Another great week of training comes to an end today. After yesterday's run I was tired for certain but overall, structurally, I am feeling pretty good. It is awesome to have a good training week with lots of volume and not end it with a lot of nit-noity little pains and aggravations.
Twenty hours and fifty eight minutes of training this week. 112 miles riding, 44 miles running. 24K gain on the bike, 8K running. Longest ride was 62 miles and my longest run was 18.
Yesterday's run was interesting. For starters I parked at the Manitou Springs High School Track and caught the Intemann trail there and ran it to Ute Pass Trail. I refuse to deal with any of the Manitou traffic, parking, and paying to park hoopla so from here on out Manitou High School will be my trailhead of choice for anything Pikes Peak related. That is until the figure out how to fleece me for parking there too.
Anyway, I had a nice comfortable warm up over to Ruxton and then limited exposure to the circus around the COG before hitting Ute Pass Trail which I had all to myself. Hill one was tough... hill two, still tough but shorter, hill three took forever, hill four about did me in and hill five finished the job right before the crest. I devised a plan inspired by Keith Grimes who earlier in the week posted that he had hiked up Long's Ranch Road one night. Yesterday afternoon that idea seemed brilliant to implement for me as well into my workout.
I had already gone through probably half of Camelback bladder and water bottles at this point. If I ran up the road I'd be completely empty by the top I am sure. My mind was fried from pushing for so many days. Hiking up that road wasn't going to be that much slower anyway. So that is what I did and it worked out great! Hiking is legit ultra training anyway.
Hiking is challenge too. It can be a touch humbling, it can be too slow at times and it can demand a lot more patience than a typical run can. But the truth is there will be parts of EVERY race in Leadville this summer where I will probably be hiking some at one point or the other. Hell even in the 10K I bet. So I figured yesterday I should probably start hiking some more and getting used to that again. I got to spend more time with my heart rate a little more under control and steady (I was probably at MAF anyway) and spent more time in the fat burning zone where I sort of need to be for a bit. I got to work muscles that aren't worked that much anymore with all of the running and cycling. My brain got a break form pushing so much like I said earlier and it just allowed me to relax and enjoy the ascent up the road.
One of the other great benefits to hiking I figure is that it is damned near impossible to get hurt so in the sense of self-preservation and protecting all of the work put into training this year, hiking a bit was a good idea. And lastly, if I EVER get into Hardrock, I can almost promise that will be mostly hiking anyway.
The run back down Barr via the Experimental Forest was fun as always. Then the trek back to the High School was tough initially going up and around the base of Red Mountain but after that it was easy.
Like I said, another great week. I am so glad that Meslissa and I decided to stay home this weekend as it really allowed me to rest between workouts, eat and sleep and recover. I wouldn't have been able to do that if I had a lot of windshield time in the Jeep.
Five weeks till the Marathon... gulp.
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