Obsessive running

107:  a chip off the old block

Another year older and another PW(personal worst): 46:56 in the Trossachs 10km trail race. I had won this race in its previous incarnation in 1990 after coming second the year before. The route has changed a bit over the years, it carves round the forest with four or five short sharp hills, lots of tight bends and a fair bit of debris from timber operations. My only intent this time was to help the local charity Rainbow Valley and to see if I could match my time of 8 years ago when I last did the race. I was within a minute of my 2006 time and pleased that Gregor (107) managed to come third for the second time despite a training regime of football and only running once a week.

My preparation had not been conducive to a good time as I had just returned from 3 weeks in the States. The only runs I had managed whilst there were an early morning in Yellowstone and a couple of runs in Central Park before arriving home on 17 September. I needed to run 85 miles by the end of the month if I was to achieve my monthly target of 100 miles. Apart from a couple of months when away on holiday or once with a torn muscle, I have managed this target every month since January 2012. It provides a sense of achievement during the lazy days of retirement and keeps me healthy apart from my feet which are suffering from a lifetime's abuse from energy-sapping activities.

The obsessive running gene kicked in as soon as I returned from the States. I had the cardio-vascular benefit from two and a half weeks at 7000 feet above sea level in the high plains of Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. I went out every day on getting home, twice in one day, and achieved my highest weekly mileage (62 miles) for twenty years.

These runs included a 6-mile run with the running group on the first wet and dark evening of the autumn. I had neglected to take a head torch with me but the other four who turned out were all properly equipped and took some tricky paths in the forest. There were lots of tree roots, steps, switchbacks, protruding rocks and occasional deep grass to trip over. I had to play follow my leader and fell behind the others, only the sound of Colin's heavy footsteps and an occasional flash of disappearing head torches kept me on track. The three women in the group had escaped, their beams of light were 300 metres in front as I gingerly jogged out of the forest. As we hit the road with some street lighting, my pride was aroused and I managed a 6:30 mile to catch them before the village.

The following four days involved another 34 miles of running so my muscles were still aching as I lined up at the start of the 10km trail race. I decided to run within myself and kept a steady pace all the way around. As usual, I lost some places between 2 and 5 kilometres but then made some places before the finish and even managed a steady sprint past a couple of runners.  I began to think where I could have saved time but this just confirmed that I still have all the symptoms of an obsessive runner. On reflection, this is not a bad thing and the sense of well-being was tangible as I completed my running log whilst enjoying a beer, chicken jalfrezie and watching the football.

New York

Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park

Central Park Reservoir looking east to Manhattan

View from the Staten Island Ferry

World Trade Center

Memorial Plaza at the World Trade Center

High Line Apartments

Scaffolding Art

Brooklyn Bridge

UN building from the Empire State Building

Chrysler Building

Cezanne cut-outs

Bryant Park

Times Square

These two were arrested shortly afterwards

Central Sation

After three weeks on the road, New York was to be our time to relax before the flight home but that is not easily done in New York. Even getting from Newark Airport to the hotel took two and a half hours on the hotel bus, which was a travesty of integrated transport. Then the perfectly located hotel on Sixth Avenue charged prices that we would have expected to include the internet and a decent breakfast but these were additional items.

There is no sense in describing all our activities in New York, we charged around places we had not visited previously and doubled up on the Museum of Modern Art and the Empire State Building. The highlights were the free ferry to Staten Island with its superb views of the Manhattan skyline, the community-managed High Line walkway through the former meatpacking district on the Lower West Side, and the Jeff Koons Retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Modern Art. We had walks and I had morning runs around Central Park and breakfast at a local Greek diner on Sixth Avenue. We admired the rectangular solidity of Central Station and visited Lower Manhattan. The scene of the 9/11 tragedy was overpowering.

We had a long conversation about the pending Scottish Independence referendum with an Italian/Brazilian who was now resident in New York. He couldn't understand the purpose of the vote as Scotland and the UK were perceived as mutually integrated by the rest of the world. He admonished us for defending the right to a ballot and said it would be hugely damaging for Scotland, the UK and the world if there were to be a Yes vote. This opinion was echoed by several other Americans we spoke to during our trip.

