Weekly Update: 8/22 – 8/28

Tuesday – 13 mi (1:57, 787 ft) Teller Farms – Gently settled back into a groove to make this week a solid high mileage week

Thursday – 13 mi (2:27, 3,250 ft) Mesa Trail – Last week I really wanted to run Mesa all week, but despairingly, I banished all hopes for such a change of pace as this goal proved to be too much too early. I re-attempted a diet version of the same goal with a bit more success.

Saturday – 13 mi (1:53, 787 ft) Teller Farms – As to not over do it, I chose to run Teller for its easy rollers and lots of flats.

Sunday – 15 mi (2:48, 3,450 ft) Doudy, Spring Brook, Mesa Trail – Back at it late in the morning. I almost blew it on this one because I didn’t start running until 7:20-ish, in 72° heat. I ran the first four miles much faster than planned and already began to sweat incessantly. I toned down the pace quite a bit and decided to make it a very, very leisurely long run.

Totals for the week:

Miles: 54

Climbing Feet: 8,274

Time: 9:06

The Week of Stupid (aka 8/15-8/21)

Don’t put the horse before the cart. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. There are probably a few other clichés to describe my efforts this week. I really wanted to run the Mesa Trail much more than just once a week, so I thought I might as well try to run it every day this week. Well, not very far into this week, I upped the ante a bit by tossing in an attempted summit of Green Mountain. Note the use of “attempted”. Not only did I fall short of summiting Green by a mile, but I blew the other objective of running Mesa all week. My trip to Telluride on Friday compressed my 54 mile week goal into a four day slot, so this undoubtedly added more pressure to these goals. The week started strong and quickly unraveled before my tired ass. In the end, I ran only 37 miles.

Tuesday was a nice start to the week though, with a mix of Mesa Trail, South Fork Shanahan, and Big Blue Stem. I mainly wanted to run the steep stuff on South Fork Shanahan since I haven’t run this route in months. The whole run was terrific. Not only was it a bit of a divergence from the usual Mesa route, but it fortified my confidence in my climbing efforts.

With my compressed schedule for the week, this meant that I had to run every day, including a 20 miler on Friday morning before hopping in the car to drive 8 hours to Telluride. So, after work on Wednesday, I headed to Eldorado Springs to run the same Mesa mix from the day before. The traffic leaving Boulder was gnarly and my impatience got the best of me, so I headed up to NCAR to run Bear Creek Canyon to the summit of Green Mountain. Mind you, the temperatures were in the mid-80’s. It was the classic plane crash scenario of how an airplane typically doesn’t crash due to one singular problem, but a compounded mix of a few problems. Not only did I decide to run Green Mountain, which is a much different run than the Mesa, but I wanted to do it in the heat, and let’s throw in one more newly created concept – run it faster than last time. That plan was a disaster, which I would have loved to realize before attempting this run. Let’s use another cliché – hindsight is always 20/20.

I maintained a pretty strong pace for most of this run, but as I started to make my way up the final ascent to the summit, I quickly realized I was not feeling good to maintain even a slow pace, especially since the sun was setting and I really wanted to be off the mountain before I couldn’t see the technical sections of the trail. I bailed out at mile six of a seven mile run. Lame, I am aware.

That wasn’t the lamest part of the week though. The fact that this run burned me out so much that I couldn’t run at all the next day was what really drove the nail into the coffin (boom – fourth cliché). So, Thursday was a zero-mile day. I figured I could simply recover enough to, at the very least, run my long run on Friday morning. I did just that. I put in a solid effort on Doudy and Mesa to wrap the week with 37 miles of stupidity.

(I got over the crappy running earlier in the week with a little r&r in Telluride)

Tuesday – 11 mi (1:53, 1,900 ft) Mesa Trail, South Fork Shanahan

Wednesday –6 mi (1:22, 1,600 ft) Green Mountain via Bear Creek Canyon

Friday – 20 mi (3:35, 3,450 ft) Doudy, Spring Brook, Mesa

Totals for the week:

Miles: 37

Climbing Feet: 6,950

Time: 6:51

Weekly Update: 8/8 – 8/14

52 miles this week! I finally broke the 50 miles/week threshold and hopefully I can continue with consistently higher mileage weeks. Though, with the exception of my Sunday run on the Mesa, all of the other running has been at Teller Farms, which at this point has become really boring. I think the obvious next step is to start incorporating more mountain running during the week, rather than consigning this type of terrain only to my weekend long runs.

