10K, climbing and an ass kicking

Saturday I got up at 5:30 AM to run 10K. I'm insane, or so say Brain who I ran with. I'll be honest in saying that I never was able to finish a 10K until this last Saturday. And with a time around 50-55 minutes, I'm rather happy.

After the 10K and a shower, the puppies and I went a bit of a walk. After the walk it was off for a few hours of climbing at VE. Did a few harder routes including the finger crack. Yikes, that was a hard climb, I ended up having to use a few of the near by holds from other routes. About half way up I went for a two jam, basically putting all my body weight on my already deformed pinky toe. (Those of you that have seen it know what i'm talking about, for those of you that don't, it's basically twisted under my foot.) When I did this, the blister/callas thing on the top of the toe ripped off and OUCH.

COLD: Mississippi Palisades

COLD
Originally uploaded by mike.palic

So I have decided to more closely link my flickr and blog together and i'll start blogging more.
This last weekend was cold. Reese, Diane, Ryan and I headed out to western Illinois at about 5AM. We opted to climb at the Sentinel climbing area after setting to anchors and rapping in we opted to climb the Sentinel. The Sentinel is a free stand "chunk" of rock located right near the Mississippi River. The west face is the tallest at about 120 Feet. I led the east face and belayed our party up.
We spent the reset of the day doing TR climbs. I did a mock Aid climb up a 10+ which I gotta say...made me really start to like aid.