Take me to the river...

Have fun at work. I'll try to think of you while I'm floating down the Colorado River and hiking/running in Canyonlands, Utah for the next 9 days.

BB

Finally got my results in... 1:06:32. No record setting here, but not too hideous either. :)

Not feeling so Bold anymore!

What a fun weekend! Stayed up in Boulder at Ryan's house with 13 other people on Sunday night. Naturally, we drank heavily and stayed up very late. So with about 4 hours of sleep, hung over, and completely dehydrated, I got up on Monday morning and r*n my first 10K! For those who don't know the Bolder Boulder is insanely huge. We had over 50,000 participants and it took several hours to cycle everyone through. Fortunately, there was beer waiting for me after the r*n at the "9K Bar" set up by NHW and Brownie. After securing as much free schwag as I could get my hands on, I stumbled down to the 9K and proceded to drink again right there on the streets of Boulder. I love this town.

Although I know I was extremely slow (my dehydrated body and busted knee fighting me the whole way) I still don't know exactly how slow I actually was. I was more interested in getting a beer than waiting around to find out my time. Normally results are posted, but there is some sort of SNAFU going on with getting the results online. The website says it'll be up tomorrow morning. It would just be nice to know...

The rest of the long day included: crepes at some sort of fair in Boulder, a shower (yay!), sushi, a party at a friend's house in Denver, and crashing at another friend's house in Denver (thankfully because I would have died if I had tried driving home). I finally drove back to the Springs this afternoon through a tornado warning. Whee!

Why can't I sleep?

I love being awake at 1:47am for absolutely no reason. I'm completely exhausted. I feell like I haven't slept in days. Yet I'm wide awake. Someone explain this evil phenomenon, please! POOP!

I also like that this thing is saying it's 12:46. As if I'm in California or something. Sheesh. Get it right. Mountain Time! It even says so in my profile!

Garden Run

There may be some benefit to running at 6am. This morning I didn't get out to the Garden for my run until 8:30ish. It was still early enough that there weren't many cars in the parking lot. Despite that, there were entirely too many cars driving past as I ran. Guess it's back to early mornings! Distance: 6 miles. Time: slow (1:06:38).

What a week!

For being my week "off" I didn't get much rest. Which is exactly how I like to spend my free time! Monday - Wednesday I was busy at school trying to get ready for the summer, at the Air Force Academy and Peterson AFB trying to get my paperwork taken care of so I can get paid to be a raft guide this summer. At least I climbed on Tuesday & Wednesday.

On Thursday I paddled 18 miles on the Arkansas River with Air Force Academy's rafting program on our first customer trip of the season. (Customer. Read: people who know nothing about the river paying to have us take them safely down the river. Customer trip. Read: hard work.) We had an awesome day on the river with a flow of ~2160 cfs. Mmmm... sunshine, warmth, and swift moving water. On my way home from the Academy, I get a call from Brownie reminding me that I haven't run in days and I have a r*ce on Saturday morning. Oops. So, completely exhausted and smelling like the river, I head over to Barr Trail and run 3 miles up & back. My reward for not being a sissy is a couple of Arrogant Bastard Ales at Kinfolks.

Friday was by far the best day of the week. For our second customer trip of the season, we had more customers than we had seats in the boats. We had 3 Gorge guides, 22 customers, 1 Parkdale guide (me), and 2 trainees. That meant that in order to run the Gorge, we had to put all the customers with the 3 Gorge certified guides. Because the boats were so crowded, the only way for the trainees to get some river time was to send a separate training boat down with me as the guide. I had guided parts of the Gorge before and run the Gorge so many times that I have lost count, but I had never guided the whole thing from top to bottom. So it was a trial-by-fire type of run. It was just me and two trainees (one of whom it was her second day on the river). We had an awesome day!! A big thanks to Brian and Megan for being as kick ass as they were. Here are some of the pictures that Whitewater Photography got of our run through Sunshine Falls. ~2210cfs.




Too bad they didn't get any photos of my carnage in Boat Eater Rapid. I would have loved a shot of me flying through the air as I'm being launched out of the boat. It was a fairly high-carnage day on the river. Several companies had some trouble in different parts. But I feel special. It my first flip while guiding. The saying among raft guides is this... "There are those who have flipped and those who will." A few people add "and those who will again." We swam one of the biggest holes in the river. Woohoo!

Saturday had me out in Salida for the Spiral Drive Run. I didn't do too bad... for a run that starts above 7000' and has a 500' gain in elevation. Length: 4 miles. Time: 42:58. At least I was able to run the whole way and didn't have to walk any part of the uphill. The run was followed immediately by the P2H4 Blue Dress hash, which we managed to show up to the circle for.

What a week!

