playing silly mountain games

Ouray:

Big walls, grand views, rain and wetness all cooped up in the back of my car, waiting for reprieve, Reading and thinking.  Weather always wins, listening to mountain streams and birds chirping, eating Maggies burgers.

Hiked to Imogene pass, patiently waiting for the weather to break and wading in cold/freezing mountain streams. It’s the dream that wakes me up, always. 

Red Mountain Pass:

Perched atop our campsite, new friends, old friends, Rock slides and maybe tomorrow the storm will blow over.  Praying for some better weather.  I’ve been at this campsite before, hope to be here again the San Juans.   Beautification.  Cars go by, trucks go forth.  My fingers are cold but my core is warm.  This time next week, I’ll be knee deep into a hard hundred miler. There are things in my life that I can’t accept.  Failure at this run twice before and one year ago, same place, I was here, Thinking different, feeling the same way I feel now. I didn’t forget. I go.   That is why I love it here.  Cool breezes and a light mist.  Gray clouds and silhouettes of big trees and big mountains.   

I’m going to live; I’m going to die.  I’m ok.  Life seems so simple, so trivial, so small, sometimes so sad, and so happy all at the same time. 

Spent the night on Red mountain.  So high, so wonderful, so peaceful. I sat, I thought.

Spent Friday and Monday doing trail work on the twin peaks trail. 

Helped Roger Wrublik with the finish line flags and preparing the tables for the breakfast and award ceremony on Wednesday

Hardrock: 

THE SHORT VERSION: 

Got to run with a ton of different people throughout the run.  Took it easy and steady on all the climbs, pushed some of the downs and flats.  Tried to maintain a continuous flow of calories during the run (got much harder later on in the run) First part went well.  The nighttime, I struggled and hit a bad patch for a few hours from Ouray to about Engineer and Bob Combs paced me through it, getting me back in the positive realm of my thought process.  Threw up three times and got drenched and very cold during an intense rain, lightning and thunderstorm.  Hallucinations were abundant and very real.  This consisted of a storm trooper, a freaky looking bearded man 6 inches from my face, only to disappear when I turned my headlight back on, which gave me the chills and numerous photograph portraits encased in beautiful framework inside rocks on the trail.  I felt like I was constantly looking through a yearbook of people I didn’t know but thought I did and was trying to figure out why these pictures were scattered about and who were they and why did they all look like they belonged in the late 60’s or early 70’s.   I had trouble concentrating and my mind felt very dumb and numb in the later stages of the run.   Got lost a few miles from the finish. This error made this journey a few hours longer and with Doug Sullivan, we pushed hard to make it under the cut off.  Standing on a dirt road at 4:30 am, my mind was desperate, racing, agitated and lost, thinking that I had run, walked and hiked for 45 plus hours, now off trail, not knowing were to go but trying to focus my mind to make the best decisions possible was a real challenge.  Up the road or back down,  twice, I guessed correctly and it eventually all worked out as it always does. 

My last two previous Hardrock attempts ended in failure so I am glad to get that monkey off my back. 

Hardrock 100 miler finish number two.  Check