Frosty's

That sucked. But good times were had by all. Wanker beat me by a full minute in the 5 mile, but I crushed him by 6 minutes in the 10 miler. That should put an end to who's a better beer runner.


Between race PBR...

2012 Non Running Challenges

Now you can follow along my non running challenges on the blog as well. On the right you'll see the 2012 book challenge, which sort of came about as a new year's resolution. Also, a bit further down, you can see each of my 100 beers from the 2012 100 beers in 100 places challenge.

As of right now I'm on pace for a solid 100 beers (2 per week), and I'm way ahead on the book goal. Kids books really shouldn't count, but I don't care.

Also, been thinking about getting Xavier some rock shoes in March when REI dividends come out. I'll need an activity to help develop some more upper body strength and Xavier loves to climb so bouldering will be a cheap and fun way to get him out in the hills and then perhaps if he gets it in his blood next winter we can climb indoors a bit at Thrillseekers.

CSFA50K

Good times down at JT's place for the Fat Ass. Unofficially 5:54 (6:04 + 2 beers @ -5 minutes per beer). Only about 2 hours faster than JT which gives me a good cushion for this weekend. Looking forward to bringing my sons to a questionable post race beer environment. The FA was a great way to take it easy and cruise around some trails that I have this thing called dirt (weird concept I know, I was confused too).

More Good Parenting

2011 Recap

Ahh, the time of year that beckons reflection. Hot coffee, good beer, and slow runs abound. My family had our first Christmas with 4.



Sometimes folks look back at a year and say, "I could have done better here, here, and here." I know I'm guilty of it. Not this year though, I essentially did everything I wanted to and had a lot of fun in the process. I'll shoot to fulfill the same process this year with similar goals.



I'm embracing the snow for all it's worth, trying to be smarter about my training and scheduling of races. My main goal races are widely spaced, and I'm gonna train specifically for each. Bighorn is gonna be tough, really tough. Compared to Leadville, the race is a MAN sized 100. An area of mountainous terrain on the cusp of the Wyoming/Montana border, this isn't flashy. You'd more likely see Jesus' second coming than a Prius in Dayton, WY. I'll likely be going most of the night solo, no crew or pacer until mile 80. I'm rather excited about this actually, self sufficiency in a 100 is a tough thing to get right.



I've recently given some thought to racing the Devil Mountain 50 in October for the incredible run of Silverton > Steamboat > Pagosa all in a row. I think that would be a bit better than running Deadman Peaks both financially and logistically with what I've got planned for the run up to Hellgate.



In any case, let us look back on the year that was 2011. Some highlights:

Fourth of July Weekend:


My family was in California and I was able to sneak in a LOAD of training in a short amount of time. Two of the greatest people in the world agreed (each in their own way :)) to let me drag them along on a "fun" training weekend which included record setting vertical on all three fronts. Nevertheless we did manage that incredible fun that i'd promised. The fact that we literally almost drove my car off the mountain and died is an afterthought in that weekend which speaks to how great it really was.

Bighorn weekend:
Wyoming. Mountains. Family. First win. Enough said.


How quickly life goes from this:


To this:



Xavier's first day of Preschool:


So, hopefully, there'll be more runs like these to share our "year in review":

3K

Hit 3k yesterday while spending some time up in wolf country. I was thankful for snow and an "easy" run. Easy in this case is 13/+2500' up to 9200'. Had a great time hanging with Lucho and chatting along the run. Amazing country West Golden is, such incredible access to unused mountain trails. Gonna have to get out and explore that area this spring and summer.

Legs actually feel good now, perhaps the hills and altitude pushed out the sludge that seemed to be stuck in there. Need to continue pushing to get some semblance of sharpness back, but there's time for that too. The real racing begins in April, so I don't want to get ahead of myself just yet.


Missed some vert in tracking, but no matter.

Parenting

They say parenting is hard. But here is proof that even JT can be a parent.