Sunny and 32 degrees

It was a great day for a longer run.  I ran the first 3 miles with Hillary and the dogs to the end of our road, then took off on an atv trail to connect over to Castleton Village via Ames Hollow and Pond Hill.  Some hills to start and a stroll back on flatter Rte. 4a back to the house.  I am feeling really good this week even with some intervals and the longest run to date under my belt today.  A 10 miler is on the schedule for tomorrow and a rest day on Monday to start the school week.

1 mile Intervals and Swimming

The final week of the mid-year academic siesta.  Yesterday (Wed) was a beautiful day in the 40s with bright sun for the first half of the day.  I reserve Wednesday for either intervals or tempo runs in order to get some speedier workouts in once a week.  I like to run on the Castleton Rail Trail for tempo runs since it is super flat, but it is still really icy.  So I decided to run from my house down into Castleton Village for some interval training.
I set up my Garmin 310XT for an interval workout for the first time and it was great ... well running intervals with the watch was, not so much for the intervals.  My interval workout consisted of:
1 mile warmup
5 - 1 mile repeats at 6:15 pace
0.25 mile recovery between each mile at 8-9 min pace
Cool down for a total of 8.8 miles
The intervals actually went pretty well and it was great to have the watch in order to hit the targets nearly right on for all segments.

Today (Thurs) is a cross-training day.  We did get 2 inches of snow today, but not enough to ski on with the ground still thawed out.  So I hit the lunchtime lap swim at the Castleton pool.  45 minutes of continuous laps really stretches you out, gets your heart rate up, and hopefully served as a good active recovery from the interval day.

Week 1 2014 - Recap

It was a nice week to break in to my more formal training schedule for this upcoming ultra season.  We are still on break from classes; however the weather was a bit of everything ... cold, warm, rain, ice, it just couldn't decide this week.  Since it was break I also had a great lead in to the week with nearly 50 miles the week prior including ski and run miles.

Summary of the week:
M  OFF
T   6.3 mi ice rail trail run
W  6.7 mi dirt/trail run
Th  8.5 mi snow trail run
F    12.8 mi skate ski with Hillary
S    5.0 mi road run with Hillary and dogs
S    10.2 mi road/dirt/trail run

Weekly totals
Run distance:  36.7 miles
Total time all activities:  6.7 hours
Total elevation gain:  4,452 ft

Today's run had about 800 ft of elevation gain over the second half of the run and I am looking forward to getting more elevation into my training.  I need to get my leg strength up again.  It is tough to get really big climbs in when the trails are ice and break through semi frozen mud!  The 2 miles of trail today were pretty broken leg worthy where you would just bust through the frozen ground to your shin at times.  There was also a great stream crossing at the end where I had to wade to the crotch of my running shorts!  Luckily I was only a half mile from home.

XC Skate Skiing at Grafton Ponds Outdoor Center

Hillary had the day off so we scanned the nordic ski centers in Vermont to see who had snow and trails in decent shape.  Since we have season passes to Mountain Meadows in Killington we are also part of the VT reciprocal pass program where you can ski one free day at all of the other nordic centers in VT.  Our research paid off as we ended up at Grafton Ponds Outdoor Center in southern VT.  There was much more snow down there and the trails were perfect for skating!  Hillary and I skated just over 20k and got a good workout on the hills throughout their trail system.  We stopped for lunch in the village of Grafton and even stopped in at the Cheese Store for numerous free cheese samples.  It was a beautiful day to see southern VT and ski some great trails.

Icy Trail Running

I was able to get out for a 6+ mile run on the Castleton Rail Trail this afternoon with temps in the single digits and wind chills well below zero.  In an attempt to stay out of the wind I decided to run on the rail trail which is pretty protected with trees along most of it.  The temps were definitely manageable for the 6+ miles at a pace just over 7 minute miles even though the trail was literally a sheet of hard glaring ice!  My new DIY running cleats performed spectacularly!  There are a couple spikes that I could feel through the foot bed when stepping on hard, uneven glare ice, but no falls and overall great traction.

Registered for the Vermont 100

Today at 10am registration opened up for the Vermont 100 in July.  After continually hitting refresh then filling out all of the info I found that I had just barely made registration as the 325 person field was filled within the next 20-30 minutes!  So I have set my ultra racing schedule through July with:
Bear Mountain 50 mi on 5/3/14 in New York
Bryce Canyon 50 mi on 6/14/14 in Utah
Vermont 100 mi on 7/19/14 in Vermont

This week starts my official start to more formal training, but last week was extremely active with XC Skiing and running adding up to nearly 50 miles for the week.  With the downpouring rain today, morning temps in the 50s and temps around zero tonight I decided to take the off day.  I should have seen this coming yesterday ... as Hillary and I started to gather gear for skate skiing the dogs migrated up to the bed to take an all day nap and let us know that they needed a day off as well!

I have now added race preview links at the top of the page.

New snow and cold!

Hillary, Stout, Hubb and I went for a 7.25 mile XC ski around Bird Mountain out the backyard today.  The temperature was just 1 degree for the entire ski.  We had about 4-5 inches of fresh super light snow when we started on a very minimal base.  There was just barely enough snow on the trails with out lots of debris and ruts.  It is still snowing and we are over 6 inches now.