Surviving Fall Racing Season & Burn-Out

Running and I have always had a love-hate relationship.

Throughout the past 3 years though it's been mostly love. Right now I'm going through the hate stage. Me and running are not on good terms. I just have absolutely no desire to run.

It's VERY frustrating. Yes, I've gone through a few short term burn-out periods before, but this time it just seems worse. I think a lot of it has to do with me trying to accept the fact that I failed at my attempt to qualify for Boston this year. I just REALLY wanted it, and I think I am somehow feeling like less of a runner because I wasn't able to do it. Now don't get me wrong - I'm not "giving up." But I am taking a break from trying for awhile. It just consumed SO much of my time and energy. I put a lot of things I wanted to do on hold - and because of that, I think I'm extra disappointed. I did barely any trail running and hiking this year so I could focus on road running. And for what? So I could be sitting here at the end of August feeling like I wasted my summer for no reason?

Ugh - anyways, sorry to be such a debbie downer right now. That is just how I'm feeling.

And it's not good because I have a very BUSY fall coming up with a LOT of races. My plan had always been to spend the first half of the year racing hard and working on speed, and then just have fun for the second half of the year by running a lot of races just "for fun". Which I still intend to do, but it is just daunting having all of these events coming up with no motivation to train for them. Especially the full marathons. I have enough of a base that I can get through a Half Marathon without many problems. But a full? Hmmm this will be interesting.

Here's what's on tap for this fall:

September 13th - Loveland Fall Classic Marathon
September 26th - Golden Leaf Half Marathon
October 3rd - Black Canyon North Rim 20K
October 10th - Durango Double Trail Half Marathon
October 11th - Durango Double Road Half Marathon
October 17th - Indian Creek 50K
October 24th - Global Hope 5K/10K
November 7th - Rim Rock Marathon
November 22nd - Route 66 Marathon
December 5th - Moab Winter Sun 10K

So what should I do about all these said races combined with my said lack of enthusiasm?

Well, I'm still working this one out - but here's what I've come up with thus far:

1. Stop being so hard on myself: I'm not a professional runner. My career is not on the line. Running is a recreational activity that I do to relieve stress and keep myself healthy. There's no point in getting mad at myself for taking some time off and not training as much as I normally do.

2. Get lots of sleep: Obviously there is surely some sort of physical exhaustion going on when I get burned out - sleeping well should help, so I'm going to focus on this.

3. Eat Right: this is a HUGE problem for me right now. I'm going to let you in on a little secret (well not much of a secret if you know me in real life): I am NOT a healthy eater. I don't like most vegetables - I like processed food that's bad for me. I LOVE desserts. But I also know that eating healthy makes me feel better as a whole - so my goal is to really focus on trying to get back on track eating wise. I stress eat a lot - and this whole "burn out" thing is stressing me out - but I'm going to try to work through that without sabotaging my weight. Maybe I can use some of the time I'm not running, to cook more healthy meals?

• P.S. Skirt Sports founder Nicole DeBoom is doing a fun September Eating Experiment where she is keeping track of everything she eats for a month (think "Food Awareness Month")! I'm thinking I need to join in, and you should too. Find out more info here!

4. Run when I want to: Seeing that long list of races just makes me feel like I "HAVE" to run - which in turn makes me want to run less. Well you know what - I don't HAVE to do anything (I just read a pretty good blog post on this actually!). As I said before, I am not a professional runner - I don't even have a coach telling me what to do. If I don't want to run right now, then I don't have to run. There's nothing wrong with taking a break now and then!

5. Cross Train: Don't have a lot of desire to run? So - do something else! There are a lot of ways to keep my fitness level up without running. I can try a yoga class or ride my bike. I have been hiking the past few weekends which has been GREAT for my mental state - so I hope to keep that up as much as I can throughout the fall (and that's the awesome thing about Western Colorado - we have some great spring and fall hikes I can do when the mountains start getting snow!).

6. Have Fun! When in doubt - just have fun. Don't stress. Just enjoy things. I signed up for most of these fall races as an excuse to see new places and enjoy the wonderful fall weather. And that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm throwing time expectations out the window and going to use these races to focus on what it is I love about running. I signed up for the Golden Leaf Half because I'll be running through aspen tree's during peak fall color season - so I'm going to enjoy it. If I have to walk a lot because my training has been lacking - so what!? That's more time enjoying what I love about fall. I signed up for the Durango Double because I haven't been to Durango before - so I'm going to enjoy seeing Durango! If I have to walk? Who cares - I'll be in a new place I've never been before - the slower I go, the more I get to see! I signed up for the North Rim 20K because it's one of my favorite races I do every year. Do I have to PR the course? No - you can only PR things so many times anyways. How about instead I enjoy the views of the Black Canyon?!

