On Saturday i did my long run for the week. I normally do it early Tuesday but wanted to do a brick session on saturday which means all 3 run-bike-paddle in any order back to back to back.

Also i wanted to run on hills and make it as real to race conditions as possible. So off to Sprewell Bluff State Park i went. Started with a run that was scheduled for 3hrs 20mins. Here’s where it turned in into more than a long run. During my run i encountered not 1 but 4 armadillo’s. Generally a nocturnal creature to see 4 of these armoured animals on 4 legs during the day was weird. Then to top that off i ran alongside the river for a while taking a bush whacking route (remember trying to mimic race conditions). Then to my surprise i almost stepped on a snack as i ran through the scrub and long grass. And not just any snake a Copperhead (poisonous) the snake was trying to get away from me by slithering towards ME!!!

As i jumped i lifted my right leg, just in time to notice that the snake was striking right in the place where my lower right leg would have been a spilt second before. I snaked between my legs and headed for the river.

WOW. This really freaked me out. Re-gathered my composure and carried on running. I’m not too afraid of snakes in fact they fascinate me (we don’t have snakes in NZ) and i think it was more the surprise that it was a snake than that snake was a Copperhead.

However i will say this, for the next few minutes i played out the scenario in my head of ‘what would i do if that little buggar got me… turn on my phone (wait, i don’t have it with me) ok quickly swim back across the river, turn on my phone call for help and wait for EMT…YIKES”

I did go on to complete my run and brick session, then to drive home and EAT!!!! Yummy

Quite an adventure and more than a long run

Went running this morning for the 1st time in a long time (besides racing in Canada this summer) with it being COLD. I am currently in Pennsylvania with my job, about 1hr north of Pittsburg at one of our camp & conference centers.

Ran in the rain and cold wind for a few hours. The temperature was in the 40’s WoW it was quite a shock to the system. But it was a nice change from the hot humid still 90degree days of Hotlanta

Arrived Wednesday afternoon fly back to Ga tomorrow afternoon- quick trip.

Looking forward to cooler running weather

Today my i-phone died.

For reasons unbeknown to me. It turned on fine this morning, got a text from a friend, beeped to tell me about new email. Read the text and went to the office. Got to the office & went to look at something on my phone and BAM it wouldn’t turn on. No big deal just push this button instead… No nothing
What
Huh
How come
Tried charging it when it had already been charging all night
Nothing
Here’s where it gets interesting and the real reason for this post
I call Verizon & finally get a real person, explain what has happened and here’s the response I get

“sir, can I verify your mailing address, are just going to send you a new one!”
“What a new one, this one isn’t broken, it’s just… (not sure what to say at this point) it’s just…”
I guess my point is this. Without any big explanation of what happened  (from my perspective) and any real in depth questions from the very kind young woman on the other end, all I get is “we will just send you a new one” really that’s it . not try this or do that or push this combination of buttons just we will send you a new one

Is this what our world has come to. Forget trying to repair, we will just send you a new one.
I work with young adults a lot and I shouldn’t be surprised because this is a phrase I hear often.  “we can just get a new one”

I immediately think of Robins grandfather who is 89 and what he would say to hearing this. This is a man who grew up with amongst other things knowing that if it was broken then let’s try and fix it or get it to someone who can

Maybe I’m getting old and maybe I need to get a new … Me

It took a while but below they lie. A selection of our recent holiday/vacation to Colorado. We were there for a week. And featured about as many different forms of sleeping surfaces as you could imagine.

1st night spilt between a plane that left ATL late & then a nice bed at Highlands Conference Center near Estes Park, Co. 3 nights on the hard ground of Rocky Mountain National Park, 1 night in a bed in the ‘nurses cabin’ back at Highlands (no room in lodge) thats cool, i can sleep virtually anywhere. Then last night at swanky Sheraton Devner. (Got a killer deal the day before online)

At our final destination on Day 1. Sandbeach lake. Short hike (4hrs) up from the trailhead. With super heavy packs. Robin picked up some blisters. But worth it for the view. We camped here for 2 nights. Looking west, had great view of Mt Meeker, Longs Peak & stunning sunsets.

Typical on the trail shot. Hard to see, but our packs were huge & heavy. Robin did great and certainly carried her share of the load. Was strange for me to be moving in this type of terrain with heavy boots & gear on.

