January Digits and Frost Giant Double Take

What a whirlwind of a month! As of Dec. 24 2010 Meg and I were living in Gunnison and running in single digits. Now its been a month in the Fort and on Jan 28 Dakota and I ran 25M of 90% dry trail in 60 degree temps! How time flies... Training, motivation, and the joy/fun factor of running have been at an all time high! It's been awesome to learn and apply many of the Jack Daniels training principles. The big difference I'm noticing comparing this year to last is that of recovery days. Last year I ran 10-14 M most days; not to hard, not too easy. Looking back my body never really had an easy day to rejuvenate and I would simply take a day off running. This year I'm focusing on knowing the purpose of each given run. On easy days I run super easy putting in some good mellow miles and adding to the aerobic base. On fast days it's been great to plan out focusing on VO2 intervals, tempo/extended efforts to build lactic threshhold or fast reps to improve economy. With my easy days super easy my body is recovering and allowing me to run every day. My last day off was Christmas. The streak will end when it needs to; I'm simply enjoying the process and taking each day at a time. The variety has been great and it's a simple approach in its most basic tenets: alternating fast and easy days and throw in a long run each week. This is also the most miles I've run in a month despite not worrying much about my weekly totals and hoping quality will trump quantity to an extent.

January:

411.3 miles
13.2 miles/day
0 days off
0 meat
0 alcohol
Stretch or rollout each day of the month
1200 Pushups
2275 Crunches
239 Pullups

Weekly breakdown:

1/1 - 1/2: 23.4 M, Quality: 5K race, Long: 14M
1/3 - 1/9: 87.7 M, Quality: 1. 10-100 count Fartlek (10 easy, 10 fast etc), 2. 4x1M, 4x200m, 3. 5K race, Long: 16M
1/10 - 1/16: 98.2M, Quality: 1. 10x30 sec. fast during run, 2. Towers Time Trial, 3. 8x800m, Long: 24M
1/17- 1/23: 93.4M, Quality: 1. 12x400m, 2. 5x1200m, 3. 10x40 sec. fast during run, Long: 23M
1/24- 1/30: 97.9M, Quality: 1. 2x1.5M, 1x2M, 2. Towers Time Trial, 3. 5K and 10K race, Long: 25M
1/31: 10.7M

Frost Giant Races-

Yesterday was another fun day of racing. It was the first time I've ever run 2 races in a day; good to experience something new! Senor Clark put up a nice write up on his blog- great description of the terrain we encountered on a road/dirt road/cross country course. The 5K start was a rude awakening. Felt a bit sluggish during the warmup and once we started I was breathing way too hard and settled in a few ticks back of the lead group of Youngster, Swank, Saunders, and Clark. Just before the mile I passed the Youngster (high school?) and it appeared the others had eased off the gas a bit. Before 1.5 I passed Saunders on the dirt road. I watched as Clark put a strong gap on Swank who appeared to be slowing ever so slightly. From mile 2 to the finish I gave it what I had and made up about 20 sec. on Swank who crossed the line 2 ticks before me...just a little too late.

The 10K felt amazingly better than the 5K. Our first mile was semi casual as the top four runners in the 5K doubled up. Clark was running strong and had a sizable gap after the first mile. Shortly after mile 1 I passed Swank and started getting into a good rhythm. The slightly slower pace felt amazing as I'm obviously geared towards endurance than speed. Put in a consistent effort throughout the race and finished strong in 2nd.

Results:

5K- Senor 17:56, Swank 18:26, RWB 18:28, Saunders 18:55
10K-Senor 36:23, RWB 37:28, Saunders 38:26, Swank 38:34

Senor is looking great for NOLA. Hay's in the barn at this point. Good to finally put some faces to names-running Towers at night you never know who is who when it's dark and headlamps are all you see of a face- good meeting Alex May and catching up with Rick Denning of Bells Racing Team. Greeley Superbowl 5K up next.