Waldo Fire (Day 1-5)

LAST UPDATED: Thurs 6/28 7AM -  Newest info at the bottom.

As you may or may not know my wife Ashley is a firefighter for Manitou Springs fire.  She was called in on Saturday morning to work Hwy 24 and try to keep the fire from jumping the highway and head into Manitou Springs.

Here is a pretty cool map of all the fire activity in the country that I found.  http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~starbird/TtT_Fires_map_byEvent.html

Anyway I thought I would share a couple of pictures, the first two are from unknown source the last 4 she took with her iPhone.   Hopefully they contain this soon so she can come home this week sometime.

I am adding pictures and video to this post as she sends them to me to keep checking back.

Saturday night

Saturday night

Saturday afternoon on the drive in

Sunday afternoon

Sunday Night looking up the canyon from Manitou

 

Monday mid-day

Monday mid-day

Monday mid-day, same for the video below.

 

Monday afternoon

Smoke is knocking everything down from the sky

Monday afternoon

 

Monday afternoon

 

Loner truck from another dept that Ashley is using

 Tuesday lunch- thought she was coming home today but the fire grew to the south and is threating Cave of the Winds.  This is the parking lot, she is on structure protection there now.

 Off the back deck at Cave of the Winds Tuesday 1pm

 2 pictures above are off the back deck at Cave of the Winds Tuesday about 1pm, you can see the slurry bomber heading in on the 1st photo.  This is about 1/4 of a mile from Cave of the Winds.



Slurry bombers Tuesday 3pm trying to protect Cave of the Winds

Taken 4pm Tuesday, location unknown

So about 8pm last night my wife called and she got pulled from Cave of the Winds and sent up to the northside with 4 trucks to try and save some homes.  LOTS of homes were lost as you most likely saw on the news.  

 View of the fire coming down into the neighborhood about 7-8pm

 Stopped on her way to the northside of the fire in Colorado Springs to pick up more help.  Lots of firefighters but no trucks or equipment for them to help.

 No words for the rest of the photos as it goes through the neighborhoods

Wednesday 7/24:  My wife was sent back into the neighborhoods about 1pm to try and save some houses.  She was hoping to come home today for a break but they needed the truck that she drives.

 Pump baby pump!!!!

 The fire is about 30-50 feet behind this house, they were losing the battle as the flames were rushing up the hill towards the house when a helicopter came over and dumped its load on the fire right in front of them.

Taken from the Colorado Springs Newspaper Facebook feed, just thought it was a cool photo.

 Sad

Wednesday Morning

Thursday AM:  So last night Ashley was released last night and headed home.  Much deserved break for her!  She is off until Sunday 7/1 when she goes in for her normal shift of Sun/Mon.  Hopefully by then the fire will be more under control and not threatening any structures so she does not get pulled into it again.  If she does get pulled back into the fire I will start a new blog post, this will be the last update on this one.  Below are a couple more things to share.

This helicopter drop saved this house, they were about to lose the house when it just showed up.  This happened on Wed and is the same neighborhood as photo above the firefighter and deer.

  

Manitou Springs Fire in action

Looking into 2012

Been kind of lazy with my posting lately but not really a lot to talk about. Just been training hard for the Red Hot 55K in Feb. With the Hardrock lottery last weekend and not getting in again of course really got me thinking about races for next year. My wife and I need to sit down and figure out what will work before everything sells out. Guess I better quit dragging my feet. Here is what I am looking at for 2012 from April on, now I just need to make some decisions.

April
28th- Collegiate Peaks 25 or 50 was thinking the 25 then Greenland a week later but maybe the 50 would be best.

May
5th- Greenland 50K
6th- Fort Collins Marathon (still want to get that Boston qual time)
12th- Quad Rock 50miler
19th- Buena Vista Adventure Race

June
2nd- Dirty Thirty 50K
16th- Mount Evans (one of my favorite races, 2 close to Black Hills to do?)
17th- Estes Park Marathon (only consider if doing Leadville)
23rd- Lake City 50 (only consider if doing Leadville)
22-24th- Black Hills 100
30th- Leadville Marathon (only consider if doing Leadville)

July
8th- Pace at Hardrock again- 50 miles (not sure if I can do this if I do Blackhills 100)
15th- Leadville 50 (only consider if doing Leadville)
14th- Devils Backbone 50 (only consider if doing Leadville)
14th- Summit County Adventure race

Aug
18-19th- Leadville 100
18-19th- Pike Peak ascent and marathon double (if I do Blackhills)

One race that I am eyeing due to being by my dad’s in MT is

Oct
Le Grizz 50

Thoughts? Or other races I might be missing that are not far away? I use the shorter races as practice training runs for the 100.

