The past couple of weeks has been filled with some of the best winter running I can remember since moving back to Salt Lake almost a decade ago. The trails are fairly dry and generally pretty fast for this time of year, which has meant I have been able to do a decent amount of climbing and at least some of it at a strong-consistent pace. In addition, despite the lack of storms moving through the area, the inversion has been survivable (typically there has been enough wind to clean things out every few days and although there has been some pollution there have been almost no red burn days --- YEAH!).
Two of the best runs since the New Year in terms of running at a good-solid pace include a PR on the "mountain lion" run that connects the steepest route up Mt. Van Cott with some Red Butte trails and a new Red Butte-Shoreline loop that I am using as a time trail/tempo course for the next few months in preparation for running in the Black Hills. The loop is right around 6 miles and has about 1000 feet of vertical which is relatively close to the vertical-ratio listed for the Black Hills race. Both of these runs gave me a chance to push the pace over a middle distance . . . In more traditional training, I ended up running through the Buffalo of Antelope Island the other day -- 16 miles with no food or water -- and ran about 15 miles in one of the few storms of the season along the shoreline trails with what turned into a group of about 6 runners . . .
The one thing missing from my training so far this season is long runs. I still haven't gone much beyond 20 miles and am trying to decide how long I can continue putting in mostly shorter runs . . .
This has been a ramble of thoughts, but it's one of those nights where I simply needed to push out some ideas/memories about the past couple of weeks. My general feeling is that the year has started off well -- knock on wood.
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