Fortnight Ending Jan 15

Mon - 3.5 miles easy. Two university loops.

Tues - 3.5 miles easy. Two university loops.

Weds - 0 miles. London to Denver by way of manic JFK.

Thurs - Noon: 4.5 miles (900') easy. Falls loop. Insanely warm out.
PM - 6 miles easy on the bike paths with the FCTR crowd. Despite the Jan 6 date and dark of night, we had sports bras and bare midriffs aplenty tonight. Two weeks in the UK and I return home to mid-summer in January.

Fri - PM: 2.5 miles (500') easy with Dylan and Yassine on the Bandera course.

Sat - 62 miles (4,500'). Bandera 100k.

Sun - 0 miles

Total: 82 miles (5,900')

Mon - 0 miles

Tues - 0 miles

Weds - 0 miles

Thurs - AM: 10.5 miles (1,500'). HTH5MO&B with Pete, Celeste, Ziggy (who has big doggy goals for 2012), Slush, Mike, and a very late Sarah. Windy and cold. Out in a sore 45 mins, back in an even sorer ~34.5 mins. Downhills were quite painful on the quads. Took things very easy.
PM: 7 miles (1,700'). First Towers session of the year. Good turnout on what was a pretty nice evening for mid January. Track was dangerously icy in places. Up in an easy 38 mins.

Fri - 5 miles (1,100') easy. Falls long.

Sat - 22 miles (1,800') easy. Horsetooth circumnavigation with Sarah, Alex and Pete. Beautiful morning. Still quite sore in the quads, but just glad to be out.

Sun - AM: 3.5 miles (2,500'). Palisade Mtn (8,264') with Mike and Elijah. Been wanting to get on Palisade Mtn, a prominent and jagged Front Range peak, for quite some time. Palisade is essentially on the opposite side of the Big Thompson from Round Mountain and is visible from many vantage points in Fort Collins and Loveland. From the canyon floor, there are multiple drainages and ridges to choose from in getting up. We ascended a few drainage ribs too far to the east, making our morning a little longer than it would otherwise have been, but we were still up and down in a reasonable 2.5 hours. All bushwhacking, probably a little more class III than necessary, and a ton of cactus. Back home for breakfast and then up Horsetooth with friends and family.

Possibly the largest summit-register canister in the Rockies. All pics: Mike H

Mike with Round Mtn. behind

West up the Big Thompson toward RMNP

PM: 4.5 miles (1,500'). Horsetooth summit with Dana, Alistair, Stella C, Brian, Sandis, Stella W, Rob and Madison.

On H'tooth summit with Great Plains to the east behind.

Looking southwest. Pikes is faintly visible 100 miles south.

Halfway up with my zonked-out baby.

Total: 52.5 miles (10,100')

Bit of this, bit of that and a few days off after Bandera. January will be a very relaxed, run-when-I-want kind of month. There is so little snow around right now, I think I'll take the opportunity to explore locally a bit and get up a few of the lesser visited NoCo Front Range peaks. Palisade was a good start today. Also on the list are Alexander, Storm, Christ, Milner, Goat, Spruce, Buckhorn, and Ethel. Other suggestions welcome.

Registrations for the Quad Rock 50 (aka FoCo 50) are going strong. We're about half full right now, with just 40 spots left in the 25 miler. Pete and I are working hard to make sure that we put on a top-notch event, and we couldn't be happier to be teaming up with some really great local companies, including Pearl Izumi which has just signed on as the shoe and apparel sponsor. This means top-quality, gender-cut race T-shirts for all participants, shoes for age group winners and tons of other great giveaways.

In addition to Pearl, we're working with First Endurance as the fuel sponsor. All participants will receive a 5oz EFS gel flask with their entry and we'll be doing jug refills at the aid stations. If you haven't tried EFS before and want to test it out before the race, we've set up a 20% discount for runners. Visit the race website, nose around a bit and you'll find the coupon code. We're also working with Smith Optics (which means more awesome prizes and giveaways) and Colorado Physical Therapy Specialists (which means free massages and PT after your run). Other relationships are in the works, all of which means more cool stuff for you.

Rick just hosted his first annual VerticALE Beer Mile in North Carolina. I hear there might be one occurring on the Incline soon too. It's sweeping the nation, folks.