Short, sweet...

Whoopi-ty-aye-oh ~ Gene Autry

Finally able to get back out on the feet and let me tell you... it feels good. Only running a couple of miles to start but I am feeling strong and have not experienced any discomfort while running on either of my recent outings. Yesterday, I cranked out a couple of miles on our road in 16 minutes. Today, I spun the same route in 15:20 something.

Today's run was a humid (for here) affair and it was nice to be out on a Sunday morning. Birds were singing, no dust to be seen due to yesterday's late-afternoon rain showers... good stuff. I just stayed relaxed, focused on my form and enjoyed the run. Yesterday was much of the same with more dust (pre-rain). Still wonderful to be out if only for 15 minutes.

This weekend featured two big races in Colorado: The Hardrock 100 and the Leadville Marathon. The Hardrock is an incredibly challenging course in the southwestern part of the state that features over 33,000 feet of climbing and tops out at over 14,000 feet. Karl Meltzer won again this year (I think this was his 5th victory) in a course record 24:38. Diana Finkel led the women (and all but two of the men!) to win her race in 27:18. Amazing.

The Leadville Marathon was also held over the weekend with another course record being set. Dennis Flanagan finished up in 3:32. The Leadville Marathon heads up Mosquito Pass and tops out at over 13,000 feet. High altitude madness abounds.

~stubert.

Humor is funny...

Why "Pinto"? ~ Larry 'Pinto' Kroger

I posted a clip from this series the other day. There are others that are equally amusing. Check them all out. Also, if you didn't see women's Boston Marathon finish, you really should give it a look.



Amazing.

~stubert

And you think I'm nuts...

Sliiiiiiiide. ~ Marla Singer

The Marathon of the Sands is a 6-day race across the Sahara where competitors must carry all their gear and the only real support is rations of water and tents in which to sleep at night. Amazing.

Speaking of racing, I met with Janet Runyan yesterday for the first of several sessions scheduled to help with my running form and to get some training and racing advice. She is a past winner at Leadville and National Ultradistance Champion so I am very excited to see how she can help my performance and help me get and stay injury-free. She recommended some posture adjustments yesterday that really seemed to help and I am planning to go out today to see how much "sticks". It is fairly warm up here today so as long as it doesn't rain, I should be okay. She did think that the first 50K I have scheduled was a bit aggressive so I will probably scale that back to the 25K event.

I did get out for some turns at the Basin on Sunday. Luke and I pretty much tore it up and Pete and Edy were up as well. Pete joined us for a couple of fun runs. The conditions were a bit funky but REALLY good turns were to be had if you explored a little. We got into some really good stuff up on East Wall and did a run out the Steep Gullies which was pretty great.

I ran Betasso on Monday evening and it was more of a slog than anything to write home about. Felt pretty poorly throughout but did manage 3 laps before calling it a night. Hoping I can get my psoas issues resolved very soon.

~stubert.

Apparently, I didn't get the memo...

One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it. ~ Oogway

A new study has taken a look into "the perfect running pace" and determined that though this pace is unique for each individual, the average optimal pace to travel 1 mile for males is 7:18. It does sound as if the study took into account only traveling a single mile so it would be interesting to know what the pace would be for those traveling greater distances. Anyway, that is my running link for the day. Enjoy!

I took Saturday completely off in an effort to recover a little bit from Thursday and Friday's skiing excitement and drove down to Boulder on Sunday to do some really sloppy trail running. It was beautiful out, a bit breezy at times and the trails were wet and muddy. Good stuff.

I started out at Eben G. Fine park and made my way under Canyon Blvd to Prospect Park. My heartrate spiked pretty much immediately (gotta work on that) as I made my way up and over the hogback and on to Sanitas. I ran/walked up the gut of Sanitas , enjoying the scenery and perfect running weather then dropped off the top toward 4th.

This trail was SUPER muddy and very slick at points. I fell once but managed to get a hand down to keep from being coated in sloppy, wet clay, so that was a plus and eventually made it down without further incident and on to the Wonderland Lake trails.

This section was very wet but at this point, it didn't really matter so I just tried to keep a sub 12-minute pace and let my legs spin. Unfortunately, my abs were really acting up and so I am sure I looked less than graceful. I ran North across Lee Hill road, up to the top of the hill and turned around for the return journey.

The only complication came while climbing back up the muddy access to Sanitas - just slow-going. I was pretty bonked by the end as well and man, my guts were killing me. Only 9.5ish miles, which took me about 1:45. Not stellar but given that I haven't been running at all really, I am nursing two injuries, and it was only my second time on major hills/trails since who knows when, I'll go easy on myself.

So the great experiment of running marathons over the fall months seems to have only really resulted in my having a nagging injury (abs) and less improvement in the efficiency department than expected. I'll keep working to get the ab problem resolved... perhaps that is what is holding me back. The knee had several "twingey" moments but overall was okay. I definitely wouldn't want to run 50+ miles on it right now.

Given the lingering injury situation, I have decided to postpone the double traverse until the fall but am looking at a few options for 50k races in May/June. The first, the Sage Burner, is in Gunnison on May 23rd. It follows a lot of the Rage in the Sage course which I used to race/train on heavily when I raced Mountain Bikes. This course has a hometown feel for me so it would be a fun one to do. The second upcoming event is also a "home course" kind of deal - The Golden Gate Dirty Thirty. This race is on June 6 and is run on the trail system near my house where I spent a lot of the last two summers training. Should be a lot of fun.

I am going to take today mostly off (will probably head to the gym later to lift) but am hoping to start ramping things up, move skiing more to the backcountry and start to feel better soon. At least that is the goal.

By the way, if you ever have electric motor repair needs, go see the guys at Boulder Electric Motor. They are awesome.

~stubert.