Day 4: Rock it Run in Castle Rock, Colorado

And the first half marathon is on the books! This morning, I ran the first race of this trip. I will pretty intimidated by running at altitude here just outside of Denver, but it didn’t seem to be an issue for me at all. It’s been a strange day because I had to get up at 3:30 AM—- I’m staying pretty far away from where the race itself was run in order to make my drive to Wyoming tomorrow more feasible—- so it’s now 4 in the afternoon and I’m already two time zones off from home, meaning I have no idea what meal I’m hungry for or what time to go to bed tonight. But the race itself was great. It was well run and well organized, with enough runners so that I was never by myself on the course, but not too many to make it crowded. It was an out and back course, which normally I’m not crazy about, but the mountain views and crowd support kept it interesting the whole way. At one point I thought I might be in line to set a PR for myself, but I really made an effort to go easy because of the altitude and because I’ve got a lot more running to do, which worked out well because the last few miles were almost all uphill and really took it out of me anyway. It’s an early start again tomorrow for the long drive over the mountains, so I’m putting a lot of effort into doing as little as possible around the AirBnB today. I know these last few blog entries have been short, but my mind is in pieces right now because I’m so tired, so mustering the focus to write this is an achievement in and of itself. Tomorrow, I’ll be well rested and write a few paragraphs of inspired prose, I promise. Until then!