Week of 3-19-2012, Moab 12 hour report

Race week, so everything other than one day was easy, short, or off.

Monday: 3-ish mile equivalent, jogging in place hard for about 20 minutes in the sauna at 160 degrees. Was enjoying the laziness of the taper, so I combined what would've been a short run and sauna time into one combined thing.

Tuesday: 6 miles easy, roads.

Wednesday: 12 miles, 2000' gain, moderately hard, with Adrian, half trail half road.

Thursday: Off

Friday: Off-ish (walked an abridged lap of the course, with a bit of jogging), guess I'll count it as 3 miles since the trails are tough.

Saturday: 60 miles, 7000' gain, see race report below.

Sunday: Off.

Weekly total: 84 miles, 9000' gain.

Moab 12 hour race report:
Moab was the first race in about 2 years that I felt that I put a decent amount of good training towards. I wanted to have a run that far exceeded anything I've done in 2 years and I feel that I achieved that.

I drove down to Moab with Adrian, his girlfriend Samantha, and their dog Baer the night before the race and quickly set up my tent. We all walk/jogged a quick abridged version of a lap and immediately noted how outrageously sandy the course was, expecting that it would destroy our hips in the race the next day. The course:

I got to bed pretty early, although getting to sleep was tough due to some moronic family that was running around literally screaming and shouting at their campsite while people were trying to get to sleep. Oh well, I eventually got to bed and got 8 hours of sleep, which is much more than normal before a race.

The race started at 7 AM and it was freezing out prior to the race (quite close to being literally true as it was somewhere in the 30s). It quickly warmed up, so I wore a jacket for the first lap but immediately took it off after the first 5.37 mile lap. We knocked off the first lap in 52 or 53 minutes and spent about 2 minutes in the station. My nutritional plan was to do one gel halfway through the lap at about 2.5-2.75 miles, drink whatever water I needed during the lap (they had a refill point halfway, so I wasn't worried about fluids), and then take a gel with a Hi-C Fruit Punch juicebox in between laps (each of these things is 90 calories, so my typical lap would include 270 calories, or about 50 calories per mile). I also decided that every 3rd lap, I would take about 300 calories of chocolate milk with 3 lactaid pills (way more than enough lactaid, as I of course wanted to avoid gastrointestinal disasters brought on by my lactose intolerance). I also took an average of 3 salt pills per lap (2 at the start and 4 on a few laps when it felt hot) and took some e-caps along the way here and there to make sure I was getting some other electrolytes.

This nutritional plan worked very well for 7 1/2 hours and I didn't walk a step of the first 43 miles, despite the course having a several mile hill on every lap, regardless of the direction. In fact, most of my first 8 laps were right around that 52-53 minute mark, ie mid-high 9:00 pace on a tough course, and I typically just lost a few minutes between laps.

Adrian and I ran together for the first 44 miles and we finally overtook everyone else in the race by mile 43 (there were only 15 people in the 12 hour, but there was a simultaneous 24 hour and 100 mile). The last person we picked off was Harry Harcrow, who just beat us into the station after 8 laps and needed more downtime than us.

I still felt great up to this point, but had just urinated and noticed that the color was starting to get much too yellow, so I made the rookie mistake of drinking an entire liter of chocolate milk (with 5 or 6 lataid, ie more than enough), 2 hi-c's and some water all at once to get things back on track. This was obviously way too much at once, but my stomach had been very good the rest of the day, so I thought I could withstand taking this much at once.

Unfortunately, I was wrong, and I left the aid station feeling like I was going to vomit every time I started running. After a mile of sluggishness, I told Adrian to take off and make sure he kept the lead, so that was it for us running together. I struggled through the lap and frequently felt that I was going to lose all the liquid on both ends, so when I finally finished my 9th lap, I spent about 15 minutes in the portal john and thought my system was finally back on track.

Unfortunately, things didn't really get much better on lap 10 and running for more than a few minutes made me feel like I was going to lose everything still, which was frustrating considering that my legs felt nearly perfect still. Harry repassed me near the end of lap 9 and I couldn't catch back up on 10, although apparently he was hurting and just called it a day at this point. i once again spent a lot of time in the bathroom after lap 10 and I finally got my system cleared up pretty well, but at this point, I had lost too much time due to nausea induced walk breaks and actual bathroom breaks, so I didn't have time to push for my unofficial goal of 12 laps anymore. I still had plenty of time left for an 11th lap, so I took it nice and easy, soaked in the fact that I had 2nd place locked down, and walked most of the lap to make sure I didn't blow out my legs for no reason.

