Training week thirteen recap

The first week of the second half of my winter/spring running season is done.

• 10 hours and 52 minutes

• 57.5 miles

• 6762 feet D+

My biggest weekly mileage yet! I get to write this almost every week now and find it quite fun to do so. This is not my biggest week measured by time spent on my feet because my long runs were shorter than two weeks ago and I had two longish workouts and a longish steady run. Friday morning my workout centered on 3 7-9 minute intervals of power hiking on the Towers Road in Horsetooth Open Space followed by 5 shorter intervals of hard running on a segment of the Towers Road known to Strava users as Ax Murderer. 15% grade for a quarter mile. The Towers Road has two equally steep ramps near the top. I'm a slow runner, but a relatively fast and strong hiker. On group outings, I tend to slip off the back on the flats and downhills and catch up on the steeper climbs. Hiking is a big part of my plan for finishing the Quad Rock and I'm trying to practice and improve at it. Running hard uphill in a workout is something I'm doing purely to build endurance and power, I won't be sprinting or bounding uphill during the race.

I'm trying to follow advice of more experienced runners like Sarah Lavender Smith, author of the Trail Runners Companion, which is to make the hard days harder and the easy days easier. The weather is helping by sucking on workout days and being beautiful on long run days.