Redcloud/Sunshine 14ers.

Thought I would put a few short posts of the past 4 days with my photos.

So I decided at the moment to drive down to Lake City for a few days to get away for a bit after getting someone to watch the dogs.  No TV, phone, ect...  Left in the morning arriving in Lake City about 1pm.  After a light lunch drive out to the trailhead of Redcloud/Sunshine to bag them before dark.  This is an awesome 12 mile route with awesome views.  Here is my GPS tracks of the jog.  Numbers 42 and 43 of the 58 14ers.

After getting back to the truck and rinsing off in the nearby creek I drove over to the trailhead of my adventure for tomorrow and slept in the truck.

Photos:

Estes Trail Ascent

Decided at the last minute on Thursday that I needed to do a hill tempo'ish workout this week, what better way than a 6 mile race?

Here is a description of the race I choose to do from the website:

We invite you to come and stretch your legs in the mountain air above Estes Park. The race takes place on a trail course on Pole Hill, Estes Park, and covers 5.9 miles with nearly 1900 feet of elevation gain. Starts at 8,500 feet, and rises to over 9,000 feet with inspiring scenic mountain views. The race is organized and presented by the same team that host the Estes Park Marathon, Colorado's most scenic and inspiring paved marathon! The course will kick your ass … it combines a hefty wedge of climbing with rolling descents and a final blast down a dirt road that will have your feet rolling faster than they ever have before!

Sounds great to me!

 Getting there early for an easy 2 mile warmup I ran into Alan Smith one of the founders of the best gel on the market VFuel.  So after downing my free sample from Alan went for a 500ft/ 2 mile warmup, yes it is hilly here in Estes Park.

Pre-race briefing 

The start is a flat for about 200 yards before climbing up some powerlines.  I took out from the front with 2 young kids (red and white shirts in the front of the photo above) and another guy about my age.  About 100 yards from the start the other guy my age caught is toe and went head over heels tumbling down the trail.  I stopped real quick to make sure he was ok, with that the 2 young kids were gone and a couple of other people passed me.  Time to get to work.  The first 3 miles are basically all uphill then you fly down to the finish with one small hill at mile 5 that hurt like a bitch.  The blue line below is my pace, you can see where it jumps up on the big hills.

I never was able to close in on the 2 kids.  They got me by about min and half.  After talking to them after the race they are both varsity cross country runners at Princeton, figures... Guess I have to be happy with that.

This is one of those small races that is just a gem.  I will be back to do this one again.

Mount Evans Ascent

The Mount Evans Ascent is one of my favorite races in the state.  I know, I know it's a road run but how many road runs are there where you get to race at 14,000 plus feet above sea level and not have to worry about your footing and just run and suffer?  The only other race that goes over 14,000 feet that I know of is Pikes and of course I am signed up for both the Ascent and Marathon there this year but that is a topic for another day.  This year was my 5th race at Mount Evans Ascent.  My past race results are listed below, I guess I have never put a race report on any of these races on my blog which is disappointing.

2011:Mount Evans Ascent 6/18 (2:29:51 for 21st place overall & 3rd in age group)
2010: Mount Evens Accent 6/19 (2:26:14- 29th overall & 3rd in age group)
2008: Mount Evans Ascent 6/21 (2:46:43)
2007:Mount Evans Ascent 6/16 (2:30:31)

Well this year my goal was just to try and be Mr. Steady Eddy and run it as a steady moderate-hard tempo run.  In years past I always ran it by heart rate putting the upper cap at 160 beat per minutes the first 9 miles to summit lake then go all out to the finish at 14.5 miles but this year I ditched the heart rate and just ran by feel trying to keep it steady the whole way.  Seemed to work out pretty good.  Here are my mile splits according to Garmin.

 I can not say that I more pleased than ever.  14 min PR in this race!!!  Never saw that coming.  I think this will set me up good for the Pikes Double in Aug.  Just need to dump in as much "running" vertical that I can between now and then into my training.

Result- 2013: Mount Evans Ascent 6/15 (2:12:15 18th overall, 4th age group)

Here are some photos all taken at about 14,000ft above see level and 1/2 mile from the finish line by my buddy Neeraj Engineer.  What a great day!

Dirty Thirty 12 miler

Thought I should throw up a little something on the race.  I was originally signed up for the 50k but dropped down to the 12 miler just to be safe with the ankle while it is slowly recovering from the roll it had at Quadrock.  The 12 miler is still a stout course with almost 4,000ft of climbing.  Anyways still drove up there at 4:30am with the 50K'ers that I carpooled with and hung out with Timko after the 50k started at 6am until the 9am start of the 12 miler.  So a long wait....

