Alarm went off with a loud gong this morning at 4 AM - it was easy to get up because I was eager to go run through the cool morning sunrise on a new trail.
I ran at White Ranch in Golden, which I biked last Saturday. I couldn't help thinking to myself the whole time I was riding it that it would be a phenomenal running trail...and it was indeed. I only biked 5or 6 miles of it because I was short on time...I wanted to run a lot farther than that and explore the trails.
Running time 1:51:52 - including pee stop and a few map review stops
10.5 miles - 10:39/mile - 2811 Feet ascent
I had to be home by 7 am (the real reason I got up at 4) because Nan had to leave for her workout at 7. So I pushed a little harder the last 3-4 miles to make sure I was back in time. I felt great. And WOW! What an amazing trail and time of day. I really liked how runnable the entire thing was. I averaged 13:30/mile for the first 50 minutes of straight climbing, just taking it pretty easy...it was still a great amount of climbing, but not so brutally steep as the boulder area trails.
** Later
When I got home I did an hour and 15 minutes of P90x lunges, pullups, and abs while watching cloudy with a chance of meatballs with my kids. My favorite line of the show was "I'm not baby brent anymore...I'm chicken brent!"...because everyone knows that once you turn into a chicken you automatically get mad kung fu skills.
Then when Nan got home I headed back to White Ranch with my bike. I got it all tuned in and tubeless tires set up and it rode really nice, and I didn't have any issues with flats. I rode the exact same 10.5 mile route I had run this morning.
I have decided I kind of like pitting my biker self against my runner self. So far I'm 1 to 1. Monday, runner self won the hill climb. Today, biker self just barely snuck in a win...but it didn't come easy. The 4 mile climb on the bike felt twice or three times as hard as it did running. I guess my runner self had the huge advantage of being fresh and rested, and running in the cool morning, which is why it felt so easy. I didn't push hard at all running the hill this am and it just felt like a pretty easy climb. But after running for nearly 2 hours in the hills, then doing a lunge workout, then riding that sucker in the 85-90 degree heat, it was a challenge indeed.
Next week I think I'll switch it up and try biking first to give my runner self the challenge to overcome...its kind of fun to have discovered my own built in race partner(mostly its just fun to have the best of both worlds).
There was one section of trail going down today on the bike that was incredibly cool and fun. It was really cool running it, but biking down it was HEAVEN. It was really tight single track, smooth, down a valley with 3-4 foot tall green grass on each side and winding moderately with huge trees all around, and every 100-200 feet there was about a 2 foot log drop in the trail. It was straight enough that I coulkd just fly down full speed and launch off drop after drop. What a rush. And the bike handled the landings so smooth, it was really cool. Then I got an immediate reality slap in the face as I had to climb a super steep 300 yards out of the valley a lot of which I walked because it was so technical. And I was kind of tired at about that point in time for some odd reason. | 