week Ending April 10

Mon - 8.5 miles (800') easy. Bluesky to Arthurs and back.

Tues - 9 miles intervals. Ran with Jane's group on a beautiful spring morning. Workout was 5 x 1 mile on the two hilly City Park routes, with middle three at fartlek (hard/medium) and 3-5 mins between miles. Miles 1, 3 & 5 measured .97, while miles 2 & 4 measured 1.04 (according to GPS watches): 5:22, 5:40, 5:23, 5:38, 5:18 (5:25 - 5:32 pace). After a somewhat disappointing 5k race on Saturday, I made the pledge to push my interval workouts a little harder to see if I can't make sub 5:20 pace a little more sustainable; however, with AR50 upcoming, I decided to slot into my usual interval effort for this week. Next time out I'll try to make good on my pledge (recovery from AR50 and other excuses pending).

Weds - 6 miles (500') easy. Valley.

Thurs - 10 miles (2,000'). Towers. Cruised to a comfortable 33 something ascent.

Fri - 4.5 miles (500') easy. Out and back on last 2 miles of AR course.

Sat - 50 miles (3,500'). AR50. 6:00:09.

Sun - 14 (2,000'). Out and back to Hwy 49 on Western States course from start/finish at Placer High with Ryan, Scott, Andy J-W, Jill Perry and Eric. Out super easy to No Hands Bridge, then picked it up a bit heading up to the Hwy 49 crossing. Back steady w/ Fast Eddie in 58 minutes, which is two minutes faster than I ran it at the tail end of WS last year. Felt like a reasonably hard effort, especially on post-50 mile legs, but certainly a few gears under overdrive. Running it in 60 minutes on 93-mile legs just about killed me last June. Out in 1:13. Really pleased with how good I felt.

Scott, me, Burch, AJW, Eric on the finish line.

Scott put a move on me with 150 to go that I just couldn't cover.

Total: 102 miles (9,300')

Got a little confidence back this weekend at AR after a couple of performances that I felt were a little sub-par. I'll take that and roll it into the next seven week block of mileage before the Western States taper. Probably the biggest thing for me this weekend was feeling so good on Sunday after the hard AR effort. Things were definitely a little creaky getting going, but once Scott and I picked up the pace for the last ten miles, things started feeling good. Good enough even that I was able to engage in a 250-meter kick down with Scott as we got onto the Placer High track. For the record, Scott destroyed me, so I'll have to make sure to break him early in June.

Next seven weeks will be all about mileage and vertical gain/descent, with two faster workouts per week slotted in there as well. Starting to get that tingly goal-race feeling already. Love it.