Big Water!

Good grief I needed that! What a great day on the Ark. High water, closed Gorge, double Parkdale. I love this river. I've yet to see it at a level that we can't find some fun on it, from 250-3600. Today, on the high end of that range, I got to see a whole new river. Rocks that we've stood on in the past to do throw-bag training, with the river several feet below us, were completely under water. In some spots, the water was even getting close to the road. Beautiful! We had two great runs. Highlights: new guy passed his check ride even though he made his guide swim, swimmers at Three Rocks that got beat up and actually enjoyed it, great customers, some sweet pictures and videos taken by a friend (will post when I get them), and just a gorgeous day on the river.


For Chris: Have you ever seen the river at 3600? I rode with Pat today, while Duane gave a new guy his check ride. On his check ride, Joel dumps Duane in Puppy's Tail. There's a gnarly hole in there at this level. If Duane hadn't come out, that boat was probably gonna flip. On his second run down, Joel took the boat sideways over the meat of Three Rocks, right down the center. Ooops. Dumped half his boat. They recovered everyone fairly quickly and somehow our crew managed to recover all of their paddles plus an extra one from PT. I love when you have customers that swim something crappy like Three Rocks and come out asking for more. There are some seriously wicked holes in PD at this level! In Shark's Tooth, there's this awesome wave that if you punch it just right you're nearly airborne. It just sent us flying! The whole raft, not just the crew. I can't wait to get those pictures from Rick. He took photos the second run and kayaked the first run. He's nuts. There's no way I'd get in that river in a 'yak at this level! Of course, he's also a lot better than I am. Remember our nighttime 'yak run? Fun stuff. I have missed the river so much. More than anything, I miss my river family... There will never be another year quite like my first one. Oh! We got a message from Vanessa, Xanthe went rafting today. :)

So glad to be in Colorado

I procrastinated with my run today and gave myself a nice reminder of why I run early in the morning or late in the evening. I went out for a nice, easy 4 miles at about a 10 min/mile pace and ended up bathed in sweat. It's only 74 degrees out there and I feel like I'm cooking. I can't imagine living in a place where it's regularly over 90 degrees. I'd never survive.

Sunshine Falls

There's a groovy picture from Sunshine Falls on the Colorado Whitewater Photography website.

Mandatory Downtime

My stupid RA started flaring up again last night. It's a doozy this time. To top it off I've got a cold that has me so stopped up I can barely breathe. I guess that maybe I should have listened to my body on Friday when I started to feel a bit cruddy and taken a day or two off. Instead, I went out and ran the Incline on Friday and went boating all day yesterday. Ooops.

I had planned on going back on the river again today, but my body is finally demanding the downtime that I seem unable to force myself to take. So today is a day in, with pain killers and ice backs, and planning the upcoming week's adventures. Running and river running seem to be the focus of my summer. I love it.

River Running

I'm so glad to finally be back out on the river again. It has been a rough semester for me and it's good to be back to a place I feel completely at home. I ran with USAFA yesterday, a full day Parkdale & Royal Gorge trip. The weather was unbelievably beautiful and the water was kicking. We were running in 16' NRS boats yesterday. They're like barges on our smallish river, the Cadillac of boats. We were hitting holes sideways and rolling right over 'em. In smaller boats we would have been toppled so many times. But with the big boats, we were just playing around.

It was a spectacular morning and start to the afternoon. But at the bottom of Sunshine Falls one of our boats had a couple of swimmers. Two customers fell out. Both managed to get to shore at the concrete slab below Sunshine, but one slipped on the concrete and fell back in. She ended up swimming all of Graveyard before being pulled out. Unfortunately, because of her rough swim, she was unable to complete the day in the Gorge. So, like the good, responsible guide I am, I walked her out using the trail that photographers use and got us a ride to Pink House. I was so bummed to miss out on the rest of the day in the Gorge. We had an awesome crew in the boat and were having so much fun. But the upside is that there is always more time on the river for me. I can't wait to get back out there again.

Which marathon?

I have quite a few crazy goals with running this year. My favorite runs that I already have planned are the Pikes Peak Ascent, Imogene Pass, and the Colorado Relay. In addition, I want to do my first marathon this year. I'm just not sure which one I should shoot for. I'm considering some of the ones my friends are running and some that just sound awesome:

4 Oct - Crazy Horse Marathon (Brownie is running this one)
4 Oct - Big Sur Marathon (Beautiful run at sea level!)
2 Nov - New York City Marathon (Family in New York)
16 Nov - Rock 'n' Roll San Antonio Marathon (Several friends running this)
7 Dec - Tucson Marathon (Several friends running this)

The Ascent is in mid August, Imogene is in early September, and the relay is the weekend after. So I'm leaning more toward the Nov or Dec runs. A little bit of recovery time seems like a good idea for me.

Where did the weeks go?

So finals whooped my ass. Then I went straight into summer classes. They are finally over! Hurray! The past few weeks have kept me incredibly busy. My summer classes were fun, but they were incredibly stressful because there was a lot of information condensed in a short time period. To top it off, I had yet another flare up of my RA and now I'm getting a cold. I f'ing love my immune system. Blah. Because of this I haven't been running nearly as much as I would like. I've had a grand total of 5 runs in the past four weeks (two of which were races). The crappy stuff aside, here's the past few weeks in a nut shell...

13-19 May - Finals. Bleh.

20-27 May - Summer school: Art & Politics. I wrote a lot of papers for this one!

24 May - Kimchi Hash-O-Limpdicks: I don't know how I survived this one! I earned all three of my tabs in one go: Retard for my sexy granny panties; Special Olympics for the beer mile; and Tard Linguist for five tongue twisters five times fast with a beer between each rhyme. I only vaguely remember playing beer pong and tippy cup later.

25 May - Up in Boulder to party with Ryan and friends until way too late in the evening. Err... more like 1:30 in the morning.

26 May - Bolder Boulder 10k. Hung over, I still had a decent run. I even hit every "beer check" along the course.
Time: 1:01:30. Pace: 9:53.

30 May - 7 Jun - Summer school: Conservation Biology (Go Green!)

1 Jun - Registered for Imogene Pass Run

8 Jun - Garden of the Gods 10 Mile Run. Again, I somehow pulled off a respectable time. Time: 1:47:13. Pace: 10:35. Plus, I'm so sexy that I ended up on the front of the Sports page for the Gazette.




9 Jun - DIM Hash

10 Jun - Jack Quinn's Running Club 2nd Anniversary

11 Jun - Writing my resume! I want a summer job doing something fun that involves little brain work. :) I had forgotten how much fun it isn't to write a resume. Whee!