It could be worse...

8 days post op and still experiencing some pain in my jaw. Tomorrow is the brutal Rockefller Park in Sleepy Hollow, NY. Every vet I talk to has been dreading this run, those who were there last year and felt the pain, as well as those who missed it but heard tell of what lay in store for them. But this is why we train, to get stronger, and what we will do tomorrow really pales in comparison to what some of my teammates did today in Colorado.

My close friend Jenny moved out to Boulder a few weeks ago and invited others to join her in tackling the Pike's Peak Ascent, which is a 13 plus mile run straight up to the top of the eponymous mountain. There is 7,815 feet of elevation gain throughout the race. You start at 6,295 feet, which is 7 feet higher than the summit of Mount Washington, the tallest peak east of the Mississipi River. You end at the top, which is 14,110 feet high. My friend Jenny called me afterwards and said for many periods of the race you are not really running anymore, rather just walking or hiking or crawling up a mountain.

Jenny, Eugene, Erin and Dan all finished the race in fine form and with 98% of the precints reporting, nobody was injured (you never know, you can always wake up the next day with some undetected ailment, but everybody seems to be feeling well). Congratulations to everyone, you all accomplished something that Zebulon Pike never did, and that is reach the summit. :-)

It would appear that Zebulon Pike was not the greatest explorer in American history. He was chosen ostensibly to explore the southern half of the Louisiana Purchase, but in actuality the General who appointed him wanted Pike to spy on the Spanish in what is now Texas and New Mexico. In his travels he saw Pike's Peak, but never set foot on it, only documenting it from afar. Part of his mission on paper was to find the Red River, but instead he set up a fort at the Rio Grande on Spanish territory. His men were captured, which actually amounted to a rescue, because they were dressed in summer clothes in the middle of winter and were suffering from frostbite among other things. Pike was taken to prison deep into Spanish texitory, which enabled him to make many observations about Spain's presence in the area, which came in handy when we decided to settle in Texas and ultimately take over that state and the rest of the southwest. I've actually found accounts of Pike's exploits online that paint him as the Clark Griswold of explorers, and its true that he was no Lewis & Clark, but during the expedition to Southern Colorado he actually was following orders and got lost on purpose.