Week 15 was my peak week before Quad Rock. I didn't run a lot, but it was all high quality running.

• 14 hours, 23 minutes all training

• 24.8 miles running

• 6,020 feet D+ running

Tuesday I hiked and ran up and down Green Mountain in Boulder, my first time on that route. I went up the steep side and down the runnable side. It's a ridiculously steep trail: in the first mile I gained 1,300 feet of elevation. There's a ladder at one point, that's how steep it is. The second mile has a short runnable section and averages only 19%. I went steadily to the top and ran the downhills of Ranger and Gregory Canyon as fast as I could while sight-reading. Green Mountain is fun, easy to access, and loved almost to death by Boulderites. The Amphitheater and Saddle Rock trails are in bad shape.

The geology of Boulder's Mountain Parks and Lory State Park are similar, but because the intrusion of the Boulder Creek Batholith there is broader and 1,000 feet higher than at Horsetooth Mountain and Arthur's Rock, there is no schist or gneiss to be found on Green Mountain. It was shoved aside a billion and a half years ago. The red Fountain Formation sandstone that provides Boulder's striking backdrop is immediately adjacent to igneous grandiorite and pegmatite.

Thursday I ran Quad Rock's second climb and first descent from the Horsetooth Open Space trailhead. I went hard for half of the climb and got some personal bests on a few segments. I was close to a personal best on the descent as well. Some parts of Spring Creek are in such bad shape that I slowed down to stay safe. Hopefully we'll get some moisture before Quad Rock, that would keep the rocks and gravel a little more glued down.

Saturday I went out for 13 miles on the Quad Rock course with other local runners. I pushed on the climbs again, got a few PRs, and a near PR on the Mill Creek climb pretty easily.

The other half of my week 15 training was on my bike, on my yoga mat, or moving weights. Daily crunches, calf raises, and heel drops are keeping my hips and Achilles tendons, perennial sources of pain, in great shape. My knees are the only things bugging me now, and they'll be okay once I'm warmed up and racing.

Speaking of heel drops, I got a great tip recently: unless your heels touch down on a surface below your toes, your body may not adapt as effectively as it could. I'd been doing heel drops into space, but have switched to dropping from a thick book (Sunset Magazine's Western Garden Book). I believe it's making a difference.

Week 16 will be fine tuning, not tapering. I will run hard, but in smaller doses.

Welp, I'm joining the ranks of the unemployed tech workers again.

As before, I'm in a good situation. I don't depend on my former employer for health insurance. I've got some severance and savings, my family is in good health, we have a roof over our heads, and I have good connections. I don't feel afraid.

But maybe I should? The job market is worse than last time this happened to me. I've seen experienced and talented people go for weeks and months without offers, and read some harrowing stories about what under-employment looks like for older tech workers these days.

After a little detour into the biomedical field, I'm looking to get back into helping to solve important geospatial problems. If you've got them, please let me know.

Hello, my name is Sean Gillies, and this is my blog. I write about running, cooking and eating, gardening, travel, family, programming, Python, API design, geography, geographic data formats and protocols, open source, and internet standards. Fort Collins, Colorado, is my home.

Email me with questions or comments on any of my posts: sean.gillies@gmail.com.

Update: I'm currently looking for work in the geospatial field, remote or in Colorado. Please check out my CV.

I needed my training to begin to peak in week 14. Quad Rock is in 20 days (at this writing), and I won't get much adaptation to workout loading in the last 13 days. Weeks 14 and 15 would be my last opportunities to get faster and stronger before the race. Fortunately, a return to good health and favorable weather helped make this my best week yet.

• 13 hours, 8 minutes all training

• 42.7 miles running

• 8,550 feet D+ running and treadmill

The first block of my training was dedicated to power and pure speed, The second to intense aerobic efforts. This last block is about going up and down technical mountain trails at my race pace or a bit faster. In practice, I push pretty hard for half of each climb, run the downhills as fast as I can, and otherwise keep it easy, but not slow.

