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... wish I had your level of commitment.
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Well...it's partly self-discipline (I am pretty structured) and partly my environment. Both my city (Colorado Springs) and state have a very fitness focused culture. The local newspaper's lifestyle section every Thursday is entitled "Out There"...a total focus on hiking, mountain biking, backpacking, skiing, etc.. There's always a guide to some hiking trail (difficulty measured in little boot symbols...a "4 Booter" is a real challenge!). The paper also devotes much of Tuesday's lifestyle to a "Fitness Challenge" and is currently documenting the fitness progress of a guy and a gal who were willing to have their fitness improved publicly. Somedays it seems that a quarter of the cars & SUVs have bike racks on their roofs...of late I've been noticing a fair number with bike racks
and ski racks year-round. Add in an Olympic Training Center (Olympians are everywhere) and 5 fitness oriented military bases and a populace that will vote tax increases for trails but not for anything else. As a retired USAF officer, I'm able to use the best-in-the-Air-Force $6.5M fitness facility at Peterson AFB (though try to avoid it at mid-day as it's an overflowing madhouse). General Eberhardt (Commander of Northern Command...the military's homeland defense command) just had a $400,000 lighting system (all solar) installed along the base's 3 mile jogging trail so that no-one could use the excuse of darkness to get out of running. It's very hard to live here without being constantly exhorted to get out and start hiking, running and biking.
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Running was designed for cature and escape, not recreation.
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Hoo boy...it would probably be best if you not say that out loud if you ever come to Colorado. The biggest sporting event in the state in terms of spectators (much less participants) is the "Bolder Boulder". It's a 10km race (not even a half marathon) that attracts a mind-boggling
40,000 runners and even more mind-boggling
100,000 spectators who fill UC's Soldier Field (the finish line) totally to overflowing.
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So, I hope some day I'll see you somewhere out there above the 10,000' line or above the tree line. You'll recognize me -- I'll be the puddgy, little old guy on the 4X4 ATV, Snickers in one hand and the smell of a Twinkie on my breath.
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And I would be equally honored to meet you in person as well. But it's rather unlikely you'd be astride an ATV in Colorado at the higher altitudes. ATVs are pretty much banned in most of the national forests (leastwise above 8000 feet) within the state (due to pressure from the outdoors crowd which hates the noisy things)...and, of course, they are totally banned in all designated wildnerness areas. And we're steadily adding new wilderness areas...IIRC, something like 2.3 million acres of new wilderness should be designated in the next couple of years. Utah is quite ATV friendly, Colorado is largely hostile to them.
The twinkie-breath I can handle though.
