Summit junkie!

My legs are only a little sore after Saturday, but I want to give them another day of rest, so no running today. I went to the gym after my kids went to bed and lifted with some guys from my neighborhood. We had a really good workout. We did upper body/core for 50 minutes.

My wife had school tonight, so it was a busy evening getting the kids taken care of, but I did manage some TM miles after they were in bed. I really need to get out for a run, so I'm thinking of hitting the tails at lunch today (Wed). I'm not sure yet what I am going to do, but I am sure it will involve a trail and possibly a peak.

It's not every day that you have a run-in with a bull moose. I brought my work out clothes to work today hoping to get in a run during my lunch break, but I didn't know where I wanted to go. Jun gave me a great idea to run the Little Cottonwood river trail aka the Temple Quarry Trail. It sounded like a great run and it is only 10 minutes from my office.

The trail follows the river up the canyon for 2.6 miles. The scenery is fantastic and the weather was just about perfect. You really can't beat the views of the canyon walls and river that you get on this trail. The run up was a little slow and I was working the kinks out. It isn't extremely steep, but it is uphill the whole way.

It took me 30:20 to run the 2.6 miles up to the river crossing and I stopped and took a short break. I wanted to run fast on the way down, so I just ran hard and except for a few technical sections I was able to keep up a really good pace.

I was about a mile down and running between a 6:30-7:00 pace and a bull moose jumped out onto the trail about 10 feet in front of me. I didn't even have time to process what was going on, but luckily he took off running going the same direction as I was. I quickly stopped and watched as he ran about 30 yards and then stopped. I was hoping that he wasn't going to come back to confront me, so I waited for a few seconds and then started to slowly walk. At that point he took off running down the trail, and I slowly followed walking for the next 100 yards or so. Talk about an adrenaline rush. I have seen several moose while playing in the outdoors, but I have only had one, well, maybe two other experiences that rivaled this one. It certainly wasn't just an average run.

I made it back down to the car in 18:40 for a total time of 49:00

I bit off a little more than I wanted to chew this morning. The plan was to climb Thaynes peak with my friend Matt. I have never climbed to the summit of this peak before, although I have been on the nearby summits. The peak is just under 10,000 feet, so we knew there would be snow up there, but we both felt like there would be a 'beaten' path to the top.

I set my alarm for 4:30, but my backup alarm was set for 3:30 and I didn't realize it until it woke me up an hour early. I couldn't get back to sleep, and just as I dozed my son woke me up because he needed some loves, then when I dozed again the alarm went off. I wasn't feeling it at all, but I was hoping to get in a groove.

I met Matt at Dans Grocery store by Millcreeek Canyon and it was a quick drive to the Desolation trail. Both of us were feeling sluggish and we slowly made our way up the trail. I made a stupid mistake and left my gaiters in the car. DUMB DUMB! I was just being lazy and it would come back to haunt me. After a mile we were in snow the rest of the way. We followed a gully that got pretty steep, and just as we thought there were bucket steps in the snow, which was good because we didn't bring our snowshoes or ice axes.

It was really slow going and the gully was pretty steep. About 3/4 of the way up the steps stopped, and it was taking us a lot longer than we thought it would. Both of us thought we could climb this peak and get back down in about 3 hours, but we were wrong. The conditions were not good.

The last half mile was slow and painful. It was steep and we were now post-holing to our knees with every step. We took turns breaking trail, but it was bad. Not having my gaiters made it even worse and my boots were getting wet and my feet very cold. I couldn't keep the snow out of them. We were both determined to make it to the top though, so we slogged on and cursed a lot.

We finally made it to the top after 3 hours and the view was fantastic. It was now windy and snowing a little, so we didn't stay long. We dropped down off of the summit to get out of the wind to take a break and I had a Hammer gel and Matt had a sandwich. The long slog back was just horrible. My feet were numb and my shins were getting trashed by the snow while I plunge stepped down. We did have a few glissades, but not as much as we would have liked.

The hike down was pretty uneventful and we made it back to the car for a total time of 4:36. It was a lot more work than I wanted to do today, but we had a really good time anyway.

3K + elevation gain.

I woke up early this morning to lift. I was really tired and I almost went back to sleep, but I knew I would feel better if I just dragged myself to the gym. I love Friday mornings because the gym isn't very crowded. I had a great workout working my upper body/core for 50 minutes. My calves are sore from all of the elevation gain (8K feet) in the last 6 days, so no running today.

On a side note: One of our FRB members Burt is in need of a van to transport his rather large family while on a trip to Utah. Can you please help him and his lovely brides out? Thanks.

Today was just an all around crappy day which is rare for me but it was. I'll spare you the details. I did manage to get in 3 on the TM and 30 minutes of core with my ball. Everything feels really good.