Bear Creek Park

January 14, 2010

Bear Creek Park

9.16 miles

1:45 hours

Whew. Tired Tuesday and still worn out today. Tracey needed 9 miles and I wanted to run with her somewhere I haven't run yet; therefore she took me on my inaugural run of Bear Creek Park. Leave it to Tracey to challenge me over and over. Wow.

You start in the park; however in order to get more distance you leave it and then run up the blinkin' road by Section 16 ... over two miles up that road today.

Today was also the first day I wore the micro spikes Rick gave me for Christmas. I thought they were too heavy duty for what I was running. Oh my goodness! These are manna from heaven! I am normally one of the most fraidy-cat runners when it comes to ice; not today baby! They grip like nobody's business and I was actually running on ice, something I've never done before. They have chains on the bottom with huge gripping spikes for good measure. Man, I'm sold, sold, sold.

At the four mile point of this run, after going up and down (mostly up) in Bear Creek, and then hitting the fire road for continued up, I power hiked the last half mile up. I wanted to get my heart rate pumping. Before, I was in a slow jog that, yes, I could have continued; however, for Leadville, I'm going to need running and power hiking abilities. Therefore, I changed it up a bit.

The downhill is such a welcomed run and today was no exception until we hit Bear Creek again. The agony began again at each hill. I was still tired from the weekend it seemed and just couldn't get all gears functioning like I wanted.

A good, challenging, new run and one that I am sure Tracey will take me on again. Sorry, I didn't stop for pictures today! However, I did pull the top photo off the Internet. This sculpture is at the top of one of the trails we ran. We continued up past it.