Another weekly recap + Lots of mountain pictures

April 23-29

Monday: Ran 6.4 miles/5.4 at a 8:49-9:03 pace. (New tempo pace?)

Tuesday:
AM- Ran 3.5 easy miles in the morning/10:00 avg pace
PM- 5.93 mi at the track. 6x[400m, 200m rest], 4 minutes of rest, then 4x[400m,200m rest].
Goal was to get progressively faster, about 5 seconds per lap.  First set started at 2:12 and ended at 1:42.  Second set started at 1:56 and ended at 1:38.

Thursday: Second week doing a 5am run. It’s growing on me a little bit. 2 loops, negative splits: 5.82 mi/9:31 avg pace.  Being awake before the crack of dawn allows me to see cool things like this:

Friday: 7.5 mile hike.  We returned to the Devil’s Punchbowl, where we hiked several weeks ago.  And I was less of a scaredy-cat on the narrow parts of the trail and in walking out to the “Devil’s Chair” this time.

         
  

Saturday: 13.54 miles in the morning/avg pace of 9:56.

Then that afternoon I volunteered at an aid station at the Leona Divide 50km/50mi race with some people from my running group.  We were at aid station 10 which was less than 4 miles from the finish line.  It was my first time volunteering at a race.  We had a crazy drive up the mountain on deeply rutted fire roads (which was also part of the race course) in the race director’s SUV, driving past people finishing the race.  We rolled the windows down and cheered people as we passed.  I’d like to think of us as the mobile cheer squad. 

We were up to the aid station before 2pm, and by that point there were a few 50km-ers passing through, but it was mostly people who had already ran 46 miles.  46!  Crazy.  I know two gals who were crazy enough to run this distance (and more) before (Kara and Alyssa).   After this aid station there was about a half mile uphill then 3 miles downhill until the finish line.

There was a nice spread of water, soda, Gatorade, Gu Brew, potato chips, boiled potatoes, animal crackers, peanut butter cookies, banana bread, chocolate-dipped strawberries, orange slices, grapes, ginger chews, gels, salt tablets and more.  It was fun cheering on the runners as they approached the aid station.  We filled their bottles and Camelbaks, put ice in their hats.  The course seemed to be full-sun and some runners just needed a cold towel and a shady spot to sit for a few minutes.  One of my fellow club members even pulled off a guy’s compression socks for him and ran up the hill that followed the aid station with another runner who needed some motivation.  Now that’s dedication.

The view from the aid station in the other direction.  I think the course went down that way earlier in the day.

4ish hours later, most of the runners had passed through- and it was past the time cut off for our station- and we were sent back down the mountain.  We cheered on runners as we drove back down (it felt kind of mean to be passing them when they felt like death, but that was the only way down).  We had views like this on our way down:

It was a lot of fun and I would definitely do it again!  The ultra runners were amazing. I can’t even imagine running all day, and with elevation change like this.  The race started at 6am and had a 13 hour cut off.  The winner came in at 6 hours even, which was a new course record.

 Sunday:  Easy – 1 hour walk with the dog.

Total Weekly Miles run: 34.89!
(Big for me…but sounds like nothing after mentioning people who ran 31 and 50 miles in one day).