Go slow to go fast.

Got my new replacement mt. bike put together this morning and took it out for a short spin.  It felt really good...looking forward to some more fun rides on it this fall.

Did a super easy 4 miles barefoot around my neighborhood today.  Surprisingly it was an easy pace and I did it in 29:08 - 7:16/mile.  Apparently my body is totally recovered from the Marathon Saturday.

I didn't have any soreness in my legs after the marathon except for on the outside of my lower legs.  I think that was just because of the rockiness of the terrain.

Now I just need to make a training plan for the next 4 weeks leading up to the steamboat 50.  I'm getting pretty excited for Steamboat.  I'm healthy and injury free and I'm in the best distance running fitness I've ever been in.  And I think I've finally figured out a race fueling strategy that works well for me.  So I'm really looking forward to trying my hand at a 50 miler.

I felt good today.  In my warm up I was going 7:30's up a slight incline and just feeling a nice spring in my step.  So I decided to just do a 7 mile loop of some sort holding a 7:00 avg pace.

I ended up changing my mind because Simms Hill was calling my name when I got to the bottom of it.  So I decided to do a 3.5 mile out and back with a large hill in the middle and see if I could hold 7:00 pace.

I did the half mile up Simms hill in 3:43, pushing a pretty moderate pace but not maxing out by any means.  Then I continued up Simms for another 3/4 mile and turned left up the hill on 128 for 1/4 mile until the 3.5 mile turnaround.

Coming back down was fast, averaging between 5:30-6:30 depending on the steepness.

And I was averaging 6:54/mile total after 5 miles, and feeling great.  But I had to make a 1 mile climb back up the hill to my house.  That was tough!  By the top of the steepest part I was pushing really hard and struggling to hang on to 8:30/mile, but my avg was still 6:59 by the top, and I was able to cruise the last 3/4 mile home easily in sub 7:00.

Totals: 7 miles - 48:46 - 6:58/mile avg - 470 Feet ascent

The last hill was really tough, but otherwise it felt great to cruise at that pace.  Here's the run elevation profile.  There's not much in the way of flat running around my house.  Which is fine by me!

Was going to run up green mountain from Eldorado cayon mesa trail today, a 12.5 mile run total.  But I forgot my watch and I was going to be really pushing my available time limit as it was.  And then my calves were kind of sore from my harder speed effort on Thursday.  So I decided a couple miles in that I would just run up bear canyon for a while and turn around early so I wasn't late for getting home to head out with Nan.

It was a hot day, but I felt pretty good overall.  Just a bit tired and mentally not really into pushing myself super fast up the mountain.  7.5-8 miles with about 1500' of ascent was sufficient.  I felt great flying down the decent.