Tuesday I injured my hamstring during a track workout and limped home. I went out for a trial run on Wednesday morning and had to quit early. I skipped running on Thursday and went for a bike ride instead. Friday I did another short easy run and made a mile before my hamstring complained. I was getting better but decided to scratch my long runs, call this week "recovery week 16 bis", and start over on Monday, June 1.

Today, Sunday, I hiked with my family up Lory State Park's Timber Trail to check out the backcountry camping sites. While they continued to Arthur's Rock trailhead, I ran back down Timber Trail to the car so I could drive around and pick them up. My hamstring felt much better, so I'm optimistic that I can get back on track next week.

Abert's Squirrel (Sciurus aberti)

Front Range beardtongue (Penstemon virens)

Britton's skullcap (Scutellaria brittonii)

Sidebells penstemon (Penstemon secundiflorus)

My rest week is over. It's only Saturday night, but I'm not running or working out in any way tomorrow, so I'm logging this early.

• 3 hours, 42 minutes

• 22.3 miles

• 1562 feet D+

I spent about 12 fewer hours running and commuting this week than in week 15. I put them into work and sleep instead. I also made some nice meals for my family and finished some home and garden projects. Friday's run was my longest of the week at 95 minutes. Last week I had four longer runs than that. Today I went out for 4.5 miles and couldn't help speeding up a little. I'm feeling recovered and ready to go hard for the next three weeks. I'm aiming for more than 220 miles distance and 36,000 feet of climbing in weeks seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen.

I just finished week 15. Here are the numbers.

• 13 hours, 21 minutes

• 65.8 miles

• 11,220 feet D+

I did a lot of hard running this week, all of it uphill. Tuesday I set some new PRs on the Maxwell climb. Thursday I did hard intervals on the Towers road, 4 x 6 minute, 3 x 2 minute, and 3 x 30 second, going as hard as I could sustain for the intervals. Some of these intervals overlapped with classic short and steep Strava segments and I enjoyed moving up within sight, if within reach, of the all-time leaderboard. Being more of a puncheur, I can't hang with elite climbers on long climbs, but I'm close on super steep terrain.

I'd planned to do a 25 mile run following the Quad Rock course on Friday but pushed it to Saturday for better weather. What do I bring for food on a 6 hour run? My current staple is nut butter (almond or peanut) and honey sandwiches. I make them up to be approximately 600 calories each, cut them in quarters, and stuff four quarters into a small plastic ziplock container. Less mess than a baggie, and in time the pieces absorb any honey that leaks out. I took one sandwich and two handfuls of gummy bears in my running vest, with an equal amount of each in a drop bag I left at the 18 mile point. I eat a quarter of a sandwich, or 150 calories, every 40 minutes. I would have to eat more on an all-day run, but I can tolerate a deficit for a few hours.

1200 calories

Arthur's Rock trailhead

Front Range of the Colorado Rocky Mountains from South Ridge trail

The mountain lions of Horsetooth would like you know that they are still here

25 miles and 5000 feet of climbing on tired legs was hard. I fed as soon as I got home, ate a huge helping of spaghetti with pesto sauce for dinner a few hours later, and was asleep in bed by 9 p.m.

This morning I went back to Lory for a shorter run on some of the same trails, but in the other direction, shuffled. I went light on gear, broke in my new version 4 Speedgoats, and my legs felt fine. We're entering peak wildflower season and I stopped to take photos of penstemon, geranium, and delphinium. The latter, also known as larkspur, grows in large patches near the bottom of Well Gulch.

Delphinium

Another week of fair, if breezy and cool, weather. Good for running, unlike week fourteen of my 2019 season.

• 12 hours, 39 minutes

• 63.7 miles

• 9925 feet D+

Just short of 10,000 feet of climbing for the week. I had four weeks with greater mileage last season, but only two with more elevation gain.

I went back to the gravel track for 5 minute repeats on Wednesday. My effort was half-hearted: I ran the same pace as I did for my last track workout in March, and according to my watch, at a lower HR. I might be more fit, but I didn't translate that into more speed this week.

I practiced yoga twice and sets of pushups, split squats, and step ups after my easy run on Friday. I skipped one weight-lifting session to do a little more computer work.

