Chris Cunningham and I reluctantly went outside on his mom's command to "enjoy the fresh air" that day.  We were twelve.  Lacking any other appealing options, we decided to head out to his driveway and play catch with a football.  A real football, too...not one of those fluorescent, sticky Nerf ones that were only awesome until chunks came out of it.  For no real reason, I intentionally overthrew Chris once.  Not by a foot or two, but by maybe ten or twenty.  Enough to land it straight into…

Victory is so much easier to write about than defeat.  But it's from defeat where we learn to appreciate victory.  I can only hope my last outing to the Weminuche Wilderness teaches me something.  It has nothing to do with Pikes and little to do with Ascent training, but it is a window into what this whole pseudomountaineering thing is all about.

Jagged…

Pikes training is a blast.  Seriously, it's so much more complex and intricate than your standard 16-week canned marathon plan.  There are so many things one can do to prepare, and so many ways to leave oneself wondering if enough has been done!  It doesn't matter if you're an elite, grizzled middle-of-the-pack vet, or newbie just hoping to hit the cutoffs...there's always something more to be…

Although I know there's value in it, there is a part of me that feels kind of silly writing a race report for the Summer Roundup.  Why?  I purposely treated it like any other day - I didn't go to bed early the night before, did no special hydration, didn't dwell on my splits or feel the need to memorize the course in the preceding week.  I didn't taper for it, didn't wear racing flats, didn't do the standard pre-race warmup routine.  I just showed up, ran, and had a great time with my Purple…