Week Ending November 27

Mon - 6 miles (700') easy. Valley Trails. Pretty stiff from the weekend. Went super easy with Sam.

Tues - AM: 7.5 miles. City Park workout: 1,200 x 2, 1,000 x 2, 800 x 2, with second of each 1,200 & 1,000 as fartleks. 800s were actually .6 of a mile. I was feeling stiff and full of leg crud from the weekend, so started out easy and then upped the effort for the last few: 4:23 (5:50 pace), 4:21 (5:48), 3:14 (5:12), 3:22 (5:23), 3:09 (5:15), 3:02 (5:03).
PM: 3.5 miles (700') easy. Reservoir Ridge Loop.

Weds - 6 miles (700') easy. Valley trails with Sam.

Thurs - AM: 11 miles. Thanksgiving 4 Mile Race. 21:38. 5 mile w-u with Slush, 2 mile c-d.
PM: 6.5 miles (1,700') easy. Beautiful afternoon, so snuck out for an easy summit of Horsetooth before cooking T-Day dinner.

Fri - AM: 9.5 miles (3,200') easy. Up Round Mountain with Pete and Alwesir. 38 mins to 3 mile, then notched the effort to get up in under an hour. 58:50.

Sat - AM: 21.5 miles (5,500') easy. With Pete and Alwesir on JV version of El Chub. Windy out and just a little fatigued there towards the end. Fun morning.

Sun - AM: 18.5 (5,800') easy. Double Crosier with Pete, Alex and Eric Lee. From Drake TH to summit, then on to Glen Haven TH, back up to summit and then down to Drake. Legs felt pretty beat up, but still plenty in there to grind on Crosier for a few hours. Beautiful day out, which made the views from the summit even more outstanding than usual. Best 9'ner on the Front Range.

Total: 90 miles (18,300')

Made the last-minute call to register for Western States last night. There goes another $370. Whoosh. Pains me beyond belief to register for these things so far in advance, but I guess it's the nature of the beast. I was going to wait until Bandera - see how things played out there - and maybe take a qualification spot from that, but there are other people running Bandera that I know want to run Western, so I felt guilty potentially taking a spot from the Bandera qualifying pool.

Moving right along. Here's an event that won't break the bank ... coz it's free. December 10. Email, comment, whatever, if you have any questions. But essentially, we will be following exactly the same arrangements as last year (detailed in link above). And of course, this is the free teaser for bigger and better things to come on May 12, 2012. Registration for Fort Collins' first ever 50 miler opens December 7. Website goes live December 1 (or so).

A Horsetooth taster from Saturday:

Stumbled across this vid the other day. Fell running looks like a lot of fun - love those cross country starts.

Week Ending May 8

Mon - AM: 7 miles (1,600') easy. Falls - Spring Creek - Stout - Herrington - Spring Creek - Soderberg - home long.
PM: 7.5 miles (1,900') easy with Duncan C and Ryan B. To top of Horsetooth via hiking trail and back on Wathan - Spring Creek - Falls. From my house to the summit of Horsetooth via the hiking trail, it is exactly 3.15 miles (1,500'), or 5k, (per Ryan's GPS device). Got me thinking about putting on a 5k race one of these days...

Tues - 10 miles track. Jane's Tuesday morning workouts are done for the winter, so it was to the track with Kyle and Slush for a ladder workout (400, 800, 1,200, 1,600, 1,600, 1,200, 800, 400). Legs were kind of heavy and I really didn't feel like pushing myself into the pain cave at six in the morning, so went at what felt like a 10k (ish) effort throughout. As is typical, I sped up as things loosened: 83, 2:44, 4:07, 5:24, 5:25, 4:01, 2:41, 78.
PM: 8 miles (2,050') easy. Horsetooth summit via hiking trail, then back on Wathan - Spring Creek - Soderberg - home long.

