What happens when you lose your focus and balance for half a second when you are hiking?  You end up sliding down a hill feet first, busting your face open and breaking your shoulder in four places.  What started as a nice hike in December up to a hut outside Leadville with my husband ended up a little different than we had planned.  I lost my balance as I turned around after saying something to Brad and next thing I know I was hauling it down the hill – slam, crash, ouch! Brad slid down the hill and balanced on the tree that caught my leg and kept me from going further down the hill.  Somehow he got me and my pack up from our precarious position and then carried both packs down to the truck.  As the doctor in Leadville was working on me the first thing I said was “crap I forgot to stop my watch” and then it was “this is really going to screw up my training”.  Runners are odd beings.

My doctor here in the Springs decided to keep my shoulder immobile, instead of surgery, for 12 weeks.  That was 12 weeks of no running.  I knew I was signing up for the Triple Crown with the Garden 10 miler on June 10^th as the first race. I needed to keep motivated so I signed up for a 50K on June 2nd that I had planned on doing with Kari and Kelly.   50K training with a broken shoulder is interesting to say the least.  Sharon Davis didn’t let me feel sorry for myself at all.  She didn’t ask, she told me she’d pick me up at 4:30AM to go walking our usual running route.  She was my tough love angel and I really appreciated that.  It was perfect timing on our part because I was broken and she was training for a power lifting competition and wasn’t supposed to be running.  The hardest part of training was walking all of my runs for 3 months.  The 20 mile runs were the worse.  I didn’t want to ask anyone else to endure 20 miles of walking so I did those solo either up Rampart Range Road or High Drive to upper Gold Camp.  All of that solo time came in handy at the 50K.

Completed my second 50K on June 2^nd and then the Garden 10 miler on June 10^th as a Mighty Marmot – woohoo!  My Garden time was a few minutes slower than last year but I’m okay with that. The 2^nd leg of the Triple Crown is the Summer Roundup half marathon at Cheyenne Mountain State Park on July 8^th. One person branded me the braided marmot because I always have braided pigtails – I like that!! (thank you Amber) . Movement is life and I don’t plan on stopping.  One set back doesn’t define anything it just gives you a new normal.  Embrace where you are right now.