Go slow to go fast.

4 miles easy.  Right ankle kind of bothering me since last Friday, minor but sure what's up in there.

Solid workout today with Nan and her group.  Nan was dealing with some left leg pain today so it wasn't the best workout for her.  She is just off her heaviest training weeks ever so far, and the mileage and work has been adding up.  Now she just needs to recover and taper in order to have an awesome race in Boston.

Here was the workout today:

Warmup 20 min, stretch, then strides.

4 X 2 Min hard, with 60 sec. rest.  All of these were uphill on the boulder creek path.  Split paces: 5:50, 5:57, 5:54, ? missed the last.

4 X 30 sec. really hard, 60 sec. rest.  Some of these were up hill slightly and some were down.  Split paces: 4:46, 4:20, 4:46, 4:32

3 X 4 min hard, with 2 min rest.  Paces: 5:44, 5:55, 5:44.  The middle one was all down hill and I was going easier because my ankle was bugging a bit.

4 X 60 sec hard, 60 sec. rest:  Paces:  5:03, 5:20, 5:10, 4:53.   The 5:20 one was slower because we had to navigate a bunch of ice.  The last one was straight up a big hill and I kind of went all out on that one because I like doing that on short hill sprints.  I'm surprised to see my pace fastest on that split since the others were all flat.

Cool down for 10 minutes.  

Every week the workouts are feeling better and better.  I'm liking that. 

 11 Miles  - 1:29 - 250-300' total vertical.

Didn't feel like running this morning, so I didn't.  Instead I threw on the biking gear and explored some trails on the mountain bike I hadn't been on before around the marshall mesa area.  Nice morning.  15 ish miles on the bike.

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

Easy 5 miles barefoot on the bike paths. About 42 minutes, just taking it easy. In the 60 degree weather going barefoot on the recovery run is hard to resist.

My body is in a weird funk today. My right knee on the lower right side kind of got swollen yesterday, I think from running weird due to my right ankle being slightly tweaked. Then I smashed my hand yesterday putting Nans bike in the car. Oh yeah, and I cut a painful slice in the end of my 'stub' of a left index finger when I trip going up green on Thursday, its really tender to the touch like it was after I chopped it off in the first place. Then, also last night, my chest all of a sudden started to hurt, like a muscle spasm by my sternum in my pec that caused a pinched nerve and made every breath painful. What the heck? Is my body just shutting down shop for the weekend or what? And today is the most drop dead gorgeous day of the year. 75 and sunny.

Anyway...I wanted to run, but my body wasn't feeling that at all. Mostly because of the pain in my chest.

But after the first session of conference I did get out for a sweet ride on my mt bike for 75 minutes on the trails south of Boulder. It felt great despite the chest pain, and was extremely fun.

Then I got home and continued to feel extremely lethargic and weird.

Weird day. But general conference has been really uplifting and that bike ride was incredibly nice.