This was a rest week and I ran just 3 days. I did one bike ride, my usual strength and conditioning session, a yoga session and did two half days of telemark skiing at Steamboat. No hiking, but plenty of bumps, so I got a pretty solid workout. Though I didn't run today, I did run yesterday evening after skiing. Steamboat Springs has a trail system that is plowed mostly clear in the winter. I always lose the trail before Emerald Park whether I'm coming from the north or the south, but that's not the city's fault.

The numbers:

• 3 hours running
• 17.8 miles
• 404 feet D+

I spent more time cross-training than running, which is fine.

A big highlight of the week was helping Bea discover some new skiing terrain. She was super excited to be going through these black diamond gates for the first time.

In The Case for Impeaching Donald Trump, Jason Kottke writes:

Meanwhile, the US government and a populace bewitched by breaking news is stuck in traffic, gawking at this continually unfolding accident. And we somehow can’t or won’t act to remove him from the most powerful job in the world, this person that not even his supporters would trust to borrow their cars or water their plants while on vacation.

It's time. To not impeach is irresponsible. It's cowardice.

Read the whole Atlantic article here.

I ran outdoors six days this week and did two speed workouts. I had a strength and conditioning workout on Monday, my only day off running, and yoga sessions Tuesday and Friday, so 1-2 activities a day. It was a pretty big week. I'm feeling tired but good.

• 9:37 running time
• 45.6 miles
• 5217 feet D+

I ran one more hour this week than last and covered 3 fewer miles. This is because Saturday's long run was an epic slog with longtime FOSS4G compatriot and actual ultrarunner David Bitner through snow over the fifth and second climbs of the Quad Rock 50 course. I'd intended it to be the first and second climbs, but missed a turn. I missed three turns in all, and one of them took us up to Horsetooth Rock.

Wondering how I ever got a job in mapping

It snowed the night before our run and we had to do a bit of trail breaking. Otherwise, the conditions were great for running, no ice to speak of and good traction. This will drastically change this week.

It was great to catch up with David and absorb his sage advice about ultrarunning. Best outing of the year, for sure.

I took a few days off work at the start of the year. I did a little open source software support and issue gardening this weekend to warm up and will be back at work making the geospatial doughnuts full time tomorrow.

Here are a couple photos I took on the flight home from Boise, sitting on the North side of the plane for once. The reflection in the engine cowling chrome really makes the first one for me.

Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park

The Rawah and Never Summer Ranges and Cameron Pass

The numbers:

• 8:30 running time
• 48.5 miles distance
• 4268 feet D+

I bought new shoes last week and used them on all my trail runs this week. I still like the Speedgoat 3. Some reviewers have written that the max cushioning removes all trail feeel, but I must be a bit bigger than these reviewers because I still feel the trail. I feel it more gently, though, which suits me perfectly.

My Mom's hometown, Boise, ID has an extensive system of nicely planned trails. I ran 13 miles on dirt trails starting from the Cottonwood Creek trailhead above the VA hospital. Although steep in some sections, the trails were so smooth that I beat my Lory State Park pace by 2 minutes per mile. These trails were made for fast cruising.

Heading up on a packed snow trail

Beginning of the descent back to Boise

We spent Christmas at home in Fort Collins and saved our travel for the New Year. Yesterday we flew from Denver to Boise to visit my Mom and stepfather. The views on this route can be spectacular when the sky is clear, and it was. Waypoints on the flight: Berthoud Pass; Dinosaur National Monument; Evanston, Wyoming; Cache Valley and Logan, UT; Twin Falls, ID; and finally, Boise.

Peaks of the Colorado Front Range

The Green River and Canyon of Lodore

The Wasatch and Wellsville Ranges and Logan, Utah

There is almost no snow on the ground in Boise, but it's cold. Not too cold to run, however, and I had a good one along the river today. Tomorrow I'm going to do a longer run up in the hills above downtown.

I ran 195 times in 2018, including 3 local races: April's Horsetooth half marathon, May's Quad Rock 25 mile, and September's Black Squirrel. I accumulated some good numbers.

• 198 hours and 18 minutes
• 1,111.1 miles
• 84,770 feet D+

I've never run more miles in a year since I started keeping track in 2015. I ran 934 miles in 2016 and 903 in 2017.

December was my biggest month of running since August 2017 when I was training for the Blue Sky trail marathon, and my second biggest ever. If everything goes according to plan, I'm going to go far into new training territory in January, February, and March of 2019. My body feels fine so far, though I did feel a bit pounded after my last 14 mile run along the ridge east of Horsetooth Reservoir. To try to keep my legs fresh I went to Altitude Running and added a new pair of Hoka One One Speedgoat 3 shoes to my collection.

I took them for a spin around Pineridge and Maxwell on New Year's eve. It's a much different ride than my old favorite Nikes, but I like it. They're bouncy.

Hi, my name is Sean Gillies, and this is my blog. I've been writing here since 2005 and more often in the past year as I've weaned myself off Twitter. I'm going to write even more in 2019. What about? Generally: life and work. You can subscribe to either or both of those feeds if you like, in case running or standards wonkery bores. More specifically, I write about running, cooking and eating, travel, family, programming, Python, API design, geographic data formats and protocols, open source, and internet standards. Mostly running and local geography. I live mostly in Fort Collins, Colorado, and sometimes in Montpellier, France. I work at a startup called Mapbox, building location data services and products.

I hope you'll subscribe or continue to subscribe. I love to get comments on my posts via email. You can find my address in the "about" page linked at the top of this page.

This was my hardest week of training yet. My weekend long runs added up to 24 miles and I did my first serious speed workout on the day after Christmas: running as fast as I could maintain for 5 minutes with a 1 minute rest, repeated 4 times. I ran at the CSU intramural fields. One loop around the light posts is about 4/5 mile. My pace for the intervals was about 7:45 per mile, a bit slow. I blame the cold and holiday excess. I'm going to try to pick it up on my next workout, tomorrow, which will have to be indoors on a treadmill since it's going to be too cold to run outdoors. Indoors, New Year's day, probably not a recipe for record breaking pace, but we'll see.

My family gave me a Garmin Forerunner 35 as a gift. I've enjoyed leaving my phone behind on shorter runs and have been using its heart rate function to modify my long runs. If Garmin's model of my maximum heart rate is correct, I've been going too easily on the flat or downhill sections and too hard on the uphill sections of past runs. On Saturday's long run I flipped this around to keep my heart rate mostly in the 70-80 percent range (lots of D+ meant going over a bit) and increased my overall pace compared to my previous shorter run on the same route. I'm going to continue to try to make my long runs easy, but not too easy, as the miles increase in future weeks.

I didn't do any significant amount of biking last week, but did 50 minutes on an elliptical machine at the gym listening to France Inter programs, and did two one-hour strength and conditioning workouts, one at Become Fit (squats, dead lifts, box steps, etc) and one heated flow yoga class at Raintree. I missed my favorite deep stretch yoga class.

The numbers:

• 7:55 running time
• 42.2 miles
• 3389 feet D+