I finished my 11th lap with 20 minutes to go (for whatever reason, the website lists it as less, but I definitely had 20 minutes left still) and that was that since they don't do partial laps. My official distance was 59.07 miles, but it's relatively difficult to follow the trail on the slickrock portions do the markings being pretty far spaced apart, so everyone had the tendency to meander off the fastest route and I estimate that my 59.07 was at least 60, conservatively. This makes me confident about my ability to run other courses I have coming up since this had a moderate amount of climb, relatively hot weather that I wasn't prepared for, but still succeeded in (projected high was 81, although I never caught the actual high during the race), and a hard surface that was less forgiving than anything I'll be racing on in the near future.

One fun pic from a few minutes before the race, as people started lining up at the start and as the brotherhood of ugly shorts prepared for a solid 1-2 finish. (Adrian to my right, random dude with the best hair cut ever to my left):



Some analysis of the run:
I'm pleased with how my legs felt the entire time and my nutritional plan was perfect other than the gradual slight lack of fluids that led to the later stomach problems. In the future, I'll just need to hydrate slightly better, but everything else was awesome. Regardless of what people say about needing complicated nutritional plans without any simple sugars, I am starting to swear by having a reasonable amount of simple sugars during my long runs and races. They've done well for me in training and I think that having a mix of simple and complex carbs works much better for me than all complex carbs, which has not worked nearly as well in the past, especially if I get low on energy at any point, which has happened to me in most of my races over 50 miles since I often times don't eat enough in long races. As for the chocolate milk, I drink very sugary milk, so the majority of the calories in that were from the sugars and I doubt my body did much with the fat (it was whole milk, for the taste). This nutritional strategy worked for me very well, so I'm going to keep my nutritional plan very similar in my next race, the Old Dominion 100.

As for comparing this course to other 12 hour courses, I would imagine that someone with Adrian's mileage (64.44 officially, probably more like 65-66) or mine would probably be able to get roughly 10 miles more on a totally flat non-technical course in good weather. The course profile they give doesn't sound bad, but the sand and slickrock are both very slow and their profile has something like 40% elevation gain less than what my previous GPS measurements of the course suggested (in fact, the high point minus the low point of every lap is 100' more than the total gain they estimate per loop, despite additional rolling hills). Thus said, I feel that this run would equate to somewhere in the ballpark of 70 miles on an easy 12 hour course and I feel very good about that being early in the season with only 5 solid weeks of training in my belt.

My choice of shoes was the New Balance Minimus MR00, which were awesome, especially on the slickrock. I had only used them for a week before the race, so I had a couple backup shoes ready just in case, but they were the best shoe I could've worn. Adrian used a similar road racing flat, also from New Balance, and also 6 or 7 ounces, so while I respect that shoes are really a matter of preference, we had a good laugh about the fact that everyone else felt the need for heavy clunkers out there. I'm definitely over that sort of footwear. If my feet felt 100% with no problems after 60 miles on very hard and unforgiving terrain, I doubt I'll ever wear anything more substantial than the Minimus again. Old Dominion is mostly dirt roads and relatively non-technical trails, so I imagine that I'll wear the MR00s for that rather than MT00s, just due to the durability issues of the MT00s. Speedgoat, in its technicality, will get MT00s, as will Wasatch. I just hope New Balance puts out a more durable MT00 update by the time Wasatch is here so I don't have to replace my shoes as often in training...


Well, I guess that's about that. Despite the fact that I know this is a good result for me right now, I feel relatively indifferent about it. I know that my legs had another lap in them, so I guess that has something to do with it. In any case, I took several days entirely off just to make sure my legs were rested and at 100% before starting back up. My legs still felt pretty good after the race, but 60 miles is a pretty long day of running, so better safe than sorry. As of today, 6 days later, I'm feeling great and several days back into training. I guess I'll have another report in a few days.

