I decided to treat myself to a Mt. Timpanogos summit for my birthday this morning. I have done the summit twice from the Timpooneke trailhead but never from Aspen Grove. I decided to make a loop of it. Up Aspen Grove, down Timpooneke, then loop back to AG on the Salamander Flats, Snow Gauging, and Lame Horse trails. A 19.5 mile loop. I put out the call and two fellow Wasatch Mountain Wranglers joined – Keith and Tim. We started…
Trying to put in some easy miles, keep fit, but not aggravate my sore injured hip and foot/ankle. Varied success. A couple of these felt great, a couple hurt. The last, the full Grove-Battle Creeks loop was magnificent and actually felt pretty good during and after. Thankfully, I haven’t turned my ankle any more. Hopefully things are on the mend.
Local legend and 17-18-time Wasatch 100 finisher and friend Phil asked me to pace him for the last 25 miles of the Wasatch. I thought that might be a bit more than I could handle, so he said, how about the 14 miles from Big Mountain to Alexander Ridge to Lambs Canyon. It is the hottest and most exposed section of trail and Phil was pushing for a sub-24 finish. This would push me to my limit, and he knew…
After the 21+ mile President’s Day run at The Wedge I was so excited that the tibial stress fracture (left and right, yay!) did not hurt at all. Zero pain. I was excited that this might be the end of my stress fracture troubles. Then, 2 days later, on a Wednesday night, I somehow found myself playing a little pick-up basketball on a nice hardwood court in a pair of random sneakers. An hour later, I limped home – both…
Last week, too lazy and unwilling to slog through a muddy local trail, I took a spare hour and put down a few miles on the paved trails in Farmington – plus a little gravel trail. That night, my right ankle started throbbed – exactly like the stress fracture I have on my left ankle. It was one year ago – Jan/Feb 2014 – that I incurred a painful stress fracture on my left outer tibia by putting in too…
I am now about a week removed from Ragnar and am starting to assess how the race affected my injury-plagued lower-half. In short, some prior injuries seem fine, some seem bad. IT Bands: Miraculously they didn’t hurt during the race so I am optimistic that all of my daily work on the foam roller is doing the trick. Fingers crossed. Stress Fracture on left Fibula: This didn’t hurt during the race or the day after. But, in the following week…
It was Saturday afternoon, the high was forecast to be around 70 so I couldn’t, in good conscience, not hit the trails. I decided to try out my new trekking poles on the steep climb up the Davis Creek trail area. 4.0 Miles in 1:02:44 @ 15:46 min/mile and 1,791 ft. elevation I felt strong and did get a PR on the initial climb from the trail head to the split to the first waterfall, but not on the…
They lied. Everything is not bigger in Texas. For the last couple weeks I have been down in Austin and San Antonio, Texas, for a couple academic conferences and some research in a few archival repositories. Fun fun fun. And, rather than sit around bored in my hotel rooms at night when I didn’t have stuff planned with colleagues and friends, I went running. These were three of the sweatiest runs of my life. Wow. The humidity. Overall, it was…
With an official diagnosis of ankle problems, a fibula stress fracture, and a strong suspicion that running on pavement severely aggravates it, I decided to hit the dirt today and test out my theory. I started at the Farmington Pond, ran north on the BST to Shepherd Canyon, up to the Upper Terrace, and took that back to the car. Its a great loop. My left IT band hurt towards the end, but my ankle did not. Often the pain…
One of the Wasatch Mountain Wranglers organized a group run up city creek for early in the morning – something I tried out two times back in November before the winter (and injuries) really set in. I really enjoyed it then – getting an early run in, showering at work, feeling more awake at work than I usually do in the AM – it was great. My ankle was feeling ok so I decided to give it a shot. I trailed…