Wednesday – 12 mi (1:41, 787 ft) Teller Farms – With a late start to the week, I had some good energy to maintain a quicker-than-usual pace.

Friday – 12 mi (1:50, 787 ft) Teller Farms – Nice and casual pace. I had a really strange nervous twinge in my left foot.

Saturday – 12 mi (1:50, 787 ft) Teller Farms – I got a really late start (11 am) and the mid-day heat was horrendous. Granted, the temperatures were upper 70s, but I’m so accustom to the 50 to 60 degree early morning runs. This was certainly a grunt and I felt like I had a much slower pace than I really had.

Sunday – 16 mi (3:45, 4,200 ft) Mesa with a Green Mtn summit via Bear Creek Canyon– So, ever since doing the first couple Green Mountain ascents, I’ve been curious whether I’d be able to append this summit to my usual Mesa long run. Well, this was the day I had to give it a shot. I started my way up Mesa from the Eldo trailhead with a pace a tad quicker than I wanted. I am determined to tackle that first two miles and 900 ft of vertical quicker each chance I get, with little to no regard to conservation of energy for the remainder of the run at hand. After ditching my shirt in the brush, I got to the second Shadow Canyon trail marker in about 23 minutes. I then bounced my way over to the Bear Creek Canyon Trail. I really love the variation this trail offers. The beautiful, albeit small, forest canopy in the lower sections, to the narrow ledges on the north side of Bear Peak, it's a pleasant departure from the usual terrain on the Mesa Trail. I then made my way up Green Bear Trail, which I've obviously forgotten how challenging this climb can be. It's gnarly. Every time I make the push up the last ten yards, I keep glancing to the summit to spot the stack of rocks as an indication that I can almost tally one more summit. A few minutes on the top and then it was time to mosey on. I had been stopping here and there along the way mostly to check out the scenery, so I really need to buckle down to not make this run longer than it needed to be. I had briefly considered not continuing with the remainder of the Mesa Trail (particularly the damned blue bell service road at Chautauqua), but my thick skull prevailed and I pattered on. I did, however, compromise with myself a bit and decided to only go another couple of miles, since I only needed 16 miles on this run. So, I made it to Koehler Mesa and headed back. Thankfully, the clouds rolled in by the time I had to make my final descent down the mesa and to the parking lot. I really can't stand the sun beating down on me as I run on loose gravel after a few hours of running. I had time afterwards, to plop my feet in the South Boulder Creek and suck down some water and my last GU shot. A good way to end the week.

Totals for the week:

Miles: 52

Climbing Feet: 6,561

Time: 9:07

Weekly Update: 8/1 – 8/7

Started the week with an infection in my heel, which eliminated any running from Monday through Thursday. Some antibiotics helped enough to get one easy run in on Friday before the Eldora 10k on Saturday.

Tuesday – No running, infected heel

Thursday – No running, infected heel

Friday – 10 mi (1:34, 787 ft) Easy run at Teller Farms – The first time out since the heel got infected. It was still swollen, but felt good enough to get some miles before the race.

Saturday – AM - 6.2 mi (53:04, 700 ft) La Sportiva 10k at Eldora – This was my first “trail” race and it was a blast. Surprisingly, the elevation (9,200 ft to 10,00 ft) felt pretty good. I started out pretty strong and after the first couple miles, I fell into a nice pace for the remainder.

PM – 4 mi (39, 787 ft) Easy run at Teller – Wanted to round out the day with 10 miles to play a little catch up from not running earlier in the week.

Saturday – 14 mi (2:36, 3,450 ft) Long run on the Mesa Trail – Felt strong all morning, especially coming off of a race the day before.

Totals for the week:

Miles: 34

Vertical Feet: 5,724

Time: 5:42

(Hmmm, which one looks abnormal to you? This was Tuesday night)

(..and ready to race!)

(about a mile from the finish line)

Rounding out July

The Numbers for July:

Miles: 187

Vertical feet: 25,592

Time: 33:45:46

This was a good month in running. I progressed toward building more mileage and vertical feet. In the case of the latter, I climbed 10,620 feet more than June (14,972 ft), which helped me to ascend two of Boulder’s iconic mountains (Bear Peak and Green Mountain) for the first times this month. I’m confident that doubling up the climbing at Teller Farms was key to building a larger vertical base to do this. All I can say is that I anticipate on incorporating ascents of both of these mountains into my weekly long runs and maybe even some weekday easy runs in the near future.

