Another usual week in that everything was unusual. I nailed down a room to move into next month and am selling furniture because the house is fully furnished.
I have hiked to the top of Mt. Humphreys twice since my last post. The first time I speed hiked it by myself to try out my new trail running shoes. They worked very well because I made it up and down in record time without blisters or sore feets. The second time I hiked it with James. But after we reached the trailhead, we were already in the clouds and it was sprinkling. So we decided to walk up the plane wreck, and forget about the summit. Well, when we got to the plane wreck at 10,000 we looked up the talus slope and saw the summit ridge just above it and decided that a few thousand feet of climbing probably wouldn’t be too bad. That was a mistake; the next few hours were spent slipping and sliding our way up the bare slope under clouds which threatened lightning. Not a very smart move, but we finally made the ridge and the summit shortly thereafter. Since we definitely weren’t planning on summiting, I had left my food and electrolyte drink in the car. I was worried about cramping, and resulting soreness, because I was racing on Sunday. Which was why we decided to take another shortcut back down to the trailhead. To make a long story short, we made the summit but spent more time off-trail than on-trail. There was no view since we were socked in with clouds most of the time.
This morning I ran in the Snowbowl Hill Climb road race. I signed up for this thing on a whim in June and have been frantically running hills ever since. The race is 7 miles long with 2,000 feet of climbing, and finishes at 9,500 elevation. The difficulty level was extreme with some stretches where speed-walking was faster than running. My target time was two hours but I finished in 1:20 for an 11:25 average pace. Nothing too astounding, considering a fast walk is 12:00. It looked like I finished about in the middle of the pack. I did not participate in the burger challenge. A local burgery was giving away prizes for runners who could down a double cheeseburger at mile 6 and still finish the race. Eating a burger was not even an option for me at that point of the climb. This was definitely a fun race and people were truly enjoying themselves. At least after they reached finish line. I want to do it again next year.