Another beautiful day in the Colorado Rockies

T-Minus 24 hours to the race start! Shelby and I managed to get about 9 hours of sleep last night and it was marvelous. We're sure tired of laying around though. . . . time to get this party started!

We met several teams this morning at breakfast, including Team Son's of Beaches from Clearwater, Florida. They're thinking about the altitude like us; but at least we're from 250 foot elevation, they're from 15 feet. We also met Cynthia, the Gore representative.  She told us the story of seeing the Trans-Alpine race in Europe and presenting the idea of bringing a race like that to America. I loved hearing her passion for this craziness, she's so proud that this is the 4th year of the Transrockies race.

Yesterday's walking and short 2 mile run was good - we're just a bit woozy, but nothing at all to be worried about. We're relieved to be feeling so good, but we're sure ready to run for real - all this resting and relaxing is exhausting!   

From one of our many walks downtown, the local kayak shop.  How cool are these little single man khakis?

Supper at Mother's and Daughter's again and our waitress loved us. . . .sweet of her to take our photo, don't you think? It was a beautiful, cool evening eating our salads in the courtyard under the quaking aspens.

Drink the Wild Air. . . .

Shutter and Saute are in Colorado! We flew into Denver yesterday and arrived to much, much cooler tempratures, although the natives insisted that it was 'really a very hot day'. Sorry, folks, but this feels amazing compared to where we just came from! Our flights were great, no issues and our luggage arrived - that's always a huge relief when traveling for a race.

Joe Edgecombe, mentor extrordiaire, got in without any trouble, we picked up the truck and headed west on I-70. Turning south on Colorado Hwy 91 was just beautiful - we climbed and climbed and made it to Leadville. It was raining and windy by then, so we were pretty frozen in our Florida clothes. Not that we're complaining! We grabbed some coffee at a little coffee shop. . . heaven in a cup, I have to say.

We arrived in Buena Vista at about 6 p.m. and went to Mother's for a fabulous dinner. Such charming places here. . . tiny, quiet and very unique.

We managed to sleep in a little this morning, got a free breakfast, then went for a stroll down Main Street of Buena Vista. The outfitter place next door to our hotel is fabulous - we could spend some crazy money in there for sure, but we did pretty good resisting. For now.

Tonight. . . dinner and to bed early.  Its the last night in a real bed until August 27th! Bring on the adventure! 

We're officially registered!

Well, our names are in lights, as it were. We checked the TransRockies website for the 857th time this year and Twisted Blister Sisters is on the official start list! It's happening. Really, it is.

I ordered my first pair of trail shoes today (thank you, Amazon.com) and after Gasparilla this weekend, we''ll be all trail baby! Well, not all the time, but the majority of our running will be on trails, especially for the long runs.

Next on the list will be Torreya Ultra Trail Challenge Run. We'll be running the 50k, that's 31 miles if you're wondering. . . and don't let Florida fool you. Torreya State Park Torreya State Park is the highest point on Florida and its steep. Really, really steep.

Shelby and I are fully prepared to go the distance, but we can't promise that it will be pretty. The training plan has been tweaked a bit, so after the 50k, we'll rest a bit and then TRR Training will begin.

Colorado, here we come!

St. Marks Run

St. Marks is not exactly Colorado but we got our first 20-miler done in a somewhat rustic atmosphere. We substituted alligators for bears since we saw two (between 6-10 feet), saw many different kinds of water birds, and even a black snake crossed our path. Running to the lighthouse and back with great friends without traffic zooming by is a nice, even if small, taste of what our 6 days in Colorado will be like.

Team Name

We hope you had a nice holiday and are getting ready to ring in the new year. Speaking of 2010, it is finally the year we run the TransRockies race so we decided it was time to finally pick a team name. And it is....."Twisted Blister Sisters"!

Since this name was not submitted by anyone, we are giving our prize of a free cookbook to our first runner-up submitted by Laura Welch of "Zig & Zag". Just for the record, a close second runner-up was submitted by Heather Harrington of "Shutter & Saute".

Thanks to all of you for your creative name ideas and for supporting us thus far. See you in 2010.

TransRockies 2010 or Bust!

Sore, aching, sweating, mentally exhausted, weather-beaten and completely depleted of glycogen: this is what we expect to feel like at the end of our sixth race day in August 2010. We will be deliriously running because there is no way we are letting our friends, families and, most of all, ourselves down by not crossing the finish line.Wanting to experience the TransRockies race is a misery that our running and non-running friends alike don't understand. Our non-running friends don't understand why we get up at 5 a.m. to run in the Florida heat and humidity or why we can’t wait to get our next pay check to buy a new pair of running shoes or the latest GPS watch. Our running friends understand this part of our lives, but have no clue as to why we’d want to run for six straight days as an extreme “vacation”, especially at elevation we can’t even train on or experience in North Florida.

A lot of people ask us why we want to compete in TransRockies and it’s hard to tell people this is a goal of ours when we are sure they are looking at us thinking, “They can’t even run that fast and they don’t really have runners’ bodies”. Well, to all those people, maybe this is why we want to run this particular race. It's a challenge that we want to take on since we believe pushing ourselves to the limit and making it to the finish is what God wanted us to do with the body and mind He gave us. We will run because we already know we can make it through 26.2 miles and then go back to our hotel to rest, but knowing we can do this endurance race for six days will make everything else in life seem easy. This will be our moment in time when, as two average women, we can feel like heroes and do something extraordinary.

TransRockies 2010 or Bust!