Canyonlands Half Marathon

Once again, it's been another couple of months since my last post! I've mostly been spending my weekends training for my Half Marathon - running about 25-30 miles per week with shorter runs during the week and long runs on the weekends. I've gotten fairly active on MyFitnessPal, an online community for people wanting to focus on health and exercise. Since I don't know too many serious runners, this helped me learn a lot and stay motivated during my training.

In February I did my first "official" 10K (6.2 miles). I run 6 miles almost every Tuesday and Thursday, so I was definitely prepared, but wanted to actually do it in a race format. It was also good to get another timed race in prior to my Half Marathon, just for the experience of running in a race setting. I hadn't done any races since last October, so this was very helpful.

And now, on to my "big day"...

I honestly can't believe how fast it came up! I've been training for 3+ months for this, so it was very exciting for the day to finally arrive! I've ran 12-13 miles every Saturday for the past 4 weeks, so I felt fairly confident going in. My goal was to run the entire race without walking and to complete it under 2 hours and 10 minutes, which would've been just under a 10 min per mile pace.

When we lined up to start, there were so many people and not enough room, so I ended up a little ways behind the 2:20:00 runners. I tried not to let it bother me, and figured I could make it up once the crowd loosened up. And I was right! It took about 3 miles, but I finally managed to catch up with the 2:10:00 pacers, and actually passed them. The next 8 or so miles went just as well. There was even a pretty big hill at mile 9 that I felt confident doing thanks to one of my training routes that takes me up 6800 road in Montrose (killer incline). Unfortunately, right about the time we hit mile 11, I got a terrible side cramp and a weird neck pain at the same time and had to slow down. I didn't walk, but was probably running at a 10 or 11 min/mile pace. When I hit mile 12, I was able to pick up a little momentum due to the mentality of knowing I was almost done, and then when I rounded the corner onto the last stretch and there were people on all sides cheering I picked up my pace a tiny bit more. Unfortunately by this point I just couldn't get myself to sprint or anything though, but still finished with a gun time of 02:03:23 and a chip time of 02:00:51.

Overall I was very happy with myself that I made it so close to 2 hours. With the way I slowed down on mile 11, I didn't think I would be anywhere near that time! Of course, once I finished and saw how close I was, I was immediately bummed that I didn't finish in under 2, but what are you going to do? I am doing at least one more half this year (Georgetown to Idaho Springs Half Marathon on August 10), so I now have a goal for that! I'm happy I finished under my original goal of 2:10, which I think is a great time considering it was my first ever half marathon!

My husband, family (mom, dad, and brother), and I spent the rest of the afternoon seeing a bit of Arches National Park, and then we enjoyed a big celebratory dinner! It was a beautiful weekend in Moab! In fact, it ended up being perfect weather conditions - 60 degrees and cloudy for my run, and then upper 60's and sunny during our time in the National Park!

Overall stats from the race:
Chip Time: 2:00:51
Gun Time: 2:03:23
Average Pace: 9:13 min/mile
Overall rank: 1293 out of 3189 finishers
Class rank (Females 20-24): 40 out of 150
Sex rank: 558 out of 1895

Pictures from the weekend:

The starting line (top right)

My bib and finisher medal :)

Hubby and I after the race!

Beautiful blue skies on Saturday afternoon in Arches National Park!

As we get into spring and summer, I'm hoping to update my blog a bit more! I'm definitely planning to add running in with hiking this year. We haven't made too many official plans, but I know I want to get up to Estes Park this summer, do several more races, a little camping, and at least one fourteener!

Merry Christmas!

How quickly summer turned into winter! My last post was right around the first of fall, and here I am not writing again until the first day of winter. Despite my lack of writing, we have been on a couple adventures in the last few months. Not nearly as many as over the summer due to my extreme dislike of the cold, but nevertheless, a few...

In early October, I participated in the Second Annual Black Canyon North Rim 20K and 8K race (I did the 8K). Back in June and July I began to start getting into running, and did my first 5K in Aspen (which I posted about). Well I'm not really sure what motivated me, but I kept it up, and soon I was running up to 5 miles on any given day!  So when I saw a poster advertising the Black Canyon 8K, I knew I had to sign up. I've been wanting to check out the North Rim of the canyon for awhile now, and what better way than this!?

It was an absolutely gorgeous day! Beautiful weather and beautiful views!

Which brings me to my next topic - I've officially signed up to run the Canyonlands Half Marathon on March 16, 2013! I'm very excited. Moab is such a unique place, I think it will be a truly gorgeous race! The course actually boarders Arches National Park! I've been pretty good about exercising about 4-6 days per week and have been working up my mileage, having gotten to 10 miles without stopping. My goal for the race will be to complete all 13.1 miles in less than 2 hours, 10 minutes (which is just under a 10 minute/mile pace). I think it's do-able, but it means no slacking for me once the holidays are over!

Other highlights of the last few months include a visit to Oklahoma in October to meet my new niece, born September 19th. Then for Thanksgiving my family came over from Denver again this year. I got them all to participate in the Turkey Trot put on by the San Juan Mountain Runners. There was a 2 mile walk/run, and a 4.2 mile run. My family all did the 2 miler, and Scott and I did the 4.2. It was a lot of fun!

