I am pretty much recovered from the fractured Radial (Arm) and completely recovered form the head injury - Time is short, so I can think of only 1 think I want to work on ... Downhill running. My goal this week is to be 100-120 miles with 3-4 good efforts focused on downhill running. No hero workouts - Just some solid quad pounding.
(HC = HighCliff State Park)
M - 6 Easy at Lunch / 12 nothing but HC Hill repeats (3,000+ of vertical)
T - 7 easy in AM / 5 easy in PM
W - 16 nothing but HC Hills repeats (4,000+ of vertical)
TH - 9 easy in AM / 5 easy on TM in PM + 1 mile walking (1,000+ of vertical)
F - 8 easy in AM / 26 miles(ish) 4 hours, 20 minutes on Ice Age Trail south of Greenbush (4,000 vertical)
SA - 6 easy in AM
SU - 16 nothing but HC Hills repeats (4,000+ of vertical)
Monday - I was happy to have the hill repeats feel the best of the year. I think this is because of all the easy mountain running and hiking in Yellowstone. I was going to do more repeats, but as dusk fell something weird happened. For about 10 minutes I had heard a whining or was it buzzing sound. I could not locate its source, at times it sounded like a wet car engine belt at times like a swarm of killer bees. Every time I thought I knew which direction it was coming from, I would turn my head and it was louder from somewhere else. I had just taken a gel and was going back down the hill when I looked up and the answer was clear (almost) ... mega swarms of mosquitoes or were they lake flies? 15-40 feet in the air, big enough to cover a football field. At the bottom of the hill, I turned around and back to the truck ... Done! Turns out they were lake flies (second hatch of year - 1st is April-May). As I drove the road down out of the park, there were mega swarm after mega swarm. I have never heard flies at that decibel level except the Cicada.
Wednesday - Back to Highcliff State park for more vertical. 85 and humid - not awful, not nice either. 21 good hill repeats and I was done. I was hoping for 30 ... I am not sure if I could have managed 30, but it would have been a super human effort. We save those for races. The long up the hill is a favorite training spot of local bikers. I usually see 30-40 different bikers in a night. My favorite thing to do is to beat a biker up the hill. It does not happen often, and usually its someone enjoying a ride in the park and never someone out for serious training. I bagged 2 bikers!
Friday - Hottish (83) but very humid yet. This was a very unpleasant run - Attack of the horseflies. To me there are 3 categories of how bad horseflies are: 1) Annoying - They are buzzing around and occasionally land (Bite) on you 2) Bad - Thick enough that every time you slap at you head you are killing one or 3) Horrible - You see the constant cloud and every time you slap at your hear you are killing 2 or more. On this run they were between bad and horrible in the day light hours. This big horse sweats so much that on days like this I sweat through my shoes in 45 minutes - So spray would not be effective.
I learned 2 things on this run - My Fenix LD20 Flashlight only has a 30 minute battery life on high (Completely inadequate) and that I should always have a back up baggie of S-caps along (I missed my pocket @ 3 hours into the run)
Sunday - A repeat of Wednesday - Highcliff hill repeats. But it was high 70s and not overly humid. Great run - felt good the whole time. I did tweak a calf about 25% into the run, we will see what comes of it.
Weekly Stats
116 miles in 12 runs approximately 15,000 feet of up and more importantly down.
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