This was my biggest week since the end of June. A busy family calendar made it hard to get more time on the trail.

• 9 hours, 40 minutes

• 42.8 miles

• 7,303 ft D+

The Superior trail race is less than three weeks away. I'm planning to run quite a bit this week, do some fine tuning for a week, and then have a short one week taper.

I'm solo parenting next week while Ruth is traveling. Between work, running, and the first week of school for the kids, I'm going to be busy. Apologies in advance for delayed replies to emails and open source project issues.

Week twenty was supposed to be a rest week. I took it pretty easy and did just one long high-altitude run on Friday. From the Bear Lake Road Park and Ride lot in Rocky Mountain National Park, I ran past Bierstadt Lake, up to Flattop Mountain (12,324 ft), Ptarmigan Pass, and back. 16 miles and 4,000 ft of elevation gain in all. I saw moose grazing in Bierstadt Lake, elk at Ptarmigan Pass, and pika all over the FLattop Mountain trail. This run dominated my numbers for the week.

• 7 hours, 3 minutes

• 26.1 miles

• 5,020 ft D+

I want to get ~110 miles and 15,000 ft of climbing in over the next two weeks. I hope weather and my health continue to stay good.

I spent most of week nineteen on the hot and humid coast of North Carolina. I did three hour-long barefoot runs on the beach, some bodyweight strength training, and three hour-long surfing lessons. Back at home on the weekend, I did one long run at Horsetooth Open Space. Two trips to the summit from the parking lot. That one run accounted for 3,900 ft of my week's elevation gain. There aren't any hills on Hatteras Island. Here are the numbers for the week.

• 7 hours, 16 minutes

• 29.5 miles

• 3,973 ft D+

I'm on vacation until Monday, August 8. I hope that you are, too. Apologies in advance for slow response to emails, DMs, and GitHub mentions.

I continue to feel fine and finished a hard hill interval workout and some tempo running in week 18. Saturday was a travel day but I did get in a long run out here on Hatteras Island island yesterday. The training volume for the week is a little lower than I planned, but that's okay. I'm happy to be at the seaside with with my family.

• 7 hours, 21 minutes

• 36.9 miles

• 3,071 ft D+

After 3 weeks of little training, I'm back at it in week 17. 5 trail runs with plenty of hills.

• 8 hours, 35 minutes

• 38 miles

• 7,493 ft D+

I spent 2:30 riding 30 miles on my bike on top of that. About half riding to and from Pineridge Open Space, but also did a longer ride on Saturday instead of running. I'm going to try to run 55 miles next week and 65 in week 19. That's down quite a bit from my peak volume in the past two years.

This week I became a Fort Collins municipal internet utility customer. 1 Gbps up and down for $60 a month.

I called the cable company on Tuesday to cancel and was told that they were going to refund me $25 in the process of squaring up my account. Sweet! Then today I got an email announcing my next month's bill. The cable company is terrible at their business. I wonder how many times I will have to cancel my account before it sticks?

This is a great upgrade. The house my family was renting in France got fiber in 2017. I'm just saying.

I had some health troubles during weeks 14-16 and got very little training done while feeling generally crappy and worried. On June 16 (end of week 13) I went for a 20 mile run in the hills and struggled on the climbs. I was unusually out of breath and after I finished I was a bit dizzy. The next day I was mildly feverish and I continued to have an elevated temperature and noticeable lethargy during my run on Tuesday, the 28th. I took a COVID test and it was negative. On the 29th I went out for an interval workout and quit after my warmup. I felt dizzy, achy, without energy, and was seeing a heart rate on my Garmin watch that conflicted with what I was feeling: anomalously low at times. I took another COVID test, again negative. Friday, July 1, I had a virtual visit with my doctor, who recommended a PCR test for flu and COVID and some blood work. The PCR test was negative and the lab report said I was normal on all counts. About this time I became aware of twitching in my chest, which I noticed most when I was laying down before falling asleep, or in the middle of the night. At first I chalked this up to anxiety, but after several days of no relief and some very confusing heart rate measurements on my run on July 5 (after which I joked "Getting confusing HR signals from my watch. Either it or I am about to die.") I got a live, in-person visit with my doctor and a ECG, which revealed premature atrial and ventricular complexes (PACs and PVCs). My heart really was malfunctioning.

I got fitted with a wearable ECG to collect more data and had a generally crappy week of heart twitches, poor sleep, anxiety, and no running while waiting to get a echo scan of my heart and a consultation with a cardiologist. In week 16 (starting July 11), I began to feel a little better. I found that I could hike and run at a super easy pace and not feel terrible, so I began to treat it like an ordinary recovery week (every 4th week of my training blocks are recovery weeks). On July 14 I drove to the UC Health hospital in Greeley, which has some extra capacity, and got an echo scan (sonogram) of my heart. The initial assessment said that I had an enlarged right ventricle. That didn't sound good. My heart palpitations continued to subside, but I still had five stressful days of waiting before my cardiology appointment on Tuesday of this week (week 17). The cardiologist disagreed with the initial assessment of my echo scan and didn't recommend any other scans. I don't have an enlarged ventricle. Other than the PACs and PVCs, which continue to diminish, my heart is in good shape. I had a treadmill stress test on Friday and passed. We measured only a few PVCs during the test.

This week I started running a little harder and have been feeling fine. It seems like I only had a temporary episode of premature contractions that were likely triggered by an unknown virus. My watch's measurement of my heart rate is back to normal, too. Neither it, nor I am going to die soon.

Here are the numbers for weeks 14-16.

Week 14:

• 3 hours, 11 minutes

• 15.1 miles

• 3,428 ft D+

Week 15:

• 1 hour, 57 minutes

• 9.6 miles

• 1,056 ft D+

Week 16:

• 3 hours, 45 minutes

• 18.1 miles

• 1,631 ft D+

I had been aiming for 120 miles of running and 20,000 feet of climbing in weeks 14 and 15 and got nowhere near that. I missed two big weeks of training, but I'm trying not to sweat about that. I've had enough worrying in the past three weeks, I don't need to add worry about training to my problems. I'm still on track to run the Superior 50 in 7 weeks.

I had leftover ground beef and lamb from making burgers last night and turned that into no-recipe Korean-style sloppy joes for lunch on the deck with Ruth and Bea. I started by making a generous sofrito of onion, celery, yellow bell pepper, garlic, and ginger in a cast-iron skillet. When that had softened and started to color, I pushed it to one side and browned the meat (half a pound of beef, half a pound of lamb), stirring all of it together when the meat had cooked through and crisped a bit. For the sauce, I stirred in three tablespoons of vegetarian oyster sauce, a splash of black vinegar, a teaspoon of sesame oil, a quarter cup of gochujang, a teaspoon of salt, a tablespoon of sugar, half a teaspoon of black pepper, and half a cup of water. When it had reduced, I checked the salt, added a bit more, and then spooned it onto toasted buns. Sesame seeds, green onion (from my garden), and cucumbers dressed with rice wine vinegar provided the finishing touch.

I like the traditional sloppy joe, too. But I like it even more with ginger and sesame oil. The mild, sweet funkiness of gochujang goes very well with lamb.