So there you have it - what I hope to be doing over the next few months! I REALLY hope my running mojo comes back soon, but in the meantime I have managed to get some pretty cool hikes in during the past couple weekends in an effort to savor a little bit of summer and keep me from going completely insane:

Hiking Wetterhorn & Handies Peaks - August 15th & 16th

Joined some friends for a run/hike up to Imogene Pass on August 22nd

Took my dog for a run/hike up on the Grand Mesa on August 23rd!

Hiked to Highland Mary Lakes near Silverton on August 29th!

Explored the trails off of Loveland Pass with the pup on August 30th!

Oh and be sure to STAY TUNED FOR A GIVEAWAY! I'll be hosting a giveaway in the coming days for a chance to win a free skirt from Skirt Sports! Almost all of their new fall line is now on their website and it's all pretty darn cute! And hey - that's another thing I forgot to mention in my ways to get through burn out: cute new running clothes are always a good way to motivate me to go for a run! ;)

Lake City Trip: Wetterhorn (14,015') and Handies (14,048') Peaks!

This marks my 100th post!!!

Considering the fact that I started this blog with the sole intention to document hikes, it is very fitting that my 100th post would be recapping hikes (as opposed to running - which is what the majority of my posts are these days).

My how things have changed since I started this little blog three years ago though. Just for fun, I went back and read my first post, just to see what's changed. Here's a link to it. The main thing that stood out was a summer bucket list I had created. Let's see how well I did:

Summer 2012 Bucket list:
1. Visit and Hike in Moab - Check! (and check, check, check)
2. Camp at the Great Sand Dunes - Check!
3. Camp and visit Telluride - Check!
4. Hike from Crested Butte to Aspen - Still haven't done this one yet :(
5. Hike into the Black Canyon of the Gunnison - Still haven't really done this yet - I didn't realize how technical most of those are (practically climbing). There is a hike on the northern end - Ute Trail that I'd like to do sometime in the fall or spring that kind of gets you close
6. Hike Mt. Sneffels - Check!
7. Hike a summit before dawn and watch the sunrise -Check!
8. Hike half of the trails on our Ouray Topo Map - kind of Check - not sure I've done "half", but I have done a lot of Ouray hikes by now!
9. Hike on the Grand Mesa - Check!
10. Drive the Million Dollar Highway from Ouray to Silverton - Check!

So, overall: not too shabby! I have done quite a bit in the last 3 years. But, one thing I love about the Rocky Mountains is that no matter how many hikes I manage to get in, there's still WAY more out there! I could spend the rest of my life hiking new trails around this state and not get them all done!

Which I fully intend to do, by the way, especially after my awesome weekend in Lake City that left me with a bit of a Rocky Mountain High, that's for sure! I crossed 2 more fourteeners off of my list, including my first ever Class 3 fourteener (the peaks are ranked by difficulty up to a class 5) by hiking Wetterhorn Peak (14,015') and Handies Peak (14,048'). And the views: once again AMAZING. Seriously - the San Juan fourteeners are by far the most gorgeous - the area is just so incredibly green and amazing. So without further ado - here are some short recaps with TONS of pictures:

AUGUST 15TH: WETTERHORN PEAK (14,015')

Truth be told, when I rolled into Lake City on Friday night, I had no intention of hiking Wetterhorn. I wanted to do Sunshine and Redcloud - a two-fer (two peaks, one hike) also in the San Juan's. But unfortunately (although, spoiler alert - it turned into a "fortunately" because I LOVED it) no one else was up for those two and my only options were Wetterhorn or Uncompahgre. I had hiked Uncompahgre last year and while I absolutely loved it (one of my favorite peaks thus far), I kind of wanted to bag some new peaks rather than do a repeat hike (too many peaks to see, not enough time!!). So, despite my incredible fear over the words "Class 3", I decided to give it a shot. I figured if it was "that bad", I could just turn around (of course, they always seem worse on the way back down - in which case turning around isn't really an option). So, I went in with one of my favorite quotes and never looked back:

"You can't fall if you don't climb, but there's no joy in living your whole life on the ground."

I love this quote because not only am I fairly timid when climbing mountains - so it has a very "literal" meaning to me, I also just love the concept. There's no fear of failure if you don't try something new - but there's also no joy in that either! Experiencing new things, shooting for a new goal, etc. are what make life worth living - whether or not you succeed at those endeavors!

So anyways, I repeated that quote to myself during the more difficult sections of this hike. But I am once again getting ahead of myself...

We ("we" being myself and fellow "Western Slope Adventures" - people from a local meetup group) left our campsite in Lake City a little after 5:00am and drove up to the trailhead. Now keep in mind, that even though we're in Lake City which is very close to everything, it still took us about an hour to get to the trailhead because of the rocky, 4WD terrain. So it was more like 6:00am by the time we got started. The trail is a very well defined trail with a decent amount of elevation gain for the first 3 miles:

Wetterhorn is the peak on the left.

I absolutely love that moment when the sun first appears over the surrounding mountains on an early morning hike! This was the moment - right as Uncompahgre Peak came into view to the east of where we were.

