X the X Games?

Aspen once again hosted The Winter X Games this week.  I did not attend them.  My presence at this annual ritual surely was not missed.  There were enough adrenalin junkies there without me. 

Two things are striking about the skiing and snowboarding competitions.  One is the insane maneuvers the participants perform.  The tricks they do create and defy hyperbole.  The other is the ages of the recently weaned children doing them.  Quite a few are still in their teens; barely old enough to grasp the risks of what they are doing.  Sarah Burke’s recent death should be a sobering reminder of those risks. 

Sarah was a Canadian freestyle skier who was a pioneer of the superpipe event.  She was a four-time  Winter X Games gold medalist, and won the World Championship in the halfpipe in 2005.  She successfully lobbied the International Olympic Committee to have the event added to the Olympic program for the 2014 Winter Olympics.  She died following a training accident in Utah doing what she loved to do.  She was 29 years old. 

When I was a teenager, for an adrenalin rush we would go to an abandoned quarry in eastern Pennsylvania, climb the rock cuts and jump 60 feet into the cold, spring-fed pool.  Nowadays, my rush comes in those few moments on the starting line waiting for the race to start.

This week I paid for my entry into the Colfax Marathon which will be held on May 20^th, so my focus is on preparing for that event.  Today I ran 15 miles including the eight mile segment of the course from the Bronco Bridge to the highest point on the course near 20^th and Garrison.  There is a lot of climbing on that course.  Fortunately, most of it is in the first half of the race.

From Sports Authority Field at Mile High (aka Invesco Field, aka Mile High Stadium) the course heads west on Colfax to Perry where it turns north to, and around, Sloans Lake and back to Colfax.  Next, the marathon heads west on Colfax to Pierce (Casa Bonita) where it jogs north to 20^th, then west to Garrison before returning to Colfax and the downhill run back to the finish in City Park.

It isn’t so much that the Colfax Marathon is hilly; it is that there are many miles of constant uphill running.  It is good that we have been doing our long runs in Cherry Creek State Park.  The hill work will put me in good stead.

Getting back to the X Games.  I have a morbid fascination with them; kind of like watching NASCAR or a Category IV criterium bike race.  You know there is going to be a crash; you just hope no one dies.