Triathlon Anyone?

I joke with some of my triathlete friends that I am just going to show up and jump into a triathlon one of these days. Well today, I literally almost did (although unofficially and unintentionally). While these events look fun, I just don't want to train for one. I like the simplicity of trail running. I had planned a big loop around Horsetooth and Lory Parks only to find myself eventually heading down toward the Timber Trail Trailhead in the opposite direction of the Xterra Lory Trail Triathlon. I had actually done this triathlon a few years ago (the trail run portion only on a team), but completely forgot that it was going on today. So I pulled a U-turn and huffed it in the opposite direction hoping I was far enough ahead of those lead bikers. So my route today was created and edited "on the go" to get me about 19 miles and 4000 feet of vertical. I even included Nick's "secret trail" today so I can now say I have run on every piece of trail on Horsetooth Mountain Park. Not too much to it, but it does provide a loop option when doing the Towers Road climb (I need to best my very soft PR of 41:11).

Todays run: Southridge/Horsetooth Rock/Westridge/"secret"/Towers/Mill Creek/Arthurs Rock/Timber Trail (toward trailhead and back)/Well Gulch/Overlook/Arthurs Rock/Mill Creek/Loggers/Herrington/Spring Creek/Soderberg/Horsetooth Rock/Southridge

Start and Finish at Horsetooth Mountain Trailhead.

GPS data

Unfortunate that UTMB (Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc) got postponed due to weather this weekend in France. This is sort of like Europe's version of Hard Rock and had a strong contingent of US trail runners this year to try to take down 2-time defending champ Kilian Jornet of Spain. Rain, snow, and mudslides caused the race to be cancelled about 3 hours into the 166 kilometer race. They ran a shorter (98 kilometer) "replacement" race the next day won by the UK's Jez Bragg. Bighorn winner Mike Wolfe from Montana came in 2nd. Certainly not as exciting as if the original race could have been run (most didn't even run the next day), but always better to be safe so we can all run another day.