saturday 7/24

Cliff notes: Blodgett Peak fail.

Headed over to the west side this morning to tackle a peak on the north end of town that I've never been up. Trail started out on a service road in the open space and dead ended into a single track trail near some old water works.

After heading up a drainage for about 10 minutes, I crossed the drainage and moved onto the east facing slope of Blodgett Peak. The trail petered out here and I was left to scramble up the boulderfield. Felt ok until I got to the top when it was just a scramble up a scree slope with no real trail to go by. I gained the northeast ridge but could see that I still had another few hundred feet of vertical to go with no trail.


At this point, I decided to start the slide down the scree slopes instead of continuing on. I made it back down to the water tank and the double track service road and back to the parking lot.


I looked up the routes when I got back home and saw the error in my ways. There is certainly a "route" to the top via the boulderfields, but you make it up as you go. The standard route continues up the drainage instead of traversing over to the east slope of the peak. I'll make sure I stay straight next time.








Took me almost 3 hours to cover 3.5 mi with a lot of backtracking in attempt to find some semblance of a trail around the boulderfield.

friday 7/23

Counter clockwise loop around the golf course again this morning. 4 mi in a casual 46 minutes.

Gonna go check out Blodgett Peak in the morning. 5.5 mi round trip with 2400' gain! Climbing the southeast ridge of Mt. Elbert on Sunday with 5300' and plenty of time above 13k feet.

Breaking news: Leashes only work when you actually hook them up to your dog.

As I rounded a corner this morning some lady had a leash in her hand and a dog walking next to her. Unhooked. Her dog was quite interested in Boomer and as I tried to cross the street, her dog continued to follow. I stopped and she just kinda stared like I should do something about it. I turned and ran back to the curb with her dog in tow and tried several times to continue on my way but her dog kept following... into freaking traffic. She chased the dog in circles around me 3 or 4 times before her mutt finally realized that it was in trouble and stopped. Awesome!

7/21 incline

Got to lower Ruxton a few minutes after 6 and jogged up to the top of the Cog parking lot. Felt really good on the lower half and then blew up above the bail trail. Stopped my watch at 51:38 on the top. Easy run down Barr and then back down Ruxton to the car.

A touch over 4 mi on the outing in 1:33.

monday 7/19

4 mi around the golf course. Took the counter clockwise loop today and it proves to be much more difficult with a pretty significant climb over the 3/4mi or so up the hill on Constitution. Managed to run all of it and felt pretty good.

sunday 7/18

Got a late start up Barr to get up as high as I wanted to take pics of the BTMR action so I settled in at the turn for the 2nd switchback. Ended up being a pretty good spot. After the race went by, I wasn't keen on hanging out there for at least the next hour so I headed down to the finish. Found a pretty good spot to grab pics there and took quite a few of the finishers coming into the line.

Headed home, made some breakfast, watched Le Tour, and took a nap. As the afternoon turned to evening, I was itching to do something since I didn't get near enough work in the morning. I put the shorts on, grabbed the dog, and headed over to Palmer for a run around the loop that we usually bike on. Ended up with 4.5 mi in an hour at a very casual pace. Not sure if it was the clouds or what, but it seemed like it got dark awfully fast after the sun tucked behind the front range. Made it back home at 9 and caught a few minutes of BTMR coverage on the news.

wednesday 7/14 - incline

Up early and headed over to Manitou. The thermometer in my Jeep read 75F when I left the house at 5:30! However, it stayed mostly cloudy for the hike up the Incline and was quite comfortable. Up in 51:29, easy jog back down to Ruxton. Times are far from impressive but I've taken over 10 minutes off since I started going over there on Wednesday mornings last month.

Was up late watching Le Tour and got up early this morning. Time for coffee. Even now that Lance is out, I'm so completely invested in the race and I can't stop watching it. Epic stuff.

getting close

... and I'm way behind the curve. I've been making twice weekly trips to Manitou to do the incline and then some. Last Saturday, I decided to get some time in on the real course. I hit sub 5 hr splits up to No Name and took it really easy to the 7.8 sign where I was down about 4 minutes. Turned around there and fried my quads all the way back into Manitou.

A few other runs sprinkled in around those trips to the west side of town but nothing terribly exciting to speak of.

In other news, I quit chewing Copenhagen almost two months ago. Bad news is I didn't quit eating. Gained a few lbs in the process but it beats lip cancer!

Will hit the incline tomorrow morning and then go up to Barr Camp on Saturday. Might also head up early on Sunday to scope out the BTMR and snap pics for a couple hours.