CO2011 - Friday

CO2011

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 |

Bummer. We've been here a week already and it's flying by way too fast. So sad!! You know, our trips here keep extending longer and longer each time....

Anyway, Friday was our Colorado Springs day. As usual, we got late start but planned to do to cog railway, which is basically a train car that takes you to the top of Pike's Peak.

On the drive over... kinda weird/different. We're only used to seeing the Denver-Boulder drive, so this one was unique!

Then we rolled into the Pike's Peak area, Manitou, which was filled with all sorts of cutesy Western-y shops that draw tourists.

We had no idea that the cog railway would be that crazy popular, so we didn't make it onto the train we'd wanted to. For $35 a pop, it didn't really seem worth doing, and especially not because it would take over three hours for the round trip (I don't have the attention span for this!). Instead, we headed over to Old Colorado City, which is another cutesy area, lots of restaurants and unique shops like the one below. We got a pizza and walked around for a few minutes.

Then, one of the main events... run at Garden of the Gods! This place is so beautiful - it is a large park that has tons of natural red rock formations, donated to the City of Colorado Springs as long as it remains free forever. The pictures should say it all, but hopefully you can get an idea of what running here would be like:

Ben and his Altras

This scenery was so gorgeous, and the formations were so enormous, these pictures don't even do them justice. They looked completely fake.

I always knew that climbing up door frames as a kid would be a useful skill!

There was yet another didgeridoo player a few feet away from where we took this photo. Is this a Colorado thing?!

There were definitely some pretty dark storm clouds brewing... some foreshadowing!

So as we were about a half mile from the car finishing our run, we started to see some crazy lightning out in the distance. Next on the agenda was heading to the Northern part of town to see my friend Kyle. We worked together at Woodward, so it was a nice lil' reunion. He's like the big bro I never had!

On the way over, we saw this!! Full double rainbows. It was storming like crazy but still extremely sunny, producing what you see below. Two rainbows in a week? I ask again: is this a sign??

The other half:



Kyle has an a-mazing family and house (and golden retriever too!). We had dinner with them, caught up, and played with his kids for a while. Good times. Their house is on a large, extremely wooded lot, and they've even seen black bear wander up in their backyard. It's like night and day compared to what was going on in Rockford! Anyway, I love that between Ben and I, we already have quite a few buddies out West. :)

We made it an early night and headed back to Denver to get some sleep for an early Saturday morning!

That pretty much sums up our Friday, the end of a full week in Colorado. It's going by too fast!!

CO2011 - Thursday

CO2011

Thursday!

Got a late start, and went up to Boulder to bum around.

Boulder Running Company - the Hoka One One brand of gimmicky triathlete shoes.

Ben tried on one that was specifically designed for downhill trail running. Do you switch to a different pair, mid-run, for uphill trail running?

Then, we went to the Fleet Feet in Boulder. It was tiny!! So tiny they couldn't keep the shoes on the wall, but they hung them from the ceiling. It was a pretty cool concept:

After messing around at the running stores, we decided to get some food at Panera and then drive up Flagstaff to let the food settle and kill some time.

Then we ran up Flagstaff... haha, kinda.

Chataqua Park, the mouth to many many trails, including Mesa and Flagstaff. That's gravel path is a pretty solid uphill, even though it doesn't look like it in the photo. Actually, the trail to Flagstaff is way off to the right. This one will take you to Mesa.

Ben held the camera phone while I ran... I needed all the head start I could get. Here's an example of the steps that always get me -- so hard for short legs. This is me riking.

And some more photos, posed this time. Workin' out my new 101s.

And he carried our water too!

So, funny story. Emily mentioned in an earlier post that she and Scott got stuck on Flagstaff in hail, when they went to run there in the evening. (Never. Even at relatively low altitudes, weather is completely unpredictable up there...)

Anyway, Ben and I took a different trail into the Flagstaff trails than I had used when I ran with the Newton group earlier in the week, so it was unfamiliar to me. We must've totally missed a turn because we got hardcore L-O-S-T lost. To the point where we were climbing up these gigantic boulders and following sad-looking run-off streams (that were clearly not the trail) because it meant getting closer to the top... but as you can see in the photos above, the trail is pretty obvious. I have no idea how we lost it.

Each climb seemed to go on forever! We'd climb on hands and knees up a large boulder, thinking that above the next one - to where we could see - there would either be a road or that would be the peak. But sadly, no. It kept going on and on. We told ourselves we had to be close each and every time, so we kept on going, rather than turning around... because going back down is much scarier than up when you're climbing on huge rocks. Finally, after climbing up about 1/4 of the moutain, we reached the amphitheater and the flagstaff (get it?) at the top -- we took some crazy backwards way and climbed into the back of the amphitheater sans trails. Just climbing. No riking, just climbing. It was ridiculous.

Honestly, the view was only ok because it was obscured by trees. But seeing as we did Sanitas and I didn't make it all the way to the top of Flagstaff earlier this week, I was glad we finally conquered it!!

If you recall the original picture above of Chataqua Park and that trail, here it is from wayyyy above. The trail pictured is along the treeline at the top edge of the park. You can see all the little trails that cross through that open hilly park space. We riked all the way up from down there!