I started in the middle of the pack and took an easy the first 2 miles running with Eric.  When we hit the climb up the creek at about mile 3 I decided that I should get to work and at least treat this race as a tempo run.    With that said I made the goal of running every step of the course which I did until about 1/2 mile from the end on the smoothest trail we have been on all day (right before the picture below) I rolled my bad ankle again.  As I was being pissed at myself for being a dumbass I walked for a min to compose myself then jogged it.  Not to bad, the results are below.  I am really starting that think that my wife is on to something and maybe I should just stick to racing the shorter stuff.

This is the Strava segment of the climb up Windy Peak, think it will the only time in my life that I will see my name in front of Michael Aish.

Coming into the finish, photo by Glen Delman 

Coming into the finish, photo by Glen Delman 

Results-  9th overall, 3rd in age group

May Numbers

Guess I opened my mouth to soon last month with the statement,"Finally a normal training month where I actually felt like I make some progress with my fitness!!"  May was just a blahhh month as far as training goes but a f*cking great month as far as getting a couple of PRs in the 5K and 10K.

Here is how the numbers shook out.  You can click on the photo to enlarge it.

Not even close to what I wanted to do this month but had to take a shit ton of days off with my ankle injury.  I guess it is what it is.

Positive of the month-  Got in 3 races even though I got hurt in one of them.

1. Kohl 5K- 18:31 for a new 5K PR.
2. Quad Rock 25 miler- DNF hurt my ankle at mile 17
3. Bolder Boulder 10K- 38:42 for a new 10K PR

So overall I it was a better than average month.  The ankle seems to be holding up just fine and slowly recovering.  I did do the Dirty Thirty 12 miler last weekend which I barely made it through without hurting myself again, report to come later in the week.

Also added 3 new breweries in this month to my list.

Bolder Boulder 10K

So this race is exactly 2 weeks after Quadrock where I rolled my ankle pretty bad, so I had no real goals in mind.  The week after Quadrock I covered a total of 20 miles and took 4 days off.  The week of the race was much better, around 50ish miles but all of the miles were just light jogging on a smooth surface which meant roads or smooth trails.  I was not able to do my normal vertical and effort.  Oh well...

Race morning I felt good, got up early to eat my normal eggs and toast before hand and drove off to Boulder to get in a warmup.

After about 4 miles of jogging around it was time to line up where I ran into JV and followed him to the front of the corral to the A wave.  Yes I did steal some of the photos below, it is just retarded that they want $20 a photo.  If they had any common sense they would sell them for $1-2 bucks a piece for a download.  They would make so much more $, hell I would have bought all of them they had of me (about 12 of them).  Take that times 40,000 plus people and that is some serious coin.

Still enjoying the morning.

 Photo stolen

Photo by Todd Straka

I did not wear my HR monitor, my plan was just to run as evenly as possible at a hard effort with the goal of breaking 40 mins which meant trying to keep my pace under 6:28 per mile.  I honestly did not think I would be able to do this.  I was looking at my watch to keep up my pace throughout the race.

In the pain cave now!

  Photo stolen

 Photo stolen

 As I hit the final hill into the stadium I looked down at my watch to be totally shocked at the total time!  Up to this point I was only watching my pace and had not looked at my total time yet.  I had over 3:00 to cover the last 0.2 or so miles to be under 40 mins!  YES!!!  Final time 38:42:62, a new PR in the 10K for me!  Here are how the splits broke down, pretty damn even effort if I must say so myself.  You can see the hill from mile 3 to 4 in the mile 4 pace though.  My Strava data is over here which measured the course long, that is most likely due to me going around people and not cutting the corners correctly.

This effort earned me one of these babies which I will wear proudly.

Photo by Todd Straka

 So a few days later yes I am still sore from this effort, especially in the hamstrings.  The rest of the week will just be jogging around on smooth surfaces at an easy pace to let the soreness work itself out and let the ankle heal a little more.  Next up is Dirty Thirty 12 miler 5 days after the Bolder Boulder on June 1st.  I did drop down from the 50k due to my ankle not being very stable on rocky trails yet but do plan on racing the 12 miler.  I did not want to risk my whole summer by doing the 50K and setting back the ankle.  Should be an interesting month with quite a few races.

Quadrock 25 miler- FAIL

Just realized that I did not post a race report for the Quadrock 25 miler.

The short and only version I am going to take the time to put up is that I got hurt at mile 17 and had to hobble out about 2 miles to the last aid station to drop.  The run was going great up to the point that I was bombing down a double wide trail at about 6:30ish pace when I stepped on a rock wrong and flipped my right ankle over to the outside and went tumbling down the hill.

