24 Hours of Towers

  Yes the glorious rumors you have heard are true.  The FCTR summer running fun will be 24 hours of Towers.  The date will be Saturday July 30th.  Mark your calendars.  The details are yet to be determined, probably after some beverages at the Trailhead, but the broad strokes are in place.

• Who: As many of you as possible, and any borderline crazy friends you may be able to talk into this.  You can run solo or as relay-style teams.
• What: 7 mile laps up and down Towers road.   As many as you can or want to do in 24 hours.  Here's a great blow by blow up the route from Nick.
• Where: Towers road in Horsetooth Mountain Park.  We'll start/finish each lap at campsite I54 which is right across the road from the Soderberg parking lot.  This makes the route an even 7 miles round trip to make the math easier at 3:00 AM.
• Why: To celebrate the beast that makes us all stronger runners.
• When: 7:00 AM Sat. July 30th to 7:00 AM Sun. morning July 31st.  Breakfast and tall tales to follow, probably at the campground.

We simply want a lot of people to show up and have fun.  To that end, there aren't a lot of rules.

• Run solo, or run as a team.  
• Start/finish each lap at the campground and tag the service building up top.  
• Run when you want, stop when you want.  Drink beer when you want.  Dip your toes in the Reservoir when you want.
• Have fun.

Three of us have campsites in Horsetooth reserved already.  There may still be a couple more available, if you're so inclined, but you're welcome to hang at the sites we have too.

Ask Alex, Pete, or Brian any questions you may have and check back here for forthcoming details.

No PB in the Horsetooth Half

No Half PB for me in the Horsetooth Half Marathon.  No sub-2:00 hour finish.  Not even a course PB.  Oh-for-three on my goals, no fun.

 Last weekend I ran at Pineridge Reservoir and the wind was all over the place.  At times it was 15-20 MPH, at times calm.  At times I ran into the wind at one end of the loop and with the wind, while going in the same direction, at the other end of the loop.  I hit wind in some spots that were calm the loop before and vice versa.  It was just difficult to figure out. 

Such has been my running.  In the past 2 weeks I've run a 5K PB, a Towers road PB, had one of the uglier long runs in months and ran my slowest half marathon in 3 years.  I've had all the runs to fill in the gaps in between too.  It's been difficult to figure out.

I suppose there's probably some wisdom in here regarding adequate recovery after hard and fast efforts.  Probably some more wisdom regarding riding the ups and downs while increasing mileage volume.  Maybe even some snarky comments to be made regarding pavement pounding.  For now I'm just kind of bummed.  That will probably change tomorrow when I go out for a run.  Wonder which way the wind will be blowing?

5K PB!

Yesterday at the Fort Collins Running Club's T&H finale I set a 5K PB by 22 seconds, finishing in 24:20 (7:43).  My old PB was set at the Colder Boulder in Dec 2008, so it's been awhile (not that I run a lot of 5Ks, last was in May I think).  I am pretty excited about this. 

My speed has not been the same since injuring my ITB in September 2009, mostly because I never picked speed work back up after the injury.  I still don't run any regular speedwork, though things like Towers and treating social runs kind of like tempo runs in trying to keep up with the fast guys and girls surely count for something.  Lately I have felt a little extra something something when opening it up on the roads so I was hopeful on Sunday and went for broke from the gun.  I went out too hard, but not too too hard I guess. ;-)  Most of my short race PBs are ill-run from a pacing perspective, as Sunday's 7:35, 7:44, 7:57, 1:04 would illustrate. 

It's funny how things like this shape your views on future races.  I had all but given up on breaking 50 in the Bolder Boulder this year, or even beating my BB/10K PB of 51:39.  I also had no thoughts of a half PB in the Horsetooth Half.   Now I'm thinking all that is possible.  I've even thought a bit about a another road marathon.  Only so Nick would have another data point in his Towers-Marathon prediction formula of course.

Oh, and I'm going for broke up the hill on Thursday.  I'm feeling fast.