Thursday, March 21, 2013

Lap 9 - Dave McMillian

Date: Thursday, March 21, 2013, 6:00 PM
Temp: 45 degrees
Time Up: 34:30
Time Down: About 30 minutes

Sanitas is back!

Just a short little catch up for people that either haven't read my blog before or don't remember.  Last year I committed to doing laps of Mt Sanitas (in the Winter) in order to raise money for the running team that I'm part of, Team AllEars.   Some amazing friends of mine generously donated to the cause and because of that I had committed to doing all these different laps of Mt Sanitas.  Well I was deep in the training for the Disney World Goofy challenge and I had a lot more donations than I thought I'd get.  So basically I didn't finish all the laps.   Anyway, two months later, here am I, training for the Desert Rats Trailrunning Festival in Fruita, CO.   I figured now was a good time to get in some more hill work and to finish up the laps I owe people.  This lap is being run in the name of my good friend David McMillen and his wife Mishi.

As I said, I am right in the middle of training for a half marathon out in Fruita.  It's going to be on April 20th.  I'm not running it alone, in fact quite a few local Colorado friends are planning on running it with me (Michael Kelly, Andrea Oakley, Rebecca Boozan, Kate Bierbaum, Jenny Bitzan, Karen Lipisky to name a few).  It's a trail race so we have been trying to get in as many off road training sessions as we can.  Since the weather was so nice today and we wanted to work on practicing our downhill running, Andrea and I decided to head up to Mt Sanitas.

 We had a bit of snow and rain earlier in the day, but you couldn't tell.

Such a difference to be training with light once again.  Andrea showed up at my house at 5:30 and we headed out from there.  Still plenty of light once we got up on the hill.  I think it may have been around 50 degrees when we started but it was a bit breezy.   Still a beautiful day out.  Tuesday both Andrea and I did a pretty hard hill repeat workout so our legs were still recovering a bit today.   Also Andrea hadn't had enough to eat and I was recovering from a wicked hangover from the previous night (the wine bottle and I had a fight and the wine bottle won).  The plan was to take it easy on the way up, but then to go down the backside and really practice some good downhill running.  This is important as the Fruita course has a wicked elevation gain around miles 8-11 and then a steep downhill right after that for about 2 miles.  We were trying to get some wear and tear on our legs to mimic the course.

 I think she just enjoyed getting warm in the sun

For some reason my lungs didn't feel at 100% today.  I hope I'm not getting sick and that it was just something that was hitting me today.  We stopped about halfway up so I could snap a few pictures.
 Boulder sure is beautiful almost all year round

For the most part my training for the race has been going really well.  I took about a month off after the Disney World Marathon and didn't do any serious running during that time.  Since about mid-Feb I started back up training for this race.


 Look how good of shape the trail is in for being mid March

While the trail was in great shape, my wife just informed me that we have a few days of rain and snow rolling in.   At least it looks like its a recovery week on the schedule so while I do have to get runs in, this is a week to rest.

 Woohoo!  The top, again!

Felt really good getting to the top again.  The last time I was up here was our moonlight jaunt. I still owe Laura one more lap and I hope that we can plan another moonlight run up sometime in the future. Heading back down I seconded guessed myself (like I do often) and took the wrong path.  Andrea and I backtracked and with the nice help of a local young Boulder hipster, we found our way back down.  Andrea was dealing with a bit of a side cramp but still managed to push hard through the rest of the run.  I'm so proud of that girl, I probably would have just walked it. =P

Part of the hill we were bombing down

Anyway, I'm sorry it's been so long since I've blogged.  I had a bit of burnout in general after the marathon this year.   I'm trying to get back into habit of blogging more often.  I did want to take the time to mention another cause that I'm fundraising for this year, totally separate from Team AllEars.

There is a group of us friends that had recently gotten together.  Not only are we all runners, we are also all total nerds (if you didn't already know I was a nerd, well...you just don't know me very well).   We sort of informally call ourselves the Nerd Herd.  We have a website if you want to check it out as well as a Facebook group.  Since we are all runners and we live all across the US, we have decided to put on a virtual racing series this year.  Each race has its own theme.  The first one is called the "May the 4th be with you 5k".   The second one later in the year is the "Happy Birthday Harry Potter 5k and 10k".  The last one is the "Banned Book Week 5k and Half Marathon".  All the profits to these races will be going to charity.   Registration should be opening very soon so if you are interested in helping out a good cause and want to get fit at the same time, please consider signing up.  If you are curious how a virtual race works, we have a FAQ located here.  I'll be posting more information on this soon.