Sunday, February 10, 2013

Changing Plans

"You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don't believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can't possibly foresee now."  - Harry S. Truman

My 2013 racing plans took another turn recently when I decided to back off the idea of an early summer 100 miler.  The New Year's excitement wore off and was replaced with a heavy stress of how I was going to swing training for the DRTE 100 with it's 29K feet of elevation gain while carrying on with normal life activities.  The only answer was sacrifice.  At the end of the day, I just couldn't make those sacrifices and feel good about the race.  When I decided to "amend the big plan," I felt the weight release and the enthusiasm flood in as I thought about running other summer races here in CO.

Leadville is definitely the grandaddy, but I'm also bumping my 5 day Colorado Trail adventure to early July.  I'm so fired up for a solo thru-hike to see how far I can get.  In the meantime, I've got several other fine trail races to look forward to.  

Moab's Red Hot 55K is this weekend.  I wish I could snag another two weeks before toeing the start line for this one.  My training post-Bandera has been about the worst I can remember.  I've felt pretty blah and I just came off a week of no running in order to let a calf strain heal.

I did get over to Falcon a week ago for my first real vertical in 2 months.  The run stunk and the calf strain was the gift I came home with.  Thankfully, I was provided with a memory to last a lifetime.  On the Parmalee trail, I heard this high pitched noise coming right at me.  The adrenaline gushed and my hands went up.  What I came upon was a grown man driving his remote control monster truck as he followed behind.  Awesome!  No self-defense needed.