Like everyone else who visits New York, we found the prices high and relaxation difficult. The magic of the first visit in 1996 with our children was no longer there. We walked miles, as the taxis were slower than walking as they were the reason for and the victims of gridlock. They had to do twice the distance to stand still as Alice might have told them owing to the one-way systems. New York is a game designed to make everything seem bigger, slower and more expensive than it really is, no wonder Donald Trump has his tower there.

I calculated based on our trip that you could get two weeks in Wyoming, and that included the hire of a car and 1500 miles, for the price of 4 days in New York. The guy in the Apple Store who sold me an iPad agreed but he was waiting for his wife to retire before they decamped to Wyoming. He reckoned that he could get all the entertainment stuff he wanted online or from the memories of a life spent in the city and what he really wanted was the physical and mental stimulation of the great outdoors. We agreed and he managed to save me $100 on the iPad that I was going to buy. It was 8:30am on a Sunday morning and he said it would buy us lunch and he was just about right.

Much as I enjoy visiting cities, the numbing effect of New York airports and transport systems, the lack of courtesy in diners and public attractions like the Guggenheim museum together with the high tariffs for everything would not persuade me to rush back to New York. This even though we never managed to visit the superb Metropolitan Museum or obtain tickets for any of the shows we had wanted to see.

Colorado

Mesa Verde, cliff dwellings

Mesa Verde

Leaving Mesa Verde as the storm rolls in

Backlit by lightning

Micro Brewery in Durango

Downtown Durango

Letting off steam in Silverton

Durango train steam into Silverton

Well, you're the lucky one, we all wanted to be engine drivers

Silverton 

The Rockies from the Million Dollar Highway to Ouray

Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs

Surely Banksie hasn't got this far, Colorado City

I persuaded a gullible Texan to help me topple the balancing rock

Came across this fellah on my morning run

Our Arts and Crafts B&B near Manitou Springs

Colorado is probably the state I had most wanted to road trip. It has it all: the Rockies with four national parks, skiing at Aspen, Vail, and Breckenridge and it has the most active lifestyle in the USA with the commensurate healthiest population. The entire state is above 1000 metres so an ideal environment for aerobic training. All this and a reputation for some of the best microbreweries and a fairly radical take on life. But after a couple of weeks in Utah and Wyoming, it seemed like an anti-climax returning to Colorado. A state which enjoys 300 days of sunshine a year but was overcast and rainy for the five days we were there. We did not have a chance to witness the Rockies which were lost in the clouds.  It still provided a grand tour and, if anything increased my resolve for a more leisurely visit.

After leaving Moab we headed south-east uncertain about our next destination, we had no accommodation booked and had decided to play it by ear. Should we drive to Arizona and visit Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon, which we had visited a dozen years ago, or make for Mesa Verde instead? After breakfast in Moab, we decided that we would head down to the Needles section of Canyonlands and then maybe drive towards Four Corners where the states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet. But on reflection, there would be nothing there but an intersection of lines of latitude and longitude on a map. Heavy storms were predicted for Arizona so we decided to aim for Durango, on the basis that Bob Dylan had sung about it and it seemed to have a lot of accommodation.

We emerged from Canyonlands as the heavens opened and I took the forest road which climbed up to 10,000ft. It was like driving through a waterfall with no other vehicle on the roads and a soundtrack of whooshing wipers behind the distant claps of thunder. Eventually, we dropped down to Monticello, where we stopped for some gas and to buy coffee to calm our nerves. The road from here had more familiar landscapes of rolling countryside; no dramatic red sandstone cliffs or mountains, just small-town America. The road across to Cortez was bean bean-growing country with well-cultivated fields and long vistas into gentle landscapes.

Time was not on our side and, as we pulled up in Cortez at 4:30pm, I realised that it would be pushing it to visit Mesa Verde National Park but the alternative would mean a return trip back from Durango of 90 miles if we left it until tomorrow. Fortunately, the Tourist office had lots of good advice and they provided a map and highlighted all the points to stop on a 3-hour trip around the park. We then had a 40-minute drive to reach the park and a good 25 miles to the cliff dwellings which are the central attraction. Mesa Verde translates into English as "green table" which is a good description but there are some deep gorges that provide the sites for the cliff dwellings.

