Sunday, June 15, 2008

What goes up, must come down...100 GRAND!

On May 1st I reset the history on my Suunto T6. I wanted to know how many hours and how much ascent I could do before Western States. Having rolled over 1 million feet of ascent sometime in late April, I was curious to know how much climbing I could put in before the big day, so I reset the history and kissed my million plus goodbye.

Not really knowing what an attainable goal was, I set my sights on 75,000 feet of ascent. Well 75,000 came and went with the the month of May and I realized that 100,000 may not be out of reach. Well I'm proud to say that today my 14 mile run with 2657 feet of gain put my at 100,396 feet of ascent in 46 days. I can't tell you exactly how many miles I've run in that stretch, but I feel pretty dang good about that much vertical time.

Of course, as all Western States runners know it's the downhills that can kill you, so it may be just as important to note that I've descended 102,520 feet in that same time. I've never tracked my total ascent and descent so closely, so it's hard to know what it means, but it can't hurt to be averaging over 2,000 ft. a day.

5 comments:

Michael Havrda said...

All that hard work is going to pay off; you're going to do awesome at WS because you're prepared and healthy. We'll have to throw you a celebration party when you get back (excuse to eat pizza). See you Sunday.

garobbins said...

Looks like you're ready to rock it out at Western...kick some ass down there!!

Unknown said...

That hard work IS going to pay off! Now go get a beer!! ...and maybe another run... :)

Alison Hanks said...

Yeah! You're going to rock! See ya down there!

Dave said...

i just heard ws is cancelled. that is so devastating to all the hard training. i hope you can find something to replace it soon while you're still at the top of your game.