Week of 5-11-12 to 5-17-12: 164 miles, 15500' gain.

As I mentioned a few days ago, I decided to push for a massive aerobic base week this week before tapering out for Old Dominion.  It went pretty well.

Friday: 44 miles, 5000' gain, as previously described, 11:30-ish, high temp of 92.

Saturday: Off (only got 20 minutes of sleep on Friday night)

Sunday: 26 miles, 3000' gain, 3:42.  As previously described, high temp somewhere in the low 80s for the earlier run.

Monday: 13 miles, 2000' gain, 1:51.  JCC to CC, back via roads since I wasn't feeling spectacular and didn't want to run the climb back to the 5-way. Temps in the mid-80s.

Tuesday: 34 miles, 2500' gain, 4:41.  AM: 14 miles, 2000' gain, 2:06.  A little outside Mueller Park to a little past Rudy's Flat and back, PM: 20 miles, roads, 500' gain, 2:35, high temp in the low 80s at the start of the PM run, didn't bring water, very dehydrating.

Wednesday: 25 miles, 500' gain, 3:24. AM: 22 miles, roads, 500' gain, 2:54.  This run didn't feel all that great.  I was not looking forward to it and it was hard.  I felt extremely depleted at the end.  PM: 3 miles, gain negligible, light jogging with Holly.

Thursday: 22 miles, 2500' gain, 2:47.  AM: 9 miles, 500' gain, 1:06, to the legacy parkway path, out on that, and back, felt pretty decent surprisingly. PM: 13 miles, 1:41, 2000' gain, city creek canyon.  I took it very hard up City Creek Canyon, running the 5.75 miles from gate to gate with 2000' total vertical gain and 300' total vertical loss, ending at 6000' in 42:19 (this corresponds to 33:51 on flat, or 32:44 on flat at sea level, ie an effort equivalent to a 35:30 10k for the last run of a 163 mile week).  I tossed my water bottle off the side of the road at camp-site 28 on the way up so I could pump my arms better, but couldn't find it on the way down and jogged back and forth between 26 and 28 a couple times to make sure I hadn't misremembered where I put it.  Oddly, I never found it, so I jogged an extra 1.5 miles for nothing.  Total down time was 59 minutes, so minus the 15 minutes of easy jogging for 1.5 miles looking for my bottle, my actual down time was slower than my uptime since I wasn't tempo-ing the down portion.

Totals: 164 miles, 15500' gain.  Biggest week I've ever done.  I'm very satisfied with this, even though I inadvertently missed a day.  The fact that I was able to run such a solid tempo run in the first half of the last run of the week is extremely encouraging to me and I honestly didn't think that the equivalent performance was that fast until I crunched the numbers through my Daniels calculator.  I think I'll have to run the Deseret News 10k this summer to see how my current fitness pans out when compared to my extremely poorly split 35:07 there 3 years ago (splits of 16:35/18:32... ouch...)  On a more relevant note, I now feel very ready to go for the Old Dominion 100 and I hope I can keep myself from doing too much during my 2 week taper.  I've never before put in such consistent high mileage as I have over the past 3 months, so I'm excited to see what all of this work will do for me when I finally get back out on the trails for a nice grueling 100 mile trail race.

Next week: Taper time. :)

Music:

This week's song is the very appropriate "Moment of Clarity" from Death's "Sound of Perseverance".  This week was all about perseverance and I feel that I had my own moment of clarity on day 7.  Pushing my body through big physical challenges helps me to see life through a much clearer lens and provides an unmatchable sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.  I now aim to replicate the sense of accomplishment that all of my training has given me when I race 100 miles in one day at the Old Dominion in 2 weeks.