Slowly Getting Faster

I wanted to get a good run in today but I didn't want to kill myself.  I would like to be running Farmington canyon up to Francis peak weekly by July so I figure I need to start making my every day runs closer to 10 miles, rather than 7. If I can average 10-15 miles during the week then I can surely pull out a 25 on the weekend - provided I'm eating enough.  With that in mind I thought I would head up the canyon to the campground via the road, come back down the trail that cuts down the middle of the canyon, cut across the firebreak to the flag rock trail and then go up and over that from north to south. 

I wasn't feeling that great when I woke up this morning but 2 miles into this run I was glad I had pushed myself out the door. The canyon is beautiful in the morning, with the sun streaking down the valley and a slight chill in the air. The road was abnormally busy today.  I saw some campers making their way down the paved part of the road, a guy with ropes (rock climber I'm assuming) going up, and I even passed a couple of guys trying to run the canyon. They said they were new to running uphill and it showed.  I tried to pass on some encouragement and kept moving.  

I made it to the campground in just over an hour and then set out to find the trail back down.  I was concerned that it would not be visible since the campground has been closed for a year and has clearly not been maintained at all.  I found a sign by an overgrown trail and started down.  I remember hiking up this trail several years ago and it was pretty decent then.  It has been neglected for some time now and I had to do a bit of bushwhacking to get started. Once I got passed the waterfall the trail cleared up a bit and I was able to move a little faster.  I was surprised at how fast I made it back down the canyon from the camp ground.  From the spot where the trail goes up the canyon and road turns from pavement to gravel it is about 4 miles.  The trail coming back down was 2.

Once I hit the firebreak I walked for a minute to get some nutrition in my stomach.  If I was still going to climb up to flag rock I was going to need some more energy.  By the time I hit the trail to turn up I was beat.  I thought about calling it off and just heading back down the firebreak home but decided that I had set out to go over flag rock so that is what I was going to do.  It was slow going, maybe the slowest it's ever been. It took me over 30 minutes just to climb the less than 2 mile section of trail to the rock.  

When I got to the top I ran into a guy I haven't seen in years (Rick Wesche). I had heard he was thinking about running the race in July but until today I hadn't seen him on the trail.  He had just made it up a few seconds before I got there so we stopped to chat for a minute.  I then set out and he followed me back down the trail. once we got back to the firebreak we jogged for a bit together chatting about life until I turned to head home.  It was good to catch up with him.

All in all this run was pretty awesome, even if it was tiring.  It took me 2:42:36 to make the whole trek, a time I'm sure I can cut down with some practice. If nothing else, this is a great training run for the trail half in Moab in November.  

Flag rock with VH.  I was slow going out today because I was stiff from yesterdays run but I made it around the loop in 1:25, which is a pretty good time for being slow. It helped that my wife was going to kill me if I didn't make it back pretty close to 7:30.  Nothing like a little motivation to get the legs moving. 

I didn't go this morning and I didn't go yesterday.  I've been beat lately.  Not sure what is going on.  Maybe calorie deficient, maybe something else, I don't know.  If it is calories, I need to figure out how to eat enough healthy food to keep my energy levels up.  I don't want to just make up the difference with crap.  You can't fuel the machine with garbage, right? 

At any rate, I was getting grouchy - or so my wife told me - so I went for a run.  I've noticed the last few times I've been out that I am slow.  I'm not turtle slow, but I'm not fast either.  I know, because I have read and been told over and over again, that to get fast you have to use your fast twitch muscles.  Typically, this is done on a track with some 200's or something.  I don't have a track and I'm not that keen on running on flat surfaces.  I decided that I should do something that I've seen Kilian Jornet do in this video. As I understand it, the purpose of this type of a run is to make you faster up hill by firing all the fast twitch muscles.  The advantage of this, as opposed to running on a track, is that it simulates the type of running that I plan to be doing on the same surface.  

So, I found a hill pretty close to my house that is pretty steep and sandy.  It's 80 feet of gain in .05 of a mile. My plan was to do 5 sprints up the hill and see how I felt at that point.  I didn't make it. The first attempt I went out as fast as I could, legs straining, lungs burning, heart beating out of my chest.  For all my efforts I made it about half way up, 47 feet, in 36 seconds which is an 18 minute mile.  That was my fastest attempt. I stopped at 47 feet because my legs literally couldn't go any farther.  I also timed my downhill time, as that is just as important in trail running as the uphill portion and equally as hard on the legs. I'm better at the down than the up but I'm not as fast as some people I know.  My downhill was pretty consistent at about 15.5 minutes per mile. The rest of my uphill runs were as follows: 39', 29 seconds; 40', 29 seconds.  Instead of 5 I got 3, and that was all my legs had in them.

I climbed back to the top of the hill, which is actually the firebreak road, and sat down to take the rocks out of my shoes. That's the downside of running in sand I guess.  Then I figured that I should put in some more relaxed miles to cool down.  Even though the course is pretty even across the top, I was faster after the sprints than before them, even with the tired legs.  I felt a bit like I was floating.  My splits on the way back, which again is up and down hill but almost exactly the same as it was on the first part of the run, was minutes faster on ever mile. I'm taking that as a good sign. 

So I've decided I'm going to add this in to my runs on a regular basis.  I'll see if I can get a mile or more in sprinting up that hill in a single session.  That will be the goal.

According to Brad Hudson, hill sprints should be added into your runs regularly so I'm assuming it will be alright as long as I get 2+ miles in before the hill sprints and some sort of cool down after.  

I wanted to do hill sprints again, the aftermath was so good last night.  I decided I needed to do flag rock though so the plan was flag rock, north to south, and hill repeats at the end of that, then finish out the loop with the last 2 miles of trail.  By the time I got to the hill sprint area it was dark, so I bagged it, finished out the trail and came home.  Hopefully I can pick them up tomorrow. 

I have pictures from this run but I don't know how to upload them to this blog.  If anyone can tell me the secret I'll gladly start posting them.