Kaleb's First Soccer Game

Pre-Running the Mary's Loop 8 Miler

The relatively flat, gravel, rock. dirt trail.

The overlook of the Colorado River.

Views from along the trail.

This was the hillest part of the trail. It is the first 1/8th mile up the Mary's Loop Trail.

Renae and I went out and hiked part of the 8 mile Mary's Loop near Loma, CO. Our race is Sept 5th, so we wanted to check it out and make sure it wasn't a Powderhorn repeat. We got out there around 745 am and it was already 75 degrees. We parked in the parking lot below not knowing we could take the road up over the burm. We started our hike from the parking lot and headed up the road, down a 13 % decline (hopefully they won't make us run up this) to Mary's loop. The start of Mary's loop is about a 8% incline for 1/8th of a mile I'd reckon. It was the hardest part as it was loose rock and lime/sandstone. Much like Pollock Bench trail. After we got up that first section it was all runnable from there. We hiked 3 miles of the 8 mile loop and then turned around and came back as we had to go to some soccer games at 11am. But I'm pleased to say that it is a flat course compared to Powderhorn. Our goals is to finish it in the same times or under that we did Powderhorn. I'd like to finish in 1 hour and 46 min.

We finished the Thigunawat 10K!!!

Self portrait around 4 1/2 miles

Renae running down a hill at the beginning of the run

Renae and Roby stretching before the race

All the participants

Me finishing the last hill of the 10K

Renae finishing the last part of the 10K

Me around mile 2

Roby pre-race

Me stretching before the race

Here is the link for the race results:

http://www.sarevents.org/thigunawat10km/2009results.htm

It's sad when a 70+ year old man beats 98% of the participants and looks like he is 30 something.

Anywho the story actually starts out the day before when we headed up to Powderhorn. I got a condo for Saturday night at Goldenwood Condo because I thought Tarra would be joining us. Instead of giving up the reservation we went on up. The sweet thing about the condo was it had a full kitchen and jacuzzi tub, luckily Renae and I brought our swimsuits. I fell asleep around 930 and woke up around 1030 hearing straining noises like someone was having a hard poop. Well I got up to investigate I walked towards the back bedroom and the noise got louder then Renae popped out of the bathroom and we scared each other. I asked her if she was ok she said yes. I said what's that noise then? She said it was one of the neighbors "doing it" and that they woke her up twice. So I tried to go back to bed, but all I heard was "oh yeah yeah do it oh yeah oh oh oh". She's (unknown receipent of awesome feelings) is lucky she didn't scream out his name because that would be in here too! So around midnight or slightly after I was able to fall back asleep. Needless to say my pre-race sleep consisted of about 5 hours.

Renae and I got up about 6 am and ate some breakfast and got ready. We checked out at 0815 and headed to the check in for the race. Renae got her favorite number #5, I got 17 not sure how that worked out since I registered us all at the same time. Roby showed up shortly after and we were all checked in.

The started the race promptly at 0930 and we were off in the wrong direction. What is this. Renae and I had practiced the route twice and either they switched the route (more likely scenerio) or we practiced the wrong route. Instead of down the road to the hiking path we freakin went up to disc golf hole number 1 and came down to hole number 4 across the road to the hiking path. Shit my butt is already dragging. Once we hit the hiking path I started running. I ran for about 3 miles before we started the creek crossings on the moon loop. At this point I could still see Renae and here comes Roby finishing the Moon Loop. I tried to get a picture of him but damn my camera and it's complicated operations I missed and took a picture of the ground. I walked 3/4 of the 1.3 mile moon loop and then started running again, probably ran 1/2 mile before coming back up on the aide station. Side note: How can you run a race with aide stations and not have gatoraide? Side Side note: They only had water at the 2 aide stations. Then I started the laborous climb back up to the resort through the forrest. By that time the 60 something year old lady that I was following started running up and I ate her dust. I was bonking big time. So I pulled out my gel and took a big ole swig of it. I felt a bit better but each time I would trip over a tree root my energy level would drop. I even pulled the sole of my shoe away from it's main part on one tree root. I finally made it up the first 700 feet elevation ascent and to the last aide station where I actually drank some water. I started running again but it probably looked more like a delirious swagger. I reached the road and WHAT!!! the changed the course again! Instead of going up disc golf hole #4 like we practiced the had us turn right and go to the Westend lifts. I almost started crying.