This was actually taken on the way back down, but I wanted to show how defined the trail was in the earlier sections.

Uncompahgre Peak is the far one with Matterhorn (a 13er) in between.

It's the last mile where the tricky parts begin. Overall, I actually ended up doing pretty good on the Class 3 stuff, despite my fears. There was one section where I lost sight of everyone and had a mini freak-out, but I survived it (because it's also very tricky to find the right route during these rocky sections). The very last climb is almost all vertical, but what was neat about it, was that, I got over the last bit and I was just all of sudden, there - at the top! It was pretty darn cool. I think what I've discovered, is that, even though it was difficult stuff, the fact that the rock felt solid (like - it wouldn't come out from under me), so mentally I did fine on most of it. It's the real loose, scree stuff that I don't like (at all).

The beginning of the tricky stuff!

I'm up there in the white hat! - Photo by Chuck Cooper

On top of the world! - Photo by Chuck Cooper

I took this of another girl from our group - this is that last, really steep section!

Just below the summit!

The weather was absolutely perfect, so we stayed at the top awhile taking pictures, chatting, and waiting for the rest of the group to get there before heading back down. I was pretty worried about the down - but I ended up doing well on that too. I think because I stayed real close behind other members of the group - so I could watch where they were putting their feet and what exact route they were taking, which helped tremendously.

Fourteener #9 Complete! (Uncompahgre is the far one in the distance - that was #7 for me!)

SO green!

Our group!

Mr. Marmot was practically posing for us!

Heading back down.

Once we were off of the difficult stuff, I started lollygagging and taking tons of pictures of wildflowers and sheep - there were hundreds of sheep just grazing at 12,000+ feet - it was pretty neat (albeit noisy). I was pleasantly surprised at how many wildflowers were still around considering how late in the summer it was!

Uncompahgre!

Colorado State Flower: The Columbine

Sheep!

The Wildflowers were incredible!

So overall, it was a pretty amazing hike. I was very proud of myself for branching out and trying the Class 3 hike despite being very intimidated by it. I ended up having an awesome time and hope this will get me to step out of my comfort zone more often. I love that feeling of accomplishing something I used to think I couldn't do!

AUGUST 16TH: HANDIES PEAK (14,048')

On Sunday I joined some of the same people, some different, for a hike up to the top of Handies Peak. This has been one I've wanted to do for awhile, just haven't gotten a chance yet. It is a Class 1 - fairly easy,"trail-all-the-way-to-the-top" hike. There's two routes you can take, and we chose the American Basin route which is shorter, and, from what I hear, prettier - as it goes through American Basin which is just full of wildflowers (I believe the other route has a lot more trees). And it was incredible - the last section to the top was just insanely steep though with a lot of loose small rocks - not my favorite thing in the world (I'm always afraid the rocks are going to slide out from under me and I'm going to slip - although it is funny that that scares me more than some of the Class 3 stuff - considering I'd be in WAY worse trouble if I fell on that vs. this).

But anyways, I had a great time on this one as well and the views were once again phenomenal. The weather was looking pretty iffy as we got close to the top. So much so, I was hesitant to even keep going - but I was in front of the rest of the group and they were still coming up, so I figured I'd just get to the top, see how it looked, and then head back down if it looked bad. Luckily, once I made it to the summit, the sun came out and everything looked much more clear. There were a lot more people and a lot less room on the top of this one - it's always funny how that works out - I thought Wetterhorn would be a small summit, but it was actually pretty big. This one, on the other hand, I thought the opposite, but it was pretty small.

We sat around for awhile waiting for the rest of the group to arrive and then got a picture of all of us. I started my descent down right after this so I could find a bathroom (and by bathroom I mean some trees or a bush - which is quite hard to find when you're above treeline!). As we headed back down, we got rained on a few times, but never anything too bad. I had wanted to take a lot more wildflower pictures though and of course it was raining when we were heading back through the best area for that! Ohwell - somethings are best left to memory!

American Basin

SO many wildflowers!

First glimpse of the sun!

Sloan Lake

Love this one!

The only real "rocky" section of the hike - and it was nothing like Wetterhorn, that's for sure!

This was from a saddle, before the homestretch up to the summit. It was gorgeous!

Views from the top!

From the summit looking back in the opposite direction towards the Grizzly Gulch trailhead.

I'm in love with this picture - I just love the trail. It looks so funny though, like you wouldn't need the switch backs. Trust me - you do! It was SO steep in real life!

Fourteener #10 in the books!

Heading back down.

Flowers!!!

More flowers!

American Basin!

More Marmots!

As we were leaving the trailhead we spotted a Moose! This was only the second time I've ever seen a Moose in Colorado, and we all got out of the car to go check him out - pretty darn cool and an awesome way to end the weekend!

I know it seems dumb to not have the Moose in focus, but I don't care - I LOVE this picture!