The Week That Was - May 6-12, 2012

Decent week of running, although the mileage isn't where I'd like it to be. Starting to feel like my fitness is returning after having to shut things down for February and March due to ITBS.


The stats:

57.86 miles
10,811 feet o' elevation gain
9 hours, 27 minutes

Sunday: Beaver Brook Trail Traverse - (17 miles; 4,489 feet o' elevation gain; 3:29). Did an out-and-back run the length of the Beaver Brook Trail, starting at the Chief Hosa trailhead and running to Windy Saddle on Lookout Mountain Road. This trail has it all...tough, rugged climbs, gentle rollers and a wee bit of flat, steady running. Was pretty hammered by the time it was all said and done. Came across Troy H. twice. He was out doing the same run, only more and starting from the Chimney Gulch Trailhead. Big day for him!

Views down into Clear Creek Canyon from Beaver Brook Trail

Beaver Brook Trail blaze

Monday: Home - Firestone via Elk Meadow - (3.88 miles; 466 feet o' elevation gain; :38).  Legs were heavy from the previous day's run. Decided to keep it waaaaay easy. Just ran from home to car repair shop to pick up the car.

Tuesday: North Table Mountain - (10.02 miles; 1,190 feet o' elevation gain; 1:20). Tempo pace/effort run. Ran a bunch of stuff to pretty much circumnavigate the mountain, with a bit of climbing thrown in via the Mesa Top Trail.  The North Table Mountain Trail is a great and relatively new trail and is flat enough to get some solid and challenging turn-over going. Felt good to push the pace a bit, which I haven't been doing much of since January when the ITBS flared up.

Wednesday: Green Mountain - Lakewood - (10.07 miles; 1,151 feet o' elevation gain; 1:21). Ran from Rooney Road lot around the south side of the mountain, climbed up to the towers, over to the high point and back down via the Box o' Rocks Trail.

Thursday: Bergen Peak Upper Loop - (8 miles; 1,758; 1:14). Ran a slightly abbreviated version of the upper loop from the lower lot at Elk Meadow Open Space.

Friday: Off - Crazy day between work and family obligations.

Saturday: Bergen Peak Upper Loop - (8.89 miles; 1,758 feet o' elevation gain; 1:23). This was one of those runs that restores one's excitement about running/training. Felt like I was flying up Elk Meadow's Too Long Trail. I recall wishing I had run my time trial route this day. I'm sure I could have set a PR. Ran hard down the Bergen Peak Trail feeling great. IT barked a wee bit when as I was finishing up on the Meadow View Trail. Slowed down and jogged it in. No further problems. Played it safe as soon as I got a few minor twinges.

Thoughts:  As noted above, I'm starting to feel like some of the fitness I had in late winter is beginning to return. Tuesday was my first tempo pace/effort hard run in several months. Felt so good cruising along the North Table Mountain Trail on a beautiful day. Looking forward to more of those.  No yoga this week, but got in a solid session this past Sunday morning.  Foam rolling and hip mobility/strengthening exercises continue.

Random Goodness

Does a later-in-life start to serious running allow one to perform better as one ages?  Maybe.

Want to finish Leadville (or any other 100-miler) more than 30 minutes sooner without running any harder or faster?  Learn to pee while running.

Got a favorite "green" restaurant in Boulder or Denver?  The Nature Conservancy has a contest going. Vote here.  My fave in Denver:  Watercourse.

The Week that Was - January 1 - 7, 2012

Ah yes...a new year. The time when many make new resolutions, big plans and look back to take stock of the year that just ended. I am definitely a big fan of that stuff. Thus, my resolution is to make some big plans as soon as I finish reviewing 2011.

Until then, I'll try to keep up the daily ultramarathon of work, family, running and volunteering.

So, the week that was:

Monday: Steady - 10.38 miles; 1:38; 1,105 feet o' elevation gain - Hiwan - the Ridge - Kittredge. Met up at DW's house and ran through two local 'hoods and snuck over to the dirt road that leads down into Kittredge. Ran down to Bear Creek, east down Bear Creek Canyon. Climbed back up via Kerr Gulch. Took the upper sneak back into the Ridge and retraced our steps to DW's house.

Tuesday: Tempo - 8:59 miles; 1:16; 384 feet o' elevation gain - Upper Bear Creek Road.  Met up w/ Steve F. for this one. Two mile w/u jog up the road, then two miles of uphill tempo (6:31; 6:20). Actually, I did about 2.25 miles of tempo because I missed the prominent mile marker post. Turned around and did a mile easy, then two more miles of tempo (5:56; 5:55). One mile c/d.


Wednesday:  Climbing - 5:12 miles; 1:06; 1,513 feet o' elevation gain - Flagstaff Mountain. Started late afternoon from Eben G. Fine and climbed up the trail to the sign that marks the loop atop of the mountain in 33:24. Trail conditions were decent, with constantly changing mix of snow, ice and dirt. Most of the descent was in the dark. Naturally, I had no light. Took me 32:50 to get down (a whopping 34 seconds faster than the ascent).


Thursday:  Easy w/ hill fartleks - 9:23 miles; 1:18; 1,279 feet o' elevation gain - Ran a slightly abbreviated version of my 10-mile loop through the Soda Creek subdivision. Got in an extra mile on the bike path around Bergen Park. Toward the end of the loop my right knee started hurting - a very noticeable ache on the outside. Walked the last quarter mile.


Friday:  1 mile; 8 minutes - treadmill, Buchanan Rec Center. 6-7 miles was the plan, but my right knee objected. After some tense negotiations, I relented and headed to the weights. One and a half sets of squats was about all the knee would allow, so I scrapped that too and setting for a series of core exercises on the soft floor around the climbing wall where jP and CP were climbing. Frustrating, but was able to watch a lot more of the kids rock climbing that I would have otherwise.


