This is the week!

After a couple of months of base building, official training kicks off this week! I am excited and nervous and on some level humbled to take on this opportunity.

Luke and I spent some time running the Bonneville Shoreline trail on Saturday. This trail is affectionately referred to locally as the "BoSho" and skirts the Salt Lake Valley. Ages ago the Salt Lake Valley was under water. Literally. The ancient Lake Bonneville covered nearly 20,000 square miles. The lake receded but is responsible for much of the landscape that we currently enjoy in Utah. There are plans for the BoSho to one day span some 280 miles from the Idaho border to Nephi, Utah.

The nice thing about the BoSho is that it is close and convenient and is a nice way to rack up some miles on the rolling trail. The rough thing is that it gets crowded! Mountain bikers, hikers, dog walkers and runners all enjoy what the trail has to offer. A lot of "bike right" can be heard while on the trail. The crowds do bring a cool vibe and really do speak to the active nature of the city. In all a great place to be.

I have been having more and more "Wasatch nights". Wasatch nights are nights that I go to bed at a reasonable hour with great intentions of getting a good night sleep. I then lay in bed for up to 2 hours going through all of my thoughts about this race. They are centered on nutrition, weather, aid station splits, pace, pacers, finishing etc. etc. It is literally exhausting which in and of it's self is probably good training.

While training, I look forward to summitting the peaks of the Wasatch several times. I love summitting. There are days when faced with adversity in the valley that I look at the peaks of the Wasatch and say to myself "If I can get to the top of that thing..." Summitting those peaks gives me confidence that I can do more with my life in the valley.

You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.”
― René Daumal

Thanks to my younger brother Brian for sharing this quote with me. Brian will serve as one of my pacers in September.

Happy trails!