Thru Endurance We Conquer!

After moving to Grand Junction, doing the entire Triple Crown of Moab made perfect sense. Drive 5 hours total, I race, Nick gets to ride his bike and it's a fast, fun weekend trip - unlike from Colorado Springs. It's three of Mad Moose Events' Moab races - Dead Horse Ultras, Arches Ultra, Red Hot and finally the Behind the Rock Ultras. For the ultra series it's two 50ks and one 50 miler - doesn't matter which of the races you chose for the different distances. You can do two of the first three, but everyone has to finish with Behind the Rocks. Of course, I had to go and make things difficult with my version of the Triple Crown.  Instead of being smart about it and picking the fastest race for the 50 mile, I went off "which race will have trails I don't want to ride?" as my criteria for picking my longest race. Makes perfect sense to me! But maybe not the smartest for the racing aspect of the series.  Dead Horse - this would be one of the 50ks. Why? Bec

Now that Nick is finally here in Grand Junction, we've been able to do some fun exploring weekends. Lots of miles running and riding. One of the adventures I've been eyeing is the kinda thing that takes those long weekends of learning the trails and roads. With that in mind, there have been more then a few times where Nick has kicked me out of the van and I've run to the final destination. No better way to learn then actually running! The first day was just an out and back while Nick rode with the guys. The first section of trail, and what might be the busiest chunk. My goal was to turn from the Loma Trailhead to the Salt Creek bridge and then back. I wanted about 20 miles and the Koko was the kind of terrain I needed for that day. Lots of runnable miles, but with some good climbing. As expected, it was quiet on Mary's out to Pizza Point. I met a few mountain bikers, but not to many. That stretch was also really fast - after the initial climb, a gradual downhill with ju