Riding and Racing in Winter Park

 Tom and I went to join Stacee, Jess, Vivian, Matt, and Diane in Winter Park to ride.  Matt and I raced on Saturday while Jess and Stacee volunteered to make everything run smoothly.  Tom and Vivian went joy riding.

 On Sunday we went for a lovely ride in the rain.  O.k. it was wet and cold and we cut it a little short while still doing a rather serious ride.  Photos of the mud...

 Vivian and maps showing to illustrate Tom and Vivian feeling a bit lost on their joy ride...

 Me and the bike getting ready for the big Sunday mud ride.

 Tom is a consummate photographer. 

 We may be muddy, but we had a great time!

 No trip is complete without a dog who loves her belly to be rubbed and

 a dinner stop with Mom and Gerry at Pug Ryan's on the way home. 

Runtopia

We were looking for new and good trail runs in the Bend area and we had driven past a store a few times with the name Runtopia.  I suggested to Tom that we stop into this running store to get suggestions.  When we arrived, we found a new shop under construction whose goal was to support runners, rather than a more traditional running store focused on gear.  They will have (probably already do since I am just that far behind on my blogs) an ice bath and cool full leg compression and ice "socks".  I'm really not doing it justice.  The idea is to bring to the public the recovery resources provided to the most elite runners in the world.  The space is lovely and to make things better they have taps for good bear and kambucha and an entertainment center to keep one occupied while recovering.

Best of all for us the owner was amazingly friendly and sent us on one of our top 10 (top 5??) trail runs of all time, the soda springs/green lakes loop (see the previous post).  Closed to bikes, amazingly beautiful, and entirely runable.  Check them out if you are in Bend, we will next time we are there for sure.

Running Soda Creek/Green Lakes in Oregon

 I am really falling behind these days on the posts.  I'm still catching up with our final posts from Oregon. 

One day I will become some sort of consummate story teller.  In the mean time, here we go. 

The story of finding this trail will be in the next post.  Picking the right pictures for these posts is an eternal struggle.  This post has too many, but I already had a terrible time picking. 

 Lucky for us we did some river crossing early letting go of wet feet. 

 A series of panoramic pictures --- we are moving along the Soda Creek/Green Lakes loop.  Soon we have some good snow pictures --- still in July.

 As we neared the green lakes below, we were nearly out of water.  We were trying to ration... we each only brought one bottle on the trip.  Lucky for us, Tom noticed a couple with full camping gear, which meant a water filter.  They were kind and fun to talk to and loaned us their filter.  Such lovely water.

 Fun times in Green lake!