Monday, March 4, 2013

Week Ending March 3

Mon - noon: 7.5 miles (1,900') slogging. Horsetooth north summit (Southridge/Audra). Although there was a decent trench most of the way, the snow was still pretty unconsolidated and choppy which made for a bit of a slog fest. Good and deep up near the summit, which was fun, and then some good wading on Audra. Tiring.
PM: 6 miles (700') easy. Milner Mtn loop. Felt pretty spry coming back up the hill on 38e.

Tues - AM: 8.5 miles intervals. Workout was 5 x mile, with first and last mile at steady effort (cemetery) and middle three as fartlek (city park). A while since I've been to Jane's AM workouts, and I felt it - perhaps some lingering fatigue from Fuego y Agua too. Ran with Mike and Ben, although Ben consistently dropped us on the faster fartlek segments, in addition to the last mile: 5:29, 5:34, 5:37, 5:44 (fell apart), 5:26 (felt terrible).
PM: 6 miles (700') easy. Felt better as the run went on, but that's not saying much as I started out feeling like I was going to have trouble completing the loop.

Weds - PM: 7 miles (1,200') easy. Falls loop with some tooling around in the neighborhood.

Thurs - AM: 10 miles (1,400') tempo. Been a few weeks since I've done the HTH5MO&B, so it was good to get back this morning. Weather man said it was 12 degrees at 6:00, but when the wind's not blowing it just never feels that cold in Colorado. So, yeah, it was really quite a pleasant morning, made all the better by the big bright moon hovering over Horsetooth to the west with day breaking over the plains to the east: Centennial has to be one of the best sections of road on the Front Range for running/biking, IMO, especially at daybreak. If you haven't run it yet, the Horsetooth Half Marathon (which we run the first five miles of for this workout) is an absolute classic and will be celebrating its 40th year in 2013.

Anyway, today was much like many other Thursday mornings: out easy with good friends, and then back at some degree of intensity. I told Mike and Steph at the turn that I wasn't feeling much like pushing on the way back, but by the time I'd climbed north dam hill and given Mike 20 seconds, I guess my competitive nature got the better of me. At first I was content to try and keep the gap at 20 seconds, but by the end of mile two I was pretty determined to catch Mike. Finally did on the last mile back down to Maxwell, and then felt silly for running the workout harder than planned. Splits: 7:50, 6:18, 6:48, 5:03, 4:45 (30:45).
PM: 6.5 easy on the bike paths with the FCTR crew.


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January: 345.5 miles (51,900)
February: 309 (47,900')
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2013 Summits
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Horsetooth (7,255') (24)
Arthurs Rock (6,780') (2)
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Fri - Noon: 7 miles (1,900') easy. Horsetooth north summit via a heavily snowed-in north gap. Once on the rock though, the climbing was good with very little ice - as I suspected would be the case given the warmer temps. Somewhat freakishly, a search and rescue helicopter did a fly by, 50 meters to the west of the rock as I was climbing and then circled again even closer - to the point that I could clearly see the pilot and passenger - before shooting off west towards Buckhorn Canyon.

Sat - AM: 23 miles (3,200') steady with Burch. A nice casual summit of Horsetooth (up Southridge/Audra, down Rock) in the packed and rapidly melting snow, then down 38e to Redstone for a full out and back at the high end of easy, followed by a strong climb up 38e and an easy finish on the Grim Reaper. Spring was most definitely in the air today.

Sun 11.5 miles. 4 miles setting up the Lee Martinez 10k T&H course, then some quicker miles to make the best of sleeping through my (super) early alarm. Had planned on 16 miles, running from home, but ended up driving into town. Ran the final 7 miles at a low to mid-six effort before getting the race underway.
PM: 2 miles carrying Stella down to the Falls and back. Muddy out - snow pretty much all melted out - water flow through the falls was kinda disappointing unfortunately.

Total: 95 miles (11,000')

Pretty good week on balance. Probably take the foot of the gas a little bit this week before heading out to the Banana Belt with the family on Friday after work for the always-fun Salida Marathon weekend. Full-on mileage mode from there.

5 comments:

  1. You're going to have to run 2:30 at Salida to avoid owing me a brew.

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    1. So you'll be running a 3:31 then. Ambitious. Looking forward to my annual Salida free beer bonanza.

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  2. Just looked at the weather - banana belt? Not looking like it...

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    1. Mid 30s and a bit of snow. Looks to be about perfect.

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    2. Forgot that is like 70 and sunny for you Brits ;-)

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