Weds - AM: 5 miles (1,000') easy. Easy jog on the Falls loop. Home long.
PM: 5 miles (1,000') easy. Falls long again.

Thurs - AM: 11 miles (1,250') steady. Ran out and back on Bluesky/Indian Summer from Bluesky TH with Sarah, Slush and Brian. Notched the effort coming home on the last two miles. Beautiful morning out.
PM: 11 miles (2,100'). 31:18. Towers w/4 mile warm up. Went out relatively easy with Slush and upped the effort to relatively hard toward the end.

Laura, Cat and Scott in various stages of Towers recovery.

Photos: Pete Stevenson.

Fri - Noon: 7 miles (1,600') easy. Falls - Spring Creek - Stout - Herrington - Spring Creek - Soderberg - home long. Thought this one was going to be a slog, but ended up feeling great. Love it when that happens.
PM: 5 miles (1,000') easy. Falls long.

Sat - AM: 25.5 miles (7,800'). Crosier triple Bagger. This one is becoming a rite of spring/ early summer for me. Third year in row knocking out this big-vert workout. The route includes three summits of Crosier (9,250'), with out and backs from each of the Devil's Gulch trailheads. Climbs of approximately, 3,200' (5 miles), 2,300' (4 miles), 2,000 (3.75 miles). A total of 13 runners from the Fort Collins Trail Running group turned up for the early start, with six completing the three bag, three the two bag and the rest enjoying a beautiful day on the mountain with a more reasonable single summit.

Courtesy: Pete Stevenson

Crosier was clear of snow the whole way up, thus marking the march higher as the peaks begin to open up. Crosier has perhaps the best views of any of the lower-elevation peaks in the area, covering the Estes Valley and all surrounding peaks from Meeker to Mummy, with even a shot of Evans and Pikes off in the southern haze. The snow-capped peaks on this windless, bluebird morning were particularly stunning.

Told to look 'epic,' this was the best our first group of summiteers could come up with:

Sarah obscuring Longs, but giving Meeker some love.

Heat training (80 degrees by the time we were finished).

Towers Sam.

Slush. Now that's epic!

Coming up the meadow from the Glen Haven trailhead.

In keeping with tradition, I hit each of the three .6 (500') summit slogs at an increasingly fast pace on each successive summit. Last one just about did me in. Splits:

First ascent: 1:02:15 (summit spur: 8:55)
First descent: 36:47
Second ascent: 46:30 (8:07)
Second descent: 32:59
Third ascent: 45:21 (7:49)
Final descent: 48:49

Total running time: 4:32:33
Total outing time: 5:33:13

Great day on a great mountain. Next week is a 29-mile single summit of Round Mountain, which will wrap up three consecutive weekends of silliness on some of our closest-in and favorite 8-9k peaks. More on that later.

Sun - AM: 20 miles (2,700'). Bluesky from home with Indian Summer (outbound) plus two of the three Loveland-side loops. Home long. Went easy, and slogged a bit, but generally felt decent. Hot again. No snake sightings (yet).

Total: 122 miles (24,000')

Big week on miles and vertical, which has me feeling strong. After working through some pretty significant fatigue the last few weeks, this last week was a breath of fresh air. Legs felt great, the running was easy and no real long-run fatigue to speak of. Just got to keep that rolling for a few more weeks (seven to be precise).

Interesting race weekend with some quality times posted at Miwok in the Marin Headlands. Dave Mackey gets it done again, but Mike Wolfe, and Hal Koerner were right there. All three of those guys look to be in great form as they get ready for Western States next month. As does training partner Ryan Burch, who dismantled Andy Henshaw's course record at the hilly, high-elevation Collegiate Peaks 50 on Saturday. Haven't spoken to him yet, but he's got to be super stoked with his run. Clearly Ryan is in great form right now, but as he always says, 'still need to piece together two good 50s.' Confident that will happen next month for Ryan, and also have a feeling that Western States is going to be a deep race in general this year.