Wednesday, 12/16/09 Sanitas

18:49 up
16:45 down

Today was a little warmer than yesterday, but I was not sure how the snow/ice conditions would be, as half the trail yesterday was bullet proof ice. I wore screw shoes just in case and dressed much lighter. I did not have hopes of going too fast, as I was with Sierra, so I started off pretty easy while she sniffed around and did her business. Once she lightened her load so to speak, this gave her a significant boost in energy and she was running ahead of me. I bumped up the pace to match hers and before I knew it, we had a good thing going. What was ice yesterday, was softened snow today and though traction was not necessarily better, it just seemed a bit more friendly. Went on the high side of moderate with a few surges of easy hard and made the summit in 18:49. I took it easy on the down due to the studded shoes (I have to re-arrange some screws near the toe as I was getting poked and jabbed). Nice evening.

Tuesday 12/15/09 Sanitas

Felt lazy about getting out, but got dressed up and headed to Sanitas anyways. Of course it was freezing cold where I park (causing me to overdress), followed by a 10-15 degree rise in temperature just 100 feet off the valley floor. I started off walking and easy jogging with no real agenda and started ditching layers about 1/4 of the way up. Once I pocketed hats, gloves and tied my jacket around my waist, I felt a bit renewed and bumped up the pace to moderate. The trail kind of sucks right now, plenty of bulletproof ice to require studded shoes, some mud, but also plenty of bare rock for the studded shoes to scrape and scratch on which gets quite annoying and even uncomfortable at times. After a few trips last week busting ass in the snow and barely cracking 21, I wanted to get in under 20, which is normally a given with just a little effort. Once I knew I would break 20 (an arbitrary goal), I backed off for the last few minutes and ended up at 19:29. I took it easy on the down (16 minutes) due to the crappy trail conditions and not so optimal studded shoes.