Right before we got on the trail the rangers were warning us about A LOT of bear activity and that we had to be really careful. This included having all food stored in ‘bear cans’, which we did, and cooking well away from tent. Then at night not having anything scented in the tent. even toothpaste. This all made for some anxious moments the first night, and over active hearing & imagination. But we were fine the whole week. This after hearing horror stories about bear interactions from the places we were even camping at. We later concluded that those were idiots that weren’t cautious.

Our view on Tuesday. After an early start which included some great map & compass work (we wanted to do this, really we did) and a little bush whacking we made our way up this valley. Meeker is our of shot to the right and Longs is back behind the high point on the false summit. The weather was getting bad and a little high up we decided to bail because it was only 9am and already storming. It snowed on us too. We got to about 12,000ft here. The next photo shows the contrasting weather we had all week.

This was on the way back down to Sandbeach Lake.

The view from our tent. tough huh? move over HGTV

On Wednesday we packed up and with sadness left our great spot at Sandbeach Lake with the intention on travelling to Thunder Lake. In the next valley over and about 500ft higher than Sanbeach lake (10,500ft). There is no trail from Sandbeach to Thunder Lake. Most of the trails in the Wild Basin Area travel East/West and we needed to go North/South. No problem for 2 adventures like Robin & I. So we went to the southern end of Sandbeach then navigated & bushwhacked down to a trail to then hike up to Thunder. We were off trail for several hours and out here where the features are so large (AKA mountains etc) its relatively easy nagivating. We did encounter a few people once of the trail who gave us some strange looks upon hearing what we had done.  Above is our view at Thunder lake. Again a real tough setting. haha. At all our our camping sites (remember these are remote, not like pull up car camping) we were fortunate to have this sort of site, well worked on by previous people. This was where we cooked and ate several nights. Well sheltered. and even with a few bug coils left over to burn. And after a hard day climbing, a good ‘kitchen’ and good food is important.

i think this photo speaks for itself. Taken at Thunder Lake. Enjoying the outdoors and outdoor pursuits like both of us like to do. While we both canhave separate interactions with it we always come back to photos like this.

Rocky Mountain NP. Is a great place to hike and climb. While we didnt get up Longs Peak like we wanted to. We really had no agenda and everything else that we did more than meet what we needed to gain from this trip.

Planning in easy, permits are easy to get. But it does fill up fast as they limit amounts of people out there, which is good! The park people are totally ok with you planning your own adventure if you can demonstrate your skill level to them. And were cool with us going off trail and navigating our way around.

Already planning our next trip back.

Then to make this post even better. Its raining here. WE NEED IT. Fun to sit in the sunroom and watch and listen to it.

We finally made it down the lake, not after i had to change & adapt to using a modified now single blade paddle after i snapped the afore mentioned one.

When we got to the TA there were a number of teams there waiting for (guess what) their gear bins. One team being Team SOG who’s bin we have dined on for breakfast earlier that day. I pleaded for forgiveness from Julia and she was totally cool with it and said she would have done the same.

By this point all the teams there had missed a time cutoff but entirely due to being without our bins for over 12 while transition to canoeing etc. We were held in the TA by race volunteers as the sough out a race director on the radio (remember we are really remote) to see if we continue of usual route or are re routed which would have meant riding a road to cut out a chunk of time.

The call came back and it was ‘proceed as normal’ to next TA. This meant leaving our bikes in our boats and paddling across the lake directly across from where we were (about 500m) then re assembling our bikes to continue. There were about 7 teams here at this point (anywhere from just arrived, which was us, right through to ‘been here since last night’)

Many people were happy about the proceed as normal call and were told it was purely because they didn’t want us biking on roads for which we weren’t covered under insurance for. WAIT A SECOND, about 2 days ago we climbed up the side of a sketchy waterfall and trekked over 2 mountain passes one of which we should have had more than just sneekers and trekking poles. And now we are worried about traffic on remote Canadian roads…. REALLY.

oh well. i would rather paddle & ride then ride some pavement. We made it across. re assembled our bikes. Bought some food from a family and began a long up hill climb to eventually meet up with the rails to trails system several 1000 feet above us.

It was now early evening/dusk on … what day is it… oh yeah friday and we then ride on the rails to trails mountain bike trail which was really fun. smooth double wide trail, gravel and an easy ride. High above the lake we just paddled on, watching a great sunset over the Canadian Rockies.

We were riding still with WEDALI and eventually made it to the next TA. Where we were warmly greeted but told we had missed the cut off (BIG SURPRISE THERE) and were being re-routed. This consisted of being put in a van with several other teams and transported about 30 mins down a road to enable us to skip part of the next bike section so we could ride this other famous bike section called 7 summits (named as one of the most specactular mtb rides in the world) and to ensure we finished in time the next morning by the 10.00am cut off.

