Veteran's day 4 miler

I didn't run it this year. I helped out by directing runners on the course and freezing my butt off while riding my bike around. I didn't know it was only like 30 degrees until I was already out the door. Brrr! Hedgehog hill is one of the prettiest spots in the entire park. I wonder if the maples on the hill are native or if they were planted and spread on their own. Juraj (Euro) won easily in 31 min and change.
My motivation to train has been waning lately. Darkness at 5:30 doesn't help. I need a kick in the ass.

Pawpaw patch!

Pawpaw season is over now, but there was a bumper crop in the woods this year. If you don't know what a pawpaw is, click HERE. I even made some pawpaw and walnut cookies. The pawpaw trees are turning a beautiful yellow right now. I'm going to save the seeds from the fruit I collected and sow them in the spring, so hopefully I'll have some trees to plant and sell next year.

Mt bierstadt

I'm way behind on the blog, but here's a shot of me and Ben on Mt Bierstadt. Cody called me earlier totell me that he just climbed Pike's Peak on the Barr trail. He said he saw Matt Carpenter when he was headed down. MC was running UP the golden staircase. I saw that he won this years Pikes marathon in 3:36. Wow! I think that it's pretty stupid that people thought it was a good idea to cut a road to the summit. I need to post some more pics from this trip as well as from the Leadville 100 run. Soon.

Lunar Trek 20 mile

Here are a couple of pics from the Lunar trek in Scandia KS. I was a pretty cool race actually. Neat farm roads out in the middle of nowhere. I wish the sky would have been clear so we could see the stars, but it was still bright enough that I barely had to use my headlamp. My plan was to try to run it in 3 hrs. The first half went perfect-10 miles in 1:30. Not lon g after the turnaround I began to realize that eating a thickburger with fries a little over two hrs before a long run isn't a good idea. The humidity and the course conditions(mud) made it harder than it should have been as well. I got a bit behind on electrolytes and fluids and really slowed the last 5 miles. Finished in 3:26. Much slower than my goal, but it was a good time regardless. I even got to spend the night in Caleb's hometown before heading to Colorado (pics and story soon).

Psummer Psycho 15 miler

I'm finally getting around to writing a race report after a little over a week. The whole lead up to the race this year was very exhausting. I didn't even try to keep track of how many hours I was out working on the course. Not to complain though, I like it. Anyway, I've had too many irons in the fire lately to do anything resembling a long run so I opted to do the 15 mile instead of the 50k. The first loop is always the most fun, right? One problem was that the day before the race was the 4th of July. I opted to have fun instead of rest and drink water like I should have been doing. That is probably why my 15 mile loop was more like 50k pace. I finished in 2:38. Not what I was hoping for, but Oh well. It was fun hanging out and supporting finishing runners afterwards instead of killing myself on a second loop. Maybe I'm just a wimp, I don't know. One thing that did make me really mad was when a skinny girl with red hair went flying by me at Pat's aid station. For a second I got pissed and was going to chase her ass down. So I stopped to top off my bottle real quick. When I looked up she was already at the top of the paved hill out of the aid station. At that point I forgot what I was thinking about so I just decided to go my own pace to the finish.

Jackson and Josie both ran the 5k along with Jackson's friend Austin. I think it was an awesome race with tons of happy finishers. Lots of cool race reports too. Check some of them out on BadBen's Blog

Also Big Congrats to Tony Clark 50k winner 4:33 (Tony ran Bighorn 100 two weeks previous) ! Close to Wynn Davis' CR. I'm not sure if the course change made it easier or harder. For me I'd have to say that singletrack is easier even if it did add another significant hill.

Next up for me is the Lunar Trek 20 miler on the 18th. It looks like we're getting a gang together to head out to the Leadville 100 . I've never been to the run so it should be cool.

Summer Intro 5k

We had a good race today. It took quite a bit of work to get the course ready for race day and it was a bit short, but I think it's a sweet loop that will be fun to train on as well. I had a decent race . Definitely shoulda started a bit easier. I ran the first mile in 4th and then I blew up. I couldn't smoke the long downhill like I wanted because I was still trying to recover from the hills. I think I finished 8th or 9th in 19:25. Some dude tried to blow by me at the finish, but he got shut down.
Jackson and his friend Austin both ran the race and they were talking about doing the 15 mile Psummer Psycho so they can get a medal.
I had to go to work after, but some of the Nerds went to work on the Psummer Psycho course. I get out there and do some work soon.

Shrooms

Here are a couple of lovely mushroom pics. Morels and oysters. I also recently found a nice batch of suphur shelf(picture soon) mushrooms. All are edible and delicious.For more info on edible mushrooms check out americanmushrooms.com The running and riding is going okay. Next Saturday(6/21) is the summer intro trail race at Wyco lake. We've decided to do a 5k run this year and we've blazed some new trails so it should be an awesome course. Correction: It is an awesome course.