Fortnight Ending May 5

Week Ending April 28

Mon - Off. Totally beat down from the Horsetooth Marathon.

Running through Lory at the Horsetooth Marathon. From the Coloradoan

Tues - 6 miles (1,900') easy. Horsetooth north summit (# 50 on the year) in the snow. Played catch up with Wesir and Josh, after getting a late call from our neighbor that she could come watch the kids. A good romp in the snow and still a ton of snow on the summit. Down through the slush on Wathan/Spring Creek. Fun summit for the 50th on the year.

Weds - noon: 6 miles (700') easy. A quick loop of Milner on tired legs.
PM: 8 miles (2,100') easy. Horsetooth north summit via north gap. Down on Wathan.

Thurs - 13 miles (1,400') hill tempo. Out and back on Centennial. Didn't even bother trying to keep up with Mike with legs still feeling totally fatigued from the Sonoma 50 / Horsetooth Marathon weekend back to back. Really thinking the Horsetooth race was a bad idea.
PM: 7.5 miles (1,900') easy. Super casual north summit.

Friday - 11 miles (3,200') easy. Slogged my way through a Horsetooth double summit (north/south) on still fried legs. Southridge - Wathan - Spring Creek - Soderberg - Rock - Audra - Southridge.

Sat - 27 miles (6,000') easy. Ran the Quad Rock loop with tooth and falls add-ons. Ran steady with Jason Ostram, Mike, and Bryan Williams on what turned out to be a pretty warm morning. Just the one bottle was not enough so packing snow in there as we made our way around. Steady Eddie the whole way round; felt marginally better than earlier in the week, but still something of a slog.

Sun - 20.5 miles (5,000') easy. Ran part of the QR loop from home, joining Alex and Danny at Soderberg. Went nice and easy and felt a good bit better than the day before. Sawmill - Towers - Spring Creek - Falls - Soderberg - Rock - summit - Wathan - Spring Creek - Falls.

Total - 99 miles (22,200')

A pretty torturous week on really tired legs. By the weekend, things felt slightly better, but still not great. Not really how I wanted to be feeling at this stage of the training cycle, but that's what you get for being an old man and racing too much. This one didn't deserve triple digits, so I purposefully capped the week at 99 miles.

Week Ending May 5 

Mon - AM: 5 miles (1,100') uber easy. Falls loop.
PM: 8 miles (2,100') easy. Horsetooth middle summit with Wesir. Nice easy jog up, then Wesir talked me into a middle summit, which was mercifully free of bird crap. Snow melt must have washed a good bit of it off.

Tues - AM: 7 miles intervals. Workout was 4 x mile w/middle two as fartleks. Legs had nothing, and I mean nothing. Gave up on these and just got around.
PM: 5 miles (1,100') super easy. Wanted to grab a quick summit, but my legs said niet!

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January: 345.5 miles (51,900)
February: 309 (47,900')
March: 438.5 (68,800')
April: 362.5 (68,700')

Total: 1,455.5 (237,300') 
Ave: 364 (59,325')
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2013 Summits (March)
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Horsetooth (7,255') (39)
Arthurs Rock (6,780') (2)
Turtlehead (6,324')
Maderas Volcano (4,573')
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Weds - noon: 6.5 miles (700') easy. Milner loop in driving snow. Woke up to a huge snow dump and it then proceeded to snow all day leaving us with another two feet on the ground. Really didn't want to run, but forced myself out the door.

Thurs - 12.5 miles (1,400') hill tempo. Josh Arthur was in town and met Mike and me at Maxwell for the Centennial out and back. Legs felt about as good as they have all week, allowing for a controlled 31 minute return.

With Josh Arthur after Thurs AM Tempo. Pic: Hinterberg

PM: 7.5 miles (1,900') easy. Slogged out a Horsetooth north summit in rapidly melting snow.

Fri - 8 miles (2,100') easy. Horsetooth north summit in the slush and snow. Back via the roaring falls.

Sat - 25.5 miles (4,700') easy. Early start up Horsetooth with Jason O for a quick summit, then down to Redstone Canyon for 3.5 miles followed by a left on Puma Gulch Rd after eyeing from top Horsetooth what looked like a connector to Otter Road high on the Christ Mountain ridgeline. It's never much fun to run private roads, but all the people we passed seemed reasonable enough and just a few threw suspicious looks our way. Anyway, after a 2,000' climb the road dead ended at a private property high on the Christ ridge. After an inspection of the satellite images, it looks like we could have picked up a connector jeep trail to Otter Road if it hadn't been buried under snow. From there we could have run the ridge south all the way into Masonville for what would have been a super fun loop. As it turned out, we back tracked and ran the private-road gauntlet all the way back to Redstone, then back to 38e and home. Fun morning.

Sun - 21 miles (1,000') easy. Ran out to the 19 mile mark on the Colorado Marathon course to pace Sarah in to the finish. I picked her up just as she was entering full-on bonk mode, so the planned 6:30/40 pace ended up being 7:30s. She didn't give in though and still ran a respectable 3:02, which was good enough for third female. Always a fun event.

Total: 107 miles (16,100') 

This was a tough couple of weeks, with heavy and unresponsive legs on a majority of my runs. Rather than do the sensible thing and take some down time, I plowed on and ran through it all. Things were better towards the end of this last week and the two long weekend runs felt pretty good. Hopefully I'm through the funk now and ready to finish out this training cycle with a strong May and June.

But enough about me. Burch has a fun Quad Rock preview up on his website. Pete and I are super excited to be hosting over 300 runners from all over the country this weekend, showcasing what we think are some of the best foothill trails in the state. We've got strong and deep fields in both the men's and women's 50 mile races, and we're of course looking forward to cheering in every runner from first to last. My buddy Justin Mock put a preview up on Running Times, if you want to check that out too. Please take note that Quad Rock gets top billing in the RT preview over that other race going off in the Canary Islands the same day.

We've also got a couple of events going on later in the summer: the inaugural Black Squirrel Half Marathon at the end of August and then the sixth running of the Blue Sky Trail Marathon in October. If you sign up for the Black & Blue Double (register for both races at the same time) it'll cost you less than $100, which we think is a pretty good deal.