Last week turned out be as hellish a week of work as I’ve ever experienced. Yes, even more hellish than working 90+ hours when ASC hosted the NCAA DII Indoor Track & Field Championships, and even more so than when we hosted the CHSCA All-State Games, another 90+ hour week.

What made this more hellish… Well, for starters, I worked the equivalent of more than three full work weeks (120+ hours), with the vast majority coming between arriving at work 8 a.m. on the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 14 and getting to bed at about 4 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, Sept. 18. During that span of 92 hours I spent 86 awake, and with the exception of getting the car from Melissa each evening so as to not need to walk home to shower at 6 a.m. before the start of the next work day, spent nearly every waking minute working. UGH!

But, while certainly not going off without a hitch, the first weekend of home volleyball and football games, and the accompanying game programs and scoreboard production that went along with that, did seem to go pretty well. Although at the time I certainly wouldn’t have thought that myself.

Needless to say, the middle and end of last week allowed me very little time to think about anything running related, although sprinting up and down the stairs of the stadium and running all around the athletic department for four days did give me a pretty good workout. Mercifully, however, the end of the work day on Monday gave me my first opportunity in six days to go for a run, and therapeutic would be the best way to describe how that felt. My legs and my entire being were still fairly exhausted and beat from all the hours worked, but the hour I spent cruising the Alamosa Ranch Trails seemed to flush out they system - physically, mentally and emotionally - and allow me a bit of time to myself.

While still fairly busy, this week has not been nearly as bad, and I don’t think any other week will be as bad as this again. The problem with these first weekends of big events always seems to be that everything that we need is never done ‘til the “last minute” has always passed, and that is what leads to the waaaaaayy to long hours into the night. Fortunately, now that things have been done to completion once, all that’s left is to make weekly tweaks, and not on anything too major.

Presently, I am anxiously going through the next two days of work awaiting a chance to head up to Gunnison, Colo. for the morning/afternoon on Saturday where the ASC XC teams will be heading up to run at the Western State Mountaineer Open. While I may have creatd a bit of work for myself by offering to go and get some pictures and possibly some video, this at least allows me a great chance to get out of Alamosa city limits for the first time in nearly two months, and it allows me to finally get a firsthand view of Gunnison, which Melissa and many others tell me is one of the most beautiful areas of the state. So that oughta be very nice.

Additionally I will, one way or another, be getting out and into the mountains for a little while on Sunday. It will hopefully be in the form of a run in the Great Sand Dunes/Mosca Pass area. The one hindrance to that, though, is that now that my achilles/plantar pain has subsided nicely, the return to running is causing a small area on top of my foot to experience a little pain. This is absolutely nothing new and something that has been a relatively common occurence in the past and is typically made better following a couple days off. If these next two days off don’t deliver the relief I need to make Sunday morning into a good run, then I’ll just have to go have myself a good little hike. Either way, I can’t wait.