Mon - O

Tues - 9 miles (1,900'). HTH 8-mile course, easy. 1:20 total, 1:07 on course.

Weds - 9 miles (1,900'). 1:19. As Tuesday. Effort felt harder, watch said otherwise. Splits: to '2 mile' 23:00, Towers 16:35 (39:35), Herrington 7:42 (47:17), Horsetooth trail 13:27 (60:44), parking lot 5:51 (66:35).

Thurs - 14.5 miles (3,000'). 2:17. Horsetooth big loop. Sloppy and snowy.

Fri - 9 miles (1,900'). As Tuesday. No watch. Started this one out as an easy run, but the legs felt good and wanted to go faster, so they did.

Sat - 6.5 miles (1,600'). Horsetooth FKT attempt.

Sun - 22.5 miles (4,600'). 4:05. Beautiful morning in Fort Collins, so great to be out running some long hard miles with good friends. Pete Stevenson, Nick Pedatella and Jason Ostrom met at my house and we did the Horsetooth/Lory grand tour. The big loop is 21 miles w/ 4,500' starting and ending at the upper parking lot: Soderburg - Horsetooth - Westridge - Mill Creek - Howard - Timber - Lory service drive - East Valley - Sawmill - Loggers - Herrington - Towers - Herrington - Spring Creek - Soderburg.

Coming down from Arthur's Rock on the Timber trail it was super icy and pretty treacherous - so very slow going. The lower valley trails coming back into Horsetooth are still pretty sloppy, but not too bad. Everything else was patchy snow and ice, but mainly dirt and all runnable. We took it pretty easy today, but it felt great to get out for a longer run.

Total: 70.5 miles (14,900')

Stepped up the mileage a bit this week, while continuing to hit the hills. Felt strong and fit on the long run today, which is great. Will probably try and come in with similar numbers next week for three weeks of solid hills and then take it easy the next week. I think it's going to be important to remain restrained on the training front until the new year as all three of my possible goal races for 2010 are mid to late summer.

Running the FoCo 4 mile Turkey race on Thursday. I'm hoping to hit 22 minutes, but as usual have no idea how my road fitness is, so who knows. The sponsors put up a significant purse that goes eight deep, so there are always plenty of speedsters and it's typically a big field. Fernando Cabada won last year's race in 18:59, and Olympic marathoner, Nuta Olaru won the female race in 21:25. My goal is to finish top three age group so I can bring home a pie. The age-group pie has eluded me the last two years, so this year I mean business!