Per Aspera Ad Astra

Legs surprisingly felt great today, so I did 11.6 at a higher effort than usual (7:30 AP on the dot, at altitude, with 430' gain). This caps off 57.3 miles in one week! Amazing to see that I'm able to be back at this point and not hurting myself. Guess taking it pretty easy on nearly every run and not doing any huge jumps in mileage has been helpful. Looking forward to continuing to ramp it up and getting into shape. Weight is responding well to proper diet, and it's only a matter of time until I'm in shape again.

4.3 at 8:02 AP. Told Daria I was just going to do 4 at 8:30 to really just get a super easy active recovery. Actually did a little more at a little faster, but close enough, and kept the average above 8. :)

18 miles at 7:29.9 average pace. Hah. (18.01 in 2:15:03 means ever so slightly under 7:30 pace). I'm rather surprised that 18 miles at "sub-7:30" didn't kill me. Fitness must be coming around really quickly. Anyway, the route was Fritz's old house to JRP trail, where I immediately went the wrong way (stayed on the gravel along the river instead of going around the golf course, which was rather dumb considering that I had to jump a short rope). That added a half mile, then I kept going up JRP, with the detour between 200 S and N Temple, back to the little loop prior to Center Street in NSL. I planned to take the loop, but didn't think I ought to go over 18, and was going to be 18.5 with the extra distance early on, so I cut back to Redwood and then threw in an extra .2 at the end to get up to 18 even. Really, I can't reiterate enough how happy I am that this didn't wreck me. Sure, legs feel pretty dead - I've only run over 13 miles once in the last year, and that was 21 or 22 miles at Jordan Chang's 100 mile pace, with plenty of breaks - and the pace felt casual the entire way. I still have 15-20 pounds to drop, so I ought to be able to get back into actually good-ish shape when the weight is back to usual.

Other note... I'm at 63.7 miles in the last 7 days, and that's my biggest week since Summer 2014. Jeez. It's been too long since I trained for real.

Only looking to be about 50 or just over this week, and hit 43.5 in 4 days, so I rested up yesterday and just got in a couple miles before work today. 7:38 AP. Will keep tomorrow pretty short as well.

LA again. 6:34 AP. Within 2 min per mile of what Eliud ran for 26.2 yesterday! Lol.

Exhausted after traveling back from southern California. Took a day off that I didn't intend to take off.

Work to home via JRP. 7:10 AP. Felt pretty comfortable, but the last 2 miles (uphill) weren't super fun. Fitness is coming along. Just a week ago, 12 miles at 7:30 felt roughly (or almost) as hard as 13.3 at 7:10 did today. Yes, today was a bit net downhill, but it was also in the 70s and I was running into a headwind most of the way, unlike last week's perfect weather 12. 

Wanted to get a long-ish, very easy effort trail run in on somewhat tired legs, so today was perfect for that. 13.5 (11 on Bosho, 2.5 on roads) home from work with 2400' gain (2330' in the first 10, then a nice coast down home) at a very pedestrian 9:20 average pace. Roughly mid-8 equivalent effort on roads, so achieved my goal of long-ish very easy effort trail run on somewhat tired legs.

Very easy 5 miles. Trails with 700' gain, 9:20 average pace. Legs were really tired, and I wanted a super easy day. Intended to go longer (more like 8), but this was what I had time for. I recently ordered a second pair of Vazee Summits. Unfortunately, old pair is mostly still in great shape, but I wore a really annoying semi-hole into the heel of the left insole that was bugging my foot a decent bit yesterday, so I retired them and will just use the new pair now.

Definitely a challenge today. Heat (low 80s) was really aggravating at the start and I was dehydrated from the beginning, so I didn't take it out super hard. I drank about 20 oz of water and ran out at mile 12. I could have refilled with a tenth of a mile pit stop, but figured I'd be fine. Bad call. By 16, my thirst was extreme. The mosquitoes on JRP were the worst I've ever seen, so I jumped back on Redwood. Got 10ish oz of water at a gas station at 17.5, but at that point I was pretty done. Finished up with an absolute crawl from 16 to 20 (literally like 9 min pace to avoid more pain haha) to end up at 7:53 AP. At the very least, it would have only been 19.6, but I did a large loop at the end to get it just above 20. I'll be smarter with fluids next time. 

Calories consumed: ~200 calories of skittles. Haha.

Well-earned day off.

7:30 pace. Played disc golf with Daria in the northern end of Centerville, then ran home. I apparently really like 7:30 average pace. Was dead on 7:30 yet again. Haha.

7:50 ap. 360' gain. Feeling slightly under the weather, so running wasn't a blast today, but I'm glad I got it done.