One thing I didn't slack off on this week: running uphill. I went for a steep 8 mile run in Lory State Park on Thursday. Eight miles is short for me these days, I didn't bring food or water for this one. Saturday I went for an all-morning run at Bobcat Ridge. Bobcat Ridge is the name of the city's natural area. The name of the ridge I summitted twice is Green Ridge.

Looking east at Horsetooth and Milner mountains from Green Ridge

Today I went twice up the Towers road, from the Soderberg trailhead to the radio and television facilities at the top of Horsetooth Mountain Open Space. A local runner that I follow on Strava did this five times on Saturday, but two was all I needed today.

I was suprised to see the words Bye, Amazon in my feedreader this morning.

Firing whistleblowers isn’t just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets. It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.

I hope that his resignation helps moves the needle one more time.

Whew!

• 11 hours, 27 minutes

• 56.8 miles

• 8497 feet D+

This was 6 days of running, 4 in a row to end the week. One yoga practice on my off day, one post-run session of weight training. One speed workout at Pineridge: a 1-2-3-4-3-2-1 pyramid. One hill workout on the Greyrock trail on Friday morning. Greyrock Mountain (7,613 feet) is a dome of Silver Plume Granite formed 1.4 billion years ago, the same rock that makes up our closest 14-er, Longs Peak. It's a pretty peak with a little pond at the top. And the trail is steep, with long stretches of 13% grade.

Greyrock Mountain

Early morning shadows

Pasquesflower

Summit pond

From the summit, looking NE toward Nebraska and Wyoming

My workout at Greyrock was pretty intense. I was feeling it on my Saturday long run at Pineridge and still today on my long run at Lory State Park. I didn't get great photos today, but the weather and ambiance were fantastic: mist on the mountains from yesterday's rains giving way to sun and blue skies. The park is greening up quickly and will be bursting with geranium and penstemon in 1-2 weeks. I heard turkeys, saw an oriole, smelled wild plum blossoms, encountered friends who were wearing masks, too ✊. A great end to a hard week.

Here in Fort Collins, white people seem to be just about done with wearing masks and distancing. I spent the morning running by myself in Lory State Park and saw seven multi-family groups. I'm not sure what these people are thinking or telling themselves, but I'm a white person, and I know there's impatience with inconvenience, and denial in our makeup.

Me, I'm still running with a Buff, the stretchy cylindrical scarf, and I pull it up when approaching others on the trail. Reactions from people who are mostly not covering their faces is mixed. I see revulsion, I see shame, I see gratitude. I feel like it's really on runners and cyclists to be covering up like this. Walkers are mostly doing their best to give other groups space, but I'm encroaching on others quite a bit due to my choice of activity, trails, and time of day.

There's going to be a 2.0 version of shapely. Joris Van den Bossche has written an RFC for a roadmap.

Joris is a Pandas and GeoPandas developer. The GeoPandas team has identified some enhancements to shapely that would allow GeoPandas and shapely to reach new levels of performance, and we're going to implement them. A NumFOCUS grant will support some of this work.

I'm super late in blogging about this and commenting on the RFC, which has lead to a little confusion about whether I'm in favor of this. I am, 100 percent. Rewrites aren't easy, but this effort has a lot going for it: serious use cases, committed stakeholders, clever and pragmatic programmers, funding, and lots of goodwill. We're going to have a 2.0 version that removes cruft, adds killer new features, and isn't super difficult to migrate to.

Please read the RFC pull request and comment if you're into helping shape the future of Python's #1 open source GIS geometry package.

I haven't done this in a while! This afternoon was warm and it's fairly cloudy, so the warmth is hanging on. I'm outside in the dark, listening to music, and dealing with my open source backlog.

Today would have been a great day for working outdoors in the sun, but construction in the lot behind my house was too disruptive. Have I not mentioned this? My family and I have been practically confined to a construction site for the past 5 weeks. The beep-beep-fucking-beep of reverse gear alarms on earth-moving equipment starts promptly at 7 a.m. and goes on without a break until 4 p.m.

In related news, I have a new favorite show on WFMU, and am listening to it now: https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/KH.