For the past couple weeks I have been thinking a lot about putting in smart miles rather than just lots of miles. Lots of miles usually just get me injured, plus I don’t have lots of time, so I’m trying to be strategic (and have even added biking to work once a week or so into the mix as a way to work on muscle strengthening and endurance without stressing my joints). Here’s some recent doings. Two of them were…
I like maps and I like drawing routes on maps that I can only dream of ever running. I draw them and then challenge others to run them. See all of them at The Professor’s Trail and Ultra Courses. The Big Baldy Vertical Kilometer Challenge is in my backyard and I tackled it this morning before work. Yowzers. The SW Ridge of Big Baldy (above Lindon, UT – in-between Dry Canyon and Battle Creek Canyons) is crazy steep. From the…
Thankfully, the back pain from last month did not return and I was able to fit in a number of runs and hikes (not listed here, but on Strava) during the remainder of August. I ran a bigger version of the squiggly wiggly. Lots of fun. Some HOT BST action: An awesome morning run up Grove Creek to Chris Flats. Bagged my first Mountain Goat sighting. I even ran some pavement. Possibly the first time this year! Actually, it was…
Twice now, I have run a 7 mile loop from the Orem Gun Range > Dry Canyon > The Altar/Rockpile > Orem Gun Range. I think it will be my regular treadmill run. It has it all. Runnable flat-ish rolling trails, a good steep climb, and some fun technical descents. The mile drop from the altar down to the fire break road is such a fun single-track. The grass is about chest high or higher so your immediate peripheral vision…
I am running my first ultramarathon in a couple weeks – the Bryce 50k (~31 miles). I have *almost run that far once, and it was slow. I have done a number of runs in the 20-25 mile range, but none have been races. Aside from 2 Ragnar relays, the longest race I have done was a 5 mile Turkey Trot back when I still lived in Nebraska. In any case, I have not trained very well and figured I…