Good week of training capped off by a fun day pounding the streets of Denver.

I spent Sunday afternoon hiking around the mountains with my camera and tripod.  Man, I love that kind of day.  Just wandering around looking for nice scenes to shoot.  Legs beat up and tired from the day before.  Perfect.

Monday
7 miles

Pretty decent run. Far better than I thought it would be after the hard 20 on the weekend. Calves were a disaster, but loosened up after about 5 miles…

Took the kids over to the high school spirit week bonfire.  Thought my face was going to melt off at one point.

Tuesday
7.5 miles

Turned out to be a great day at the Boneyard. Plan was to jog over, run a lap easy, then 2 laps at a solid pace, then jog back. I got a little carried away on the 2 lap effort.

This place is not a place to run for run. It is a vacant lot with weeds and the trail is narrow, lumpy and bumpy. It is a great place to train, though. A few small climbs keep things interesting. A ‘lap’ comes out to exactly 1.2 miles.

My previous best avg pace for a single lap was 6:55. Today I came through the first lap with a 7:15 pace and it felt easy and controlled. The hills were no problem. I pushed hard on the second lap with a 6:45 average and brought the overall pace down to 6:59. Pretty happy with that unexpected result.

Wednesday
10.5 miles

Rough first 2 miles, then settled in and felt good. Went a couple miles further than planned.

Caught a nice sunset at Chatfield.

Thursday
5.4 miles

Boneyard. Pretty tired.

Friday
0 miles

OFF

Saturday
40.2 miles

Denver Marathon.  And a Half.  Report to come.

Sunday
OFF

Leadville!  Went up to hang out with my son for the day, and spent some time walking around the hills.  Felt good to work out some of the soreness from yesterday and to breathe the nice mountain air.

Total: 70.6 miles / 10:24