Red Hot 55K

I guess I better post this before next year's race, huh?
After my son and I hit the road for Moab, we took the Cisco back way in through the canyons, past the Dewey Bridge.
We ate at the Moab Brewery, and afterwards I picked up my race packet.

After not running a single official race in 5 whole months (only El Chubbo Grande in Dec.), it was nice to see old friends.
We parked at my usual spot near the start line and slept in the back of my Forester.

The next morning was perfect weather. I had a coffee-challenged morning, where I geyser'd the coffeepot twice. But I still managed to make enough brew for my son and I.
This would be my son's first day driving completely unsupervised. So I handed him the keys and headed for the start.

Since I didn't remember to bring my camera, and I already have tons of photos of Moab and Red Hot, you'll just have to take my word for it - the scenery was at it's Moab/Canyonlands best.
I was going to bring road shoes to handle the punishment from the slickrock, but my unpadded La Sportiva Crosslites somehow handled the rocks so well my feet hurt LESS than they ever had with any softer shoe! Go figure!



And this is with my bad right foot. My foot hurt a little bit before the race, it hurt a little all through the race, and it hurt a little at the finishline post-race party.
At dinner, though, it throbbed all of a sudden, and it was downhill from there. Normally, it just takes some warm-up to loosen it up, but that wasn't working. I was limping the rest of the vacation.
This year was the best race weather in the history of Red Hot.
My finish-time was horrible - a PW (personal worst). I think if I drink enough beer, I can get an even better PW next year.

I was actually pushing for a record, but at the last aid station I was 15 minutes back, so I quite trying and just coasted tot he finish. For one thing, it was Day 2 of a 4-day vacation. For another, I was hurting and pushing 100% would have been lots of pain and extra hurt on my foot for nada.

I splurged for a hotel room for one night, showering well and sleeping like a corpse.

The next day, the snow started falling, and falling.


My son and I went to Canyonlands and checked out Upheaval Dome. The snow started dumping on us real heavy. It was a fantastic hike, because I always love hiking in falling snow, but it sure did hamper the views. It was a very slippery hike.



We kept following little rock cairns like the one below, but it was still hard to see the trail. The reason we didn't go further is we were afraid of slipping, and we were afraid of walking on the biological soil crust.


Some of the trees were awesome, and kind of spooky at the same time.


This tree was weird, with swirls of bark and limb.






We spent our last night near the Dewey Bridge and headed back the next morning.

On the way back, we stopped in the middle of nowhere, south of Cisco, and shot one of my Glocks and my AR-15. It was a great spot to shoot, with literally miles of open range sloping away from us.

For a 4-day vacation, we managed to get a lot of adventure out of it.