Monday: 13 miles, 5000' gain, 2:30-ish (don't recall exact time). From Bountiful Mormon temple area to the top of Sessions mountain and a bit farther back on great western trail, then back. Didn't have enough to eat beforehand and didn't bring any food with me, so I felt pretty hungry on the way down. Temp was 85 at the bottom when I started and the trail is pretty steep with no shade, so it was definitely a sweaty ascent, evening run.
Tuesday: 14 miles, 2000' gain, 2:08. From 1/4 of mile away from the Mueller Park trailhead, up the 6.5 miles to Rudy's Flat, another quarter mile out, then back, with Adrian, ran at 8:30AM, not so hot yet but starting to get a bit hotter by the finish (78 degrees when I was done).
Wednesday: 14 miles, 2000' gain, 2:10. Mueller Park Trailhead to Rudy's Flat, down North Canyon, back along roads (not quite the most direct route, but close), with Adrian. Ran this at 6AM and I plan to do early morning runs frequently in the next month or so to help my body prepare for the 4AM start at Old Dominion.
Thursday: 7 miles, flat, no gain, 0:56. Easy run with Holly, who wasn't having so much fun when it started downpouring near the end of the run.
Friday: 22 miles, 3000' gain, 2:51. Tempoed hard up City Creek Canyon road, 4.5 miles up the trail at the top of the road (plus about an extra mile due to getting significantly lost and off trail at one point), back down. I did an extra 1/4 mile downhill and 1/4 mile back up at the end so I could get an even 6 mile split (33:12) for the nice 7.5% grade average downhill coming down the canyon. First 5.75 and 6 of the last 6.25 were full on tempo, the rest was pretty easy.
Saturday: 7 miles, flat, no gain, 1:00. Another easy run with Holly. Would've gone a bit faster, but she didn't seem that interested in running.
Sunday: 30 miles, 5000' gain, 5:01, with Adrian part of the way. Up City Creek Canyon Road, up the trail, not getting lost in the same spot as Friday, and up to the point where the sudden several feet of snow started to interfere with our ability to follow the trail after 5-6 miles. Got lost here, added in more than an extra mile, but found a few random 40s-50s era military medical bins containing a sleeping bag/tent/pad stashed way off in the middle of the woods, so if I ever happen to get caught in that area in a blizzard, I'll know where to go to find shelter. Finally found the trail again, but Adrian had to turn around due to time constraints so I continued on alone. I was able to find the trail 2 more times after this point in a few spots where the snow cleared, but after this point I never saw it again. I'm guessing that I missed a turnoff to get up to the Great Western Trail as I continued up the canyon several miles farther than I expected without finding that offshoot. Eventually, I was sick of continuously getting lost and not knowing where I was in the canyon, so I hiked through a nice long patch of small trees, briars, and other sharp shrubs to get to a ridgeline, but found that I was at a lower peak with nothing but mostly taller peaks surrounding me and couldn't figure out with 100% certainty where the conncetion was. I'm pretty sure I was able to see where the GWT connection was at this point (I was quite a ways past it), but I wasn't completely sure and the route was super snowed in, so I just turned around and went back. Once I got back to the canyon road and got a few miles down, I took the trail route back down the canyon and went past my car at the mouth a bit up the road so I could get the total over 5 hours. Legs felt pretty fresh at the finish despite minimal electrolytes. Ate 5 gels, a bottle of Hi-C fruit punch, 4 endurolytes (not very much, but I forgot my electrolytes and had to borrow from Adrian), and a bottle and a half of water (I only carried the Hi-C bottle and 1 water bottle, but Adrian was nice enough to give me a bottle when he turned around as he hadn't had much to drink yet).
Total: 107 miles, 17,000' gain. A successful week and I was very happy to feel strong the entire way through my long run, even if it got slow at times due to snow, difficulty in finding the trail, bushes, creek crossings (mostly related to my inability to track a trail that was under several feet of snow), etc. In regards to next week... On Thursday, I'm going to be headed back to MN for a long weekend and may have a hard time getting in solid mileage everyday as my trip is pretty packed, but I'll do the best I can.
Music for the week is Blotted Science's Cretaceous Chasm, as scored to a scene from King Kong. The writer/guitarist of this group, Ron Jarzombek, apparently spent roughly 2 years scoring 25 minutes of 12-tone instrumental progressive metal music to 4 video clips from bug-related films. None of these films were meant to have music written to go with them, so it's obviously painstaking work to write a cohesive song that perfectly matches the clip in style, timing, etc. I love the various intricate themes that each character and bug style receives and, beyond that, the entire record is written in an atonal 12-tone format that is extremely difficult to work with, so Jarzombek and crew deserve major props for actually seeing this through to fruition... The more you watch the clips from all of the songs on Animation of Entomology, the more you'll catch onto.
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