Mon - 1.5 miles. Aborted mission with very sore legs.
Tues - Noon: 6 miles easy (500') valley trails. Legs still sore, but definitely good to go. Cruised coming back which felt good.
PM: 6.5 miles (1,200') easy with the FCTR crew at Reservoir Ridge.
Weds - Noon: 9.5 miles (1,200'). Overlook/Valley. Ribs really hurt on this one to the point that I had to stop and catch my breath a couple of times.
PM: 5.5 miles (500'). Milner Mtn loop. Super easy. Tried not to focus on my ribs and felt much better than on the noon run.
Thurs - Noon: 9.5 miles (1,200'). Overlook/Valley. Wow, ribs hurt again and struggled again to get sufficient air, especially in the stifling heat.
PM: 7 miles (1,800'). 34:10. Up and down Towers at a moderate effort. Took a pain killer before heading out for this one. Made things a little less excruciating. Probably should have just bagged the run, but I'm pig headed like that.
Fri - Noon: 9 miles (2,600'). Found myself in Boulder, and just happened to have some running gear in the back of the truck, so went from Chautauqua up Gregory - Ranger - Green - Bear/Green - Bear Canyon, Mesa. Super easy. Ribs felt moderately better, but still not great.
Sat - AM: 24.5 miles (5,100'). ~5:00. Comanche Peak Loop. Big improvement on the rib front, although that was aided by dropping a pain reliever pre-run.
Sun - AM: 21 miles (2,400'). 3:13. Blue Sky to Devil's Backbone from home w/ Indian Summer add-on outbound. Bumped into Jen Malmberg at the trailhead, so ran much of the route with her and Cherilyn, although ratcheted up the effort a bit coming home to get a good six or seven faster miles in on tired legs. Hot out but felt awesome. Ribs better again, but still felt like I needed to take a pain reliever before the run in order to get sufficient air. Pretty sure I'll be pain free by Wasatch though.
Total: 100 miles (16,500').
The plan for Monday was to go long on the back of the Pikes Marathon the day before. That didn't happen and was a completely unrealistic expectation given the abusive nature of racing down Pikes Peak. However, I was able to build the mileage through the week and come in with the kind of numbers I wanted with less than two weeks until Wasatch. I haven't run 100 miles in a week since before Western States, so this week was a good mental boost. With Pikes added in, I ran close to 25k of vert and 130 miles in the last eight days.
The legs felt great towards the end of the week, so with 11 days of easy running/no running upcoming I am confident that they'll be good to go for their last long outing of the year in Utah. In no way am I as prepared for Wasatch as I was for Western, but I am quietly confident that I can still push out a strong run. Dakota was telling me on Saturday that only four guys have gone under 20 hours at Wasatch (Geoff Roes, Karl Meltzer, Kyle Skaggs & Nate McDowell), so I kind of have that in the back of my mind as a time goal, in addition to hopefully being competitive against other runners in the field.
I didn't realize it at the time, but apparently I must have landed my ribs on a rock or something on one of my diggers from Pikes last weekend. The pain has been pretty intense through the week, especially when trying to fill the lungs when working hard (problematic for a runner), but it seemed to reach a crescendo on Thursday and has since tapered off a bit. I'm pretty confident that it will be background noise at worst for Wasatch.
Looking forward to some rest.
