2017 - First Quarter Recap

Well, the first quarter of 2017 is over and TransRockies is just a little over 4 months away. EEEEEK! I feel confident about my training though and I think it will be an enjoyable experience. So far this year, I have logged 367.89 miles, which is slightly over my total for all of 2016. To say I’ve really upped my mileage would be an understatement. Five times during this quarter I ran at least a half-marathon. My longest run to date is 16 miles, I really ran 17 miles that day, but the first mile was a “warm-up” to test my knee and I stopped my watch and waited about 30 minutes before starting my 16-mile run that day. What’s crazy is that over the past three months I’ve only “climbed” 18,428 feet and TransRockies is supposed to be 20,000 feet in just six days, it looks like I need to quite literally step it up in the elevation department. I started treadmill running once per week at an 8% incline to get some “hills” in on a more regular basis. I only started doing that a couple weeks ago, so, hopefully adding that weekly will get my elevation numbers up. My average speed for the first quarter was 4.9 miles per hour, I really want to see that get to the 5-6 range in the next month. Coming up in the next few months, I have a 33k (20.7 miles) in April, a 50k (30.07 miles) in May, and a marathon (26.2 miles) in June. Yes, you read that right, I am skipping the marathon distance and going straight to Ultra in May and then in June I back down to a marathon, except that the marathon will be over 10,000 feet in altitude and have over 6,000 feet in elevation gain. I would say that the Leadville Marathon will be a true test of grit even more than the ultra or TransRockies. We have an 8.5 hour cutoff for that one and it’s the primary reason I really want to increase my speed and efficiency moving uphill. Wish me luck and injury free running in the 2nd quarter! Bring on the heat and the elevation!