Anywho when I got to the lift there was a lady with a cow bell jingling it for me she said 3/4 of a mile to go WHAT!!!. At this point I started talking to myself and decided I probably should have a shot of haldol. This route took us to disc golf hole number 5 through 12 (I think) and I was walking again because we were gaining in elevation (roughly 500 feet). Each time I would see the orange trail sign I thought it was a sign from God to head back down to the finish line. But God was a sense of humor and it was actually the sign for the next disc golf hole. For 5 different orange signs I got my hopes up and they crashed. I finally saw the way down and on a trail that I have boarded 50 times or so. I started running again down the 500 feet of elevation I just gained. Renae and Roby met me at the bottom of the hill before turning up the last bit to the finish line. I was the last person to cross the finish line but I don't really care...I finished. And even won a give away prize yeah lucky number 17.

Roby is trying to talk me into running the Mary's Loop 8 mile. It is a charity race for the Mesa County Search and Rescue on Sept 5th. We'll see.

Pre-Running the Thigunawat 10K

Yesterday Renae and I decided to go walk/run Powderhorn's 10K trail to see what it is like. Man am I glad we did. Because there are a lot of things on race day that I will do differently than what I did today. According to the Powderhorn website there will be one aide station at the beginning/end of Moon Loop. We took 1 liter of water each and I packed my GU Strawberry/Banana Gel and my Hammergel Rasberry to try them out having never used gels before.

The trail race starts at the back of the Sunset Grill. You head beneath the lift between the ski patrol building and several other out buildings down a gravel/dirt road. You'll pass hole number 4 for disc golf (this will be important for the trip back) and on the right hand side is the sign for Powderhorn Hiking Trails. Hook a right down a weedeated trail. This part of the trail isn't to bad. Shortly before 3/4 of a mile you'll come to your first three stream crossings. The first two have rotted tree bases to cross see above picture, they are very giving and probably won't last if there are more than 25 people on race day. The third crossing is more of a hop over make sure you have solid footing on landing.

We meandered through various open fields with wild flowers. During this part of the trail there were various iron ore rocks, lava looking rocks and just plain rocks, not to mention little oak brush roots that would trip you up. On race day I've decided to tape my shoe laces because they kept getting caught on roots. Soon you come to a switchback in which you start descending through an aspen grove. I made a mental note about how much elevation we lost because on the way back we'd have to gain it again. After about two miles we came to the Rock Garden loop which we don't take and headed just a few 100 yards for the Moon Loop. This is where I am guessing the aide station will be. There are a total of I believe 6 creek/stream crossings on this loop which you either plow right through the water or hop across on the loose rocks. I was wearing my nike plus monitor and wasn't sure how waterproof it was so didn't plow right through as I normally might have. During this loop after an hour of hiking I tried my GU gel. It tasted pretty good but took lots of water to accompany it, water I didn't necessarily have (which I actually ran out of around mile 4). Anyway I wasn't sure if I was supposed to feel some surge of energy, but I really didn't feel much.

Once we finished the loop we hooked an immediate right onto the Beaver Creek trail. And after a short bit we saw the beaver damn, it was pretty cool. I decided that I wished I had gators because I kept getting the little grass stickers in my socks and had to pull them out. Around 3.84 miles my ass started dragging, this was about the same time I ran out of water, and also about the same time we started regaining all the elevation we lost. Renae ran out of water around mile 4.3 because I helped her I think. On the beaver creek trail there are 3 or 4 water crossings but there are solid bridges (like VOC bridges) for crossing. It was around 4.8 miles or so that we came back to the gravel/dirt road that brought us down to the trail. For the race the return is not on the gravel/dirt road but up to hole 4 and reversing from 4 to 1 and down to the Sunset Grill. But seeing as I thought I was going to die and we were out of water we headed back to the jeep in the parking lot.

I had both the GPS and my Nike Plus. The GPS indicated we did 5.35 miles with a moving time of 2hours24min and a stopped time of 13min48seconds, max elevation was 9326 and total ascent was 770 feet. My Nike plus indicated we did 5.12 miles in 2hours39min. I tend to rely more on the GPS on this type of terrain. We didn't run any of the trail because we wanted to get a sense of what it was like. I've been on a lot of trails, and am in ok physical shape and this is one of the harder trails just for the fact that there are things that can trip you up pretty much the whole entire trail. We are going back out next Sunday to rerun the trail, perhaps even running some of it, in the early morning (we started our hike at nearly 1pm and it was almost 80 degrees (which I believe is why we ran out of water). We will definitely have more water with us next time.