This week my desktop background picture was sent to me by a Hardrock veteran and one of the top waitlisters for this year, Will Vaughan. It was taken from the mouth of Green Valley looking south across Cunningham Gulch. The upper right (way upper right) is the trail connecting Dives Basin and Little Giant Basin. The trail switchbacks its way down the mountainside just to the right of the “stream” in the photo. If you look closely you can make out parts of the trail. This will be the first downhill for this year's race, bleeding off 2500 ft or so. It looks rather intimidating. Having said that someone will probably send me a picture of the 5,200+ ft descent into Ouray. I learned a new training technique this week called the "stepback week". I didn't pick up any of this great stuff as a swimmer. My recollection is that we pretty much went hard at it all year except for December when we went *really* hard and August when we surfed the whole month. Necessity is indeed the mother of invention and this week necessitated a little rest. I forced myself to sit out a couple days, caught up on sleep and cut my overall mileage ~35%. Probably could have cut a little more than that.
Here's how it broke down...
- Mon: 10 miles (pm: 10)
2 sets of stairs for 40 mins each. Weights - lower body. - Tue: 8 miles (pm: 8)
Stairs and weights again - more upper body. - Wed: 18 miles (am: 18)
First 13 felt okay but ran out of gas the last 5. Fell twice in the last mile and called it quits. - Thurs: 6.5 miles (am: 6.5)
Stairs and lower body weights again. - Fri: REST!
- Sat: 21 miles (am: 21 mi)
- Sun: REST!
Good to get some rest. This week - continued focus on stairs, weights, and higher mileage.
2 comments:
Rest is GOOD ;-)
I absolutely cannot wait to see this scenery for myself...and I might even get to enjoy it as a pacer ;-)
I am taken aback by how thoughtfully you're approaching your training for this race. You must have been a pretty disciplined graduate student!
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