Freezing Cold and Tired

Okay, okay it has been a week (at least) since I posted. In the time I have gone for a solo ride, which is much tougher than going with a friend, run once or twice but today's exercise was on a pretty grand scale.

Since I have lived in Utah I have looked at Mt Timpanogos everyday and I have never reached the top. Well now I have, and she can never mock me again. I went with a friend from work and we began on the trail at 1:30am (Timpooneke Trail). As we started the parking lot was full but there was nobody to be seen so we started up in the dark (there was no moon until we reached the saddle and even then it was a sliver.) Before long we had the unusual sight of lights bobbing along the trail for miles. There must have been at least 50 people in front of us and it didn't take long before we reached the first group and passed them up, from there the Sea Biscuit took over and we didn't stop for a break until we had passed the majority of the hikers and from there we passed them all before we started the climb to the saddle.

I realized as I was going that my exercising efforts were starting to pay off. I have found that my heart doesn't beat at a million miles an hour anymore and it is not my heart that gives out, it is leg strength and muscle burn that gets to me long before my cardio gives up. So that can be easily worked on.

Anyway we reached the saddle and if any of you have ever been there it is quite dramatic as it is the first time you see over into the Utah Valley and the wind almost knocks you off. Just prior to this I started to feel a little light headed and I was worried that altitude sickness was starting to effect but I had no other symptoms. I finally realized that I was getting dizzy because of my headlamp constantly bobbing around in front of me. This is a bad place to be feeling dizzy as there are many tricky sections to navigate and lots of loose shale to slip and fall on and it was very cold. Anyway, we made it to the top in 3 hours and 45 minutes, the downside was that we needed to wait about another 1.5 hours till sunrise, that was cold so we huddled in the hut at the top and after about 20 minutes there was a steady flow of people cramming themselves into the shack all hoping it share body heat but it is entirely pointless as there is so much wind.

After a long cold wait the sun finally showed up at 7am and we could all warm up. Coming down was fast and we ran for about 2 miles of the 7.5 miles. We did see a bull moose on the way down.

All told we went to 11,777 feet in altitude and hiked about 15 miles returning to the car at 10:10am. It was a great hike.