Beaten up and bush whacking on Boney Mountain

I am really liking the routine I have gotten myself into, three training runs; Monday, Wednesday and Friday, a recovery run and cross training on the other week days and that leaves me the weekend to play. It can be a bit brutal starting the day at around 4:15am and squeezing in a 10-11 miler and getting home around 6:00am is a challenge but so far so good, this weeks training was another solid week; 49 miles, another 24 miles on the bike, some stretching and all in for just under 10 hours. The week shakes out with Intervals on Monday; totally messed up my Garmin data.

Wednesday; Short tempo: 1m w/u 5m x 6:53

Friday; Long Tempo; 9m x 7:13, messed up the first mile’s data!

I am pretty pleased with the splits, these are not easy runs but I am getting in range of the target paces, I am trying to learn to feel the pace rather than rely on looking at my Garmin or using the Pace Alert to warn me to slow down; happens not much or speed up; happens much.

So with these in the bank I had Saturday to play, I headed to Boney Mountain to run the Xterra Half Marathon course, it’s a challenging course which I have not been on for a couple of years, so it took a bit of total recall to remember the actual route and I made a couple of wrong turns, one which took me off course by a couple of miles. I was pleased that I managed to run the first set of climbs and pretty much I ran the first 11 miles only stopping to take photos.

Around this time to trail turned from fairly runabale:

To a bushwhacking bonanza:

Yeah it’s in there somewhere, and it it got thicker at ground level, leg level and chest level! This continued for another couple of miles and left me no resort but to walk, I never realized I could get my HR to 165 walking and the ever fun 14:00 minute miles! Finally at the top it opened out and I was treated to the downhill view of well, nothing; thick cloud, thick bushes and 30 minutes behind schedule meant that the camera went away and I was resorting to calling home to reshuffle things much to the amusement of some hikers as I dashed down the hill! I pushed through back to the car and had enough mileage, over three hours on my feet, a lovely green smear across my shirt and a cactus thorn in my thigh to show for my efforts!

It’s a nice reminder not to get too complacent and that while I am getting reasonably quick on the roads, the trails can give me a right good ass kicking!

None of the photos are great, but they’re here:

Boney Mountain, 6/6/11 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL