See M run

M ran a 50-mile race last Saturday.  Yes, you read that right.  No, I did not mean to type "5-mile."  Nor did I mean to type 50 kilometer.  I meant 50 miles.  Normal people do not do this.  Normal people cannot do this.  And in my (normal) opinion, normal people should not want to do this.  But he did.  It was 50 miles at high elevation, some of it along the continental divide.  There were many many stream crossings.  There were places where the trail was so steep it was possible only to walk, not run.  There were places where there was no trail, just scree fields.  C.R.A.Z.Y.

Here he is coming into the finish:

He's not even crawling! Or sobbing! He even had enough strength left to pick up Z as he crossed the line:

We saw him twice along the course. At mile 15.7, around 8:30 in the morning, where the kids had a nice picnic breakfast while we waited:

The second time we saw him was at mile 40, around 4:00 in the afternoon. The plan had been for me to pace him from there to the finish, but my ankle is still hurting and I haven't run so much as one mile for three weeks now. Sad. But that's another story. Anyway, I probably would have slowed him down, because somehow he got a second wind and ran the last ten miles pretty fast.

The moral of this story: M is a bad ass. And slightly crazy.

Lake City

We drove down to Lake City, Colorado for the weekend. M was running a sick, sick race: 50 miles, with 12,000 feet of elevation gain and loss. Just the fact that the race started at 5:00am was enough to put me off (as if I would, or even could, run 50 miles!). Who would voluntarily sign up for that?! M would. Here's M & our friend Jason, before & after the race:

It was about a five-hour drive, and Miss Z zonked out pretty early on. Here she is going through the stages of out-cold, waking up, feeling grumpy, hamming it up, screaming with joy, and generally pleased with her own cuteness:

And here's M-the-driver, who looks grouchy here, but really wasn't. In fact, the drive up went amazingly well. The kids even behaved nicely! Don't ask about the drive home.

We stayed in this adorable cabin:

It was old and not exactly stylish (it was a CABIN, after all), but it was absolutely spotlessly clean. And the couple who ran the place was so friendly -- they stopped by several times over the weekend to chat, and even gave B & me a little ride in their Ranger when B asked for it.

The cabins had a playground that I thought was rather sad, but the kids found no fault with it whatsoever. B even insisted on eating his dinner up in this "treehouse" the first evening:


The race itself? Not so hot. Literally. Here's the view from town of the Continental Divide, where M was running at the time:

It looks foggy up there, and I guess it probably was, but it was also snowing and very very cold.
Here are the kids with our friend Jess, several hours after the previous photo was taken & the sun had come back out, waiting for M & Jason at the 40-mile aid station:

And here's an anthill B found a hundred yards up the trail from the aid station -- we're pretty sure it's the biggest one IN THE WORLD:

Z stole the show when one of the volunteers at the aid station decided the belly dancer coin skirt would look good on her. Here she is just after the woman put it on her, and after she figured out that it jingled if she shook it:

Last but not least, a couple images I just really like. One is my sweet B, of course, and the other is of the wonderfully wild and unique nursery in Lake City: