Training Week Feb 2-8

Weekly Totals:

Miles Run: 51.5
Hours Run: 9:04
Running Elevation Gain: 8,970'

Miles Biked: 80.8
Hours Biked: 5:50
Biking Elevation Gain: 4,300'
Total Biking Power: 3971 kJ

Total Training Time: 14:55
Total Elevation Gain: 13,270'

Summary: Very happy with the week overall. It was a slow start as I still wasn't feeling 100% after my sickess last week and had some residual congestion all week. After getting so cold on my ride home wed and having my tail between my legs, I had a solid day thursday with an incline PR, 3 summits, and a couple of hours post mountain biking in the mud followed by a crap day friday and then a solid weekend to round out a solid week ending with 9K gain running. Plan was 15.5 hours but came up only slightly short at around 15 hours. Can't complain being that close after early week days taking it easier. Funny with 2 sports, I am back to 7 days streak now. Next week will be slightly less volume (maybe) before my 2 highest volume weeks of the season wrapping up a base building period mixed with some speed to start getting ready for Salida.

Mon 2 Feb: Didn't Commute in last night due to Priorities (Superbowl that I didn't care who won but wanted to see commercials). I also woke up feeling like my body was losing the fight to whatever sickness I was acquiring. Funny because I usually wake up feeling slightly better and not slightly worse. Today was highly opposite but I kept popping pills. Even started to lose my voice but I proudly claim that I never got fully sick. No foggy head, no stuffy nose or cough. Just a light sore throat for a couple days with swolen glands and then losing my voice. Anyhow, I felt much better after my night shift ironically and after getting home and having breakfast, I took the family for a 6 mile jaunt. Wife pulled the kiddo in the bike trailer and I ran. Was about 30 deg to start and upper 40s to finish just an hour later. I took it easy so as not to exacerbate the sickness. The idea is to get better and not worse. Sat in the hot tub before going to bed. After sleeping, I got up and rode into work for an unusual headwind on the way in. At slightly harder effort, I was a couple minutes slow. I wish wattage calculator calculated in wind because it just looks like I worked less hard.

Running Stats:

• Miles: 6
• Time: 57:26
• Pace: 9:39
• AVG HR: Tried but HRM just doesn't work anymore :( really need to cash in on that warranty.)
• Gain: 150'
• Weather: sunny and warming from 30 to upper 40s
• Route: paved trail through hood to stapleton and back.

Biking Stats:

• Bike: Cross
• Miles: 13.9
• Time: 44:54
• Avg Speed: 18.7
• Power: 190W (512 kJ)
• AVG HR: NA
• Gain: 184'

Tues 3 Feb: No running day. I know I know. I had lots of time off of running last week but this was this week's planned no running day. I rode home from work in the morning, took the wife out to birthday breakfast, went to bed and then rode back into work. The ride home in the morning, I actually tackled a new hill late in the ride. Only added .4 mi to the ride and another 100' or so but it made a difference. I have been eyeballing this climb on other days and decided to go for it. Was glad I did. Will take all the climbing I can get albeit the fact that the ride home is pretty much up hill the whole way. For the way back to work, I had a tiny bit of extra distance because I forgot my water bottle and had to go back and get it. Wouldn't have effected the ride but I would not have had water all night and commute home would have been rough. Looking at the weather forecast, tomorrow morning's wind looks scary for the ride home forecasted at 18 MPH headwind (N) and temps at around 30 before windchill. Was hoping my new winter shoes would arrive tonight but they did not. That wind mixed with that temp is right at about my ride/no ride decision but I decided to sack up. Brought the thick mountaineering gloves and some extra wool socks.

Biking Stats 1:

• Bike: Cross
• Miles: 14.3
• Time: 58:46
• Avg Speed: 14.6 MPH
• Power: 215W avg (757 kJ total)
• AVG HR: NA
• Gain: 910'

Biking Stats 2:

• Bike: Cross
• Miles: 14.2
• Time: 41:58
• Avg Speed: 20.3 MPH
• Power: 228W Avg (578 kJ)
• AVG HR: na
• Gain: 185'

Wed 4 Feb: So I was getting ready to leave work today for my ride home planning a big day with the commute home and the incline later on. Just as I was prepping to leave at work, they announced 40 MPH winds. Sometimes, they are over zealous with the announcements so I decided to make a go for it. While I got frozen toes in the very accurate announcement, I made like the tortoise and began to slowly tick off the miles wishing for my new warm shoes. Eventually, I realized I was going to be late home to take the dog to the vet and take over care of my child so my wife could run her errands by a long shot. My normal hour commute was going to take two hours. I eventually called the wife and asked her to come pick me up. It took a couple hours to get feeling back in all of my toes. The cold sort of took it out of me and I ended up napping and lounging the rest of the day and skipped the run potentially setting myself back later in the week. 2 days off out of 3 early in the week makes it hard to make quota but I just didn't feel like going back out in it. I will make it up tomorrow I thought.

Biking Stats:

• Bike: cross
• Miles: 7.5
• Time: 50:03
• Avg Speed: 9.0 MPH
• Power: 356 kJ on Strava but maybe double that with wind haha.
• AVG HR: na
• Gain: 451'

Thurs 5 Feb: Big day today. Gotta work hard eventually if you want to be a leadman. Yesterday as I rode in the cold, I recalled Larry DeWitt's blog about extreme races requiring extreme training as I froze in the wind. Today, I needed to get it done again. So the plan was to wake up early and knock out some miles while the fam was sleeping  and then maybe go get the incline or something later. I ended up not getting up early and had a headache from such a deep sleep for my first night off and on a normal schedule. After some coffee and my first advil (1 pill) in quite a while for the headache and a good solid breakfast, I began to feel much better and ready to train. After fighting sickness and the easy week, my legs were finally ready to perform. The wife and kiddo took off for some stuff mid morning. I loaded the bike onto the car and the running gear on my body and headed west towards Manitou. Ended up not only doing the incline but getting an incline PR as well as nabbing rocky mountain, Mt. Manitou, and even Red mountain on the way back for 2.5 solid hours of 4K of gain and some great PR's. After a quick 10 min break at the car eating some food and getting ready for a bike ride, I went out for another 2 hours on the bike to cover myself with mud as I hooted and hollered and wore myself out. I felt good but tired after the workout knowing I had to come immediately home and be alive for my wife's official birthday party.

Running Stats:

• Miles: 12
• Time: 2:33:33
• Pace: 12:48
• AVG HR: NA but probably 170s on incline and 150s during remainder.
• Gain: 4,237'
• Weather: Sunny and 50s maybe up to 60
• Route: Incline, Rocky, Manitou, and one person Red summit party.

Biking Stats:

• Bike: Bees Knees 650B Hard tail
• Miles: 16.8
• Time: 1:53:04
• Avg Speed: 8.9 MPH
• Power: 1190 kJ
• AVG HR: NA
• Gain: 2,386'

Fri 6 Feb: Big day causes poopy day. You got poop in your mouth Ron Burgandi. The plan once again was to get up early and get some miles. Wanted to get 2 runs in today to reclaim some lost miles. I woke up early but the legs were very dead and I hardly felt like a run. Waited until nap time and then went for a couple laps of section 16. At one point I was thinking If I could get 4 laps (16 mi) I would be in great shape. Time dwindled and I left the house planning on 2 laps. I started the run feeling like crap. The sandy wetness mixed with lots of mud and some ice mixed like that had me running slow and I had a headache and wasn't carrying water but I was determined to not give up. I figured after a few miles it would blow off and I would feel better. I ended up feeling about the same throughout the run. While I could have thrown in the towel at 4, I ran another seemingly trash 4 miles. The second 4 was not about getting physically stronger though. I was beat up from the day prior's events and the harder intensity mixed with taking an expectorant trying to clear some lung congestion. In hindsight, I was just very dehydrated as well as beaten down. While slow, today was a hard earned 8 miles. There were several times where I wasn't even climbing and thought I was at 8 min effort and was at like 10:30 pace. Crazy. It is nice to train to be able to continue on when you don't feel it when it comes to ultras. It is near impossible to run 100 miles and not have at least a minimal ill feeling.

