Pikes Peak Bloos

The race website for Pikes Peak says, "There’s a reason trees don’t bother growing above 12,000' on Pikes Peak. They can’t! Makes one wonder if trees are smarter than runners. Above treeline most runners take 30 minutes or more, some much more, just to cover a mile. What little air remains can’t satisfy the endless stream of zombies hoping only to survive their next step—a death march right out of a scene from Dawn of the Dead"
And yet there we were...four apparently not-too-bright 'flatlanders' tryin our luck on America's mountain. (alright.....Vinod being the lone mountain man having done back to back mountain 50 milers on two consecutive weekends! Even we think he is crazy)
To make things a little bit more interesting, somewhere during our training we had this brilliant idea...its so darn difficult to go up that big piece of rock once...lets do it twice...in two days!
And we did it!The D-D-D-Double...the Pikes Peak Ascent on August 18th and the Pikes Peak Marathon on August 19th. A combined mileage of over 39 miles and an elevation gain of over 7000 feet on each day, culminating in a maximum elevation of 14,115 ft. on both days.
(Just to put things in perspective...on another day in another age, I used to jump out of perfectly good airplanes with a backpack ....and that was at 12,000 ft.)

Two races down in the Indian Slam...as Joe has so eloquently named our quest this year.
Two more to go...coming up next....a visit to the big hole in the ground (sometimes also known as the Grand Canyon).