Week in Review (May 24 - May 30)

Tuesday (19,463 steps) - Almost didn't get out of bed. Even with the sun coming up super early, for some reason, I am having an even HARDER time getting out of bed than when it was cold and dark. Urg. But, I did get up, and had one of the best runs I have had in ages along the lake on the trails.

The grass is knee high out there! Picked up some groceries on the way home and got Tokyo Joe's, and A joined me for most of an upper body video after dinner.
Wednesday (19,370 steps) - Got to "sleep in" since all I needed to get done was a video. Chose a new pilates/abs video and some stretching. HOLY CRAP. I have zero abs, and apparently, not much in the way of glut/thigh muscles either. Wah. Also, today was A's last day of school! Can't believe she will already be heading into fifth grade in the fall. Where has the time gone??

We had a super special run club planned! Coohills, a French restaurant in LoDo offered to host Runner's Roost for the night. They were offering a free drink and appetizers to anyone that signed up. New Balance was also there to demo shoes. It didn't take nearly as long to get there as I thought, although we hit some nasty traffic heading into downtown. It was pretty hot and sunny when we set out for our run just after 6 - an out and back on the Cherry Creek trail. We ran with Maureen and Heather, struggling a bit with the heat (how are we going to survive summer??) The food was fantastic... flat bread pizza, asparagus, cheese, CHOCOLATE MOUSSE? A great night with lots of awesome running friends.

Thursday (17,286 steps) - Exhausted. Still managed to get up with enough time to do an upper body video. I upped the weights on quite a few of the exercises, will have to see how that affects me later. Since A didn't have gymnastics, we had plans to go to Runner's Roost in Lakewood for the Belmar running club! The weather looked super iffy all day, but we still planned on running three miles. We ran with Maureen and Colfax (and her friend, I think her name was Lisa) and managed to get a little over a mile in before the rain started. There is a liquor store on this route that does beer and wine tastings (??!!) so I tried the new Dry Dock sour - it was tasty! The temperature dropped pretty quick and we were pretty cold and wet by the time we got back to the car.

We met up with everyone at Rocko's for dinner. Fun night! Got home late and still had to pack for our long weekend.
Friday (12,895 steps) - Rest day!! I did, however, do an abs video that is INSANELY hard (for me, with no abs). Loaded up the car for the weekend, dropped A off at a friend's house, and then I headed to work. It was super slow because a lot of people were gone for the holiday weekend. THANKFULLY, they decided to close the office at 3 - which meant we would be able to get on the road sooner. I picked up A and we headed south. We stopped to get a picture near Collegiate Peaks.

When we arrived in the Salida area we stopped at Elevation brewing. I hoped there would be food, but the place was really small so I just had a quick drink and then we went down the road to a cute Italian restaurant for dinner.

After that, we still had a few hours to drive to South Fork, where we would be staying for the night. We arrived around 9:45, enough time for A to change into her swimsuit and go to the pool for 15 minutes until they closed. LONG DAY.

Saturday (19,802 steps) - I had set my alarm but didn't realize it was my "weekday" alarm - so we overslept a bit (thankfully, this has never happened to me on a race day!). We had breakfast at the hotel and headed out for another long drive. Stopped at Treasure Falls, but A was too cold for a long hike).

We stopped in Pagosa Springs for gas and coffee, and then drove straight through to Four Corners! Pretty annoyed when we got to the gate and found out that they are cash only, so had to turn around and drive 15 minutes in the opposite direction to the closest ATM. I hadn't been to Four Corners since I was a kid, and they have certainly livened it up since I was there last. Line for photo ops and tons of vendors around the perimeter. I thought it would be cool to do a run that would allow us to run in all four states (although after uploading the data, it appears we somehow missed Colorado? Anyway, there was actually a pretty cool nature trail that we did a bulk of the run on.

A doesn't like this picture, but I think it's a cool pic of her running up the hills!

We went back to the center, I bought a magnet and a bracelet for A. Then it was heading back east to Cortez for lunch. On the way there I nearly hit a kid on a bike (I had a green light) and slammed on my brakes, narrowly missing him. WTF, why would you not wait for a walk light?? So damn scary. A picked Mexican food for lunch, and we were both STARVING. The portions were HUGE, I couldn't eat even half of what was on my plate.

By now it was getting later in the afternoon, but we decided to head into Mesa Verde, about 15 minutes up the road. We went to the visitor center to get maps, and then headed towards Step House, one of the few dwellings that you could view without needing to be in a tour group. I hadn't been to Mesa Verde since I was a child and didn't realize how mountainous the roads would be - and were only two lanes. I pulled into every overlook for pictures.

So even though it was about 15 miles to get to where we were going, it took A LONG TIME. As we were getting nearer, we saw a sign that Step House trail closed at 4. Four???? We parked just after 3:30 and thankfully made it just in time to go down the trail to see the ruins. Pretty cool!

