“If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.” Charles Bukowski

Well it has been a good week. The weather the past few days has been beautiful. This is one of the reasons I moved to Colorado a long time ago. I do like to visit other places that have a lower elevation and a higher humidity, but that’s it. Just visit. Unless of course it was on the beach, say like Hawaii, or some place in the Caribbean. Now that would be pretty cool. To be able to live in both locations. Colorado for part of the year and the beach and “warm” ocean water for the other part. Some would say just move to the Pacific Northwest, but I never totally understood the appeal of the PNW. I have been there a few times and the forest are fantastic and the mountains beautiful. But I don’t think I could do the humidity, clouds, and rain for a majority of the year. I did grow up around water, whether it was in a pool or lake and did a lot of swimming. So that is another reason you would not find me long term in the PNW. The ocean water up there is cold. Too cold for me.

Marvin is growing as expected. Not sure how big he will be, but Janet and I are thinking some where in the 100 lbs plus range. Or maybe bigger? Lol. Puppy class is progressing along as anticipated. What was not expected is how he has changed in behavior from week to week. Thinking about it now in hindsight it does make a lot more sense.

At the very first class he was a little shy but now he is like one of the pack, running, jumping, playing with all the other puppies. Each week has been somewhat of a new experience to see how his confidence grows. Just like it would be in a human child but on a much shorter time frame. We are continuing with the socialization as much as we can.

He seems to be a very easy dog to work with in my experience. Pretty laid back most of the time. The only issue that is ongoing is the puppy bitting. But even as I write this, it seems like we have made progress in shifting his attention to chew bones and dog toys and less to his human companions. Lol

Well I did not make the 50 miles in the Quad Rock again this year but I did do the first loop for 25 miles. It was a great run. The trail conditions and weather were much better than last year. Actually I don’t think you could have asked for better. Of course if you had tried to predict this on Thursday 9th, two days before the race, it would not have been easy. Rain and snow, and rain and snow. And did I say more rain and snow…. Lol.

Cold morning but a very nice afternoon in the high 50s and low 60s. Perfect for running. They did have to reroute some of the course to avoid a few very wet areas. Funny thing, I liked the reroute better than the original course. It did add a little more elevation gain/loss but not too bad.

As far as not finishing the whole 50 miles this year? I am not too disappointed. It is a hard route. Lots of ups and downs. 5000 ft plus of elevation gain and loss in each 25 mile loop. And as I have stated before, it is a little early in the year for me with the 50 mile distance. I was happy with my time compared to last year. This time I was about an hour and ten minutes faster or 6 hours and 40 minutes total.

A surprise that I got while running the revised route was to run the Westridge Trail in Lory State Park. As many times as I had been in the park this was the first time for me to actually run this trail. The views of Mount Meeker and Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park were beautiful. See the above picture. In my opinion, even if the lower valley trails were not wet, this was worth the reroute.

Well before I go I would like to thank all the volunteers and sponsors for supporting the race. Especially the volunteers. Without you this event would not happen like it does. Also this year I would like to thank the land managers for allowing the race to be run even with some of the marginal trail conditions. The conditions on race day were next to perfect but it would have been easy to cancel the event based on the weather occurring on Thursday. Thanks again for allowing us “nutcases” to run on Saturday in a very beautiful place. And last but not least I would like to thank Nick Clark and Brad Bishop (Gnar Runners Event Management) for putting on another fantastic event. If you would like to read and learn more about Gnar Runners and their future races, check out their web site: http://gnarrunners.com/

Well that is going to be about it for me on this Blog Post. The next race I plan to run is on June 15th. The Leadville Trail Marathon. I have done the half marathon in Leadville in the past but not the full. Should be fun?! Right?! Lol. So the training continues for working my way up to the bigger races in July and September.

Take care my friends and I hope to see you out there whether it be hiking, running, biking, or skiing. Adios amigos!!