McCullough Gulch Trail

Another day, another beautiful hike…

 

Out of the backpack and onto the trail…

Trail runner in the making…

 

A well deserved rest…

portrait of an idiot

In a terrific show of idiocy, I decided to run/hike the Breck Crest Marathon last weekend.  Despite having run only 75 miles combined in June, July, and August (the longest run was 9.5 miles), for some reason I thought signing up for a high-altitude trail race was a good idea.  The race was only 23 miles, but the altitude, the terrain, and my lack of training made it into an epic event.  There was roughly 4600 feet of climbing and it peaked around 12,500 feet.  Fortunately, my climbing muscles didn’t give out and start cramping until I was within a quarter mile of the peak of the last big climb. I eventually made it to the finish line, but I felt like I had just been through a grueling ultramarathon.  At 5 hours and 40 minutes, it was the slowest 23 mile “run” I had ever done, but my goal was to finish, so mission accomplished (fyi, 5:40 was slow, but anything sub 4 hours was superfast.  A good, in-shape time for a normal human was in the 4:30 to 5 hour range).  Although I felt out of shape, I’m really glad I signed up.  It was an absolutely beautiful course, and I met some nice folks along the way.  One benefit of taking such a long time on the course was that my sister Molly and her husband Phil arrived in time from Broomfield to catch me at the finishing line along with Adrienne, June, and Jolee.  The following finishing area photos are courtesy of Molly (can you tell she used to be a photographer?)…

black powder pass

This morning we headed out for another beautiful hike.  We topped out around 12,100 feet before heading back down.  I’m hoping this early high-altitude training springboards Junie and Jolee into Olympic stardom…

 

 

 

Junie enjoying the boxcar at the trailhead…

The drive down the mountain…

our view… and the view of things to come

This is the view from our deck…

And this was the view this morning…

A subtle but important difference.  Yes, that’s fresh snow up there along the peaks.  Fortunately, the snow held off until this weekend; last weekend I was running a trail race along those peaks (I’ll write a short post about that suffer-fest when I get the chance).

lunch break

We have about thirty posts in the queue, so when we have a minute and some energy, we’ll get you updated.

In the meantime, this is how I spent my lunch break today.   It’s not the worst thing in the world working in Breckenridge…