I'm sitting on my bed with my feet propped up for a recovery day after a nice week of training. This weekend is 6 weeks out from Leadville, and during the past week I weighed whether to do my back-to-back long runs this weekend or the next. I opted for this one so I still have two weeks to put in long(er) runs before I drop down my long run mileage a bit in the final month. I really want to run the Four Pass Loop in Aspen while I'm out here this summer, so all is working out. This is also one of those weeks that makes me feel really good about what I'm doing and look forward a great deal to racing. I ran up Mt. Elbert last Saturday, so I shied from vertical some this week to help keep my mileage up more.
The nitty gritty:
Monday:
AM: 10 miles (Dowdy Draw/Goshawk Ridge with some add-on at the end) Pretty flat
PM: 4 miles and 40-min elliptical after weight room workout.
Tuesday:
AM: 10 miles (same as monday)
PM: 5 miles (3 and 4 were barefoot)--Just a shake-out run around town with two miles on Kittredge Field.
Wednesday:
AM: 8 Miles Walker Ranch loop
PM: 2 miles and weights/cross-training
Thursday:
PM: 2 miles barefoot
Friday:
PM: 5-hour long run (mostly) on the LT100 course. ~25 miles in length. Ran from the Turquoise Lake dam to the Fish Hatchery then looped back around.
Saturday:
AM: 4-hour long run. ~20 miles (very sluggish, plenty of hiking up). Parked 2 miles west of Twin Lakes at a bridge that crosses the currently impassable river there, and ran up and over Hope Pass. Didn't go down to Winfield, just went down the other side far enough to get a feel for the trail on that side. My muscles felt fine on this run, but I was just tired overall and couldn't push it how I'd have liked to have done.
Total: 86 miles.
I'm pretty happy with this week since after the long runs my legs feel fine, but I just feel kind of wiped out. After today off, I'm going to get back into some climbs this week. I'm going to do this week hard, then take a few easy days when my mom visits at the beginning of next week. After that break, I'm going to try to push all the way until I start to taper in early August.
