Sunday December 16, 2007

AM- 20 miles (3:06) Longs Ranch Road to Bob's Road to Barr Camp and down to Manitou (PC II)
PM- 7 miles (1:01) Monument Loops (New Balance RC152)

This morning was a great run with the Incline Club. I didn't run over to Manitou because I had to be to work at noon and because I decided I should split up my 4hrs of running today just to be on the careful side.

After getting a couple minutes late start because I was stripping off my tights (correctly anticipating a warm day in the mountains) I spent the run up the Ute Pass Trail (UPT) catching up to and passing a lot of runners, including Dan Vega and Kelli Lusk.

Once I turned onto LRR, the powdery ankle-deep snow and steep terrain had me grunting and cursing, and despite the wind I was soon grinding along in shirt-sleeves. At the top I took Bob's Road over to Barr Trail and up to Barr Camp. After the snow and radical incline of LRR, the packed down Barr Trail felt positively flat. It is amazing to me that I can still run to 10,200 feet (because the trail was so well-packed) on trails in December---it's hard to beat the Pikes Peak massif for training.

After chatting with Neal and Teresa Taylor (the caretakers at Barr Camp--Neal finished his 10th Leadville 100 this summer), eating one of Teresa's scrumptious pancakes, and quaffing a free Gatorade in exchange for carrying a bag of trash back down to Manitou, Steve Bremner and I enjoyed a brilliant run back down to the city on Barr Trail. I love that trail.

In the evening, Jocelyn and I went for a quick jaunt around Monument Valley Park in the dark (we didn't get out until 7:30pm). My legs were a bit tired (mostly from standing up all afternoon working at the CRC), but mostly I noticed that my New Balance flats are on their last legs (they only have about 360 miles on them, but pretty soon I will have worn a hole completely through the bottom of the right one). All in all, a great day of running.