There's a guy that just found us, it's just a cleanup.
Did he find it the aspen time to check it out?
Sam Brady, there's another one coming.
Looks pretty strong out toward west of Keystone.
On the plateau before the final push, two minutes until start.
You can kind of touch that sign to stop the clock.
The beers will be on the tailgate.
If someone is right there with you and wants to challenge you for a tie,
the better drinker wins.
One minute.
Clouds are starting to move in and it's starting to snow.
Hopefully no standing.
All the guidebooks unanimously say get an early start.
Five p.m. start to go hike a 14er doesn't really make a lot of sense.
Seems like a bad idea.
Well, it always seems to fall on a day that's notoriously horribly,
or the weather is horrible.
Pretty much pouring rain, thunder in the background.
You know, the kind that you really want to be inside a house.
There's no way this is going to happen.
We drive up and everyone's there.
So we're like, I guess it's happening.
I don't know.
I think it's going to blow over.
It is Colorado.
It doesn't rain for more than an hour.
I think the sun will come out and it'll be fabulous.
Typically it's a sketchy time of a day to run a high 14er peak in Colorado.
I think it's going to be a lot of fun.
It's hard because it starts really steep.
It's not like a gradual climb.
It definitely starts with a very steep pitch.
The most painful part of the race is probably right at tree line on the way up.
You're trying to keep pace with whoever's around you.
And you're going as fast as you can, basically, without totally blowing up.
Trying to blow my heart rate.
It's not hard to breathe.
Then you kind of settle into a pace just above tree line.
It still hurts for sure, but it's like you just can't go any faster.
You're on your way to heaven.
And then you get this break where it levels off a little bit.
And you can kind of start to kind of do the ultra shuffle.
You're not really running, but you're not really hiking either.
When you're getting near the summit, your brain is pretty starved of oxygen.
It's like hands on the legs to basically, you know, help the clouds.
Just hiking as fast as you can, which at that point is really slow.
At 14,000 feet, you get a little weird up in your head.
I feel like I'm hiking in water and I'm a little slightly delirious.
Just totally hypoxic and kind of dizzy, like really kind of dizzy.
Sometimes I have a headache.
I'm usually drooling over myself and stuff like that.
I took a little bit of time at the top and kind of had to stop and look at my surroundings
because I'd never been up there before, but it was worth it.
It was worth the time lost for that.
From the top, that's where the pain really starts because you're almost done.
And I know that what is about to come up is the most horrendous, nonstop,
cleaning, reckless downhill descent to try and make up some ground and catch back up.
You know, they're just taking huge bounds and rocks are flying up in the air as they're coming down.
That descent is, that's what I think is the namesake of the race.
And it's to the point where if you crash, like you're going to fly down the mountain,
literally fly and tumble down the mountain through the tally.
But then it's just mentally taxing because it's like where is every single step going to go?
You know what I mean?
And down towards the bottom, the trail is smoother and you can really just go.
And it feels totally exhilarating, I think.
And to be almost done feels really good.
It's a friendly, competitive atmosphere.
Meaning people push each other and people kind of do their best and kind of beat that guy and whatever.
But it's all friendly and it's all good nature, which is nice.
Knowing that I can go beyond my own ability is probably why you compete in these activities
and why you don't just go out and do it yourself.
It takes others to bring you to your best. You know, you can't be your best on your own.
If I'm honest, I would say that I find great joy in passing a male on anything.
But especially where it's tricky rocks and I'm like, eat my dust.
Yep, a lot of guys getting chipped, I think is what they call it.
Not a bad thing, especially when you're coming from her.
It's like you can be super competitive and push yourself really hard.
But wherever you end up placing, it's like your site.
It's just about the effort and the camaraderie.
It's not about who wins and who loses, but of course we'll know that at the end of the day.
So this community is so great because there's so many events and there's so many good people.
And I found it is, it's a very ego-free community too.
And that was one of the cool things I noticed when I got there, that it was just a wide range of people.
You know, it wasn't all the elite runners in the community.
It was everybody and anybody who wanted to be there.
So I was excited about that. It didn't make me feel nervous that, you know, it was my first time doing a 14er or running a trail race.
I just love this community here and the people that it brings together on a little fun race like that.
And getting to meet new people, I met a lot of new people.
It makes me feel happy to be here, another reason to be happy to be here.
But it's also about how we all did the same event.
We all pushed as hard as we could to get up and get down.
And to me that the community element of that, that you know all your friends are doing the same thing is pretty powerful.
And so it's really about the camaraderie and the environment. That's what makes it special.
Everybody's friends and just rooting for each other to go faster.
And it's pretty sweet. Teak seems to be at the center of all of it.
And yeah, he just has this way of bringing people together.
He's just, he's so fun and you can tell that he loves doing that and things like that.
And it was really neat just to see that he had put all this work into this little event just because that's what he loves to do.
And that's what it is, is you make plans to do things in the middle of life, work, weekdays, training, you know, difficult challenges in life, whatever.
We have to keep our focus on what gets us psyched and what's important to us and make those plans.
And not be afraid that the plan is going to fall through or afraid that we can't achieve it or afraid we can't do it.
Worry about what might happen. Just make the plan and then things fall into place and all works out.
There's always mountain goats. I hope someone does something about the mountain goats.
The mountain goats.
Yeah, I had to yell out the mountain goat and her little baby to get him off the trail.
He had a resting heart rate of 28, I think he was 40.
True story. Alright.
People are going to be like, what was in that nasty cup?
Blueberry and banana smoothie with kale and steel cut oats.
Left over from breakfast. It's a little warm.
My favorite part was when I was trying to throw up my calzone that I had for lunch, which is a bad idea.
And it started snowing. The snow was awesome. I loved it.
Brad's going to get chicked a lot more coming up here in the next few years.
This is a local random bandit race after work and we are killing ourselves.
Almost there.
What was Tic giving out for Nola?
But I finished my beer first, so I beat him on technicality.
