In keeping with my tapering, I'm shortening the length of my bl

As part of my rigorous (some might say rigor mortis) training regimen, I am now tapering in order to rest my feeble body and store up whatever energy I might be able to save. The total training regiment also calls for tapering the blog so my blog posts will be getting shorter and shor....

Looking forward to teammate Mary Baldwin sharing her purple and gold nail polish with the rest of the team before the big event on Saturday. As far as i can tell, my two other male teammates are also in touch with their feminine side so we should have a complete, team effort, all 7 of us (The Magnificent Seven) pointing the way to the top with glittering digits. Purple & Gold - For Honor and Glory!

Since my good friend Tom had expressed an interest in getting some elevation at least one more time before he did the Ascent, I shot him an e-mail asking if he wanted to go to the summit and do an A Frame and back. He responded with a phone call. “Better idea,” sez he. “Let’s go do the Democrat group and we can spend more time above 13,800." Splendid. Capital idea. As Bill Murray said in Ghostbusters, “I’m excited about this plan, I’m glad to be a part of it.”…

I’ve always had lousy posture, even standing still. Jogging up hills I find myself really leaning into the hill, bent at the hips. Not good. So I work on this constantly.

I work on keeping my head up. It only makes sense to keep your airway as open as possible right?   I also try to throw my shoulders back, push them back, whatever it takes. I’m not a physiologist but it only makes sense that you give your lungs as much room to work efficiently as…

I started hearing it a few weeks ago. An incessant, gradual, then rapidly accelerating ticking. Worse than Captain Hook’s croc tracking him. That nagging, nauseating feeling that time was slipping away. Like many things in life you can’t expect to put off training for a long run until the last few ticks of the clock and expect to get the job done. So July 22 I drove to the summit of Pikes with teammate Shelley Hitz. We jogged down to the A Frame at treeline and back up, a six…

So on Saturday, 7/19 I ran up the Barr Trail for the first time in a long while...just a couple of miles due to time restrictions but enough to inform me that I am woefully under-prepared for the Ascent. Let me just say that I'm glad they keep a light on all night at the visitors' center so I'll be able to find my way to the finish. I was thinking of incorporating some of teammate Sean O'Day's suggested Lactate Threshold training into my regimen but I think I'm lactate intolerant. Besides I…

At the Church of the Hidden Root. There is no greater soul-cleansing on a Sunday morning than an 8.5 mile run. Did repeats on the service road (pictured here) at Spruce Mountain. Can’t claim to know exactly how the clinometer app on my phone works but I measured this road at a grade of about 23% at one of its steepest parts. I do know that it’s a half mile long. With the repeats it was a nice, 2-hour workout. I ran comfortably in the second leg of the Triple Crown, the Summer Roundup…

The highlight of the second leg of the Triple Crown of Running was passing teammate Sean O’Day. This was made possible by virtue of the new course for 2014 which involved an outer and Inner loop. I passed Sean at the merge point of the two loops as he was finishing up the inner or second loop, probably a good 25 minutes ahead of me. It didn’t take him but a few seconds to pass ME but nevertheless I reveled in my fleeting glory. It’s not every day that a plodder such as I gets to enjoy…

This year’s attempt to complete the Triple Crown and the Ascent seems snakebitten. Intermittently I’ve lost about two weeks of training due to physical ailments. Now I’m not looking for sympathy because I know there is none to be found, at least not with the crowd I hang with. One of the real joys (not) of aging is the innumerable, inexplicable aches and pains that pop up as in “What did I do to deserve THIS?!” It’s one thing to twist an ankle on a trail and immediately know what’s…

I knew it was going to be hot Sunday morning especially since I allowed myself to sleep in and knowing I was going to tack on the lollipop loop at Spruce Mountain for a planned outing of six miles. So I thought, this would be a good time to bring out the singlet for comfort, style and to promote the great Triple Crown of Running. Well, I had no idea the experience that…

One thing the June 8, 10-mile run in the Garden of the Gods proved to me is that I have a lot of work to do before the Ascent. The Ascent is 3.2 miles farther. And there are a few more hills involved. Looming like those hills is the second leg of the Triple Crown, the 12K (7.8 miles) Summer Roundup at Bear Creek Park. While preparing for the Roundup two years ago I devised a route that proved to be a pretty good training run for this particular event. I only did it once but it helped.…

So I made it through the Garden of the Gods 10-miler with virtually no damage to the old machine. The distance doesn’t bother me, the hills don’t bother me. It’s the pavement. About 3 weeks before this run I came down with some painful achilles tendinitis (self-diagnosis) after running 7 miles of this course so I assiduously stayed away from it until the day of the run. It is a beautiful run to be sure but the surface is brutal for a bod with as many miles on it as…

Unlike my previous Triple Crown adventure (2012) I've only taken one practice run in the Garden of the Gods this time around. Call it self-preservation. I know the course well enough and my knees won out over familiarizing myself with a course I already know, choosing softer trails instead. Still, I wanted to get in at least one 10-mile run before the Garden event June 8. So a little over a week ago I went to my favorite trail and did two trips around Spruce Mountain for a little over 10…

So another PPSTCR alum, Don Solberg, my teammate in 2012, told me I had to blog about my personal best in this year’s Bolder Boulder. Actually it was a personal first.

After running the BB in 2012 and having passed up the offer of free beer along the route (for those who have never run in this event, you may also find pancakes and popsicles offered along the way by generous residents in the many neighborhoods you pass through), I…

Oh, did I say I was running hills in training? heh, heh. Oh, no. No, no, no. Not in the slightest. Wherever did you get that idea?

When I was training for my first Ascent (2012), I lost count of how many people told me, “Work on your speed walking, because you’re not going to run the Ascent.”

Words of wisdom to be sure. For one thing, unless you’re one of the real fast dogs up front, when you get to the spur trail at the…

Since the crowning achievement of the Triple Crown is climbing a mountain, it is only fitting and proper to include hills in one's training is it not? So let me introduce you to one of my favorite little places of pain, a little something I call "LRB." It's located in Fox Run Regional Park and comes about 2.5 miles into a 3 mile loop (in the direction I run it). Attaching a video and some pictures (in photos) for your consideration.…

Prior to 2012 I had never run more than 7 miles so the first leg of the Triple Crown, the Garden of the Gods 10-miler would be my longest run ever. Fortunately my good friend and regular jogging partner, a Triple Crown winner in his age group, trained me very well. Our first time out we did about 7 miles of the 10-mile course. The next time we did another 7-miles that included the portion of the course we had not run the first time. By the third time I was ready for the entire 10-mile…

Well, here we go again, a third stab at that great sentinel above Colorado Springs. I mentioned to someone that I was part of a group attempting the Ascent again and this person, a very nice person mind you, never says a bad word about anyone, said "Yeah, I know" and then I distinctly heard them mutter, under their breath "Crazy fools."

Yup, crazy alright, seeing how fast one can haul their butt up a mountain and yet, somehow, in some peculiar way, it just gets in your blood and you…

Wow! There’s a word that’s almost as overused as awesome. However it succinctly sums up all of my feelings in one, tidy, three-letter word. The Ascent was the exclamation point on one of the best experiences I’ve ever had, i.e. participating in all three Triple Crown runs. I can heartily recommend these three runs to anyone who is seeking a…