Sunday, February 27, 2011

Weekly Summary for 2/20-2/27

Monday
AM 11.05M; 1:39; 1,238Ft; 133Avg Hr; Wonderland Trail- Nice easy run in the fog.  Ran a cool bonus 2 mile loop up to a ridge that was steep, forested a bit and scenic.
PM  4.17M; :38; 142Ft; 131Avg Hr; Run from work over to Kitteredge for about 3 miles barefoot.  Feeling pretty good.

Tuesday
AM 11.55M; 1:57; 3,214Ft; 142Avg Hr; NEW PERSONAL BEST OF 37:51 up Green's "Middle" route. After 4 weeks of no time trial up Green due to my XC race in San Diego and a few muscle strains, it was good to do a time trail.  The overall conditions were a bit funky at 6:45AM... not that cold (20s) or windy, but the trail up Gregory Canyon consisted of about 70% bone dry rock and dirt, 30% solid ice approximately 4-6" thick.  You had to wear spikes this week on a majority of the trails in Chautauqua, despite the fact that most of the trail was clear, the ice was killer.  The trend continued a ways up Ranger and Greenman eventually followed by the nice treat at the end of fast packed snow up the stairways and summit push.  The body felt "different" than past time trials, with the cardio doing better than before but the stair/mountain climbing legs power was a little less.  I honestly expected to maybe just break 40 and then due to bad math (didn't review the splits on the run) I thought I ran high 38 or low 39 until I checked the splits that night.  The run was certainly an encouraging gauge for my fitness level going into next weekends Nueces 50 mile race.        

PM 4.04M; :34; 64Ft; 127Avg Hr; Easy run to Kitteredge fields for some barefoot running.  Great to see my average heart rate under 130 at sub 8min/mile pace on this 4 mile run after a hard run in the morning.  Aerobic efficiency is coming around.

Wednesday
AM 11.07M; 1:39; 1,270Ft; Recovery run on Wonderland trails with the cool bonus loop (same as Monday) at the turn-around with Marcus Allen.  I felt noticeably better today than Monday and wish I had my HR monitor, as I'm sure the Avg HR was less despite running the same split.

PM Massage with Marcus Allen.  Worked out the little kinks from the previous few weeks of muscle issues.

Thursday
PM 12.28M; 1:27; 539Ft; 6 X 1 Mile repeats with a minute jog in between each; 3 mile warm up and cool down.  Totally missed Dave Mackey and Geoff Roes for this run as I told them to meet me at the "buffalo on campus".  Low and behold, from Dave's report, there are at least 3 buffaloes on campus.  I meant to meet them at the buffalo at folsom stadium, where I work.  I ran 3 of the repeats west into the canyon on the boulder creek bike path at 6:08, 6:10, 6:14 running on the side trails and then gravel once in the canyon proper.  5:49, 5:50 and 5:50 back down.  All 6 repeats were at threshold pace... basically "medium" hard pace.  I was happy to feel I could have done 6 more, like I should have felt.  I didn't feel this way a few before when I ran 7 of these with a 2 min jog between flatter terrain with GZ and Aaron Kennard. 

Friday
AM 9.03M; 1:13; 748Ft; 132Av Hr; Wonderland Trails easy.  Felt flat from Tuesday and Thursday's workouts.

PM 3.63M; :29; 313Ft; 133Av Hr; Easy from work.  Flat still.

Saturday
AM 2:50; 17.47M; 3,365Ft; 142Av Hr; One way long run from the trails north of Eldorado Canyon, into the canyon and out to Walker Ranch, Flagstaff Road North and East a few miles to Long Canyon trail, Green Mtn Lodge, down Flagstaff Trail, Panorama Trail, Eben G. Fine park, home.  I started this run with a hike (didn't count the hiking miles!) with my Mom, Vicky, visiting from San Diego, Felix and Maggie.  When they turned around I took off towards Eldorado Canyon.
My Boy (Slept the whole hike)

Good sense, a second opinion, or coach, would have advised me to run flat on a longer run a week out from the race, but I couldn't resist.  I felt flat the day before and was today on this long hillyish one way run.  Two good things came out of the run though: my legs didn't have any issues with muscles, so I kept smooth form and secondly I got to try out 1st Endurance "EFS" Electrolyte Fuel System.

After attending a talk with owner Robert Kunz of 1st Endurance Friday night (thanks for the invite Aaron!), I was very excited to see how one of the the products, EFS, worked for me.  EFS worked brilliantly.  While I was flat from the first mile, the EFS went down smooth, kept me from bonking, tasted good and in general, kept me going.  I won't go into detail here, but 1st Endurance is really on a different level than all the other Gel fuel products out there.  EFS has electrolytes (the other gels really don't) and doesn't use gelling agents... that alone is enough to sell me, but the rest of the product make up is engineered for serious performance.  I was very, very impressed.  The real test will be next weekend, but I have a feeling the minimal GU sponsorship will be ending soon.

Sunday
AM 10.08; 1:23; 784Ft; 131Avg Hr; Easy run around Wonderland trails.  Flat, but better than yesterday.

95.09 Miles
11,677Ft Climbing

Good solid week of training.  No muscle issues.  I debated on the approach to this week, as normally 2 weeks out from a big race/marathon, I cut back by around 20%.  With Ultras being heavily aerobic based, I have cut that down to a 10 day tapper.  The other reason I decided to keep the week pretty focused is that I have had a couple lower mileage, lower intensity weeks in the last month with XC and some muscle strains.  I felt great Tuesday and Thursday, but paid for it Friday and Saturday with pretty flat runs.  Today I could feel myself recovering and I am feeling very strong and injury free.

Very happy I attended the 1st Endurance talk with Robert Kunz.  I am convinced they have the best products in the world and I'm excited to utilize them.

I'm anxious for Nueces next weekend.  I am better prepared for this 50 mile race, with regards to endurance, hill climbing and trail running, than and than I was for North Face in December, so I expect to have a great race in Texas.

9 comments:

  1. i'm really pleased to see that you are running healthy and consistently again. great job man. i'm rootin for you next weekend, you'll do great.

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  2. Thanks Jacob, likewise... can't wait to see you run well at Way Too Cool (the race I couldn't get into!!).

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  3. UROC is in the plans for sure. I emailed Geoff and he sent me a list of who all has "made plans" to run it and was glad to see your name on it. I'm excited because those are my types of trails! I'm an Appalachian Man all the way through.

    Have fun and good luck down in Texas. You'll rock it.

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  4. Hey Speedster! You're going to rock your race this weekend!

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  5. The above comment was Maggie Schlarb NOT Jason - didn't know he was already logged in!

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  6. Thanks GZ!
    I enjoy you humor dave and will ber watching for my opportunities too!

    The lead up to the race this weekend was out of control... Work will be off the hook monday and tuesday, so a race report will bea few days off at best.

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