Colorado adventure...

We've had an enjoyable Memorial Day weekend so far in Colorado. We flew into Denver early Saturday morning, and within minutes of stepping outside of the airport and feeling the cool, crisp air I launched into my litany of reasons that we should move here. K has heard it before (and I like to remind him every chance I get that I turned down a possible job opportunity that would have brought us here a few years ago). Regardless, it's a fantastic place to visit with so many different seasonal activities to enjoy and quite easy in terms of traveling from Austin. I'm thankful that we are fortunate to make a couple of trips here each year.

Typically, we head West or North from Denver, but this time we opted to head South to Colorado Springs. As we left the Denver area and got our first glimpse of Pike's Peak in the distance, I was awestruck by it's size as it towers over everything else on the horizon. We arrived in Manitou Springs around 10:30am and had some time to kill before our noon train reservation on the Pikes Peak Cog Railway. We stopped for a quick jaunt on the Paul Intemann Memorial Nature Trail from the Crystal Park Road trailhead to the Manitou Mesa Overlook about a half mile east. The entire trail is about 5 miles, but it's broken up a bit which makes it difficult to access the entire trail at once. I had wanted to check it out though to see how runnable it would be for me because I knew Barr Trail wasn't going to happen for me later.

Steps that led up to a series of switchbacks that led to the overlook

K at Manitou Mesa Overlook with Garden of the Gods in the distance

We then made our way through town in Manitou Springs to the Cog Railway Depot and hopped aboard the Leadville car that would take us the 1.5 hour ride to the summit of Pike's Peak (elevation 14,110 feet).

K & m at the summit of Pike's Peak - still plenty of snow up there!

Views from the summit

The temperature difference between the base and summit was incredible. It was sooo cold and windy at the top - temps in low 20's with the wind chill around 10 degrees. We stayed at the summit for about 40 minutes or so, which was enough time to take some pictures and munch on the High Altitude Doughnuts before heading back down to warmer temperatures! It takes approximately 3-hours for the roundtrip train ride while it takes 2-3 hours to make the drive on Pike's Peak Highway.

By this point (and well before, honestly) we were pretty exhausted from the limited amount of sleep we got on Friday night and early morning wake up to catch our 6:20am flight. K toughed it out though and decided to hit Barr Trail for a few miles, while I window-shopped in Manitou Springs.

K's experience on Barr Trail: So, having developed a sudden interest in running up Pike's Peak in the August race, I decided to give it a test run on the bottom section of Barr Trail. Since we were already at the top and knew how much snow was up there and how treacherous the path looked, I already had a good feel for what would be awaiting me further up, so I wanted to try to at least see what was runnable around the bottom. Coming up from the parking lot at the trailhead is a steep set of switchbacks to where it almost looks like you are on top of where you started after about a half mile to a mile. This pretty quickly took its toll on my lungs and leg strength and I found myself walking quite a bit of the starting section. Once I got around a little bend, the trail flattened out somewhat and although I was still climbing it felt like it was less rocky and more runnable with not as many big step-ups. I still found myself walking quite a bit because it was hard to run more than a couple of minutes without running out of breath. I stopped to catch my breath and stretch a little short of 2 miles and I was already going close to 30 minutes. I knew I was going to turn around soon, but I was hoping to get to a good stopping point or 3 miles up which I managed to reach in about 50 minutes. I passed one sign where the trail branched off to go to the top of the incline and then soon after decided to turn around. On the way back down, my legs were already spent so I definitely wasn't pushing it but it was nice to stretch them out and enjoy the ease of coming back down. I realized that if I do the race that I won't have that luxury. I reached about 8,000 feet from a starting point of approximately 6,400 feet. Based on what I did today, I feel like the race will definitely take all I've got, but I'm hoping that with a couple of months of training I can push through and make it all the way to the top.

After dinner, we then made a quick drive through Garden of the Gods featuring 300+ feet of sandstone rock formations before collapsing at our hotel from a fun-filled day.

Notice the people at the top!

View of Pike's Peak from Garden of the Gods

This morning had us making the hour drive southwest to Canon City for a day of white-water rafting on the Arkansas River through the Royal Gorge. The weather was perfect for a day on the river with temps in the upper 70's and low 80's, but the water temp was cold enough that we had to wear a wetsuit. We started with a 9-mile run on relatively mild waters to get us warmed up for the 11-mile afternoon adventure of Class IV-V rapids through the gorge. With names like Boat Eater and Sledge Hammer, we were in for quite a ride. K even went overboard (although not fully) and nearly slammed into a wall of rock on a rapid aptly known as Wall Slammer. All in all, it was big fun.

We're staying overnight in Canon City and plan to visit the Royal Gorge Bridge tomorrow.