Training Summary for the week of: 1/21/2008

Made it. 7 consecutive 60+ mile weeks in the dead of winter. Pretty happy with how that worked out. Very solid effort, built up a solid base, lost 10-12 pounds, and even worked on some speed. Now it’s time to reduce the mileage and rest up for my first big race of the year.

Spontaneous Lunch Marathon

After 6 solid weeks in the ‘zone’, ticking off the miles, watching my diet, going to bed early, getting lots done at work - this week started out with some major speed bumps. Threw me off my groove, you might say.

I had Monday off and wanted to run, but got wrapped up in the process of registering my son for high school so put it off. I was looking forward to a lunch run on Tuesday, but it turned out to be a terrible day. Some things happened that really rocked my world and left me feeling confused and upset. Then to top it off, I had an explosion of problems to address and didn’t get home until 10pm. Strike two.

Wednesday was redemption time. I was back in the office at 6:30. My legs were still kind of thrashed from the race last Saturday, but I didn’t care. I figured I had a little extra time to burn over my lunch since I put in the extra hours the night before. I pulled a Forrest Gump, and told myself as I jogged out of the parking lot that I was going for a run and didn’t know when I’d be coming back. Unusual for me since I have things pretty structured most of the time. My brain was crammed with thoughts, I was still a bit angry about the events of the day before, and just wanted to get it out of my system.

I ran easier than normal for the first few miles, then settled into a comfortable rhythm. After an hour, I thought to myself - hey, why not do a marathon?  With that thought, my pace became more determined and I became very focused on the task at hand. I was a bit on the cold side, wearing shorts in 30 degree weather, but it was better than overheating and being all sweaty for a long time in that kind of cold.

I was having a blast, but had a few things working against me. I only got 3 hours of sleep the night before, was running without food or water, and I was wearing brand new shoes. From mile 16 to mile 20 I started to struggle. The pace was wearing on me, and I constantly asking myself “How’s the motivation level?”… I would narrow my eyes a bit each time and try to focus just that much harder. I think the lack of food and water was catching up to me, and I was hating the shoes. They were stiff and solid feeling. I missed my trusty Nike Pegasus.

I ran the last 6 miles pretty hard just to break out of the rut I was in. I finished the sucker in 3:36. Just a training run on a random Wednesday. Dang. Maybe I should take a crack at one of these things…

Training Summary for the week of: 1/14/2008

This ends my 6th consecutive 60 mile week.  I’m shooting for one more before I start a 2 week taper for my first ‘A’ race of 2008.  I’m WAY into new territory with this approach.  I usually do a 3 week block followed by a reduced recovery week before repeating the cycle.  Pushing through 7 weeks will be a challenge, but I’m happy with the results so far and hopeful that the two week taper will work some magic before the race.

Race Report: CMRA 12k

Aurora Sports Park Cross Country

I had the opportunity to run in a race today put on by the Colorado Masters Running Association. I dropped my son off for an activity at 8:00, hit the race at 9:00, and was back to pick him up at 11:00. Quite the action packed morning, but it worked out well.

I’ve been wanting to do a CMRA race for a year now, and finally got my chance. They are a local club that puts on one race per month with varying distances and surfaces. Today’s race was a-typical in both of those categories! The races usually attract from 40-100 runners, and offer a chance to do a low-cost, no frills event. For a 10 dollar fee (or free to club members), I viewed it as another great opportunity to get some speed work in. It’s always easier to push yourself when in a race setting.

The couse was a 4k loop through weeds, brush, ditches, creek bottoms, grass, trees, willows, you name it. Add 4-5 inches of snow, with some ice underneath, and it made for quite a challenge. Runners could stop at one, two, or three loops - meaning there was a simultaneous 4k, 8k, and 12k race going on. The one catch was that you didn’t have to declare what distance you were racing before the start, which made for some interesting times as I would watch the runners ahead of me each time we came through the start/finish and hope they would pull off - because I was dying! Every time they would run on through, I would have to dig a little and keep up the pace.

Training Summary for the week of: 1/7/2008

Had some struggles this week, but managed to complete my 5th straight week over 60 miles. I had a hard time with Tuesday’s hill run, then rode way harder than I should have on my first ride of the year on Wednesday. That set me up with some pretty good fatigue that I’m still dealing with.

Training Summary for the week of: 12/31/2007

This was my 4th highest mileage week. Coming in behind only my 100k race, 100 miler, and the week of my 31 mile birthday run.

