2010 update

3/4/2010- I climbed Mt. Olympus before work this morning. The weather was perfect when we started and I didn’t put my jacket on at all until I reached the summit. The trail had quite a lot of snow/ice on it after the first stream crossing, and it really slowed me down. The last ¼ of a mile was a little sketchy because of the icy boulders, but nothing too serious. We just had to take care and take a few places kind of slow. Once on top it started to snow, so I put on my fleece jacket.

When we got back down to the saddle it cleared up, and it was warm the rest of the way down. I did slip and fall twice on the way down, and the last one was pretty bad. I had just taken off my gloves and pulled up my sleeves and I got some serious road rash on my arm, bruised my shoulder and took off all of the skin on my pinky knuckle. It was the only negative of the day though. I think that was my 6th time on top in the winter, and my 6th mountain in 2010.

3/6/2010- Had a really fun run this morning with Craig Lloyd and Matt Ricks. We started in City Creek canyon. Matt was running 33 miles and came from his home in Bountiful, so he had already done 8 when he met us at the Capitol building. The wind was really strong and it was cold when we started at 6:00 am, but after about 15 minutes I warmed up. Once we were on the BST trail it got steep really quick. The trail conditions were horrible with snow, ice and frozen slush. It was really tough on the legs.

Matt and Craig were faster than I was, and I spent the first hour and a half trying to catch them. We went up and over several small hills, and the trail was really steep at times, but it finally mellowed out about when we got to the Avenues Twin peaks. I was so tempted to bail on the run and climb up to the top because we were so close, but I kept going. At 8:00 I knew I had to turn around because of the time. I was almost to the base of Mount Van Cott above the U. I couldn’t see Matt or Craig, and I was hoping they weren’t waiting for me somewhere.

After about 20 minutes of running back Craig caught up to me and we ran together for a while before he took off ahead. I stopped with a few miles to go to take a few gels, and Matt caught up to me. We ran the rest of the way together, and he was really fast on the downhills, and it was tough keeping up with him, but I did. We finally got back to the car about 9:15. I had brought some food and Gatorade for Matt, so he took a nice break and refueled before doing the final 8 miles back home. I finished with 13 miles for the day. That was a tough 13, but a lot of fun, and it gave me 30 miles for the week.