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Some great workouts lately.

I’ve been getting in some great workouts lately.  I recently started running Lookout Mountain (sometimes on the road, sometimes on the trail) weekly on Fridays.  Yesterday I ran the trail along with some other friends, we then went and had a few drinks, then we went down to Highlands and had even more drinks.  Needless to say, this morning I was feeling it.  Gatorade seems to be a magic hangover cure, so I downed a bottle of that, and went to the Saturday morning running group.  Only did 3 miles at an easy pace (8:30/mile) and then had breakfast.  That got the day started off well and I was feeling much better.  So I jumped on the bike and started from the house and rode the 22 miles to Golden and back.  Averaging 17.7mph on the way there and then 20.8mph on the way back.  The way there from start to finish is about 800ft difference, plus a bit of a headwind, so obviously the way back would be a little faster.  Immediately after getting home I switched out to some running shoes, threw a hat on, and took off on a run.  I found my rhythm pretty quickly after about a half a mile.  I turned back after the mile mark and made it a 2 mile run at 8:00/miles.  If this keeps up I’m going to be in great shape for the two half ironmans and Ironman Arizona by the end of the summer.  Tomorrow I have a similar workout planned over on the Harvest Moon half ironman course.  Going to do about 40-45 miles of the course followed by a 3-6 mile run with a friend who’s doing a half ironman in Norway where he is from, but that course he has to do is apparently a killer.   So hopefully this workout will show him a thing or two about what it’s like to try to run after biking that far, I don’t think he’s actually done any brick workouts ever, so it should be interesting.

Boulder Backside Loop

On Sunday my friend Mike hosted a little trail run on the Backside loop over in Boulder.  Mike is an incredible runner, on Saturday he ran from Boulder to Denver to join the typical morning running group I go to.  Except he started at 3am and ended up running 40miles.  Then the next day he shows us this epic trail, 19.2miles, 4500ft+ of climbing.

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Platte River Half Marathon – Race Report

It’s been a few days now and I think I’m finally recovered from the race on Sunday. It turned out to be a great day with the temperature being perfect for a good race, right around 65-70 degrees. There was a slight head wind though, which showed by the top placing guys being about 2 minutes slower this year than last year. Either way, the winning time was still in the 1:13s as opposed to 1:11 like last year.

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Platte River Half Marathon – prerace thoughts & organization

Tomorrow is the Platte River Half Marathon. I signed up because my friend suggested it and I have trouble saying no to any race. It’s by no means an A priority race, but like any race you have a compulsion to do the best you can at it. After this my next big race is the San Diego Marathon in early June. So I’ll have two months of solid training before considering another taper. I do have the Colfax Marathon as part of a relay team to do for a charity, but distance wise I’ll end up either running or biking after it as well. I plan on using it as a speed workout since it’ll only be a 5 mile run, then go for a second workout later on after lunch.

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24 Hours of Utah… the Run!

Moab is a wonderful place, with incredible scenery and an extremely active community. It’s known mostly for it’s Jeep 4 Wheeling, mountain biking and rock climbing. When you mention the “24 Hours of Utah” and that it’s in Moab, most people instantly think “24 Hours of Moab”, which is a 24 hour mountain bike race that occurs around October about 10 miles south of the town of Moab. The “24 Hours of Utah” is similar except you’re running and not biking.  Besides just the 24 hours, there’s also a 12 hour option as well as a 100mile option (you have 30hours to complete 100miles).  I chose to go with the 24 hour option as my first ultra because it let me test my limit of how far and how long I can go without putting a line in the sand at XXmiles saying “stop when you reach this point”, instead it’s “run until you just can’t run anymore.”.

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