Mountain Photos, We Gots Em, and Wow I Have a Race This Weekend

Summer is in full swing and this means lots of time in the mountains.

Buffalo Creek

Red Tail Hawk barely batted an eye at us.

Gashouse Gulch Trail, part of the Xterra course

The one super technical part of the Xterra course that everyone has to walk.

But it's mostly stuff like this.

Then Saturday was Jonny's birthday hike up near Indian Peaks Wilderness though on a fairly remote, quiet stretch of trail so we saw only a handful of people.

Beaver Reservoir, our starting point

Pretty meadow.  Sometimes there's a moose but not today.

I know you're all jealous of my groovy purple shorts.

Then Sunday started off with my master's group's Bare Bones swim race.

SO many people.  Ironman Boulder is in 2 weeks so people flocked to the race to get some swim practice in at the Rez where the swim will take place.  These are the 2-milers.  I only did the 1-mile race because that's closest to the swim portion of the triathlons I do and I wanted to practice going FAST without having to worry about a bike or run afterwards.  I ended up with a time of 32:16 mins. or 1:50/100 yards, not exactly the zippy pace I was hoping for but it felt like I was moving.  I did drift off course a bit but not too drastically.  I was 15/44 people overall (men and women, all ages) and 9/32 of the women.  The top 3 spots went to women and 2nd and 3rd went to women in their 50's.

Compare to a Stroke-n-Stride I did a little over a week ago:  14:53 for 750 m/820 yards or 1:49/100 yards then 28:47 for a 5k or 9:17 min/mile (2/5 age group, 15/30 women, 33/72 overall).  I guess about a 1:50 pace is what I can expect these days.  A little frustrating considering how much time and effort I've put into swimming but I guess we're still only at mid-season and Nationals isn't until September.

Then a trail run with hill repeats at Walker Ranch.  Sure beats the track.

Walker Ranch was my last hard effort before Xterra Aspen Valley this coming Saturday though today's swim/bike workout and tomorrow's swim/run workout are keeping me busy.  I'm feeling good for the race, fit and feisty and excited and ready to go.  Should be feeling even better after this taper week.  And how awesome does this course look?



I can't pre-ride the course until Friday and I was a little curious about what the wooden bridges/features would be like for the bike but they look o.k.  And how cool to run on the funky wooden bridges over all the ponds and marshes?  A very unique race.

It's the first year of the race and I won't be able to pre-ride until Friday since it's on private land so I have no idea of goals.  It's a relatively short race so my plan is to go hard.  Challenge myself.  Have fun.  Soak up every last bit of summer in the mountains.