I did three workouts like this, plus two shorter tempo runs at Pineridge Open Space, which is flatter than the Quad Rock course. Five days of comfortably hard to just plain hard running, a recovery ride on Tuesday, and a full day off to recover on Friday.

Today I went for a loop in Lory State Park that I did five weeks ago. The loop includes the last seven-mile stanza of the 25-mile QR poem: a 1,000 foot climb up from the Arthurs Rock aid station, some rolling terrain, and a 1,100 foot descent to the finish line. I did the loop in the same time as I did in March, but at a noticeably lower level of effort. I'm counting on being able to run at an even faster pace at a higher level of effort in May.

Thursday I ran at elevation for the ffirst time this season, a loop around Lumpy Ridge in Rocky Mountain National Park that begins just below 8,000 feet and tops out just above 9,000 feet. There is no snow to speak of at Lumpy Ridge. If the aspen in the Cow Creek drainage on the more remote north side of Lumpy Ridge had more leaves, you might think it was mid-summer.

I loved seeing water in Cow Creek, even if it was only a July-level flow. At least the birds and mammals have something to drink.

Week 13 started out pretty strong. I returned to my favorite Monday evening yoga class, did a fun run with strides at Pineridge on Tuesday, and then a hard running interval workout on Towers Trail in Horsetooth Open Space on Wednesday. Thursday I had cold symptoms again and shifted to dog walking and bike riding for the rest of the week. The running numbers for the week are nothing much.

• 11 hours, 35 minutes all training

• 14.6 miles running

• 2,041 feet D+ running

By Saturday afternoon I felt much better, which gave me hope for a solid week 14.

In week 12, I started to get things back on track after being sick. I ran five days, biked one day, and took Saturday off to take my family to a Nuggets game in Denver.

• 12 hours, 9 minutes all training

• 34.8 miles running

• 5,800 ft D+ running (and treadmill)

My energy level was low to mid until Friday, when I rallied for a good interval workout on a 12% incline treadmill indoors and a sauna session after. My fitness didn't advance much in week ten, but I didn't lose a step. According to the machine, I went "up" beyond any of the Quad Rock climbs, and at a pace that I'd love to hit on race day.

Saturday, as I mentioned previously, I sat on my butt in a car and in Ball Arena, with Ruthie and our kids, and then we all met my folks in Denver for an early dinner. It was a wonderfully easy and sociable day. Some days I think we should be living in Denver instead of Fort Collins, and this was one of those days.

Sunday I went out for three hours on the rolling and punchy dirt trails east of Horsetooth Reservoir, intending to get 90 minutes of Z2-Z3 running. It was a great run. My legs felt lively during miles 2-12, and I pushed my gas pedal with enthusiasm. If I'd brought another two gels, I could have avoided bottoming out at mile 14. I'm hoping to feel that good and pain free at Quad Rock.

I had big plans for week eleven and then came down with a cold. My Wednesday workout's mediocre feeling was the first indication. The rest of the week I shifted into recovery rides and easy runs.

• 10 hours, 23 minutes all training

• 19.2 miles running

• 2,306 ft D+ running

It wasn't a terrible week, to be clear. I didn't fall apart physically, or anything like that. My concern is that it was the first week where I didn't progress very much in my Quad Rock training season.

I'm squishing four weeks worth of recap into this one post.

First, the numbers.

• 40 hours, 32 minutes all training

• 99 miles running

• 15,600 ft D+ running (and treadmill)

I'm less concerned with miles than I used to be, but I'm still writing these numbers down for continuity's sake.

I'm running four days a week and riding or other cross-training 2-3 days. Two of my runs are easy, but not slow. One has some high intensity intervals or hill sprints. The other is a 2-3 hour run with 45-60 minutes of tempo pace in the middle. My top speed hasn't increased in the past four weeks, but my easy pace has improved a lot. With five more weeks of training ahead before I begin to taper off, I'm looking forward to getting even faster at zones 2 and 3.

