Labor Day Fun!

On Labor Day, we had the great treat of watching a bunch of folks compete in the American Discovery Trail Marathon. Among them were some great people from Tulsa, OK, who were competing in their second marathon in two days - OUCH! We met up with Ken and Dana earlier in the week and they brought more of their friends back with them from Albuquerque for Day Two of the torture fest. Ken has an awesome blog where you can find out all you ever wanted to know (and maybe MORE) about trail running in the Tulsa area and the TATUR's group. We met up with Ken at mile 9.5 and hopped on the trail to give him a little company for a while.

Ken - all smiles on the US Air Force Academy...

... heading south with Falcon Stadium and Pikes Peak in view

Ladies in Pink - Kathleen offers words of encouragement on the climb up to the Woodmen ramp with Ms. Lisa, another TATUR doing the double

The course wound its way through Colorado Springs to the finish in America the Beautiful Park. Nice view of the Peak looking across Colorado Ave on the way into the park.
Runners pass the Julie Penrose Fountain as they make their way to the finish. It was an awesome day except that it got much hotter than expected - not what you want on day two of a double marathon weekend.

Ken and Lisa bringing it home to the finish - Congratulations!

A well deserved break (in the SHADE) for Ken and his friend Ed

Congratulations to Ken, Brian, Kathy, Jason, Lisa, and Ed for finishing the marathon and Sandra for finishing the half marathon! We really enjoyed our day hanging out with these great people. If you are in the Tulsa area, you probably ought to hook up with the local trail runners and have a blast while you are there.
We had a little surprise, too. Ken and Dana arranged to have Brian and Kathy tote along a couple of TATUR shirts for us - so I guess we are now adopted TATUR's! Great Weekend - hope everyone had Happy Trails under foot!

Two Gimps and a Trail Run . . .

. . . but hopefully the "Gimp" part is on the mend! Kathleen's chiropractor has pretty much narrowed the gimpy knee and hip to a leg length discrepancy and is on the way to having it fixed up. While he's at it, he is going to adjust my (Steve) tibia and fibula a couple times to help with the sprain recovery - good. However, I am on mandatory brace for a while - oh well, I'll live with that if it means I can run!!!
We hit the trail at Cheyenne Mountain State Park today to check out some of the routing for the Xterra Half Marathon that Kathleen is going to run in October. A lot of the route is reverse of the way we usually run it and turns two of the extended descents into extended climbs - just gotta train harder, right?!?! She is really concentrating on the rock drop on Cougar's Shadow here.

Steve on a buttery smooth section of Blackmer.

The clouds rolled in EARLY today along with a lot of haze from the CA fires. We had some "nice" lightning over the mountain "encouraging" us to speed up toward the very end of the run!

Kathleen cruises the rock garden on Zook Loop.

Happy to be finished and not hurting - both! Sweet! I finished with 8 miles and Kathleen did an extra loop on the Medicine Wheel (think uphill, all boulders!) and finished on Zook for 9.5 miles. We kept it shorter today while test driving Dr. Dale's handy work. We had a great time but certainly were not through with running thoughts for the day. By the way, we "stimulated" the economy running style - new Brooks Cascadia 4 for both. Were suckers for shoes, what can we say???!!!


We headed from the run over to the expo for the American Discovery Trail Marathon - we were on a mission to pick up packets and bibs for a fine group of TATUR's coming in tonight to run the race from Tulsa, OK. Of course, they are coming in via Albuquerque because they ran the New Mexico Marathon earlier today - so they are doubling up for their holiday festivities. Since it is right in our back yard, we'll slip onto the trail to run a bit with Ken and possibly a couple of his friends and then meet up with Dana at the finish area to cheer them home! Because of a certain "fascination" Ken developed for the Incline (see end of Winter Park post) while visiting earlier this week - rumor has it that any fuel left in the tank may be expended on a little foray out to Colorado's Stairmaster - OUCH!!! Say tuned . . .

Zombie in the Garden

We had the great pleasure of meeting up with blogger friends Ken and Dana from Tulsa Oklahoma on Thursday night for a little dirt at the Garden of the Gods. Ken, aka TZ, and I took a nice little trail run while Dana and Kathleen took a nice hike. Dana is unfortunately dealing with some plantar fasciitis gremlins and Kathleen has a pesky knee alignment issue, so they were not wanting a run this evening. Here we all are at the visitor center - my trusty Nikon let me down on this pic, so I hope Ken's turns out better!

Dusk at the Garden - beauty!

Trail Zombie in the Garden!

Steve "stretching" daylight.

We had a blast and followed up the run with some great Mexican food and a lot of chatting. It was great to meet some awesome new friends and we'll be seeing them again Monday. Ken is running a double marathon weekend - Albequerque Sunday, Colorado Springs Monday - WOW! Send out some good thoughts his way this weekend and we'll be sure to put up some pics of him at the marathon from Monday! Happy Trails!