Colorado Running Guide: Santa Fe part 2b.

                            Santa Fe trail

    Rating 4.3: flat

                                                              http://www.elpasoco.com/parks.asp

                In my latest post I wrote about the Santa Fe Trail, but it was incomplete and without pictures because I only ran on the trail for a mile or two. I actually failed a second time to run the Santa Fe trail, but it was an interesting story, and can mostly be avoided if you decide to run it. After Google Earthing, yeh it’s a verb now, but spell checker disagrees, the trail I thought that I had a pretty good understanding of its location. I thought that I could just travel to Palmer Lake through the Monument exit, off I-25. This logic was mostly true, but I drove to the wrong side of the lake, and I couldn’t see where the actual trail starts because it was getting dark. In conclusion, a lack of planning and a random bobcat siting diverted my run a few more days. This mistake sucked because I had used up some car borrowing political capital just so I could go running, and I just ended up going to Five Guys without exercising. After some extensive research on the El Paso County P&R website, I had a better idea where the trail began, plus I thought I may have seen the trailhead after failure two. Finally this past Sunday I took a much needed study break and I drove back to the Monument trail head to go for a run.

                Once I finally got to the trail head there was a well labeled map, I guess it’s getting its internet debut, which showed where the different trailheads were. There were a few different trails; the first was the Front Range Trail System that haphazardly connects different areas from Pueblo, Colorado to Denver. Within the FRTS, the Santa Fe Regional Trail runs from the South Gate of the Air Force Academy to Palmer Lake/Monument, Colorado. The Santa Fe Trail is about 16 miles in total, but is only well marked from the South Gate of the Air Force Academy to the North Gate of the Academy and also the path that I ran on Sunday

                Starting at the Monument trailhead the well packed dirt trail is guided by the Santa Fe Railroad which winds around the different rock formations, cool, but less interesting than the Garden of the Gods, for about 3.2 miles until it tapers out alongside Palmer Lake. The trail as part of the FRTS has three mile markers and one imaginary mile marker. The beginning mile marker is the imaginary one, if there were a marker than it would read 53 miles, the distance from the beginning of the FRT in Pueblo? After that there is the 54^th, 55^th, and the 56^th mile marker placed just before the lake. This means if you run all the way to the lake and around it you have run about 6.2 miles or 10K.

                The actual trail started off a little rocky, figuratively, the first thing that you see besides the gorgeous Rocky Mountains and the awesome rock formations is a storage area for El Paso county park vehicles. Not only was it ugly, but the vehicle area hadn’t been maintained so it was just a giant mess of ugly white utility vehicles and weeds. The trail did get progressively better there were some pine trees at many points whose foliage had fused together to create some shade over the trail to grant protection from the brutal December sun. Seriously, it has been 50-60 degrees here for the past week, Dec 14^th timeframe. After the small forest type areas, about a mile into the trail, it continues along the railroad to wrap around some rock formations in a relatively secluded area. Then it continues for another two miles to Palmer Lake. I don’t know much about Palmer Lake, but it appears as you some around the last corner of the trail. I’ve included some pictures of the lake.

 

                                                                           

                                                   

Colorado Springs Running Guide:Santa Fe Trail

Santa Fe Trail part one

     I have been wanting to try the Santa Fe Trail for several days now, but I haven't been able to because of school work or a ride to get to the trail head. While finishing my school work and studying for finals are integral to my success, especially at this point in the semester, I decided that getting a ride to the trail wasn't. This was a serious mistake because I completely misjudged the distance to the trail from my dorm. Most of my friends know this is definitely a weakness. It was actually three miles which wouldn't be that bad if I wasn't trekking over the mountainous terrain on the way. I was expecting to run for 30 maybe 40 minutes but this gross underestimate prolonged my run to 50 minutes, approximately seven miles. Again, seven miles is fine without the rolling mountains of the academy.

     The Santa Fe trail runs along the Santa Fe Railroad which runs all the way from Pueblo to Denver. I'm not sure how far the actual running trail stretches, but I know it goes from the south gate of the Air Force Academy to Lake Palmer. I guess I'll have to run it twice in a row to figure it out. 

     Despite the torturous hills I talked about earlier, the mile or so of running on the Santa Fe Trail was well worth it. It is very flat compared to Garden of the Gods and especially the Academy. It is pretty secluded from my perspective which was just in the general area of the Academy with the exception of the random sixty car train. I'm not sure if I liked the train or not because it was so loud, I guess it added character or whatever. The path is made of packed dirt which is good to run on unless you are wearing white shoes like I did. I look forward to running the trail again, but I hope to drive to the lake Palmer area of the trail so I can take some pictures and try running there. So far I have been impressed.  

