In July this year I finished a quest that I started in the early 90's... to hike what are known as the 46 high peaks of the Adirondack Mountains.
First, a quick bit of info & history...There are a lot more than 46 official mountains in the Adirondack Park in New York State but the high peaks designation applies to those peaks over 4,000' (or originally measured over 4,000' - some have been remeasured at less but the original list from about 100 years ago still stands). They may not sound very tall compared to much taller mountains elsewhere, but realize the base elevation for most of these mountain is below 2,000', and often have lots of ups and downs on the way (so ascent is sometimes much more than just the difference between the top and bottom). And many of the trails are very rugged, especially unmaintained ones. The tallest is Mount Marcy...

What a fun race! I turned 60 a couple of weeks before, so I got to compete as the youngest (instead of oldster vs. young 50-year-olds) in my group . . . and placed 2nd in women 60-69! Woo hoo!

I also "dressed up" in my craziest red-white-and-blue running kit . . . I guess I'm old enough now not to care about looking silly?

Here's a more complete report (with some of those previously mentioned "silly" photos) on my blog:

https://theagavin.wordpress.com/2019/07/11/still-running-crazy-and-barefoot-after-all-these-years/

Happy (silly!) Trails!

Thea

Last month, since I was already at Grand Canyon's North Rim (for a creative writing workshop I lead there every June), I decided to take a stroll down to the Colorado River and spend the night at Phantom Ranch, a fun overnight backpacking trip I'd done several times from the South Rim.

Of course I "knew" that it was 14 miles each way from the North Rim (twice as far as from the South Rim), but I was feeling good about the workshop and happy to have a few days to enjoy the canyon solitude.

Long story short: to hike 28 miles in two days, in summer heat, carrying a way-too-full backpack (a sort of "rebound" pack job in response to being very cold backpacking in May) . . . well, it was a bit of a rough go the last five (steep!) miles.

But . . . one step at a time . . . I made it, experimenting with three...

My first test of my year without metrics is done and the tl;dr for this race is a 20 minute improvement over last year's time at 6:24 vs 6:44 in 2018. I also did roughly 20/31 of the miles unshod, ditching my trusty Luna Origens after the first 11 miles due to slipping around underfoot from humidity.

The course is a 25k loop done twice and I noticed on that first lap that tecent rains had created a few spots of mud and lots of tacky dirt and I couldn't pass up the opportunity. There was also about 3-4 miles of fairly rough gravel I wasn't looking forward to but I figured suffering through that was worth it for the rest of the tactile experience.


Curiously enough, those rough gravel...