We were told the shuttle would arrive at 3am. it was now midnight…. SWEET. We could get some sleep. Our gear bins were there. WOW -AMAZING. time to pull out the stove, eat some decent food and then get inside our sleeping bags and get some much needed sleep. this was heaven.

‘Hey folks, we have just heard from race directors that the shuttle is on its way, it will be here in 30 mins and the following teams will be on it ….. 5……” oh $hit thats us, are you kidding me. oh well thats Adventure Racing.

So pack up, load up and leave. We get on this trail after the short shuttle ride, and set off on the famous 7 summits trail with amazing views. One small problem…. its the middle of the night, its dark. hmmmm great view. oh well thats adventure racing.

We finally are greeted by dawn, of course as we near the end of the trail and ride down a ski field into a town to the finish line with the Race Director and like 3 people there. No big fan fare etc. But that’s pretty typical of AR and none of us do it for the bells and whistles (at least no one i race with) we finished with WEDALI which was appropriate. We all hugged took photos, they even had a bottle of bubbly for us.

I guess thats the end of my race report. I do have some more thoughts and will post those another time because i’m sure you are really tired of reading all this.

But thanks anyway.

As we left on our bikes it was very easy to see that we were extremely tired. I was falling asleep and I could see Chris was too. So to keep myself awake took on the task of keeping Chris awake and therefore hopefully keeping each other awake. However there were parts of the dirt road we were on that would suddenly have the scenery change as I realized I was asleep. Only to look over at Chris and see that his eyes were closed as all 3 of us biked down the road.

It wasn’t long before we were at the zip line challenge. This meant zipping across a scary river on a zip line BUT with our bikes attached to us. Before we reached here Pete and I decided that we needed to take an hour nap after the zip line. Of course the line didn’t get us all the way across and found ourselves pulling our tired bodies and bikes across this watery canyon.

After we all got across we took that nap in the shade in a quiet little spot on the side of the road. While 60 minutes isn’t nearly enough, it was all we could afford as we knew this next bike section was long and we didn’t want to be poking around another mountain range in the dark. It was also hot and with Chris struggling a little Pete and I took all his extra gear and the climbing began.

After a flat tire, quick change, a water fill up at a creek we continued to climb. Mixing between pushing bikes and riding, it was later afternoon as we continued to steadily climb. Our morale was a low, but just then a truck came down the dirt road and who should jump out but Glen Rodgers, good friend and fellow adventure racer from DART/Nuun who wasn’t doing this race. This was the boost we needed. Glen is a crazy man with lots of energy and his words and encouragement was exactly what we needed. Telling us how far we were from the top and that WEDALI was right ahead of us. For those of you who know Glen would not be surprised to read that he just popped up out of now where. They guy is from Seattle and had come over to just check out the race.

Thanks Glen!!!!

We finally topped out around 8pm, which gave us about 1 hour of daylight left. The bugs were out in full force and we couldn’t wait to get riding downhill to ‘drop the bugs’. Downhill was fun and we screamed down this mountain in no time on the well marked trails. I pretty much wore out my back brakes in the process. We overtook 2 teams, who we found out were unofficial because they had dropped someone, so we were moving up the header board again, despite our shortcomings earlier in the day.

One more flat and then into the TA were we scheduled to change from bikes to canoes but partially dismantling our bikes and putting them in our canoes to paddles 6-8 hours down the lake.

But when we arrived we discovered that our gear bins had not arrived ahead of us. This contained our lifejackets, more food (of which we were almost out of) and other paddling gear. We went ahead and put our bikes in the canoes in anticipation that they were ‘about to arrive’… yeah right!!!! We had heard stories and rumors that other teams had suffered this, but it was never confirmed. Because of the huge logistical under taking along with the remoteness that this race had created it took a long time to transport teams’ bikes & gear. We stayed up hoping it would come, not knowing anything. Our plan was to get some rest but paddle through the night

And so we sat, with about 4 other teams on the side of the lake with all we had from biking. 2 other team arrived later, and we were told by the race volunteers that our gear would be here in the morning. So what do you do…. That’s easy, SLEEP. We put campfires, pulled out our emergency blankets and tried to sleep.

