Uninvited Guest in my Chest again.

Frak!

Had a tremendous run Saturday in the VFF treks on up in Buffalo Creek.  A 16 mile loop I've ridden on my MTB but never run.

It turned out to be a bit harder of an effort than I wanted, because I found myself running with a bunch of mountain bikers.  We leap frogged at first, but eventually I dropped them.  That was really good for some extra BPM.

I'll post a link to the run.  But in basic, the first 3 miles or so are on Hwy 126 and all uphill.  After that the route gets onto single and double track which climbs until about mile 7 or so.  Then there's a long descent back to the cabin.  In all a 16 mile loop.

I took 2:45, and not only was I happy with my passing and dropping some MTB'ers, but I ran the entire way in VFFs.  That is my longest single run in Five Fingers by 100 percent and my longest day in total by 33.  Pretty sweet.

After I got back to the cabin, my Mom, Nataly, the Beanery, Julie and a whole mess of dogs took a walk on the Colorado Trail to get my Mom re-oriented with the surroundings.  There's a really pleasant location, east of 126 on the FS 1776 where you stand in an unburned copse of trees and can see Pikes Peak, Denver, Mt Evans and Mt Bierstadt.  Cool.

Sunday, I was going to do about an hour long workout which included some intervals, but I woke feeling like crap.  It wasn't my achilles-s either.  Nataly wanted to rake some needles and somebody needed to babysit the Beanery.  So, I decided I'd just put off my workout until lunch today, but when I woke today the gremlins had moved into my chest.

Probably shouldn't have had so much fun chasing down the MTB'ers on Saturday.  Because today, I'm wondering if I'm going to feel a run is warranted tomorrow.

Oh well.
Thanks for reading,
J

McIntosh Lake

Quick hitter update.  Today's workout was supposed to be a tempo effort.  In my world that's somewhere between half and full marathon pace.  The kind of effort you can keep up for 2 hours or so.

The weather is blustery, windy, cloudy and cool.  A perfect fall day.  Reminds me of training for cross country in high school:  New Jersey in Voorhees State Park and in VT on Bump Road.  It's actually snowing in the mountains.  Aside from the wind, I'd call that perfect for running.   Good stuff.

I started out comfortably fast to warm up, but when I hit my lap button suddenly it felt like the race was on.  I settled into an effort comfortably above my tempo effort - not much, but perceptibly.  I was ticking through right around 7 minutes per mile and feeling good.  The weather surely had something to do with that.  There's no way I could run for 2 hours at 7/mile, but I could probably go slightly faster than that in a 10k.  Perhaps I will if I run in the Longmont Turkey Trot again this year.  We shall see.  I'd like to break 42 minutes in a 10k before we head to Bolivia.

I did 2 laps of the trail around McIntosh Lake for a total of 6.9 miles.  My 5 mile "tempo" section was done in 35 minutes and 10 seconds.

Anyway we're going up to the cabin this evening, I'll log a few miles on the Colorado trail tomorrow.  Not sure how many, but I'm looking for 2.5 to 3 hours.

Thanks for reading.
J

Good weekend

Didn't do much other than getting out to move around a little bit.  Deneb and Homey trotted along on the Colorado Trail for a bit, and it's got me thinking about running from Waterton Canyon to Buffalo Creek.  I've always thought about maybe mountain biking it, but these days I think it might be easier for me to run that stretch...

Maybe in a couple of weeks if the weather is right.
Thanks for reading,
J

Head for the Hills.

On Wednesday, my wife and son finally got back from 2+ months in Bolivia.  Little guy grew probably 3 inches while he was gone.  He's speaking Spanish and some other language I'll refer to as babble.  Simply walking from one place to another is not good enough anymore, he's got to run!  Good news for a hopeful Dad that's for sure...

This weekend we're all going to head up to Buffalo Creek to hang out, read and take it easy.  I'll probably get out on the trails with Homey for a couple quickies.  It's been tough sitting around the house waiting for my blisters to heal up.  They're still blisters, but they don't hurt.  We'll give it a try anyway.  If it's too unpleasant, we'll can the idea and hang in a hammock instead.

Thanks for reading.

J