Track. Pretty windy. 6:43 average pace. Harder than marathon effort right now, but not as hard as half marathon effort. 6:43 should be easier, but it's a lot easier than it would have been a few weeks ago.

Home via a much less buggy jrp. 7:36 AP.

Bprb to bosho 5 way and back. 1100' climb, 8:51 average. Started snowing 5 min from turnaround. Very snowy and extremely windy on the return. I had a down vest on and I don't know how things would have worked out without it. Stucks hands in pockets and they still got extremely cold. Bare forearms were fully numb. The massive wind gusts on the exposed trail made every snow hit (dippin dots consistency) sting. Despite the vest, I'd rank this in my top 3 runs of all time for worst preparedness for the conditions. 90 min later, my hands still hurt a lot. Wow.

7:27 average pace. Home from work via yet another iteration of a JRP run.

Easy shortie, though it still had 600' of climbing. Around campus area at 8:13 average pace.

Fairly easy effort running of the Mueller Park / North Canyon link up (with some crappy road linking the beautiful trail). 2040' climb, 9:08 average pace.

Easy 7 at 7:56 AP in NSL/Bountiful with just under 300' of climb. Got heckled for my American flag shorts by a morbidly obese couple with XXL sodas in hand. Ahh, America. 

Well-earned day off.

Easy long run with Lara (7:58 average) who will be crewing and pacing with her partner Max and Daria at Squaw Peak in a week and a half. Last long effort before tapering a bit. I'm not fit ot ready to run well for 50 miles, but I'm  sure I can finish. The only goal with signing up was to scare the hell out of myself and, in doing, force a smart but quick reintroduction to actual training. Regardless of how the race goes, I'm sctually training. There's still weight to drop, but that's happening too.

With Josh and Nic. Nice easy trail run at 8:41 AP with 1040' gain and loss.

Got home from work at 8:30, then spent 3 hours setting up and mounting the rooftop tent. Haha.

No running today! Running a 50 miler in 8 days, so I guess this is ok.

Camped out overnight with the new rooftop tent up Skyline Drive (4WD-preferred dirt road) right before things suddenly went from dry dirt to several feet of snow within the span of about 100 feet. Crazy what a change on the path to a north-facing aspect can do. Daria took the car home via Skyline while I ran home over the ridge and down Sessions. I slogged up Skyline and onto Sessions Road. Things were straightforward for about 2 miles, and then I started crossing some pretty steep and deep snowfields that completely covered the road. Around 2 miles in, the snow was deep enough for me to run over the top of a "Road Closed for Winter" sign. Hah. Around 2.5 miles, all tracks ended, and the snow was deep enough that navigation became somewhat of a challenge, especially considering that I've only run that chunk of dirt road up there a couple times and it's been a few years since I've been up there. I'm quite glad that I have the Fenix 5X (with built-in maps), as I was somewhat lost around 3.5-4 miles, and it turns out I had gotten a fair amount East and down mountain of the road. To be fair, the road had at least half a dozen feet of snow at that point and there were no tracks anywhere. However, after consultation with the built-in maps on the watch (seriously, such a great feature to have), I figured out where I was going, hiked up a steep snow field, and was able to find the peak and Sessions trail. Going down Sessions was reaaaally slow up top, with the steepest portion (near the top, probably 45 degrees) completely covered in snow. I'm surprised my pace managed to hover around even 20 min per mile for that portion. It was pretty wild. A few of the really rocky, steep downhills were also crazy slow today, as I just didn't want to commit to running them at anything other than a jog. Probably didn't help that we forgot matches to start the grill and barely ate last night - and then for no reason at all, I only had a single graham cracker for breakfast - so I was pretty hungry and not wanting to put a lot of energy into stability on steep downhills. Haha. Anyway, finally popped out on the road after a few miles of 10:00 rocky downhill (seriously so lazy about putting energy into stability to run faster without falling hahaha), then did an easy mid-high 7 min pace from there, both on the steep downhill outside of Mueller and and on the flatter Orchard. I'm glad that a bit over 14 miles at ultra effort took nothing out of me - I guess that's kind of important since I'm going to run 50 miles a week from today. Hah.

1110' uphill and 4530' downhill. 

Camping up in North Canyon a quarter mile down from the trail head. Ran with Holly up to Rudy's Flat and back. Mid-8s AP with 1000' of gain was actually a moderately hard effort.

Tapering because I'm dumb and running 50 miles on Saturday.

Tapering because I'm dumb and running 50 miles on Saturday.

Tapering because I'm dumb and running 50 miles on Saturday. 4 mile cut-down on treadmill in 6:45, 6:08, 5:54, 5:35. Haven't run much of anything this fast this year. Felt good to go fast. I feel like the rest is getting me into a fat version of sharpening up. Hahaha.