After work I drove over to Dakota Ridge. I had signed up to volunteer for more trail work, not realizing exactly how exhausted I would be after the weekend. It was SO hot. I do like to volunteer though, so I am glad that I went.
Wednesday (35,429 steps) - Work from home. Didn't do much all day. Took Ariel to get a sports physical after work, then attempted to get my ring cleaned, but apparently they have moved to only appointments.
Thursday (24,902 steps) - Work in the office. I finally walked to the gym on my lunch break to cancel my membership. There is no ETA when classes will return, and that's the whole reason I was a member there. I did find out my trainer no longer works there, I hope he is ok :(
Tyler had hurt his knee over the weekend, so I went for a solo run at Apex. I really thought I had researched which direction trail traffic was, and got into a few screaming matches with bikes before I realized I was the one in the wrong. Ooops. Ended up having a pretty decent run, even though it was REALLY humid after the quick afternoon rain.
Ariel had left earlier in the day for her cross country retreat, so it was just me and Ben for dinner. He cooked a really good batch of stir fry, his veggies are the best!
Friday (16,627 steps) - Work in the office. Nicole had actually taken some time off, and I figured it would be easier to get work done, especially since Ben can be distracting. A big day of wedding planning - I paid off the rest we owed on the venue and the photographer. 2/3 of all the money we owe has now been paid. I also went to the seamstress and picked up my dress after the alterations! Wow! Had a happy hour with Tyler and went to bed later than I should have considering what I had planned for the next day...
Saturday (67,385 steps) - Up at 4:30 am to drive to Golden to meet up with Lisa and Jandy. I left my car in one of the carpool lots and Lisa drove us to Echo Lake. We had plans to run up and down the road to Mt. Evans. I had done this once before, in a race - the Mt. Evans Ascent. So 14.5 miles up the road, then about another half mile to the summit. And back. Because of COVID, the road was closed to traffic, so we only had to worry about bikes. We started just after 6:30. Very quickly I remembered that this was hard. And like I said in my race recap 8+ years ago, ascent means UPHILL. Luckily, this was not a race, it was just the three of us out to enjoy the day and get some high altitude, climbing, and time on feet. It was a beautiful morning!
During the early miles I was fine in my t-shirt and skirt. Once we were a few miles up, however, I got a little chilly, and I was glad that I had brought my Houdini.
We saw SO MANY marmots!! This guy was especially cute. I saw him from fairly far away and he was just standing on the rock looking around. They must LOVE not having all the cars and traffic.
We stopped briefly at Summit Lake in hopes that the volunteers that were doing trail work wouldn't mind if we used their port-o-potty since the permanent bathrooms were closed. There was a line of people, so we opted to wait and take our chances when we got to the top. It was at this point that it also got MUCH windier.
Not many people were on foot - I guess most people think it's crazy to intentionally do 15 miles just to get to the summit of a 14ers, especially when there are some where it's only 6-8 miles round trip. So imagine our surprise when we saw people coming down that we knew! It was good to see Grace and friends.
The rumor we heard was that there were a lot of goats at the summit, including babies! Thankfully we were NOT at all disappointed! I have never seen so many!
Unfortunately the permanent bathrooms in the upper lot were also closed. There were probably a hundred cyclists at the top taking a break before riding down. I took a chance to pee behind the wall of the top. No way I could have made it all the way down to the bottom, or even down under tree line. Lisa went after me and nearly got chased down by two bigger goats. They were so cute, though!
I didn't realize until this point that Jandy, a Colorado native, had never done a 14er?! There was another hiker up there that offered to take our picture - definitely the emptiest summit I've ever had.
Time to head back down! For whatever reason, Jandy was really struggling. She was hanging back from Lisa and I. I have never been in a position where I wasn't the slowest in a group, so I offered to keep track of intervals so that we wouldn't end up walking the whole way down. We stopped at Summit Lake again (9 miles from the bottom) so Lisa could use the bathroom, and this time there was no wait.
I was a chatty Cathy the whole way down, but it felt really good to talk to other people about running. I didn't realize how much I have missed it. We hit our 30 miles at the bottom and then had to go back out for one more since Jandy needed to complete a virtual 50K. Round trip clock time was about 9 hours, with about 8 hours of moving time. We really didn't run much of anything the way up, and managed to run around 12:30 minute miles on most of the way down, which was pretty good considering how Jandy felt. Unfortunately we had to head home immediately, so post-run beers together.
I did text Ben and when I finally got service again, and he met me at Over Yonder. Imagine our surprise when Grace (and her husband Don) showed up. We had just seen Grace on the road to Mt. Evans, what a funny coincidence.
We had to get home to Pika and neither of us felt like cooking, so Ben stopped to get pizza, and I took Pika out as soon as I got home. Pretty sunset and an owl!
Long day, but I felt surprisingly good doing my longest mileage since January. And on a whim. I literally didn't know I was doing this run until about 6 pm the night before.
Sunday (21,343 steps) - Initially, we had discussed possibly getting up early to get up to the mountains and do a hike with Pika before it got too late/hot. We ended up not setting an alarm, and I managed to stay in bed until almost 8:30. We lounged around not doing much of anything, and by the time we decided to go back up to Idaho Springs, it was about 11. Lisa and I had noticed the Chicago Lakes trail head and we opted to do that. We were not amused that barely anyone was wearing masks and it was really crowded. It was, however, pretty.
It was definitely more climbing than I expected on the way back, but it was really pretty. I think Ben and I are devising a crazy plan, TBD at a later date.
We had hoped to have time to stop at Over Yonder for a beer, but when I got phone service again, Ariel's ETA in Arvada was much earlier than we planned. We picked her up, dropped her and her bags at home, then Ben and I went to the grocery store to pick up food for dinner. We had enough time to take Pika for a walk, and the water at the lake has receded enough that we were able to walk along the shoreline for the first time in many months.
Monday (28,397 steps) - Work from home. A day of nothing other than taking Pika for walks. Ariel and I made dinner - she has gotten quite good at making guacamole from scratch!
Stats:
- 217,474 steps
- 41.6 miles run
- 20 whole minutes of cross training
No comments:
Post a Comment
I adore comments and I read every single one. Thanks for reading :)