Anyone can start strong . ~ me Thurs 13 May: 1:40, 7.03 miles, Boulder Creek/Sanitas run/hike Sat 15 May: 00:50, 5.77 miles, Peak-to-Peak surges Sun 16 May: 3:45, 19.01 miles, Boulder Creek, Flag, Green Mon 17 May: 00:20, 2.16 miles, Mtn Meadows barefoot Tues 18 May: 00:49, 5.02 miles, Casa trails to Beaver Creek surges Wed 19 May: 1:50, 10.86 miles, GGCSP Raccoon to Thorne Lake tempo Thurs 20 May: 2:11, 9.3 miles, Mesa to Saddle Rock to Green to Gregory run/hike One would think, that with my abundance of free time, I’d be posting more. Well you thought wrong, my friend as apparently the last 10 days got away from me. Now it’s catch-up time and you better get ready. Or not, your call. Decent week of training/recovery. Lower mileage than I would have liked but moving to trails definitely slows things up, I am working in more hiking into my routine and I am still not 100% recovered. Getting there, however and starting to feel a lot better, thank you. I guess the highlight of the week was just getting out on trails that weren’t completely packed with snow. Refreshing, to say the least. Yesterday’s run/hike found Green to be completely snow-free – a marked change even from last Sunday. Things are opening up in the high(er) country as well with trails east of the P2P getting more and more thawed out. Springtime in the Rockies… gotta love it. I’m off today for a little rest then back at it Saturday and Sunday. Looking forward to a good weekend of training then another solid week to finish up a fairly weak May then ready to really open it up in June. Three months until the LT100. Getting pretty psyched.
Anyone can start strong . ~ me Thurs 13 May: 1:40, 7.03 miles, Boulder Creek/Sanitas run/hike Sat 15 May: 00:50, 5.77 miles, Peak-to-Peak surges Sun 16 May: 3:45, 19.01 miles, Boulder Creek, Flag, Green Mon 17 May: 00:20, 2.16 miles, Mtn Meadows barefoot Tues 18 May: 00:49, 5.02 miles, Casa trails to Beaver Creek surges Wed 19 May: 1:50, 10.86 miles, GGCSP Raccoon to Thorne Lake tempo Thurs 20 May: 2:11, 9.3 miles, Mesa to Saddle Rock to Green to Gregory run/hike One would think, that with my abundance of free time, I’d be posting more. Well you thought wrong, my friend as apparently the last 10 days got away from me. Now it’s catch-up time and you better get ready. Or not, your call. Decent week of training/recovery. Lower mileage than I would have liked but moving to trails definitely slows things up, I am working in more hiking into my routine and I am still not 100% recovered. Getting there, however and starting to feel a lot better, thank you. I guess the highlight of the week was just getting out on trails that weren’t completely packed with snow. Refreshing, to say the least. Yesterday’s run/hike found Green to be completely snow-free – a marked change even from last Sunday. Things are opening up in the high(er) country as well with trails east of the P2P getting more and more thawed out. Springtime in the Rockies… gotta love it. I’m off today for a little rest then back at it Saturday and Sunday. Looking forward to a good weekend of training then another solid week to finish up a fairly weak May then ready to really open it up in June. Three months until the LT100. Getting pretty psyched.
What is that, yoga? ~ The Dude Sat 22 May: 1:32, 8.95 miles, Casa Trails Sun 23 May: 4:40, 26.5 miles, South Boulder/Mesa variation Mon 24 May: 00:30, 2.5 miles, Secret trail barefoot Tues 25 May: 00:55, 5.5 miles, Casa Trails surges Wed 26 May: 2:10, 15.5 miles, Gunbarrel tempo Thurs 27 May: 2:20, 9.6 miles, Green Mtn. run/hike Great week of training thus far. Ended last week with 11.5 hours and 63 miles and am on target for more than that this week. Really pretty happy about how my fitness is shaping up and tacking on additional time each week. Training is an interesting beast. One is certainly trying to get one’s body to perform at a certain level but there is also a lot of mental fitness that is being fine-tuned as well. Working on focus, rolling through checks, even conditioning oneself to drink at regular intervals… it’s all part of that big picture. As fit as I am getting, there is lots of room for improvement and I work on my overall fitness on every run. Currently, I am at a bit of a cross-roads. I’d like to figure out ways to pare down my approach. To break running down to its core elements and be able to do more with less. Tony Krupicka ‘s approach is incredibly appealing to me: Minimalist shoes, shorts and maybe a water bottle and some gels is all he needs on most days to complete incredible feats of athletics. But each person is different and has his or her own needs to which to attend. I am heavier than Tony, so (currently, at least) I rely on beefier shoes. I also sweat like some sort of nuclear-powered sweating machine so I tend to need more water on any given run. Plus, when you cover as much distance as quickly as Tony does, you can get away with carrying less. I’d like to get there and am working toward that goal but know it will take awhile. I am starting to discover that those goals which take the most time to achieve are often the most satisfying. So the remainder of this week will be rest today, 1.5 hours on Saturday and 6 on Sunday. Hoping to finish the week up with ~70 miles and a solid sense of forward progress.