In early December, Scott and I headed up to Telluride/Mountain Village for a "Christmas Weekend." I LOVE Christmas, but it had been so warm out, it just hadn't felt like the Christmas season yet. So Scott and I made a spontaneous decision to go check out the ski area of Mountain Village (located over the mountain from Telluride). We rode the Gondola from Mountain Village into Telluride for dinner, went ice skating, and enjoyed the Christmas lights. We even woke up the next morning to a winter wonderland with freshly fallen snow!

Unfortunately with freshly fallen snow and cold weather comes ice, and on the way back home we ended up in a car accident. We were about half way between Telluride and Montrose when we hit some ice, lost control of the car, and ended up in a ravine about 30 feet down from the road. Luckily neither of us were injured, other than Scott's Nissan Xterra, which was totaled. So now we're in the process of car shopping!

I believe that covers all of the highlights over the past few months. Now we're just looking forward to enjoying our third Christmas together with our adorable puppy!

Colorful Colorado

Can I just say that I absolutely love fall!

Yesterday we headed down to Telluride to spend the day viewing all of the beautiful fall colors. I've been wanting to do a drive like this for the last couple of weeks, but wanted to try and time it just right - go too soon and they've still got a lot of green in them, wait too long and they're too brown. Well I think we managed to time it pretty darn well. We stopped at a couple pull outs along the drive (including Dallas Divide), headed up to Bridal Veil Falls in Telluride (Colorado's tallest waterfall), and then south towards Lizard Head Pass. The colors were absolutely phenomenal! Everywhere we went the aspens were bright golden yellow and lit up the entire mountain side.

So without further ado, here are the pictures:

 

Wildflower Photo Book

I got a coupon for a free photo book from shutterfly, so I decided to take our flower pictures and make one. I didn't have a lot of time before the coupon expires, so I just made it simple, but I think it's shows the pictures well this way too:

Click here to view this photo book larger

Build your own high-quality photo books at Shutterfly.com.

I also got a great deal on Groupon for a large 11x14 book for $19.00, which I'm going to use this fall to make a big scrapbook of all of our summer 2012 pictures. Can't wait for this one!

Silverton

We had an incredibly wonderful day in Silverton today!

The original Labor Day plan was to go up to Pagosa Springs for the whole weekend - we had a cabin with room for the dog and everything. Unfortunately Scott had to work Saturday and Sunday, so those plans were thrown out the window, but since he was off on Monday I knew we had to do something fun and memorable.

One of the things I had been looking forward to on the Pagosa Springs trip, was driving the "Million Dollar Highway," which stretches south of Ouray, down to Silverton. Since we hadn't had a chance to do this yet, and hadn't seen Silverton yet, I thought it would be a great day trip for us. And it most definitely was!

I had been debating whether we wanted to try and hike, but decided with it being the last day of the long weekend, and never seeing the town before, we'd just take it easy and try out some "touristy" things instead. We started the day around 8:30, stopped for some breakfast on our way out of town, and headed south. It's about an hour and a half drive, and my is it scenic. If we ever have family out here for longer than a day, I really do need to get them to some of these areas, they are gorgeous!

One surprise for me along the way, was that I got to see a little bit of Fall popping up here and there! It was amazing that while most of the Aspen's were still green, every so often there were patches of bright yellow trees, and even a few red ones (although these were much more rare)! So that was very exciting for me and I tried to take several pictures of them, although it was hard to find road pull outs in the exact same places as the changing trees - but I did my best, and managed to find a few.

The Million Dollar Highway was beautiful, although we were surprised that it wasn't quite as scary as we thought. There were definitely a few spots that you wouldn't want to be passing a giant RV, but overall nothing too terrible, and nothing worse than Trail Ridge Road in RMNP.

We made it into Silverton around 10:30 or so and stopped in the visitor's center to see what they recommended for just a half day visit. Of course, they said to walk around town (which we were already planning), and the lady working also told me that the Silverton-Durango train comes in at 12:00, if we wanted to see it. Scott didn't really care too much, but I thought it would be cool, so we walked around town shopping until the train came in, and I got several pictures of it. I would love to take the train down to Durango someday!

After that, we got some lunch, and then headed out to the "Old Hundred Mine" for a Mine Tour (this was another thing I thought would be fun, plus the Visitor Center recommended it as well). We got to wear big rain jackets and hard hats and ride into the mine for a short educational tour. I believe I did one or two mine tours back as a kid, so it was fun to do one again and actually learn a thing or two this time.

Following the mine tour, we ended our day with a quick stop overlooking the "Gold Mill" (another big tourist attraction - but no time this trip), and then into town for some ice cream before making our way back home. We did end up stopping at one more overlook, to check out the "Red Mountain Mining District," and in particular, the "Yankee Girl Mine" - which is one of the most photographed in the area.

Pictures...(again had trouble narrowing it down, so bear with me, there are a lot!)

Million Dollar Highway

Silverton

Old Hundred Mine

The Gold Mill

Yankee Girl Mine