Musings of Abbie: 9 miles and some rock climbing in Bishop = Great weekend

This weekend we were in Bishop for rock climbing (more about that below), and I needed to run 9 miles. I decided to get up Sunday morning and run before we went out climbing for the day. It was cold. Like sub-40s cold. I put on my headband, my gloves, my many layers of clothing, and headed out the door. The first mile was through the town of Bishop, mostly on the sidewalk. It was very brisk, but I warmed up quickly. I headed out of town towards the Buttermilks (some of you may know Buttermilk Rd. from the Bishop Ultras) and found a dirt path next to the road to run on, which made me super happy :) I kept checking my Garmin, finding that I was running a little slow for me, but at first I figured it was because of the cold. As I continued, I realized that I should not have been running that slowly. I turned around and realized that I was running a gradual uphill the whole time. And I continued on the gradual uphill the whole first half of my run. I wasn't too concerned, I figured that I would make it up on the way back, and I did, so that was good. I was impressed with myself for running pretty well in the cold weather, considering I'm very adjusted to the mild temps in SoCal :) I'm also very happy because my knees felt good (a little tired, but good). My right knee is a little sore today, but besides that, this is the best 9 mile run I have ever done!

I had a great weekend climbing wise, too. On Saturday, Eric and Jeff were warming up on the Sunshine Boulder, which is 20 feet tall, and they tried to convince me to climb it, too. I finally gave in, but chickened out on a move about halfway up and climbed back down. *For those of you not familiar with rock climbing, when I go out to climb, I boulder, which is not using ropes, and putting pads down on the ground in case you fall.* After coming down, I sat around for a minute, and then when they started to pack up, I decided I needed to sack up and climb the problem. I went up, and got to the same place that I chickened out before, but cruised past it before I could get scared again. I did another problem that was my arch rival last time I was in Bishop, and impressed Eric by flashing (completing a problem on your first try) a problem that was also kind of high, and kind of technical. I didn't really do anything else, but I did pretty well on a couple hard problems, so that was cool. On Sunday, I did a couple problems, and I also did a very easy problem, that was higher than the Sunshine Boulder, called China Doll. I was psyched that I did two highballs within two days!

Gettin' ready for the Sunshine Boulder