen illness or injury issues. Now is the time for taper, and then the big show. Twelve hours in the desert is a long time, but I'll be out there with fellow runners, getting through it together-that shared experience-will likely make all the difference.

Hope's A Funny Thing-It Shines Like A Ring: Turkey Trotting And Speed Working

Firefighters over the starting area of the GJ Firemans Turkey Trot

Photo by Me

I have to admit to being rather unmotivated to blog this week; or, more accurately, so busy with other stuff that I've not wanted to do much of anything when down time finally came to me. Good things have been happening, though, so they're worth sharing.

First of all, this new weekly speed work group we started about a month ago is REALLY taking off, from four of us the first week to ten the day before Thanksgiving, and twelve yesterday. It's not just straight-up speed work; we do a warmup, some drills and exercises for strength training and injury prevention, intervals (of course) where we already seem to be pairing and grouping off with other similarly paced runners, and cooldown. Interestingly enough, three of the four workouts have come before races for me, but we're learning how to modify the speed work pre-race so that it loosens us up and gets us ready to go rather than taxing or exhausting the body. I wasn't sure if I should go last week, since I decided late to do our local Turkey Trot the next day. Our fearless leader assured me it was a good thing if I ran my 400m intervals at around 70-80% effort for the first 300 meters, opening up to race pace in the last 100 meters. When I went to bed that night I did feel a little tired, but I think this was more to do with two races and a bunch of speed work less than two weeks after a marathon. The Turkey Trot was not some huge target race of mine, so it was a great time to experiment with racing a little tired, but with high hopes and confidence for a good race based on my recent running.


I showed up about an hour early for the Turkey Trot, which I figured would be plenty of time to pre-register. It was, but I learned that unfortunately, they only had 900 timing chips and already had more than 900 runners registered. The good news here was that they'd lowered the race day registration to cost to $15 to make up for this. I wondered, though, how they were going to record times for those of us who were unchipped.

I warmed up on the riverfront trail pre-race, and just tried to keep it about going through the motions with good form. I didn't want to overthink and remind myself that my legs were a little tired-I just wanted to get out there and run as fast as I could. To that end, I'd ditched the Garmin again, as I did previously at the Holy Family 5K. I was just going to run fast and hard, and have no idea my actual pace.

When it was time to line up, there were all the usual local speedy people out there, as well as what appeared to be some non-local speedy people in to visit family and friends, and whup up the locals. There were actually close to 1200 people toeing the line today-an amazing number in a city with a population somewhere around 46,000. It's great to see so many people-from competitive local and regional runners to recreational walkers-out to start the day off right, and support several local firefighter charitable groups. Soon we counted down and took off.

What's that rule about 5K races? Oh, yeah. They HURT. BAD. Today was no different, but on the upside, nothing seemed to be hurting me above and beyond the normal pain threshold for short distance. It was a little cold, and my lungs were struggling a bit to adjust at first, but I soon settled in. There was a good handful of women who were off and gone; there were a few others of us who paced kind of near one another in the first mile. Considering that I was 12 days post-marathon, this was a pretty decent run on tired legs thus far. I focused on a high cadence and running with good form, and tried to ignore the small mile marker on the ground at the end of mile one. I didn't want any outside influences other than me pushing and keeping up my own pace; I didn't want to let in any chance of a second mile sag.

Heading down the road and turning toward the Connected Lakes, I managed to pass a guy or two, but also had two local women pass me-with dogs. They are speedy gals, and I tried to pick it up but they were picking up more. Running down to the turnaround, it was so uncomfortable to have to corner the orange cone quickly. I boomeranged around it and got my first look at how close any other women might be to me. I saw two less than 30 seconds back from me, and knew they were good runners who could pick it up anytime. If I'd had any thoughts pre-race of this maybe being a fun run where I let myself coast, they were gone now and I was in full racing mode.

Hitting the second mile marker, I was pleased that although I knew how far into the race I was, I hadn't obsessed about the long second mile, nor did I feel like I'd dropped off any. I was running now on the paved riverfront trail, which curves, twists, and has a number of uneven spots and little bumps. It's a real workout late in a 5K on what had been fairly smooth and flat surfaces until now. I was bound and determined to really hammer through and finish strong, and not sag off or get clipped at the finish. There was a little bit of leapfrogging with various men running about my pace, but there had been no passing or being passed by women since before the second mile ended. Coming toward the finish, I could see the balloon arch and time clock, and got a look at the time...clicking off in the 21:xx range! This was going to be another good 5K finish for me, and I surged ahead with a little bit of a third wind. I crossed the finish in 21:44, and moved through the chute, happy to be finished.

