Happy 4th of July - God Bless America!

America the Beautiful
Written by: Katharine Lee Bates

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America!

God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet

Whose stern impassion'd stress
A thorough fare for freedom beat

Across the wilderness.

America! America!

God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,

Thy liberty in law.

O beautiful for heroes prov'd

In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,

And mercy more than life.

America! America!

May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,

And ev'ry gain divine.

O beautiful for patriot dream

That sees beyond the years
Thine alabster cities gleam

Undimmed by human tears.

America! America!

God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea.

Trail Running on the 4th of July!

We headed out for a short run today at Garden of the Gods. We started a little later than expected and, with the heat coming up early, we knew it would not be a long outing. That is OK since we do have an event to participate in on Sunday morning. It was great to be out on the 4th of July, especially with Pikes Peak - America's Mountain - as the backdrop for our run. For those who don't know, America the Beautiful was penned by Katherine Lee Bates while on a trip west to teach at Colorado College. The poem began to form in her mind while atop Pikes Peak and she finished composing it in her hotel room upon returning. We see it every day and don't ever want to take for granted the majesty of Creation before our eyes!
Back to the heat issue. We have always ridden our bikes in the heat and have learned to manage pretty well. However, we have not done a lot of summer running until this year, so the learning curve is on for running in the heat. The second difficulty is that we had such an extended cold spring that we went from running in long sleeves to figuring how little we can wear - virtually overnight. Part of the "learning" will be to start earlier in the day. 90 degrees at 6000'+ altitude definitely takes a toll. With the speed of biking, especially road biking, there is always the opportunity to have a little built-in wind chill. At our current running pace, wind chill is non-existent!!! :-)
Regardless of heat, it was another spectacular day for hitting the trails. We saw so many people out enjoying the day on our way to the park and while we were there - bicycling, running, hiking, horseback riding, rock climbing - we live in a very recreation oriented community for sure.
We finished our run and headed home for a little ice-bath session to get the legs in recovery mode. It also helps to cool off the engine room on a hot summer day. The run was great and as always - good times!

It is that time of year again - while most sports fanatics are in the doldrums of summer, we will be keeping an eye on the Tour De France starting tomorrow. We're a little disappointed that #1 and #3 from last year's Tour are not there but it should still be interesting.

Previewing the Summer Roundup course...again

Being the nervous, new-to-racing types that we are, we felt the need to go check out the Summer Roundup Trail Race course again today. It is a well known "fact" that race directors are a rare breed, known for their sadistic ability to underestimate the scope and difficulty of their courses (i.e. Course description - 1000 feet of climbing - Reality of the altimeter and GPS - 1530 feet of climbing - only a 50% difference). Not that we doubt the validity of this for the Triple Crown of Racing folks - these are the people who put on the Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon, but we just had to make sure it was going to really hurt and leave us spent - yes and yes!!! For a 7.5 mile course, this has a bit of a bite to it, especially for newbies like us!
However, we are still going to sign up for the race, or in our case, "event" ... we think! We have low expectations for a top 50% finish! ;-)

The climb at the beginning of the race is actually more deceiving. There is a lot of winding through the scrub oak and there are not long stretches of uphill spread out before you to make you cringe. The hardest part of the start is that the climbing begins in earnest no more that 200 yards into the race. We have to figure out a way to properly warm up for that. There is a "gentler" section of climb from about 1.2 miles to 2.1 miles that will sort out some order for those who don't blow up by starting too hard. The tricky part will be avoiding those whose flames are flickering on the single track descent to the road. The sinister climb comes next - High Drive - a steep dirt road that allows only one-way traffic. This climb stretches out before you and provides those who dare to look up an endless view of the pain that lies ahead. The ascent to the turn-around point is close to 600' in a little over a mile, so hold on and try really hard to find a rhythm. The downhill is pretty good although there is a definite need to control the speed on High Drive.

There are also a couple of short, punchy climbs on the way to the finish that require a little reserve in the tank. One of them, which is .5 mile from the finish, starts at 19% grade according to the GPS - ouch!!! Should be fun at least for a test to see where we are with our fitness and skills. We cooled down in the large grassy field by the parking lot with some barefoot walking and stretches. The cool grass felt relaxing to the feet after a good run. It was a great day on the trails (as always) and good times for the memory bank!!!