Week ending June 3

Monday: Off. Quads are a still sore from the marathon, but otherwise everything else feels fine.

Tuesday: 8 miles, Foothills trail, 1500ft of gain; 4 miles, Foothills trail, 500ft of gain. I would be lying if I said that it took me a long time to warm up this morning. My quads felt very weak on the downhills this morning - not stiff, but sore and overstretched. Oh well, caught the north end of the Foothills trail by the department this afternoon and worked out some more of the soreness. Tweaked something in my right glute, perhaps some piriformis syndrome? It appeared suddenly toward the end of the run; stretching seems to be working it out.

Wednesday: 8 miles, Foothills trail, 1500ft of gain; 8 miles, Foothills trail, 1500ft of gain. The double-down, two repeats of my routine out-and-back on the Foothills trail. Still felt a little stiff and sore this morning, with a few odd tweaks in my glute again, but I'm almost good as new. Second run was better after sitting and rolling around on a tennis ball.

Thursday: 8 miles, Foothills trail, 1500ft of gain; 7 miles, Towers time trial, 2000ft of gain. Piriformis issues are gone and I felt refreshed on this morning's run around the usual loop. Smelled a skunk near the Laporte dam and made acquaintances with a rattle snake on the trail just north of the big A. It's like National Geographic around here. I went to the time trial not knowing what to expect, still feeling some quad soreness, but I managed to shave 29 seconds off my PR and run 29:30.

Friday: 14 miles, Foothills trail and Reservoir Ridge, 2500ft of gain. Did the Foothills trail/Reservoir Ridge lollipop route, with an extra loop thrown in at Reservoir Ridge. I felt really energized and knocked out the whole run in under 2 hours. I'm surprised that after a marathon and a full week of training, I can run that fast over such nasty terrain and still feel good.

Saturday: 36 miles, Horsetooth Mountain and Lory State Park, 7000ft of gain. I knew it was going to get hot by midday so I woke up extra early and got an hour of night running in before the early morning twilight. I did a riff on the Quad Rock course, with two summits of both Horsetooth and Arthur's Rock, and ran through the valley toward the end to get some heat training. The contrast in climate between the valleys and the mountains is wild - there was no wind in the valleys so they were absolutely baking, while the shade afforded by the trees and the steady wind kept the ridgeline cool.

Sunday: 8 miles, Foothills trail, 1000ft of gain. Slave to the mileage? Naw, I thought it would be fun to break my pattern and not take the day off after a long run. It was surprisingly therapeutic, waking me up from that post-long-run zombie state the morning after and loosening up my quads.

Totals:
Mileage: 100 miles
Elevation gain: 19,000ft of gain

Welp, a high mileage week after laying down a fast marathon in Wyoming, and I don't feel trashed. I'm getting pumped for Bighorn. The next two weeks will be a hard taper into the race, with the Burning Can 5K (and the associated post-race libations) this coming weekend. Time to dust off the old XC spikes.