Go slow to go fast.

This morning started as a slow easy run up table mesa to skunk canyon, to mesa.  Then at the top of the hill, 30 minutes and 3 miles in, I realized I only had a little over 20 minutes to get back home in time for Nan to take Abe to school.  I still had 3.5+ miles to go on my loop.  It was all downhill though, so with a little more steady effort of a 5:31 and a 5:40 mile in the middle I made it back with plenty of time.

6.5 miles - 53:29 - 8:13 avg - 910' vert 

Green Mountain.  1.5 mile warmup up and down gregory trail.  Then ran a steady effort up Green via gregory/greenman (the middle route up green).  Turns out flat speed training doesn't seem to help when it comes to running up steep mountains.  Not that I thought it would.  I definitely don't see any progress in climbing speed lately.  But that makes sense since lately I have only been doing a solid hill climb once every couple of weeks.  But I'm going to shift gears slightly now with Logan peak coming up at the end of next month.  I'm going to start doing a lot more vertical each week.

8.5 miles - 1:47:00 - 12:35 avg - 3190' vertical

Gorgeous morning.  50 degrees at 6 am and sunny and calm.  Ran over to lower big bluestern, up to the upper bluestern, to mesa, down north shanahan and home.  Could have stayed out there running all day today it felt like.  Except I thought I was doing an 8 mile loop to get home in time to help get the kids ready so Nan could get out the door, but it was actually a 10 mile loop.  Oops!  Hard to correct for that when you're 5 miles away from home and you don't know that.  I opted not to do the accidental tempo run and try to cram 5 miles into 25 minutes since I have a speed workout planned for tomorrow.

10 miles - 1:21:36 - 8:09 avg - 1100' vertical

I met up with Brendan pre-sunrise this morning for an interval session out on the lower Bluestern trail.  Bummed that Schlarb is getting deployed to Iraq this week...but I'm glad to have Brendan wanting to get together for weekly speed sessions now.  He had to be home by 7, so 5:40 am we were on it.  The cool thing is that sunrise is already nearly upon us by that time.  It is really nice getting out that early now that its already light.  By the time we finished our warmup at 6am the Sun was out.  I love this half of the year (just a little bit more than I love the other half)!

The workout today consisted of the following:

warm up ~21 min. then stretch a bit

3 or 4 strides.

Then the following, with 2 to 3 min down hill recovery between each

• 1/2 mile up hill - 3:03 - 50' ascent
• 1 mile - 1/2 up, 1/2 down - 5:53 - 70' ascent, 70' descent
• 1/2 mile up - 3:06 - 55' ascent
• 1 mile - 1/2 up, 1/2 down - 5:56 - 80' ascent, 80' descent
• 1/2 mile up - 3:05 - 65' ascent
• .3 mile - 1:46 (5:53 pace) - up and down pretty steep with 27' net ascent

Then we cooled down easy across lower shanahan and down lehigh street.  

11 miles -  1:24 - 7:43 avg - 700' vertical

It was weird to be getting home from my workout at 7 am when the family was still just finishing breakfast.  Nice though to get after it early.  The workout felt great too.  

4 miles barefoot easy and slow this morning on the bike paths.  Didn't have time to go any farther because I woke up too late...oh well.  It was a nice 36 minutes anyway.

Picture rock trail at Heil Ranch, looking toward Lyons 

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!  

(Interpretation: that was half scream-of-summer-mountain-running-joy and half sigh-of-winter-abated-relief)

Such a gorgeous day to be out running through the mountains.

A section of the nicer smooth single track at Heil 

The new-to-me single track at Heil Ranch was pretty cool.  A bit rockier than I like best, but still pretty cool.  It did have tons of sections of just smooth rolling single track that were really nice.

Came within inches of stepping on this guy.

About 30 inches long

I prodded him off the trail with a stick and he got freaked out and started rattling like crazy as he slithered away.

I'm really happy about the 75 degree May sunshine right now.  And I'm also stoked that Abe and Breanne learned to ride without training wheels this week on their bikes.  This weather calls for our first official bike ride together for sure.

Weekly Total: 58 miles - 8 hrs 46 min - 8400' vert

April Totals: 199.5 miles - 28 hrs 30 min - 17000' vert - 975 push ups, 390 pull ups, 6 days core workout

Ow.  I used the NormaTec MVP compression boots that my buddy Eric has a few times over the weekend, and my legs must have been over compressed or something.  My calves and everything were pretty tight and I was sloooooooooowwww.  Wow...super slow run.

6.5 Miles - An hour and something - ~1000' vert.

But it was a gorgeous morning.  I sat down at the top of skunk canyon gazing over the beautiful valley in the sunshine for a while...liked that.  Also I finally warmed up after about 6.5 miles, which was great timing....er... 

OUCH!

Had to sit down for about 10 minutes to recover after that one.

Way harder than it should have been to run that time.

HUGE plate of chile relleno, beans, and enchiladas for lunch at Racines in Denver today?  Check.

Good idea?  Nope.  I was feeling that on the run.

Stiff headwind the second half of the race??  Double check.  Thank you mother nature!  Awesome.  I must be a much stronger person now.

Yeah that would have been fine and dandy if character building were the goal of the evening...but the actual goal was to get closer to 17 minutes vs. farther away.

Oh well.

At least it wasn't a very competitive race so I got away with 3rd overall and a free rolfing session, but most importantly, a miniature candle in a jar!  HURRAY!  Candles are so amazing.  I just love candles.  Can never get enough candles in a jar. 

I got totally stuck in no-mans land on the 2nd half of the race with the entire 1.25 miles of head wind all to myself.  It's kind of a tough situation for me, when the leaders are a minute ahead, and the people behind are 30-40 seconds back.  Late in the race it didn't help my motivation at all to keep running faster knowing my place wasn't going to change at all.  That extra motivation of having someone to chase or push me can go a long way in those painful stages sometimes.

Instead, I was left to my own non-devices.  I didn't have a watch on, so I didn't even have that to distract me or tell me how slow I was plodding along.

Anyway, it was fun to get out.  Met some new people.  Felt momentarily way cooler than I really am for placing in the top 3 in a race.  And got to play with the family at the park for a bit and hang out. 

Good times. 

Easy and slow reverse loop from yesterday

We had an odd stretch of rain for Boulder this week.  48 hours of straight rain in Boulder??  Odd as it was, it was kind of a cool break from the normal sunshine.  The morning misty runs with the Flatirons encased in fog or snow or both were really nice.  It looked kind of like this:

I did a lower week of overall mileage, but got two pretty solid workouts in still, spread out by 5 days of easy running.  My legs were feeling really sluggish on the easy days…it definitely wasn’t a good week for getting 3 hard runs in for me.

Started at 6:30 this am in cool and cloudy temps – 14 miles – 2:06 – 9:03 avg – 2850′ vertical

First attempt at a Logan peak simulation tempo run.  Had a really fun run this morning.  It took me a good 30 minutes to get warmed up from my house up to the entrance of Bear Canyon.  Then I did 11 miles of tempo running.  I went up and down the trail from the trail marker to the green-bear junction and back twice.  It gains 1000′ vertical over 2 miles, and is a really fun section of trail to run, which is why I chose it.  Above the junction it gains 1000′ over 1 mile which is a little too steep for what I was looking to do on this run.  My splits were 23:15, 15:37, 21:37, 15:23.  I felt a lot better after the first lap and was almost 2 minutes faster up the second time and it felt easier.  After two laps up bear canyon I continued the tempo pace and ran the last 3 miles from bear canyon to my house in 16:50 (5:37 avg, but with 850′ descent) which felt pretty good.   Got home at 8:30am feeling really great after about 95 minutes of moderately hard hill running.  The actual 11 miles of tempo stats were 1:34:20 – 8:35 avg pace – 2000′ gain and 2850′ descent.  I could definitely improve my uphill running fitness, but also my downhill technical trail running speed isn’t all that solid I don’t feel.  I do feel pretty good about being able to pretty easily hold 5:30's on straight, smooth downhills though.

