Week of 3/12 - 3/18

First off, big congratulations to my friend over at There is Gold in Them Hills for his performance at the Georgia Marathon (road) 3:34:29, he has not posted a race report but I am sure he will soon, check it out here.

Well, this week you would have thought it was late May we had temperatures in the high 60's bright sunny skies and to top it all off I had a run on Sunday in 72 degrees, zero wind and clouds.  There continues to be progression in my running and things are continuing to look on the up and up.  Hill repeats over at the Blue Hills access road continue to be Wednesday adventure, I truely hate them, but do them, blah.  Core strength and stretching have also remained in the routine which I am happy about, trying not to let them drift off.  The core strength and stretching I think have been the biggest benefit to my running this year.  What adds to this is the 5am text message competition with Chris C to see who is up and actually doing their morning core/stretching vs. sucking their thumb still in bed.

The miles were definitely up this week, just shy of 60, one of the big pushes this week was the Bonds Traverse which included Bondcliff, Bond, West Bond, South Twin and Galehead.  We pushed hard for 22 miles but were brought to a virtual crawl for about 2 miles (2.5 hours) of waist deep quick sand like snow that was completey water saturated.  Everyone ran out of water on South Twin, it wasn't that bad as temperatures were not that bad, you could melt a snowball in your mouth if you wanted to.  We did restock on water and S-caps on the descent on the Gale River Trail, lots of good water sources and a really great trail to run.  The trail conditions are getting BAD, it is mash potato, soft, jello like, mud like quick sand.  We made it out in 8 hours 42 minutes, check the Garmin Data link on the main page.  I had about 2 liters of water all day and pushed back about 3000 calories, stomach was good and felt generally good all day.

Here is a pic or two from the day:

Totals for the week:

56 miles combined trail running and hiking
13 hours 18 minutes time on feet
7580 feet of vertical