Slowly Getting Faster

I took the BST from a bit south of Red Butte Gardens over to the pass behind the hill with U on it. I had never taken this trail and it was pretty fun. I begins by cutting up behind the new history museum and then goes a ways up the canyon before crossing over and coming back out.  Once you get back around to the front of the canyon, behind the Huntsman institute, the trail continues for a while then cuts up another canyon and around the hill that the big white U is on. It climbs up that canyon to a pass.  You can continue on from there over to City Creek or up to the twins, but today I turned around and headed back.  The pass was 5.2 miles and I planned on doing no more than 10. 

 There is a lot of climbing and descending in Red Butte and I didn't have a lot of time left so I cut down around the new amphitheater, along the marked BST, back in front of the natural history museum and back to my car.  I enjoyed running a trail that I haven't run before. My legs felt fine the whole time and it seems like my speed has improved, even over the 10 miles I did during the middle of last week.  I am a little concerned that my feet hurt.  It's not the muscles or tendons but the skin on the bottom of my feet, under my big toe knuckle (does that make sense?) that seems to get rubbed raw on these longer runs.  By the time I made it back to my car it didn't hurt that much, but while I was trying to make my way down the canyon it hurt more than I would have liked.  Not enough to make me stop, but enough to let me know it was there. My hope is that if I continue to run longer miles it will toughen up and go away.  

I am supposed to be getting miles in for the purpose of building my base so I can start marathon training.  The problem I'm having, if it is in fact a problem, is that I can't seem to motivate myself to run on the road.  I can move faster on the road, and I will at some point need some specific training on the road for long miles, but I feel like maybe I should be doing some of that now.  But the road is so boring and the trails are so much fun that I'm having a hard time hitting the black top.  Anyone have any info on this? Should I force more miles on the concrete?

AP: 10:21; Vert: 1,798' 

I didn't have to be in salt lake until later today so I decided to run Centerville Peak again. This is the hardest trail I've run.  It's roughly 1,700 feet of climbing in 2.3 miles with no downhill mixed in and no flat spots. Once you hit the top it's pretty smooth, and the trail is not as grueling.  I decided that I would follow the trial up the ridge for a while and just see how nice the trail is and if I could run until I hit snow.  The trail is nice and I'm sure I could have gone that far but I ran out of time. Soon I will go all the way to Skyline Drive. 

AP: 12:17; Vert: 2,076 

I wanted to run from the capital, up the BST and over to the twins.  I ended up about a mile and a half short of the twins because I ran out of time. I was able to run the entire trail though.  My slowest mile was 13:59, which is substantially better than my slowest mile was yesterday and better than my slowest mile going up flag rock. It's not quite as steep but it isn't exactly flat either. I was tired today as well, which left me wondering how much of this would be a walk.  I'm very pleased with the results. I'll have to do it again when I have enough time to get all the way there. 

AP: 10:35 

Shirt less running today.  Not sure I'm in good enough shape to pull of the Anton Krupicka look just yet, but it was hot so I went for it.  It felt pretty good and I look forward to doing it again many more times over the course of the summer.

 I took the BST west from City Creek today over to North Salt Lake.  It was pretty fun and I was able to run the whole way, no hill walking at all. Some of the hills still felt steep, but a lot of the hills that used to be steep are not bad at all any more. I intended to just do 7 or 8 but when I hit the radio station, or whatever it is, I decided I should just drop down to NSL since I was already right there.  Hopefully it won't be too detrimental for my running plans tomorrow. I'm going to try and get in some good vert. 

AP: 10:24, Vert: 2,261'

This run wasn't as long or as vertically challenging as I wanted it to be. Time constraints caused me to cut it a bit short. Next time I need to leave the house earlier so I can make the whole course. 

The plan was to run up the south trail to Flag Rock, take the north trail down, follow the BST over to farmington canyon, cut through the canyon and climb back up to the upper BST that Dorsimus runs, take that accross to Baer canyon and the do the whole thing in reverse coming back.  If I had the time to follow that route it would have given me something like 4,000' of gain today.  As it is, my legs are sore so it's probably good I ran out of time.  

I followed the out course all the way over to where the BST drops into the upper neighborhoods in North Farmington or Fruit Heights (not sure what city it is at that point).  I realized that I wasn't going to make it to Baer since I was running out of time so I turned around and came back.  I didn't have enough time to climb back up to flag rock so I just took the paved road back home.

I felt pretty sluggish today, probably from yesterday's run.  I enjoyed the run but I just couldn't move very fast, or so it seemed.  I'm not sure what fast is on this course yet so who knows I guess.  I have decided a couple of things over the past week though.  The first thing is that I'm going to start counting the number of times I reach flag rock, alla Anton Krupicka and Green Mountain. According to a story I read yesterday, between January 2010 and Western States that same year he summited Green Mountain, roughly 3,000' of gain, 176 times.  While Flag Rock isn't nearly that steep it is about the same number of miles.  Maybe if I can make my goal to reach a ridiculous number of runs up the Rock before the run in July I too will be able to run fast on race day.  It seems that if you want to be able to run fast in these ultra type events, which I'm not quite ready for yet, you need to spend a good deal of your time running up really steep trails. Which brings me to the second thing I decided.  

Before the summer is out, I want to run 10,000' of vert in a single run. This is going to take some training to get ready for, as I ran a mere 4,900 in the past 2 days and feel exhausted at this point. Nevertheless, if I can reach that goal I will be on track for getting myself in the kind of shape I want to be in; competitive shape. I believe, based on some calculations I worked out, that I can achieve this right here.  I can get roughly that much elevation gain if I start at Chevron, run up the north side of Flag Rock, run across to Centerville Peak, take that trail to Skyline Drive, and follow the whole thing back in reverse including running back up flag rock. That will be about 25 miles, but it will also be 10,000' of gain.  

AP: 12:57; Flag Rock Ascent: #1; Vert, 2,722'