Music for the week is Bortkiewicz's highly unheralded 3rd piano concerto. Sorry that this is the best recording I could get in a stream, but this piece is RARE. According to every database I've looked at, only one professional recording exists in any format! From everything I've heard by him now, this guy deserves to be in any romantic music lover's top-5 all time classical composer lists, but he just came along at the wrong time (very late for a romantic composer) and kind of got screwed over by early modern era classical, impressionism, and even the early precursors to rock. If you don't have 27 minutes to listen, start at 8:50 in the second video. This section and the finale are, to me, what music is all about:

Week of 3-12-2012: 102 miles, 10500' gain (almost entirely on Mon-Fri)

Monday: 19 miles, 3000' gain. JCC to City Creek, a couple miles up the canyon, and back down, back to JCC, with Adrian. 2:40-ish? I forget the exact time, but it was right around 2:40.

Tuesday: 13 miles, 2000' gain, 1:40-ish. JCC to the meadow above City Creek and back (didn't quite have time to get down to City Creek).

Wednesday: 12 miles, negligible gain, a few hundred feet tops, road loop in NSL / Woods Cross / Bountiful, 85 minutes. Started at about 8:00 pace, progressively picked it up until I ran the last few at a hair faster than 6:00 pace, felt great to be running fast at the end. Ran in my new New Balance MR00s (seem a bit more durable than the trail shoes).

Thursday: 28 miles, 5000' gain. 4:07. JCC to City Creek, all the way up the canyon (with a bit of trail mixed in at the beginning) + lots of deep and slushy snow up top, despite 70 degree temperatures (wouldn't have lasted much longer, but unfortunately it's started to cool back down and snowed again a bit...), back down the canyon, back to JCC. Stomach was upset all day from something I ate the night before, so I ate very little before the run and only had one bag of M&Ms during the run with water. Started to bonk with an hour to go, but toughed it out quite nicely.

Friday: 21 miles, 2:40-ish, roads, a few hundred gain, As far west as I could go in North Salt Lake on Center Street until the road turned, followed down south to North Temple St in Rose Park / West Valley quite a ways down south, turned east, followed to downtown, did a little downtown loop, back to 300 west, up 300 west to beck, back up beck street on the side of a 50mph road at 11pm on a friday night (hah... you can bet I was waaaaaaay off to the side), on the side mining road as soon as it started, and back up to Center Street. Pace was pretty moderate, but I picked it up at the end.

Saturday: 8 miles roads, very easy, with Holly. Somewhere around 70 minutes (didn't even wear a watch, just glanced at a clock when I started and when I finished). Taper officially started this day.

Sunday: Off.

Totals: 102 miles, 10500' gain. A little less gain this week so I could get 141 miles between last Saturday and this Friday (that 141 still had 20500' gain). Actually, after taking Sat/Sun so easy, I was left feeling quite good and like I should've pushed things for another 2 days rather than giving myself a full 7 day taper before this Saturday's race. I guess those last 2 days don't make a difference for Saturday though, so I'm not fretting it. I'm at 427 miles over the last month, so I think 2 easy days at the end of the month won't hurt me too much even in the long run. :)

This week I'm doing a lot less than the past 5 weeks, that is until Saturday. I found out that we'll have 75 degree temps during the race, so I'm doing a bit of sauna time everyday in hopes that it will slightly acclimate me (though I think my 28 mile day in 70 degree temps will the most helpful thing I'll have done).

Music for this week is Cynic. I can't possibly pick between their old (early 90's) and recent material, so I've selected something from both to showcase how adept they are at playing vastly different styles, yet still maintaining their own unique acid-trip/space-age/unbelievable sound:
The classic "metal"-ish record:


The latest record that is basically the same style as the old Cynic, minus the "metal" component, and therefore almost entirely undefinable:


The first song is from Focus, which is undoubtedly my favorite recording ever put together. If you can tolerate the metal vocals that are interspersed throughout it, I wholeheartedly recommend it. I've never heard anything else like it and I doubt I ever will.

141 miles in one week, reflections on the last 2 years of my running.

Just today, I knocked off the 7th day of what became the highest mileage week of my life (including weeks that contained a 100 mile race). My previous highest mileage was 136 miles in one week, but today, I pounded out yet another run that would be considered a "long run" by most peoples' standards and got myself up to 141 in a Saturday-to-Friday stretch. Today's run was 21 miles, but the beauty of it was that a 21 mile day no longer feels long.

