Tuesday, July 23, 2013

July 15-21

Monday: 8 (1:03)
Was going to do my usual run from my house to old farm but I was feeling sick adn it was hot so I turned around at the gateway sign and came back. Did not feel that great.
Tuesday: 11.5
SUPER FUN run up the cascades to Barney's Wall and Butt mountain. Felt pretty crappy at the start going uphill so I told Guy I might turn around after we got to Barney's wall but ended up feeling good after we got there so I made it up to the top of Butt. Ran back down and swam in the cascades which felt AMAZING, like seriously I thought I was in a sprite commercial or something. However this was not that smart of a decision to jump into cold water after being hot when I have a cold.
Wednesday: nada
Felt pretty shitty today, realizing yesterdays decision was not the smartest thing to do
Thursday: nothing again
Friday: 5.7
Ran an easy loop with Rudy before a big day tomorrow
Saturday: 16 (long ass time)
Well I was hoping my cold wouldn't rear its ugly head today but it did unfortunately. I was feeling better everyday so I thought I could do 26 miles and let Rudy and Jordan go for the next two hours while I wait at the car but things didnt go as planned, The plan was to go from Craig's creek along the AT to dragons tooth then turn around and run another 5-10 miles on the other side for an 8 hour run. I died at mile 9 and hiked up to dragons tooth and ran down to the parking lot where Kristen picked me up (thank you SOOO MUCH!!). It was a beautiful day outside though which made my slow hike much more enjoyable.
Sunday: off
Didn't want to do any amount of running today

Total
Running: 41.2 miles
Wow! I was really humbled by what a cold can do to you this week. Did not expect to shutdown on a run but I guess thats how it goes sometimes. Decent amount of miles though surprisingly this week. I don't really need to be putting in a huge amount of training so it feels good not to be disappointed that I didn't get a certain amount of miles in or time this week.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

July 8-14

Monday: Biking (2:15ish)
Didn't feel like running so I went for a 30ish mile bike ride to the river, didn't bring my watch but it was around 2:15 I think. It was really fun ride, first time in Blacksburg, New River was REALLY high, good thing I decided not to go tubing there Sunday
Tuesday: 6.7 (59:09)
Ran poverty to Jacobs to horse, I was tired of running slow so I picked it up a bit but the climb up Jacobs ladder was really slow, washed out trail and pretty muddy. Other than the climb up I felt pretty fast without giving it a real hard effort.
Wednesday: 10 (1:25:22)
Ran from my house up Old farm and back down. Really good run with about 1,500 ft of gain thrown in there trying to run this more often as it spares me the use of my car and allows for some good turnover.
Thursday: 10.6 (1:32:49)
Same as yesterday except I ran back through the bike path at the Old farm parking lot.I was pretty dehydrated for the last couple of miles and had a sore ankle coming down OF. Really like this run though, plenty of ways to add variation to it.
Friday: 14 (2:15:18)
Ran from my house up OF and down beast and up snake and back. Really fun run, deliberately slowed down and hiked up parts of OF and snake root to keep an easy effort for the day. Ankle felt better and I had a water bottle with me for the run. I was hoping it would be an extra mile longer but I suppose I need to go Beauty and the Beast hook up for that. This is what I envision will be my mid week long run, adding some extra miles on to it though, as its half road and half trail. My NB 890's are almost perfect road to trail, plenty of cush for the roads and enough grip and protection on the trail. The only thing I don't like about them is the drop (8mm) and the sort of sloppy fit going downhill. Good day out running though.
Saturday: nothing
Someone broke my car window Friday night which prevents me from driving places until Monday when the repair shops open. I was planning on running the triple crown section (Tinkers-McAffes-Dragonstooth) of the Catawba runaround loop with Guy and Jordan but had no way of getting there. Didn't feel much like running today after that letdown so I didn't.
Sunday:  Biking 2:45ish
Didn't feel like running again today plus I couldn't get to the trails I wanted to anyways, biked up Tabor down Blacksburg/Harding. Easy off day but bonked right as I hit Harding, which made the climb up a little more exciting than I was planning on.

Totals
Bike: 75 miles (5ish hours)
Run: 41.3 miles (6:12)
I was expecting to do a lot more miles this week but things happen, like getting your window broken... Anyways I got a good amount of biking in, which is always nice, to mix things up. I wanted to get around 80 miles this week but only got around half since I couldn't do anything on the weekend. Next week Ill have my car fixed and am trying to get around 80-90 miles so that should be fun!

Monday, July 8, 2013

Back in Blacksburg: Summer part 2

I was going to post a race report from Pocatello 50, but I was traveling around after and generally being super lazy (as usual over the summer). Basically my race went exactly as planned... until mile 17, and then I died a slow, long, painful death multiple times until mile 32 when some awesome runner gave me pepto pills at the aid station, I had been trying to calm my stomach down for a long time, nothing really worked. Then my legs felt shot, so I took some advil and felt great for the last 10 miles. Finished in 12:58, by far longest, and hardest race I've ever done. Didn't really want to stay around in the mountains afterwards so I headed home the next day, stopping in Colorado Springs and Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and stayed home for about a week and headed back to Blacksburg.

While back home I finally bought a road bike (I've always wanted to) and just today took it on my first real ride around in Blacksburg. It's a really good way to get an exercise in when I don't feel to great about running, mainly after a big mileage day.

Anyways, since I've been back I have done one real long run with Guy on Craigs creek going south, which I ran out of water which reminded me that summer is HOT. Besides that humbling experience I've been doing a couple of runs up craigs creek, both north and south on the AT. I really like the 3-4 mile or longer climbs that I got used to in Colorado. These extended climbs have really increased my ability to run uphill efficiently, so faster and easier, a win win. Unfortunately, I still suck at hiking, I'll have to work on that for Mountain Masochist, but I'm definitely trying to do more extended climbs and descents to work on getting better. My next race is Iron Mountain 30 which i'll be trying to race fast and not really use as a training run for my next race after Mountain Masochist 50, because I never really got to race at Pocatello. I'll also try to blog more,maybe once a week, I feel like I miss a lot of stuff because I never really get around to posting things.


I'm going to post some things that I see around the web that I can share to people. I don't really like using facebook or twitter for this type of thing I guess.

Music
Shakey Graves: one man band from Austin, love his unique style of music, reminds me of home, also plays killer live. He plays a couple of different styles sometimes it seems like, this was the first song I heard from him, Roll the bones.

I really like this song as well
I can't post my favorite video of him for whatever reason so i'll just post the link here,

Random Awesome Videos
I can't embed this video either but it's Mt Marathon that happened this last weekend which shows how awesome and gnarly this trail race is. Video here

On the topic on awesome gnarly trail here's Anton doing his thing, I think pretty much everyone that runs trails has seen this but it's worth showing again, cause well, its awesome.

Also you can see photo's when I was in Colorado and Idaho on my facebook here. I don't have anything else to post for now but I'm really going to try to keep this blog more up to date because I'm sure I missed like a million things already.