The coolest thing about it was that I was able to do it all M-F and take the weekend off. I’m still getting up early and using that extra time to get longer runs in at lunch, then my back-to-back 20 mile commute was icing on the cake. I only impacted one evening with the family, pretty sweet to be able to pull that off. I’m optimistic that I can keep finding creative ways to get in a high volume of training.

Home Run!

Yesterday I did something I had been thinking about for the past several weeks. I ran home from work.

The shortest route I could find was just a hair over 20 miles. Not a bad way to get home. The tough part was getting up at 04:00 and heading out the door to run back the next morning!

Except for some icy conditions in some areas, the running wasn’t too bad. I took it nice and slow, and enjoyed running in the dark. I saw one shooting star.

I’ll probably try to incorporate this routine into my training on a more regular basis. I’m just blown away that I pulled this off in the beginning of January!

This was about 6 miles into my run home. Still smiling…

Race Report: Rescue Run 10k

Happy 2008! I got up at 6:30 so I could drive down to Colorado Springs and run a 10k race with several hundred other crazy people to kick off the new year. Normally, I wouldn’t bother to go through all the trouble for that kind of race, but this is one that I had wanted to do last year and couldn’t due to injury. I wanted to check it off the list, plus the money goes to support the El Paso County Search and Rescue organization.

The day turned out great. It was sunny and clear, with a little breeze. 16 degrees at the start - I decided to skip the tights and just go with shorts. I also broke out the running shirt I had designed as an offshoot to my cycling team gear. I planned on running hard as a good way to get an extended speed session under my belt. I had just done 30 miles on Friday, then took Saturday and Sunday off, and put in a medium tempo 10 miles with hills yesterday. I definitely wasn’t going into this race rested, but that was ok. I needed to push the speed with a little fatigue in the legs.

I knew the course started out uphill, but wow was I shocked at the climb in the first mile! It was pretty stout, and pitched up to 9% for the final 1/4 mile to the top. Coming back down, I hit 15mph on this section. Fun!

I was hoping to maintain something under a 7:30 pace. I thought that would be a fair challenge given the state I was in and the difficulty of the course. I had done a solo time trial on a 10k course near my house back on November 3 and came up with a 47:25. I really wanted to break 45 minutes, but would need a 7:14 pace to do that. Seemed like a stretch.

The start was pretty crowded, over 700 people were lined up to do the 5k or 10k which started at the same time. After a flat 1/4 mile start on a smaller path, we were dumped onto a road at the base of the climb so it was pretty easy to find room to pass.

I abandoned my conservative strategy and started passing dozens of people immediately. I ended up giving 3-4 spots back by the end, but I think it was the right thing to do. My legs never complained at all, I felt like they had plenty to give. My lungs were another story. They just seemed to be limiting me for some reason (several in the family have colds, and I’ve had some symptoms).

I ended up 26th out of 310 overall male (was passed by one girl), and 7/44 in my age group. My time was 43:14, which works out to a 6:58 pace. I was thrilled! For me to run sub-7 on a course like that, contending with the hills and snow, and having all those miles in my legs was fantastic. I was really, really pleased. I bogged down a bit during miles 3 and 4, paying for the faster start, but then rallied and finished strongly (the downhill helped, too!).

Sled Time!

After I got home, we took off to go sledding. Littleton has a dedicated sledding park with a big hill that is very wide and can accommodate a LOT of people. There were tons of people there since it was nice weather + a holiday. Talk about the Darwin Awards on steroids. This place was nuts! There weren’t really any defined paths to take back up the hill, so people were randomly walking everywhere. We saw so many collisions and near misses. I can’t believe they didn’t have a fleet of ambulances waiting at the bottom with doors open. The first place we set our sleds down had a nice patch of fresh blood decorating the snow…

One guy was at the bottom of the hill with his back turned to the slope (duh). I yelled ‘heads up!’ as loud as I could as a girl on a huge tube was gunning right for him. He turned and saw her a millisecond before impact, jumped as high as he could, and she clipped his feet and sent him flipping over backwards onto the hard-as-ice snow. Ouch. We saw another guy jump out of the way of an oncoming sled only to realize that his little girl was right behind him. She was a centimeter from being knocked into orbit. She ended up getting sideswiped which spun her around in a 720 and flung her mitten several feet away. We saw another little kid his legs taken out which slammed his face into the ice, blood and tears were everywhere.

We survived for about 90 minutes, then considered ourselves lucky to still be in one piece and headed out. The kids had a blast, even if the parents were a little worried at times.