Quest for LeadMan 09

View of Pikes Peak from Cameron's Cone

This week was a lot of hours at work, so workouts were cut short, but the weekend was fantastic! Monday, I was still pretty wasted from the previous weekend and worked late, so just used it as a rest day. Probably better to recover than force a workout.

Tuesday: Got up early and ran in Ute Park then two miles inside the track barefoot. This run felt incredible. I just wanted to run forever, but had to get to work. Ended up working 11 hours so missed the ProCycling hammer fest in the evening. The morning run sure was nice though! Run 1.5 hrs, 11 miles.

Wednesday: Great early morning hill repeats on the road bike. Was up at the crack of dawn for hill repeats as it would be another long day & late night at work. Since I was strapped for time, stayed in the neighborhood and rode 5 repeats up a .92 mile hill with average grade of 8.8% , averaging about 7 minutes each climb. Felt really good, the early morning sunrise was awesome and the mountains, as always, amazing. Just had to watch the descents because there were deer all over the place. I really felt like doing more but no time. The climbing legs are coming around!

Thursday: Another day in paradise! Got up very early this morning and ran with Max in Ute Park. It was just another beautiful morning with the sun rise and the mountains and the trails. About halfway through the run went over to Eagleview Middle School track and ran a couple of miles barefoot as well as a half dozen 100 meter stride outs. The more I run barefoot the more I like it. Maybe I'll start working on getting my feet tough enough to run on trails barefoot and not just grass. Hmmm that's a thought. We'll see. Rode my rode bike home from work. I figured with the long hours I'm working that's the best way to get a ride in.

Friday: Easy ride to work.

Saturday: Ahh the weekend! The Leadman events are getting ever closer! Two weeks from today the show begins. Went out to Breckenridge with Dan & Kara Durland. I've mentioned them before but they are worth mentioning again. These two are the toughest couple around, and in Colorado that is saying a lot. Both of them do 24 hour races, the Leadville Trail 100, and many other epics that literally chew up mountain bikers and spit them out. Dan & Kara do em all on single speeds. The non-finish ratio at the Leadville Trail 100 is very high for women on geared bikes. Kara finishes every year on a single speed. They are both studs of the highest realm. Today we went out so Dan could recon day three of the Breck Epic. This is a 6 day mountain bike stage race over high altitude and some of the toughest terrain anywhere. As always, he is doing the entire race on a single speed. Day three is supposed to be the easy day; 30 miles with 4,341 ft of climbing at an average altitude of 10,300 ft. It was a great ride.

Dan

Wahoo!

Sunday: Cameron's Cone. What a cool run! Most of it was hiking but it was super cool. Rick Hessek, Steve Bremner and I decided to do a little adventure run up to the top of Cameron's Cone then do some exploring from there. The climb up was steep and a lot of bushwacking.

Steve on the way up

At the top we were treated to incredible seldom seen views of Pikes Peak. Instead of going back the way we came, (which was dangerously steep) we went down the other side, bushwacking and following a creek. Came upon some old cabin ruins and trails here and there that we could actually run. We eventually came out on Barr Trail near the Experimental Forest and No Name Creek. We hadn't seen a single person in over 3 1/2 hours. Barr Trail seemed like a highway of hikers after that. Incredible, amazing run. Can't think of enough adjectives to describe it!