Friday, April 22, 2011

April snow showers bring May trails unrunnable because they are still completely buried in FEET of snow

It's been an eventful month and not totally unblog-worthy but I just haven't been in the mood to write much.  First of all, the title pretty much says it all.  When the ski area closed on the 10th, I was ready for the switch to be flipped, the sun to come out and warm temperatures to begin melting the snow so that I could start doing some serious vertical running.  Alas, we've had TWO days of sun since then and it has rain and/or snowed every other day since.  Above 9000' the snow base is still well over 100".  Probably closer to 150" at 10,000'.   As a result of my lack of training (and being generally unprepared to make the drive/camp out/etc.), I decided not to run last weekend's half-marathon at the Desert RATS Trail Running Festival.  My first official DNS (did not start) of the season.  I don't think I'll be going down to Buena Vista to do the 25 mile version of the Collegiate Peaks Trail Run on May 7th, either.  (Then again, who knows...)   I've kind of decided to keep my race distance at half marathon and shorter this year.  While I love doing ultramarathons, the training, racing and recovery times are just too much right now.  I'm concentrating a little more on getting faster at shorter distances and I think my focus races this year will be Spring Creek Memorial (gotta make up for losing the trail last year!) and the Mt. Werner Challenge.  I'll try and do all the trail races in the Steamboat Running Series and maybe not travel to any races this year.  Keep it close to home.  Of course, those races seem so far away right now when I look outside and still see nothing but snow and snowing. 

However, this past week, I finally wrapped up the Wilderness First Responder course I've been taking at Colorado Mountain College so I've got a little more time to commit to running.  After a very mediocre winter mileage-wise, I've been ramping up my time on my feet for the last three weeks and have increased my weekly mileage from around 20 to almost 40.  I will keep my total running to around 40 miles/week for the next month before increasing again and work on intensifying my efforts so that I'm running in the 7 - 7:30 min/mile range.   I'm going to keep the volume fairly mild and target 50-60 mile/week for the summer.  For the moment, I've only been road running.  Fortunately, one of my routes contains about 1000' of cumulative vertical in the first 3.5 miles, so I'm starting to get my leg strength back.  Man, it's been a long winter...I've been jonsing to run on dirt for months!

Well, short post to just catch up a little.  Although not a complete record of all my runs, here are some of my recent numbers:

Week of 4/3 - 4/9  -  23.28 miles
Week of 4/10 - 4/16  - 14.76 miles + 1:30 snow trail run on Howelsen CC ski trails
Week of 4/17 - 4/23 - 37.11 miles  

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