Go slow to go fast.

Easy run out marshall road and back in the 48 minutes I had available this morning.

6.5 miles - 51:43 - 7:59 avg - 138 Avg HR - 150' ascent - windy

Easy cruise around east boulder - unseasonably warm - 56 degrees this am at 6:45, can't complain.  It's probably the warm before the storm though.

I almost start feeling guilty on my runs lately because it is so gorgeous here in Boulder and I keep reading about how nasty the weather is in Utah lately.  Is it really fair that I should still be enjoying gorgeous sunny weather and dry trails while all you utahns are running on treadmills or in nasty air?  Probably not...but who said life was fair?  Ok, I'll stop rubbing it in now...I do feel an ever so slight twinge of sympathy for you all though, for what it's worth.

8.5 Miles - 1550' vertical - 1:39 - just a really slow and easy cruise up to NCAR on the road, then up the Mallory cave trail until it ends, then back down the bear canyon road.  Found myself lollygagging and sightseeing up at the top of the Mallory trail because it was so gorgeous.  The trails winds up steep switchbacks in the forest past lots of really cooling climbing crags.  I walked out on top of one at one point and was kind of in awe at the views of the city and the surrounding flatirons that engulfed me on all sides.

5.5 miles - REAAAALLY SLOW and easy and flat on the east boulder creek trail

7 miles - 1:04 - 9:14 avg - 1200' vertical

Easy cruise this morning up the lower bear canyon trail from my house, up table mesa, to the trail.  Ran past the base of Bear canyon and up the mesa trail for a while until turning around...wanted to explore a new route home but needed to get home so Nan could get to the airport so I turned around.  She is heading to NC for the club XC race.   

Odd 24 hours in my life.

Nan was in North Carolina for the club xc nationals - congrats to her by the way for 3rd place overall!  What a studette.  The race was pretty stacked with Hanson's Brooks, McMillan Elite, and Boulder Running company runners, among others, and the only two that beat her were Renee Metivier-Baille and Desiree Davila - and it was just a few seconds of gap between the top 3, and then about a 20 second gap to the next finisher.  My wife kicks some serious butt!

I had a stomach bug Friday which wiped me out from about 3 PM on...my poor kids had to tuck themselves in (2, 4, and 6 year olds) as I was useless, just laying in bed and vomiting.  Pretty much purely miserable 6 hours of life.

This morning I felt mostly fine, just tired and dehydrated.  

 Tried to get a little rest while the kids watched a movie at 11 after a breakfast with Santa.

Was awoken by my 3 kids informing me that water was dumping into the basement.  The toilet had clogged.  And it was literally pouring into the basement, fast...not cool.

After dealing with that mess, I had a babysitter over at 1:30 and got out for a run.  I hadn't eaten much of anything since 3 pm the day before...so I wasn't necessarily feeling all that energized.

But I had a couple hours to use, so I headed for the straightest route up green mountain from my house.  I felt oddly really good the entire run up, and ran every step, albeit at a super easy pace.  First time in a couple weeks my calves and legs didn't feel kind of sore climbing.  I just locked into a 145 HR and motored up the trail, and thoroughly enjoyed how smooth and effortless the ascent felt.

But by the time I was half way down, my body was telling me it was kind of cooked.  Not enough calories in the system, so the last few miles at 6:20-30 pace took a lot more effort than it normally takes coming down them at 6:00 pace.

11.5 mile run - 2 hours even - 10:30avg - 2600' vertical - 138 HR avg - made it up to the four-way 1/4 mile from the top of green in 1:10 - and had to turn around because I needed to be home in 2 hours.  Timed it perfectly.  I think I can make it up green and back home in 2 hours on a good day.

On a negative note, my sweet little green MT101's uppers are already coming apart after only 160 miles on the pair, that's lame and unfortunate.  Such a great shoe, but it looks like the uppers are going to blow out pretty quick.

For the week: 48.5 Miles - 8300' Vertical 

The best December weather ever just continues forth...beautiful 50 degree sunny, calm morning again.  Shorts and a t-shirt were comfortable.

Really slow and easy 7 miles, up Skunk Canyon, across the Mesa Trail, Down McClintock trail. First time on McClintock, really like that trail.  It winds right below Chataqua but you feel totally enclosed and secluded until all of a sudden you pop out in a neighborhood at the bottom and look around and realize there were houses on both sides of the gorge all the way along.   

1:19 - 1100' vertical. - Very nice leg recharging run.  Pace was really, really slow and leisurely the entire time.  I'm liking the Monday slow recharge runs a lot lately, they tend to be very rejuvenating.  And its really easy to just get lost in the enjoyment of movement through the forest single track.

5 super easy, flat, slow recovery miles - maybe 9 min pace.

6 easy and flat around the CU south tennis complex dirt trails with my friend Eric who's in town for a day or two.  7:55 pace.

