I did a small set of hard running intervals, some steady running, and one last
hilly run on the Quad Rock course with a friend on Friday. We pushed the pace
on the upper half of the first climb, going up Towers Trail, and I was just
a few seconds off my personal bests on those segments. 10/10 effort on Saturday
won't be sustainable, but it was fun and a useful check on my fitness before
the race. I'll completely recover from that by the end of the week, no problem.
Week 17, race week, will be so easy that I expect to go a little stir crazy.
A winter storm is arriving tomorrow, so I'll be inside, running on a treadmill
and sitting in a sauna, until Thursday. I'm curious to see how much snow we
get, whether it's going to stick on the mountains through race day, and how
muddy it will be.
You've probably seen links to "The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess"
already. I've just finished the last installment. This is an excellent series
of posts with many references. If we meet to talk about the industry, I'm
almost certainly going to ask if you've read it.
This is bullshit about bullshit machines, and I mean it. It is neither
balanced nor complete: others have covered ecological and intellectual
property issues better than I could, and there is no shortage of boosterism
online. Instead, I am trying to fill in the negative spaces in the
discourse. “AI” is also a fractal territory; there are many places where
I flatten complex stories in service of pithy polemic. I am not trying to
make nuanced, accurate predictions, but to trace the potential risks and
benefits at play.
I've already come to some of the same conclusions, so I admit to confirmation
bias.
Week 15 was my peak week before Quad Rock on May 9. I didn't run a lot, but it was all
high quality running.
14 hours, 23 minutes all training
24.8 miles running
6,020 feet D+ running
Tuesday I hiked and ran up and down Green Mountain in Boulder, my first time on
that mountain. I went up the steeper east side and down the more runnable west side.
The trail is ridiculously steep: in the first mile I gained 1,300 feet of elevation.
There's a ladder at one point, that's how steep it is. The second mile has
a short runnable section and averages only 19%. I went steadily to the top and
ran the downhills of Ranger and Gregory Canyon as fast as I could while
sight-reading. Green Mountain is fun, easy to access, and loved almost to death
by Boulderites. The Amphitheater and Saddle Rock trails are in sad shape.
The geology of Boulder's Mountain Parks and Lory State Park are similar, but
because the Green Mountain intrusion of the Boulder Creek Batholith is broader and 1,000
feet higher than at Horsetooth Mountain and Arthur's Rock, there is no schist or
gneiss to be found on Green Mountain. It was shoved aside a billion and a half
years ago. The red Fountain Formation sandstone that provides Boulder's
striking Flatirons backdrop is immediately adjacent to igneous grandiorite and pegmatite.
Thursday I ran Quad Rock's second climb and first descent from the Horsetooth
Open Space trailhead. I went hard for half of the climb and got some personal
bests on a few segments. I was close to a personal best on the descent as well.
Some parts of Spring Creek are in such bad shape that I rode my brakes to stay
safe. Hopefully we'll get some moisture before Quad Rock, that would keep the
rocks and gravel a little more glued down.
Saturday I went out for 13 miles on the Quad Rock course with other local
runners. I pushed on the climbs again, got a few PRs, and a near PR on the Mill
Creek climb pretty easily.
The other half of my week 15 training time was spent on my bike, on my yoga
mat, or moving weights. Daily crunches, calf raises, and eccentric heel drops
are keeping my hips and Achilles tendons, perennial sources of pain, in great
shape. My knees are the only things bugging me now, and they'll be okay once
I'm warmed up and racing.
Speaking of heel drops, I got a great tip recently from Dr. Tonya K. Olson on
the Trail Runner Nation podcast:
unless your heels touch down on a surface below your toes, your body may not
adapt as effectively as it could. I'd been doing heel drops into space,
standing on a stair step, but have switched to dropping from a thick book
(Sunset Magazine's Western Garden Book, specifically). I believe it's making
a difference.
Week 16 will be fine tuning, not tapering. I will run hard, but in smaller
doses.
The many high summits of the Indian Peaks Range, with a modest snowpack,
viewed from the top of Green Mountain (2.477 meters).
Welp, I'm joining the ranks of the unemployed tech workers again.
As before, I'm in a good situation. I don't depend on my former employer for
health insurance. I've got some severance and savings, my family is in good
health, we have a roof over our heads, and I have good connections. I don't
feel afraid.
But maybe I should? The job market is worse than last time this happened to me. I've seen experienced and talented people go
for weeks and months without offers, and read some harrowing stories about what
under-employment looks like for older tech workers these days.
After a little detour into the biomedical field, I'm looking to get back into
helping to solve important geospatial problems. If you've got them, please let
me know.
Hello, my name is Sean Gillies, and this is my blog. I write about running,
cooking and eating, gardening, travel, family, programming, Python, API design,
geography, geographic data formats and protocols, open source, and internet
standards. Fort Collins, Colorado, is my home.
I needed my training to begin to peak in week 14. Quad Rock is in 20 days (at
this writing), and I won't get much adaptation to workout loading in the last
13 days. Weeks 14 and 15 would be my last opportunities to get faster and
stronger before the race. Fortunately, a return to good health and favorable
weather helped make this my best week yet.
13 hours, 8 minutes all training
42.7 miles running
8,550 feet D+ running and treadmill
The first block of my training was dedicated to power and pure speed, The
second to intense aerobic efforts. This last block is about going up and down
technical mountain trails at my race pace or a bit faster. In practice, I push
pretty hard for half of each climb, run the downhills as fast as I can, and
otherwise keep it easy, but not slow.
