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Monday, 1/23/17 – bouldering @ Movement 2 hours, core/hip mob. work, 4x hogback laps (~10 miles)
I again faced my V4 nemesis, but yet again was beaten. I advanced by one move. Even giving myself 2-4 minutes rest per burn, I was done within an hour – by the end, I couldn’t link the first few moves, let alone get to my day’s high point. The rest of the sess. was pretty disorganized. I stopped a little earlier than I planned, as my left fingers were just hurting too much. The V4 problem isn’t terribly difficult and well below my grade limit, it’s just that problems on the overhanging wall are especially challenging to me for the grade, as my power plant legs and diminutive upper body (in comparison) do not give me much of an advantage for the power/power endurance required. Work on your weaknesses, eh?
Stayed for a while, and did my ever-evolving core routine, and hip mobility routine. Core routine is really turning into bodyweight fitness routine, what with all the dynamic movement rather than static stretches. Which I’m fine with. Its sacrilege for me to even mention this as a former skateboarder, but I take a bit of influence in parkour routines – or just generally any practice that’s about moving quickly and efficiently through complicated terrain. And practicing to master the parkour roll seems like a useful thing to be doing the next time I am barreling down the trail, out of control.
In the late evening, I ran to the local hill by my house to do some laps up/down the 1.7 mile hogback. It’s pretty short and gentle-ish grade, so runnable, even on less than fresh legs. Mine were very fresh, so after the warmup of running from the house, I opened up the legs a bit on the first lap, and PR’d the effort by 1:30 – a solid minute/mile faster. 1:13 of that was on the downhill which is somewhat surprising, given that I was running in the middle of the night by headlamp, my Altras are a bit sloppy/large for me, and my ankle isn’t really at 100% even now, a year+ after I messed it up. I guess I’ll take that as a sign I’ve gotten my confidence (and the coordination) for cruising downhills back, and just maybe my form is better – so I’m faster.
I am really trying to focus on not breaking the classic running form on the up and downhills by staying pretty tall, landing my foot right below me and pushing back. If the terrain is somewhat technical, I break from this, and start really shortening my stride and I’m just basically falling down the trail, lifting my knees up to avoid obstacles. Lots of breaking on my heels involved. It feels more like the classic, “at the ready” athletic pose you would use riding a bike, where your weight is much farther back. It’s not bad, but I think there’s more efficiency to just be comfortable with the pace and run it as normally as possible. I’m not sure if more experienced runners go through this major pattern breakdown, but I’m just not that experienced of a runner! I should be able to take a minute+ out of the uphill part of this loop in no time.
Three more loops, and ran back home, felt pretty confident and strong; legs clicking over really well.
Tuesday, 1/24/17 – Rest
This was somewhat planned. I ghost rode my Surly Ogre which is in need of a terrible amount of TLC to the downtown bus station, while I rode my Kona single speed MTB, so that the Ogre and I could grab a bus to Golden, drop off the Ogre at Golden Bike Shop, and I could ride home from the Boulder bus station. Whew!
Initially, I locked up the Kona at the Boulder bus station to make things simpler, but the longer I waited, the more worried I was becoming of getting back to the bus station greeted with several missing parts off the Kona – if not the entire bike on my return. Evidence of this happening before were everywhere, as the bus station was littered with the carcasses of former rideable bikes.
So, sigh. I loaded BOTH bikes up onto the bus to Golden. The busline straight to Golden from Boulder is on a commuter schedule, so the 8:15am bus I grabbed was the last bus running until 6 hours later. My meeting at the bike shop in Golden was at 12pm, and only lasted an hour, which means I had a 2+ hour wait in Golden beforehand and a 3+ hours wait afterwards for the first bus scheduled back to Boulder. I guess I could have taken the light rail to downtown (or Westminster?) and grabbed a different bus that way to get home… but that didn’t seem really all that efficient. Instead, I worked in the morning, then decided after I was free to do a quick lap on the Kona up/down Lookout Mountain, before taking that direct bus home. Sadly, the weather turned sour, so that was out. I didn’t really have any riding gear – just a pair of beat up corduroy pants!
Anyways, I dropped the Ogre off at Golden Bike Shop, who should do a great job at tuning the bike up to be usable. Thank you Golden Bike Shop/Bentgate Mountaineering!
I came home to my landlord swearing angrily and LOUDLY – thankfully to no one but our hot water heater that had bitten the dust. The water was turned off, and he was having a hard time turning it back on… So cooking was out as well. I was so tired from the previous night’s run and from this day (People! Buses! Crowds!), I just basically passed out until the next day.
Wednesday, 1/25/17 – 2 hours climbing/bouldering @ Movement, 1 hour spin bike
Climbed with C. for a little while, before she had to split, than bouldered for the rest of my sess. Climbing seemed to be more of a extended warmup and a few 5.11 d’s done at the end (top rope). I did one burn on my v4 proj., which actually went… great, as I made my high point on the first go, but decided against working more on it – it’s just too busy for me at night, and I can’t focus all that well with so many people around. I decided instead to do some harder rated problems on the overhanging wall that I hadn’t tried before, and just tire myself out. I’m getting a little sick of projecting!
One hour on the spin bike.
I’m fairly confident I did my core/hip mobility routine, but I can’t be 100% sure – I should write these summaries the day I do the workout, not several days afterwards!
Thursday, 1/26/17 – 2 hours spin bike
It’s ridiculous to ride a bike to a gym, to ride a machine that closely approximates riding a bike, to then ride a bike back home, but that was my crazy Thursday night. I rented a movie to watch while doing the stationary part of the evening, but forgot my phone, so no movie. Instead I read a magazine, which works out better than I thought it would.