Weekly Totals: 45 Miles – 6 hrs 30 min – 5000′ vertical – 450 push ups, 225 pull ups, 3 days core work.

7 ish miles - 1:04 - 1000 ish feet vertical - Skunk to mesa down McClintock.

By the last half of my run this morning I simply couldn't help but feeling really really grateful to be alive.  To be healthy.  To be running free from any pain.  To be moving effortlessly across the ground.  Then it extended into feeling grateful for a ton of other things, my family, home, business, friends, etc, etc.... I love runs like that.  Each day is invariably better when I start it out running.

Nothing like the accidental time trial to get the blood pumping.

Its easy to lose track of time meandering through the flatirons foothills trails.  I was running with Brendan this morning and we got all the way down the mesa trail to Bluestem and almost back to shanahan before I realized that we had already passed the 1 part of our 1 hour run.  I had about 15 minutes to get back home on time for Nan to leave and I had over 2.5 miles to run still.  Oops!

As soon as I hit the top of lehigh I bid farewell to Brendan.  I took off and covered the last two miles to home right at 11 minutes (~375' descent).  Only ended up being 2 or 3 minutes late after all.  

And I got some speed work out of the deal!  So I guess it worked out OK.

9.5 miles - 1:23 - 8:44 avg - 1400' vert

Such a beautiful morning.  It still feels kind of odd to see the sun already high in the sky when I start running at 6:20.  I would have to start running closer to 5:30 to see a sunrise these days. 

Easy flat jog around the south boulder CU loop, south boulder creek, home on bear creek path.  Feeling great.  Getting pretty excited to be leaving for France for 10 days tomorrow.  Some epic bike rides and runs are bound to make their way into the mix.  We're going to ride Alp d'huez, mt. ventoux, the tourmalet, and I'm definitely going to see about fitting in some running up some of those as well (or instead of biking).  I'm not entirely bummed about not getting to work for a couple of weeks.  It took some time to get used to the idea, but I'm warming up to it.

 8 Miles - 1:03 - 7:57avg - 200'

Easy six miles early before driving all day to Utah

7.5 miles at the airport in Dallas around the upper deck of the parking garage.  Did 12 x 200 meter repeats at around 33 seconds each.

10 miles easy exploring the town of Nyon Switzerland.  Really cool town, saw a lot of it, and a lot of varying terrain.  From lake side flat trails to winding trails through the hills and forests...very cool run.

3 miles easy on the roads up to Alp D'Huez - 550' vertical

24 miles on the road bike riding Alp D'Huez. - 2:34 - 3600' vertical 

53 miles cycling - 6000' vertical.  Up Mt. ventoux, down to carpentras and velleron.

Easy 5.5 miles through Arles France with Nan in the AM - 400' vertical. - about 50 minutes

7.5 miles - 1:12:42 - 10:00avg - 1600' vert

farmlands and singletrack above Aste, France, base of the tourmalet. 

26 miles on the tourmalet- 4800' vertical - 2:45 

9.25 miles - 1:22 - 580' vert - Running around the grounds at the palace of Versailles in France with Nan.

6.5 miles - 59 minutes - 300' vert

Running with Nan around Bologne park in Paris. 

~10 miles in the airport in Madrid Spain - 1:18 - 600' vertical

I did 15 hill repeats up and down the spiral parking garage which was four flights high, about 40'.

It worked out great to get some good training in on a long layover.  Then I took a bath in the sink in a handicap bathroom and left a nice pool of water on the floor for someone to clean up so that Nan and I didn't die from my stench on the 10 hour flight back to Dallas. 

10 glorious miles across the BST north from Fruit heights into layton etc. and back.  46 minutes out to the high point.  34 minutes back to my in-laws house.  1600' vertical - 1:20 total time.  Felt great to be to the rockies, running on trails.