I know, I know…the mileage and elevation gain are slightly off. An unfortunate side effect of me never remembering to charge my watch. Missed the whole last descent plus the section I made up at the end after skipping part of the 4th lap to catch a group of friends.

With no real plans for the day’s run and having skied for 12 hours the day before on a few hours of sleep, taking an easy morning and sleeping in was too hard to pass up. I eventually made my way to the store for groceries and, with the loose plan of repeats on Mount Morrison in my head, decided to grab some snacks so I would at least consider eating for a change. Naturally, I grabbed some portable applesauce packets made for children to use as my main fuel for the day.

Fast forward about three hours, three laps, two applesauce packets, and 6000ft of elevation gain later and I was feeling pretty strong descending for the third time, leaping down some of the short drops along the more technical sections at the top. I slowed my pace a little, knowing that I still had two more laps once I made it back to the parking lot where my car was serving as an aid station. By this point, I had passed the same people so many times that they began to cheer me on as I went by…although they also probably thought I was insane.

As soon as I made it to the car, an alert came across my phone: “Tornado warning in this area til 5:00 PM. Take shelter now.” The sky had been getting darker for the last hour so I checked the radar on my phone. It didn’t look like much to worry about so I grabbed my paper-thin windbreaker as my defense against the potential tornadic activity and headed back up the trail. It rained progressively harder as I climbed and eventually turned into hail. Lightning began to strike in the distance and the wind howled. As I continued up the trail I saw a lot of people who had just started turning back. I wondered for a second if I had made the right choice but I trusted my internal Bruce Nolan and pushed on. Just a few minutes later, the storm had passed and I was able to watch it descend on Denver as the sun came out in the mountains.

Now on my fourth lap, the climb was becoming more and more of a challenge. This amount of elevation gain in such a short distance is pretty ridiculous and it was definitely testing me. My main motivation was looking forward to running the last lap with a group of friends who were doing an memorial run for a friend who recently passed. When I reached the summit they were already down at the parking lot waiting for me. With rediscovered energy, I took the descent hard in order to catch them before they made their way too far up the mountain. Luckily, I was able to catch them not too far from the base so that I didn’t have to make up too much of that lap at the end. They were all fresh and moving well so I was nice to have someone to follow for a change. I settled in to the middle of the group and was quite content not pushing the pace. At the summit, we all shared some beers in honor of the memorial run and snapped some basic summit pictures.

As we descended, in a partially delirious and applesauce-deprived state that left me susceptible to feeling emotions, I thought about how awesome the trail community is and how lucky I am to be a part of it in such an active area as Denver. I realize that I take it for granted 99% of the time. If you haven’t been to a local running group, I’d encourage you to check it out sometime…even if they’re terrible human beings and only run roads. Or, if you’re in the Denver area, check out Berkeley Park Running Company on Thursday nights for free beer! Oh, and there’s occasionally some running involved too.