Weekend Recap: Denver Oktoberfest

In June, I wrote my summer bucket list… and then I only accomplished about half the things on the list. But I still loved the idea, and so I made a fall bucket list two weeks ago. Well, that fall bucket list has already been a huge success! A lot of my friends have been eagerly wanting to join me for some of the activities on it, and I love looking at the list and picking something out to do for the weekend. I know this is laughably Type A, but my life is so much better with a to-do list 🙂

On Friday, I headed downtown to check out Denver Oktoberfest. I had never really heard much about it before, but it turns out that Denver has one of the biggest Oktoberfests in the whole country. Who knew?! My friend Kelly and I decided to go in costume, and met up with a bunch of friends who were in town for a wedding.

In addition to all the beer, brats, and pretzels you could want, Oktoberfest had a few competitions that were really fun. For example, keg bowling:

I participated in a costume contest, even though I knew it was over for me the second a guy showed up in lederhosen with his two year old daughter in a dirndl. My friends tried to see if they could find a puppy for me to hold to even out the competition… but no such luck 🙂 So instead, I headed over to the stein hoisting competition to try my luck there.

I think my shoulders are reasonably strong (or at least, I do okay at Orangetheory), so I was hoping to do well at stein hoisting. But wow, a stein full of beer is heavy! I lasted about two minutes, at which point my left arm started slowly drifting downward. The official came by and warned me to keep my arms at shoulder height, but there was no stopping that rogue ghost arm as it continued dropping… and I was out. Perhaps it should be my new life goal to train for this for next year?! A quick Google search revealed that a full stein of beer is only actually about 5 pounds, so it seems my goal needs to be to train for endurance rather than weight.

Although I had planned on only staying out till 7pm and then getting a good night’s sleep, all the fun meant I didn’t head home till 11pm. Whoops! So much for resting up for the wedding I was going to the next night. On the plus side, everyone else going to the wedding (including the groom) was out till 2am… so I wasn’t the worst of the bunch 😉

Saturday morning, though, I woke up determined to do something good for my body after all that marzbier. (Um, and maybe a slice of buffalo chicken pizza on my way home.) I woke up and pretty much immediately started getting ready for a run. I wanted to hit the Coalton trail system near my house and see if I could go a little bit further than last weekend’s 7 mile run.

If you read my post on Saturday about the pumpkin spice waffles I cooked up post-run, you already know the story. Basically, after checking the trail map, I thought I’d go 4.2 miles out before turning around… but I decided to bump that up to 4.5 miles so I’d end at an even 9 miles. But then I was enjoying the trail so much that I ended up staying out for 5 miles on the outbound. That meant I finished 10.1 miles (oops, didn’t run tangents), and averaged about an 8:30 pace! That’s way faster than on any long run I’ve ever done in my life, and this was on trails!

I was so excited by how strong I ran and how easy it felt. It seems that all my speedwork has translated into some pretty good paces for distance… so now I just need to decide whether I want to keep chasing that frustratingly elusive sub-20 5K, or if I should instead turn my attention to something like a half marathon PR? Very different training…

After my run, I had a few hours to run errands and do some chores around the house, and then it was time to get out of trail running mode and instead get all dolled up. Wedding time! I went as a date to a wedding down in Cherry Hills that was so beautiful, and such a blast too. I barely left the dance floor the whole night, and when I finally went to bed around midnight, my Fitbit said I had burned over 3500 calories for the day. Good thing I had more than one piece of wedding cake 😉

Sunday dawned rainy and chilly, and unfortunately, it got worse as the day went on. However, I was already committed to a day of volunteering with Boulder County Open Space, so I dutifully donned my 19th century pioneer costume, adding a heavy cape to try to ward off the rain. After arriving up at Walker Ranch, I spent most of the day teaching visitors how to cross stitch. I loved doing cross stitch as a kid, but it’s so time consuming that I never really do it anymore. It was kind of relaxing to be spending a rainy day making tiny X after tiny X in a barn with no cellular service in the middle of the mountains!

(A pic would go here except I never bothered to save it from my Instagram stories. Whoops.)

Finally, I rounded out my weekend by checking out a new-to-me trendy restaurant down in LoHi, Old Major. The rustic vibe was really cozy, which was especially welcome now that the temperatures had dropped to the 40s and it was still foggy / raining. The bartender was really nice, the ham and biscuits appetizer was fantastic, and finally, who doesn’t love half price wine bottles on Sunday nights?! It was the perfect way to close out a great weekend.

This week: I’m headed to Manhattan, Palm Beach, and Ithaca for work before returning home late Friday night. So it will be a little bit of an abbreviated weekend once I get back to Colorado, but I’m determined to make it a good one! I’m thinking a leaf peeping hike and some baking may be in the cards… but we’ll see how I’m doing by the time Friday rolls around. Happy Monday, y’all!