I came home early from work tonight, with an upset stomach. After a while, I felt better and was feeling quite restless so I decided to go hit the trails for a quick run before dinner. My plan was to climb the south switchbacks that lead to the Farmington Upper Terrace. It is about 1,000 ft. elevation gain in about 1 mile of trail. At the top, a local trail building colossus, Ryan, had recently cut and flagged a new…
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…
After a failed attempt a couple weeks ago to run the Buffalo 25k course out on Antelope Island, I tackled it again. This time with a couple friends, Glen and Spencer. I was again struck by how gorgeous Antelope Island is. It is stark. The vistas are enormous. Expansive. I don’t run many places where you can see the next 8 miles of trail all laid out ahead of you. Coming down on the bone road either going to…
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…
While in Arizona for the last couple weeks I have been drooling over all of the beautiful snow-running pictures my Utah friends have been posting. So, having just flown back to UT (family still in AZ) yesterday, I resolved to go exploring. A number of people suggested Antelope Island for good snowy trails. I have been out there before (twice) but never to run. I was also excited to test out my new winter running gear: a Bjorn Daehlie Ambition…
I probably should have drawn an easier route for my first attempt at a marathon distance run – but it is just too easy (and fun) to draw lines on maps, tracing trails and ridge-lines, etc… In any case, I drew it, so I ran it: The South Mountain Western Ridges Marathon+. In all, it ended up tracking to 29 miles – almost a 50k. Phoenix’s South Mountain Preserve is located on the southern edge of town – a series…
Last year on Pioneer Day, a friend and I tackled Baer Canyon. It was only my 2nd trail run, and we were unprepared and it was rough. I thought I would continue that and make an annual tradition of pushing myself to do unwise things on Pioneer Day. On the top of my trailrun to-do list has been to bag Thurston and Francis Peaks. I have been to both, but only after driving up to Francis and then running the…
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…