At that point I made a homemade cane and limped out.  Photo by Mike Hodges who hiked up the trail to check on me and keep me company on my 1 hour/ 1.5 mile hobble out.  Thanks Mike!

When I got home I crawled into bed for a short nap and I woke up to this.

At which point I could not walk on it anymore so Ashley made me go to the ER to get an xray.

 No break THANK GOD!  I just tore the ligaments that connect the 2 bones that I circled in the xray.  So that meant crutches for a few days, lots of ice, and some PT work which I am still doing 2 weeks later.

"Are you ok daddy?"

Big Beaver Brewery

On my way home after today's blow out at Quadrock 25 miler I needed some pain meds to deal with my injury.

So I got me one of these.

This is one of my top 5 breweries.  They have some good brews there and were letting us sample everything.  More on the race and injury in a later post.

Breweries Visited

After seeing this guy brag on Facebook about all the breweries he has visited I thought I could match it.  Guess not, after going through the list it seems I like to visit the same ones over and over.  I really thought I had been to more of them.  Anyways with that said I started a page that is linked above to start tracking them.  Hopefully I can push this list closer to 50 by the end of the year.

http://www.shadmika.blogspot.com/p/brewerys-visited.html

And of course the best brewery out there!

New Header Photo.

Not sure if you noticed or not but yesterday I changed the photo at the top of my blog to this awesome photo.    Yes that is the Boulder Hills that we all love so dearly.

This photo was taken by my buddy Rob Timko.  If you need any photos taken he also has a studio in his place or can work outside.  You can see some of his work on his blog by clicking here.  You can also contact him through Facebook here.

Here are a couple of photos he took from his blog and Facebook.

His wife

Top of Hope Pass

Views on the Boulder trails

The man himself

Kohl 5K

Had a much better race than I expected at the Kohl Elementary 5K this past weekend.  I was curious where my speed fitness was before the Bolder Boulder later this month.  With GZ pushing me I was able to hit a new PR of 18:31.  Thanks GZ!  You can see his longer report here.

My whole approach to this race was to try and run by heart rate.  Keeping it between 170-175 the first 2 miles and ignore it the last 1.1 miles.  This approach seems to work good for me for the 5K distance.  I am not sure how I am going to approach the 10K yet.  Maybe 165-170?

Anyways here is the breakdown according to Garmin Connect.

First Tracks

I got first tracks heading up towards Shadow Canyon from South Mesa Trailhead on my lunch run yesterday.  Just plan ass beautiful out !

5 miles and 1010ft of gain in 48:20, slow but steady.  This is becoming my favorite lunch run even though I can not go quite as far due to the 10 min drive to and from the trailhead from work.

1st American Mount Everest Summit

It was 50 years ago today that an American stood on the summit of Everest.  This 1963 Life magazine is one of my prized things that I have.  I also have the 1953 Life magazine from the 1st ever Everest summit.  They are a great read,  I am willing to loan them out for good beer.

Progress... Finally!!!

Finally a normal training month where I actually felt like I make some progress with my fitness!! I hit all of my goals but one which I am going to blame on all the crazy snow that we have gotten in the month of April.  Here is how the goals panned out for April.

1.  Get back to normal training with a goal of ~250 miles & ~40K of vertical this month. Complete!

2.  Hit the weight room at least 2 times a week.  Complete!

3.  Do one 14er.  Fail!!  Weather was bad up high on the only days I had open.

4.  Do at least one race of any distance. Complete!  Cheyenne Mt 25K.

5.  At least 2- 20 mile runs this month.  Complete!  And they had shit ton of vertical, see here & here.

6.  2-3 weekly afternoon walk breaks at work. 1-3 miles each depending on my workload that day.  Complete!

Anyways here are the numbers for April (click on the photo to enlarge):

So with that said here are my goals for May.  Pretty much the same as April to keep building up so I can drag JT's ass around the Hardrock course.

1.   ~250 miles and ~40K of vertical this month.

2.  Hit the weight room at least 2 times a week.

3.  Do one 14er.

4.  Do at least one race of any distance.

5.  At least 2- 20 mile runs this month.

6.  2-3 weekly afternoon walk breaks at work. 1-3 miles each depending on my workload that day.

I am signed up for 2 races in May already, Quad Rock 25 miler and Bolder Boulder.  I may add in more, I am finding they help with my motivation to get out there and train with a purpose instead of just jogging along.

Keeping it short today, time to get out and go for a short lunch run in what I hope is our last snow storm of the year for the front range.