Old Man Still running

Feel fully recovered already from the 79 miles Friday and Saturday.   I've been using a different training strategy, very long weekend miles with recovery and rest during the week.  But overall weekly miles still big.   My theory with this approach is that it helps me to recover very fast between 100s and also makes running 100s much less painful.  Running 50 miles now is no big deal, starting to feel like a 20-mile run used to feel.

However, this approach doesn't help with speed, but at my age, speed is just so hard to keep up without doing a bunch of tempo/speed work.  However, that seems to be leading to injury easier.   So, instead of being speedy, I would rather run strong and steady, being able to recover fast so I can do as many long adventure runs as time and life's demands will permit.   I think I'm going into the spring/summer season more prepared than I have since 2010.

Busy all week and had a terrible tooth problem that I finally got fixed today. So, not much running going on.  But before the storms I did go run the north spine of Lake Mountain.  Started at the little pass at the Ranches and made it to the summit in two hours.  It was sprinkling and rather cool up there.  It looked like storms were coming in so I cut the run short and ran down the road to home.

Wild flowers and grass are growing on the mountain, making this run more difficult with each week as the deer trails along the spine are starting to be hid.  It is so nice to see the explosion of wildflowers and green wild plants in the burn scar toward in areas where the fire wasn't as hot.  But down lower, where the fire really killed everything and was blazing hot, it still looks dead.

The legs feel great and enjoyed the 3,500 feet of climbing.  I like my new New Balance Leadvilles.  They are certainly fine for these shorter training runs.  How will they do on a 100?  We shall see.

I wanted to get in some altitude training so I headed up American Fork Canyon.  I didn't have any specific plans, didn't bring or check a map, just started running up the Pine Hollow Trail.  It was wonderful.  I made my way up the Ridge Trail and then it started raining for a few minutes, enough to get the trails wet.   I then headed down toward the Cascade Springs Road and tested the new shoes (NB Leadville) in the mud.  They held up pretty well, not bad on the slippery downhills and they also didn't collect a ton of mud in the sticky places.

Made my way to the Alpine Summit and after a long bathroom break continued on, running random trails, connecting to the trail to Timpooneke.  The new parking lot is nice and will allow for a few more cars, but not a bunch more.   

I then decided to run up the Timpooneke trail.  Snow appeared within the first mile and detours were required nearing Scout Falls.  I stayed close to the trail above that, but made some direct climbs when long post-holes were coming up.   I made it to the big flat area where the stream comes around from the left.  Instead of following the trail, I headed right across the giant step and then found a nice moose trail to take straight up to the last giant step, near the rock slide.  Once up there, the snow was very deep.   That was enough for me.  I was at 8,700 feet.   I headed down, doing some butt slide on the snow.

Continuing on, I took the 151 trail as high as it went with great ridge views and then blasted 2,000 feet down the Bear Canyon trail in just 2.5 miles.  Great fun!  It is so nice to be able to run downhills again.  At Mutual Dell, I then took the short trail up to Pine Hollow trailhead to my car.  

Wow, what a wonderful day.  I saw no one on the trails and very few human tracks.  I did see plenty of moose tracks on the trails.   It was a nice peaceful day of running.  I took my sweet time and even stopped at times to clear the trails of dead fall.  Somehow I managed to dodge most of the rain.  I did about 6,000 feet of climbing along the way.