Really leisurely cruise up skunk canyon trail and down front of NCAR.  Finally got an inch or two of snow here in Boulder.  Trails weren't really slick at the slow pace I was going though.

6 miles - 1:02 - 10:32 avg - 1100' vertical

Carpooling up to the chubby cheeks 50k with Tim long tomorrow morning, looking forward to a fun long run and meeting some new people. 

Easy run - really slow and leisurely - ran past Fairview and then up the South Shanahan trail to the mesa trail, then down North Shanahan and back home.  Beautiful calm morning.  45-50 degrees.

8 miles - 1:21 - 10:10 avg - 1150' vertical.  - legs feel great, no soreness or stiffness from the longer run Saturday.  I've been doing a hip mobility routine after every run, recommend by Dr. Hansen, my ART therapist, which I think has been beneficial.

6 really easy and slow recovery miles, pretty flat...300' vertical - 55 minutes. 

Did a fun fartlek/speed workout with a couple really fast dudes this morning.  It's always so much more fun to do hard workouts with other people than solo.  And it was really motivating to be trying my best to hang on to those guys, I am sure I ran faster than I would have alone.

By 'fast dudes' I mean Jason Schlarb who just took 5th at The North Face 50 mile championship right behind Dakota Jones; he also did a 2:27 marathon this year (among other really fast races he won).  And his fellow air force cross country compadre Levi Severson who was leading the way this morning and has beat Jason in Cross Country for the last 4 years, and also did a 2:27 marathon.  

Needless to say, I wasn't able to quite hang with each of their respective paces for all of the 2 minute intervals.  However, I did out run them on the final 30 second interval which felt good (not that they couldn't have out run me if they really cared to probably).  But I feel like I have a decent amount of power on the short 30 second to 1 minute stuff, but beyond that I start to max out pretty quick.

We did a 2 mile warmup to the wonderland lake trails which are relatively flat, just slightly rolling.

Then we did 7 X 2 min. hard x 3 min. slow, and finished off with 2 x 30 seconds hard.

My paces for the fast intervals according to the garmin:

 5:18, 5:23, 5:48, 4:58, 5:20, 5:26, 5:10, 4:42, 4:14

The 5:48 was a net 35' ascent, and the 4:58 was a 44' descent.   The others were closer to flat.  The last 2 were of course only for 30 seconds, but hey...4:14, I'll take it!  Now if only I could hold that for longer than 30 seconds.

Totals: 9.25 miles - 7:54 avg - 650' vertical 

5 easy slow flat miles around CU boulder-south xc course.

Merry Christmas! (merry late christmas I guess since I'm writing this monday.)

What a 'mostly' great day.  So much fun to see the excitement and thrill that Christmas morning is for 2.5, 4.5, and 6.5 year old kids.  What an incredibly fun age they are.  The best part of the morning was after all the presents were opened when we pointed out that there was wrapping paper on the sliding glass door...a piece of information they had glossed over the entire morning.  We coaxed them to rip it off to reveal a trampoline in the back yard, which they were thoroughly excited by.  So much fun.

The weather in Boulder continued to impress for December 25th...which led to Nan enjoy a really nice12 miler, as opposed to last year running on cruddy ice and pulling a muscle in her groin taking her out of racing commission for 2-3 months.  And which led me to accidentally getting in a nice 22 miler through the mountains.

I meant to run for 2.5 hours because we had a plan to meet some friends for dinner in the afternoon.

But I didn't plan the point to point route out very well and vastly underestimated the distance from the flatirons vista trail, up Eldorado canyon to walker ranch, and around the back of the flatirons over flagstaff and down to Eben G. Fine park on Canyon road in Boulder.  I thought 2.5 hours would be plenty of time.

Turns out it was 22 miles with 4250' ascent.  Anyone who does that run in 2.5 hours better be on a large salary from some big shoe company. 

Ended up taking us 3:31 running time, with 3-4 minor stops along the way (once to ask directions from someone)

It was a totally gorgeous sunny 45-50 degree day with dry trails.  And it was great to run with Jason and chat the whole time, and just enjoy being out in the mountains.

Unfortunately it wasn't all good...because my family and friends were expecting me an hour and a half earlier.  I totally botched that one up with a huge underestimation of the distance of the run.  And since it was a point to point run, there was no way to fix that once I started to realize that after about 10 miles in.  The biggest problem though was I neglected to bring my phone, so I had no way of letting Nan know I was going to be late, which was incredibly lame of me.  After an hour or so of me not being back when expected she started getting worried and nervous that I was ok.  When I finally got back to the car and called her to let her know I'd be there soon, she was really worried and was on the other line with the Emergency room.  I felt like a total idiot and a loser of a husband at that point for being so far off on my estimate and for not bringing my phone.  Just a simple call to her at any point during the run to let her know where I was would have saved a lot of stress for her.   Not one of my brighter moments in life.  Not on the same scale of stupid as my eagle territory running fiasco...but definitely not smart.  A very cool run, but I was pretty bummed afterward about making Nan worry.  Thankfully she forgave me and was glad I was OK and we had a great rest of the Christmas day together with the kids.  