Heading down...

We must be completely dumb. Could we have missed trails this obvious?

Awesome view of the city in the background.

Sun was going down as we rushed to finish...

'Cause then we headed to Pearl Street in Boulder for the Pear Street Mile. It's a quick one-mile race, lollipop-shaped course, that goes right through downtown Boulder. It's amazing... I would like to do one in Bloomington, but the city is not runner-friend when it comes to closing streets, even if for the few minutes it took these elites to run a mile.

Women's elite race. Winner ran 4:43.

Men's Elite race. We realized we'd chatted at breakfast with the winner and runner-up at the Newton retail summit days before. Today was the launching of their Newton team, Team Alchemy. Winner ran 4:15.... mind you, this is at altitude!

The Boulder Theater was right around the last turn to the finish line. This is where we had our Newton night out on Monday! It's cool and historic-y.

Annnd the finish line, right on the Pearl Street Mall.

After this we went over to meet up with some friends, Brice and Alyssa, who literally moved to Boulder less than 24 hours prior. Alyssa hadn't seen the Mall and we decided to go there and eat at Mountain Sun Brewery. Good food! They were out of a lot of stuff, but it's all good.

Then, I called Mike and he came out again, so we all trucked over to Spooners for some frozen yogurt. We listened to Mike tell us about his newest orientation "assignment" and the $5 challenge (your team gets 5 bucks and 2 hours to make as much money as you can, legally). So we came up with a bunch of stupid ideas for him, which was wayyy more entertaining than the legit ideas. :) I'm hoping Brice and Mike can pull it together to become the CU Boulder running club this year..........

Another late night again. How do we keep doing this?!

CO2011 - Wednesday

Colorado trip, 2011 in photos.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 |

Today was a reset, take-it-easy day. We slept in fairly late and messed around on the computer for a while (work doesn't stop while you're on vacation!). My Garmin wouldn't stop low-battery beeping all night so I woke up every few minutes, not knowing where the alarm-clock-like sound was coming from.

We finally got out to BD's Mongolian Barbeque and ate our weight in food. Then, we hit REI near downtown Denver. It's an outdoor store that's HUGE... you could spend hours in this place. It was a good way to try on and see/feel stuff that had been considerations for bringing into the store.

REI is in an old converted warehouse.

We considered buying Max some puppy booties.

This mannequin's outfit and the sportsbra adjacent had to be documented. All Moving Comfort.

REI - the main big big room... it's 3 floors of outdoor heaven.

That's the building, right on the Colorado River.

Ben: "Tubing is like Colorado's version of sledding, except you don't have to walk up a hill."
These people were tubing pretty much right downtown. How cool is that?



We had decided to run but nixed the idea since I was so tired... we'll get our miles in this week, with all of the other races/runs we have planned! After REI we came back home and just bummed around, enjoying the not-humid weather!

CO 2011 - Newton Retail Summit, Tuesday

CO 2011 in Photos....

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 |

Tuesday morning.

We ran on group run on Boulder Creek trail, about 6 miles.

RS2011 Group runs meet in front of the hotel every morning.

Somehow we ended up running with Danny... (was he sick of us yet?) I can't think of any other shoe companies where I can casually go for a run with the CEO, can you? 

Got in a quick lift in sweet fitness room and had an a-maaaazing hotel breakfast.

Ben and Danny on the creek trail

On the way back we dropped behind the group and just took some for-fun photos.

Camera trick. I mean, I'm wearing racing flats, haha!

King of the Mountain!

In the session, there was the retailer panel, then breakout sessions where we discussed Newton marketing suggestions.

We took home boxed lunches, and said goodbye to everyone boarding shuttles to the airport. Fritz looked so depressed to be going home and leaving the beautiful mountains and scenery and trails and clean air and DRY air...

Anyway, next up: we walked to Newton Lab/store.

Newton Lab

Cool vignette

Newton R&D: Where Danny cuts up shoes

Nice window display!

The place was pretty decked out, it is very bright and urban -  designed just like a colorful Newton shoe! Bright sofas and walls, local artwork, cool chairs...great feel for a running store.

Not gonna lie, we were so interested and intrigued by everything we learned about natural running this week, it was like a Christmas-is-over feeling of disappointment when the retail summit was over and we were off on our way.  Want to see more of the Retail Summit 2011 and see the goods? Like Newton Running on Facebook and check out their photos (warning: this site contains "shoe porn" -- click only if you are a shoe geek)!!

I learned that you can get certified to be a natural running coach. I really want to do this!! I'll share the other links and notes I took in a later post.

The rest of the day went like this:

Caught dinner at Half Fast Subs near the CU Boulder campus hanging out with my Ohio State Industrial Engineering buddy Mike around Pearl Street.

We talked triathlon, played some Deer Hunter (you know - like video arcade duck hunt!), drank some fresh Coors Light, and got a pizza at Old Chicago. Majorly fun night (why didn't we hang out more in college??)! Mike's starting the MBA program at CU, which is getting the grad school wheels turning.........