Lap 7 - Laura Cissell

Date: Tuesday, January 1st, 1:30 PM

Temp: 34 degrees
Time Up: 34:00 Minutes
Time Down: No idea (but we went down the backside)

First of all, let me apologize, this blog took me a bit longer to get out than intended.  This lap is dedicated to my good friend Laura, I can't wait until you can come run this with us.  :)

So here I was, knowing I needed to get a run in on New Years Day and also that I had a few more laps to get in before Marathon weekend.  I had posted on my facebook page that I was planning on doing a lap of Sanitas on New Years Day and Andrea mentioned that she wanted to go with me.  Yay!   While I would have done it regardless, here at the end of my training I was feeling pretty uninspired.  I was really glad that she offered to go with me. :)

Andrea (and her roomate at the time Kim) are the first two friends I met when I moved to Colorado in 1994.

Talk about an amazing day to go out running.  We had just been getting over a cold spell and the snow was starting to melt that we got over Christmas.   I kept going back and forth on what to wear and decided hell with it.  It was sunny, and warm enough that I threw on shorts.  So glad that I did. 

Fricking shorts yo!  In January

Once we started up the mountain we did notice a few spots that had snow and ice.  For the most part it wasn't really an issue.  For New Year's Day the mountain was pretty packed and it was hard to find a parking spot.

   Pretty busy actually for New Years Day.

The climb up was great.  I could feel the taper working as this was one of the first Santias laps in a long while that my legs actually felt semi-rested on.  Tapering always worries me.  You question if you are doing enough, and maybe if you just got in one more hard workout, you'd be better prepared for the race.  I always question the taper but in the end I have to trust my training plan.  I know on race day that my plan was there for a reason.

Not only did I feel good, Andrea and I had some great conversation, probably one of the best talks the two of us have had in a long time.  In fact, when we ran the Rock-n-Roll half marathon we had some great conversation as well.  :)

The top!

To change it up a bit, I suggested that we go down the back of Sanitas to the valley trail.  I had only gone down that way once and got lost (yes, you Sanitas regulars can laugh at me).  This time except for one small turn we made it down okay.  We did notice that the backside gets a lot less sun and therefore the trail had a lot more snow and ice than expected.  I think both Andrea and myself wanted to open it up a bit on the way down but couldn't.   

Coming down on the backside.  Wish we had Yak Traks.

Once you get off the Mountain proper, you get down on the Sanitas valley trail.  It's a nice, maybe 3/4 or mile long stretch, all downhill.   Lots of people were out walking their dogs.  Here starting after the marathon is where I will be doing hill repeats with Fast Forward (the training group that I train with in the Spring).  The only difference is that we will be doing this at night, in the dark, with headlamps and it will probably be around 20 degrees out.   Very surreal sight to see 50 sets of headlamps running up and down this hill.  Both Andrea and I just sort of opened it up and cruised back down to the parking lot.  Felt really good after all the uphill work we just did.

Nice long trail we just came down.  Felt good going down after all the up.

What a beautiful day, and I was so happy to spend part of it with Andrea.   We were planning on doing a full moon Sanitas trip the weekend prior to New Years but I had to cancel.  Andrea was pretty bummed about it and I understand why.  So now I think the plan is to do the full moon lap at the end of January.  That lap I'm saving for Andrea.  Then, I still have two laps to do with Mike K, but I told him that will be a day that I decide to do three laps total, sometime after the Marathon.

So here it is.  Training is over, I have two more small runs to do before the Goofy this weekend.   I have a run on Tuesday with Fast Forward.  I have a run Friday morning at Disney where I get to meet Jeff Galloway, Bart Yasso, and a few other running celebrities.  Then the half on Saturday, and Full on Sunday.  I am as prepared as I think I can be, I just need to get good rest this week, watch my nutrition and press play.   Thank you to everyone who has supported myself and my running team, Team AllEars.  If you want to track my progress on the race, you can do that here - http://live.xacte.com/wdw/alerts/