Go slow to go fast.

8.5 miles - 2:01 - 2800' - running the bottom half, postholing through windrifts up the top half of Green mountain - super fun running down through the powder.

Ousted Tony K, Geoff R., AND Jurek for the glory of the First Ascent for 2011...they were good sports though...see details here. 

I performed some duct tape surgery on the inside of my green 101's on each shoe by the ball of the foot where the upper was starting to separate from the sole.  It seems to have staved off the impending separation of the upper.

7.5 miles easy with 10 x 10-15 second sprints up the steepest road hill I could find behind Fairview High school.

1:05 - 350' vert. - 8:49 avg - super slow day. 

Decided to forego the Green mountain Tuesday hard effort with Jason, levi and George and join Nan's group for a flat speed workout this morning in preparation for the quicker quaker 5K this weekend in Lafayette.

Glad I did.  It was a really solid workout, with Nan and Simon leading the way on the longer intervals, and me, in usual fashion, attempting to regain my manhood and massage my ego by out sprinting them on the 1 minute intervals.

It was better timing to do that workout today than doing a hard flat workout on Thursday...so I'll have to rejoin the mountain-men next week.

Here were my pace splits...we did a 2 X 1,2,3,2,1 with 60-90 sec. recovery, followed by a 1,2,2,1.  Pretty fast intervals, which suit me better than 4+ minute stuff where I just tend to not have as long of staying power:

• Set 1 - ?, 5:25, 5:41, 5:24, 4:53 (missed the 1st split)
• Set 2 - 5:09, 5:38, 5:41, 5:31, 4:35
• Last set - 5:18, 5:49, 5:37, 5:14

Slow.  Sometimes it seems like my faster runs are getting faster and my slow runs are getting slower.  I guess today I was just feeling extra worked over from the 24 minutes of really fast and hard speed work yesterday so I was running almost 10 min pace on flat sidewalks for 40 minutes.

Track workout with Jason, Marcus, and two other friends of theirs.

Goal today was just to hold back, and do a few repeats at race pace and not below that.

I did pretty decent at that, but my legs weren't feeling all that great.  I hope they feel a lot more fresh and better on Saturday.  They did feel better toward the end.  I was just still kind of worked over from Tuesday I think.

I got a bunch of ART done yesterday though, which I think was really beneficial.

After a warm up I did 4 X 800 at the following times:

2:56, 2:57, 2:53, 2:50 - I was aiming at 2:50's which is a 5:40 race pace goal of mine.  But I think I was still warming up, and also I was trying not to go too fast and I think I overcompensated.  Because normally on our 2-3 minute intervals I have been doing 5:20-25 pace.

Then I jogged around the track while the other guys finished 3 more 600's.  I joined on the last one and did it in 2:14 - a 5:48 pace, which was fine.  Then we finished with 4 X 200.  I did them in: 41, 39, 42, 32 - Kind of broke down and couldn't resist sprinting the last one after about the first 50 meters.

10 miles total:  1:23- 8:19 avg  - Virtually 0 vertical, unless you want to count the 6' to hop the fence to the track.

6 miles - 59 min. - 450' ascent.

Easy, slow, recovery run up around the perimeter of the neighborhoods in south Boulder and back past Fairview.  Feeling pretty decent and ready to see what I can do about my 5K PR in the morning.

Fun race this morning!  Fantastic weather, tons of competition, met and ran with a bunch of cool people.  Great times.

Also I set a 29 second PR which felt good, even with a screwup at the finish line when I accidentally stopped too early.

See my full Race Report here 

Easy, slow run around south west boulder, up lehigh st, up shanahan ridge trails in 8 inches of powder for a mile out and back.

6.25 miles - 1:03:31 - 515' vertical 

Accidentally slept in and missed meeting Jason S. at 6:30 for our weekly Green mtn. jaunt.  So I decided to run up the reverse way up Bear Canyon.  Just over half way up bear canyon I met Jason and decided to cruise back down with him.  Ran back around mesa to the gregory trailhead, and then back home down baseline and up broadway. Finally started feeling warmed up and ready to run in the last few miles...kind of sluggish before that.

11 Miles -  1:57:29 - 1800' vertical

Kind of not into running at sunrise in 10 degree weather for the 3rd morning in a row, so I waited to run until the afternoon.

Really sunny, even though it was 26 degrees, it felt nice out.

6 miles - 46:53 - 7:49 avg - 800' vertical - HR: avg 136

Between easy to very light side of moderate pace.  Ran up table mesa to NCAR and back on the roads.  I was pleased with how low my HR was going up the hill and down for the pace I was holding.  

