Week Ending August 11

Mon - 1 mile hiking. Still feeling a little thrashed from the weekend's overexertion, so decided to rest.

Tues - 4 miles jogging on the Bluesky trail. Still not great.

Weds - 7 miles (1,700'). Horsetooth north summit with Wesir. Went nice and easy and felt okay. Still sore in the quads coming down.

Thurs - 7 miles (1,700') easy. Ran 34 minutes on Towers. Felt harder than it should have for a 34 minute ascent, but that was predictable enough given that I still felt a little swollen and stiff. Mainly jogging. Descent felt okay.

Fri - 2 miles (600') hiking. Hiked up to Reservoir Ridge - Larimer County's second lowest ranked peak - with the family.

Sat - 4 miles easy on the Bluesky trail. Wore a prototype of the Spring 15 Road N1s and enjoyed the shoe so much, I turned the last mile or two into a good steady tempo. Felt really good and like I'd turned the corner on the early week funk.

Sun - 5 miles (1,500') easy. Had guests - Bob and Sue from Minnesota who paced/crewed me at Western States - in town with their kids, so we did a casual trip up Horsetooth from the parking lot. Beautiful morning; summit was as packed as I've seen it in quite some time. Summit 94 or 95 on the year, I think. Legs still good.

Total: 30 miles (5,500')

My legs were quite sore through the first half of the week, so I decided to keep things really easy to see if I couldn't reset the Vermont recovery process. I'm feeling pretty good right now and am expecting all systems to be a go for Leadville on Saturday.

I just looked at the iRunFar preview of the Leadville field, and it seems like it will be a bit softer than last year at the front. I expect Ryan to go well and as iRF suggests he is definitely the odds-on favorite. With Josh Arthur not running, I think I have a decent shot at finishing on the podium. I'd like to say that a sub-17 is in the cards given the shortening of the course back to ~100 miles (~versus 102.5 last year), but there's no telling until the race gets under way what kind of legs I'll be working with. I intend to run a well-paced race and not be chasing any kind of mad pace up and over Sugarloaf like last year. Prepared to let Ian and whoever else go. Race for me will start at the Mt Elbert trailhead coming home.