Groovy Weekend

One mean looking bird

Finally found myself getting back into the groove of solid mileage after Oil Creek 100.  I know I jumped back into my high mileage lifestyle too quickly, as after taking 1 week fairly easily, I logged over 100 miles in the week starting only 7 days after OC100.  After that it was crash and burn for the rest of October, and besides a PR 2:23ish on the 18 mile Potawatomi aka Poto (on my birthday none-the-less), I had a pretty hit and miss month of running. 

Searching for motivation, November has found me running more roads with my mind focusing on turn over and legspeed.  I have been mixing it up with other workouts on the treadmill, with a mind to keeping the incline turned up and the speed moderate.  This seems to be a better workout for me than really cranking between 8.5-9.5mph, which almost always leads to an injury of some sort. 

This weekend I did not record a huge number of miles, but I found myself happy to just be running.

The Poto is relentless in its rolling nature - an excellent trail system

 Jason Robertson and I met up Saturday morning for a nice outing on the Poto, and like usual, we had a great time.  I really want to get a large group of people together sometime and do a "fatass" style 50k on these trails.  Maybe I can get organized and make it happen this spring.  This loop is a gem and we managed 22 miles without ever having to travel the same trail twice.  Even better, it has a solid 2300 feet of ascent and 2300 feet of descent to keep ones mind occupied.  Oh and did I mention its very technical and rocky? :)  A trail runners dream (or nightmare)...

I followed up Saturdays AM effort with a light 5 mile shakeout run in the PM.  The next morning my Dad told me about a cyclocross route he had envisioned and invited me along to run it.  Looking at a topo map, I was excited by the amount of hills and looked forward to running some completely foreign roads.  Despite losing my map about 5 miles into the run and having to back track for an extra 2 miles, I had a great time and saw one of the biggest red tail hawks I have ever seen.  It was great to do a long road run - in fact this is the longest road run I have done in almost a year - and I was even more pleased to hold a 7:30 pace without too much stress for the entire jaunt.

Suh-weet Sunday run followed up by a Detroit Lions victory!!!

I really think I need to incorperate more fast pace road runs of this nature into my training in order to keep my leg speed up when I am running mostly trails.  While I have great stamina, I have never been a particularly fast runner.  Maybe this is because I never ran XC or Track in my youth and have no formal running training.  I like to think so.  I generally avoid long road runs due to the increased chances of hurting myself, but I think by finding dirt roads to run on, I may be able to avoid this problem.  I wonder if other ultrarunners maintain leg speed by doing road runs or if they are just naturally fast.