Felt great to be out running again after 2 days off. The roads were an entire sheet of ice this morning, which was really unique. Luckily, I was only on the road for 3/4 mile before hitting the connector to skunk canyon. Ran up skunk to mesa, up bear canyon to the green/bear junction which was just over 6 miles. Then came back the same way. By the time I was coming down a couple of inches of fresh sticky powder was already on the ground which made coming down work fine without spikes. Until I got to skunk canyon, then it was really slick so I slipped them on. 12.5 miles - 10:06 avg - 2:06:31 - HR: 139 avg - 2500' vertical This morning was a pretty easy/leisurely cruise. Not total recovery pace the whole time, because I was feeling so fresh and rested, but I wasn't ever pushing the pace either. One of those runs that just feel really good and really enjoyable. No pains. No need to push too hard. Just running smooth and feeling great to be out in the mountains on a calm wintery day. Huge flakes of snow were falling all around and making a nice 2-3 inch pad of powder to cruise around on. January Summary: 227 Miles - 34 hrs 39 min.- 25,100' vertical. I thought I might be closer to 250 miles for January with more vertical. But with missing 2 days I wasn't quite there, and I did a lot more flat stuff because of a week of focusing on a 5K race. Still a good month of training though. I had a lot of really good flat speed work sessions that I think were really beneficial. February I'm not going to go after a ton of vertical either, because I'll taper a bit for Moab. Probably in March I'll get back into the ~10K+ vertical per week stuff again.
| 