Week in review

Runnin’ with my brothers, headed for the home base
With a steady pace on the race we just faced
The road ahead goes on and on
This shit is gettin’ longer than a motherfuckin’ marathon
~N.W.A

Mon 29 Mar: 00:29, 2.97 miles, easy ‘hood run
Tues 30 Mar: 00:54, 4.73 miles, Janet’s house surges
Wed 31 Mar: 1:50, 12.25 miles, Gunbarrel tempo
Fri 2 April: 00:25, 3.06 miles, Cirque de la Butte
Sat 3 April: 00:39, 4.25 miles, Treadmill surges
Sun 4 April: 5:50, 30 miles, Cirque de Boulder

Week total: 10.3 hours, 57.5 miles
March total: 37 hours, 221.31 miles
YTD: 113 hours, 575 miles

*hour totals include all activity

Post race, I actually felt okay. Not particularly damaged at all and ready to keep rolling the mileage. Took Sunday off then did a quick little jaunt around the ‘hood and felt fine.

Tuesday, I met up with Janet and did some easy surges out in East Boulder. We worked on some form issues but really things are coming around nicely in the form department. Still trying to figure out shoes and insoles but that may be an ongoing task.

For my tempo run on Wednesday, I had a great time running with Art and the crew. Started out solo and then bumped into Art doing his warm up. Joined him and ran to the start. Felt great, actually, and was excited to see what I could do with the tempo portion of the run. Janet had me teed up for a little shorter distance this week to recover fully from Saturday’s race and I started with Art. Spun negative splits each mile and finished very strongly. Just what I have been looking to do since starting tempo work several months back. Good stuff!

I creamed my toe (no roast beef) Wednesday night with a door and thought I might have broken the little bugger so I just did a short walk (about 1.5 miles) to test the waters. It wasn’t too bad – hurt a bit in the shoe but didn’t really bother me too much. So that was pretty good news. Something is definitely not completely right with it but it doesn’t seem to affect my running so I am going to choose to ignore it for now.

I had two days left on my Crested Butte pass so tested cramming my foot into my boot (all systems go) and jammed over to Gunny for the night on Friday to ski, hang with my pops and get in a short run. The skiing wasn’t too bad for last-week-of-the-season action but I was hitting it like a chump. Spun a lap around the town of CB before dinner and felt pretty great, actually, then gorged myself on Donita’s food.

Decided to head back home Saturday instead of braving the slopes as a storm was rolling in and I didn’t want to get caught up in heinous I-70 traffic on the way. Stopped at the gym and ran briefly but didn’t feel super red hot. Did ~45 minutes with some surges.

Sunday we were up early for bunny duty then I decided to tackle what has been a bit of a nemesis – the Cirque de Boulder. This fun run takes one completely around the PRB and manages to do so mostly on dirt. I felt great for the first half or so then started to fade a bit once I got into more technical, hilly, sloppy terrain. By mile 25 I was pretty hammered but vowed to finish up. Ended up with a not-too-shabby 5:50ish for 30 miles with a lot of walking in the last 5. It wasn’t pretty but I got ‘er done.

Think my main problems during this run were pacing and hydration (which led to bonking). I definitely bit off more than I could chew but was really pleased that I managed to finish it up. I need to work on hydration across the board and get more used to carrying water in a pack vs. bottles. There are a lot of advantages to the pack but one significant disadvantage is being able to monitor your consumption more closely. This will be something on which I work on future training runs.



So that was my week. All in all, pretty solid effort and a lot of good training as I continue to prep for the LT100. More to come this week!