I've been switching between potential race shoes on my faster and longer runs. While the Hoka Tecton X 3 are growing on me, and the Kjerag are fun, I'm 99% sure that I'll run Quad Rock 25 in La Sportiva Prodigio Pros. They're well suited to the course, fit me well, and feel stable, fast, and adequately cushioned.

My favorite run of March was a Friday afternoon outing in Lory State Park with my friend, Dana. He's not training for any event, but is naturally faster than me, so our runs are a great opportunity to go a little harder. On this occasion we did two warm up miles in the valley and then went rapidly up Quad Rock climb no. 3 and quickly down descent no. 3 to what will be the finish on race day. I recorded segment times that were only a few seconds off my personal bests, and wasn't wrecked afterwards.

Last Sunday I went out by myself and ran through the first and second Quad Rock climbs (and matching descents). My calves and hamstrings cramped after a long, hard push in the middle of the run, and I struggled for the last four miles. That's the first time this season, a good reminder to fuel better on my long runs.

30 minutes of mobility and core strength exercises every morning are keeping my body in good shape. I've no Achilles tendinitis. My hips and back are pain free. No foot trouble. Inflammation and swelling in my right knee is troubling, but I'm keeping it in check with ice and, sometimes, ibuprofen. I hear that some people benefit from tart cherry extract as a supplement, and I'm going to give that a try.

After a couple years of being injured, I'm grateful to be close to 100 percent. It feels good.

I ran four times, did one elliptical recovery spin on cold day, a recovery bike ride, one weight-lifting session, one yoga class, and the daily mobility and core workout six times.

• 12 hours, 56 minutes all training

• 27.2 miles running

• 6,100 ft D+ running *

I put an asterisk by the elevation gain, because two-thirds of this was on a treadmill during interval workouts. There were no matching descents, and that's the toughest part of running in the mountains.

Running uphill is hard, but also relatively low impact. That's a win-win for my training. I'm doing almost all of my intense running right now at 10-12%, on a treadmill or steep road. In week six, I did 27 minutes of hard 30/30 running. Running on an 8% incline at an 11 minutes per mile pace felt more fun than going slower on a steeper setting. I'll do more of this.

I'm adjusting my Quad Rock training plan a bit to match my current fitness and race goals. Since I want to run the race faster and am responding well to the speed work that I am doing, I'm going to do more. Instead of four evenly sized four-week blocks of training, I'm switching to three blocks. A final block dedicated to improving my all-day pace isn't the best way to help me finish a 25 mile race in under five hours. Instead, the last block before the race will be devoted to zone 2-3 efforts and downhill running. I will also expand the length of my tempo run block from four to five weeks. In a nutshell: more speed, less slogging.

Unusually mild weather helped make week five productive. I can feel the benefits as I write this, a week later.

• 11 hours, 37 minutes all training

• 19.3 miles running

• 1,890 ft D+ running

Tuesday I did hill sprints on the "Wallenberg Wall" in my neighborhood. My cadence has increased, and I was a second faster on average. 23 seconds instead of 24. Getting faster is one of my goals, and I'm making measurable progress.

Thursday I tried my first running intervals: 9 minutes at 9.5/10 rate of perceived exertion (RPE). This was on a road that starts at 5% incline and increases to 12%. To help keep the quality of the running intervals high, I'm practicing 30/30 running like I did last year, interleaving 30 seconds of maximum effort with 30 seconds of micro-recovery high effort. I ran by a utility crew on Centennial Drive and got some cheers and good-natured heckling for my effort.

Tuesday and Friday, I lifted weights at the gym. I'm doing 5 x 5 sets of back squats at the rack to build more muscle and increase the power of my legs. It's going well.

By Saturday, my legs need a bit of a break. I went for an easy ride with a few hard pushes, and gave the single track stretch of Timber trail a go. I can ride it cleanly on my mountain bike. It's more challenging on a gravel bike with no suspension and narrower tires.

Sunday, I did a long-ish run on the ridge east of Horsetooth Reservoir. "The reservoir", as we say here, though there are many reservoirs, because it's the biggest one. I went at the pace I'd like to run at Quad Rock, and felt good during the run and afterwards.