Around dawn (5am) the next day (Friday) we awoke to still no bins. By now 6 teams we waiting, anxious leave and hungry. As we sat around the topic soon moved to eating and there were several team bins there in front of us that were from teams that had left earlier the previous day to do what we were still waiting to do. We realized that they too would be waiting for their bins at the end of the lake as bins would be dropped off, picked up and shuffled down the lake. Soon the idea arose that we … EAT THEIR FOOD!!! Yup it was said. The race staff wasn’t too excited about this but soon we were looking at what team’s bins were there. First bins were the French….’no, not touching theirs.’ Next was Team Sog, a US team of which we knew some of the team members after a short discussion on ethics etc it was decided to go for it. And Julia was a lucky recipient of hungry adventure racers diving into her bin to eat food. We all promised to tell her sorry later on and admit what we did. And it’s not like we ate everything and being Friday morning the race would be over in 24hours.

Then of course right after that our bins showed up!!! We were in heaven. Quickly (& by that I mean an hour) got our paddling stuff together and were off. We quickly left the other teams behind and found ourselves with WEDALI again. We made our way down the lake, not going slow either; we wanted to finish the race. The only hiccup along the way being me breaking a wing paddle.

More & hopefully the final report soon.

Robin & I are currently sitting in a coffee shop in downtown Estes Park. We are out of the mountains safe and sound. We had a great time and lots of highlights to share

Tomorrow we will travel to denver to chill before flying home on sunday. We didn’t achieve our goal of summiting Longs Peak (14,2?? Feet) we had an early start on Tuesday after hiking in to Sandbeach Lake on Monday. We made it to about 12,000ft before getting chased off the side of the mountain by a fast moving storm that produced snow and hail. Yes it’s summer in the Colorado mtns and anything can happen. We both feel good about our decision to bail in some very fast changing and already challenging conditions at best.

We still had the rest of the week to enjoy and this included doing some off trail hiking/bush whacking with a map and compass to guide the way

We did lots of this on Tuesday morning, getting to the base of Longs then most of the day Wednesday. Then again on Thursday. It was great to use skills that most people don’t even know the first thing about now days. And to be confident to know where we were all the time. Unconventional, but hey it’s Paul & Robin right

We saw lots of cool wildlife and were warned consistently about bears and to watch for them as they were becoming aggressive. Therefore take appropriate plans to avoid encounters.

All in all we had a great time, will share photos when we get back

That was not a fun experience last night. Our flight didn’t leave ATL until midnight. Besides the other flight coming in making us later the pilot for our flight to Denver was somewhere still in the air delayed because of bad weather himself

They finally found a pilot and we left. Landed got baggage, rental car, drove all the way here, finally went to sleep (in a bed) @ 3pm local time, 5 on the east coast. Almost time to get up.

BUT woke up to this

Robin and I are currently sitting at ATL airport waiting for what was already a late night to Denver to begin our vacation
BUT… For what ever reason like storms somewhere else in the US we will be leaving about 1hr late

So do the math (& hence the title we aren’t racing are we)
Now arriving in Denver @ midnight
Get rental car by 1am hopefully
Drive to highlands conf center where we are staying tonight which is 90mins
Now it’s 2.30am
Which will be really 4.30am on the east coast

Robin and I are doing an all nighter
We aren’t racing are we?

Really part 4. wow how time flies. I hope i can get these done. Robin & I leave on Sunday night for Colorado for 7 days, 5 of which will be spent climbing & hiking. oh well there goes some more adventures to share.

Anyway back to RTNX, where was i. Oh yeah Ice Creek lodge. So we left there not too long after BRATS & the French. We should have left with them, because what is about to unfold not only cost us about 2-3 hours but some heated conversations high up on a mountain.

often Race Directors send you purposely in an intentional direction because they want you to go a certain way. That could be because of permits they have/don’t have for land access (not that i think that was an issue out there), they want you to see some cool stuff or in the interest of time there really isn’t any other way to go. For this next section (remember, we are still on foot) i think it was see cool stuff and there really wasn’t any…

This meant trekking over 2 mountain passes. Already been over one, but these 2 were a lot higher and from the map a little more technical. And before i left i promised Robin i would come back alive and wouldn’t do anything stupid!!!! that got your attention didn’t it.

