trail

Who’d have thought that a set of 100-metre repeats would be perfect preparation for a hilly 8-mile trail race?

But that’s the way it turned out. For the first time since cross-country days in England, I found myself flying past people on the downhill stretches of the Greenland Trail race – and there were a lot of them.

Day 1 Restart Phase: easy 10 miles on trails out past Wonderland Lake and onto the Eagle Trail Loop. Basically one mile trending uphill to start with, then four miles downhill to the turn at 45 minutes, four miles back up and then the downhill finish.

Praise be that although there was a stiff wind, it was nowhere near as strong as when I did this same run last week. So although there was less help going out, there was nothing much to battle against on the way back.

Already there is progress; last time out I ran at 8:55 pace for 84 minutes covering 9.5 miles at an average heart rate of 130. Today it was 8:42 pace for 87 minutes covering 10 miles with an average of 129. It felt pretty easy, apart from a slight cramp in that bu-ttock when I restarted after a pause for a glug of Cytomax.

I must be getting fit (at last).

Set out to The Fence, a 7-7.5-mile out and back mainly on an undulating trail. My aim was to repeat a stonking run I had last week when, fired up after watching a clip of the "Spartans" training for the movie "300", I'd elected to sprint all the hills.

So off I went...only I couldn't find the hills. They seem to have been magically transformed into benign little slopes. Hmm... this may have something to do with the tasty muscle-endurance workout Bobby put me and Kyle through on Tuesday. One of the hardest sessions I have ever done. (Gory details on the Sub-5 forum). In comparison to that, I guess a lot of things are going to seem easy.

I have an improvement to report: for the last few weeks I have been running like a slug. Now I am running like a bus. Slow, noisy, makes frequent stops, but always gets to the end of the route.

My heavy breathing on the trail today caused great alarm in the colony of prairie dogs, normally so blase about runners that they won't move even if you're about to tread on them. It also frightened the bejesus out of two young women who didn't hear me until I was almost on top of them, if you'll excuse the phrase.

I caught them in the dying moments of a "fast surge". I am practising for Thursday morning, when I have rashly agreed to meet Patty to restart our once-a-week tempo (for me) and easy-brisk (for her) runs. I say rashly, because the day after agreeing, I read this on Ken Stone's Master's News blog:

If it wasn't for the thought that Kyle is out there in some car park doing his 90 minutes, and Henry Rono is slogging up and down Copper Mountain in New Mexico, I'd have declared a rest day. But no...

Showing true grit (aka stupidity) I stumbled out into the ice and snow. Again.

You know when you get tired and irritable? It was that sort of a run. If I'd taken advantage of Colorado's concealed-carry laws it would have been a black day. Yes, the usual. People with dogs who think they're in a coffee shop. The people, not the dogs. No awareness of what's going on around them so that TWICE I had to take evading action and dive off the narrow ribbon of hard packed snow into the chin-high powder at the side, swim my way out and crawl back into running mode while cursing and spluttering. Not that they even noticed. I'm thinking of getting one of those automatic avalanche rescue bleepers, just in case.

"Her body shattered by a 60-foot fall, stranded in a remote redrock canyon with virtually no hope for help, one of the world’s premier athletes stared at death for 52 hours, and defied it."

Danelle's dog played a key part in her rescue.

Read the full story at www.summitdaily.com

I loved the advice Buzz Burrell has just handed out to a newbie runner on the Boulder TrailRunners list.

Buzz is a legend in trail running and ultra circles -- although I've heard him dispute the description on the grounds that it makes him feel like he died and nobody told him. He specialises in tackling long, hard, wet, cold, extreme runs that "normal" people would only attempt as part of a ten-person team with sherpas. He runs wearing normal trail running gear plus an extra bottle if conditions are really bad.

"Keep it simple"? He invented the phrase. We don't know what "harrach9" was expecting when he wrote...