Cheesman Intervals and Pikes Peak Full - Step 1

Ran some Cheesman Intervals today, my legs were feeling much better as was my energy level (and the sunshine helped too). It was still cold, but not frigid, in the 30's, which is not bad when you are doing intervals if there is no wind chill and sunshine.

I went early before the group run at 11:30 because I wanted to register for the Pikes Peak Marathon on line at 1:00, so I needed to be back at my computer by 1. More about that below.

With my 50 minute time window, I did 5 1/2 mile repeats under 3 minutes. I felt like I could have done more had I the time. I caught the group (Tom,Andre and Bob) at the end of my fifth one barely . Tom was going around Cheesman park but I needed to head back the short way so we didn't run back together.

6 Miles, 48:45 with 5X 1/2 Mile Intervals at 3:00.

I got back and settled at my desk ready to register for the Pikes Peak Marathon. Why do I want to register for this? I don't know, other than I did the Ascent and this would be a challenge and not a common accomplishment in our group (many Ascenter's, not so many fulls (or is it fools)), I'm in shape or will be if I stay on track and like a lot of things, if I don't do it now, I might never do it (reason #1 I did the Ascent last year). Jill put the bug in my ear last year after the Ascent. She got turned around due to weather and ended up doing 20 miles, very close to the full marathon. She said next year I'm just going to go for the Full Marathon and I said yeah, that was fun, me too. 7 Months later and here we are, registration time. Jill changed her mind and decided to go for the Ascent again, there can't be two years of bad weather in a row can there? A final reason that I want to do the full, almost every runner that I know when you tell them you did Pikes Peak, they say "the full or the Ascent"?

I got a lot of emails this morning from runners and former runners reminding me about the registration and asking if I was going to sign up this year. The main one was Jay's to the group reminding them to sign up for the Ascent at 12:00 or 12:30. I replied and added some more people that it was open for the Full registration at 1:00 and that was where my money was going. This surprised some since I despise running uphill, I got this response from Craig C:

Wow, Dennis, you’ve become a mountain running fool – I didn’t know I created a
monster when I snookered you into Mt. Evans.

So see Gina, it's all Craig's fault, in more ways than this too.

Anyway I got back to my desk thinking how disappointed I would be if I could not get into the race, but thought maybe I could sign up for wave 1 ascent as a fallback. I had all my info ready including my qualifying link, high speed connection and my door shut in my office.

I clicked on the Register Button and "Server too busy". Arggg. Reminds me of Rockies 2007 World Series tickets and Woot BOC (any wooters will know what that means http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woot.com).

I kinda expected it, so kept refreshing. Finally after about 7 minutes it let me in. I was so excited I screwed up a couple of things on the form that normally I would not have, but in the end I am registered and confirmed for Pikes Peak Marathon Wave 1 2009.

The good news is I'm registered for the Pikes Peak Marathon, that's also the bad news. I'm sure in August I will be thinking, what the hell was I thinking. Oh well it will be an adventure, stay tuned.

Of my group of running friends nobody else I know signed up for the Marathon but I haven't heard from everyone yet, I'm sure there's someone out there I know doing the full. To the left is a picture of last year's ascent with the weather blasting me as I crawled my way to the top.




Of our group I know the following got into the Ascent...

Jill
Craig C
Matt
Jay (Reason #2 I did the Ascent last year).

Unfortunately they are on different days to Ascent on Saturday August 15th, Marathon on Sunday August 16th.

Maybe I should have signed up as a Doubler so I could run with them and do the Marathon? Nah save it for next year...