Birthday Challenges

I went to visit my friend Isaac in Colorado and we did the fourth flatiron near boulder and the green mountain pinnacle. I was looking for an adventure and this had it.  The route is supposed to be all face and I found us doing a little chimney pitch diversion on pitch eight and I mistakenly had worn my nice pete's greens shirt.  Whoops!  I always have loved those front range areas and really enjoy the climbing and the exposure for such mellow climbing.  We did 8 pitches of 70 meter rope in about 3 hours.  The flatirons are at about 6 to seven thousand feet in elevation so I was super psyched to be doing quick pitches at the altitude and hiking at fast speed with a pack and without being winded.  All that running is paying off. Then I did my audit on monday and took a break to run 3 miles at the five thousand foot height.  I found this really hard for me but also very good to find my limit since hiking was not too hard.

My Friend Isaac just had a baby!  He was psyched to get outside after being stuck with the baby for so long and so little sleep.  I was glad to be his rope gun. The afternoon after I did the flatiron with Isaac we drove to the Mile-Hi Skydiving spot in Longmont Colorado and signed up to jump.  I was surprised at how macho all the instructors were for a sport that is so engineered.  We were on wind hold for about 2 hours waiting as others jumped so we got to see the instructors perform their routine several times.  It was neat.  I will say that it is easier to jump out of a plane than I thought it would be and there are times in climbing where it is harder to take the first step or move than stepping out of a plane. 



So this year for my birthday back in VT I did not have the opportunity to climb 28 pitches of rock like I did last year but I found myself wanting a challenge that satisfied me. I ended up running about 6 miles of trail with one thousand feet of elevation gain and loss on this amazing single track that is easily accessible from our office. It was good to take the hour off from the drone of the cubicles. On the trail I had never been on it so when I ran for almost 40 minutes directly uphill and decided to go over the backside having never been there before it was a little bit of a head game to know if I would be able to keep up with things.  I ended up coming out at a coworkers house just a couple of miles from the office.  It was more than I had thought but it kept the spirit of adventure that I was looking for.   I cannot wait to continue to explore the trails back there.  It is great to have so many trails so accessible for training.  Part of me is wondering if I can get 29 miles in this week of running .  I am finding myself calculating things and deciding that by one week from the 20th I will have run 29 miles.  My Age in miles.