Sunday, December 6, 2009

Building a foundation in the mountains

Me on the summit of Mt. Jackson
A busy week of work and running, more work than running, but not bad. I managed a whole 29 miles this week, but the motivation to want to train is starting to come back. Maybe the post by DoubleJ about Mt. Washington being the lone mountain qualifier had something to do with it.

Yesterday I had an intersting run in the Southern Presidentials. I was hoping that there would be enough snow above treeline to get in some good snowshoeing, but it was a mixed bag. The weather was great, but the trails changed from rock, to streams, to snow, to ice and back to rock. I went prepared with my Dion snowshoes and Khatoolas. I ended up using both. I was able to make it to the summit of Jackson, the 46th of 48 Four Thousand Footers I've run up, in 54:57. I put on the snowshoes for the section between Jackson and Pierce and hit the summit in 1:52:14. Next I headed to Eisenhower where I used the Khatoolas above treeline along the Crawford Path. A lot of people were out taking advantage of the nice weather. I summited Eisenhower in 2:33:52. The trip down the Crawford Path back to the Highland Center was pretty uneventful, except for catching a spike a few times on bare rocks as I was getting tired on the downhill. I covered the +/-11 miles in 3:51:08. Not an impressive pace, but I felt like I was working the whole time.

Today I got out for a nice 6.2 mile, 65 minute run in the singletrack along the base of the Green Hills. There was a couple of inches of snow, but nothing to make the going too slick. During this run I thought a lot about what I'll need to do this winter to be ready for Snowshoe Nationals, and ultimately Mt. Washington. This week my main goal is to get a run in everyday and get in another long mountain run next weekend. I need a place to start and then I need to build from there.

View of Eisenhower, Monroe and Washington from Pierce