Journey to an Ultra: WEEK FOUR: Snow Dancing

1-9-12: 7 Miles
       Vern and I met up at the Mickinick trail head at 6am and started are ascent in the darkness donning headlamps. Mixed running and hiking due to slippery and steep conditions. Time to the top would have been slow for a summer run but felt just about right due to the conditions of ice and snow. Beautiful morning the city of Sandpoint was covered in a light fog and as we ascended above the fog line the whole valley looked like a lake. The city lights were faintly penetrating the fog to give the valley a watery glow. The descent coming back to the cars was a lot of fun I love bombing down steep grades over rocks, trees (fallen ones) and other obstacles along the way. I often like to use trees/tree stumps, boulders and cut-banks as spring boards to launch myself airborne as I come down hills. It feels like your flying especially if you get some good hang-time.

1-10-12: 5 miles
         Ran 2 miles on treadmill then lifted weights for 45min then ran 3 miles on treadmill. Yea I still lift weights and running on the treadmill was just convenient due to time constraints, some days it hard to fit it all in. Right now when it comes to weight training I try to fit in 4 lifting session a week focusing on upper body strength. I haven't been lifting with the lower body since I started my ultra training mainly because I do not want to over do it and cause over-use injuries.

1-11-12: 7 miles
         Ran from the house to the Syringa trail, then ran a 5 mile loop on Syringa then back to the house.

1-13-12: 15 miles
         Vern and I met up on Syringa and did some exploring. We ventured on some trails that neither of us had been on before. It seemed that just as we thought we had run about all the trails on Syringa we would find another one leading somewhere else. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and no wind but cold. I think it was about 18 degrees when we started at 10am. Conversations consisted of different races we would like to enter, shoes, and local trails we would like to explore (we did talk about non running things I just can't remember what). We kept a good steady pace throughout the run nothing blazing probably averaged between 5 and 6 miles per hour. Overall it was a great run the time flew by and both of us were happy about where we are at in our training (Vern is running a 50k in march).

1-14-12: 8 miles
         At first I didn't want to get out of bed at 5:30am when the alarm clock went off. I was in a pretty deep sleep whether it was from the previous days run or that I didn't get to bed till after midnight, probably a combination of both. Yet I had been itching to run the Gold Hill trail all week, so despite being tired I got up and made it to the trail head at about 6:30am (trails about 20min drive from my house) and "boy" was I glad that I did. I spent the first 40 minutes ascending the trail by the glow of my headlamp. I reached a big open and snow covered ridge that overlooks Sandpoint just as it was getting light. I snapped a few photos in the early morning light and from there I ran up the rest of the trail. The last half mile of the trail had not seen any human visitation since the last snow fall and I cut a fresh path in about 3" of powdery snow. The only tracks that crossed the trail were those of elk, deer and coyote. It was really cool running up that last section of trail, my feet whisked through the fresh powder causing little clouds of snowdust and the only noise was the swish of my feet as they lightly touched the ground, it felt like I was dancing with the snow. The descent was fast, just the way I like it. On the way down I ran into my dad, Ken, and the Kramers(another friend of the family) as they were hiking up for their Saturday morning pilgrimage. I think it's awesome that they are out every Saturday hiking somewhere way to go Guys!!! I did almost ate-it once on the way down when I came around a switchback a little too fast and found a ice patch waiting there for me. I was able to save it and not crash and burn but it was really, really close.

Total Miles: 42

This week my overall mileage decreased slightly from last week, the training program I'm following calls for roughly 3 weeks of building mileage every week followed by a week with a decrease of miles to allow for recovery. I really like how this program does that, it helps you build up slowly and recover from all the running so you can avoid overuse injuries. I felt great running all week and am ready for next week's increase in mileage. I have also decide to run Mickinnick at least once a week for the rest of my training I really need the vert that it offers; I even plan on ascending and descending Mickinnick twice and even three times during the same training run to really cover some elevation. The video clip below is me running down a section of Gold Hill, it's pretty rough footage mainly because I was holding the camera while trying to run but it gives you a little feel for what it's like running in the snow.