Sunday, April 11, 2010

Week Ending April 11 (WS - 10 weeks)

Mon - Noon: 9 miles (2,200'). Horsetooth/Audra long route.
PM: 5.5 miles at Pineridge taking down T&H course markings. Felt great.

Tues - Noon: 9 miles (2,200'). Horsetooth/Audra long route. Wind, wind, wind. Felt like a sandstorm on exposed sections.
PM: 5.5 miles on Pineridge again. Ran hard last two miles. I suppose I'll take wind over snow, but boy was it blustery out. More hair-on-chest points for getting out twice, I guess.

Weds - Noon: 9 miles (2,200'). Horsetooth/Audra long route. Slushy after a bit of snow overnight. Beautiful out, felt great and cruised at a good clip.
PM: 5.5 miles easy at Pineridge.

Thurs - Noon: 9 miles easy (2,200'). Horsetooth/Audra long route. Went super easy with Towers TT later in the day in mind.
PM: 10.5 miles. Towers hard (1,800). 3.5 mile warm-up, followed by Towers TT.

Fri - Noon: 8.5 miles (2,100') easy. Horsetooth/Audra long route, home short way. Right achilles was hurting.
PM: 4 miles easy. A lap of Pineridge. Ran with Alex M on the back side - he actually reminded me today (4/15) that I did this run last week, so I get a few bonus miles that I forgot about. Like finding five dollars in a winter jacket that you haven't worn for six months.

Sat - AM: 20 miles (5,500'). 3:40. Met Josh, who was in Denver from Vegas, and Scott J at the Centennial TH in Boulder - a middle ground between Fort Collins, Denver and Highlands Ranch - and got out for a mellow tour of the Boulder mountain trails.

A little nip in the air to start.

None of us have much knowledge of the trails up there, so we did a lot of stopping and starting, in addition to slipping and sliding on some treacherous sections of ice on a traversing trail mid-way up Green Mtn. We started with an easy ascent of Sanitas (20:30) and then scrambled down and back around before heading south on a bunch of trails I don't remember the names of.

Sanitas does this to you. 1,300' in 1.3 miles.


Definitely some nasty sections of ice on the trail today.

The trails are packed with runners in Boulder and we bumped into a cast of characters on our way around, including a guy I had bumped into last weekend at Horsetooth - Audra's friend - then the brother of the RD for Fruita who's going to be taking pictures next weekend, and teammate Darcy Africa with her husband Bob who had hired a babysitter so they could get out for a run together - nice.

The Boulder Mountain trails are extensive and fun, but damn there's a lot of intersections and steep stuff. Don't get me wrong, I love me some gnarly climbing, but I think I prefer what Horsetooth and Lory have to offer in terms of variety and rhythm when it comes to day-in, day-out running. I guess the ice didn't help today. As Scott pointed out on his blog, we never really got much of a rhythm going with all the looking at maps and dealing with ice, but it was certainly fun to be out enjoying some good conversation and a patch-worked long run.

Sun - AM: 12 miles (1,600') at Bobcat Ridge with Eric. I always enjoy running Bobcat because the trails are so nice and the climb on Ginny is at a perfect uphill cruise grade. Took a detour to the top of the Powerline climb to scout out the Longs route a bit and then took it easy coming down.

A goal for this summer is to run to the top of Longs (second snow-capped peak to right of closer peaks) from my house via dirt. That's gonna involve some fence hopping. This shot is from the gate at end of the Power Trail at Bobcat Ridge, and the road in the foreground is one of a few private ones that I'll have to negotiate to get out to Longs.

Rest of day: Taxes (ugh). Maybe a run if I find the time.

Total: 107.5 (20,000').

Good to get a harder effort in there this week, and hopefully in the weeks following. I'll probably load the front end next week, and then take it easy Thursday and Friday in preparation for Fruita, which is setting up to be a pretty good race competition-wise. I'd be surprised if Andy Skurka's CR doesn't go down, but really I'm just looking forward to getting out on the beautiful course and mixing it up with Ryan B, Duncan C, Nick P, Dakota Jones and company. I'll probably do a pre-race look at the field over at RunColo.com later in the week.

Andy Henshaw, who narrowly beat me at Salida the other weekend, had a very solid run out in California at the American River 50 on Saturday. He told me after the race in Salida that he was shooting for a 5:50, and honestly I didn't think he had much of a shot, but he got pretty close - running 5:56. And just so we're clear on what a time like that takes: he ran a 2:45 marathon on the bike paths, followed by a 3:10 24 miler on rolling trails. Oh yeah, and he beat Olympic hopeful Max King convincingly. I know he trained hard for this bad boy, posting some ridiculous pavement long runs of 30-40 miles at 6:30-6:40 pace, so I've got to tip my hat to the guy for the discipline, but not my cup of tea, that's for sure.

6 comments:

  1. Another great week of training. I did not know about Andy's race. thats is pretty impressive.
    Do you know who Todd Gangelhoff is? Thanks to him I will be running at Fruita next Saturday. It going to be a crazy race for sure. Looking forward to seeing you in the trails!

    ReplyDelete
  2. For what it's worth, there are plenty of good trails for daily running that don't involve a bunch of steep climbing. You just have to know which ones to pick that are a little more runnable... Although you do have some nice trails in your backyard :)

    Andy definitely had a solid run at AR. He is a tough runner - I think you and I have both seen his persistence during races, when you think he is gone he always seems to come back and get you.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I was really impressed with Henshaw too. 7:07 pace. Damn.

    For Fruita, don't forget my dark horse - Pawel Oboz. Barring any late entrants, looks like that 25M CR will be safe.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Interested in the Longs thing ...

    Yeah, I hear what you are saying for the Boulder hills. There is some fun to be had there with that stuff, but it is not the training I think most benefit from (some do though). It seems that everything in the Boulder area is either too shallow (5 percent grade) or too steep (like Sanitas). Ah, I'm just bitchin. Go with whatcha got.

    ReplyDelete
  5. good camera work while running on the bullet proof ice. And thanks for putting up the pic of me sucking wind while you pranced up Sanitas. Next time we will hire GZ, Tony, or NP to take us around.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hey Marco - good news. Look forward to seeing you out there.

    Nick - yeah, I know, but everyone seems to be stuck on the 1,000-feet-in-one-mile type climbs these days. Gonna be a fast one this weekend. We should touch bases on carpooling.

    Justin - if the 25 doesn't go down this weekend then I'm gunning for it next year - you've held it too long.

    GZ - my house to the top of peaks and back to the TH, where hopefully my wife will pick me up. No asphalt permitted. Still got plenty of recon work to do on the route.

    Scott - certainly didn't feel like I was prancing, but if it looked that way, I'll take it.

    ReplyDelete