"Back to Life, Back to Reality. . ."

C - 5 miles, push up challenge

D @ the Grand Canyon South Rim! One of the pictures that I do have.

Ok, so I know you'd much rather see beautiful running pictures, but almost all of our vacation pictures are with D.   Therefore, you're going to have to wait a little longer.  What I can do, is tell you that our vacation was amazing - truly amazing.

We both ran and hiked along the Canyon rim-  which could use some more fences...

We ran in Boulder, Santa Fe, Flagstaff, the Grand Canyon, and Las Vegas, and we loved every single run.  Running really is a great way to see a new city.  The city that we probably saw the most of by running was Boulder, but we also ran at over 7,000 ft in Flagstaff, saw the entire Strip plus some desert in Vegas and experienced a true hill work out in Santa Fe.  The Grand Canyon was the most beautiful, but it was also the most terrifying for me.  We were at the Canyon for two days- we ran the first day, and we hiked part way down both days.  We now have a gazillion pictures of me clinging to the Canyon rim and some sweet pictures of David next to overlooks.   Oh, and a nice shot of a lucky mule deer living by/in the Canyon.  In case you can't tell, he's moseying along the Canyon rim trail - a trail that we ran and hiked parts of and was the easiest on my fear of heights.

Running at elevation was difficult, but not impossible.  The hardest part was going up hills.  I really struggled with a tiny hill that we ran up three times on our route in Flagstaff, but I was comfortable running at a slow-ish pace when there were no hills.

I came back from this trip tired.  We ran three miles in Boston yesterday, and D seemed ready to go, but my legs just felt done.  Nothing hurt, but nothing really wanted to move either.  I was looking forward to taking today off until D pointed out that there will be cold rain tomorrow.  So I did my Tuesday 5 miler today, but I purposely did not take a watch and I ambled along listening to my Marathon Talk.

In other news, yay for an exciting Marathon Olympic Trials!  One of the best write ups that I found was here.  While I still haven't seen any video (anyone find it online??), I love that the top four women ALL finished faster than the previous Olympic Trials record.  Video of their post-race interview is here.  I am very excited for London 2012!