Tuesday, January 17, 2006

32 Miles and a Busy 3-day Weekend


On Saturday, 6 of us Trail Nerds hit the trails at SM Park for a nice 12-miler. It was 27 degrees F, so the mud was frozen and our shoes actually cleaned-up during the run.

Sunday we met to run at WyCo. Twelve trailrunners showed up! More than half of us ran two 10-mile loops, (with 5000 ft of elevation change per loop). I really needed a nap after our run, but instead spent the rest of the day moving extremely heavy pieces of furniture around with my son. I won't go into it...(but I spent almost $3000 on the whole affair). I didn't sit down until 11 PM.

Monday, I took the MLK holiday off as a vacation day. Kyle, Stacey and I met in WyCo Park to put in some more singletrack trail. Kyle and Stacey worked with me for about 2-1/2 hours, and then Shane showed up and worked with me for about 2 hours. (Shane is the one in the photo who supplied the cigars, and who could win a Jake Plummer look-alike contest). We finished 0.95 miles of trail construction for the Psycho WyCo course. It was all done with hand tools and back-breaking labor. I was out there working for a total of 7 hours. Damn, I was fairly tired after it all, but still went home and did chores and transferred some homebrew to secondary & tertiary fermenters.

This trail mileage will improve the course somewhat. Last year, the course had grassy areas that we ran people around on to make the total mileage come out right. This year, the entire course will be run on trail! Each loop will be 10.35 miles in length, and have over 5000 ft in elevation change per loop. Three loops will make it (slightly over) 50K. The 10-mile and 20-mile participants will get more for their money, I figure...a good value.

Todays fitness agenda:
Chest, shoulders, and triceps early this morning in the gym.
10-mile (tempo) group trail run at 6PM with the Trail Nerds.

3 comments:

Olga said...

Wow, 32! Now I feel like a slacker...but then again, my 100 doesn't come till June. Is it your last long run yet?

Ben, aka BadBen said...

I know, I know, I'm supposed to be tapering. I don't taper well, and I need to learn to "recover" better. I like long runs and I refuse to relax.

My gameplan: I'm going to try to hold my long runs to 12 miles and below for the next two weekends, and try not to be tempted to run long during the week, as well.

Unknown said...

You know a 50K is really anywhere from 30-35 miles. You can call them Bad Ben miles instead of Horton miles.