Go slow to go fast.

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. 

1:02:30 - 8.75 Miles - 7:08 avg - 0 vert. - HR: 155 avg

Negative 8 degrees this morning in Boulder...perfect running weather!!  If you're indoors that is.  Fortunately Jason was up for meeting at the indoor track, which comes in really handy on a day like today. 

Unfortunately, Jason had banged his knee and decided once he showed up that he was going to need to take the bus home to make sure he didn't tweak his knee the week of a race.

But my friend Ryan had shown up, so luckily I wasn't going to be all alone for the workout.

After a warmup, strides and stretching, I jumped into a 4 x 1600 meter with 400m rest workout.

Here were my splits: 5:33, 5:38, 5:26, 5:37.  I threw in 2 x 200 for good measure afterward at 29 and 30 seconds.

Not super even on my mile splits.  I was on track on the 2nd mile for another 5:33 or so, and I kind of slacked on the last 200 and lost 4 seconds.  Kind of lame to give up on the last lap.  So the third mile I went after it the whole time and nailed that one.  Ryan was basically running 2 out of the 4 400's with me, and then recovering.  It was nice to have him to chase during the later laps in the mile.  But after the third mile he left to go home, so I was on my own.  And it was surprising how much that affected me mentally during the final mile.  It would have been easy to bail half way through that last mile, and that mile was definitely a tough effort to hold onto that pace the last few laps.  Mostly mentally.  I think just the fact that I knew I was going to have to write down my splits on here gave me some mental power to push the last few though.  Interesting how that works.

Great workout this morning.  I am really enjoying the consistency of a weekly flat speed workout.  And it has been really beneficial to my overall running fitness. 

6.3 miles - 51 min - 8:07 avg - HR: 136 avg - 810' vertical

Really easy run up to NCAR and back on Table Mesa.  Ran in the afternoon sun so it was way warmer than this morning...it was a scorching 8 degrees by the time I ran.  But really 8 degrees is not bad if you wear enough layers.  It was great to be outside running.  It was cool to watch the shadow extending across Boulder Valley as the sun went farther behind the mountains.  Still no treadmill for me this winter, and I don't see any reason to change that. 

Indulged myself with 4 gloriously slow and flat miles in about 40 minutes.  Recharging the legs.

Well, the training is officially in the bank...not much more to it now than a couple taper weeks.

Today's run I was unsure how I'd feel, because I had kind of a big early week of solid workouts.  But I felt great and everything felt solid and enjoyable today, which was really pleasing.   The last mile or so I started to feel tired in a couple spots, but minus that it was a great feeling run.

18 Miles - 2:48:27 - 9:22 avg - HR 142 avg -  3150' vertical.

The route today was up McClintock to Mesa.  Across mesa all the way to the eldorado trailhead (about 6 miles), then back across mesa to Chataqua, then down baseline and across broadway to home. 

It started snowing right when I started my run and it didn't ever stop.  By the time I came back across the mesa trail it was dumping and all the tracks were filled in.  The fresh, sticky snow provided great traction, and softer than normal surface the entire run, which was kind of nice. 

Weekly summary: 61.5 miles - 9 hr 45 min. - 9500' vertical