back from vacation

After the weekend in Ouray, the 4th of July fell in the middle of the following week.  Michelle and I went for a picnic up on Capt. Jack's trail and I decided it was finally time to ask her to marry me.  After dinner and all the important questions were asked, we met up with our friends over at Josh's house and watched fireworks from the roof.

A few days later, we headed up to China Wall, outside of Divide, for two nights of camping for my 30th birthday.  We returned on Sunday just in time for a BBQ at my parent's house with a bunch of friends.  That was the end of the break from training and I got right back to work the following Monday with a trip up the Incline.

It sucked!  I was a good 5 minutes off my normal pace and could definitely tell that I hadn't done anything but drink beer and relax for the past two weeks.  I had some pretty serious muscle pains in my calves and quads through Friday and finally felt ready to do something again on Saturday.  We had planned to get to the summit of the Peak via the Crags trail on Sunday, July 14th.

Sunday, we all loaded up and headed to the Crags bright and early.  I packed some peanut butter bagels, GU, raisins, almonds, and loaded up my Camelbak.  I forgot to eat one of my sandwiches on the way up and it hit me hard about a half mile into the trail.  We stopped and I put one away real quick.  Crags starts at 10k feet and it didn't take long for the altitude to take it's toll.  I hung near the back of the pack for most of the ascent from treeline to Devil's Playground with the exception of the section where Josh and I dumped our packs and got a 50yd sprint in just before cresting the first ridge.  That hurt!

Things were going well until we started the last push toward the rock scramble.  It got really windy and cold, so I threw on a windbreaker.  It took about 5 minutes before the sauna started inside of that thing so I took it back off.  The only other warm clothing I had was soaked in sweat from the first couple miles of the hike.  Luckily, once we started up the steeps, I forgot about how cold I was.  We summited in about 4 hours taking our sweet time on the way up.  I still felt like my legs were a little beat up from doing the incline earlier in the week, but I made it.

We got down in just a little over half the time and stopped at Wines of Colorado in Cascade for lunch.  They have a killer burger there and I highly recommend it.

I was still feeling the effects of two weeks of nothing, but it was good that I took the time off earlier instead of later so I could really start pressing hard to train before the Ascent.