Summit junkie!

Weights at the gym for an hour working my upper body and core. Considering all of the crap my body has been through in the last few days it went pretty well. Last Friday morning I woke up at 3:00 am with severe pain in my abdomen. It got progressively worse and by 11:00 am I found myself in the ER getting pricked, poked, explored and tested. They admitted me and shot me up with morphine and other drugs and after several tests determined that I had an ulcer in my stomach that was probably caused from taking too much ibuprofen. In the last few weeks I have been taking more than usual with the sores on my feet that have been swollen and painful and that probably pushed it over the edge, so I spent the weekend in the hospital and now I am trying to adjust to a new diet and no caffeine. Ugh! I wasn't able to eat anything for almost 3 days and last night was the first exercise I have had in 5 days. I think I'll try a run tonight to see if it bothers me at all, but I think I'll be good. Life is never dull.

At the track and on the TM at the gym.

Lake Mountain with Jun:

It has been a week since I have been on the summit of a peak, so I really needed to get out this morning even though I knew there would be a threat of some mud on the trails. I was up at 4:20 am and met Jun at the park n ride at 5:00. It was a lot warmer than I thought it would be today and for the most part the trail was in decent shape, but there was a good mile+ that had some really thick mud and it slowed us down a lot. We both kept getting mud bricks on our shoes and we had to constantly knock it off. The upper half of the mountain was alright and we topped out at a slow 1:10. Just as we were coming up to the top 5 deer popped out in front of us and trotted ahead with the most amazing view opening up to us. It was still dark and the city lights looked really cool.

We both had a gel and didn't stay too long up there. This was the first time in almost a month that I have run without my feet bandaged and for the most part they felt pretty good, but going down from the summit was tough on my ankle. I still have a sore there and it is pretty sensitive. The run down was a lot of fun except for the mud mile. We were not fast, but I won't complain because overall it was a blast.

Grandeur Peak loop with the WMW (Wasatch Mountain Wranglers) aka (FLUFFERS).

This is one of my favorite loop runs in the Wasatch and it didn't disappoint. Met the fellas at 6:00 at the Grandeur West Ridge trailhead. It wasn't as cold as we thought it would be and we settled into a slower than normal pace up the steep WR. About 3/4 of the way up Jun and I put a bit of distance on the other guys and we hit the summit in a slow 1:14 which was still an hour faster than the last time in the deep snow. It was cold on top and we waited for 5 minutes for Dors and about 10 more for the other guys. Jun and I froze our tails off and resorted to some snuggling (see Jun's blog for pics). Haha.

From there we ran down Church Fork to the Pipeline. The trail conditions were really good. At Rattlesnake Gulch we checked for the Millcreek Flasher (darn no luck) and then took Bambi hill up another few hundred feet and then dropped back down to the steep trail that would take us back to the WR trail. I took a dive at one point, but landed in a pile of dry leaves. No damage done. It was an incredible morning with really good friends.

Check out the new WMW blog. Our running crew will start to post on this blog as a group.

New blog