Weekly Summary June 17-23

Monday: 1.5 hrs of Parkour. Took the day off of running. Previously I have found that if I run and do a full Parkour class on the same day, I end up far too tired to do any sort of workout the following day.

Tuesday: 6 miles, 1500 feet. Ran Sanitas from work. I briefly thought of giving it a time trial effort, but I really wanted to put in a solid effort the next day on Flagstaff, so I kept it as easy as is possible on this route. Set an easy baseline of 22:20 for the ascent. Ran the full loop from work in 56 minutes flat.

Wednesday: 8 miles, 1500 feet. Put in a tempo effort up Flagstaff. I hit the summit at 39:37, and 28:27 from the Viewpoint trailhead. I believe this to be a PR for me on this run. Put in a solid effort on the downhill too, and ended it with an up-tempo run back down the creek path to work (1 1/4 miles in 8:03). Solid effort and a good benchmark for later tempo runs.

Thursday: 5 miles, 500 feet. Shuffled my way up Sunshine Canyon. I was still really sore from the effort on Wednesday, and really didn’t have anything left.

Friday: off.

Saturday: 9 miles, 3650 feet. Ran from South Mesa trailhead up Shadow Canyon to South Boulder Peak. Took the ridge over to Bear Peak. Ran down Fern and back via Mesa.

Saturday was a good solid run in one of my favorite areas. Without pushing unduly hard, I ran a PR to the Shadow Canyon turnoff, and broke my PR to the saddle where Shadowy Canyon Pops out in 55:05. Given the amount of time I had to wait behind hikers, who seemed relatively oblivious this particular day, I think I actually ran this a good 2 minutes faster.

This was the first I had been up Shadow since they opened it a few weeks ago. The lower part is the same as ever: brutally steep and technical. I had forgotten just how hard this trail is. Then, suddenly, you emerge into the burn area from the Flagstaff Fire. The scorched landscape is just familiar enough to be truly eerie. It appears that none of the evergreens, and very few of the aspen, survived the fire. New growth is poking out, but it is still brown and burned to the ground for the most part.

I had to pick my way up South Boulder Peak, because the trail was often hard to pick out from the burned ground.  But the view from the top of South Boulder is as impressive as ever. SoBo is the highest of the Boulder peaks, but is so often hidden behind Bear that it seems people rarely climb it, which is a shame. After taking in the view for a few minutes, I headed over to Bear to tag a second summit, before descending to Fern Canyon.

I had forgotten again how steep the first section off Bear Peak is. It seems as though every time I come down it, it gets a little more rocky and a little more eroded. I took it slowly until the saddle, then threw myself down Fern Canyon with a bit of reckless abandon. Something about Fern makes me want to go fast, and I apologize to any of the hikers I may have startled.

Still feeling good. I pushed it again on the way back down the Mesa trail, and managed a respectable sub-27 minute time on this split.

Sunday: 7 miles, 2850 feet. Hiked Mt Bierstadt with several friends as the first 14er of what promises to be a great year of them For more on this, you’ll have to head over to my other blog: The 13 Project. 

Felt solid all week. The mileage and vertical added up though, and I started the next week pretty tired, deciding to ease off a bit before taking on the next training cycle.