Coyote Call

Great foothill run on shoreline trail -- basically Hogle to City Creek and back with a couple of zig-zags thrown in for good measure. Admittedly I cheated today by sleeping in and avoiding any "chance" to break trail after the first (maybe second if you stretch the definition a bit) storm of the season . . .

I didn't hit the trails until this afternoon and figured my only real goal was to stay relatively consistent on the snow and ice . . . good times. Thanks to the number of people who spent the early hours doing all the hard work, the running ended up being quicker/easier than I expected with the trail being packed almost the entire way.

Highlights: amazing sunset and cool coyote moment.

As I turned on my headlamp -- just before the descent into dry fork -- a couple of coyote howls echoed from the hills surrounding and the necessity of returning home sent me running toward them with a bit of extra adrenaline -- a better kick that the mocha clifshot I had saved for the last few miles. The next mile and/or mile-and-a-half were an awesome combo of music playing on my ipod (deak kennedy's, velvet underground, and the dead came in succesion), coyote howls, a group of deer rushing out of the way, a singular star, and more typical nighttime views of my headlamp reflecting off the snow. Good times.

I felt like this was the first run that really tested me in terms of distance and effort over a sustained period since Bear . . . and I have been happy to see how quickly I have recovered since getting home. A good start to the training ahead . . .

January

I have been digging the running as of late . . . I am still throwing down relatively light mileage (47 last week, with a goal of about 50 this week) . . . but the time on trails has felt good. It may all be an illusion, but it seems like the average pace of my runs lately has been fairly strong . . .

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.

Back into training

Obviously it has been quite a while, since the last time I wrote. After Bear, I went into a bit of a forced hiatus from training as a result of achilles tendonitis. Ironically the injury seems to have had more to do with yoga than running -- during my post-Bear training cycle I was experimenting with adding variety to my overall exercise routine and either caused or aggravated the injury. My initial attempts at simply suffering through the pain seemed to only make running and even non-running time miserable. Eventually I surrendered to the inevitable and decided to take about 10-11 days completely off from running. After the complete break, I started my training at basically zero again . . . last week was my first week back at the 50 mile mark and included my first run since September at the 20+ distance. I think it's relatively fair to say that I am back in at least winter training mode although a bit behind where I have been the past couple of years in January (and definitely a couple pounds heavier than my normal December-January weight) . . . despite the general setbacks of October and November, December turned out to be a fairly good month of running in the sense that the trails are frighteningly clear of snow and I have been running on dirt more consistently than sometimes happens in the winter.

General Reflection on 2011: I would say that overall the year was one of my strongest years, if not my strongest year of racing. The fact that I DNFed at Bear puts a damper on all this nonsense, but I raced more during 2011 than any other year and in further reflection I kind of believe that part of what happened at Bear might have been an example of mental/physical burnout leading me to take impatient/unnecessary risks. Thankfully, the rest of the race season went fairly well with the highlight being the fact that I finished 3 - 50 mile races in the top 10 and completed Western States well under the 24hr mark. In addition to these races, I thought my improved time and finish at Speedgoat was a good sign that my mountain climbing is getting a bit stronger or at least more stubborn. Unfortunately the exhaustion of August and September (and the subsequent injury in October) were a bit of a downer, but thankfully the year ended on a high-note and I have been sincerely enjoying running again during the past few weeks.

Race Goals 2012: Still taking shape is the best way to explain my race schedule for this upcoming season. I am currently signed up for the Black Hills 100 and Squaw Peak 50 in June. I am considering a couple of other races (ideally one more 50 and one more 100), but am planning to race considerably less this year than last. I am also uncertain of what my exact goals will be in June since the two races are so close together -- kind of hoping to run SP50 strictly as a training run, then race BH100 relatively hard with the number one goal being to finish and only start worrying about pace/time/place in the latter stages of the race. Beyond racing, I am hoping to simply make sure that I keep my training at an enjoyable although relatively high level. Most importantly I want to make sure that after June, I give myself a solid amount of time for mental/physical recovery before racing again. In fact, I may leave my race schedule as empty as it currently stands until after June and then decide on a couple of additional races dependent on how I feel . . .