Run Rabbit Run training weeks eight through eleven
Week eight began in Glacier National Park and week eleven finished in Steamboat Springs.
51 hours, 47 minutes all training
116 miles running and hiking
16,903 ft D+ running and hiking
Hiking with my oldest kid in Glacier and Grand Teton Nation Parks was one of the highlights of this year. Arabelle has become a strong hiker (summiting nine of Colorado's fourteeners this summer) and is great company on the trail.
A sprawling four-story wooden lodge on the edge of a greenish lake with big peaks in the background.
July in Fort Collins was characterized by exceptional heat and miserable air quality. Particles from smoky wildfires upstream and ozone derived from fuel pumps and gas wells locally are making smog a permanent feature of summer on the Front Range of Colorado. It's nice to be able to escape to the mountains to escape the heat and ozone.
The feet of a white man soaking in a small alpine lake under a rugged mountain and fields of summer snow.
I tried a new kind of running event in week eleven, a relay race from Fort Collins to Steamboat Springs, 200 miles in 36 legs, as one runner on a team of twelve. I ran legs 11, 23, and 35, all of them on the shoulder of a scenic Colorado highway, the middle one at 1:00 a.m. It was a bit like running a hilly, short 10K every 7-8 hours. We split the team into two vans of six runners, so one group would be a rolling runner and crew, while the other had 7-8 hours of downtime. None of us had done the Wild West Relay before. We executed pretty well and had a lot of fun. I drove a giant white Ford Transit, ate a lot of junk food, slept very little, and made a bunch of new friends.
A dirt trail traversing a lush green slope dotted with large conifer trees above a pair of blue lakes.