Well it's all most time for the Garden of the Gods 10 miler.  Hope everyones training is coming along well.  It's been a busy couple of weeks but I have been trying to get some more flat mileage into my training.  I actually ran the GOG route for the first time last week with a friend and coworker.  His name is Bill Bennett and he is running his first Triple Crown this year, this will also be his first Ascent.  He grew up in Colorado and has never been ran any of these races.  His training has been going great and I think he will do well, its been fun running with Bill and seeing his progress and enthusiasm for the road ahead.  I am looking forward to getting him on the mountain and start some high elevation training.  I keep telling him that once he finishes the Ascent he will never look at the mountain the same again.  He doesn't know it yet, but he is gonna do the marathon next year. 

                                                                                    Bill in the Garden

     This doesn't have much to do about running but had to throw this in, Bill and I went for a run in the Garden and then afterward we went for a haircut on GOG road.  Now this isn't usually worth mentioning but the place we went....served BEER!!  We were in heaven, Trinity brew served in a frosty cold mug.  Next time I go,  I may need to bring a designated driver.   I may go broke getting haircuts!  Had to get a picture of this....

     Last weekend I had to go back to Oklahoma for a few days to see my oldest daughter McKenzie  graduate from high school.  It was awesome to see her get her diploma, but it does make me feel old.  I am soo proud of her, she did great in school and was All State in 3 sports.  She is going to University of Central Oklahoma to play basketball. I can honestly say that she is my hero!   I now have my twin daughters who are 13 and following in their sister's footsteps.  While I was in Oklahoma I had to find a race so I could get my star for the Incline Club.  All my family was their so we all ran in the Sooner State Games, it was half marathon,10 and 5k.  I ran the half and the rest of them did the 5 or 10k.  It was nice to run at 800' elevation but it was very windy.

                                                                           My three babies!

     Since I have been back I have been trying to run more mileage and doing some more speed work.  Probably gonna be too little, too late for the Garden but hopefully it will pay off for the other two races.  I did get a 19 miler with my running partner Tom Dinwoodie on the Sante Fe trail last Saturday.  He is also training for thePikes Peak Marathon but is also getting ready to do his first ultra, Run Rabbit Run 50 in September.  I enjoyed running this but I think it wrecked me for the Incline Club run on Sunday.  The other night I must have been out of my mind but I actually put myself on the waiting list for the Run Rabbit Run 50, hopefully 39 people won't pull from that race before September.

                                                                     Tom and I finishing 19                                                                           

     Thursday was the Incline Club speed work on the Barr Trail, we do 1 minute hard and 1 minute off for 30 minutes starting at Hydro street.  These workouts are tough but I believe they really develop your speed for Pikes races.  After we do these we usually jog back down the trail and do hill repeats either on Hydro, Intemann Trail or any other steep hill around Manitou.  The last couple of weeks there has been a group of guys (Michael Everson, Eddie Baxter, Shawn Erchinger ,Dan Cockrell and a few others) doing their hill repeats on the Incline after the intervals.  We all are usually pretty close to the Incline bailout so we start from there.  They go 1 minute hard and 1 minute rest, and repeat 5 times.  These increase by 1 every month, so thank god there was 31 days in May because 6 would have killed me.  I got a couple of videos of Mike Everson and Mark Bibb doing  these, you can hear how heavy I was breathing and I was on my rest period.  These are killers!!

                                                Mike and Mark hitting it hard!

     I got to meet the rest of thePikesPeakSports.us Triple Crown Running Team last week.  We all got together in the Garden then went for some pizza and BEER!!  They are all a bunch of great people and it was fun getting to meet all of them.  Ron llgin joined us also and told us all of the great events coming up for the Triple Crown of Running.  Well get out there and train hard, if anyone is interested in going up to the Peak this weekend, a bunch of us are meeting at Memorial Park this Sunday at 7:00am.  We are planning a Elk Park to Summit and back, but some others are just gonna summit and ride down.  So whatever you want to do I am sure there will be a car somewhere to give you a ride.  Hope to see you there!

                                             Photo by Tim Bergsten of PikesPeakSports.us