Saturday: 23.25 miles ; 3:32; 2,137 feet o' elevation gain - Hooked up with CB for some early morning jogging. Started at the dirt parking lot at the Morrison exit of C-470. We headed north to Green Mountain running on the bike path along C-470, noting that the mountain ahead looked tantalizingly free of snow. As we drew even with the mountain, we called an audible and hung a right and did a loop around the southeast side of the mountain. We continued along to the snowier/icier north side before climbing steeply up to the signal towers (after I made a rather unglamorous butt slide down a steep, icy section of trail). We descended the west side of the mountain and ran the C-470 bike path back to the cars. I bid CB adieu (family commitments) and headed out for a nine-mile bike path/road loop through Bear Creek Lake park. My knee felt a little twingy now and then, but held up fine.

Lakewood's Green Mountain in the distance. From near Mt. Carbon. 

Road down from the Bear Creek Lake dam, looking southwest.

Total:  67.49 miles; just shy of 10 hours; 7,253 feet o' elevation gain. Overall a very solid week. The knee issue that cropped up Thursday, and forced the day off on Friday was frustrating, but seems to be manageable (as it held up OK on Saturday's long run). Fingers crossed that it was a fleeting protestation.

On Sunday I sweated my way through my second-ever yoga class with JP. I sweated so much over the hour-long class that my fingers were pruned and I regularly found myself laying in my mat's very own private sweat pond. I feel like these sessions are great for long-run recovery. I felt so much better post yoga work-out than before. Hope to make these a somewhat weekly affair. After the class, I went home and read the NYTimes Magazine article on the injury risks of yoga. Good reminder to take it easy.

One of Those Days...Green Mountain (Lakewood)

Ever have one of those....scratch that.  Everyone's HAS had one of those days. Today was my turn during a double loop around Lakewood's Green Mountain.


Time: 2:59
Distance: 19.01
Effort: Easy (but hard)
Body: Poor
Weather: Sunny, then cloudy, warm(ish)

Had grand plans to get up early and head over to Buffalo Creek, but a poor night's sleep and a dog looking at me that way conspired to convince me to lend the early morning to the NY Times over breakfast and an hour at the dog park.

So, Plan B was something local.

A couple week's back, I really enjoyed running around the trails of Lakewood's 2,400-acre Green Mountain, formally known as the William Frederick Hayden Park.  Seemed like a good plan to head back there for a couple loops.

From the get-go, the legs weren't there. Everything felt hard. In response, I adjusted expectations, put my head down and slogged out three hours of up and down.  I ran the first loop of about 8.5 miles around the mountain counter-clockwise and the second the other way, adding on some trail sections to the northeast that I'd never been on before.

By the time I was jogging along the final stretch of trail back to the car, I was cooked. I was moving OK, but the mind and body definitely wanted to be somewhere else (like on a massage table).

I can say that I'm glad to have gotten it done, but that's about the only good thing I can say.

2,726 feet o' elevation gain.

Dry Trails Ahoy!

Out early for a solid 19 miles of fun on the nearly completely dry and snow-free trails of the foothills just west of Denver.


Time: 3:23
Distance: 19.1
Effort: Easy
Body: Average
Weather: Cloudy and cool

Met up at 6:30 a.m. with Todd G. at the base of Lakewood's Green Mountain with plans to do a circuit that would include Green, the Dakota Hogback, Red Rocks and Matthew Winters open space parks.

The first nine miles was a sweet circumnavigation of the (mostly) outside flanks of the mountain. We ran a series of official and social trails, missing out on the northwest corner of the park when we ran out of social trail options.

After a quick stop at the cars to drop some clothing and pick up more gels/water, we set off up the Zoro Trail to the upper ridge of the Dakota Hogback. At the top, we hung a left and headed south along the formation's spine, dropping soon down to Red Rocks.

With the massive red rock formations looming above, we headed up the Red Rocks Trail and climbed through meadows and up a gully to the north of the park's namesake rocks.  We topped out on the Morrison Slide Trail and cruised across the high plateau here before dropping down to just above the Matthew Winters parking lot.

Twas here where Todd pointed out an old road bed that snaked west up into the foothills above. "Up for a little exploring," he asked. Some question. So, up we went, hiking most of it as it climbed steeply up. Turns out, the road bed is actually the route of an underground natural gas line. We climbed for about a mile before hitting the western boundary of the open space park.  We soaked in the views of Mt. Morrison and pointed out potential routes visible due to snow in the trail/road treads in the trees and grass far across a big drainage.  We'll be back to find a way to access Mt. Morrison, one of the bigger peaks of the immediate Front Range (clearly there's a road up the backside, since it's festooned with multiple radio/tv towers).

After running back down and rejoining the Red Rocks Trail, we ran through the Matthew Winters parking lot, across Highway 93 and back onto the Dakota Hogback formation, which technically is part of the Matthew Winters Open Space park.  We made relatively quick work of the steady climb to the Dakota Ridge Trail, hung a right and returned to the Zoro Trail and descended back to the cars at the base of Green Mountain.

Felt decent (save for a lingering dry hack from the recent illness) the whole run.  Still working on fully kicking the virus, but progress is evident.  Legs felt good, despite the multiple days off of late (including Saturday).  Really a great day on the trails. Virtually no mud. Almost no snow/ice (save for a really sketchy steep stretch coming down from the Morrison Slide Trail that had both of us on our butts trying not to slide off the trail).  Just a whole bunch of dry singletrack to whet our appetites for the coming spring (please hurry!).

3,899 feet o' elevation gain.