Teva Mountain Games

Ok. If you are ever in Colorado the first weekend in June, you HAVE to go to this thing! Teva Mountain Games is a HUGE event in Vail taking up all of Vail Village and Lionhead. It's a ginormous outdoor athletism event for four days straight complete with Bouldering, kayaking, rafting, fishing, biking, running, and even dog competitions! We originally just thought it would be fun to run in the 5K mud run but I had no idea how much of a blast we were going to have the entire weekend! This will now be a yearly Usry event!

We headed up to Vail Friday night and took advantage of all the early morning vendor tents on Saturday. Vail village was packed - with competitors, families, baby joggers, dogs, and bikers everywhere. There were a million tents, with products from all the outdoorsy stuff you could want, to organic foods, to dog accesories, and we even saw a breast cancer informational tent...all sorts of variety! We attempted to take Sager, who was completely overstimulated and jumping after every dog we passed (which was like every 10 feet!) and therefore spent the second half of the day in the car. I think she didn't mind much since we let her run under Vista Bahn lift and play in the river for an hour prior to her car nap! It was the weirdest thing, playing fetch in the grassy mountain under a ski lift that we skied on only a few months ago!

Saturday afternoon was mud run time - not as muddy as we thought it'd be but fun none the less. I did learn that my lungs are worthless in high altitude but Grant was a sweetheart in letting me walk a bit and recover from a full blown asthma attack before finishing. This possibly could be due to the fact that I am no longer in pristine D1 athlete shape (which is quite sad!) - but I choose to blame it on the altitude instead! After the mud run we continued to travel around in our now mud covered attire and watch some fly fishing casting competitions, dog "high jump" and "speed retrieve" and kayaking events. We stayed for some of the free concert Saturday night and grabbed some ice cream (wheat, soy, and peanut free of course!)

Sunday was just as great, minus the fact that I obtained a major sun burn. We spent the morning and into lunch watching professional bouldering, more dog events, and citizen rafting competitions, which were quite entertaining! We had lunch at a vendor tent and enjoyed a bit more browsing, then let Sage play in the river a bit before heading back to Denver. Such a wonderful weekend. I'm told they have a winter games as well - which we WILL be checking out this winter!

In summary what we learned from Teva mountain games:

1. Michelle's lungs are not so great.

2. Teva is not in fact pronounced TEE-VA but TEH-VA

3. The mud run in the mountains = trail run with a man made mud pit at the end to jump in.

4. Sunscreen should always be worn in the mountains.

5. The Roost Lodge is not so nice and definitely not the three stars it said online BUT it is cheap, close to the mountains, and dog friendly!

Seriously. Check out the Mountain games!

Teva Mountain Games Day 1

Post mud run!

World Championships of Bouldering - This guy was competing from Japan.

The Dog events were under the Vista Bahn lift. 

A little odd seeing people's tents and dog kennels lined up along the lift.

River rafting competition. Really entertaining to watch! A guy flipped his raft, it got stuck, and he jumped from the bridge onto it to try and get it out of the swirl! Craziness!

G just had to take this pic. Hahaha...

Sager loves Vail!

"Dock Dogs" events. Apparently, if you place at the Teva games, you are qualified for regionals! Who knew they even had regionals for dog jumping competitions! 

Sager will start training soon for next year!