Desert Solitude

The view of a ridge I run almost daily...it's awesome!

Once again I find myself way behind in updating my blog. I could go on and on about all of the reasons why I haven't, but I'll skip that for now. The day after the Pocatello 50 my family and I loaded into our truck and made the ling drive to Cimarron, New Mexico. We took the longer, more scenic route though Silverton, Colorado. It is always a ton of fun to camp with the family, and I really love the freedom of a nomadic lifestyle. After two days of travel we arrived in Cimarron and settled in.

It has been awesome here at Philmont so far. It has been very warm (hot) and dry, which has resulted in some fantastic training. I am learning to love the Northern New Mexico landscape, the cactus, desert peaks, and the heat. The move here brought a great change of pace for me and my family. I eat at least two meals a day with my family, have more time to train and actually get to be a part of my little girls day while they are awake.

A few weeks ago I had planned on pacing my good friend Ty Draney at the Bighorn 100 , but do to some unfortunate events with his house and excessive groundwater we couldn't get away for the race. Since I was en-route to the race when I found out I diverted to Colorado Springs and ran Pikes Peak instead. I had a great run, enjoyed spectating some if the chaos on the incline early in the morning, and truly savored the solitude of running on the upper mountain essentially alone.



This is a picture I found in the Internet taken from the bottom of "the incline"



Another web pic showing the route up Pike's via the Barr Trail

Next week I am heading to St George for a few days to work on a project at UltraSpire HQ, then off to Silverton to pace Matt Hart at the Hardrock 100. Really looking forward to the fun that will be had at those two events and getting to hang out with some superstars of UltraRunning. Now I'm off to run, you should do the same!

Finally the title to this blog is homage to Edward Abbey's masterpiece The Monkey Wrench Gang, which I just finished reading. The book has really got me thinking about environmental responsibility and what more I should be doing to protect the wild places that I love. I don't plan on doing any true monkey wrenching any time soon, but have made some personal goals and taken steps to be a stronger and better advocate for the wild places that are so close to my heart.


The original artwork...buy here- http://www.abbeyweb.net/books/ea/monkey_wrench.html

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad