12 myles - no time

Daniels Park - 7:00 AM

40s, clear, dry

mind/body - clear/strong

Hard effort

Coming off a "day off" is always a good mini test to see what race day is gonna feel like. I ran 9 days straight with 118 myles prior to yesterday so yesterday was refreshing.

The air was crisp this morning but felt good. 4 mile w/u and c/d to and from "the hill". And then 10 x 1 minute @ 10% grade. And just for my future reference here are the splits: 1:03:01, 1:02:87, 1:03:44, 1:01:19, 1:01:25, 1:02:19, 1:01:50, 1:01:50, 1:01:31, 1:01:25. The trend is that I was getting faster and that's what I wanted. On each one the legs were getting heavy the last 20 seconds with the last 3 sets above LT. I figure the last 3 is where I started to build up my LT a bit. Last time I did this workout during my marathon build up I was hitting 1 minute flat but that was after 5 weeks of speedwork so these numbers today are a good sign.

On another note, check out this photo below. My father in law sent me this photo of this guy taking a self portrait recently in South Dakota. He had no idea the cat was there until he got home and saw the photos. Makes me wonder how many times cats are watching me.

The eyes on the cat are just creepy

And last, what do you think of the latest BCS rankings? What a terrible system! OU goes from 6 to 1 over Boise State and TCU? Not to mention Oregon! C'mon. The system is seriously flawed. I guess Boise State will just have to beat OU, again....

12.4 myles - 1.29:42

Daniels Park - 8:00 AM

40s, soggy, partly cloudy

mind/body - sluggish/not motivated

Hard effort

Starting the week off right with some quality stuff but I really wasn't feeling up to it. Maybe it was the lack of coffee this morning...

6 x 1:30 @ 5K pace (flat) with 15 minutes between each one. It was really hard for me to judge 5K pace, since I haven't done one in years, but the last 30 seconds were rough on each one. A full 15 minutes between each one allowed my body to fully recover on the run so that I could give max effort on each of them. While these were flat, most of them ended at the beginning of a short hill so I worked hard to get back on 7:30 through the hill - 737ft of climbing.

Also got out yesterday for 13 myles (1.35) real easy to finish the week with 60 myles. I'm off to Casper, WY for the next day or so. On the way home on Wednesday I'll stop in Ft Collins and get out with Dakota and Nick for some myles.

8 myles - no time

Daniels Park - 8:00 AM

60s, clear, dry

mind/body - engine is revving

easy effort

Seems like I've been stating "clear and dry" for quite some time. We need a little moisture. Took the same methodical approach today but I added in 6 x ~30 seconds @ 5K pace - everything is working and feeling really smooth. I'm contemplating heading to Wyoming (Casper) on Thursday to do a little work and also intersect Karl. Don't know if I'll run with him or sit in the motor home and eat all his food... On second thought, Karl's looking a little famished so I'll bring my own Little Debbie's or something. Also planning on doing some mile repeats with Lucho on Saturday up Lookout Mountain, I need a little arse whoopin'!

Any more feedback on a proposed PI ultra series? All good stuff so far! I think this could be a series like no other!

17.5 myles - 2.02:53

Daniels Park - 8:00 AM

60s, clear, dry

mind/body - good

Hard effort

The plan today was to be on my feet for two hours and get some flat(ish) fast myles in - check and check. In all, 1262 feet of climbing, says my Axio watch, with a pace of 7:01. I did not bring any calories with me (don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing?) so I felt it in the end. I guess it's good that I tapped my glycogen stores but bad that I'm teaching my body to require less that could spell disaster later in a race. At any rate, the body and mind still feel fresh with 10 straight days of running. I have a week long meeting in L.A. starting next Monday so I'm trying to get as many days in running as I can. And THIS TIME I will be good with the food.... yeah right, I'll probably eat every time they put out food, which is about 10x/day.

A year ago today on the CT - day 6

Almost forgot... Funny thing happened on my run today. I was coming up a hill that's about three-quarters of a mile long and gradually gets steeper (10%) towards the top. On the bottom of the hill a guy on a bike comes zooming past me and gives me a look back. I take the look as if he wants to race me up the hill so I'm turning myself inside-out to try and catch him while he's bobbing back and forth out of his saddle. Two hundred meters to the top he glances back (confirmation he was racing me), I wave, and he turns right into the curb and falls over. Probably a little embarrassed he hops on his bike and motors to the top. He won but I got a good laugh.

10 myles - 1.11:39

Daniels Park - 7:00 AM
60s, clear, overnight rain
mind/body - good
easy effort

I dropped Jaxon off at school this morning... first day of middle school that is. I remember my first day of Junior High, pretty nerve racking. Jaxon must have felt the same way because he forgot everything he was supposed to bring with him today, including his schedule. At any rate, he's excited to be back in school and I'm excited for him. Growing up fast!

My run this morning was the average, every day run: 7:09 pace without much effort. I also ran yesterday, 16 myles in 1.53 so I've had some decent mileage over the last couple of weeks leading into this taper, 85 and 66 respectively. This week I'll be in meetings which will limit my runs but I hope to get at least 55 myles and then 30 something the week of Where's Waldo. I started looking at the course for Where's Waldo for the first time yesterday, there is some pretty good climbing in there. Looking forward to it!

8 myles - 59:56

Daniels Park - 6:00 AM

60s, clear, dry

mind/body - really good

easy effort

I felt great this morning and was cruising along, thinking I was sub 7 pace.... whot. what. whahhh.... Doh - 7:36 for the first mile. In contrast, isn't it funny how other days you feel like crap thinking the worst and you really are cruising sub 7 pace, go figure. I think I would rather feel good and go slow than fast and crappy. (mental note for my next 100 miler...) AJW sent me a text last night thinking I should go to Ireland and then shoot for 23.55 at Da Bear. And just for the record, I don't think Ireland is gonna happen for me. More to come on that.

9 myles - 1.06:54

Daniels Park - 5:00 PM

80s, North wind, cloudy

mind/body - tired from the day

easy effort

Plugged along at an easy 7:26 pace. One the things I learned from Paul is to take it easy on the easy days to recover from a hard day. In the past I tended to push the pace on all my workouts for all my myles.

The best part of the run today was Jaxon riding his bike along side me. He didn't talk much but every now and again he would blurt out "nice job Dad". Hope to have him along side more often.

10 myles 1.17:08

Daniels Park - 6:00 AM

70s, clear, dry

mind/body - seemingly good... until I started to run

easy effort

Not sure what kind of funk I was I was in this morning but I think it was a sort of Molasses funk... I was cranking along at a whopping 7:42 pace and I was miserable. I fully intended to get some leg turnover this morning but after my first mile in 7:41 I decided to get the 'junk' myles in for the week.

I'm still contemplating going out tonight to get some 400s in at the track but it's still close to 100 degrees. Got a little inspiration from reading this guy's training blog. Even though I won't hit those kinds of numbers, it gives me some good ideas of what I should be doing over the next 4 weeks.

Alright, so I went back out tonight for another 4 myles. I chased Jaxon on his bike to paintbrush park, did a few more 30 second 5K efforts around the park, followed by a timed last mile - 5:46. OK. I feel a little better...

10 myles - 1.09:27

Daniels Park - 7:00 AM
60s, overcast, a little wet
mind/body - good
easy effort

Very good outing this morning. Can't say that I've fully recovered but I felt great! Anytime I can get under 7 pace on this course (some climbing) it's a pretty good run - 6:56 pace this morning.

On another note, I've got a big mouth.... and can fit a lot of food in there. My nephew, Dillon, challenged me to see how many Donette's I could fit in my mouth. Turns out I can do 11 with ease, he only did 6. Check out the video

10 myles - 1.10:07

Daniels Park - 8:00 AM
50s, wet, overcast
mind/body - ready to go
easy effort

Finally a break in the weather. Still overcast and mostly muddy on the trails so I had to stick to the roads. I intermixed 6 x 30 second pick ups over the course of this run, just wanted to see if the legs had any turn over left - still got some.

I'm really getting excited to get back to the San Juan's, especially the Colorado Trail. Yesterday I refreshed the old blog and while doing so I filtered through hundreds of photos of the Colorado Trail from last September. Man! Got the juices flowing again. The San Juan Solstice course travels along the CT for about 10 myles up on the CDT going in the opposite direction I went. It should bring back a flood of memories which (I hope) will spur me on the second 1/2 of the race.


