Running that made me immensely happy was going on in two places on Sunday.

Myself, I got to return to the mountains for the first time in approximatley 10 months, as I made my way out to Mosca Pass at the Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve.

But, the running that put an even bigger grin on my face, was Kevin and Daniel both running the Chicago Marathon! It was Kevin’s third and, I believe, a pretty nice PR with a time of 3:47… and I hear he even ran shirtless…

… yep, we have visual, he did run shirtless. I dare say he’s probably the only one of us who could pull that off without animal control brining out tranquilizer guns after getting calls from hundreds of concerned runners and spectators. Plus, Dan and I just don’t look quite that good shirtless - there must be something to this CrossFit thing.

What impressed and delighted me even further was Daniel finishing his first marathon.

Kevin and I both really took up and running and tackled our first marathon after college. It still astounds that in the midst of classes, working over the summer and fraternity activities that Dan put in the training and RAN A MARATHON! That’s nuts!!! I know he went through some tough patchs, both in training and during the race, but he stuck with it which is absolutely awesome. I couldn’t be any prouder of Dan, and I wish so bad that I had been there to greet him at the finish line myself… unfortunately, being an adult and having a real job got in the way… as usual.

About the middle of last week I had looked into booking a flight early Sunday morning back to Chicago that would allow me to at least catch the finish of the marathon, but the cost and logistics of it just weren’t favorable (sigh). Plus, after being in the office ‘til about 1:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, I’m not sure that I would have made it to the airport in time had I actually bought the tickets.

Knowing that Kev and Dan were having their own adventure in running the Chicago Marathon made my run on Sunday even more enjoyable - as did the snow. I knew it was going to be a bit snowy on Mosa Pass becasue… well because you could see a considerable amount of snow covering the Sangre de Cristos from town. That, and since we’d gotten a pretty good dusting-plus of snow in town on Saturday, there was surely going to be some snow higher up and in the mountains.

What we woke up to on a Saturday morning in early October… getting close to the most we got at any one time last winter in Alamosa.

At the beginning of the climb up Mosca Pass, the snow was probably about and inch or two deep, but it got considerably deeper as I climbed higher, and by the time I reached the pass itself (some 9500 ft above sea level) I had done a fair amount of post-holing and had even been waist deep at one point. Pretty different for October for me.

Needless to say, I wasn’t doing a ton of running over the final mile to the summit, but I didn’t really care, because I was back playing in the mountains for the first time in sooooo long. The climb was harder than I remember it being when I did it last year on the day before Thanksgiving, but that was to be expected, and it really actually felt a bit easier than I expceted. The descent was a blast, and made me glad to have picked up a pair of real trail shoes a few weeks in the Vasque Transistor FS. It’s the first since moving to Colorado that I’ve taken trail shoes into the mountains, and I think it was likely the only reason that I didn’t end up back at the car a bloody and bruised mess after the 3.5 miles of rocky and snowy downhill running.

Following my up-and-down to the pass, I made my way along the sandy and unstable Dunes Trail for a few miles out-and-back before retreating to the car in order to make it to work on time. When all was said and done, I’d made it about 2 1/2 hours, mainly running while doing a bit of hiking in the deeper stuff. That  made it back-to-back weekends that have affirmed my conviction that I’m back, after having run the Adams State Homecoming 5k run the previous Saturday at a level of effort I haven’t reached in a long time. It felt good, but I was a bit disappointed to have only run the course 8 seconds faster than I ran it in a wedding dress during last year’s Monster Mash Dash 5k.