A post from email

Flying from Salt Lake to Vancouver.  More sea level training!

I am writing this post into an offline email program (Outlook).  Supposedly by sending it to a particular blogspot address, it will post.  We’ll see.  It will be interesting to see how the pix attach.

The Great Salt Lake

I think this is the Columbia River?


Snow on these mountains and I think that is Ranier in the distance.  

I have had the week to contemplate a bit what is next.  It should come as no surprise that I want it all.  I want to run in the mountains, I want to run the steeps, I want to do the track workouts and I want to pile on miles.   I want to zip out a solid 5k, but then also be able to crash the mountains and touch the sky.  I want to run an ultra and compete and I also don’t give a crap, as there are times I just want to run and smell the rain.

Of course, doing all of these are not practical.  Family life and work keep me from attempting all of that (and that is probably a blessing in disguise).  The fall season here lights up with the little buggers in school, soccer, music, Scouts, etc.  And of course, those goals are all over the place, so they don’t mesh together well.

I am not even close to figuring out what I will do next year.  I have some desires to visit some of the wonderful places I have before, like the Grand Canyon but I also feel an itch to see some more of the places not far from my front door (like RMNP).   I don’t have to decide anything really, but I am the sort of guy that ends up in a bit of a rut unless I get ahead of the planning.   And while it has only been a week, I feel I can still put together the day at Pikes I have imagined.  Anything can change at this point, but at this point, I am looking to return to Manitou for the third weekend in August.  Part of me realizes I need to think about that now because of the commitment it would truly take – and to start the steer the ship that way.   But part of me also knows some silly little thing between now and then could unravel it all.

I guess I do know I don’t really want to take time off.   Simply, taking time off seems like a waste of time.  Yeah, I know, there is something to be said for a downtime part of the year – and I agree with that notion (even if I don’t practice it).  Generally I think time off is dealt to me.   So I with go with that when I see those cards pop up in my hand.

Over the past week I have thought that my ideal training right now would probably include…

… some running every day
… at least two days a week where I work speed and endurance specific for a better (than now) 5k/10k (a focus between now and Christmas)
….at least one day a week where I play in the hills (long or short)
… at least one day a week where I go long (I’d love that to be in excess of three hours)
… less emphasis on overall mileage (I have chased miles over the last couple of years, with over 10k miles since the start of 2009) and instead optimizing workouts
… getting to the gym more (I am become acutely more aware of odd weaknesses that I have in my body that do indeed the running I want and can do)

I don’t really know if I can do that.  This requires discipline, planning, habit forming and habit breaking.  The habit I have now is very much one of consistency:  get out run 7-13 miles a day, sometimes in singles, sometimes in doubles, mostly easy, avoid speed, not a ton of climbing.  To some extent it has worked.  But “if you always do what you have always done, then you will always get what you have always got.”    The issue for me will less about doing the actual training, but making the choices that allow me to do the actual training (if that makes sense) without impacting (adversely) the other important parts of my life.

Some of the posts read on the plane … Leadville reports from Fuller (again), Gorman, Burch, Bowman (again), Brooks, Boyack, Garcia, Solarweasel, Timko, Woody, .  Still need to get to a few.