Weekly Summary for 12/13/10 to 12/20/10

This was a dynamic week. 

I went from still being flat from the TNF 50 early in the week, to recovered and running Green Mtn and doing a speed workout, to taking 3 days off due to my left knee bothering me and then finishing with an epic powder day yesterday at Vail. 

The knee is nearly recovered now, but it has been a mentally and physically challenging week.

Monday

AM 1hr 31min; 10.5 miles; 2,000ft up; Easy sunrise run with Marcus Allen from the house to Eben G Fine park, panorama trail, flastaff trail to just before crossing the road to go to Green Mtn Lodge.  49:45 out, then back the same way.  Saw a shooting start.  It was warm and totally clear of snow… should have worn shorts. Felt about 78% recovered with the last 10 minutes feeling shitty.  Range of motion totally back, but my bruise or strain on the ball of my right foot is noticeable.

Tuesday

AM 2hr 15min; 14.5 miles; 3,100ft up; Another easy sunrise run from home, EGF, Panorama trail, Flagstaff, but today I kept going to Green mtn lodge, greenman trail, to Green Mtn, down ranger and back the same way as up.  Today I felt pretty much recovered… for the first 40 minutes or so then the climbing legs were flat on the final approach.  I saw another shooting star this morning!

It is great running right now as there is NO snow really all the way to Green mtn and I haven’t seen anyone on the way up on the trails yesterday or today.  With that said, I did meet a guy named John on the summit of Green mtn.  I was shocked to find John knew who I was from my name.  It blows me away how small the Ultra community is and how well connected they are on this blog network.  Very cool. 

I felt pretty good all the way down to the halfway house but stretched the legs at panorama point as they were going back to how they felt at the end of the race 10 days ago.  I stretched again at EGF and it pretty much worked, but the last 10 minutes of the run wasn’t good feeling at all.  I need to just go 10 minutes shorter than I plan it seems.  I wore the newton trails shoes to protect my sore right foot… it still is a bit sore, but nothing “bad”.  I’ll take tomorrow shorter with less climbing and descending. 

Time up to the summit of flagstaff was 44:30 today, 49:50 to green mtn lodge, 1:14 I think, to Green, 2:05 back to EGF, 2:15 home.    

Wednesday

AM 1hr 8min; 9 miles; 100ft up; Got up late and ran from home to wonderland lake, north of w.l. lake and back.  Nice sunrise.  Felt good today.  It felt like a regular flat recovery run.  Instead of feeling like the end of a race at the end of the run, I felt normal.  I ran in different shoes to help with my sore foot and it worked. 

Thursday

Felt awesome warming up this morning, no aches, pain or flatness!  Just in time, as I wanted to do some speed intervals!

AM 1hr 8min; 10.5 miles; flat; ran a 20 min w/u to wonderland lake and ran 2 on 3 off by 6 on the nice flat trail between the lake and lee hill road (a little back and forth required).  The 2 on was 4:50-5:00/mile pace, 3 off was a recovery slow jog.  Felt awesome had to actually be a bit patient with thoughts of doing more repeats.  By the last one I had my classic hard/fast workout slight dry heave reflex.  Perfect.  I am looking forward to the speed workout each week.  On my bike ride, my left knee was tight and bothering me though, which sucks.  Not sure what to do. 

Friday

The knee was tight and unhappy yesterday morning and afternoon, by evening it felt a bit better.  I kept the knee Iced, but this morning I set out at 5:30 to run a longer run up Green and Bear, but turned around at 5min for a total of 9:48.  I could feel the knee getting tight just above the knee cap and decided I shouldn’t ignore the problem. 

AM 9min; 1.5 miles; flat; time to let the knee heal.

Saturday

The left knee felt much better, iced it, etc… but I still could feel funkiness.  I want to run healthy and thus took another day off to heal.

OFF

Sunday

Same as yesterday (no run) but I decided to take advantage of amazing snow in the mountains.  I skied with Levi and Rob Parish at Vail for a full day (8:30 to 4pm).  While under the lifts was truly awesome, the highlight of the day was skiing East Vail chutes with Levi.   The steep 2,000ft+ decent was epic with deeper than knee powder and the run included a few cliff bands (25-30 footer).  East Vail Chutes is my favorite “side country” in Eagle or Summit County.  My back is ridiculously tight and I could feel my knee a little bit afterwards being un-happy again.    

OFF

(4 days of running this week)

6hrs 11 min of running

46 Miles

5,200ft of climbing