Week in Review (July 30 - August 5)

Tuesday (11,287 steps) - Work in the office. Did cross training at lunch. Took Olive for a walk after work. I guess nothing else?

Wednesday (12,103 steps) - Work in the office. Did pilates at lunch. 4 Noses after work. Ariel met us for dinner at Hoffbrau for dinner. I was excited about a steak salad but the meat was greasy and it wasn't very good. :(

Thursday (13,007 steps) - Work from home. Did another short run that wasn't as bad as Mondays, but still not amazing. 

Took Olive for a longer walk. Went to Torchy's for dinner. Olympics?

Friday (13,904 steps) - Work in the office. Did more strength training at lunch. Considering adding more of this to my training as I have been feeling much weaker lately! After work we met Terri for a beer at 4 Noses. Torchy's for dinner again.

Saturday (26,035 steps) - Up EARLY to go to Leadville to meet Liz for a Hope Pass jaunt. For some reason we were both confused on how long it would take to get up there. We left later than I planned and we still got there almost a half hour early. Started just after 8 and warned Liz that Olive might be slow and that we had ZERO desire to go to Winfield.

I'd like to think that I had felt recovered from Summit when we started, but this definitely seemed tough to me. (Yet another reason I want to do more strength training - my glutes are WEAK). Olive actually did REALLY well!

We did not need to start moving over for people until we were relatively close to the top, maybe .75 or so - and even then, everyone was just fast hiking anyway.

Looking back towards Twin Lakes

We managed to do the whole climb without using poles, yay! Liz had made sandwiches, so we took off our packs to eat and then took summit pictures. There was actually a gal at the top that had on a race tee from Transylvania, which was neat!

Someone is very happy to have climbed all the way up!

Liz originally was going to go to Winfield but decided that she was going to go back down with us. We did some jogging on the way down (and saw David Roche RUNNING up the Hope side), but as I expected, Olive was a bit lethargic on the way back down.

Saw quite a few marmots and pikas on the way down. Once we finally got back to the car we sat by the river and had a beer before deciding to go into Frisco for a visit to Outer Range. I had suggested that Ben give Lee a call and see if he could join us (since we never did get him a beer for rescuing us off the Summit course). I dozed off on the drive and we had a good time at the brewery, including getting lunch.

I managed to sleep a bit on the rest of the drive and we headed home to watch Olympics track.

Sunday (14,683 steps) - With another stupidly hot day in town, we had plans to go back to the mountains for a run/hike. Neither of us had been to Silver Dollar Lake, so late morning we drove up. We had to go waaaay up to the end of the road to find somewhere to park because it was so crowded.

Since there were so many people I kept Olive on leash. It looked like it might get stormy later, but we were really happy for it to not be a zillion degrees.

We saw a TON of little critters on this hike, including what we think was a marten - he was too fast to get a picture though. Surprised to find that there was a small amount of snow on the trail - Olive was really happy for that.

TONS of wildflowers still, although they never photograph well. It had just started drizzling a bit when we got to the lower lake.

Sky was a bit dark, but we still went to the second lake.

Sat down long enough to have a snack before we got a bit worried about thunder and lightning. By now there was barely anyone out, so I let Olive stay off leash as she moves a bit faster without it.

We saw a few pikas really close to the trail so Ben stopped for a photo shoot.

I kept heading down with Olive so she could get a few more minutes in the snowfield. 

We spent a good portion of the hike back trying to get our bearings and see if we could figure out where we were in relation to the Summit course.

Made it back to the truck and just as we were pulling out chairs to sit for a few we decided to head down as the mosquitos were really thick. We didn't get too far before it started pouring rain. It ended up raining most of the drive from Georgetown and traffic was horrible, one of the worst times I can remember in recent history. It took us 2.5 hours to get from Georgetown to Arvada! We were starving by this time, so we went to Parry's for a burger.

Home for more Olympics!

Monday (23,329 steps) - Work from home. I should have gotten up early to run, but I didn't. After Ariel and I went to Dutch Bros. I finally decided it was time to just get it done. Sure, when it's over 90 degrees and full sun. The first 3 miles or so were bearable, but it just got really hot and I walked a lot more than I wanted to, but got it done.

Took a bit to cool down after I got home. Took Olive for a shorter walk. Went to Torchy's for lunch and then picked up dinner at Costco. Did some driving after work and it was actually pretty busy! After dinner we watched the end of the women's gymnastics event finals. 

Stats:

• 114,348 steps
• 23.78 miles run
• 14.01 miles walk
• 0 minutes of cardio
• 90 minutes of strength