A Good Running Week

By my standards the last 7 days was a busy week of running, with 53.7 miles, 15:38 hours on trail, and 14,600 feet of gain/loss.

I tend not to run very much quantity-wise, and as far as my accurate records go, this is the most I've run in one week. Especially up. The week I ran La Plata Peak last summer was 16,000 feet of vertical, but this comes in 2nd in vertical, and first in mileage.

Saturday and Sunday were two 16-mile runs, one loop over Devils Thumb/Rollins Passes, and the other over the three main peaks in Boulder. Those two runs alone involved 9,000 feet of elevation gain. I can't claim it was pretty, and a lot of it was steady hiking, but I ran what I could, and kept up a decent pace -- for me -- when I ran (8:30-9:30?).

It seems like a lot, and I wonder if this is a one-shot thing, or if it will become a new norm. And what about winter, when my running tends to drop off to near zero?

I found that most of keeping going was simply a willingness to continue running when my feet are feeling pounded and my legs have no spring left in them. Perhaps even more important, it was about finding a way to run that doesn't make it worse: a relaxed stride and a midfoot strike.

Today on a 6-mile run up Mount Galbraith (the standard loop is about 4.3 miles, but I ran up and down on the lower section to make ~6 miles), I definitely felt fatigue sooner than usual, but my legs felt oddly strong. It was as if they were saying "Hill? Yeah, whatever." I liked it :)


Running form check on Mount Galbraith. Relaxed pace on somewhat beat up legs.
There's some wasted energy side-to-side. Lazy left foot (probably why I roll my left ankle occasionally when I'm tired, something I've been working on, understandably). Otherwise, not bad. It gets me there.