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.
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