Weekend River Report

I didn't get to make the normal run through the Royal Gorge, but I did get to do a bit of on-river time with our trainees in the section right about the Gorge. I love teaching people about the river. I think I'm a little too excited about it and try to teach too much at once. Our newest trainee that was out on Sunday was Hoover Daaamn! Even though it was her first time out, she did a great job at guiding. She'll have to work on her reflexes for not falling out at little bumps while standing in the boat.

River: Arkansas
Weather: warm and sunny (until we were packing up our gear, then the thunder moved in!)
Flow: ~1100 cfs
Route: Pinnacle Rock to Parkdale

Yes, I know...

...that I'm lame, but I'm happy this way. Most of the time. :)

Free at last!

Finals are done! Time now to concentrate on more enjoyable things....

Time to find new mountains to climb...

Time to follow the path of least resistance...

When you're time is limited, spend it at the top of the world!

Bring on the misery!

It's official. I'm now signed up to take the MCAT on August 16. This should work out perfectly. I'll finish Physics II the week before and the weekend after I'll have Gore Fest and the Muddy Buddy as recovery. But it only gives me a couple of months to study! ACK! I'm mildly terrified. I think I want to vomit a little.


Test Site
Date: Thursday, August 16, 2007 8:00 AM
Location: THOMSON PROMETRIC TEST CENTER
Address: 2790 N. ACADEMY BLVD.SUITE 238COLORADO SPRINGS, CO 80917

If finals aren't the death of me, the MCAT will be.

I had a kick ass weekend! I swear! Of course, I've been so deep in my books that I haven't had any time to really tell about it. Synopsis:

Saturday:
8am: My 5 miler in Garden of the Gods (as part of the Grand Prix of Running series) was pretty much kick ass. I did fairly well, considering I just started trying to train about a month ago and I still have very little idea of what I'm doing. My time = 51:30, my pace 10:18/mile. Definitely slow, but I guess it's a decent start.

Nibbles 'n' Tits & Tits On The Ritz after GoG 5 Miler

11am: In celebration of Cinco de Mayo, we gathered at Tony's for a shot, a beer, and a free sombrero. Beautiful.

Bottoms up!

12:15ish: Off to the 80909, Stinko de Mayo hash. Awesome freaking trail. Happy levels of drunkenness. Cinco Bitches! Brownie passes out before circle (I'm sure that's been pointed out by others already). General good times had by all who can remember them.

Cinco Bitches!

Sunday:
Okay, Sunday sucked. This is where the studying started. Bleh. Finals this week go from easy to hard very quickly! Monday = Anthropology. Tuesday = Cell Biology. Wednesday = Organic Chemistry (cumulative for two semesters). Thursday = Calculus II. WHEEE.

Someone have a beer or twelve ready for me on Thursday!

Beer and Vitamins

I'm sitting here, being laughed at by Nibbles 'n' Tits for taking my vitamins with beer. I'm not sure what's so funny! Isn't this normal behavior? It be harder to take them without anything to drink, so why not beer? Chips and salsa for dinner, vitamins, and beer to wash it all down.

An Incline Morning

I was a little bit overly motivated this morning. I did a short warmup jog in the the Garden, before I headed over to hit the incline. It wasn't a record time for me, but it was an awesome morning. Folks from my friend Jen's company were doing the incline for PT so I met her out there. Jen and I started 20 minutes after everyone else had taken off. I wasn't expecting to see anyone of them still on trail, but we passed one guy within the first 1/3 mile! Talk about struggling. He's still fairly new to CO.

Hiking up the incline in the fog is incredibly misleading. It's a good thing I've done the trail before and had a fairly good idea of how it's laid out. At no point in the morning could you see more than 50' ahead or behind. For those who know, the false summit about 2/3 of the way up would have been horrible for someone who didn't know it was there.

So Jen and I got to the top of the trail. I continued on up to take the longer way down to Barr Trail, while Jen went back down the incline to make sure the troop from her company hadn't died along the way. I had a great run down Barr Trail, the kind that just feels good. I passed another group of the wankers from Jen's work on the way back down. They were walking. SLOW! All in all, it was a great trail for me this morning. Which is good, since I need to get my bum up that trail more often! I can't wait!

Nerd follow-up...

I'm an even bigger nerd than I thought! I slaved away all weekend long on this project for Organic Chemistry. I didn't sleep and spent a beautiful weekend trapped inside with various spectra spread out before me. I even managed to get in an hour of studying in for my test in O Chem lecture.

Turns out it paid off! I got a 99% on my exam for lecture and 295/300 for my lab presentation! I kick O Chem ass!

NERD!

I kick Calculus II ass! I got a 100% on my exam that I took last Thursday. I am the biggest nerd alive!