Monday: 12 miles, 500' gain, roads, 1:26. NSL/Woods Cross/Bountiful loop. Boring, but starts and finishes at home...
Tuesday: 17 miles, 5000' gain, 3:01, easy effort (and extra slow since the Desolation Trail is pretty tough). Mill Creek Inn up Desolation Trail to Porter Fork connection, got off trail a couple times, added a little distance, down Porter Fork, down the Porter Fork road, down the Mill Creek road back to Mill Creek Inn.
Wednesday: 12 miles, 2500' gain, 1:39. Campus to JCC to most of the way between the 5 way and City Creek and back. Only mid-to-high 80s, but the heat was annoying for whatever reason.
Thursday: 7 miles, 2500' gain, 56:xx. From Wakara/Colorow, up the annoyingly directionless new switchbacks to BoSho, up to the Wire trailhead, up and down Wire. Saw a rattlesnake on the way up while listening to a song called "Venom" in my headphones, interesting timing. Split from trailhead/turnoff to top was just a hair over 30 flat (would've been sub 30 if I didn't have to avoid the snake on the trail), which is quite a bit faster than I've done it in the past, but I didn't feel like I was working all that hard. There are a few steeper spots up top on the climb, but my legs felt unbelievably strong. Very encouraging run.
Friday: 8 miles 3000' gain, 1:16. A bit up the Mill Creek Canyon Road, up Church Fork Road, up Grandeur Peak. From the parking lot in Church Fork to the top in 39:44, from the Pipeline trail trailhead/connection in 37:54, a big personal best. Felt very strong for the climb, but took it out pretty hard and the last 5 minutes, when the trail is at its steepest, put me in a whole new world of hurt. :) Came back down at a much more moderate effort, and then went a little ways back up the Canyon to my car. Also another extremely encouraging climb after feeling, just last week, that my climbing legs weren't that great. I guess things can change quickly.
Saturday: 20 miles, 5000' gain, 4:47. Got together with a group of people training for Wasatch, starting from Bountiful B, going backwards along the course for an out and back. Immediately started off on the wrong trail, and ended up not going very far in the first 2 hours, when the organizer was convinced that we were going the right way and that there just wasn't really a trail in this section. Turned out he was wrong and the first 2 hours or so were wasted. Got all the way up Bountiful peak though, which was cool. After that, we had to follow a dirt road for quite awhile to access the actual trail, and then made it most of the way up Francis Peak before turning around and following the actual course back. Easy effort, not many miles, but a decent bit of time on my feet.
Sunday: 26 miles, 8000' gain, 5:28, the unofficial "Brighton Marathon" (not actually a race, but just a group of people running some trails in Big Cottonwood together). If you're curious about the course, message me - not sure if I'm supposed to post much about it, but it's quite rugged, technical, and there's a lot of climb, with an average elevation of more than 9000' and a peak of 10600'. :) I went in with sore legs from lots of climb this week, an extremely hard effort on Friday and a nearly 5 hour day on Saturday, not to mention that I was running on not nearly enough sleep (11 hours between Friday and Saturday night, whereas I almost always get 8+ most nights). I felt sluggish, but kept things within myself, so it went pretty well, although it took roughly 30-45 minutes than I could do it fresh and well-rested, in my estimation. In other words, it was a good training run for upcoming races. All I had to eat was a 160 calorie gatorade, 6 salt pills, and 6 Mint Chocolate Gu gels. I really strongly dislike Mint Chocolate GU, so after 1 or 2, I was disgusted by the taste and wanted to throw up after putting them in my mouth. By the end of the race, I consumed 2 + 1/2 + 1/2 gels + the gatorade, + 4 bottles of water, plus the 6 salt pills. I say 2+1/2+1/2 gels because the mint chocolate got so disgusting by the 3rd gel that I couldn't even swallow the entire 3rd or 4th gels and just spit half of each of them out to avoid vomiting from the taste and consistency. The funny thing is that my stomach was entirely fine, but the taste was just too much to handle. Not enough salt was probably a good thing for training - my legs were still fine at the end, but they would've felt even better if I had had more salt, so this probably helped simulate later in a longer race. The total caloric intake (roughly 450) was low for a 5 1/2 hour outing, not to mention that I didn't eat anything for the last 2 hours, so I felt close to bonking near the end, but I kept things together. I'm glad this wasn't a real race, since I wasn't particularly quick and didn't want to have to push it, but it was an excellent training run.
Total: 102 miles, 26500' gain. The mileage wasn't huge, but the climb was a lot, at least for me, averaging 4333' of climb everyday from Tuesday to Sunday. Oof. I guess I kept my promise from last week to start upping my climbing!
For this upcoming week, I'll be shooting for similar mileage, a bit more if I feel good. This week is supposed to be really hot again (in the mid-high 90s most days...), so that will make things more fun. I suppose this is good considering that I'm crewing/pacing at Badwater in a couple weeks, but it seems like, while training in heat makes me better at dealing with high temps, I get sick of it pretty quickly. Haha...
Music for the week is the only thing with a hard enough drive to keep me at a balls-out effort level all the way up Grandeur Peak.
Good stuff, really brings out the primal beast within on a several thousand foot climb.
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