Weekly Update: 7/25 – 7/31

Tuesday – 11 miles (1:45, 1,574 ft) easy run at Teller Farms – This was a really, really slow and mellow run. Coming off of the weekend’s sickness, I was apprehensive about the pace I would be able to maintain on this run, so I took it easy.

Thursday – 8 miles (1:01 w/7:30’s) tempo run around Celestial Seasonings – A bit of a throwback run, but I thought it’d be good to toss in some flat, faster running since the last several weeks have been exclusively on trails with considerable climbing and relatively slow pace.

Saturday – 10.55 miles (4:59, 4,300 ft) Green Mountain Bear Peak via Gregory Canyon – This was sort of a discovery run with a friend check out both Green Mountain and Bear Peak in a single run. The time is crazy slow due to the frequent stops to check out the scenery of the Indian Peaks and Continental Divide, lingering on the summits, and general putzing around. This was certainly not a run worthy of being timed. I will say that with all the casual meandering, we both happened to run out of water a bit too early in the run and with the hot summer sun cresting over the peaks, we bolted down the canyon with a quickness to get to the frosty beverages awaiting us back at the trailhead.

Sunday – 17.5 miles (2:54, 787 ft) – Long run at Teller Farms – I intended to run 20 miles, but after the rather long day on the mountain the previous day, I cut it a little short.

Weekly Update: 7/18 – 7/24

This week was rife with monotony, humidity, exhaustion, and ultimately sickness. Yay! I started the week with the intention to run three eleven milers at Teller Farms, one of which a tempo-ish run, and to end the week with a sixteen miler on the Mesa Trail. Things started ok, but progressively turned to shit as the week came to a close.

Tuesday – 11 mi (1:37, 1,574 ft) tempo run at Teller Farms – I realized I could park at the trailhead (rather than further down on a small trail that leads to the trailhead) and do a double out-and-back, turning around just at the end of the hills. This was a great plan because I could effectively double the climbing from 787 feet to 1,574 feet. Great! – I thought. Posthumously, I realized this might have contributed to my demise in the coming days. This run, however, ended relatively strong and I felt great. The heat was just as relentless as it had been weeks prior, but I had dialed in my hydration well to compensate.

Thursday –11 mi (1:33, 1,574 ft) Easy run at Teller Farms - The second eleven miler, again at Teller, as a more assiduous run as it was focused on tempo work, with some stronger paces during the middle of the run. I hadn’t kept track of my splits during the tempo, but I knew I wasn’t holding out well enough at tempo pace and backed off a bit early. Again, this is on the hilly section of the trail for the entirety of the run. I ended this run a bit more exhausted, which is usually the case with my tempo runs, so I didn’t think about it too much. Though, in hindsight, I probably should have eaten and drank more in recovery for the easy run the following day.

Friday –11 mi (1:39, 1,574 ft) Easy run at Teller Farms – I started with a nice and easy pace for the first 5 miles, but for the second out-and-back I foolishly chose a slightly faster pace. I was dealing with some annoying indigestion throughout the first half, which I probably thought I could simply run off by going faster. Stupid. By the end of the run I felt unusually tired. Not exhausted, but drowsy. This would be the last run of the week.

Later that evening, I left work with a wicked fever, which put me in bed for the whole weekend. It sucks skipping runs, but long runs are tough to pass up. Drats.

Weekly Update: 7/11 – 7/17

Tuesday – 9 mi (1:19, 787 ft) tempo run at Teller Farms– I had some energy coming off of last week’s easy runs, so picked up the pace a tad.

Wednesday – 7 mi (58:50, 787 ft) Easy run at Teller Farms

Thursday –9 mi (1:23, 787 ft) Easy run at Teller Farms

Friday – 20 mi (3:27, 3450 ft) Long run on the Mesa Trail – I had hopes of attaching a Green Mtn summit to this run, but considering I had to go to work afterwards, I played it safe and just ran up Doudy Draw to Spring Book then cruised over to Community Ditch and ran the full Mesa Trail from the Eldo trailhead. This run wiped me out last time, but this go around felt much nicer. My legs didn’t feel tired at all toward the end. Despite starting at 5a.m., I didn’t get to see any animals. Though, later in the evening I saw a moose cross the Buchanan Pass Trail on my way up camping. That thing was massive - truly a privilege to see.