[Day 1, Mile 123, 6:00 p.m.] Made it to Palmer Lake, the high point of the ride at 7225 feet.

The Epic Weekend

Felix Wong's avatar
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Back in May, I began a weekend by waking up at 2:00 a.m. in order to drive 60 miles to the 4:00 a.m. Louisville (Colorado) start of a 250-mile bicycle ride organized by the Rocky Mountain Cycling Club. I finished that at 10:00 p.m., checked into a nearby hotel at 11:00 p.m., and crawled into bed shortly after midnight. Four hours later, I awoke to drive 20 miles to City Park in Denver to run 13.1 miles in the Colfax Half Marathon with Maureen. After the race I observed that this was one of the more epic weekends I have had in a while.

Which made me reminisce about some of the other hardcore weekends I had in recent times. Two of them came to mind.

Weekend in September 2012

During a span of 3.5 days, I drove 1700 miles, practiced Mandarin for 15 hours and French for 7, and did almost 8 hours of engineering work. Those activities “sandwiched” running back-to-back full marathons in Bismarck, North Dakota and Billings, Montana. Apparently doing all those activities was sufficiently Type A enough for world record-holding and local running legend Libby James to write about it in a column for the Coloradoan.

I cannot say for sure was the most difficult—driving solo within five states (Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Montana), listening to forty Pimsleur language lessons, the engineering work, or the runs. It was probably racing the first marathon (which was much hillier than I expected) as fast as I could go despite sub-optimal training—and then crashing and burning in the last couple miles—but a case could also be made for running the second marathon on extremely sore and stiff legs. I do, however, remember enjoying both events.

Weekend in August 2012

There was an even more epic weekend a couple months prior. This is what it included:

  • Biked 300 miles to and from Colorado Springs on a 41-lb., one-speed, pimped-out Huffy cruiser. Considering there were significant—actually, rather surprising—hills, this was not easy. Factor in a two-hour thunderstorm and it was certainly worthy of being called an epic. Including sleep, the round-trip journey took about 40 hours.
  • Woke up at 6:00 a.m. the following day to bike another 50 miles (on my Cannondale road bike) to scout out a potential bicycle relay course for a friend. Twenty-five of those miles were at full-on time trial pace.
  • Went to housewarming party #1 where my friend Jaclyn got me to do shots of Southern Comfort with her before she snuck out and ditched the party. Was inebriated enough that my friend Casey let me crash on her couch that night.
  • Snuck out of Casey’s apartment at 4:30 a.m. Why? Because I had RSVP’d for the Fort Collins Running Club’s Eden Valley Run and Picnic, which included a 13+ mile run: basically a half-marathon with hills. It turned out only four runners showed up, meaning that I had to keep up with Connie DeMercurio who Colorado Runner Magazine declared as one of the three fastest 50+ female marathoners in the entire state of Colorado. At the beginning of the run I was hung over enough that it was a real struggle, but by the end I was feeling so good that Connie even remarked, “I’m glad you were drinking last night, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to keep up!”
  • Went to housewarming party #2. Did not get drunk.

Other Epic Weekends

A case could be made for a other weekends that included lots racing, such as:

The key to making the above so memorable was that they included several different events.

What are some of the epic weekends you’ve had? Please share them in the comment form of this post!

[Day 1, Mile 123, 6:00 p.m.] Made it to Palmer Lake, the high point of the ride at 7225 feet.
[Day 1, Mile 123, 6:00 p.m.] Made it to Palmer Lake, the high point of the ride at 7225 feet.