Rollin'...

Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. ~ William Faulkner

The nice thing about being confined to short runs is that they are much easier to squeeze into a hectic schedule. Friends and family in the area make for good times and being able to keep my training schedule is a bonus, for sure.

Friday, I spun a quick 4.5 miles or so on trails and dirt roads near my house. Still feeling no pain but I am having a bit of a plateau where I am unable to get my heartrate down or run as fast as I'd like for the amount of effort required. These things happen and usually one can just roll through them after a few small changes. Overall, I felt great and it wasn't like my average pace was super slow... just took some more effort than I would prefer to keep up the flow.

Friday night I headed to Denver to meet up with the Roach clan. They are in town for the Harley-Davidson Dealer Meeting (they own Palm Springs Harley-Davidson) and after watching soccer at the Hyatt, headed over to Root Down for a very tasty meal. Pretty cool restaurant, Root Down. They converted an old service station into a hip joint and used sustainable building and recycled materials throughout. The floor was salvaged from an old high-school gym and many of the service station features remain intact. They were even playing awesome 70s-era kung-fu movies in the bar. Good stuff. Tough to get a reservation but the food was awesome and well worth the wait.

Didn't get home until super late so slept in a little on Saturday then watched the final "real" stage of the Tour. I must say that Contador rode really well and seeing Lance step back into the fray for a podium finish at age 37 after 4 years away from competitive cycling was quite impressive. I was hoping for an Astana sweep but it was great to see some fresh faces out there giving their all to the sport. All in all an exciting Tour. Once the race was over, I hit the trails again for my longest run in what seems like forever. Wait for it.... 5.25 miles! Look out Tony Krupicka, I'm on your heels. (Congrats to Tony, by the way, for crushing in the White River 50 USATF race with a course record 6:32:09... that's 50 MILES in six and a half hours, people. Awesome.)

Again, felt a little off regarding fitness or whatever is going on but no discomfort in my abdominals so I'll consider it a win. It was fun to be out in the woods for a run so you won't catch me complaining.

Post-run, Rach and I headed down to Boulder to meet up with my pops and his special lady, Donna, at the Sunflower Café for lunch. Good eats and great company. They were in town to visit her son who lives with his family in Broomfield and to go to the Rockies game. Hopefully they had better weather than the last time they hit the ballpark. They were on-hand the day the stadium had to be evacuated due to a tornado warning back in June. Excitement abounds.

Rach and I then headed to Broomfield to help out some bunnies and spent the rest of the afternoon at the shelter. There are some awesome little guys there right now (well, there always are) and I spent the afternoon dolling out pets, watching Rach groom and care for a couple special needs bunnies and cleaning up. I even helped one volunteer break into her car so it was a day where I could flex all my special-talent muscles - the petters, sweepers and grand-theft-auto groups got a good work-out.

All in all, a great start to a summer weekend. Hoping to work on the shed foundation today then get to run again tomorrow.

~stubert.