Really good speed work track session with Schlarb this morning.

It was balmy outside at about 30 degrees this am, compared to the 10 degrees the past few days.  But the trails and paths and outdoor tracks are are still snow and cruddy.  Fortunately, Jason has access to an indoor 200m track which came in really handy this morning.

After an abnormally long warmup we got going and did 8 X 600 Meters, w/400 meter jog between.  Then finished with 4 X 200 Meters with 400 meter jog.

Splits for the 600's:  1:59, 1:59, 2:00, 2:01, 2:02, 1:59, 1:59, 1:47

Did all 4 of the 200 Meters right at 30.5 seconds.

Jason was hitting 1:52's consistently on the 600's.  I commented that I thought it was odd that my HR up through the 7th 600 was never getting into the 170's, while in the 5K last week I averaged 172 for 18 minutes, meaning, much of the time in the race it was 175-180.  So I decided to stay with him on the last interval and was surprised by having a lot left in the tank even on the last lap and finished 2 seconds faster than Jason, and 12 seconds faster than any other split.  My HR capped out at 176 on that interval, compared to 169 on the hardest of the others.  

I'm sure I could not have done sub 150's for 8 of those in a row, at least for sure without WAY overexerting myself...but I'm wondering if I was taking it too easy at 1:59 - 2:00 pace at first.  I guess it doesn't really matter that much since I'm training for longer stuff mainly.  And I think I should err on the side of slower out of concern for not over-doing it and injuring myself and keeping it enjoyable.  But it made me wonder. 

Ran the track intervals in my five fingers and enjoyed the feeling of being right on the ground.  I haven't run in them as much lately with all the snow and trails, and it feels good to get everything working hard, including the feet. 

14 miles for the morning - 1:59 running time. - mostly flat - ~300' total incline during warmup and cool down.

Easy, sunny, shorts/t-shirt run up to NCAR and back on the road.  Same run as Wednesday.  Couldn't resist doing it again, its a really nice run for a road run.  Very scenic and peaceful, no traffic, wide running path the whole way, and a solid amount of vertical, but not too steep to make it difficult or slow.   Did it slower today, really casual pace up and down.

6 miles - 54:18 - 9:03 avg - 800' vert - HR: 130 avg

Kind of a blah feeling to end my biggest mileage week ever.

I was looking forward to a fun long run incorporating the mesa trail and flatirons vista this morning...but from the moment I woke up I felt off.  I finally got out the door at 7:30 instead of 7:00, noticeably not motivated.  Kind of weird.

And I just felt slow.  I couldn't find the motivation to push my heart rate even higher than 120 for any sustained periods for the first hour.  Seriously weird.  I didn't feel labored or anything, I just felt tired, and off, and not motivated.  Nan thinks it was because I got 5 hours of sleep Thursday night.  Perhaps so.  Perhaps it is just that combined with a big workout Thursday.  I don't know...its probably just one of those days, and I just need to take it easy for a day or two.

But anyway, by the time I got to mile 15 at the bottom of Dowdy Draw, while I was enjoying myself and feeling fine, I didn't have any desire or motivation to run the 1000' ascent up the Mesa trail on icy/muddy trails like I normally would have.  So I went down the road on Eldorado canyon and back home on Marshall.  Capping off exactly 20 miles at my doorstep in a pathetically slow 3:10:00 even.  9:30/mile average??  with only 1300' of total climbing.  Yeah...I was definitely dragging.  And my groin started to feel some twinges toward the end, I've noticed some knots building up in my right groin area that I need to have Richey target on Monday with some ART (not really looking forward to that, but it should be done).

And accentuating my slowness, I got home to find out that Nan ran 18 miles in under 2 hours...6:41 avg pace!  And I'm truthfully very glad it was me that was feeling off today and not her, because she's got the Houston Half coming up in 2 weeks, and it's awesome to see her so fit and ready to rock it there.  She's on track for some major butt kicking there from the looks of things.

 So, while I was planning to do 2500-3000' of climbing and go out and rock a solid 20-22 miles, I settled for a more plain version of 20 miles.  Some days its there, some days its not.  No big deal.  I still enjoyed the run.  Met a couple of the assistant RD's for the san juan solstice and chatted for a while on marshall mesa.  And got 3 hours of good education as I was listening to 'Parenting with Love and Logic' the entire time.  It has been 3 years since I first read that and I noticed my parenting effectiveness slipping.  The principles in that book work wonders if applied properly I've found.