One of my bicycle inspirations since I decided that “going sort of fast, while also going really far, while also experimenting with sleep deprivation” has been John Stamstad. This quote from an Outside magazine article sums his influence on me, nicely, as it describes his preparation to ride across Alaska in the Iditabike (emphasis mine):
A typical day for Stamstad begins with a five-hour ride, followed by a one-hour jog from his house to the University of Cincinnati physics building, where, with his hands clasped behind his back, he makes ten trips up and down 16 flights of stairs, taking three steps at a time. It’s Stamstad’s favorite, most unfun workout: no windows, no distractions, no relief. The Alaskan tundra looks like Maui after months of stairwells. The day concludes with an hour on the wind trainer. Stamstad says that he knows he’s mentally ready for a race when he can do a five-hour stint on the wind trainer, maintaining a heart rate of 155 beats per minute while staring at a blank wall.
Working up to it!
Friday, 1/27/17 3+ hours bouldering @ Movement, core/hip mobility, 2 hours spin
Whoo boy, this was gym day of an unprecedented time scale fer sure. My bouldering session was mostly on the newly reset wall, which is mostly vertical to slightly overhanging – much different from the overhanging wall I’ve been devoting my time towards. All the problems seemed extremely crafty, and the echos of frustrated climbers permeated the gym’s many levels. Most of my time was spent on yet another V4 that just had some fairly technical moves I just needed to wire to get right, which thankfully I was able to top. Bumped into friends who came to boulder, so I decided to be social and extend my sess. a little longer to hang. Fun time, but I kind of wrecked myself.
Afterwards, I did my core routine/hip mobility routine. Core routine is starting to be anchored by hanging leg lifts and back bridges – both of which now I can actually do in something approaching >1 sets, in something I can pass off as OK form, so that’s nice. Left palm is still a little sore from the accident, so all my posterior work is still being hampered by that.
After that, it was 2 hours on the spin bike, while watching Fury Road.
Saturday, 1/28/16 – Flagstaff/Green/Bear/Sobo/Bear/Green
A little run in the OSMP. Starting from Chautauqua, ran to Greg. TH, then up Greg. to the Crown Rock trail – which I’ve never actually taken and which was beautiful, to link into the trail to Flagstaff, across Flagstaff Road to hook into Long Canyon Trail to its TH, up Flagstaff Road a bit on some switchbacks, to Green Mountain via its west, “ridge”. THAT, I think, is the longest route to Green’s summit from Chautauqua that’s now open.
Then, down the west ridge, to Green Bear, up Bear Canyon to summit Bear, then Sobo, reversing my route back to Green, then down Greenman/Saddle Rock.
This was my fourth day on, so I didn’t expect too much from my legs, and I tried to pace myself, but man, when I was off Sobo, I was pretty spent. Walked a lot of what I was anticipated at least jogging, but my legs were just tired.
I was going to make this a true out and back to gain some more mileage but I bailed on that plan, which was the reason I resummitted Green – just to get to a shorter route back down. This turned out to be a somewhat terrible decision. The route I took up was somewhat icy, but nothing I needed traction for – and Long Canyon itself was actually snowy, and would have made a fun easy-on-the-quads descent. Greenman/Saddle Rock was instead very icy and slow-going in the fading lighting. D’oh. I wanted to get down to say hello to a friend working before the shop closed up, which I managed to do. Perhaps if I didn’t have that constraint, I’d take the longer route. But then again, I’m trying to train, and not just do death marches – those come later in the season!
Sunday, 1/29/16 – Rest
Somewhat miserable feeling, I barely got out of bed, and didn’t even get out of the house! I’m thinking I just didn’t eat enough the night before. I was hoping to get out to run a few easy miles, but it just didn’t happen.
Totals:
- Around 28.2 miles of running w/8,588′ in 7:48:30 (in only 2 runs)
- Negligible actual cycling – to/from Chat., the gym, etc.
- 7 hours spin bike (madness)
- 7 hours bouldering/climbing
- 2? hours core/hip mobility work
23:48:00 total time for the week
I missed most all goals I set from last week number-wise, with enormous asterisks:
I wanted to run 35 miles (my main goal), but only did about 28. BUT they were all hilly trail runs, and my time running went up by 2 hours, so I’m going to let that slide. What I’m pissed at is that this was only in two runs. To get better at running, I should be running more days.
I also did 7 hours of spin bike, up from 1 hour last week. Which is a total WTF moment for me. If I’m down on myself for not running enough days, I’m also down on myself for relying on the spin bike too much. I guess I can count these as my easy running days, and say I virtually ran (10:00/miles x 7 hours = 42 miles + 28.2 miles = 70.2 virtual miles) but it doesn’t quite work that way.
7 hours training to climb is a lot of time to train to climb. I guess.
I probably only need to do my core/hip mobility stuff 2x a week max, but it always seems to creep in after my climbing sessions. If anything should be cut for lack of time, it perhaps should be this.
Missed my goal of riding outside. I got a case of the Januaries, I guess. Or not. I don’t have a great excuse.
Overall, it’s was a somewhat boring week of putting Money in the Bank to be deposited this summer, which I’m overall happy about.
I don’t know what my goals are for next week, except try again with 35 miles running. I was anticipating a goal of 40 miles running as an aggressive bump up in mileage, but that seems like a dumb pressure to put on myself, if I can’t hit 35.
