Sunday, 07/17/11 Green

Up back/down front 4.73 miles/2,438 vert./1:18:44 RT (46 up)/128 avg. HR

Woke up at 4am after a terrible night of sleep tossing and turning (for no particular reason).  I fought it for a while, but eventually got up and headed out the door in a fog. It took my full concentration just to drive to the TH, I hardly even remember doing so. Started from the Gregory lot at 5:10am and stumbled for a bit in the dark, trying not to trip on the rocks or stumble into the poison ivy. Cloud cover to the East kept things dim until after the ranger cabin and I was hoping that better light would help, but I felt full on crappy this morning and alternated between hiking and what I would call a poor example of jogging. Call it wogging.

I was relieved to make the summit and the relatively slow 46 minute split does nothing to indicate the struggle to get there. I have had MUCH easier days going up 10 or 11 minutes faster with the dog. Spent a moment on the summit watching the sunrise to the East, but in the interest of getting to work, I headed down the front at what I hoped would be an easy cruise. Unfortunately, I felt worse on the down, absolutely no coordination or skill or strength and even walked a few times (felt like walking the whole thing, but was in a hurry). My goal was just to get back to the car without taking a header into the rocks and this foggy and sluggish run had me questioning any vague thoughts of ever trying a 100 miler.

Amazing how one day I can cruise the descent of Green in 19 minutes like nothing, then a few days later, struggle to go down in 32. As GZ likes to say, some days you are the windshield, other days you are the bug. This weekend I was certainly the bug.  I need to really get my shit together if I even hope to finish the Pikes Peak Marathon on August 21st, much less break 5 hours.

Edit:  finally got around to downloading my garmin data.  HR was 128 for the RT, 145 for the up and 104 for the down.  Sounds crazy to me because this run was such a struggle, but totally makes sense and reflects the very sluggish times.  Guess I just couldn't "get it up" so to speak ;).

Saturday, 07/16/11 Bear/SoBo

9 miles/3,418 vert./1:56:55/159 avg. HR Garmin Data

Started from the Bear Mountain Drive TH a bit after 4pm.  For the first 5 minutes or so, I thought I was going to have a great run, but before long, I was dogging it a bit and once I hit Fern Canyon, I knew I was in for it.  The original plan was to get all 3 peaks, but as the run hike progressed, I knew I would be lucky to tag 2 summits.

From Bear, I headed over to SoBo, then back to Bear and down W. Ridge, looking for some easier cruising and would give myself the option to summit Green if I felt better.  I was tired, hot and uncoordinated on the down (and the previous ups too) and it became a bit of a death march back to the car.  Though the meager stats do not indicate as such, this one really hurt and felt like a lot of hard work.