June 1-7

Perhaps this is a boring idea to most, but it's exciting to me: my steady mileage increase feels really good. I've been patiently hanging out below 100 miles a week, and I've been rewarded with the feeling of responsiveness in my legs when I pick up the pace, and I have no nagging injuries headed into July. I'm on a date with maturity and it looks disgustingly cute when we're holding hands and I'm wearing a cardigan sweater, but I don't care when the other guys make fun of me because I get awesome rushes when I do workouts. Even more, I can see other guys in bad relationships with training that leaves them used and abused, and I don't get jealous.

I think a requirement for all ultrarunners to come of age in the digital age is to be able to look at another runner's Strava or social media post, and not feel the need to try to challenge or complain about their setup making it easier to out-train the field. The only way that posts about 5 hour runs or blazing CRs can be detrimental is if you don't believe in your training, and you feel like you're a step behind or you're not good enough. It's all self-detrimental bullshit to want to train more like another high mileage runner, because race results of lower mileage runners like Hal Koerner or Dave Mackey speak volumes of their maturity to wear cardigans and turn down offers for all nighters with loose legs. The only problem is that Hal and Dave aren't on Strava, they're just on ultrasignup with dozen's of podiums and wins.

Monday: Rest

Tuesday: 4x10 min on the slight uphill in Sullivan Canyon. Guillaume and Ryan made it a bit more interesting as I ran well the first two in the bottom of the canyon, but suffered a bit on the second two intervals climbing out of the canyon. They were courteous enough to not destroy me after my painful weekend on Baldy, but I still felt like I didn't slow down too much as we leaned into the climb.
PM: Easy 3 miles to shake off the lactic acid.

Wednesday: Easy 9 miles with Katie, in which I defended our weekend plans to forgo sleep between driving back and forth between the San Gabriel and San Diego mountains. I advocated that it was better to be tired once or twice a week to keep the body aware of an impending sleepless night in August, and Katie did not.

Thursday: 6x6 min super early in the morning on Sullivan Ridge. Intervals are fun and all, but doing them with the sun coming up makes it extra invigorating. I called an audible and did a steep and short singletrack climb in the middle of the 5th interval that felt amazing. The run off the backside of it exposed a bit of quad pain from Tuesday, but it felt appropriately hard for training less miles and more quality.

Friday: Went up Mt. Wilson (13mi) at sunset with my z-poles. The whole idea of poles is tough because it's an admittance of shifting gears and mindset from racing to touring. I suppose the Ultra Tour du Mont Blanc is an obvious ideal application for poles, so I'll have to get used to them, but it's awkward because nothing in LA is steep and smooth like UTMB (maybe some parts of Acorn). I didn't have much room or soft terrain to plant the sticks on up the Mt. Wilson trail, but I did get to see a beautiful sunset.



Saturday: Dropped Katie off at Chantry and drove to Loma Alta to do Steep and Cheap with the poles and into Idlehour to run the last 11+ with her for 19miles. Poles felt less awkward today, clouds at 3,500ft were beautiful as ever.

Sunday: Did 5x10 from near the top of Acorn over to Inspiration. It felt awesome after using the poles and pack for the past few days to hit some good splits in the most idyllic single track in the San Gabes for fast running. Definitely a good check in the box as far as form, cardio, and health are concerned. I haven't ran those miles that fast with that little pain in a long time. 13 miles.

Weekly Total: 84mi, 16 hours, 18,200ft. 

-A good week of running that felt indulgent without feeling abusive.