For the week I ended up with:

63.25 miles - 9:51:11 - 5500' vertical - HR 133 avg

Took 2 days off after feeling kind of crappy Saturday and got ART on Monday.  Felt a lot better and ready to run today.  Was the first time I've missed a day of running (other than Sundays which I always take off) since a sick day back in mid-november...felt kind of odd not to run since it is such a habit now.  But it felt good also.

Did green mtn. today with Schlarb, back to the regular Tuesday hard green effort.

Except for me today, it was brutally slow and painful.  My calves turned to rocks after the first 5 minutes up the steep front side and I suffered for another 20 until the tightness started to subside with the grade decrease.  It slowed me down considerably and it took me over 45 min. to get up, compared to 39:30 something the last time I hit that route.

Beautiful out there though, and the top half was really fun running with solid snow and Ice pack making for a really smooth and fun run with the microspikes.

Jason is running Green mtn. now as fast as Tony K, which is incredibly impressive.  In fact he beat Tony's best time up the back side on Saturday by 11 seconds.  Today he did mid 32 min.  Crazy fast.  He is going to start giving the Ultra scene a run for its money this year.

10.5 miles - 2:10:00 - 3100' vert - Amazing how quick I can lose my steep climbing legs if I don't use them regularly.  It was 3 weeks since I hit green, with focusing more on flat speed work, and I could feel it for sure, in the calves mostly.

4 miles mostly flat, super slow and easy.  Not feeling all that great in the leg region, just still feeling a bit tired.

Great workout this morning.  First day I actually felt somewhat solid again on my warm up in about a week, felt recovered finally from last weeks workout I guess.

This week we bumped up the distance while attempting to maintain the pace.  I nailed it with very even splits and still felt good enough to do some fast 200's at the end.  It was one of those mornings that just worked, and felt smooth...I like those mornings.  That's not to say it wasn't a butt kicking workout, my HR was close to 180 on many of the sets, but the easy/rest days definitely paid off to get me back to feeling better today.

George joined Jason and I this morning at the indoor track, which was a perfect venue with yesterday's 4 inches of fresh snow...the outdoor tracks were definitely not an option.

Here were my splits for the 8 X 800 Meters:   2:38, 2:39, 2:39, 2:40, 2:38, 2:39, 2:40, 2:39

Jason was running between 2:29-2:33 on his sets.  GZ was just barely behind me on most of them.  We only did 2 X 200 M to finish off instead of the 4 we did in the past, and I did those in 29 and then 28.  Felt good to do a 28 at the end...first time I've ever seen that number on a 200M that I can recall. 

11.5 miles for the morning with 4 miles of just under 5:20 pace and .25 at sub 4 min. 

HR avg 152, with it topping out at 179 on each of the last four 800's 

4 Miles - 28:15 - 7:04/mi avg - 410' vertical

Wanted to get out for a quick 5-6 easy today at some point, but was too caught up in knocking out a bunch of effective time on work tasks to break away until 5:30pm, at which point I only had 30 minutes.  So it forced me to go a little faster than I normally would on an easy day to still get at least 4 miles in.

Ran up Table Mesa toward NCAR, and turned around at 2 miles.  Still felt like a relatively easy effort, although I'm guessing my HR was in the 150-60 range at some points. Mentally I am just eager and ready to run.  Really looking forward to a fast long run tomorrow, I'm a lot more into it this week than last, I can already tell.

~9 miles - 1:40 - 11:10/mile - 2150' vertical

Matt is in town visiting his Dad (also our stake president) and he came by my place to join me for a run this morning.  Thanks for the company Matt, that was a nice run. 

We ran from my house, up skunk canyon, down mesa trail toward chataqua and then up the royal arch trail.  I hadn't been up royal arch before, its a cool trail.  It was steep.  about 800' vertical over .8 miles until we hit sentinel pass.  We didn't finish the 1/4 mile to royal arch because I needed to head home.  

Nice easy cruise on the trails, very enjoyable.  And it was nice to check out a new trail. 

OK, all you 'ultra runners' out there, picture this hypothetical scenario.  I'm kind of curious how this would make you feel:

 You're cruising along the mesa trail in Boulder on your easy recovery day.  Your heart rate is very relaxed in the mid 130's, just trotting down a downhill section enjoying the mountain air, running through pine tree single track.  Then you turn a corner and notice a runner on a switch back below you out of the corner of your eye, and you just keep cruising down.  Then you do a double take since your brain has now processed the long hair, the beard, the smooth stride, and you realize you're catching up to Tony Krupicka...and yet you're barely breathing from lack of effort.  What the?!?  Then by the time you get down the switch back he's out of site like a deer that pranced off into the woods, and you're back to reality, realizing he must surely have just barely jumped on the trail in front of you and was then bounding off up the nearest mountain at some ludicrous speed.  But your curiosity is still peaked, so you pick up the pace a little, and around the next bend, just behind NCAR by the mallory trail he's still just ahead of you, much closer now.  Weird!  So you catch up to him and then slow the pace down to run and chat for ten minutes or so as you cruise up the mesa trail past bear canyon and up the steeper Fern canyon trail for a little while.

