Into thin air

I'm back!!!

I've been missing from the blog world for the past week while back in Colorado. Once a year big oil flies me to the mile high city so I can interview students at my alma mater, the Colorado School of Mines. And while I very much enjoy the free trip home, the recruiting itself is so exhausting! Interviews all day, dinners at night and now a bunch of write-ups to squeeze into the middle of my actual job. Don't get me wrong. I love meeting the "kids" (That's in quotes because, really, I'm still a kid.). It's just a lot of work. It's amazing I found time to workout!

Tuesday I (very frantically) crammed a run in between interviews and dinner. It was a pretty uneventful 4.75 miles at a, roughly, 10:15 min/mile pace. It was also on the treadmill. I used to run on the treadmill all the time. And I used to prefer running on the treadmill. Well I don't know what I was thinking. I was so bored!

Thursday I drove across town to one of the two Bikram yoga studios in the Denver metro area. And it was well worth it. It was pretty, clean and smelled like roses. Okay, maybe not roses. But it did not smell like funk. And by funk I mean gag inducing body odor. (For those of you living in the bay area and considering trialing Bikram yoga - I will say that Funky Door is pretty true to its name. If you catch a whiff of my drift. That's why I go to El Cerrito Yoga.) Luna, the yoga instructor, was positive energy packaged up into a human being. If I lived in Denver I would definitely be a regular at Bikram's Yoga College of India - Westminster.

Saturday morning I woke up bright and early (specifically 6:00 am) and went for a 6.5 mile run with a friend of mine from high school who I haven't seen since, well, high school. I had such a great run I actually didn't want it to end. (Say what?!) The weather was cool, the course was flat and the company was awesome! And I felt pretty pleased with myself for keeping up the 10:00 min/mile pace at altitude.

In fact, I felt so good about this run I decided to do another one on Sunday. A bigger one. Back at sea level and on my home turf, I decided it was time to face my fears head on. What did that mean? I ran a non-stop 8 miles, in the middle of the day, and I didn't scope out the hills ahead of time. Not only that. I started up THE hill - the very hill I have been planning all of my runs AROUND for the past four months - at mile 7.

And it was TOUGH! But still a success. I didn't stop. I didn't walk. I told myself that if I could do the Oyster, I could run up a hill (or two...or five). I didn't get a headache from dehydration. And I averaged a 10:01 min/mile pace. Once again confirming that it's tougher to climb a few feet on foot than a few thousand by plane.