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Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Summer Adventure Begins!

I never predicted that I would be a "blogger", but with this summer's events and knowing what it is to have an inbox filled with emails and large picture attachments my hope is that this will be a great method to share my experiences. People can check at will and need not be bothered with huge list emails. Please let me know what you think.

So to get this started following is the tentative schedule that will get me from now to the middle of September. If I am close to your neck of the woods, and you need a trail running buddy or a visitor for the day or weekend please let me know, I would love to add on spontaneous outings.

The tentative schedule:
The plan is to be out the door on July 1st. My best friend who I’ve known since preschool, Portia Omdal, will join me for the first 11 days. The hope is to be in Moab as soon as possible to witness the aftermath of the 2006 Primal Quest Adventure Race. Having worked at Montrail in promotions I worked with the ultrarunning, xterra and adventure racing athletes. A lot of the adventure racing teams sponsored by Montrail will be racing in this event and I look forward to cheering them through the finish line.

Some teams to watch:
Team DART-nuun
Team SOLE
Team Buff – Rebecca Rusch
Team the Balanced Athlete
Team Big Bear Adventure Racing

After Moab, my boyfriend Matt Hart and I will move on to Denver; where both of our siblings reside. Portia flies out of Denver on July 11.

July 12-14 will find me camping in Silverton three miles from the finish line of the Hardrock 100 mile Endurance race. I am super excited to pace Roch Horton for the last 42 miles. This is beautiful country! Roch is shooting to complete the Rocky Mountain Slam this summer; Hardrock is the second 100 miler of the 4 for him. He finished Bighorn 100 on June 19, Wasatch 100 is on September 9 and Bear 100 is September 22.

After Hardrock I am looking forward to spending some time in Boulder, Colorado and running the trails with the Boulder crowd. I may scoot over to Crested Butte for a couple of days and to a couple of other towns in-between.

On July 23 I will meet Andrew Skurka in Denver where we will prep and ship a couple of food/gear drops in preparation for our hike of the Colorado Trail. Our hope and plan is to complete the trail, self-supported in roughly 15 days, averaging about 35 miles a day. This will be my first experience with overnight backpacking and I feel very thankful to be learning from Andy. Last year Andy completed the Sea to Sea hike across the North American continent. Check out his site for details, but basically at 24 the guy covered over 7700 miles in 11 months.

After catching a bus back to Denver from Durango I’ll head straight to Salt Lake City for the Outdoor Retailer show August 11-13. Matt Hart will join me in SLC and after the show we will make our way through Oregon, with a visit in Ashland en route to the Where’s Waldo 100k trail race which will start on August 19. After the race we will head home to Seattle!

August 26 marks the Burlington-Edison High School class of ’96 10 year reunion. Need I say more?

On the 28th I fly north to Alaska to visit the Paulson’s, good friends of mine, for a couple of days.

September 16 is the 12th annual Cle Elum Ridge 50k Trail Run. This will be my second year as the race director and I’m looking forward to pulling everything together for the event again.

After Cle Elum things get a bit questionable. What kind of money will be left? Will I need to rejoin the working world? Will I be sick of living in my car? Right now I think I would like to take off again and spend time in Arizona, New Mexico and California (not in that order necessarily). On October 28 I would like to run a double crossing of the Grand Canyon to celebrate my birthday. Anyone interested in joining me? Other than that I have some great people and places I would like to visit and look forward to connecting the dots and enjoying the opportunities that come.