 I met up with JV and AV at Sanitas this afternoon. These two are serious mountain goats. Every weekend they are off bagging some 14er. It is easy to overlook this on the planet of Boulder where everyone seems to be sponsored by some shoe company, or are running across the country in a Fred Flinstone vehicle, or are describing a 2:31 marathon as an off day. Climb all the Colorado 14ers? It almost like another Cub Scout badge in this town.
But it really is not. Really, it is not. In fact, it quite nuts. Read his blog if you don't beleive me. Maybe I should not have a picture of a mountain goat but instead of mixed martial art fighters to portray how hard this is.
I had put about 2 miles in before hooking up with these two. I had some aspirations to do a tempo up this hill, but the treadmill run last night left me more tapped than I had expected, particularly in, you guessed it, in the abdominal muscle wall area. Latest hypothesis on this is that it is just strained and I am not giving it enough rest for it to effectively heal. I realized that Sanitas is not easy and that running it easy (figure that out) would provide a good workout in any case. And as I expected, it kicked me in the teeth. Sanitas, while short in duration, does have significant grades right from the get go. And ain't even the grades that seem to get me, its the fair step ups. I tried to keep it relaxed but by 10 minutes in, I was, well, something other than relaxed. JV can totally smoke me on this stuff, but he always remains kind, stating how the pace is just fine for him. It was good to run with him, talk training, mountains, and jokes about gas. With about 3 minutes to go I thought there was a shot at breaking 20, but the ascent trip took 20:12.
I know that making deposits in flat and speed first, as I have been, will cause a debt on the hills that I will have to pay. I got notice of that debt today. I said to JV on the way down - "I want to do it all." And I do. I want to do the fast track workouts, the long road runs, the killer hill tempos, the long mountain runs, the hill repeats, the long building flat tempos. Of course, there is this minor issue we have to deal with called recovery. (Total side note, this crud that some Yankee pitcher is hurling about not taking HGH to be a better pitcher but instead to help him recover is that - CRUD. Your ability to recover is your performance). Sanitas put me on notice, I need to inject a run like this at least once a week to keep some hill familiarity in the legs. With the weather breaking, that ought to be a bit easier. The focus will shift a bit to those sort of runs, more structured track work (managing recovery more closely) and moving some of the long runs to the trails (but assuring they are building efforts). Where I am changing from last year at this point is the level of focus I am putting on the hills. It is a minor but significant tweak.
We came back down, caught up with AV and ran with her the rest of the way. It was a good easy run, with the Sanitas portion taking about 40 minutes all told. I parted from JV / AV and I jogged over to Fleet Feet after this, did a quick check on a few things from the wireless, and then got at it again. I got in some minutes before joining the group at the store for the Monday night jog. At this point, I was ready to be done but the group run (which never starts on time, and that bugs the heck out of me), pushed me through another five miles.
All told, it was about two hours, and about 14 miles.
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