Stairs

Red Rocks Amphitheater

250 million years ago, Denver looked very different from what one finds here today. The area was a vast and shallow sea filled with life forms long extinct. The mountains that predated the current Rocky Mountains stood nearby and for many years eroded sediment from high on it’s valleys and deposited it in the basin below. Over time, the sediment was buried miles below overlying sediment. The great pressure and heat produced miles below the surface compressed the sandy sediment into stone. Many years passed and the buried stone lifted once again. During the uplift of the Rocky Mountains this sandstone, richly hued in red due to a concentration of iron-oxide, was exposed again at the surface and tilted as the massive movements of the Earth’s crust bent and warped on the fringe of the great mountain chain. All of this happened just west of Denver and that uplifted sandstone stands as frozen waves of rock today. In the early 1900s a champion of both Denver and music, John Brisbin Walker, envisioned a grand amphitheater among the prows and monoliths of these tilted layers and set in motion a 50 year project to design and construct one of the most unique concert venues anywhere. From its humble beginnings to its current standing as a premiere performamce setting, Red Rocks Amphitheater, owned and operated by the City of Denver has played host to legendary musicians and performers from around the world. The Beatles, John Denver, Jethro Tull, Carole King, the Grateful Dead, Flletwood Mac, the Dave Matthews Band, and others have all held the stage below the angled formations and open sky. In 1983, a relatively unknown band recorded a concert called Under a Blood Red Sky at Red Rocks. The album and video launched U2 on its ascendant career.

As a city park, the concert site is open to the public when no event is underway. This Tuesday my teammate Lauren and I woke up early to meet Coach Rick at the top of the seating area. We were not alone as other members of Denver’s more active community had congregated in small groups to run the stairs and aisles that are often filled with concert-goers. A powerful wind swept over the hills above, but the steep shape of the bowl blocked the strongest gusts. We started with plyometrics, exercises designed to build power and strength. We followed this with a stair workout; down, then up and back down and up. Push-ups and lunges piggy-backed on that. If it hadn’t been for such an extraordinary setting and spirited team members it would’ve been tedious drudgery, but a brilliant sunrise,  friendly encouragement and the reward of hard work left us weary but contented.