Running Stats:

• Miles: 8
• Time: 1:19:02
• Pace: 9:52
• AVG HR: NA
• Gain: 519'
• Weather: Sunny but windy. Maybe upper 40s or low 50s.
• Route: 2 Clockwise laps of Black Forest section 16

Sat 7 Feb: Normally Saturday's would be my long run day and I could have gotten up early and made it happen but I was apprehensive after yesterday's sh*t show. After a solid breakfast and some coffee I had time to slip out for ten miles on the Rock Island trail by the house. We had the privilege of attending a wedding of one of my long time Friend's little sister whom I have known since she was just a little girl. The run felt good and I probably slightly exceeded MAF effort with a negative split. Ran the first half at 8:00 to 8:10 per mile and the second half at 7:45 to 7:55 per mile average. The pup had a hard time keeping up on this one but it felt good to run in the sun in winter with no shirt. I didn't realize I had a tail wind on the first half so this made my neg split a bit harder but felt great when I finished. What a difference between yesterday where I was probably dehydrated and a bit down from the longer and harder day the day prior with the incline PR.

Running Stats:

• Miles: 10.05
• Time: 1:26:05
• Pace: 8:34 (Includes warmup and cooldown walking half mile each way as always)
• AVG HR: NA. Maybe low to mid 160s
• Gain: 84'
• Weather: Sunny. Upper 50s. Slightly windy
• Route: Rock Island Trail to 5 mi tag by Elbert Highway and back.

Sun 8 Feb: Running on a mileage deficit for the week. Goal was 50 miles to bounce back to my baseline after the rest/recovery week last week and I am still short. Don't usually like running Sundays long because I don't get to see the fam but I felt it needed to be done albeit the fact I hadn't slept since the 10 miler the day prior. I woke up at 630ish yesterday morning and was up all day with no nap due to the wedding. I came home and went to work all night (drove so I could run after) and drove to Manitou in the Morning to join the incline club. At a nice medium effort maybe 160HR going up, I made great time today. Whoever said there is no ice up there is flat wrong. There was bad Ice on the last 1/4 mi of ruxton and sheer ice pretty much the entire way from No name to Barr. Despite that I had one of my top 3 ascent times to Barr and apparently my quickest descent which I was just trying to keep around 8 Min/Mi so I wasn't too pounded out to be able to run tomorrow and not hurt. I was piggy backing with Jesse on the way up. He passed me about halfway and I was only about a minute behind leaving barr (don't know how long he was there but I didn't hang out today) Connected the last mile into town with some Incline Club legends. Ran with Glen Ash, and Jack Ramsey the last mile. I think I talked too much because they were too good at asking questions but it was awesome to run with such solid men who have been doing this for so long (over 20 years for both of them). After I got to crash for about 7 hours, it was time to ride into work. Temp was mid 40s but I wore the new winter shoes and had toasty toes. Thought I was taking it easy recovery style and made it slightly faster than normal. Wierd. No tail wind either. Proly cause I didn't bike for a couple days I guess. Great ride!

Running Stats:

• Miles: 15.5
• Time: 2:48:50
• Pace: 10:54
• AVG HR: NA. Probably around 150. I wasn't high descending. Kept in low to mid 160s up.
• Gain: 3,989'
• Weather: 52 to start. 65 to finish
• Route: Mem park to barr camp via marathon route and then back. Took back streets through town.

Biking Stats:

• Bike: Cross
• Miles: 14
• Time: 41:39
• Avg Speed: 20.2 MPH
• Power: 578 KJ
• AVG HR: 125 maybe
• Gain: 185'