Allow me to provide a bit of background. One year ago, I was 20-25 pounds heavier than my racing weight and not sure that I'd ever be able to train at a competitive level again. I was a little over a year past a mononucleosis diagnosis and was in a disease state that had significantly worsened as a result of mid-late 2010 when I attempted, and failed, to complete both the Western States 100 and the Badwater 135 several weeks apart, despite an ailing body. I made 85 miles in Western States after an incredibly awful day of running, sat down in a chair, vomited, passed out, woke up a few hours later to cry my eyes out, passed out again for a few more hours, and then generally felt wrecked up and lifeless until Badwater. When Badwater came around, I started vomiting 6 miles into the race and while I'm officially credited with making it 42 miles, I dnf'd somewhere around 35 or 36 after what felt like countless hours of suffering. After that failure, all that I wanted to do was forget about running and, based on the physical condition of my body, this was my only option.

These feelings came and left within a few months, but my body was still crippled. Several months after Badwater, I remember shooting some baskets for about 10 minutes. After 10 minutes or so, I felt a wave of nausea, extreme fatigue, and couldn't stand up any longer. For several days afterwards, I was wrecked. A couple months later, I attempted to start training again and my condition once again worsened.

After 4 or 5 months of extremely high doses of experimental antivirals and a 100% commitment to zero physical activity whatsoever, I finally felt that I was able to start running again. I was heavy, aerobically out of shape, and mentally not the same cocky and overly confident person that I was a year before, but at least I had developed some grit and tenacity from making it through all of my health struggles.

I had a very hard time getting back into legitimate training. I had PhD qualifying exams to study for (mind you, these aren't easy exams, these are the types of things that require months of intense study), lots of physical kinks to get past while working myself back into running, weight to lose, and loads of confidence to gain.

Why do I mention all of this? I have never really fully reflected on my time off of running and I believe that, now that I have come full circle, I can finally look at my past trials with complete honesty.

In any case, it took awhile for running to even be all that enjoyable again, but I reached that point and now, I have finally started to retrieve some of my old fitness.

I doubt that I am as fast as I was 2 years ago; that will take track work, tempo runs, etc, but my endurance is likely at an unparalleled high and I have a newfound grit that only a solid year of suffering could give to me.

Just yesterday, I did a 28 mile run on a painful stomach (I guess I ate something bad the night before). I had barely eaten all day before-hand and could only stomach 250 calories of M&Ms during the run, which occurred later in the day. With 7 or 8 miles to go, I was bonking badly, but I was able to conjure up the stick-to-it-ness to continue to push all the way up the final big climb of 1500' in gain and coasted it in from there without ever letting myself resign to the pain.

In the past 4 weeks, I have run more miles than I ever have in any 4 week span of my life and in the past 7 days, I have run more miles than I ever have in any 7 day span of my life. The one thing that has allowed this, beyond my newfound grit, is a sense of longterm sustainability that a year off helped me to develop.

In the past, I would just train as hard as I could day in and day out and never maintained any consistency with high mileage, but lately, I've found a happy medium of running 4 days at a moderate effort, 1-2 days easy, and 1 day hard for a typical week. This has allowed my legs to recover much better and run more mileage, even with vastly greater amounts of vertical gain than I ever did in the past.

If you're still reading, I guess the important point I'm trying to make is that I have developed into a significantly different runner and person than what I was 2 years ago. I finally have the ability to think long-term, the ability to train smartly, and the grit to get done what needs to get done. As I enter the taper for my first race in 2 years that I have put adequate training towards, I have come to realize that I care less about the racing and more about the journey to the racing. Don't get me wrong. I have significant goals for next weekend, but the most important thing for me right now is that I have gotten back to the place in my life and my running that I am actually able to prepare for a 12 hour race without horrendous health-related side effects. If I completely bomb out next Saturday, I will be disappointed, but I will not let one day overrule the success I've had on a day-to-day basis in my recent running.

In today's 21 mile run, my body didn't feel 100%. I was a bit sore from the miles I've put in over the past month, especially after yesterday's grueling 28 miles, but I found that something overruled everything else: pure joy. Coming up to about mile 19, with 2 miles to go, I had a massive wind at my back, some of my favorite music pouring into my ears, and I felt an incredible flood of positive emotion. I raised my arms to my sides and let the wind carry me for a ways, experiencing the purest of happiness I have ever felt in my life. Regardless of how ridiculous that sounds, I have come to realize how much I truly value having running in my life and I am looking forward to a summer full of expressing my passion for it.


Music for this post is Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Poem, Isle of the Dead, as conducted by the master himself. This doesn't convey the same type of emotion that I felt during my run today, but this is one of the few pieces of music in existence that I have found to capture pure emotion as strongly as I felt today.
Part one:
Part two:

Week of 3-5-12: 93 miles, 14500' gain.

