We had an awesome weekend! We traveled down to Pueblo so that Troy and Ron could climb Pikes Peak on Saturday as part of the Pikes Peak Challenge. Troy raised $225 for Brain Injury awareness, and Ron raised $702! Awesome Job! They hiked the whole thing together and it looks like and sounds like they really enjoyed each others company. It’s good for boys to get out and do boy things together and I am jazzed that they shared the 14er experience!

While they were hiking their butts off Michelle, Sam, Annie and I went to Michelle's local Pueblo farm and bought veggies. The kids really enjoyed the pigs, chickens, hay, and especially the kids trampoline. Annie is at a stage where she likes to take my finger and lead me around to places, so we did a lot of that. The afternoon was full of play for the kiddos, and chatting it up for the moms. I spent several hours making an Apple Pie from scratch for dessert that evening. Thank you Marla and Roger for letting me pick all the apples off their trees!

When the boys got home it was great to re-hash the trip with them, and to hear about their experiences, and lessons learned. We had a great dinner, awesome apple pie, some weird custard stuff, watched a movie, and hit the hay at about 11.

I had a 22 mile run to do on Sunday. Michelle graciously agreed to watch Annie, and Troy and I got up at 5am to hit the trail. Troy agreed to ride along side me, so I loaded him up with Heed, Shot Blocks, Goo, Yogurt covered Raisins...you name it. He was like a moving aid station! I even strapped my Fuel Belt onto him. It was pitch dark for several miles. I heard my watch beeping as the miles passed but couldn’t see any of the numbers. Our route was out and back along the Pueblo River Trail and around the Pueblo Reservoir State Park. It started to get light as we were running up the trail next to the dam. As dry and scrubby as it is out there, the cool early morning made it very nice. The trail had a southwestern flair, but without the heat. Wonderful.

At about mile 8 Troy got a flat on his bike. He had a pump, but no spare tube. Eeek. He rode a little further with me while we talked about what to do, and we decided I would take my Fuel Belt onwards, out to mile 11 (my turnaround) and he would walk back towards the car. When I caught back up to him, he would ride the rest of the way with me. With no iPod to listen to I got a little bored after leaving him, so I started running faster to occupy myself. By the turn around I was cruising around 7:45-8:15 pace and feeling really good. My body had adjusted to the weight of the Fuel Belt and I was generally quite content. This continued all the way back. I met back up with Troy at mile 16, still jamming along nicely. I got a little GI distress but was lucky that it happened right as I approached a restroom, so I utilized that. After that I quit all calories and switched to water. I assume that because I met back up with Troy and started taking...hence thinking...that my stomach found it more difficult to process the calories since more blood was headed to my brain. Steve talked to me once about how your body can handle only two of the following three things: digestion, thought, exercise. One of them gets the boot. Switching to water totally worked and I was good for the rest of the run. At about mile 20.5 I was getting ready to be done. Most of the run I chose not to think about how far I had to go, I just kept my thoughts simple, but when you get to 20.5 miles and you know you only have 1.5 left, you can’t NOT think about it...and once you think about it....your ready to be done! So we said lots of positive things that last mile and were really giddy about how far I had run. By mile 22 I was happy to be at the car and to be done, but I also knew that I could have kept going if need be. So..I know I can do a marathon. I have convinced myself of it. I’ve passed the “spit test”. Which is cool because on October 14th...I’m gonna do one! I’m signed up for Denver Marathon.

Another great thing was my pace...right around 8:30 for the entire run. I would like to qualify for the Boston Marathon, and to do that I need to run 8:23 pace, so if Steve will give me his blessing I would like to aim for 8:00-8:15 pace on the marathon. We’ll see!

The rest of the day was great, I got addicted to watching all my fellow bloggers come past the finish line at Ironman Wisconsin. The drive home from Pueblo was uneventful...Annie didn’t throw up...WOOHOO! I was totally glued to the computer the rest of the evening watching the streaming Ironman video all night!

What a great weekend, I feel refreshed and confident! I’m sure all that will change Tuesday at track club...it always has a way of humbling me!