Moving past the finish chute, I saw Ali come in (one of two ladies not far behind), and we hung out and talked, soon joined by another one of her friends. Looking over my shoulder at one point, I saw that our track group leader dude was talking to a reporter from a local TV station, so I knew at that point that he must've won-sweet! I learned later that he did, but it was by the most razor thin of margins, with the #1 and #2 men shoulder-to-shoulder coming into the finish. Still, a win is a win. For my part, I did not have an official time logged but Bryan, physical therapist extraordinaire and host of the race at his PT offices allowed me to go talk to the timers to have my time recorded. With the time clock, I was able to report the exact time I'd crossed the timing pad, backed up with my self-reported time being a few seconds behind a local runner I could identify as finishing just ahead of me. So, that was cool that I was able to log an official result even without the bib.

When the results were published online, I could see that it was a fast race at the front. I was 10th out of 467 women overall, with three women running 19:00 and under, and four more running under 21 minutes. I was 2nd out of 120 in age group, so all in all, I was very happy with my result. The speed work, racing, and practicing good form when tired worked out. I know I didn't just go out there and hope I'd do well-I'd been working hard and working SMART at training for goal races on my schedule-but having self-confidence, hoping, and expecting to do well did pay off.

This week, I again focused on smart training. I did a comfortably paced but still very challenging run on Serpents Trail, an area trail with 1.75 miles of climbing, 900 feet up, and then descent back to the trailhead. There was also a good hour of running early morning running on neighborhood streets, a downhill speed workout in a neighborhood that provides good practice for the Winter Sun 10K, and speed work night again yesterday. I'm feeling a little fatigued, but nothing that won't be all rested away by Saturday. I've also been to hot power yoga twice this week, and am finding that it is making me stronger, recovering me from hard workouts faster, and allowing me to really become tougher with workouts in extreme temperatures. The practice is at 98 degrees, and it killed me in the beginning, but a few months in I'm finding that it's a great supplement to running.

Tomorrow's the big day to hit the road for Moab for my 5th run at the Winter Sun 10K. Other than still being 7-8 pounds up from last year, I find myself as confident, strong and hopeful as I've been for a race. After just talking about how I need more speed work for some time, I'm actually doing it now, and am beginning to see results from it already. The strategic downhill workouts should also be very helpful for race day. I hear the race day weather forecast is getting crappier by the moment, but really am not putting much stock into it right now, or deciding in advance that I can't have a good race. Hope's definitely a funny thing....that, coupled with trusting my training, and being mentally tough when it gets hard, could have me on a road that I believe can bring me to a podium finish in Moab this weekend. If that doesn't work, maybe a pre-race margarita and soak in the Gonzo Inn outdoor hot tub will do the trick.

(The song that inspired this week's blog post by Denver's own Paper Bird)

Ray Of Light: Run To Whitewater (18 miles from Grand Junction to Whitewater...The Pretty Way)

And I feel like I just got home
And I feel

After my ten minute pity-party for my ugly running fest through the canyons in Moab, I was already thinking ahead to making the most of my little bit of time between now and the Rim Rock Marathon, with the Winter Sun 10K and February's Moab RedHot 55K in my head. After a few days off following The Other Half, I resumed running with a nice sunset "recovery medium-long run" with Sandra, one of my frequent running partners, and another shorter recovery-ish run with Laura, my early morning headlamp show running partner for about two years now. The good thing that came out of the crappy race was that it lit my fire to bounce back, really get accountable about my time spent running, and enjoy the process of getting ready for the bigger races. What worked so well for me last fall with my string of PR's was just running a lot, but for enjoyment, and picking out routes and courses that would make me WANT to run a lot but still provide a challenge and progress in my running.

One of the key components to good training then had been back-to-back weekend runs, typically consisting of a long road run on Saturdays and a medium-long to long trail run on Sunday. I hadn't done this for awhile, but I know my running improved at all distances with it as a regular part of my running schedule. While this would have been ideal in my head this past weekend, Saturday was just too jam-packed with triple-booked kid stuff and my stuff to even consider that option. Sandra and I decided we'd do an easy up-and-down early Saturday on Serpent's Trail, at the base of the Colorado National Monument, and then something for a long run on Sunday. We did it around 5:30 on Saturday, and it's amazing how this run has gone from being really painful the first few times to something that one craves, and enjoys. It's still hard, but I can feel the strength that comes from just doing it, and practicing that continuous climb followed by "how fast can I go in the dark?" descent back down.

