quasify

As this posts I should be roughly 37,000 feet above midway between where I am and where my puppy is patiently waiting for me.

I was walking around Denver yesterday when I randomly came across the late registration area for the Rocky Mountain Half Marathon. Since my flight wasn’t until this afternoon and I had 13 on the schedule anyway, I went ahead and signed up to run it. The half is really my preferred racing distance – long enough to make you feel like you’ve done something significant, short enough to no leave you a total mess.

The course does some loops around downtown Denver, then runs along and over the river, then up and around Mile High Stadium. The turning point (and peak altitude at ~5400 ft) is a large loop around Sloans Lake (roughly miles 8-10) where you’ve got this broad panoramic view of the (snow-capped!) mountains above the water, then round the far west side a beautiful skyline of the city reflecting on the surface. From there it’s almost anti-climatic, downhill most of the rest of the way home. I’m very pleased the timing on this worked out – the training for San Francisco has been so solitary for the most part that being around a community of runners at a race like this was very energizing. My time wasn’t particularly fast, just under two hours, but I’m really more than OK with that. I’m just pleased to be both injury and high altitude cerebral edema free right now.

The conference I’m at screwed with my schedule a little bit so I’m finishing the week a few miles short. Hopefully since 26 of the miles this week were at altitude that’ll make up for it. If you’re interested in supporting my fundraiser for the San Francisco Marathon (just 6 short weeks from now!) you can hit that up here.

Oh, BTW. The main sponsor of the race today was MapMyRun, which I take has a similar product to Trail Guru (which I thought was fantastic back when we did our Jingle Blast). I’ll investigate a bit more if & when I have an iPhone handy.