If you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, keep moving. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. Sat 29 May: 1:36, 9.5 miles, Big Casa loop Sun 30 May: 5:54, 33.25 miles, Heil/Hall Saturday featured another fun trail run near my house. Essentially the same loop I ran the prior week with a section tacked on and reversed direction. Really great to be back on familiar ground and running well. During most of this session, things just “clicked”. Felt really great. Smooth. Efficient. Capped the week off with a solid long run (33+ miles) in north Boulder/Lyons. Felt really strong throughout and finished the week with 76 miles total. Definitely a high mark for me this year. Started in north Boulder and spun a lap on dirt roads then moved on to the Heil/Hall network of trails. I had never dropped down from Heil to Hall before. The new connector section is super cool and makes for a nice way to hook up these two classic trail sections. Once I jumped onto the Nighthawk trail at Hall, I was able to make my way up far enough in my allotted run-time to get a really awesome view of Longs Peak. Made it totally worth the long climb. Totally runnable trail with a big pay off at the top. On a cool day (like yesterday), this one is well worth a peek. This run finished up a week that saw three really strong efforts (and great training all around). Wednesday’s tempo run kicked things off. Saturday’s trail run was a definite breakthrough in the comfort department. Sunday just moved things to a new level for which I have been clamoring for quite some time now. Onward and upward.
At its heart, running is pretty simple, so I try to keep it that way. ~ Anton Krupicka When one steps back and looks at the numbers, May turned out okay. It should have been a lot bigger but given that I was sick for about 2 full weeks and had to take one week completely off, I feel pretty good about how things turned out. Here are the digits: Miles: 213.99 Hours: 38:53:13 Vertical: 28,349 I was hoping for 250-260 but am completely satisfied with what I accomplished. It ended up being my second biggest month of the year and I finished very strongly – teeing things up nicely for June. Here are some numbers for the year to date, just for fun: Miles: 996.68 Hours: 191 Vertical: 73,431 (low by probably 15K) So I am 3.5 miles shy of the 1K mark for the year. That makes me pretty happy. I’ll get that tomorrow then move on to bigger and better goals.
Less plot. More fu. ~ Rach Mon 31 May: 00:31, 2.75 miles, Red Plow barefoot Tues 1 June: 1:12, 7.45 miles, Pirate Trail to Thorne surges Wed 2 June: 2:21, 16.28 miles, Westview tempo Thurs 3 June: 2:25, 9.03 miles, Janet’s house then Flagstaff/Green run/hike Sat 5 June: 1:45, 10.37 miles, Casa trails Sun 6 June: 3:51, 22.08 miles, Dirty Bismark to Flatirons Vista Total: 12 hours, 67.96 miles, 7387 vertical This past week saw a lot of great progress but one major set-back… the arrival of serious heat to the region. Monday-Saturday were all pretty mellow, temperature-wise but Sunday saw the first really hot day with which I have had to contend this year. Right now, I am transitioning to time-based training vs. really trying to hit specific distances or paces but it is a little hard to break out of that pattern and I find myself tracking my progress even when I just need to be getting time in on my feet. It feels great to burn 10-minute miles on hilly trails but realistically, I need to get more adept at running a bit more slowly, conserving my energy and staying super relaxed. This, if you can believe it, is easier said than done. Every run this week featured opportunities for learning and improvement and I took full advantage. While Monday and Tuesday runs were fairly routine, Wednesday featured an overall run that felt super relaxed with a higher pace than what is normal for me. I spun about 9 miles of warm-up then moved into tempo mode for another 5 or so. Overall, a solid effort with great results. Thursday was a bit of a double with a short session with Janet Runyan where she helped me work on some techniques to improve my lean and relaxation and they seem to be paying off. Essentially working on lengthening the back of my neck and floating the top of my head up and forward to initiate my lean from there rather from my waist. Good stuff. Post run, I went to Chautauqua and ran/hiked Flagstaff and Green. Felt great. Saturday I went for what is becoming a mainstay – the Casa Trails. These are some of my favorite/most familiar trails near my house. I can spend hours on these trails and not see another person. Just moving along quietly through the woods. Good times. Saturday featured more of the same – just fluid motion on mixed terrain. For Sunday, I had a mellow, relatively short run planned and met with Bobby-T to spin a lap on the Dirty Bismark course south of Boulder. This is actually a pretty fantastic network of trails that loosely follows the Morgul-Bismark road bike course from the Red Zinger and Coors Classic days. My buddy, Ben Blaugrund, just won a Pro bike race on this course last week so it seemed appropriate. The only drawback to the course is one section that forces you to run along McCaslin Boulevard. Not the worst thing ever but if you are looking to stay off the slab, this section would blow that goal. Bob and I finished up the loop in about 2.5 hours – a pretty good pace considering we weren’t really trying to push it. We stopped often along the route to read historical markers and walked most of the major hills. Once back at the car, I grabbed some more food and filled up with fresh water in hope of adding another 2 hours to the run. The Dirty Bismark route features absolutely no respite from the sun and, given the forecast heat on this day, was probably not the wisest choice. The tack-on of Flatiron Vista was not much better in the coverage department and the hours in 92+ degrees and no shade took its toll. Warm (and rapidly turning hot) water didn’t help either. By the time I had been out for 3:15, I knew that 4.5 wasn’t going to happen and I headed back to the car – dehydrated and very, very hot. Lots of lessons were learned: Be prepared for the elements – bring ice and cold water (in a cooler, preferably). Select your route with thought to the conditions expected on that day. Drink more than normal. Roll with the punches.