We'd kicked around running on Rim Rock Drive (the road that runs across the Colorado National Monument, from Grand Junction to Fruita) as a long run, looking to get in a good 18-20 miles, on Sunday, but left it open. Some time Saturday, though, we started thinking seriously about one of the few Mesa Monument Striders run/races I have not done-the "Run to Whitewater," starting at the Bangs Canyon staging area, and running the Tabeguache Trail for 18 miles to a trailhead in Whitewater, Colorado. I'd never done this run before, and it's probably one of the most sparsely attended races. It's a self-supported gig, crossing slick rock, dirt, and rock fields which vary widely in condition from year to year. No aid stations, no Rock and Roll Marathon bands. You have to pay attention to the course instructions, and keep yourself going in the right direction because no one will be flagging or directing for you out here. The beauty of this event is the beauty of this event, though. It's a trail that's a little less populated than a lot of other ones in this area. There's also that thrill of going point-to-point, like the Imogene Pass Run, "Seventeen miles from Ouray, Colorado, to Telluride, Colorado, the hard way." And, as I've learned, the Beer Cooler of Awesomeness and real food always seem to appear at the end of these no-frills running club deals. When it looked like we could make pretty easy car shuttling arrangements between Sandra, me, and Ray, another local racing regular, I said yes, let's do this thing.

I'd been up later than normal the previous night, attending a small gathering with some friends (hosted by Julie, who was one of my 24 Hours of Moab Dirty Girls teammates, and her husband Mike, ultrarunner and Mad Dog team runner at that same relay) just south of town in Olathe, Colorado. I'd eaten dinner before heading down with three of my kids for this fire pit and Dr. Seuss reading party, eating what amounted to a second dinner, and also partaking in some peach moonshine provided by Bryan and Elizabeth, fellow runners and generally outside-type folks who came here by way of Kentucky. This could have been a recipe for disaster, but I slept like a log for a good six hours. Getting up in the morning, I didn't even bother to look at the weather forecast. My muscles were still sore from last weekend's race, so I figured I'd go with some lightweight tights and a lightweight tech shirt, even though I knew it would probably be pretty warm by the time we were wrapping up this race.

I picked up Sandra and headed out to Whitewater, which is straight south out of town on Highway 50. We had rough directions from Ray on where to park, but were not sure where exactly to go. As it turned out, he was only a few minutes back, so we just pulled off and waited for him, following his truck over to the lot where we'd finish later in the day. We left his truck there, and shuttled back to the Bangs Canyon staging area in town in my car.

As we pulled into the lot about half an hour before the starting time, we saw several other runners and the regular race director for this gig there in the parking lot. Signing in, I was beginning to regret my choice of tights. It was clearly going to be warm today. Upon pulling out my Garmin which has been duct-taped to my wrist for two races now, I realized that it was just about time to have a proper burial for the thing. I zeroed out the previous run, but then couldn't get any of the buttons to work. Oh well...I think I knew this was coming. I tucked it in one of the pouches of my Nathan pack in case the thing decided to work at some point, and I wanted to calculate elapsed time. Sandra and I both agreed we'd just treat it like a training run, and try to run on feel without regard to pace and time. It was a brand-new course for both of us so might as well keep ourselves guessing.

I'd remembered that very few people ran this race the year before when I'd gotten the club newsletter with results. As I found out later, there were a whopping seven runners the previous year, and the course had been sloppy as hell. As starting time approached, I was surprised to see that there appeared to be about two dozen runners here. It was a beautiful, crisp, cool, and bright Western Colorado morning, though. Most runners were folks I knew, and the few unfamiliar faces were quickly introduced. One of the runners showed up about two minutes before the start, which was held off long enough for him to make a quick pit stop (one of the great perks about small, local deals where everybody knows your name). Once he was out, Kim, one of the co-race directors, said "okay, you guys can start now!" as our official start.

For a minute or two, everyone was fairly together, but we quickly strung out across the early ups and downs over slick rock and rocky trails. This was to be a good training run for us, though, and we'd never seen the course, so it was just about settling in to the run now. I was kind of tired from the previous weekend, and putting in a good effort over the past few days in training, but things felt pretty good. We worked our way over some pretty regular climbs, took in the view, and I marveled at how freeing it was to have no clue on my time or pace. Five years of running, and this was my first race, other than a Thanksgiving prediction run in '07, when I would be running without any gauge of pace or time.

