These two weeks gave me a massive mental boost over where I had been. In the first two months of the year, despite having a better fitness base coming in and feeling like I was doing plenty, I realized that I was in fact doing less mileage than the corresponding time in 2014. I am quite sure that I was doing the corresponding mileage faster and with less fatigue over all, but it was discouraging nonetheless.
This fortnight left me feeling like I got a solid bit of training under my belt. I also started exploring a new place to run (Battle Creek Park, site of the Night Lights half last fall), which provides a bit more vertical than my standard River Gorge route.
Summaries:
Week ending March 15: 37 miles, 5 hours, 1800' of elevation gained.
I managed two solid workouts during this period. The first happened by chance: I was running along the hillier of my two routes from home, and saw up and to my left a pair of bald eagles kettling. I ran with them for a few blocks, looking up as much as I could, and found they were moving at about 5:30 pace.
Feeling surprisingly good, I turned my planned easy loop into more of a tempo run, and ended up running about 10k in just over 41 minutes. Not a stellar time, but not bad for legs that had run 14 miles two days earlier, on a hilly course.
The second was a more standard fartlek down Summit. I tried a 2 minutes on, 2 minutes off program, but this was quickly interrupted by the stoplights (spaced every 1/2 or 1/4 mile down the entire route). Nevertheless, I got a good workout in.
Saturday's long run I headed out to Battle Creek, where I proceeded to explore for a while. After a week of warm weather, it was starting to cool off a bit, and I got some stunning visions of the meadows, frosted over, sparkling in the first rays of the sun.
As I remembered, Battle Creek consists of a lot of double track, groomed for skiing in the winter. However, it also has a large amount of single track (mostly for mountain bikes) that provides a good counterpoint. Best of all, at the end, I found another, steeper, gnarlier singletrack section on the far side of the creek from the main park. Since I was meeting friends for a Saint Patricks Day/Pi day combo lunch, I had to save exploring that further for the next week.
Week Ending March 22: 42 miles, 6:16, 4800' elevation.
I hope this week marks a turning point physically as well as mentally. After exploring Battle Creek on Saturday, I realized if I wanted to train properly for the races I have planned, I need to actively seek out steep, technical trails to train on properly.
So this week I did just that. Tuesday, I headed down to the River Gorge. Keeping to the east bank, I ran south, and every time I saw a trail down to the river, I took it down to the bank, and tempoed back up. Eventually, I found three trails within about half a mile. Two were steep, nearly a 50% grade as far as I can tell from Strava. The third was one I'd done before, shallower but longer. I did a full 18 total hill reps, for about 1500 feet.
The second workout, I headed over to Battle Creek for a hill I found promising. This time I did 10 steep reps, and 5 shallower, longer hills with more vert.
Saturday I hit Battle Creek again. Exploring to the west side of the creek, I came upon what I think is a trail in progress. It was cleared, and blazed, but the trail itself was not yet cut into the ground at all. And, eventually, it just dead-ended. We'll see if the trail-making progresses.
I got lucky on this run. Coming down a hill, the same switchbacking slope I did repeats on earlier in the week, I startled a coyote. It proceeded to bounce (not bound, but bounce on all four legs) down the hill just quickly enough to evade my camera. Later on, I struggled up a different hill to see what I think was a pair of red tailed hawks courting ahead of me. Naturally, they also flew off before I could snap a picture.
All in all, though, it was a good run, coming in at 14 miles. And after a 4 mile run the next day, I started a much-needed recovery week.
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