The Running Falcon: Two Week Summary, July 8-21

Monday, July 8: Off.

Tuesday, July 9: 5 miles, 500 feet. Ran up Dakota ridge taking it really easy. My legs were still feeling the weekend a little bit.

Wednesday, July 10: 13 miles, 2200 feet. I decided to join the Boulder Track Club’s Mountain Ultra Trail team for one of their Wednesday long runs to get a little extra mileage in for the week. More on this run in my other blog.

Thursday, July 11: 5.5 miles, 600 feet. Took an easy run up Sunshine Canyon. My legs felt pretty solid despite the long run the day before, which significantly upped my overall confidence level.

Friday, July 12: 4.5 miles, 200 or so feet. Took it really easy on the Boulder Creek Path. Nevertheless, I felt pretty good, and grabbed a bit of a scramble at what is apparently called lovers’ rock. Who knew?

Saturday, July 13: Off.

Sunday, July 14: 12 miles, 2800 feet. Headed over to White Ranch Open Space for a longish run. More on this in the 13 Project.

Monday, July 15: Off.

Tuesday, July 16: 5.5 miles, 600 feet. Another easy day up Sunshine. The legs felt good, and I planned an adventure for the next day.

Wednesday, July 17: 8 miles, 4000 feet. Easily one of my best runs this year. I decided to head out early, drive up to Loveland Pass, and run over and up to Grizzly Peak. I saw nobody the 3 or so miles over to Grizzly, save for a couple mountain goats that, amazingly, led me directly up the trail. I felt really strong in the high altitude and nailed the final ascent up to Grizzly itself (hitting 1000 feet or so in about 15 minutes at 12000+ feet).

At the top of Grizzly, I ran into a group of summer campers summiting from the other side of the mountain, and chose not to linger, but turned and went back the way I came. I had considered pushing on to Torreys from Grizzly, but opted out, as I still had to get to work at some point that day.

The route back went more smoothly than the route out had, even with many people now on the trail. I chose at the last minute to run over and tag Snikatu, another 13er (my 4^th 13000’ summit of the day, counting two summits of Mt Cupid). This only took an additional 15 minutes, much to the annoyance of the hikers struggling their way to the top.

All in all, an excellent morning up in the mountains. After dropping back down to Loveland Pass, I drove back up to Boulder, and was at my desk and working before 11AM.

Thursday, July 18: 4.5 miles, 200 feet. Boulder Canyon run. I opted for an easy shakedown after the significant vertical the day before.

Friday, July 19: 5.5 miles, 1000 feet. Tempoed up Anemone in 13:46. I can’t remember if this is a PR, or just shy of a PR, but a solid effort.

Saturday, July 20: 4.5 miles, no appreciable elevation. Easy jaunt around the neighborhood in Westminster.

Sunday, July 21: 7.5 miles, 1300 feet. Took it easy on North Table Mountain.

This was the end of a solid three week training block. I’ll grant you that the last week was quite a bit shorter than the first two, which is opposite the normal pattern, but I got a good amount of climbing in there as well.

Unfortunately, it’s looking more and more like this will be my last good training block for a bit. The Thursday after this training block, I ended up in the ER for a fun evening of tests. With a sharp pain in my lower right abdomen, the doctors were all seemingly convinced that I had appendicitis (as was I). Fortunately, that turned out not to be the case. Unfortunately, we don’t actually know what happened. Almost a week later, now, I still am having significant pain in my abdomen, and have a doctors appointment tomorrow that will hopefully clear things out.

To make a longer story short, I have dropped out of the Wild West Relay at this point, and cannot for the immediate future see myself running, hiking, or doing parkour in any significant manner. I am grappling with the disappointment this has caused, and with not being able to be out in the Colorado summer, for which I still had such great plans.

I just hope that the appointment tomorrow clears some things up.