In the early miles, my body felt kind of slow to warm up to the running thing, but it was waking up, little by little. There was quite a bit of climbing in the early miles; I'd say that this is my area of running that is always in a "state of progress." We were moving along at what felt like a consistent pace, though. We chattered about upcoming races, past events and runs, Zombie Prom (which I said was Sandra's official descent into running madness...skipping a local event she'd attended with her husband for several years in a row in order to have a more productive and run-filled weekend), and anything else that came to mind.

Now it was definitely warming up. Shorts would have definitely been a better move for me, but I was getting some cooling from rolling up the sleeves on my tech shirt. I'm not sure if there's any science to it, but I'd slathered myself in sunscreen so I didn't feel like my face or head were overheating and burning, and was only mildly bothered by wearing those lightweight tights. We hit what felt like was about the hour mark, and were kind of rambling through more narrow, tree-lined trails now. Passing another runner for the first time, he said to us "Oh, I was wondering where you were. I thought you stopped for lunch." Hehe, wise guy. We saw our friend Ray,who had car-shuttled with us, on several occasions up ahead. It seemed like every time we got a little close, though, he'd be out of sight when we crested the next ridge.

Continuing on our way, I kept wondering to myself why I'd never run this race. It was so pristine and quiet out here; we'd occasionally pass cool landmarks, like an ancient, flipped jeep that had been used for target practice, and at one point, there was a funny voice in the trees behind us. It wound up being the mountaineering partner of the guy who was now running right behind us, and who happened to be camping out there. We kind of laughed about the "talking bush," and moved along until we hit a bit of a crossroads with two different directional options. We'd been told to keep meandering right after one initial left, but the way that it seemed we needed to head was toward the left. We decided to wait for the guy behind us to see which way he thought was right because we just didn't feel like getting lost.

When he caught up to us a few minutes later, we looked for tracks on both trails, and just were not sure. It seemed like there were more tracks on the left trail, though. Coming back to the crossroads, I finally noticed the post near the left trail with an arrow and "Tabeguache" on it. We were relieved to confirm the correct route, and headed on our way. I was running in front, Sandra a few feet back, and our trail buddy behind her.

After about a mile, and moving into a rocky downhill section, I heard the distinctive "thump" of body hitting trail. Turning around, I saw that it was the guy. He'd eaten it pretty good. We asked if he was okay, and he replied with an "Oh, I'm fine," as he picked himself up and began to run again. Sandra and I kept moseying along with his "all good." Soon, he wasn't right behind us anymore. We didn't know if there were any other runners behind him and were a little concerned at how he was doing, but he also one of those old trail runners you know will make it in one way or the other.

Faster than the speeding light she's flying
Trying to remember where it all began
She's got herself a little piece of heaven
Waiting for the time when Earth shall be as one

The sun was still shining bright, and lighting up the bright autumn colors on trees near and far. We'd get views here and there of Mt. Garfield, the Grand Mesa, and back toward Grand Junction, and it felt pretty sweet to see how far we'd already come on foot. There's something cool about these point-to-point races that are off the beaten path. We were gathering a little bit of momentum and starting to loosen up into the run now, and it felt pretty good. We still didn't have a clue on time or pace. I was imagining, since we weren't really "racing" today, that we might be on pace for about a four hour finish. It didn't matter much, though. We hit a point that felt to me like it was probably about ten miles, and rather than wanting it to be all over, I really just wanted to take in every bit of the run and hard work. Our next encounter with another runner was somewhere in this stretch-a guy who came bounding along and said "Boy, am I happy to see you guys! I took a wrong turn for a mile or two" before running on ahead.

We were getting more frequent downhill and flat-type sections now, and it felt good to open up and fly down little stretches. My other "area of progress" on the trail stuff has been the opposite problem of sometimes building up enough speed that I loose all control. This leads to those rolled ankles, falls, and awesome bruising or other body marks. It was feeling okay today, though, with no out-of-control hurtling down rock fields. We kept gathering a bit more speed here and there, backing off a bit at times on the climbs, but staying consistent in the effort.

Coming over one of the hills, we passed another runner, this time one of the ladies we'd seen at the start area. Sandra knew her from one of the local outdoor stores. We said hello and moved along. Not too far up, we encountered Tom, who is kind of a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to outdoor activity. He runs, puts on all the cross country ski races with the nordic council here, does adventure races (one of which involved a mechanical bull ride for one stage earlier this year), and anything else outside that seems fun. He was running more slowly and carefully than he normally would, and seemed to be backing off to just finish without hurting himself in a tired state. We said hello, and he said "save a beer for me!" as we ran along.

