For the first time since moving to the Springs - and beginning my trail running education in ernest - I think I might actually be making progress.  On Thursday I put in 10 miles, cross-trained yesterday, and then did (almost) 7 this morning bringing the week's mileage to somewhere around the 40 mile mark.  That's low for me, but these have been hard won, high-quality miles.  None of those flat-as-a-pancake-and-boring-as-heck-road-miles.  The hills may not be the highlight of my run, but they no longer make me hate myself, the sport, and anything else that crosses my mind while I'm climbing said hill.  I'm confident now that I'll make it to the top in one piece and be able to keep going.  

It's these little lessons and realizations that are giving me a shred of confidence that come August I may actually live to tell the tale of the Pike's Peak Ascent.  I think this is a tricky thing about many runners - we're in awesome shape, we know our bodies well, we thrive on hard work, we can ignore pain until the end of a run, all pretty cool attributes, eh? - we're also a bunch of over-thinkers.  Trusting myself to be capable in the sport is perhaps the biggest challenge I face as a runner, so any glimpse of "I think I can" goes a long way.  On that note, it's bedtime for me, so I can get refreshed and train another day.