Quick Pikes Report

Well not a lot to say but that I guess I was sandbagging in my last post a little bit.

I went down the night before and stayed with the wife at the firehouse at the start line where she works. This is so nice to have this option. In the next few years I plan on doing the double and this will hopefully still be an option for free housing that weekend.

Anyways, I started in wave 2 and just cruised on a moderate hard pace up the hill. I did not want to put any real hard effort until after I broke treeline. I caught my first 1st Wave person about 3 miles up and for the next 10 miles to the finish it was 2 1/2 hours of saying "on your left", that got old real quick, especially the A-holes who thought because they were in the 1st wave that they did not have to share the trail or did not want to get passed by a second waver. There was a couple of times I had to elbow my way past someone.

Anyway ended with a 3:03:52 for 60th overall and 11th in my age group. I think that if I would not have had to pass so many people and if I would not have stopped for a beer 1/4 mile from the top of the mountain I would have broke 3 hours. There will always be a next time.

Results can be seen here.

Pikes Peak Ascent thoughts.

Well this weekend will be a fun new adventure for me. I will be running the Pikes Peak Ascent on Saturday which is about 13.3miles and 7500ft of gain. This a major mountain race in the Colorado region and is what some dudes like this guy live for. My plan is to just go and have fun running it under 4:15 so that I have a Wave 1 qualifier for the next 3 years in case I decide to run this again. The reasoning behind my outlook of not really racing it hard is that I am stuck in Wave 2 behind about 1000 people due to the fact that I did not have a fast marathon or half marathon time in the last 3 years to put me in Wave 1 since I have only been running trails. I had to use a trail marathon as a qualifier and of course it was not fast enough for Wave 1, oh well. I think I am in 3:00-3:15 shape but I expect to run between 3:45-4:00 with all the passing I will have to do even when running at an easy pace.

Should be fun!

Barr Trail Race

All I can say is that today I am hobbling around. I seem to always get more sore from the short stuff and more tired afterward from the long stuff. Today I am really sore in the calves and the feet from running my first race in the MT100's but the energy levels are good. Not sure if I will use these shoes again in a race. They seem to hurt my feet when trying to run fast down hill.

I really had no time goals or ideas for what to shoot for at this race since I have never ran it before. I figured I would just jog up and then try my best to bomb down somewhat hard, which is what I did. You can see in the pictures that I looked more worked heading down then up.

Heading up


Heading down


I hit the turn around which is about 6.3 miles and 3800ft higher than the start at over 10,000 feet above sea level around 1:23ish then bombed down in 44ish mins. I passed 6 people running down and was not passed by anyone which is great in my mind since I am not a strong downhill runner.

I finished the race in 2:07, not bad but not great. Now I have a time to shoot for next year, breaking 2 hours.

GZ has a great review of the race by clicking here.

Here is another great breakdown of the race by clicking here.

Log for the week of 5/12-5/18

This week has been a challenge just to be active for some reason. I have been tired and run down all week. It just seems like I am not recovering like I was last year from my workouts. By the end of the week I had a raging head cold. Good times. Anyway here is the breakdown for the week.

Monday: Off.. Took the day off work also and just relaxed. Even went to the movies.

Tuesday: Run 6.25 miles on the treadmill @ easy pace; 45 mins lifting weights

Wednesday: Easy run at Green Mountain to the top and back (4.5 miles)

Thursday: Run 6.25 miles on the treadmill @ easy pace; 30 mins lifting weights

Friday: Run road around Green Mountain the home over the top of Green Mountain (9.5 miles) Sore throat starting

Saturday: Run around Green Mountain for 12-13 miles. Turning into head cold

Sunday: Hike Pikes Peak via Crags route (14.5 miles, 4400 feet of gain, 8.5 hours, suffered due to feeling like crap from the cold, it was a long day but willed myself through it.

Total miles ran this week: 38.50 miles

Total hours for the week: 16 hours (8.5 spent on Pikes hiking)

It was a productive week overall, it was nice to get my 1st 14er summit for 2008 out of the way. That will make me 1 out of 3 for the year, not a good start. I was pretty much uneventful hike but I did suffer due to the head cold I had. Pounding head ache and could not breath because I was stuffed up. Hope this goes away, I want to put in over 60 miles this coming week running. We will see. Here is the link to all the pictures from the hike on Pikes. I am not going to write up a trip report like I usually do because this is such a common mountain for a lot of people. One thing that I will say is that the road and the building on top sure is an eye sore on such a pretty mountain.

http://picasaweb.google.com/shadmika/PikesPeakCragsRoute

Have a great week.

Shad