Next, we saw a funny, out-of-place looking landmark we'd been told to watch for-some fenced off retaining ponds that kind of look like a random tennis court in the middle of a Colorado wilderness area. Sure enough, there was the tennis court oasis. We laughed at how much it did look like a tennis court on the approach, and kept moving along. It was nice that I'd started this thing a little sleepy and not really warmed up, but just kept warming up and feeling stronger as we continued.

Coming over the top of another hill, we saw a guy on the edge of a trail with a jug of water. I recognized him right away as one of the local running club's older, long-standing members. "Need some water? Trail mix?" he shouted as we came down. Sweet! An aid station of sorts? I was still pretty good on water, but I happily accepted a top-off. I figured it would be good to have a little something extra to rehydrate. Sandra had a smaller flask in her hydration pack, and was near empty. She refilled hers, and we thanked him for being out there. "Only 3.9 miles left!" he told us. "Some sections you'll have to hike, but mostly runnable." Off we went again. Turning left toward Grand Junction, it was awesome to see how far we'd come. We were running through more open-type space now that kind of rolled nicely but didn't climb a ton.

And I feel
Quicker than a ray of light she's flying
Quicker than a ray of light I'm flying

Finally, we could see that we were near the road where we'd left our vehicle to take back to town. Our pace may not have been blazing, but it sort of felt like we were flying now with the finish in sight. We came over one last hill and around a bend, and could see right down to the lot. They could see up to us too, and started hooting and hollering. This was great. We weren't expecting a cheering section, and it was cool to descend the final switchbacks from above to reach them. Getting to the edge of the trail and hitting the last bit of road, we weren't sure if we were supposed to get on the road and just come to them the easy way, or if there was some trail on the other side of the street into the lot. They saw our confusion and waved us down the road, and in we came. As it turned out, we were well under four hours in our fun long run on trails, coming in at around 3:43.

I went back to the vehicle and changed my clothes, grabbing some camping chairs for the finish area. There was a full spread of pasta, bread, zucchini chips, grapes, water and Gatorade, and of course, the Beer Cooler of Awesomeness. As we sat down with our post-drink refreshments, stories were swapped about wrong turns and getting lost. Turns out that we'd done well to not go totally off-course, and find our way in that moment of confusion. Several runners ran a little bit out of their way, and our friend Bryan wound up getting so off-course that he decided to turn around and go back to the start. Another runner, a previous winner of the Leadville Trail 100 with a streak of about 19 finishes in a row there (sans pacers), added a bunch of extra miles somewhere, and wound up coming in behind us due to his extra long run. Someone yelled "Ah, here comes Kirk and that walking stick!" and we hooted and hollered for him as he finished. Most runners continued to chat, eat, and rehydrate on various beverages until all were in, and then hung out and talked a little longer on this beautiful late October day. Usually, I'm the one saying "let's go do X, Y or Z race or run today." This was a day when I was really thankful that others suggested something totally different, because it wound up being one of those days when I re-charged and hit the old re-set button.

I'm looking at a week ahead of solid running and training, and then will figure out some sort of two week taper plan for the Rim Rock Marathon. Upon thinking about what went wrong at The Other Half (and there was a LOT), I think I need to be careful that I'm not building or doing some sort of reverse taper in these last few weeks. I may have gotten a bit overexuberant leading up to that race, and just didn't taper enough. It was just one of those days, too, but I'm going to make sure I fix the things for Rim Rock that stand out as things in my power to change. If I make the most of my preparation, then I'll be ready for those things that are not in my power to change.

Photo Friday

I don't have much to say these days other than this was one of the most unbelievably surreal and stressful weeks of my life that was made better and less stressful by some good running, among other things. I still need to find a smaller camera to take ON the run (and alas...my fabulous purple iPod has gone missing. BOO.), but did bring the big camera for a few shots following my run today under the light of a full moon. These were taken at the Tabeguache Trailhead, just minutes from my home, after running with Laura, my most regular and consistent of year-round running partners.


Remember, I'm not a photographer. I am a runner who likes to take pictures sometimes. ;) This is just a representation of why, in part, there are quite a few of us who endure that 4 or 5 o'clock alarm. You can't quite fully appreciate the view driving past, or see such colors later in the morning.