9/2-9/8, Doubles, No Troubles

September 2
Am: 10 miles on Old Monarch Pass road in 85 minutes, steady-hard. 2000 or so feet of elevation gain, all between 10,400 and 11,400 ft. Pretty sure that’s the fastest I’ve run 10 miles on that road.

Pm: 4 miles easy on CR 163 @ Big bend. 31:50

September 3
Am: 5.7 miles easy on CR 220 w/ some strides 45:10

Pm: 4 miles easy w/ XC team. 40 minutes. They did hard repeat Ks. I hung out with a kid who was coming back from a stress fracture and drew motivational pictures in the dirt on the trail.

September 4
7.3 miles in 60:10, dirt road near Mears Junction, keeping the HR below 145. Still a little worked from Monday, so kept it easy, but still a positive effort.

September 5
Am: Easy four miles plus 4 x 20 second hill sprints on CR 210. 4.4 miles in total, 36:30 running time.

Pm: 5.5 in 44:10 on CR 220. Resting HR high in the evening.

September 6
Am: 35 minutes pool jogging. Legs never feel better than when I leave the pool on Friday.

Pm: 3.1 miles on CR 221 above Greens Creek. 1000 ft. elevation gain in a mile and a half. Wanted to see if the leaves were turning yet. There are a few signs of fall, but things aren’t changing yet in earnest. Much more color this time last year.

September 7
Am: Joe Vigil XC meet in Alamosa. Boys ran well, with 5 guys under 17:45 at 7200 feet. 5th place behind 4 schools with enrollments 5x larger (Salida has fewer than 400 kids in the whole school). Girls did well, with a solid pack of 4, and some promising races from freshman and sophomores. 6th overall.

4.5 miles of jogging, sprinting, and moving doing the assistant coach thing.

Pm: 2.3 miles easy in 21 minutes on the mill.

September 8
Am: Track workout. Been researching workouts to do at 7000 ft., and I stumbled upon the training of Northern Arizona University, 3x defending NCAA DI champs in XC, who also happen to train at 7000 ft. One of their XC bread and butter workouts is a 3 x (6 x 300) @ Vo2 max pace, with 1-minute rest between reps and 3 minutes between sets. I did my own version of that, with 3 x (5 x 300) w/ 1:25 between reps and 2 minutes between sets. Was able to do the 300s in high 61s (about 5:30/mile pace) w/ the last rep in each set below 60 (sub 5:20 pace).

Was swimming in lactate the last set, but it was manageable. Ankle felt good and felt in control the whole time. Hands-on-hips hard, not hard-on-knees hard, which is usually the way I prefer to keep things.

6.3 miles

Pm: 4.7 miles in 38:40 on CR 220, starting at Mountain Spirit winery going up 221.

Good week. Lots of doubles, and the doubles felt surprisingly good. My body is happy with lots of short runs on dirt roads and a couple of workouts a week.