I was a bit worried that, as in past recovery phases from 50+ mile efforts, I was going to have a lingering injury in the legs or feet some where. Instead, I feel quite good and have had no swelling or injury spots anywhere. In fact, after the ride I felt not a whole lot more tired than I would on the same length ride with the same effort before the Leadville 100. Interesting. Maybe I'm getting more resilient? Who knows. Feels good though.
So, a few days after the ride I was fortunate enough to get back into the Grand Canyon with Susan, Leo, Matt and Jess for a three day backpacking trip down to Hermit Creek on the Hermit Trail. Another great opportunity to test out the legs and have a ton of fun with friends in one of my favorite places anywhere.
It was a super hot trip, the highs were just over 100 degrees, so we did a lot of night hiking (read: start hiking at 4:30 am to hike into the canyon and start hiking at 3 am to hike out of the canyon) and pretty much lounged by Hermit Creek (our camp) during the days.
We went super light because we didn't need sleeping bags so we were able to fill the space with 24 cans of beer! Seemed silly before hiking, and I'm sure that any rangers that happened upon us would not have been psyched, in but once we were 4,500 feet down into the canyon, camping in 100 degree heat and playing in a ridiculously scenic creek with slick rock pools to dip in, the beer seemed like one of the smarted decisions of the trip.
Great times were had for sure and it was really, really nice to be back in the canyon. With the super slow pace of the trip I got to really take in the little things...something I am not able to do on my runs down there. We got to catch and release, by hand, little fish that were nibbling our toes in the water, observe in detail the many different rock types and formations, see tarantulas and scorpions on the trail, hike to the river and chill, kicked over useless cairns (one of my favorite activities...), sleep out, without any sheets or sleeping bags on us, under fantastic star studded skies and did all sorts of other wonderful things as we took in the magic of the Grand Canyon in September.
So...no photos of the trip as we can't seem to find our camera right now but Leo is an amazing photographer and he took a trillion shots and many of them (the ones I got to see) are really, really cool. Hopefully, sometime soon here I will post up a cool photo essay of the trip if he is o.k. with me using some of his photos.
A day removed from the trip, I am really, really psyched to get back in there and do some running when the temperatures start to cool and am happy that I feel really good today. No soreness or fatigue at all. Probably because I pretty much slept the whole time down there and the day I got back home... good stuff. What a great lazy trip.
Oops...spoke to soon about not having any photos to post... here are a few from the photos Matt posted on Facebook. Thanks Matt!
(Hiking down)
(Amazing views as always)
(Hanging out at Hermit Creek)
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