There's No Place Like Emerald Mountain (Part 1 of 3)

View from top of Emerald Mountain looking south - August, 2025

Scritch, scritch. Huff, huff. Scritch, huff, huff, huff. Uhh! Oooof!!!
That’s me trotting down the trail, hitting a rock with one toe and finding myself all fours, having yanked my upper hamstrings but good. I take in the browns, yellows and dark oranges and burgundys of the crunchy leaves under my body. I take a breath. Nothing is broken, I can still hobble along. I dust off my gloved hands and running tights, and move on. 

I’m here on Emerald Mountain because of the deal I made with myself when hiking the Colorado Trail (CT) last July with my daughter. (The CT Part I and The CT Part II.) As I dragged up and down Thirteeners carrying more weight than I wanted to in my pack, I fantasized about the good ole days of doing Ironman - after all, that was just a one day thing. I didn’t have to get up each morning, unrecovered from the day before, and do it all over again, like I was doing on the CT. 

The CT experience taught me a lot. My top lessons: 
1) Charlotte has the patience of Job and the attitude of sunshine.
2) I can do more than I think I can - albeit more slowly than I think I should. 
I came off the CT ready for a one-day goal, and decided on the Run Through Time Trail Marathon in Salida this coming March. With Charlotte, of course.

This may not seem like a lofty goal to some - but for me, it is. My training has two components: increasing mileage (doable over time), and more time on trails (daunting). 

Years ago I did some trail training, but after a fall resulting in pain and tingling in my hands and wrists, I threw in the towel. I was scared of getting hurt again, so I stopped running trails. In hindsight, I can see that my life got smaller because of that fear and the choice I made. 

I started to address that fear and live a bit larger last March when Charlotte and I ran the Run Through Time Trail Half-Marathon - when crossing the finish line, I had completed my first trail race. However, the training for that half-marathon was on snowy roads. So when I committed to the full marathon, I committed to running on Emerald. It was time to face my fear.

When I headed up those trails on the last weekend in August, it was my first time to run Emerald in a decade. I made it to the top and was proud. But making it through the run without crashing and burning was my #1 point of pride. And though I’ve crashed since then, I continue to run Emerald. I just have to focus and use my core to lift those feet a little higher! Because being up there is worth the risk.

Running on Emerald Mountain is special. 

On Emerald, there is the sense of my body moving along the undulating trail. There is the sight of the sun climbing, beaming down on the aspen: shiny golden fountains erupting out of long white trunks. There is the effort of hoofing it uphill, lungs puffing white clouds into the chill fall morning, and the contrasting warmth of the day at the top. The fun of cruising along switchbacks that double back on themselves, ducking under tree limbs that twist across the trail, blackened and grasping, like something out of Snow White’s enchanted wood. 

In an ideal world, I would spend most of my day, every day, running those trails. But, since there are things like life, and work, and the injury I mentioned in the first paragraph, resulting in time spent healing, running up there isn’t a daily occurrence. So I keep running on Emerald in my heart and mind most days, and savor the time when I actually get to run there. Do I float to the top, fly like the wind up or down the trail? No. Some days are hard going, and I’m challenged to put one foot in front of the other. But running on Emerald is the best, even on the worst days.


Stay tuned: more to come on Emerald and marathon training.