Took the classic tour of the Indian Peaks Wilderness this morning via the Buchanan Pass/Pawnee Pass loop. This run is certainly deserving of a blog post on its own, but it seemed to fade in comparison to all the wild events of the weekend.
Congrats to Timothy Olsen (14:46) and Ellie Greenwood (16:47) on their record-breaking perfomances Saturday at Western States. It is truly unbelievable how the level of competition in this sport has exploded over the last couple of years. Top 10 men 16:18 or better?! These guys and gals are freakin' athletes! Is there some way we can make mountain ultrarunning an Olympic sport? I don't know if anyone in the world could have beaten Tim or Ellie yesterday.
While it was cool at Western States yesterday, it's been far from that here in Colorado. The whole darn state seems to be burning up now. As I was running through the gorgeous old-growth forests around the Indian Peaks today I couldn't help but think how quickly it can all change. We did get rain from a thunderstorm here in Fort Collins tonight. I hope some of that rain made it over the burn area.
I picked a terrible day to forget my camera, but I was able to capture some of the awesomeness of this loop with my cell phone. Felt pretty good today until getting done and realizing this was only about equivalent to running from Silverton to Telluride at Hardrock. D'oh!
Buchanan/Pawnee Loop GPS data here
26.33 miles with 7295 feet of climbing
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