To be continued...

  

CSprings Running Guide

I travel almost every weekend for debate, and I need an incentive to find time in a busy schedule to exercise at the AF Academy. It's not that I don't like to exercise, I really like running. My father was a marathoner, so I grew up running a-lot. For instance I ran my first 10K when I was 11, a tradition we have continued every year. I also ran competitively as a secondary and partly complementary sport to wrestling, losing weight, endurance. I actually made it to the Maryland State Championships in the 4x800 relay. Despite enjoying running the AF academy trails are extremely scenic, but a bit too hilly to run every day so I don't have much of an incentive to exercise. However the Colorado Springs Area is full of amazing running trails located at the base of the Colorado Rockies. I'm using this running guide as an incentive to leave the academy and run some flatter areas in the Colorado Springs Area.

Garden of the Gods Park
4.1/5

http://www.gardenofgods.com/home/index.cfm

     After school ended on Friday I drove 15 minutes or so to the Garden of the Gods Park. The park has a plethora of trails winding around the random red rock formations that seem to characterize the geography immediately before the Rocky Moutains. At USAFA we have one formation, only about two miles north, that all of the Freshmen run to after recognition, once they are officially accepted into the wing as a cadet.

     I didn't reach the park until about 4:20 so I only had about thirty minutes of day light after taking a couple pictures. Once I began I realized that I wasn't used to the 7000 feet of elevation since I went to Slovenia for 10 days so I was huffing and puffing the first mile. After I re-acclimated to oxygen deprived Colorado, the run was enjoyable since it was about 60 degrees, I guess like 15-16 Celsius, and the scenery was magnificent. It is difficult to tell from the photos, but Pikes Peak is right behind the Garden of the Gods. It was nice to see the sunset behind Pikes Peak and the random rock formations.      

   I outlined the path that I took below. I started at a visitor center area shown in the photograph to the right This area had the most rock formations, it was paved, which I appreciated due to an injured toe, and it was relatively flat to run, but it is wasn't as secluded as the Scotsman trial. The Scotsman trail consisted of packed dirt which wasn't too difficult to run on, but it was a little hilly at some points, and there was some horse shit, but I am sort of used to it from our horse(s) at home.The Third and final part of the run was on the actual road that people drove on to see the rock formations, but it was later in the day so there were only a few cars. The road was paved, but it was a bit hilly, nothing like the academy hills, but not as flat as I would have liked. Through the three different parts of the run I think I ran 4 miles in 26:16. My favorite was the Scotsman trail despite the horse shit. It wrapped around the park on a cool ridge line where I could see the sun set on the Rockies to the left and the red rock to the right. The yellow region on the map below is where I would like to try running the next time I got to Garden of the Gods
    

Merry Thanksgiving

http://internationaldebateacademy.blogspot.com
Over Thanksgiving Break I had the opportunity to travel to beautiful and freezing Slovenia. The trip was organized by IDAS or the International Debate Academy in Slovenia. After the pleasure of an everlasting flight from Denver to Toronto to Frankfurt to Ljubljana and a two hour bus ride from the Ljubljana Airport in Slovenia to a beautiful alpine resort called the hotel Spik located in the shadows of the Julian Alps. The Hotel Spik is located in a small town called Kranjska-Gora which is about 20 minutes from the border between Austria, Italy, and Slovenia. We spent most of our time in the hotel due to the in-climate weather and our tight training schedule. Once we arrived at this overly priced hotel we went to a meeting that kicked off the eight day journey which was IDAS.

Being new to the British Parliamentary Debate Forum I enjoyed a practice debate between some of the best BP debaters to walk the earth including the English as a second language debate champions and the United Kingdom debate champions. I learned that this style Differed from American Parliamentary Debate since there were four teams with two members. Two of the teams make up the upper house, the teams opening the debate, and the other two teams make up the lower house, the teams closing and summarizing the debate.

After this lovely opening debate, I reluctantly forced my sleep deprived body to a social event to meet many of the other debaters. We used this social time to discuss the intricacies of this style, and world politics. These discussions were fantastic!