Monday: 14 miles, 2000' gain, 1:45 to 1:50-ish?, JCC to city creek on shoreline, back up to the meadow above city creek, and back to JCC along a somewhat indirect road route. Took the first 2 miles pretty easy and then tempoed from there. This was by far the hardest effort run I've had in quite some time. I don't recall the overall time, but my split coming out of city creek was 54, and that's after an easy first 2 miles, despite this typically getting split in around 62 most days lately.

Tuesday: 12 miles, no gain, 1:23:xx, treadmill, 1% decline (to make it more like at sea level). Felt pretty easy, made sure to not pick it up at the end, even though I wanted to.

Wednesday: 4 miles, no gain, didn't get nearly enough sleep the night before, tired, just a very light jog with Holly at about 10 minute pace.

Thursday: 15 miles, 2500' gain, 2:13. JCC to City Creek and Back with Adrian Shipley. Took it out in 62 and just got lazy on the way back, finishing with a second half split in 71, when an even effort would be only about 3-4 min slower on the way back. Haha...

Friday: Similar to the theme of the week, not enough sleep, stayed at work later than expected, and had to wake up early for Saturday's long run, so I unfortunately took the day off.

Saturday: 34 miles, 7000' gain, 5:10, with Adrian Shipley. Hogle Zoo via slightly long route to JCC to City Creek via long route to radio towers, to end of this chunk of Shoreline Trail in Bountiful and back, same way. Splits were 2:30 and 2:40, but we ate almost all of the food in the 2nd half and walked while eating, not to mention that the 2nd half should be slightly slower by around 3 minutes by my calculations, so I'd say this was pretty even run. I had this run in mind for quite awhile since it's a full out and back of the longest local complete section of the Shoreline Trail, but just never previously got out the door to get it done. Felt pretty decent, but in the last hour, my lack of electrolytes caught up to me and I just felt like I had a lot less pep in my step. The high temperature was predicted at 58, but later in the day on the way back from the run it was 62, so I'm guessing we hit a high of 63 or 64, which. While that's not hot by any measure, it is hot enough for me to sweat out lots of sodium over 5+ hours of running. I definitely didn't feel quite as good as I did at the end of last weekend's 37 miles / 10k' gain long day, but last weekend was much colder and I think that the simple act of taking electrolytes and drinking a slight bit more would have made the entire run feel completely fine. Oh, and my nutrition for the run was 38 ounces of Powerade (had about 40, but gave a couple ounces to Adrian, who didn't bring as much fluids), one reese's big cup, a caramello, and half a 100 grand bar. Gotta love the simple sugars on long runs like this; I really think they work better than all the complex carbs in gels (and they taste a lot better...)

Sunday: 14 miles, 3000' gain, 2:00, with Holly. Bountiful to radio towers down to city creek, slightly out the front, and back. Took it easy, legs felt pretty decent, but I was a bit dehydrated right from the start and the temps were around 60 again, so the run was less pleasant than it could have been.

Holly on the trail out of city creek, during today's run:



Weekly totals: 93 miles, 14500' gain. A little less gain than previously and 1 mile less than last week. Once again, a large focus of the week was on doing a high quality long run of at least 5 hours, so I was pretty pleased with the week overall, even if I intended to get above 100 and missed out on that due to one missed day and one very short day.

For next week, I'll plan to do at least 100. I have 301 miles in the last 3 weeks and feel that 4 weeks with over 400 miles would be good to have in my legs right before I taper for the Moab 12 hour. I still don't really have a definite goal or expectation for that race, but I would like to be able to run relatively strongly for the full 12 hours, whatever that means.

The lower country is getting pretty clear of snow right now and while I'm sure we'll get more before summer, this ought to be a good week to run the lower trails in the Wasatch Mountains (ie, what I've been running lately):


Music for the week is the Japanese band Koenjihyakkei. Definitely an acquired taste:
BECTTEM POLLT

Oh, and one other point of interest is how destroyed my first pair of New Balance MT00s is after 281 miles of use. I plan to buy more of them since they are the best feeling pair of shoes I've ever run in, so I'm going to load up the inside with anti-blister pads under the weak spots, which has prevented similarly thin shoes from falling apart on me in the past. Hopefully I can get at least twice as many miles per pair in the future by strengthening the weak spots...

