Army 10 miler

I has been a crazy couple of weeks for me thus the delay in posting. I had some pretty signifigant life events but kept my running going. Two weeks ago I had my finals for my last time! After that I commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant and had all of my family in town to celebrate with me. Then one of my best friends from Wisconsin came down to help me reside my house.

The good news... it was taper time anyways. I did have a good couple of workouts leading up to the 10 miler and Jemez next weekend just to clear out the cobwebs and make sure I can run fast. I hit a 2 x 2 mile on the track in 11:46 and 11:41 and a ladder fartlek. For the ladder I started with 1 min hard running with equal recovery and moved up to 4 minutes and back down to 1 so 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1. Its quick and easy speed work on any surface.

For the last week I backed way off I ran 13 miles on Monday with a progression from 8:00-6:40, an easy 7 miles on Wednesday and 4 Thursday night with some accelerations to race pace. My legs felt light and refreshed for the first time since before Lake McMurty

Friday morning was the Fort Sill 10 mile team qualifier. The top 6 male and female finishers are guaranteed a spot on the Fort Sill team, get to train 6 days a week instead of doing Army physical fitness and an all expenses paid trip to Washington D.C to race the Army 10 miler. It doesn't get much better than this... This year the race was on a Friday at 8am which I liked. A relatively casual start line atmosphere made me think I was at the start line of an ultra. The front of the pack took off with 3 ahead of use but Charlie, Zach and I hung back at a 6:00 flat pace. After 3 miles 2 had faded back. Hit the turn around in 29:40 feeling decent and it was Zach, me and the other runner who was doing well. At around 6.5-7 I had a small pity party for myself and fell 20-30 sec off Zach. I came back around after the 7.5 mile water station and started closing the gap on 2nd place. The final mile of the course is relatively uphill and I really started to gain on 2nd place but I ran out of real estate to catch him. I finished in 3rd with a 59:46 a new PR and almost 2 min faster than the time I ran in 2013 on the exact same course.

I'm going to recover now run a little over the next week and head off Thursday to meet Will in Albuquerque  for Jemez 50 miler and then we are driving up to Boulder, CO (Mecca). In Boulder we are running the Boulder to Boulder 10k. I'm super excited to see how Jemez goes for me. 1st I haven't run a 50 miler in a long time (2011 ish) and 2nd it's got 11,000 ft of vert all from 7000 ft to 10000 ft, I'm excited to see how I respond to elevation.