Monday, June 18, 2007

The Morning After

Sometimes I think I don’t remember that I live at sea level.

I’m sitting here with the world’s worst sunburn on the back of my legs, a sore knee, and sheer exhaustion after our Hallett Peak attempt yesterday. From 7:30am - 3pm, we were on our hike. 9 miles round trip. 2800 feet of elevation gain. Mostly above tree line. Ugh!!! It was a bit much for us. We ended up on the summit of Flattop Mountain at 11:15am, after scrambling up a snow field, and we were whooped. Winds were gusting to 60mph and beyond, and at times I had visions of us being blown off the mountain and down Tyndall Glacier! At any rate, the extra 1/2 mile to Hallett were deemed too much for our inexperienced selves, so we made the decision to begin our descent and call it a day. I’m actually okay with this decision, as it was probably the safest thing we could have done. We didn’t have any gear on us, and both of us were wearing shorts. Everyone who continued on had the heavy duty hiking boots, pants with gators, and poles. I bet they thought it was a miracle we even made it up there. And the altitude! I didn’t feel it until we got down….nausea all afternoon and the world’s worst headache. Why do I live at sea level? Why?

I had a WW heart attack on my hike yesterday when I became insatiably hungry and decided to eat whatever my body told me to eat. I think the grand total was 2 Sweet Salty Nut bars, 1 100 calorie bar, 2 handfuls of Planters nut mix (holy cow– very bad for you), and a 100 calorie breakfast bar, on top of my morning banana and muffin. I drank the equivalent of 10 bottles of water on the hike….and another 3 or 4 when we got back. I felt guilty about all of this until I ran a 7-hour hike through the Sparkpeople exercise calculator…..3,000+ calories burned! Well, I believe it. It was grueling. I think that I’ll be just fine when I meet my fellow TriDivas for the first time on Wednesday. They went running yesterday, but I think that my hike was more than sufficient to bring me up to speed with them.

So, two more vacation days. We’ll see how the weight turns out at the end of this. Jynell, I bet I’m back to the 150’s, so you will probably be the first to sustain the elusive 140’s.

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