TEXAS Paul - Out to Pasture - Healing

We drove up to Colorado Springs, CO area for our grandson's birthday this weekend and stayed in Manitou Springs Sunday night. I got up at 6:00 and got ready for a run half way up Pikes Peak to Barr Camp and back. What a great run.  The temperature was wonderful in the low 50's for this run.  The further up the mountain I ran the more I got into the clouds, a beautiful scene.  

Running up the 3 miles of the W's was a great reminder of the relentless up, up, up that the W's are so famous for.  It was a great reminder of how this mountain wears on muscles an tests your conditioning.  It tested mine today.  

I caught up with a guy, Carl Olson, from the Colorado Springs area and ran with him most of the way up to Barr Camp. He is training for the half marathon Pikes Peak Ascent in August, his 7th one. It was good to work with him.

Even after the W's the mountain still goes up, up, up except for part of a mile through the saddle where the trail flattens out. I monitored my heart rate on this ascent to Barr Camp and basically kept it in the mid 150's, under control pretty good. During the race last year through the W's the heart rate was in the low 170's and I noted that my ascent time to Barr Camp was comparable with last year's ascent to that point, so I think this may be a good sign.

After taking a short break at Barr Camp I headed back down the trail and pushed it at a strong pace most of the way basically simulating race day pacing. It was interesting to note the heart rate on the descent averaging in the mid to low 130's, so the limiting factor on the descent is not the heart condition at all, but it is the condition of the legs after doing the uphill climb to over 14,000 feet elevation during the race. Today at Barr Camp the elevation was 10,200 feet so it is not as much a limiting factor as the full ascent to the summit.

My ascent time to Barr Camp from the trail head was 1 hr 50 min which is very respectable based on my previous years training. The descent down from Barr Camp to the trail head was 1 hr 9 min which is 1 minute faster than I have done that part of the trail in training runs over the past 2 years. Then I ran on down into town and down to the motel to join the family.

Then we drove over to Palmer Park and did a 2 mile run with my granddaughter and grandson. A great day of running.

After running on Pikes Peak on Monday, and then the 14 hour ride back to Texas from Colorado on Tuesday, we slept in this morning.  Today is also a vacation day so when I got up I worked behind the lawn mower for 4 hours that I am going to call cross training equal to 12 miles of running at a 20 minute per mile pace (lawn mower pace).  Out here in the country living we have lots of lawn and weeds to mow.  Our driveway is 400 feet long plus the lawn around the house so there is plenty of mowing to do.  The temperature is 92 degrees already and with the Texas humidity I was ready for a shower and a break by 12:15 PM. 

Ouch, what a run!  Thursday after work I visited the podiatrist for what I thought was a final visit to tell me that the plantar wart on the right forefoot was gone.  He had done two treatments of the beetle juice.  I thought the treatements were over.  Wrong.  After he trimmed the dead skin away he said there was still some seeds left and he was surprised, so he trimmed deeper in the foot and then put another treatement of the beetle juice and said not to run Thursday night, but if I could stand the pain I could run on Saturday. 

Prophetic words, if I could stand the pain.  Friday evening I cut a hole out of my right shoe insole to make a pain reduction spot for the plantar wart treatment.  This helped during today's run, but regardless the foot pain was ugly for the whole run, I felt so brave.   

So, this morning Lynn and I dropped off a cooler at the top of the Hill of Life and then I met Tom at 6:18 AM at Zilker Park at the Barton Springs Pool.  Lynn did her walk over to the Town Lake trail while Tom and I took off on our 21 mile run.  We ran the Greenbelt up to the HOL and then did 7 HOL runs, and then ran the 7 miles back to Barton Springs Pool.  I had plenty of time to talk with Tom about my run half way up Pikes Peak last Monday, this was fun. 

By the time we finished the last 3 miles the temperature was up to 95 degrees and humid.  My fingers and feet were swelling so even though we had hydrated really well I knew I needed to hydrate even better.  Tom's heart rate was going up into the 170's and he had a headache so we were both suffering by the last 3 miles.  This was frustrating because we had had a great run up to that point, interesting.  Anyway we finished with me limping pretty good with the sore right foot.   

It just felt good to know we got in the run.  Lynn and I drove home and I got showered up and have rested on the couch watching the Boston-St. Louis baseball game.  Rooting for Boston, but St. Louis jumped on them for 8 runs in the first 2 innings, darn.  So I slept through part of the game and woke for a final score of 9 to 3, darn.