Lap 2 and Lap 3 - Laura Cissell

Date: Tuesday, December 11th, 12:30 PM
Temp: 38 degrees
Lap 1 Time Up: 34 Minutes
Lap 1 Time Down: 21 Minutes
Lap 2 Time Up: 35 Minutes
Lap 2 Time Down: 21 Minutes

First of all, thank you to everyone who has generously donated to this awesome cause.   Cancer is one of the most destructive things that touch our lives.  Anyway, I had a ton of donations this week and so I needed to start knocking out some of these laps.   

Just this last week, here is the list of donations for laps that I've received:

Jen Alexander - 1 Lap (Done last week, yay!)
Laura Cissell - 5 Laps
Andrea Oakley - 1 Lap
Glenn and Marcia Briskin - 1 Lap (I think?)

Since daylight was a bit of an issue the last lap I did and also I knew I had quite a few laps to make up, I had to fit in at least two this week, preferably on one day.   I really wanted to run my first two back to back runs for Laura as I knew it would be tough and she sort of embodies the idea of tough in my mind.  :)   

Normally my running schedule goes as such.  

Tuesday - Tempo Run (basically an hour long run that is around my 10k pace)
Wednesday - 45 minute easy run
Thursday - Track Workout with Michael K - Speed Workout
Saturday - Semi-Long run (1/2 my Sunday run)
Sunday - Long run

Trying to fit in Sanitas has been a bit of a challenge but I have decided there are really three slots I'd put it in.  Either one lap can be on Wednesday.  Or I can fit in a lap or two on Saturday if I take it easy.  Or I can use it for my tempo run but to do so, I need to wear my heart rate monitor and stay within the proper effort of my normal tempo runs.  That's what I choose to do this time.  

Waking up, some snow on the ground gave me worry

When I woke up on Tuesday morning, I had noticed it had snowed.  It wasn't a lot, maybe not even an inch.  But it gave me pause whether climbing up Sanitas in the snow was a good idea.   There are a lot of rocks and I was a bit worried about it being icy.  To be safe I decided that I'd try and go up around noon (long lunch) so that the sun was hopefully melting off any sort of ice.  Really it ended up being a non-issue.  For the most part Santias was beautiful.  No real ice to speak of and the trail was in great shape.  There was a bit of snow but most of it was melting off by the time I got up there.

Really worried for no reason.  The trail was in great shape.

The first lap felt a bit sluggish.  I took a bit more time as I was worried more about the impact going up and down the mountain was having on my knees.   Also I wanted to feel good for the second lap.   By the time I got to the top of the first lap, my initial thought was "Why oh why did I think this was a good idea?".   It is hard, and it hurts.   I really was trying to come up with pretty much any excuse to not do another lap today and just head back to work.  On the way down, I had my first spill on a trail.  Everyone warns you about this when you start out trial running.  Sometimes you just trip and fall.  Normally it hasn't been an issue for me, but somehow coming down I just caught my foot on a root and took a bit of a head plant on a patch of dirt (much better than doing it on rock). A nearby hiker stopped to see if I was okay and after brushing myself off, I was fine.  The little bit of adrenaline might have even helped. Luckily by the time I got to the bottom I realized that I was feeling pretty good and I might as well get as many of these knocked out now, rather than later this month when the weather could be even worse.   I turned around and headed back up.

The second lap overall felt really good.  I ended up putting on some music and that seemed to help.  While the time was close to the first lap, I felt a lot better going back up the second time.  The wind did pick up a bit and it was getting a bit cold by the time I got to the top.  Not to mention I was running a bit behind schedule from when I needed/wanted to get back to work.   I pretty much nailed the downhill run the second time (I love coming down from Sanitas, it's pretty fun though maybe I'm a bit too rough on my knees).  

The top after lap 1.

Overall I was really happy with both laps up.  My heart rate was right around 175-180 which is where it should be for a 10k (maybe a bit low).   It was a gorgeous day and it really gave me a lot of time to reflect on why I'm doing this, both the cause of raising money for the fight against Breast Cancer and my own fight for fitness that I've been going through over the past 3 years.  It was a fabulous day, though tough.  I can't wait to get to more of these laps here in the upcoming weeks.  I have at least two laps coming up where friends are going to come up with me that I'm especially looking forward to.

3 total laps done.  Thanks Laura, you rock! :)

If you want to know more about the cause that I'm trying to raise money for, you can check out my first post here.   Also if anyone else still would like to donate to either make me run some laps, to have me send them one of our Team AllEars Cookbooks or to just donate to a great cause, contact me and I can give you more information on how to do so.

Thanks!

Mike