Go slow to go fast.

Easy 8 miler with Nan up lehigh street, across to lower bluestem, home on marshall with a mile of barefoot at the end on the bike path.

Did my first speed workout in about 3+ weeks.  It felt hard.  Man, when I don't run fast for a while, even just a few weeks, and then I go back to it, the heart and legs seem to not like it so much.  But if I do it consistently, I find that I crave the periodic speed/hard doses.  And they don't hurt so bad.

 It probably didn't help that I miscalculated my pace on all my splits.

I was going to do 8 x 400 on the path.  I started out and did the first one in 1:06.  Thinking to myself that was 76 seconds.  Oops!  I then proceeded to think 1:06 meant 76 seconds on all the subsequent repeats.  So I was getting more and more annoyed and feeling out of shape that I wasn't able to hit 76 second quarter mile repeats.  I kept coming short of the quarter mile in the 76 seconds.

 Afterward on my cool down it finally dawned on me.  

Then I felt like a total math whiz!  

Then I didn't feel so bad about my fitness after all.  My actual pace on all the repeats ranged between 4:45 to 5:15 per mile (some up hill, some down hill).  So I wasn't as bad off as I assumed, that's actually right where I expected to be. 

10.5 miles total - 1:20 total time.  a few hundred feet vert, tops. 

On a side note, Brian Beckstead was in town today, and at Nan's request, dropped her off a pair of Altras.  And now I'm SUPER jealous of her.  Those things look awesome!  I can see now jun why you are continually going off about them.  I wish I was elite so they would give me a free pair too!  Or I wish they actually had them in stock so I could actually buy a pair.  They look like pretty sweet running shoes to me. 

Easy 7 ish miles.  Up past fairview, n. shanahan to mesa and back down.

A little over an hour,  ~1000' vert.

In honor of the first mountain stage of the tour de france I decided to go ride my bike up a bunch of mountains.

Just kidding.  While I do love riding a bike of any variety, I couldn’t bring myself to spend the 3.5 hours this morning riding when I could spend it running over a few peaks.  I wish I had time to be bike and run a few hours a day…but alas, I have to choose at this point.  I still love watching the Tour de France though.  More this year than ever before since I just visited France and rode on many of the routes and mountains they are riding this year.

Today, being the first stage of that variety actually.  They climbed the tourmalet today, which we also climbed in May.  So I was pretty eager to watch the stage today.  The crowds were slightly bigger for them than when we were there.  Here we are standing at the top of the climb after riding it.  It was very similar conditions as the tour stage today with clouds at the top, but the clouds parted for us.  As you can see, there weren’t many people cheering us on at the top, as compared to today when the summit had thousands of people lined up all over the place.

Nan, Me, Matt and Ashley (my sis. and bro-in-law)

Within minutes of getting to the top, Jurgen Van Den Broeck showed up.  He couldn’t quite hold our pace as it turned out, so we beat him to the top.  But here he is pictured, in one of his training rides on the TDF route.  We chatted with him and his manager briefly.

On the stage today it was cool to see Frank Schleck attack the leaders today looking strong.  I like watching Frank and Andy.  Bummer about Radioshack all being pretty much beat down and crashed out of this years tour at this point.  It would be a total miracle if Levi or Kloden made it back to the podium at this point…not happening.

Anyway, as for my morning run, I got in 3 summits up the aforementioned peaks, about 5000 feet of vert. and about 16 miles on the route that I ran.  Tons of fun.  Took it pretty easy and was out for about 3.5 hours leaving at 5:45.

There’s a lot to love and enjoy about July.  But two things high on the list are long mountain runs in 65-70 degree sunshine and the Tour de France.  Its slightly harder to get started working each day I have noticed though.  Oh well…work can wait until August.

Here are some pics from this am.

1.5 miles from home at the trailhead

Green Mountain summit marker

Green Mountain/boulder view from Bear peak

S. Boulder peak from Bear

Easy barefoot cruise on the bike paths for about an hour.

Track workout FAILURE.

Was going to do 7 or 8 x 800M today.

Didn't get around to making it to the track until 5:30 pm - it was about 88 degrees out, which felt fine to me actually.

After my warmup and strides I started doing the 800's.

2:36, 2:41, 2:38, 2:50.

After struggling hard to pull out a 2:50 on the 4th one, I called it quits.  I was feeling kind of crappy, lacking motivation or energy to continue doing more of those.  And it was clear I should stop when it was hurting to pull out a 2:50.

I feel like I should have no problem doing 8 of those at 2:36-2:38 right now.  So I was kind of bummed about not feeling it.  But its just a day.  I'll hit the track again Tuesday and hopefully feel better. 

8 miles total.