Week of 2-27-12: 94 miles, 18,500' gain.

Monday: Off. Was very tired after not getting enough sleep the night before and went to bed super early. Kind of disappointed, but made up for it throughout the week.

Tuesday: 13 miles, 2500' gain, 1:44. JCC to shortly before CC and back. Planned for 15, but didn't quite have time and had to turn around a little before the typical midpoint. With Adrian Shipley.

Wednesday: 17 miles, 2500' gain, 2:17. JCC to CC, 1.5 miles up the canyon, at which point it started hailing, despite the fact that the storm was supposed to be a few hours out still. Was running with Adrian Shipley and we both had shorts and thin jackets + 1 pair of gloves to share (ie, we each used one glove so that neither of us would completely die of frostbite). Not wanting to die, which was basically the theme of the 2nd half of the run, we turned around at this point (9 miles, 1 mile early of the 10 out we had planned to get an even 20). We went back to the bottom of CC and climbed up to the meadow above CC, at which point we were greeted by deafening 60-or-so mph winds and a snowfall that was getting more and more outrageous, ie not fun when the temps were around 15F. Not wanting to die far up on a mountain, we exited back down to the neighborhood and ran roads from there hoping to get wind blockage from houses. Unfortunately, the weather just got worse and worse, so with a little over a mile to go, I suggested that we stop at Shriner's Hospital to warm up our totally numb hands for a few minutes before finishing. We did so, and as soon as we left, we were greeted with a gust of wind so strong that it carried a big enough blanket in front of me that I momentarily could not even see my hands. Fun. Despite having warmed back up for 5 or so minutes, I instantly became numb in numerous digits again and finished the run with 3 numb fingers and 3 numb toes thanks to having soaked my shoes in mud earlier in the run. This run absolutely sucked.

Thursday: 21 miles, 3500' gain, 3:01. JCC to CC, 3 miles up CC, and back. Took it pretty easy. Ran by myself.

Friday: Off. Frustrating, but didn't get home until 10PM and had a long run planned for 9:30 AM on Saturday, so I decided to just go to bed.

Saturday: 37 miles, 10,000' gain (split 33 with 7500' gain in 5:23, then 4 miles with 2500' gain in 1:30-ish, didn't time the 2nd one). Started the day with 33 miles in tons and tons of deep snow with Adrian Shipley. Ran JCC to CC, the annoying long way (actually there really isn't a short way) up to the ridgeline, back along the winding path to the radio towers, back down to city creek, almost all the way up city creek canyon (turned around when the snow was knee deep without any sort of path near the top), back down to the bottom of CC, and back to JCC. Breakfast consisted of 2 Reese's eggs and my in-run nutrition consisted of 7 more reese's eggs plus about 40 ounces of gatorade and 8 or so ounces of water. Felt great all the way through and we actually ran the last mile at sub-6 pace to avoid getting passed by a particularly zealous women that wanted our scalps. Definitely encouraging to be able to pick it up that much at the end of a 5:23 effort, even if that effort was pretty easy the whole time. After this, I got a quick bite of food, went home for dry socks, then picked up Mark Lehmkuhle to go do a lap on the west side of Grandeur Peak with Jared Campbell on his 10-lap Grandeur day (a fundraiser for Breathe Utah). Unfortunately, Mark was on a time crunch and Jared was slightly behind the schedule Mark anticipated for him, so we only got up the false peak for 2500' of climb and 4 miles or so. This was one of the iciest runs I've ever experienced and the west side of the mountain is unbelievably steep in most parts, so I was a bit concerned about tumbling down the whole thing. Fortunately, this did not happen. Haha... Oh, and, importantly, legs felt completely normal on the 2nd run despite the long early effort and the nearly 7 hours of running for the day.

Sunday: 6 miles, roads, 55 minutes, no gain. Super easy recovery run since the legs felt slightly sore today.

Weekly totals: 94 miles, 18500' gain. Obviously I'm disappointed about missing Monday and Friday, but I'd say that 94 miles is a good week considering that I missed 2 days. I'm going to be more careful to not miss days in the future, if at all possible. I'm looking for a big week this next week, so we'll see what that entails. I'm planning to mix in some roads to prepare my feet for the hard slickrock at Moab 12 hour in a few weeks, so I should be able to get in substantially more mileage if I spend the same amount of time running.

Great music I listened to this past week (and one of the best music videos I've ever seen):