My wife is fast. I challenge any of you reading this to out run her in an interval workout. (OK Jason, you might be able to hang with her...for half the repeats...if you're feeling really fresh) She was probably going 70-80% today due to her race this weekend and I was still not really close to hanging.
Since Jason and George were both out for the green mtn. ascent at 6:30 I decided to join Nan, Colleen, Simon and Katie doing some 4 min. intervals.
Here were my pace splits for the 5 x 4min: 5:42, 5:28, 5:47, 5:31, 5:40 - The 1st and 3rd were up, the rest were down. Nan's splits were way faster, I'm sure she never went over 5:30 pace on any of them.
I wasn't feeling all that sharp this morning. But it still felt good to get the legs moving faster than normal. But I couldn't seem to push my HR higher than 169. Doing 800's last Thursday I was getting it up to 179. Perhaps my legs were just flat from 2K of climbing yesterday, or the cold...not sure.
8.4 Miles - 1 hour - 7:09 avg - HR 151 avg - 160' vertical
But, being a creature of habit and also wanting to get some decent vertical in for the week before going to Houston to watch Nan race this weekend, I went directly from the FAC after the workout up baseline to the Gregory Canyon Trailhead and ran a loop up Green mtn. as an additional 'cool down'. It was a gorgeous, calm, silent morning up there, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Since I was all warmed up from the workout, it was the most comfortable I have felt in a long time cruising up to Green at a casual pace.
I exchanged greetings with Tony on upper greenman, then slipped on the spikes for the remainder and topped out in a really casually paced 48 minutes going the long 3.25 mile way up gregory to greenman. I came down the front side, and shouldn't have taken off my spikes at the saddle junction because the front side warranted spikes pretty much the whole way below that...it was a bit slower going. Rounded off the mileage a bit up gregory again to end at 14 for the day.
Green mtn. loop: 5.6 miles - 1:20 - 2475' vertical - HR: 142 avg - TH to summit 48 min.
Total for the morning: 14 miles - 2635' vertical - 2:20 - 10:00 avg
