InnerTeub

Manitou Springs used to have a “Scenic Incline Railway” – a cable car that would take people the eastern face of Rocky Mountain, to appx 8500 feet. This railway shut down in 1990, but the track (the “Scar”, so called because the mountain looks scarred with the tracks were laid) is still there. The track is about a mile long, and gains just over 2000 feet of elevation.

This would only be moderately interesting except for the fact that this is Colorado, a state filled with sporty people in a state of constant oxygen deprivation, and so when they see something like this:

They think: “You know, I bet it would suck to run up that. We should try it.”

Apparently I am one of those people:

This past Sunday we met up with some friends and climbed The Incline. It was so hard, you guys. I know that’s kind of a “no duh” statement, but: it was really hard. {/whine} I lagged behind my friends and huffed and puffed up, having thoughts similar to those I had at the end of the Ironman, which can be summed up as “This sucks bad idea stupid stupid stupid suck suck suck.”

Eventually, of course, you do get to the top:

And lo, it is awesome. And – dare I say – worth it.  

Now, you could go down the way you came up, but that would be stupid. (Um. Stupider than following through on the initial impulse to climb it at all, that is.) Luckily, there is a four mile switch back trail that goes down the other side of the mountain, the infinitely safer and saner way to descend (and likely ascend as well, but… that defeats the point of doing something stupid just for kicks.)

That run down the mountain was one my favorite runs of my whole life. To be fair, it ALL downhill, making it a leeeetle more of a “controlled fall” than “run” (related: my quads and stablizing calf muscles no longer work, OMG) but oh, it was amazing. While going down it I remember thinking to myself “THIS. This is why people move to Colorado, THIS is why people love living here, THIS is amazing.”  (Aside: Kate ran down the whole thing yelling “PARKOUR!” as she launched herself off boulders and trees on the way down. Heee.)

It’s been a hard month, you guys. Things are fine, it’s just been hard. I needed to take a day to make things purposefully harder, as counter intuitive as that seems. I need to struggle to get up, so I could embrace some joy in coming down.  Climbing The Incline is absolutely an idea born of a mass of oxygen deprived individuals, but it was exactly what I needed.