gone campin'

Rickshaw · Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2006 10:04 am

I've been a bad boy, and slacked off my running over the past few weeks. A lot of it was due to a great backpacking trip I did, though, so it wasn't all bad! I met up with three old high school friends in Denver, and we went backcountry camping in the Eagle's Nest Wilderness, north of Vail.

The trailhead was at about 8600 feet, and we planned to hike about 6 miles, to a lake in the middle of a broad tundra area at about 12,200 feet. The route involved some bushwacking. Unfortunately we never made it that far-- the bushwacking was tougher than we'd expected, and some of my friends had trouble with the altitude and exertion, so we settled on an easier route to a different lake at about 11,000 feet. The scenery was amazingly beautiful all around.

We spent a few more days at high altitude, including a great class 5 whitewater rafting trip on the Arkansas River, and some rapelling down cliff faces. I wondered if I was getting enough high altitude exercise to count as altitude training. I was planning to run a 5K in Boulder on the 4th of July, but couldn't motivate myself to wake up in time.

Unfortunately, this trip and my laziness has combined to kill my running routine. In May-June I was mostly running somewhere in the 50s per week, and hoped to be in the 60s by July. Instead, I've been doing 30s and 40s. Sigh... I really need to get cracking to prepare for that marathon in October!