Each morning, I've gone out for runs on flat courses. The last three days were distances of 6, 4, and 9 miles respectively. The degree of difficulty of these workouts hasn't been high; they've just been efforts to build up my mileage and get adjusted to the climate.
My afternoon runs have been when I've had my fun. My first day, Monday, I went up to Bear Peak trail. This is where Anton Krupicka, my favorite ultra-runner, makes his money. He runs up this 2000' peak about 300 times a year. I tried a fraction of his daily workout and was wiped. The trail was thickly wooded along a ridge that wound its way up this Flatiron. The run was short, but still got several hundred feet of climbing in. I look forward to taking my runs further up the mountain to increase my mileage.
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| Bear Peak, one of the Flatirons in Boulder |
Tuesday afternoon, I ran with my sister's running group, the Running Republic of Boulder. This is an impressive collection of runner's, with several qualifiers for the Olympic trials and a coach with significant credentials. We did some good, hard intervals, and totaled 8 miles on the workout. My plan is to do speed workout with this group regularly on Saturdays. This will be an important part of my training to ensure my legs still have good turnover in them late in the White River 50.
Lastly, this afternoon (Wednesday), I went up Mt. Sanitas for some good climbing. The trail wasn't technical (it was mostly just a gravel road), but was a consistent and steady climb. It probably took me 20 minutes to run about 1.6 miles up and gain about 500' in elevation, but only about 10 minutes to get down. That was the most fun part; bombing the downhill with a controlled fall.
All in all, I've done about 34 miles through my first 3 days, and a large portion of that has been high quality. I'm happy with my start, and look forward to what I'll be able to do when I get use to the altitude.
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