Tuesday December 18, 2007

AM- 9 miles (1:10) Mesas and Monument Loops (NB152)
PM- 18 miles (2:02) Pikes Peak Greenway North out and back
5 mile tempo in 30:11 (6:27, 6:01, 6:08, 5:38, 5:55) (NB240)

The morning run was nice; I haven't really been up to go running before 8am since I've been back in the Springs, but it's a beautiful thing with the alpenglow on Pikes Peak. I just took it nice and easy and enjoyed the warmish weather (wore shorts). I noticed my left ankle tendon (the pereoneal tendon, I think?) was a tiny bit tight at times...really need some new road flats.

After getting off work at the CRC at 1pm I immediately went out for what I hope to be a Tuesday routine of a flattish/up-tempoish run straight north and back. There are new mile markers every half-mile on the trail, and for the most part they seem to be on---as you can see, my 1st mile and 4th mile seemed to be a bit off.

The Pikes Peak Greenway trail runs from Fountain, CO (a suburb of Colorado Springs) at the south to Palmer Lake (another suburb of Colorado Springs) at the north end for a total of ~40ish miles of trail going straight through the heart of Colorado Springs. Palmer Lake is at about 7200' and Fountain is about 5500', so the trail enjoys a very gradual downhill from north to south. I've found that this makes it a great venue for running tempo workouts at altitude--in the past I've been able to do 10-12 mile marathon pace/tempo pace runs at a reasonable effort because the slight downhill makes the pace doable despite the altitude.

I was plenty happy with this run since I've really only been running for a week or two; there were times that I felt smooth and times I was struggling a bit, but all in all I just need to start consistently injecting some 6min-pace-or-faster running into my schedule every week. I did notice by the end of the run that my left ankle pereoneal tendon was a bit upset by the quicker pace as were my calves and achilles tendons. Finally, the weather on this run was absurd. It was about 50 degrees and by the end of the run I was drenched in sweat. It seemed a lot more like a spring day than a winter day. All in all, a good run.