Back in the M-town....

well as always, my time in Colorado flew by all too fast and before I knew it I was back home....however, the rest of the trip was a blast...

Wednesday I borrowed Lauren's cousin's hoss of a mountain bike and Lauren rented a bike and we rode around the paved bike paths that connect the town of Avon to Edwards and Vail...stopped for lunch and a neat place in Avon and then cruised around for another couple of hours before calling it a day....I really wished I had my road bike, as the bike I was on was a 40 pound downhilling machine and wasn't very fun to pedal up the hills....

Thursday Lauren and I rode with her cousin and his buddies to the Fryingpan River, just a short bit outside of Aspen....they all spent the day fishing and lauren and I went hiking on some nearby trails....The elevation gain was not as spectacular as many of other trails we hiked but it was a very cool canyon that had incredibly colorful rock formations....we ended up finishing up our hike about an hour before everyone got back from fishing so we spent the rest of the time laying on our backs checking out the clouds rolling in over surrounding peaks....

Friday was probably my absolute favorite day of the trip...we woke up at 4am and headed to Quandary Peak, a 14, 271 ft. peak just south of the town of Breckenridge...We were one of the only cars at the trail head and we were on the trail rolling shortly after 6 am....the first mile or so of the hike brought us out of tree cover to wide open tundra with insane views of distant mountains....as we continued up the trail began to get steeper and steeper and it also began to get very snow covered....fortunately,, we began our hike early enough that the snow was still very solid from freezing over the night before so our feet were not post holing with every step....towards the top of the mountain the trail began to level out somewhat for the last 200 yards or so before the summit and from there it was smooth sailing....

We hung out on the summit for nearly 15 minutes, taking a snack break and taking pictures....the altitude was definitely taking effect on all of us...at 14,000 ft we were all sucking wind pretty bad....I would go as far as to say that my hear trate was just as high as it would be during a mid distance run during the last mile of the hike to the top...the way down was way easier than the way up, as we sort of power slid through the snow field....

Lauren and I stayed true to our trail running roots and rocked the Montrail Hardrocks throughout the the course of the week, even hiking up snow covered mountains...these shoes are nothing short of amazing.....if they could only make them crampon compatible, then they would really be the quiver of one shoe....

It was lauren's first time to climb a 14,000ft mountain and she did so even with 2 huge blisters on her heel...I have never had to contend with blisters but Lauren's were extremely bad this past week and the Band Aid blister pads made all the difference in the world....to keep the blister pads in place, we duct taped her foot which seemed to really help....

We missed our flight on Saturday morning so we got to hang out for 5 or so hours in the Denver airport...as bummed as I was about having to do that, Denver was not a terrible place to have to stay...the airport was actually rather nice and we were able to find a pretty decent and not too terribly overpriced place to eat while we killed time....

Saturday night we got home just in time to head over to the Outdoors Inc. Midnight Bike Ride pre party....this event is incredibly fun...this was my third year to do it and there are not words to describe how cool it is to see nearly 2,000 people cruising the streets of Memphis on bicycles at night...I really wish there was a way to get an event like this happening on a regular basis around town as it seems like there is plenty of interest to keep an event like this going....

Had to get back in the swing of things and work today but it's not a bad deal knowing that I'm only working four days this week before I leave for Chattanooga...I'm pretty excited about racing, though I am going up there solo and I'm going to have quite a bit of downtime during the day after the races to kill....I'll probably take my bike so I can cruise around town and keep my legs loose during the afternoon...until next time.....