Holy crap?!?!?! Where I have I been?
Actually, I've been all over the place. Really! With a lot of time on my hands, Loren and I went on an epic trip. I think I've mentioned before my extremely geeky hobby of hitting the high point of every state. Yes, total nerd alert. Now the thing about this hobby is the USA actually has very cool and varying landscapes. I knew I needed a break from running and training, so why not go climb some high mountains?
From Sept 4th until Oct 6th, we did 8 high points, all of them in the west. The high points we did were:
Mt Wheeler NM 13,161'
Black Mesa, OK 4973' (this was 8 miles which we ran. Totally beautiful running)
Mt Sunflower KS 4039'
Panorama Point NE 5424'
Mt Elbert CO 14433' (while in CO we also did La Plata which is 14336' which is actually tougher than Elbert)
Flew back east, ran Philly distance run. And ran it slowly since I didn't train for it at all. Then back west!
Kings Peak UT 13528' (this is also close to a 28 mile hike so it was a 3 day back pack)
Mt Whitney CA 14494' The highest point in the lower 48!
Boundary Peak NV 13143'
We spent so much time above 9000' by the time we got to Whitney we were totally acclimated and had no trouble with altitude sickness the entire trip (minus a few minutes of feeling like I was going to hurl after Wheeler). I think we hiked close to 100 miles and went up and down 10s of thousands of feet.
Interested in what some of this looks like?
this album shows the first part of our trip, as well as some other high points we've done.
this one shows CA and NV.
I now have done 23 high points and Loren has done 28.
I didn't run for 3 weeks. What a great break. Today I got back on the horse. Well, yesterday I got back on the bike for an easy ride then this morning I ran an easy 4.
After following the marathonpalooza that was 101010 yesterday along with following the Kona Ironman on Sat, I got a little excited about training again. I am so glad I'm taking this training cycle off, it's letting my body and mind rest.
I'm starting to think about my next big training push: Boston in April and Lake Placid Ironman in July. I plan to spend the next couple of month with low running milage, like 20-25 miles a week with more focus on swimming, cycling and core strength. I want to go into these races strong.
Now that the heat of summer is finally gone being outside should be more fun.
Until we're under a foot of snow.
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2 comments:
The FB photos of all the high points were pretty sweet-and that stuff is great cross training for running that doesn't break down the body. You and Loren ought to come west for Imogene next year.
Welcome home, honey! What an adventure you gals had, amazing to be gone that long and in such beautiful places. NYC must really suck after that. Anyway, here's to getting your running legs back which I'm sure will appear in their old form before you know it.
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