My new favorite Crag!

It is 20 minutes to drive to the cliff and 25 to hike in at a good clip.  At 200 feet tall it is awesome.  Some of the climbs can be done in one single push with a 60m rope and 17 or more draws and the face climbing and intricacy of it all is also really good. And the best part of it is that it is all close to home.  Crag 82 is quickly becoming my favorite home cliff.  

On sunday my friend Zach and I went out and did this route called block party.  It is a nice 5.10a route that has some cool climbing and it is a nice couple hour jaunt to do it from home.  It is about 2.5 hours with the hiking from car to car if you are pushing it.

My first race ever!

A week ago I ran my first race ever.  I have been actively training since November. It was the 6.4 mile relay section of the Burlington marathon.  At work we have had about 9 people running off and on and I have had good lunch time training partners.  Someone had the idea of doing a relay team for the marathon and so three of us entered the lottery for this race and we got two teams accepted.  It was good to have someone at work to run with during lunch breaks for the last couple of months but I did find that I was a little more hardcore about it like going in the rain and snow and cold. 

On race day during leg one Steph and I stood by to watch the marathon start and Steph immediately commented as the race leaders were running by "It is only mile one and they already look like they are in pain".  This reminded me to smile and have fun during the race.  When it was my turn to run the third leg our team was running along with the ten minute mile section so since I was running faster I got to pass lots of people.  I have decided that there was no better way to start learning how to race.  I was happy and running fast and I ended up running faster then I had thought I was.  The leg I had included one hill at the end which I sprinted up and was nice.  I ended up running 6.4 miles in under 47 minutes.