Like the canyon

Slow hike and easy jog up and down Malan's. 

Couple of miles easy.  Doc looked at the Achilles with an ultrasound and concluded mild to moderate tendonosis. O.K. to run light as long as the pain doesn't get worse.  Start PT next week for some ASTYM treatment that will speed along the healing.  Bright side, I can run, light, but it's running and that beats not running. Feeling good about the recovery. :)  

1:10 on the treadmill.  Slow easy pace, 9-9.5 min/mile pace steady for an hour. Kinda boring, but I'm good with it.  Probably what I need right now anyway, slow, longish aerobic running.  Achilles about the same. Which is good, 'cause it's not worse.

Hour and fifteen on the 'mill, sloooowww.  Audio books keeping the boredome at bay.  Felt good to get in some time on the feet.

Hour and a half on the 'mill again.  Nice and easy again.  Three runs in a row all an hour or more, Achilles feeling about the same, maybe a notch better.  I started keeping a chart, 5  being the baseline, closer to 10 good and 1 bad, been at 5 to 6.5 all week, so a little better, but no worse.  Might give the trails a light go next week.

Another 1:15, easy pace.

1 hour 20 minutes easy, heel seems to be improving, giving it a 6.5 out of 10. 

Another easy hour and twenty minutes on the mill, easy pace, 2% incline.  Yawn.... on the positive side this sore heel is forcing some good base miles. 

Well, haven't been posting regularly because writing "ran 1:20 slow and steady" over and over again is, on the boring scale, second only to actually doing it.  But, steady it is, ran 10 out of 11 days with every run over an hour, most between 1:15 and 1:30, with two long runs of 2 hours, all at an easy pace.

Got out on the trails today for a couple of hours.  Lots of fresh snow made it a little rough on my calf/achilles thing, give it a 65% effort.  Overall, things seem a little better, 7 out of 10.  Another week or two of flat and slow, hopefully it'll be an 8 or 9.

Very nice hour and a half or so on the trails.  North BST is mostly melted out, and the weather was perfect and the light show out west was one of the best in recent memory, stunning!. January? Hmmm felt like March! Very easy effort, heel/calf showing moderate improvement. Happy running for another day or two, I'm sure winter will be back soon enough.

Another 1:30 or so on the trails.  Easy pace. 

1:15 on the 'mill.  Easy pace.  After 3 days on the trail it took me about 40 minutes to get the "mill zombie" mode where I can space out and let time go by.  PT on the Achilles/calf helping, a ways to go yet though, may take some time off completely if no marked improvement in the next week.  That said, there is improvemen, just slow, and I am very thankful to be running at all. 

Perfect, albiet chilly, 1:50 on the trails.  That's 4 of the last 5 runs on trail with about 1500-1800 vert on each run and things are continuing to improve on the injury front.  I had some aprehension about running rough, hilly terrain, but a recent thaw and dry trail was too tempting.  Attentinve monitering and easy running has led to slow improvement rather than making the heel/achilles worse as feared. 

On another note, my schedual leaves me finishing the last half hour or so of my runs in the dark. I was getting tired of my whimpy lights, so I bought a six LED bike light today to use as a hand held. Bam! like turning on the lights in your car! We'll see if it lasts 10hrs as billed. 

13 of 15 days running, no run less than an hour, happy about the solid base building despite nursing an injury.

Pretty solid day of running for me.  Started with Malan's, ran the up, which wasn't bad, but the trail looked a heard of elephants had passed through when the snow was soft  Deep post holes everywhere, and frozen solid, made for tough going coming down.  At the BST, turned north and ran from 27th, past 12th street to about the end of the trail and back to 27th.  Got a bit rough the last few miles, one gel and one water bottle equals a bit bonky after three plus hours, bluh!  Probably over did it a bit on my calf/achilles, we'll see how it feels tomorrow. 

3.5 hours, pretty easy pace, guessing 4300 vert or so.

12 hours running this week over 6 days, easy pace for most of it, though I threw in a mile at 6:30 and a 1/4 mile at 5:50 yesterday on the 'mill just to remember what it felt like. 9500 vert for the week.

2 hours or so on the trails tonight.  Started at 27th headed north on the BST to the spring/creek about 1700 north in North Ogden and back. Muddy out north! Felt great toninght, energy good, heel so so, easy pace.   

Hour and fifteen yesterday and an hour today. Both runs on the mill.  Easy pace yesterday, a few pick ups today, couple miles at 6:40, easy effort even at the faster pace.  Heel holding up o.k.  

Decent week again given the active recovery.  6 days of solid runs.Things are improving to the point that there is little to no pain while running, minor/mild soreness after a longer run, lasts for 30 minutes or so and kicks in afer sitting for a while.  A little sore when first getting out of bed in the morning, but that fades fast. 

Great run today.  Hard to get out the door with the fog and cold, just nasty.  Started with Malan's, which I'm happy to say the trail is in much better shape now than last week's frozen nightmare.  Broke out of the fog quickly and reveled in the warm sunshine all the way to the top.  A little BST running on the South side, too icey and muddy so I headed north, crossed under12th street and headed up BST north.  Legs still felt pretty good on the climb, much better than last week.  Ran into Joel coming down, got talking about his upcominig N.U.T.S. trail series and the amount of cat tracks on the trail lately, and ended up following him back down to the parking lot. I took the straight up, non-switch back, trail from Rainbow up to the bench with plenty of energy.  Ran strong back to the car, got home, found the family out on errands, so having an hour to kill, I headed back up Malan's.  Felt great on the second lap and ran it non stop.  Trail was still good except I passed some Einstien on his way down who was butt sledding the top half of the trail and covered all the deep post holes with a nice, soft 1 inch veneer of snow, making the knee breakers impossible to see, brilliant! Shouldn't complain, might actually groom out the trail eventually.

Week: 6 days running, about 9100 vet, just under 60 miles.  Easy to moderate pace for all of it. 

1:08 on the 'mill. Easy.