OK, so how does that make you feel/think?   

Alright, you may have guessed that there was a little too much detail there for me to be making that up by now, so I'll tell you what I felt...Heck Yeah!! I'm in awesome shape right now!  I was hardly breathing and I was catching up to Tony on my easy day!  Wahoooo!  I'm going to win Western States this year! (OK, that very last line was fabricated just now, I didn't actually feel/think that at any point)

Amazing what a little 'positive mental attitude' can cover up isn't it?  And hey, maybe if you lie to yourself long enough eventually it may turn to the truth?

The good news is, our subconscious mind can't seem to differentiate all the time.  While in reality, my logical mind is well aware that I most likely just happened to hop on the mesa trail from the skunk canyon trail a couple hundred yards after Tony had just run by and we were most likely running a similar easy pace.  Then once I saw him, I definitely picked up the pace a lot in order to catch up and run with him for a bit.  Then I slowed back down to the pace I was at before so I could run and chat with him.

But even though I know all that, my conscious knowledge of that still isn't taking away the really cool feeling that occured when I noticed myself catching up to Tony even though I was running really easy.  That event told my sub-conscious in no uncertain terms that I must be in good shape, and that I can run with fast guys.  And it embedded that in my belief set for now.  And it increased my confidence to some degree, despite all the logical explanations my mind can come up with for why that may or may not be the case.  Interesting stuff.....

Thanks Tony...for going slow sometimes so I can feel fast! 

It was nice chatting with Tony for a while about his upcoming race at Rocky Raccoon and other stuff.  Also, I appreciated him asking about my upcoming race and giving me some beta on the Moab Red Hot course.  He took 2nd place there to Kyle Skaggs by only 1 second in 4:03:03 in 2008. 

For the morning: 7.55 Miles - 1:06:35 - 8:51avg - HR: 138avg - 1300' vertical - I am pleased that 5:30-6:00 pace is feeling like easy recovery pace coming down from the mesa trail and my HR is not getting even into the 140's for that section/pace

Met up with George and Justin Mock this am at the Fairview track at 6:30.

George warmed up, but is nursing a calf strain and was not in a position to do a workout.  Turns out Justin wasn't feeling too motivated since he ran a hard 13 yesterday in like 6:13 pace avg.  And I wasn't jumping out of my skin to start running 5:30 pace this morning either, so we just jogged.  Then George stopped and Justin and I kept jogging, and then after 4 miles or so we decided to throw in a few 'strides' of 200 meters.  And I can't resist opening it up on a 200 meter, so, much to Justin's surprise I passed him on the first one and did it in 30 sec.  Then we did 200 m jog, then 3 more 200's on/off.  Did them in 30, 31, 32, 31.  That 3rd one I was already starting feel it.

Ouch.  That was a shock to the system.  Going from 7 ish pace to 4 min. pace right away like that shocked my heart/lungs.  It took me a good mile of jogging after those before the nausea went completely away and I felt normal again.  I like doing those after I have eased into them by doing a bunch of 5:30 pace stuff.  That was too quick too early for my liking.

So, kind of a wimpy workout today, but whatever.  It was nice running with George and Justin.  I'm glad I got at least about 6K of vertical in this week already, and another solid speed workout on Tuesday so I can chill this weekend in flat Houston. 

5 miles easy in houston with Nan.  Just a shake out run for her for the half marathon on Saturday.

We did 4 strides, then 4 x 45 sec at 5:15 pace which felt really easy at sea level and for such short intervals.

Oops, didn't get time to squeeze a run in today.  Too busy watching Nan run, and traveling back home.  That's alright though.  I am itching to run though with such a relatively light week of mileage this week and last week only being in the mid 40's. I was half-tempted to go out tonight at 9 when we got home, but I'm kind of tired because I couldn't sleep past 3:00 am this morning since I was so excited to watch Nan race from the pace truck.  Oh well, it will probably be good for me to take 2 rest days, and then I'll be really fresh for hitting one more solid 60 ish mile week next week before tapering down over the next two weeks for Moab. 

Check out Nan's race report here

and more photos here 

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.