One such picture of the CT in the San Juan's

10 myles - 1.08:10 (LT)

Daniels Park - 4:00 p.m.
mid 30's, clear, wet roads
mind/body - hesitant/no aches
hard effort

I was dreading this run today. Ever since high school (20+ years ago) I have never liked speed workouts, they hurt real bad. I run longer to avoid this searing pain the air causes my lungs, driven by the muscles in my legs that are suffocating.

Today was no different - I hurt me. I pushed as hard as I could on the lactate threshold (LT) myles. It's been over a month since I did this run and I'm happy to report progress. My LT myles were all faster by 20 seconds or more. I don't think my legs can move any faster without snapping all the muscles in my legs. Having said that, I'll need every bit of speed that I can conjure up for Way Too Cool.

Here are my splits:

1. 7:33
2. 6:03 (LT)
3. 8:00
4. 6:13 (LT)
5. 8:02
6. 5:45 (LT)
7. 7:31
8. 5:42 (LT)
9. 7:22
10. 5:55 (LT)

Now remember myles 2, 4, and 10 are all uphill while 6 and 8 are down. The faster and stronger I get the closer the up and down myles will get. I'm gonna take tomorrow off to let the legs rest and then back to the Sancturary hill on Thursday.

10 myles - 1.08:36

Daniels Park out/back - 1:00 p.m.
clear, low 30's, calm
mind/body - fresh/fast
sustained effort

A sustained effort is just an increased leg turn over workout, little bit more than medium effort but not a lactate threshold effort. Believe it or not, every single one of my runs last year were at this effort... hmm no wonder I was dreading my training runs??

I had no intention of going faster today based on my 16 mile effort yesterday but once I got started I felt really good! This is a good sign because it shows that my body is recovering a lot quicker and can handle a little bit more stress. After the run I went and lifted at the gym for about 1/2 an hour.

here are my splits:

1. mile 1/10 6:47/6:39
2. mile 2/9 6:58/6:29
3. mile 3/8 7:17/6:34
4. mile 4/7 7:10/6:36
5. mile 5/6 7:18/6:43
6. Avg. 6:51

I listed the splits this way because they represent the same stretch of road. The only difference is that one is uphill the other is down hill, can you tell which is which??

10 myles - 1.09:07 (LT)

Daniels Park out/back - 11:30 a.m.
overcast, 40ish, slight wind
mind/body - felt great!
hard effort

The verdict is in: recovery runs after a long run are goooood for me! I felt strong today and I attribute it all to my recovery run yesterday.

Today was a hard effort because of the lactate threshold (LT) myles put in every other mile. When looking at the splits it looks a bit uneven but the reason for that is because 3 of the 5 myles are up hill. Mile 2, 4, and 10 are uphill and mile 6 and 8 are downhill. Look at the profile to see what I'm talkin' about. I assure you I was redlining it more on the uphill myles than the downhill myles. If I did these myles on a flat track I would have to guess my effort was probably a 6 minute pace. All in all I'm very happy with my splits and feel very confident going into Red Hot 50K+. But then again, Red Hot is just a training run for Way Too Cool 50K right?

Splits:

• mile 1 7:13
• mile 2 6:33 LT
  
• mile 3 8:10
• mile 4 6:26 LT
  
• mile 5 8:17
• mile 6 5:56 LT
  
• mile 7 7:22
• mile 8 5:50 LT
  
• mile 9 7:16
• mile 10 6:00 LT
  

12 myles - 1.25:00

Daniels Park out/back - 12:30
clear, low 20's, North wind, frozen road
body felt great
no Achilles issues
hard effort

I'm calling this a tempo run because I pushed the pace every mile.... on second thought, this is the first of any speed work so maybe it should be considered a "increased leg turnover" run rather than a "tempo" run. At any rate with all the snow creating the slow and go runs I felt like I had to do something.

Going out my splits didn't match my effort primarily because of the head wind - a little discouraging. But coming back I was running pretty effortlessly except for mile 7. Mile 7 is the Sanctuary hill which is a nasty climb for 1/4 of a mile, adding to the total climbing for this route of just over 1400 ft. In the last few runs my breathing has been very relaxed but my legs feel out of sorts, almost as if I'm running out of control at times. All in all I feel very composed and strong about my running right now. Here are my splits for today:

1. 6:40
2. 7:10
3. 7:37
4. 7:27
5. 7:46
6. 6:46
7. 8:00 (Sanctuary hill)
   
8. 6:35
9. 6:49
10. 6:34
11. 6:42
12. 6:48

Avg. 7:04