Moral of the story:  Bring my phone on runs like that...and also it would be a pretty good idea to do more research on the route if I have a timeline I need to follow. 

 ----

Weekly summary - 58.25 Miles - 9000' vertical.

I meant to do a bit less mileage last week, but it turned out I accidentally did 1/4 mile more than the week before...oh well.   This coming week I'll probably do a slightly lighter week on distance and vertical.

Easy, virtually flat run - 8:40 pace - 5 miles - 200'

Did Green Mtn via Amphitheater/Saddle/Greenman with Schlarb.  We're on the same routine as far as our hill days/speed days/long days so its been cool to be able to head out a few times in the past week, and we'll probably keep the Tues/Thursday workouts going and increase the group that joins as time goes on.  Its fun to run with Jason, and motivating because he is an incredible runner.

PR'd the ascent even though I power hiked most of it and had no intention of trying to PR.  I guess power hiking the steep stuff is indeed more efficient. 

39:35 for the ascent.  Jason did it in high 33's today for his first time up that route.  To give you perspective, Tony K's PR up that route is just under 31, so 33 anything is pretty dang fast.

Cruised really easy down Bear canyon.  Another gorgeous morning in Boulder...(starting to sound like a broke record I know...and it looks like December might pass entirely without any snow on the trails...odd.)

8.5 miles - 1:43:30 - 2900' vertical. 

Really Easy 6.5 miles - 1:07 - 1050' vertical

Went up bear canyon, across to shanahan trail to the south via about 3/4 mile of following deer trail or no trail through a cool tall grass slope below the mesa trail ridge.  Came down some unnamed trail through a valley north of the shanahan trail.  Ran in my old inov-8 roclites out of curiosity and decided those are probably going to be retired at this point.  They were good while they lasted, but I don't like running in them as much as I do in the mt101's.  

Speed workout on the wonderland trail with Jason. and Marcus.

Debated yesterday on whether to do a hard workout today because I was feeling a bit off, but after some ART in the afternoon I woke up feeling really good so I went for it.

That first 2 minute hard interval was a huge slap in the face/welcome to reality though...felt a lot longer than 2 minutes.  Then beyond that I was all over the map on the intervals...mostly though I was hammering the down hill intervals and sucking wind on the up hill intervals.

It felt good to do the workout, I think regardless of pace, it tends to feel good to push yourself.  Even though I was all over the map, I enjoyed the feeling of finishing off with 3 really fast 30 second intervals to make me feel faster than I really am.  

Here are my pace splits with elevation change below for the 7 X 2 minute intervals:

5:49, 4:49, 5:46, 6:19, 5:05, 5:35, 5:16

+35,  -89,   +4,   +45,  -48,   21,  -4

 Pace splits for the 3 X 30 seconds:

 4:09, 3:57, 4:15 

-12,  -10,  0 - flat 

I had no business out running Jason on the 2nd interval, but it was down hill so it felt good to open it up...but it came back to bite me on the next 2 intervals where I felt pretty flat and weak.  I got back to feeling better again once we started going back down hill on the 5th.  He still killed me on all of them but the 2nd.  Except we stayed stride for stride on the 30 second intervals.  

Snow started dumping within 30-40 minutes of finishing the workout...it's finally winter here in Colorado. (at least for a day or two) 

9 miles - 1:09 - 7:40 avg - 550' vert -  HR: 142 avg - 174 max

I feel really fortunate to be able to run so consistently lately, to have fast friends to run with, and great weather and trails, and to have an incredible ART therapist who works out my minor issues before they can escalate into problems..  I'm excited about 2011.  I will start off the year in better running shape than I have ever been.  I hope to remain injury free so I can keep running every day and enjoy a bunch of cool runs throughout the year.

It finally snowed in Boulder! And I found a great use for my inov-8 roclites this morning.  I put about 10 screws in the bottom of each of them, since they are my only shoes that actually have thick enough soles to be able to do that without the screw poking through the insole.  It worked out pretty nicely to have the extra traction on the icy snowy sidewalks and trails this morning.

I ran around the NCAR hill via skunk canyon up, across mesa, and down bear.  I had fresh tracks all the way up Skunk canyon and across mesa all the way to NCAR in about 6 inches of fluffy powder.  It was a really cool change of scenery and pace on the trails.  Skunk canyon was especially cool with a bunch of deer just hanging out throughout the canyon.  Then coming down bear canyon road it was deeper, about 8-10 inches.  And that was really fun, because its just a steep, smooth, gravel road, so felt like I was just floating down it in the mid 6's for a mile and a half as a I passed a few people on cross country skis going up.  

Even though it was below 10 degrees out, I hardly noticed the cold with how beautiful it was out. 

6.5 miles - 1:13 - 950' vert.