Go slow to go fast.

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. 

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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.