Whew!

Well I'm thoroughly hammered. This has probably been the most rigorous four weeks of training that I've ever experienced. And although I feel like I've been working my ass off, my body is holding up quite well (knock on wood).

If I'm not ready to compete at States right now, then I never will be. Really, I'm not one to exaggerate, so you'll just have to trust me. For as hard as I trained in 2006, I don't think that I matched the likes of these past four weeks. But don't tell anyone. Right now I'm not being discussed as a contender, and I like it that way. I flew in under the radar in 2006, and I hope to do the same this year.

My mileage has been relatively low (85-95 miles), but I haven't run any "junk" miles. Don't get me wrong. I've certainly run some easy recovery jaunts, but I haven't run a step just to add 2-3 worthless miles to a weekly total. The bulk of my weekly mileage has come between Friday and Sunday.

Each of the past 4 Fridays have been spent running repeats up and down Mt. Si. For three weeks in a row, I ran 2 times up and down (6400 ft. of ascent). Then to cap off this block of training, I punched out three repeats this past Friday. All three ascents were negative splits. Saturdays have been the big, long runs. The first Saturday of this stint was 69.88 miles in 10:37 as part of a twelve hour race. The ascent was minimal, only 4k, but it gave me some real confidence going that distance after a hard day before. Each of the next two Saturdays were spent at Tiger Mountain, running 12 peaks. It's a local run in which you hit all six summits of Tiger out and back, for a total of 12. The run logs over 9000 ft, covers 34 miles, and takes just over 6 hours. This past Saturday I opted for a slightly more runnable course. I hammered out two loops of the Cougar 14 miler. Again, this is a staple local run. I ran the first loop in 2:09 and the second in 2:03. 28 miles. 5300 ft. of ascent. Not too bad after triple Mt. Si's. And each of the last 4 Sundays I've spent leading the Seattle Running Company trail runs. These runs are typically 2-3 hours and cover 14-16 miles on hilly terrain. So in three days I've been knocking out 16-18 grand of climbing.

Hopefully, it's still just my mom and sister reading this, because I really do hope to avoid the pre-race hype. I'm writing this mostly to satisfy myself. I can certainly feel how hard I've been working at this, but it's nice to take a moment and put to paper (computer screen, in this case) the training I've put in. Well it sounds good, so let's see how it all plays out in less than 3 weeks.