Sunday, July 8, 2012

Week of 7-2-12: 104 miles, 24,000' gain.

Monday: 9 miles.  Main run: 7 miles, 2000' gain, Holbrook Canyon.  1:00.  Ran with Adrian.  Wanted to do more, but ran into several rattlesnakes that were being pretty aggressive (the first actually lunged at Adrian), so we turned it around early.  Also, 2 miles of literally running errands. Haha.


Tuesday: 10 miles, 2000' gain, 1:3x, with Adrian.  Ran up Little Water and partially down Canyons.  Smoke from the Alpine/American Fork wildfire was quite thick on the backside of the ridge dropping down into Park City, so the air quality was atrocious.  Once again, wanted to do more, but I value my lungs.


Wednesday: 17 miles, 6000' gain, 2:40.  Mill B to Desolation Trail (a lot more than the 3 miles posted, closer to 5 based on the last time I GPS'd it... haha... took 60:xx going moderately without walking a step for the climb, which is moderately steep, but not insanely tough), along Desolation Trail to Dog Lake, down Butler Fork, down the road.  Went too hard on the 4 miles on the road.  Paid attention to 3 of the 1 mile splits, which I hit in 6:10, 5:48, 5:50.  Aerobically, this was very easy, but my legs aren't really used to pounding at sub-6 pace, so I felt slightly sore.


Thursday: 2 miles, jogged to lunch off campus and back.  Felt sluggish after work and decided to call it a day and go to bed early.


Friday: 17 miles, 5000' gain, 3:16.  Nice slow effort from Mill Creek Inn up Desolation/Thayne to Porter Fork as a loop with Joe Dean.  Accidentally went a little ways up the Neff's connection to add on a bit of extra miles.  Did this late at night, starting at just before 7:30, finishing at about 10:45.  Found a complete moron with a raging campfire after dark in upper Porter Fork, which I thought was a wildfire briefly, due to its size.  This idiot definitely got reported to the cops and I really hope they busted him and gave him the maximum sentence of 6 months in prison (yes, you can go to jail for 6 months if you light a fire up in the canyons, as you are risking burning down everything up there).  Utah folks that read this, remember that it is ABSOLUTELY NOT OK to have fires in the canyons outside SLC right now.  Back to the run, I feel the need to point out that this trail is extremely slow, hence the extremely slow time.  This was a bit more laid back than normal, my last easy running of it was 3:01, but I doubt I could hit these 17 miles faster than 2:30, which is very slow for a hard effort over 17 miles.


Saturday: 25 miles, 5000' gain, 5:04.  Big Mountain to Sessions Lift-off and back plus a little extra.  First bit of getting lost occurred by accidentally following the west trail above upper City Creek instead of the north trail.  Second bit was caused by thinking I made a mistake while traversing across the City Creek ridge on the way back.  I thought the trail was dropping into City Creek, so I backtracked quite a bit until I realized I wasn't actually wrong.  I was exhausted on this run due to going to bed after midnight after Friday night's run, but getting up at 4:58 AM for the Saturday AM run.  Legs were fine though, which was good.  Drank 80 ounces of fluid, ate 4 S-caps (would've taken more, but couldn't find another bottle in time before the run) and consumed ~720 calories, pretty much mostly from sugar (320 cal of gatorade, 400 of candy).  Nutrition seemed fine, could've gotten away with less calories, but the fluids couldnt' have been less.  I actually intended to run more like 30-32, but apparently I would've needed more fluids.


Sunday: 24 miles, 4000' gain, 3:42.  All the way up City Creek Canyon road from 1/4 mile before the gate, plus 6 more miles past the top of the trail, and back.  Ran past the top of the trail in upper city creek, finding the creek to be bone-dry that far up, so I took the creek bed up to the very top of the canyon, right below the Great Western Trail.  The bottom of upper City Creek was cleaned up nicely from the last time I was up there (May I think?), but middle upper City Creek, after the weather station, is getting very overgrown and was absolutely full of flying buzzing insects, which made things a little less pleasant.  Overall, a good run, although pretty hot at the start.  I intended to go all the way up to GWT, instead of turning around just shy, but I forgot my watch and had no idea what my running time was until I finished and checked the clock in my car, so I turned around slightly early out of fear of getting caught in the canyon after dark.  It turns out that I wasn't even close to getting caught after dark, but whatever.


Totals: 104 miles, 25,000' gain.  Overall, a solid week, although quite lopsided mileage and time-wise.  Note the fact that within about 48 hours on Friday-Sunday, I hit 66 miles with 14,000' gain.  It was all slow easy running (12:02 total), ie only marginally harder than 100 mile effort, but it was good to get so much time and miles in after a more modest first 4 days.  It's funny to me how much faster Sunday was than Saturday, but this goes to show - beyond the fact that Wasatch is a technical course - how beneficial sleep is (I was outrageously sluggish on Saturday after sleeping only 4 1/2 hours on Friday night, whereas on Saturday night, I slept 11 hours and finished the Sunday run faster than anticipated).  I feel very good now on Sunday night, 2 hours after finishing my last run of the week, so I'm happy with the week.  One other important point is that while 104 miles isn't really all that much, there's quite a bit of climb (similar to last week's 102 with 26500').  This upcoming week will definitely be lighter.  I can't say by how much, but probably quite a bit since I most likely won't get to run on Saturday or Sunday, as I'll be helping Claire Heid prepare for her run at Badwater.  Fun!


Music for the week:

The out of tune guitars are annoying, but if you can get over that, the groove here is unbelievably cool. Besides, this is from 1982, so I'd bet their guitars were fine and the recording just makes them sound out of tune.  Plus, the line-up of Fripp, Bruford, Belew, and Levin is ridiculous.

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