The climb up to the Mesa Verde plateau was like visiting a lost continent. We managed to take in all the important stop-offs, the advice from the tourist office had been apt and concise. Mesa Verde National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is the largest archaeological preserve in the United States and was designated in 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt to protect some of the best-preserved cliff dwellings in the world. It is small as National Parks go at just 81 square miles but features numerous ruins of dwellings and villages built by the ancient Pueblo people or Anasazi. There are over 4000 archaeological sites and over 600 cliff dwellings.

The Anasazi inhabited Mesa Verde between 600 and 1300 AD. They were mainly subsistence farmers, growing crops on nearby plateaus or mesas. Their primary crop was corn but the men were also hunters, which supplemented their food supply. By the year 750AD the people were building mesa-top villages made of adobe and in the late 1190s, they began to build the cliff dwellings for which Mesa Verde is famous. These are structures built within caves and under outcroppings in cliffs - including Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in the USA. The mesa is now extensively forested and seems to have a microclimate of its own.

As we headed back the skies darkened and we watched a thunderstorm pass to the north, the skies heaving and sparking with alarming power. We dropped down to the plain and drove the last 40 miles to Durango. For the first time on the trip, we were lost. I had driven pretty well to the hotel using the street grid as a guide but we asked directions from a local and were sent across the river in a flow of traffic that included a psychopath in a truck behind me. He wanted to exceed the speed limit and for me to do the same. He cut me up and we had angry words that detracted from the generally good experience of driving in the States. We had to retrace our steps to find the hotel, which was smack in the centre of the town, pretty well where we had been before being misdirected.

It was after 9pm as we headed out to find some food. A nearby diner Steamworks Brewing doubled as a bar and microbrewery and served good food and excellent craft beers. I got into a conversation about the beers, the blackboard gave the date of brewing, the alcoholic strength, the bitterness and darkness of each brew. I asked for an explanation of this system of classification and then chose the beer that would be nearest to my preferred style; the rules worked and I enjoyed a pint of Third Eye pale ale. As we were about to leave at 11pm, the manager invited me to visit the brewery located in the heart of the throbbing establishment. It was strange to tour the facilities and hear about the source of barley and hops inside the glass walls that were surrounded by a large bar/diner. Over a hundred customers were enjoying the products of the brewery as they cheered on the Sunday night American football game that was being broadcast live.

By dint of taking in Mesa Verde the day before we had some spare time and spent a couple of hours in the morning strolling around the vibrant town centre of Durango. It is a university and tourist town so has retained a semblance of prosperity that is missing in most town centres. We had been wakened in the hotel by the whistle of a steam train leaving for the excursion to Silverton, a steep climb into the heart of the Rockies. We decided to take the same route and were surprised at the elevation reached, 10,970ft by the road over the Coal Bank and Molas passes. Aileen had her eyes closed as we climbed ever upwards on the highway with drops of 1500 feet on our side and massive juggernauts coming down the hill and threatening our road space. The descent into Silverton was equally traumatic and prompted us to take a break in what is a semi-derelict tourist town.

As we arrived the second steam train of the day was pulling in and the couple of hundred passengers tumbled out to explore this former mining town that looked like a stage set for the Wild West. We made a tour of the remaining shops, had a coffee and filled up with gas before tackling the next stage of the highway through the Rockies. I asked at the gas station whether the road was as steep as the road from Durango which had frightened my wife.  They laughed and explained that this was the really scary section and suggested that I blindfold Aileen for the next section. I didn't pass on this information and a few miles up the road she hunkered down and closed her eyes whilst we travelled ever upwards to a height of 11,018ft over the Red Mountain Pass. It was in the cloud and it did have a dangerous feel about it but fortunately, there was little other traffic on the road, which also goes under the moniker of the million-dollar highway.

The small town of Ouray had a touristy feel to it and we stopped for a late lunch. Thereafter the roads became less spectacular and we travelled through Montrose towards Gunnison where, after several hours of steady rain, we decided to call it a day. We found a hotel and a restaurant that served a wholesome meal for $12 and also had some good beers on draft. It was heaving with students and locals taking advantage of the cheap meal night and gave the impression that in small-town America living costs have outstripped wages since the recession.

The next day we had decided to get to somewhere near Colorado Springs and visit the Garden of the Gods or take the cable car up Pikes Peak. Unfortunately, the weather remained bleak but we found a spectacular Arts and Crafts B&B and then had the afternoon to explore the Garden of the Gods. In the evening we found an exceptional Italian restaurant before retiring to an empty house with features and facilities that were quite outstanding. 

