Pikes Peak Marathon

A while back Josh suggested an interesting adventure and I readily agreed, mostly because it sounded like a fair bit of suffering would be involved. Josh's proposal was to hike/run the Barr trail (7,000+ ft. of vertical in 13 miles - one way) to the summit of Pikes Peak. The trail was actually quite beautiful and made for a good day out.

My prediction of suffering was fairly accurate. I am accustomed to early starts of the three to four AM variety, but 1:30, that's pushing it. I developed a cool new technique for sleeping while hiking. I call it "sleepwalking." Once I woke up my body performed fairly well until the next day when it refused to move. Maybe I am getting old or maybe I am out of shape, but I can't remember the last time I was this sore. Josh is largely unaffected by the effort and seems to be quite amused by my robot-esque shuffling about the house.

The highlight for me definitely came on the descent when we decided to run the first six miles back to the car. We randomly picked the same day for our outing as the Pikes Peak Challenge, which only ascends the peak. Not only was running down the trail really fun, everyone coming up thought Josh and I were really hardcore for running back down.