The next morning was awful, I could hardly wake up for the first day of training. Much of what we did on a day to day basis is on the IDAS blog. The typical day consisted of a morning lecture, morning activity, morning debate, lunch, two afternoon electives about important world events, an afternoon debate, and then dinner. The first day was the most memorable because I was told several times that I spoke like a machine gun. I guess it was because I had done about ten American parliamentary tournaments up to that point. I gradually got better. I don't really remember anything in the schedule beginning with morning since we were so busy discussing the different electives that we have seen. I think the second night was country night, so there was a booth set up for the twenty-four different countries that were represented. I guess it was from the plethora of culture, but all I can remember from country night is the extremely strong apple juice in a makeshift bottle that one of the Lithuanians covertly pulled from their backpacks.

Again the next morning was awful, I felt like I was slapped in the face with culture from the night before. We followed much of the same format except that I was getting better at BP since I learned to slow down and began to adapt a general format for speaking. More importantly that night was Salsa night y yo pude practicar mi espanol con mis amigos de Venezuela. Me disfrute porque yo aprendi SALSA. At first it was really difficult because I hadn't really embraced the culture surrounding Salsa, but then it became much easier. Salsa actually isn't that hard especially if you have a really good partner.

It was becoming far easier to wake up in the morning especially since SALSA only lasted until about 12 PM or so. I got a lot more from anything with the dreaded adjective of morning. We learned about the Romani people in the lectures this day which was really interesting from an American Perspective. It seemed that the U.S. followed most European initiatives like Civil Rights, health care reform, etc, but in this case Europe seems to have regressed one hundred years based on their discriminatory views towards the Romani people. Especially in the case of their expulsion from model E.U. countries like France and Italy. I think the social event for this night was karaoke and stand-up comedy night. It was really late so I'll I can remember is doing the macarana with the Venezuelans.

Thanksgiving:  I didn't like the last day in Kranjska Gora partly because I was forcibly dressed like a women for what Europeans call a Kiche party and I was told Merry Thanksgiving. For these reasons lets just skip it...

Black Friday: We traveled from Kranjska Gora to the Lake Bled. It is a very popular tourist spot in the Alps with a beautiful lake containing an island with a medieval castle sitting upon it. It was very snowy when we arrived so we had to picture what it would look like without the overcast from the postcards that we found.We went to an excellent pizza joint where we all ordered over sized pizzas filled with an assortment of delicious European cheeses. After a little site seeing we left Bled and traveled to the Youth Hostels at the University of Ljublana. The rooms at the dorm were not as luxurious as those at the Hotel Spik, but they were still nice for Eastern Europe. 

Black Friday continued: The tournament was held at the administrative faculty of the University of Ljubljana, this was one of many different subject centers dispersed throughout the city. I think Admin included social sciences as well. My partner Dave and I did well we received a 2 and a 1. These rankings are out of four so we were pretty happy with our performance. That night we toured the city from the Ljubljana castle which rose in the middle of the city. We also went to an English Pub called the Cutty Shark, or something like this, where I had a delicious hot chocolate. 

Tournament Day 2: Dave and I did well throughout the tournament acquiring eleven points. It wasn't clear whether 11 points was enough to break, but we were to find out at 1030 at the break party at an underground club called the Companero. After a great dinner at a Slovenian named place we went across the street to the club where it was announced that we were 12th out of the 16th teams that would advanced. Dave and I were really happy because there were sixty teams. I was less happy since we had to leave what was essentially the last party to get some sleep.

Tournament Day 3: We won our Quarterfinal Round, I think the topic was about the Middle East issuing an oil embargo on France until they removed the Burka Ban. In the Semi-Final round we were going up against one very good team, the ESL champions and a team I think everyone voted for by default so we did not advance to the finals. To be fair the topic was on the European Central Band and we were the only non-European team in the round. The tournament wrapped up, and we did a-lot of sight seeing on the last night. Many photos are to come on Facebook.  

The photo below is a picture of the Julian Alps in Kranjska-Gora. This was the view from my room at the Hotel Spik.  

The Hotel Spik

This is a picture of the obilesk in downtown Ljubljana, Dave snuck into the picture 

A restaurant that we ate at, pretty good

 Some friends at the Companero discotec.

This is one of the many famous bridges in Ljubljana. The Dragon on the Dragon Bridge is actually an interesting story. The Greek mythological hero Jason stole a golden fleece from King Aetes in Greece. Jason and his fellow Argonauts crossed the Black Sea went up the rives Danube, Sava, and finally to the Ljubljana marshes where Jason killed the Ljubljana Dragon.