Rocky Mountain National Park + rainbow

Wow, what a jam-packed weekend of fun! While it was a super active and fun weekend, it also left me feeling pretty refreshed, and ready to tackle the week ahead!

Friday morning pretty much kicked off the weekend for me, thanks to a huge surge in motivation on Thursday (I got a LOT done.) I started off with an hour run on trails in town. This means the views of the mountains are a little farther back, and the terrain is flat, which is nice for a change!

I grabbed an iced pumpkin spiced latte and a shower, and then headed to Boulder to meet Lauren for a hike and some shopping. Alas, mother nature had other plans for us, as an afternoon storm rolled in and foiled our hiking plans. It was a bummer, but I’m a big proponent of not letting circumstances – especially weather – determine one’s mood. Instead, we hit up REI, Athleta, and Trader Joe’s, and I picked up a few items from each, including a pair of my very favorite lifting/training in the gym shoes:

They were on sale for $73, and the only pair left in the store happened to be in my size! My lucky day These are my third pair of the same shoes.

I had to head home after that, because I was meeting some friends at our neighborhood tap room for a Moscow Mule night.

The first 100 attendees were supposed to score a free copper mug with purchase, but then the Stoli people ended up bailing. Oh well! we thought, until the bartender announced that drinks were on Stoli all night. Score! There may or may not have been a dance party to anything and everything Taylor Swift to end the evening

Saturday started a bit slowly, and with this:

Leg warmers + the best bagel breakfast sandwich in town, which is the 4-corners sandwich, loaded with Southwestern cream cheese, bacon, egg, and cheese.

Then I decided to join Lauren and Greg on a date in Boulder, and we had so much fun! First up was an easy hike at Chautauqua.

We followed that up with a visit to the farmer’s market, where I got nothing. I always like farmer’s markets in theory, but I can get organic, local produce any day of the week here. Then we went to lunch where a pastrami Reuben and fries hit the spot. And we finished our day date with a visit to the Rowdy Mermaid, a local kombucha tap room in Boulder for a kombucha tasting.

They were all so good! I walked out with a growler of Deep Forest, which tastes like root beer. I love it, which is odd because I don’t love root beer. ‘Twas a fun day. How Lauren can convince her hubby to accompany her to the farmer’s market and kombucha tasting is lost on me, but I love it. Totally not Shane’s kinda thing.

Saturday night was pretty low key, and included a marathon of Top Chef watching and a green smoothie, because Sunday was an early one. I totally win best friend of the year award for waking up at 4:00 am to take my friends  to the airport. Just sayin’! Then I just decided to stay up once I got home because we were going on an adventure!

Plans were to drive out to RMNP and do the Odessa Lake trail. Alas, mother nature had other plans again and it was raining. Hard. I tried my best to convince are car full of peeps that we should just embrace it and hike in the rain, but my attempts were futile. At least we got to see a pretty rainbow on the drive (the first picture in this post!)

That’s the first time I’ve ever seen a rainbow end to end. It was lovely. We also saw elk and wild turkey, grabbed an iced coffee, and then did an easy hike located just outside Estes Park when it cleared up – Gem Lake.

Gem Lake!! While it’s easy and short (3.4 miles) it’s one of my favorite hikes. It’s the very first hike that I did in Colorado! It’s crazy how hard it felt then, and how easy it feels now.

I ate a PBJ sandwich at the top, and then we descended, and only got rained on for about 10 minutes. After a short <60 min ride, we were back in town, and grabbed lunch at Oskar Blues<—typical.

Heil Valley Ranch

Yesterday morning I woke up, ate some breakfast, and then hit the trails at Heil Valley Ranch.

This is one of my favorite trails because it’s only a `10-15 minute drive from my house. I’ve run it probably 5 times, and each time I get a little further than the last. This time, I had hopes of making it all the way up and around Ponderosa Loop, which would make it a total of 7.7 mile run.

It starts out as Wapiti Trail, and steadily climbs for about the first 2 miles. I always forget how steep the incline is until I’m running it, and loudly gasping for air. It feels like all 985 ft. of elevation gain on this trail are in the first couple of miles. That said, it’s a great trail for challenging those posterior muscles!

It’s funny, because these two women were ahead of me the entire way up the Wapiti Trail. They were running the entire time, whereas I would need to take walking breaks once my HR went through the roof, but they still stayed the same distance from me. Then hit me: Paige, slow the eff down! I always seem to run faster than I should, and then I get gassed out quickly. So, I slowed down my pace, and found out that I didn’t need walking breaks! Imagine that.

After 2.55 miles on the Wapiti trail, you come to the Ponderosa Loop trail. When I reached this, at first, I kinda panicked, calculating my total mileage as more than 10.0 if I decided to run the loop. Then I remembered, duh, Paige, a loop is a loop, and the total mileage for the loop is 2.6. So I went for it.

At this point, the trail levels out and the steady incline turns into a very gradual one. I kept my pace, and then lo and behold, I reached my two “running buddies” lol and then passed them! At this point in my run, the views became pretty damn amazing, so I was stopping to take pictures every 5 seconds, and we played a game of pass-each-other-over-and-over.

At about half way through the loop, you come to a scenic overlook, and become absolutely astounded by the view.

If your breath isn’t already gone from your adventure, this view will take it away for sure. I couldn’t look away! (<—in fact, I told another trail-goer that same thing!)

Eventually, I did look away and continue my run. Now, however, I got to go back down. My pace quickened and my lungs felt amazing. Going down is good training for paying attention to the feet. I have 2-3 “close calls” on nearly every trail run when I’m running down hill. And on this trail, while it’s dirt for a lot of it, it’s primarily pretty rocky.

The only annoying thing about Heil Valley Ranch is the mountain bikers. There are SO many of them! The rules are that they’re supposed to pull of and yield to those on foot, but I almost always jump off the trail and let them go by. Most of them are very grateful and say thank you, but some are just jerks. /endrant.

I found myself back at the trailhead feeling great – no big aches or pains. I also noticed how much I wasn’t sweating after running 7.7 miles. In Illinois, I’d be drenched. Gotta love this arid climate! I stretched, chatted with some other trail-goers, and handed out KIND bars before heading out.

The rest of the day included a little baking, and then a barbeque at a friend’s house, where I brought the fruits of my baking labor.

Tennessee peach pudding. drool. Shane and I split a piece, along with some strawberry pie that someone else brought.

Phew! That was a wordy one. Have a delightful Tuesday, my friends!

How was your weekend?

What was the most fun thing you did?

Eat any good BBQ or desserts on Labor Day?