Breckenridge-a-thon
It was kind of like a marathon weekend, without the running part. There was an out-of-town trip, lack of sleep, logistical screw-ups, and high anticipation. Including me, 11 Mizzou college buddies got together for a weekend in the mountains, with guys coming to Colorado from Seattle, Chicago, and St. Louis. We got to Breckenridge in waves on Thursday and Friday, spending the weekend debating who slept where (ridiculous considering we were in a massive, luxury 7-bedroom mountain mansion), hiking a bit of trail until the sea-levelers got wobbly-legged, white-water rafting down the Arkansas River, ping-ponging, and eating enough Costco food to help offset the cases of beer and couple gallons of the hard stuff. I did a reasonably good job of avoiding puking and fitting in a couple of easy runs, just to remind myself that I can (almost) hang with my more party-centric friends and still hoof it up the sides of mountains.
It was great to have so much unstructured time with friends I see so rarely. Though our lives and lifestyles have diverged since the college days, some with a handful of kids, some divorced, some not yet married for a first go-around, and all following different career paths, surprisingly little has changed in the friendship dynamics from the 1990s. I’m happy to say all seem to be doing well, both in the macro-sense (“life is going roughly as planned”) and micro-sense (“despite drinking Tito’s from a pint glass all weekend long, I haven’t injured myself!”). If I can get some pictures from the guys and there isn’t too much to object to, I’ll post them here later.
With a total of only 12.5 miles on the weekend, I’ve got some work ahead this week. While it isn’t exactly the home stretch for my October race, the days are falling off the calendar pretty quickly. I’m looking at a big second half for July before I get to the meat of the training, which will be a ball-busting training block in August and September. I’m looking to hit 15-20 hours a week on my feet, peaking at around 100 miles a week at altitude, mostly on trail, with quite a bit of climbing.
Kind of Like Fun 