Bear training weeks 15-17 recap

It's another three week batch post! My day job, home projects, and running are pretty demanding right now. It's hard to find time to do one of these posts each week like I did last year. I hope the situation changes!

I finally feel like I'm getting into something like racing form and am enjoying it. I'm doing one intense hill workout each week and they are paying off; I have more energy going uphill up longer weekend runs. In four of the past five weeks I've done one long run with at least two Quad Rock climbs, and in the past three weeks I've added one more run with a single QR climb. The only Quad Rock climb that I haven't done recently is the first. I'll try to get to that next week. Here are the numbers for the last three weeks!

Week 15:

• 32.4 miles running and hiking

• 7 hours, 4 minutes

• 3,422 ft D+

Week 16:

• 47.5 miles running

• 10 hours, 2 minutes

• 6,808 ft D+

Week 17:

• 51.3 miles running

• 10 hours, 46 minutes

• 7,234 ft D+

I spent the weekend of week 15 in Tucson with Ruthie enjoying some sun, warmth, and food. I ran in Tucson's Mountain Park, we hiked in Saguaro National Park, did some birding around the city, it was great to get away from the cold and snow in Fort Collins. I like Tucson and want write more about it soon.

Running conditions here in Fort Collins change from day to day in April. One of my four-hour runs was on dry, dusty dirt, and the next was on snow and mud.

Quad Rock is in 13 days. I'm not planning to do a long taper, instead I'm going to treat it as a very long, volunteer supported training run. I'm going to run hard next week and try to bump my vertical above 8,000 feet, and then will back off early in week 19, but still end up over 60 miles distance and 12,000 ft D+ for race week.