I feel like I have been treading water for a couple of month’s now.  Running has just been flat.  My weekly miles are nowhere near what I’d like (a lot of ‘life’ getting in the way), but I have been trying to throw in harder efforts on a more consistent basis.  We’ll see if that will shake things up a little.

Monday
7.3 miles

South Valley Park.  4pm.  105 degrees.  Tied the record for the hottest temp ever recorded in Denver.  Big south wind made it like running in a blast furnace.

Tuesday
9.7 miles

Repeats – .5 .5 1mile .5 .5

Wednesday
7.2 miles

Easy cruise after work to pick up a vehicle from getting some maintenance.  I’m slow, but I was at least moving faster than the traffic.

Headed up to Roxborough State Park again after dinner.  Saw bear #3 of the year.

Thursday
12.2 miles

Repeats.  2 mile, 1 mile, 2 mile.

Friday
6.2 miles

Easy jog.

Saturday
0 miles

Travel day.

Pine Ridge fire near Grand Junciton.

Utah is on fire, too.

Saturday
8.4 miles

Late night, then up at dawn to get a run in.  First two miles rough, had to stop and let the calves settle down again. Things started clicking after that and I did a medium-effort tempo of 3 miles @ 6:49 pace. Then one mile cool down.

Total: 51.1 miles / 7:38

A rough start to this one, then I rallied and ended up with a good week.  The time number is heavily skewed by all of the hiking on the weekend, but it all counts as far as I’m concerned.  Some good time on the feet and at high altitude.

Monday
11 miles

Felt great during the first 3 miles, and was already composing my training log entry in my head.  Something along the lines of – wow, 3 days off and back in action feeling great.

Then the wheels started to wobble before coming off completely at mile 7.  I had to stop several times.  I was badly overheated and had gone for the all-you-can-eat special at the buffet of suck.  What a miserable run.  Record heat and forest fire smoke made it like running in an oven while sucking on piece of charcoal.

These guys were waiting to pick at my carcass.

Tuesday
10 miles

Another cr@p sandwich on the menu today.  This run was so bad it’s almost funny.  I stopped about 100 times, then ended up walking the last mile.  My calves actually felt good for once, but I had big-time foot issues.  Seriously thinking about hanging up the running shoes and switching back to cycling for a while.

A sign of better things to come –

Wednesday
10 miles

After the terrible past two runs I’ve had most people would take that as a sign to back off, rest, wait for some sort of recovery to take place.  Not me.  I knew good run was in there, I just had to dig deep enough to find it.  It helped immensely that today was about 20 degrees cooler than the previous two.

I decided to hit some intervals for the first time in months.  .5 mile, .5 mile, 1 mile, .5 mile, .5 mile.

The first two .5 were 6:15 and 6:12 pace and felt under control.  The mile was gradually uphill and I did it in 6:22 without pushing too hard, which told me my previous efforts on the .5’s were soft.  I did the last two .5’s at 5:54 and 5:48 pace.  I was doing 5-6 of these in the 5:40’s last fall, so I still have a ways to go, but I’m extremely happy to have a decent run and get some quality work done.

Thursday
10.5 miles

Steady 9 @ 7:45 pace on a hilly route.  1.5 cooldown.  Happy with how this went after yesterday’s harder efforts.

Friday
7.6 miles

Easy recovery day.

Saturday
13 miles

Malcolm and I had a good day in the mountains.  5 x 14er summits.  Topped out on Sherman at 1:00 in the morning, bivied under the stars near the trailhead, then up at 6:45 to hit the DeCaLiBron loop.

More on the SherDeCaLiBro later.

Sunday

OFF

Total: 62 miles / 16:45

As my uncle once told me, “Life is what happens when you had other plans.”

I’m glad to have this week behind me.  The running was not so great and then my daughter got very ill and ended up in the hospital for a few days.  Thankfully, she is doing better now and got to come home yesterday.  I withdrew from the Black Hills 100 miler I was going to run this weekend, I need to stay a little closer to home after all that has gone on lately.

Monday
9.5 miles

Tough-ish run. Still dealing with Saturday’s calf carnage. Had to stop 3-4x and let them settle down.

Also did a fast walk in the evening.

Went up to the state park last night and saw another bear.  Two for two in the last week.

Tuesday
7.7 miles

Same route as yesterday. Rough for the first 4 miles, then the calves finally started to relent. Finished up feeling almost optimistic about things.

Did an evening walk with the camera on the east side of Chatfield.  A different kind of ‘training’.

Wednesday
6.5 miles

Easy run at the Boneyard. Felt like crap.

Went for another hike in the state park.  No bears this time.

Thursday
5.2 miles

Boneyard again.  Rolling a little stronger today.  Had to cut this one short to meet my wife and daughter at the ER.

Friday
0 miles

Hospital

Saturday
0 miles

Hospital

Sunday
0 miles

It was a Happy Father’s Day, we got to bring our daughter home from the hospital.

My teenage son posted this – guess I am doing a few things right:

Happy Father’s Day to the best dad in the entire world, Chris Boyack! Thanks for all the hard work that you have done and continue to do in order to make our family a happy one. We have done so many (choose one) incredible/fun/hard/maybe a little stupid/memorable things that I will never forget. I know I don’t say it nearly as much as I need to, but Dad, I’m really glad that you are my Dad.

Total: 29 miles / 4:37