Am I shrinking? 

By the time we made it back up everything was closed off. There were some other hikes in the area, so we decided to do the Nordenskiold hike, which we estimated to be about 2 miles. There have been a lot of fires in Mesa Verde, and this section had been hit pretty hard - pretty eerie with all the dead trees.

By the time we finished the hike we were both starving, so we decided to head down to the visitor center to see if we could buy tickets for tours on Sunday. On the way I stopped at Park Point, the highest location in the park - what amazing views!

Anyway, it was a good thing we planned ahead on buying tickets, as they were almost sold out! We drove into Mancos to check out their brewery. Beer was good - location, not so good. We stopped by the hotel to check in and shower, then went down the street in search of food. We picked J. Fargo - which turned out to be FANTASTIC. A had a burger and I had a tasty Southwest salad and a delicious piece of carrot cake.
Sunday (23,216 steps) - With nothing planned in the morning, we "slept in" - but I think we were still up by 7:30. Had breakfast in the hotel lobby, and then watched some tv - I also did do an abs video (I promise I will get abs (again?). We went to the pool for about a half hour, showered, picked up Subway to go, and then headed back into Mesa Verde. We had plans to hike/run the Petroglyph trail. The first half a mile or so was runnable, and then it was a fairly challenging hike. Plus, it was HOT. We took a ton of pictures, and thought the whole hike round trip was just over two miles. I thought it was an out and back, and when it got close to an hour and we hadn't seen the petroglyphs yet, I started to panic a bit. We had to be at our first tour at 3:30, and it wasn't exactly close by. Luckily, we realized/discovered that the hike was a loop (A claims she knew this all along), we we ended up having enough time.

Spruce Tree House - closed to the public at this time for fear of rock slides

We got back to the museum at the top around 2:30, ate our lunch, and then walked around the museum for a few minutes before we had to head out to the Balcony House for our first tour. We barely made that one in time! This was a pretty cool tour, which involved climbing a 32 foot ladder (that's three stories!), as well as crawling in a tunnel.

The 32 foot ladder!

A is standing UNDER one of the balconies

The tour lasted about an hour, and then we did a quick run to Soda Canyon - more cool views.

Our second tour was nearby, Cliff Palace. This was one of the most well-preserved sites in the park. Very cool.

We had hoped to get back to the museum before it closed so that A could get her Junior Ranger badge, but they were closed. We were hungry, so we headed back down to Cortez to check out the Main Street Brewery. We had to wait a bit for a table, but it was so worth it! I had an open faced burger smothered in green chile and a stout beer that was delicious.

After dinner we went to the pool for a few minutes, then to bed. Another long day.
Monday (16,421 steps) - Up just after 5 am so that we could be on the road early. Stopped to get coffee on the way out of town and then drove straight through to Pagosa Springs where we picked up breakfast and lunch at Subway. We drove all the way to Mosca for our next activity - the Great Sand Dunes! It was a tad out of the way, but I'm not in this part of the state that often and A really wanted to go. I hadn't been to the dunes since 2001, shortly after I was married. I was so overweight and out of shape then that I couldn't even climb all the way up to the highest dune - so that was the goal.

We arrived just before 10 am, and were parked near the "beach" just after 10. We did most of the hike on the way up in our bare feet, but then the sand got too hot so we both put our shoes on. It took about an hour to get all the way to the top, and less than half that to get back down.

We played in the water for a few minutes - cooling off our feet, and then had lunch.

By this time, the parking lot was FULL and people were parking along the road to the beach, almost a mile away! Glad we got there early! We did a quick run on the Mosca Pass trail before going back to the visitor center for A to get her Park Ranger badge.

And then back on the road. I had planned to stop in South Park at their brewery. At the brewery I had a beer and we played a few games of Jenga. A, of course, won all three.

Somewhere between South Park and Denver I got the idea to go to Godfather's Pizza for dinner. We got there around 6:15, only to discover the wait was almost 2 hours! By now I had pizza on the brain, so we stopped at Old Chicago's near the house and got food to go. Laundry, unpacking and pizza.

Stats:

• 128,453 steps
• 15 miles run (lowest mileage in ages!)
• 4 hikes, just over 4 hours total (not counting the tours we did, those were super short)
• 131 minutes of strength stretching (I made sure to do something 5 out of 7 days!)
• 1,120 miles driven over the weekend (not a real "stat," I just thought that was really a lot of driving!
• Weekly gain 1.6 pounds (129.6) - I am super sad to be at this weight. I haven't been in the 130's since I had A a decade ago. I really have to be more conscious about what I'm doing. Hopefully some of this is just "vacation gain."

Everything Else:

• See above. #noteatingallthethings didn't go so well while we were out of town. I feel like I kept up a decent level of activity. However, we were also in the car a ton, so I guess there is that.
• Nothing else. Recovery week from being out of town.