I did three workouts like this, plus two shorter tempo runs at Pineridge Open
Space, which is flatter than the Quad Rock course. Five days of comfortably
hard to just plain hard running, a recovery ride on Tuesday, and a full
day off to recover on Friday.
Today I went for a loop in Lory State Park that I did five weeks ago. The loop
includes the last seven-mile stanza of the 25-mile QR poem: a 1,000 foot climb
up from the Arthurs Rock aid station, some rolling terrain, and a 1,100 foot
descent to the finish line. I did the loop in the same time as I did in March,
but at a noticeably lower level of effort. I'm counting on being able to run at
an even faster pace at a higher level of effort in May.
Thursday I ran at elevation for the ffirst time this season, a loop around
Lumpy Ridge in Rocky Mountain National Park that begins just below 8,000 feet
and tops out just above 9,000 feet. There is no snow to speak of at Lumpy
Ridge. If the aspen in the Cow Creek drainage on the more remote north side of
Lumpy Ridge had more leaves, you might think it was mid-summer.
A row of tall white aspen stems with just a few leaves, backed by dark green
Douglas fir and blue spruce.
I loved seeing water in Cow Creek, even if it was only a July-level flow. At
least the birds and mammals have something to drink.
A footbridge made of rough-hewn timbers spans a small mountain creek. Much
local rock appears yellowish when wet, and our shallow mountain creeks
appear golden.
Week 13 started out pretty strong. I returned to my favorite Monday evening
yoga class, did a fun run with strides at Pineridge on Tuesday, and then a hard
running interval workout on Towers Trail in Horsetooth Open Space on Wednesday.
Thursday I had cold symptoms again and shifted to dog walking and bike riding
for the rest of the week. The running numbers for the week are nothing much.
11 hours, 35 minutes all training
14.6 miles running
2,041 feet D+ running
By Saturday afternoon I felt much better, which gave me hope for a solid week
14.
In week 12, I started to get things back on track after being sick. I ran five
days, biked one day, and took Saturday off to take my family to a Nuggets game
in Denver.
12 hours, 9 minutes all training
34.8 miles running
5,800 ft D+ running (and treadmill)
My energy level was low to mid until Friday, when I rallied for a good interval
workout on a 12% incline treadmill indoors and a sauna session after. My
fitness didn't advance much in week ten, but I didn't lose a step. According to
the machine, I went "up" beyond any of the Quad Rock climbs, and at a pace that
I'd love to hit on race day.
Saturday, as I mentioned previously, I sat on my butt in a car and in Ball Arena, with
Ruthie and our kids, and then we all met my folks in Denver for an early dinner. It
was a wonderfully easy and sociable day. Some days I think we should be living
in Denver instead of Fort Collins, and this was one of those days.
Sunday I went out for three hours on the rolling and punchy dirt trails east of
Horsetooth Reservoir, intending to get 90 minutes of Z2-Z3 running. It was
a great run. My legs felt lively during miles 2-12, and I pushed my gas pedal
with enthusiasm. If I'd brought another two gels, I could have avoided
bottoming out at mile 14. I'm hoping to feel that good and pain free at Quad Rock.
A dry, yellow-brown landscape under a blue and partly cloudy sky.
I had big plans for week eleven and then came down with a cold. My Wednesday
workout's mediocre feeling was the first indication. The rest of the week
I shifted into recovery rides and easy runs.
10 hours, 23 minutes all training
19.2 miles running
2,306 ft D+ running
It wasn't a terrible week, to be clear. I didn't fall apart physically, or
anything like that. My concern is that it was the first week where I didn't
progress very much in my Quad Rock training season.
I'm squishing four weeks worth of recap into this one post.
First, the numbers.
40 hours, 32 minutes all training
99 miles running
15,600 ft D+ running (and treadmill)
I'm less concerned with miles than I used to be, but I'm still writing these
numbers down for continuity's sake.
I'm running four days a week and riding or other cross-training 2-3 days. Two
of my runs are easy, but not slow. One has some high intensity intervals or
hill sprints. The other is a 2-3 hour run with 45-60 minutes of tempo pace in
the middle. My top speed hasn't increased in the past four weeks, but my easy
pace has improved a lot. With five more weeks of training ahead before I begin
to taper off, I'm looking forward to getting even faster at zones 2 and 3.
I've been switching between potential race shoes on my faster and longer runs.
While the Hoka Tecton X 3 are growing on me, and the Kjerag are fun, I'm 99%
sure that I'll run Quad Rock 25 in La Sportiva Prodigio Pros. They're well
suited to the course, fit me well, and feel stable, fast, and adequately
cushioned.
My favorite run of March was a Friday afternoon outing in Lory State Park with
my friend, Dana. He's not training for any event, but is naturally faster than
me, so our runs are a great opportunity to go a little harder. On this occasion
we did two warm up miles in the valley and then went rapidly up Quad Rock climb
no. 3 and quickly down descent no. 3 to what will be the finish on race day.
I recorded segment times that were only a few seconds off my personal bests,
and wasn't wrecked afterwards.
Last Sunday I went out by myself and ran through the first and second Quad Rock
climbs (and matching descents). My calves and hamstrings cramped after a long,
hard push in the middle of the run, and I struggled for the last four miles.
That's the first time this season, a good reminder to fuel better on my long
runs.
30 minutes of mobility and core strength exercises every morning are keeping my
body in good shape. I've no Achilles tendinitis. My hips and back are pain
free. No foot trouble. Inflammation and swelling in my right knee is troubling,
but I'm keeping it in check with ice and, sometimes, ibuprofen. I hear that
some people benefit from tart cherry extract as a supplement, and I'm going to
give that a try.
After a couple years of being injured, I'm grateful to be close to 100 percent.
It feels good.
