We started back up our weekly Green Mtn. morning time trials this week. It was great to be back out there doing it. Today it was me, Schlarb, Levi. I was eager to run this morning, which was nice. That tends to happen if I take a day off from running. And I was feeling decent during the warmup. But I knew I would be solo from the moment we started the climb. And I was. Which was fine. I threw on the headphones and enjoyed the climb quite thoroughly. I took it pretty conservatively the first mile, and was surprised to look at the watch and see it still in the 14 min. range at that point, because I wasn't pushing hard at all. That was encouraging, because its about 850 feet of ascent for that mile and in the past it generally has felt pretty taxing to do it in that pace. I tried to maintain a fast effort through the middle flatter 1.2 mile section, and I really love that section. Because i can run between 8-10 minute mile pace on smooth forest single track, still gaining vertical, but not so much, and the views are just awesome in there. The last mile is another ~880 foot ascent and I just plowed through that at a steady effort. Not killing myself like I sometimes like to to finish strong. Hit the peak in 45:06 after walking some of the last few switch backs due to some off-camber ice on the trail I didn't want to slip on. Jason did it in 35 and change, and Levi topped out in 39:55. Jason is just a crazy climbing fool. That dude has some serious capacity when it comes to running up steep mountains. I guess that's why he is capable of winning national championship 50 milers. I'll be stoked when I get my time to sub 40 minutes on that route. That is the longest of the routes from that side of green. It's about 3.2 miles. I've been up green in under 40 minutes a few times, but it has been on the Ampitheater route, which is only 2.2 miles. The routes start from the same place, the one is just more direct obviously. We ran easy down bear canyon and around mesa, always a great way to go. For the morning: 11.25 miles - 1:59:00 - 10:35 avg - 3150' vertical
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