Greetings from Denver

Its 9:35 pm and finally made it back to my hotel room. Today was a confluence of three different things - a meeting put on by the federal Interagency Council on Homelessness, a smaller meeting by a group focused on chronic homelessness, and meetings with some folks I'm working with in the City of Denver. What that means is that my day started at 7 this morning and is just now over.

Meetings all day. In order to get a run in I did something I rarely do - pass on a free lunch. There was a 2 1/2 hour lunch session that also included an awards ceremony. Despite the food this promised to be a deadly event, so I snuck back to my room and put on my running shoes.

Having been here about two months ago, I knew to head to Cherry Creek. Cherry Creek is just that, a creek with a paved bike/running trail alongside it. For the most part it is about ten feet lower than street level, so you can go under the street crossings and run uninterruptedly. I had also got a second, four mile workout in yesterday (33:17) which reoriented me to how to get there.

In light of the limited time I had and my desire to get in a hard workout, I made todays run short and fast. I ran from the hotel to the creek, somewhere around three-quarters mile, then hammered it to a point which gmapped in at 4.5 miles and turned around. Object was to run hard going out and even harder going back. I indeed got back one minute faster than I went out, and guess that I hit about a 6:00/6:10 pace at my fastest. With the warmup/cooldown, I ran the total nine miles in 62:48.

Folks say the air is thinner out here but I don't notice it. Todays run was not incredibly anaerobic (though I was breathing hard by the end) as much as it was practice running fast on tired legs. Especially after the turnaround I tried to focus on upping the pace just a bit and sustaining it there, although I really didn't want to do that. Very much a mental thing - keeping up the intensity when the feeling in my legs gives me the perfect excuse to slow down. The air was very dry, and I wasn't aware I was sweating until I felt sweat dripping on the back of my calves from the bill (turned backwards) on my cap. Also got a post-run sore throat but that's now gone.

One thing about being in meetings all day is that interesting thoughts pop into my mind, some of which today had to do with running and that I wanted to regurgitate here but I'm just too damn tired to do so now. Tomorrow the meetings wrap up here and then I'm getting a rental car and road tripping it into the Rockies until Sunday. Hopefully I can send out another postcard.