Back on track

Things are finally looking up again. Losing my bike was a horrific and tragic experience and I will miss it and remember her fondly for the rest of my life... but that's over now, a new chapter in my life has begun, one where I ride a shitty old steel-frame road bike that I put together myself with parts from all over the place. I have to mention community cycles here, a local non-profit where I was able to volunteer my time in order to Earn-A-Bike. The bike is not nearly as nice as Betty and I'm not sure I feel comfortable doing some cross-state traveling on it, so I'm going to have to cross that off the list of awesome summer things to do.

Speaking of summer, I have set one single goal for myself and that is to get outside and enjoy Colorado. I spent so much time in the lab this semester that I feel like I need endless sun and fresh air to recover. I'm talking about doing something outdoorsy and healthy EVERY WEEKEND. That could be hiking, climbing, biking, backpacking, running, swimming, etc. I spent my first summery weekend working on my new old-bike, so let's not even go there. I do want to mention that the peeps at community cycles are extremely cool, and they know a lot about bikes and tools and maintenance. I plan on going back multiple times to take advantage of those very things in the future. I want to do a little more work on my bike and paint it, I'll post a picture of it when it's ready....

This last memorial day weekend I went hiking up to the first flat iron with Brendan. Twas not very hard and the views were supa-fantastik. I also enjoyed the hippies, music, free organic milk and nutrition bars at the Boulder Creek Festival on Sunday. I don't have words to describe how happy and healthy this town is, and how contagious it is!

On Monday I ran the famous BolderBOULDER 10K road race, which was my first ever. The race was beyond fun, way better than I could have ever envisioned. You get to run through the city and neighborhoods and people sit outside cheering you on. Also there were like four live bands/artists/performers per mile or so, so you never get bored! And it was just cool to run along the side of 50,000 other people. At the end of the race I got a goody bag with beer, water and some healthy snacks. For my $50 registration fee I also got to keep this sweeeeeet Adidas clima-cool fancy-techy-type running shirt, all and all a great time and I look forward to doing it again next year if I'm still around. Oh! the results:

Overall place: 25,416 out of 48,387
Women's place: 11,136 out of 26,287

They give you an RFID tag that you attach to your shoe in order to accurately measure your time every mile (how cool is that?!). My times:

mile 1: 0:10:06.90

mile 2: 0:09:49.82

mile 3: 0:12:46.61 (I walked a little part of this one)

mile 4: 0:10:05.74

mile 5: 0:14:34.31 (and I walked most of this one)

mile 6: 0:10:11.69

net time: 1:09:51.40

pace: 11:15 (based on net time)

I'm pretty proud of myself, so here's a little bit of bragging: I rock. Not sure what the plans are for this weekend but I'll be back for more bragging later...