We had to plan for our final day and decided to travel to Denver via the Castle Rock Outlet Center. As always with these places, you can waste a lot of time but we had hardly looked at shops during the road trip. We continued the journey in the late afternoon and immediately became entwined in the 5-lane rush hour traffic jam heading to Denver. It took us an hour and a half to complete the 35 miles to the airport hotel. Our magnificent circular road trip in the west was over, we had covered over 3000 miles and after a final night, we dumped the car at the airport and caught a flight to New York on 9/11. It seemed that flights were less full than usual on this date. We were reminded that our daughter was flying back from the States after a summer vacation as a student on this date in 2003 and had been held up in Washington by the attacks. 

Utah, Canyonlands and Arches NP - the movie locations

Colorado Canyon near Fisher Tower

Looking down on Vernal from Flaming Gorge

Untah tribal lands

Interstate 20 at Crescent Junction

Moab

La Sal Mountains from Arches NP

Balanced Rock, Arches NP

Balanced Rock and Balanced Harleys in Arches NP

South Window, Arches NP

Lost in Arches NP

The organ, Arches NP

Walking up Park Avenue, Arches NP

Looking back down Park Avenue in Arches NP

Looking through Mesa Arch towards La Sal mountains, Canyonlands NP

Tourist

Walking out to Murphy's Point

Murphy's Point, Island in the Sky, Canyonlands NP

Canyonland's NP near the Upheaval Dome

Stillwater Canyon, Canyonlands NP

Shafer's Trail, Canyonlands NP

Landscape Arch in Devil's Garden, Arches NP

Devil's Garden Trail, Arches NP

Fin Canyon in Devil's Garden, Arches NP

Diamond Window, Devil's Garden

Fin Canyon on Primitive Trail, Arches NP

Chipmunk  on the primitive trail

Fin Canyon

Three Gossips, Courthouse Towers, Arches NP

Newspaper Rock Historic Monument, Petroglyphs, Needles section, Canyonlands

North and South Six Shooter Peaks, Canyonlands Needles section

Driving into the Needles section of Canyonlands NP

Big Spring Canyon, Canyonlands NP

The Needles, Canyonlands NP

Utah contains the most remarkable and mesmerising landscapes but it is a state full of contradictions. As we arrived from the Flaming Gorge in Wyoming, we descended into the land of red sandstone. But the north of Utah is ravaged by mineral workings and the journey from Vernal via Roosevelt to Duchnesse was a highway from hell as we diced with massive oil tankers replete with matching trailers on a carriageway that exhibited all the bleak roadside decorative effects that define the USA. Massive signs for real estate, seedy motels, commercial premises spreading like cancer along the arterial highways, a clutter of scrap vehicles and equipment, a lack of grass and trees, an absence of any pedestrian infrastructure and a wirescape that shows no respect for Utah's magnificent bare red or grey landscapes.

We had driven 300 miles when we reached Duchnesse and decided to book into a motel. It was clean and new but when we asked for places to eat in Duchnesse, the County town, we were told the nearby pizza place was not very good, nor was the Chinese takeaway but there was a bar in the centre that served hot food. We went off to find it but rapidly retreated when we were confronted by a bank of one-armed bandits, men in stetsons and plates of food that could feed villages. We retreated to the cafe next door which was frequented by more men in Stetsons who shouted at their kids and wives and a menu that was high on calories and low on unprocessed foods. We escaped with the consolation that it had been cheap and returned to the motel to watch the adverts on TV which were occasionally interrupted by a programme.

The next day we headed up the scenic Indian Canyon on the 91 highway but we were once again tangling with the oil tankers on switchback roads that climbed to 9114ft.  We descended back to the plain passing a massive coal-burning power station and railways that told you that the earth was being extensively plundered. The town of Price held no attractions apart from observing the extraction and transport of minerals by rail and road. It was a drab and desolate mining country so we headed across the most tedious part of the route yet to Interstate 20 at Green River. We drew off the highway at Crescent Junction and took in the views of the Untah and Ouray Tribal lands to the north before continuing the journey south on the 191 to Moab. After the airfield the classic Utah landscapes beckoned, and we were confronted by massive red cliffs and monumental rockscapes, many of them familiar from a lifetime of browsing movies.