We plotted what we thought was a good route. We plotted the 2nd pass right, just as the Race Director had intended us to go. As for the 1st pass, we totally messed that up and lost all that time. We began by heading up a snow field that was relatively easy, and uneventful. Using only a topo map allows you to see how steep the terrain is and from what we looked at on the top our route choice was good. We got to the ridge line in a little pass about 9000ft i think and Peter, Chris & I scouted around to find ‘the way down’. What we didn’t know or were ever able to know that because of the large snow fall last winter the other side of the ridge (the side with all the snow) was HEAVILY corniced over. Which is a mountaineer term for massive overhang of snow and ice. Like a big frozen wave about to break. They extend out from the side of the mountain and are undercut beneath them. Along with being VERY dangerous to walk on as they could collapse under your weight. I recognized this immediately and being the one with the most mountaineering experience out of the 4 of us voiced my fear and disapproval at descending that way. Even though we did find a rocky way down that avoided the snow this to in my opinion was really dodgy too.

At this point we had a team conference, and for the sake of my team mates and my self i don’t need to share too many details, needless to say it was heated, and i wasnt going ‘down there’. ‘I promised my wife…& that isn’t safe’. Collectively we made the decision to go back to the lodge and ask the lodge owner for some local advice and have a do over. i will say we did all agree to this, it’s not like someone was being difficult. There were a few heated moments high on that ridge line. Remembering that its day ??? (i cannot remember at that point, and we have how much sleep?) Not many words were said on the way down. But it all worked out and we are good and processing things, talking them over and moving on. Oh the human/emotional side of AR, maybe you thought it was all sweat, mud and eating anything you like. Very wrong. AR will not only physically put you through the ringer, but emotionally and lessons in human relations. However these are the same people who you come to know almost better that your self, and they level on which you get is incredible.

So back to the lodge we go, obviously a lot quicker because we can glissade down the snow field. On the way somewhere between not talking to one another and hoping that we can make up time, get some good advice and we even talked about bumping into WEDALI who we knew were behind us. Back at the lodge all our dream came true, we got good advice, and bumped into WEDALI who were about to leave, so we joined forces again and off we went, this time over the next pass.

In the limited time we had spent at the lodge (both times) i had struck up a conversation with the owner Russell. We get to the correct pass (which was so much easier to descend down that the other one) was there with his cool retriever dog whose belly i had rubbed earlier and made me miss Cora our dog who love to have her belly rubbed. He greeted us again and handed me a beer. WOW awesome, i will save that for later. having a beer during a race isn’t always a bad idea. Not just for the end of the race.

We descended that pass with WEDALI traversed around this awesome semi frozen lake and headed to the next pass which was (after our day so far) aptly named the Devil’s range, which peaks named hell and everything related. By now it was getting dark and we were about to go over a pass in the dark with no climbing equipment. At point i would like to say there are several things in this race that a race director wouldn’t get away with in the USA. Either from an equipment or insurance perspective. Somewhat negligent in some ways. All we had were our trekking polls (& they were optional gear) and that’s it, no helmet, ice axe, rope nothing. just what we had, going over several large mountain passes in the dark IN SNEEKERS!!!!! WOW. of course we had head lamps. but that only helps me see what going to hit me or where i am sliding out of control too.

Anyways we made it over this high pass, it was very cold up there, prehaps the coldest night of the race. Down the other side snapped one of my trekking poles. i still had one and that’s better than none.

by now i was starting to get to wicked hallucinations. These included thinking we were all on a camping trip with WEDALI. Then lower down the mountain on the way to the next TA bending over to pick up what i swore was a $20 bill lying on the road. Then placing my trekking poles on the ground and just leaving them there and carrying on down the road. Only to have Michelle pick them up and try to give them back to me with me responding that they weren’t mine but hers. Then claiming that there was a Tibetan restaurant ‘right down there on the left’ with free Tibet flags flying on the outside of the restaurant. hmmmmm gotta love adventure Racing. Then i can’t forget the HUGE Caribou we saw RUNNING towards us. Not far from the TA. This had a excited to see a large animal and completely freaked out as to which way it was going to go.

We were moving quite slow by now and WEDALI pushed on to the TA. We made a wrong turn and went about 1 hour out of our way. arrrggghhhh i hate it when that happens. We got to the TA 2 hrs later. To transition to our bikes. We were planning on sleeping here for a few hours, but felt the need to push on and skip the sleep. So we ate, and got ready to leave on our bikes. WEDALI were still there and they had taken the time to sleep. We still managed to leave the TA before them on our bikes, which was good. BUT!!!! we had skipped precious needed sleep they hadn’t.

I am running out of time and Robin and i leave for Colorado tomorrow. Will try to post one more report before we leave. But no promises. Will have to wait till we get back