Sweet altitude

Upon my return to Colorado at the beginning of August, Zippy and I took a five-day mini running vacation in Leadville ... learning the lay of the land for the race (this weekend!) and altitude-izing. Leadville is at 10,000 feet and sits at the base of a couple of Colorado's highest peaks ... Mount Elbert and Mount Massive ... both of which Zippy and I did loop runs on ... up one side to the peak, down the other, and then around the base back to the start. We also checked out Hope Pass and Sugarloaf Pass ... the high points on the race course and did an afternoon run along Turquoise Lake.

On top of the time soaring through Colorado's high peaks ... I enjoyed hanging out in the hostel ... the majority of guests were in town training, like me, either for the mountain bike race or the running race ... so the comrarderie was through the roof. We all spent our days training and our evenings talking racing strategy ... who knew you could analyze the minutia to such a degree? I actually had to remind myself: "It's just running." And the way I look at the race: "How cool ... I get to run all day long." That's that.

On a random note ... I stopped into the outdoor store in Leadville to pick up a few things, and behind the cash register was none other than Christine, a former fellow Alaska Pacific University student. It took us a couple of seconds to place each other - it was that unexpected and out of context. She invited me over for an excellent dinner with some friends, and about half way through Tiffany shows up ... also a former fellow APU student. She just moved to Leadville from NYC two weeks ago. We had a really fun time talking and catching up. Sometimes life is so random and wonderful.