Moab is a tourist oasis and was fairly quiet in the late summer season. We had a light lunch in a vegetarian cafe before booking in at the hotel. Moab was to be our longest stop on the trip - 3 nights -  so that we could explore Canyonlands and Arches National Parks and enjoy some late summer heat. But we seemed dogged by Scottish weather, the pristine sunshine of the morning had given way to cloudy skies as we headed for Arches National Park. The quite staggering assembly of red sandstone arches and monuments did not have the wow factor that we were to witness a couple of days later on a return visit. Arches is a relatively small NP and after driving into the heart of the park we had a couple of walks around the Balanced Rock and Windows sections. On the return, we walked along the dry canyon floor of Park Avenue, a quite awe-inspiring dry river bed between massive rock architecture. The street was empty and it seemed a perfect end to the day.

The next day we had reserved for Canyonlands. It is split into three districts around the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers and we headed for the northern section which is known as 'Island in the Sky'. It was 25 miles from Moab on empty roads. We were surprised on a perfect morning to be more or less the first to arrive at 8am. We decided to miss Dead Horse Point and drive to the highlights beyond the park entrance. We started at Mesa Arch and the views of the Colorado River canyon and La Sal mountains alone made the visit worthwhile. We were ahead of the crowds and had most of the sites to ourselves. We drove on to the Grand Viewpoint Overlook before walking out in the morning heat to Murphy's Point which gives stunning vistas to the Green River snaking its way through Stillwater Canyon. A superb walk and on our return we came across a racer snake as it emerged from a crack in the red sandstone pavement we were crossing.

We continued to the Green River Overlook and then the Upheaval Dome, a feature so complex that even geologists cannot explain its formation. Is it a meteorite crater or a dissolved salt dome? Whatever it made for good walking and we clambered to the far end of the walk. All the other walkers that made the trip were French or German and it did strike us that Americans seldom stray too far from their cars. A lady from Michigan had excused herself from the extra mile by saying that she had to get back for her dog which was gently baking in the car. We had overdosed on sandstone, sun and snakes by 3pm so headed back to Moab for ice cream but not before visiting the Schafer Canyon Overlook and the trail that sweeps down to the lower plateau and Colorado River.

In the evening we dined at a fine Japanese restaurant, Sabaku Sushi, and it served the best food yet. We met an amateur astronomer on the street and he invited us to view the moon through his telescope - it provided a remarkable view of the moon's craters, although we were a bit taken back when he asked for a dollar. Everything has a price in Utah apart from the landscapes, they are free unless they hold minerals in which case they are devastated.

The next morning brought sunshine and we headed back to Arches NP to seek out the more remote corners and eventually to take a long walk in the Devil's Garden. It was a spectacular outing and after visiting all the arches we decided to complete a 7-mile walk on the primitive trail that follows miniature stone cairns over and through fins of sandstone with some tricky scrambling involved. We completed this in the heat of the day and returned to Moab thoroughly spent from the exertions. However, a swim in the pool revived us sufficiently to explore the Colorado River east of Moab by a drive of 25 miles upriver to Fisher's Tower.

In the evening light, it was a glorious excursion and continued what had become a tour of the shooting locations for hundreds of movies including the Rio Grande, The Comancheros, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Thelma and Louise, Con-air, Geronimo, Star Trek and 127 hours. We were fully sated with the scenery so had our final meal at the Twisted Sistas cafe, another good choice although it must be stated that Moab also has its share of dreadful eating places.

We left early the next morning and headed to the Needles section of Canyonlands NP, 70 miles south of Moab. The long road into the Needles from the I65 passed some remarkable scenery with early carvings on the rock, some inselbergs as well as the more famous needles themselves. We were time-limited as we wanted to visit Mesa Verde in the late afternoon before driving on to the accommodation in Durango that we had just booked. So we returned early in the afternoon choosing to take the forest trail route over another high pass to Monticello. The threatened electric storm had arrived and for the second time on the trip, it was a hard rain that was gonna to fall. We stopped for coffee at a gas station in Monticello to recover from the storm and then drove through the heart of the bean-growing district to Cortez in Colorado en route to Mesa Verde.

North Window, Arches NP