I'm Back!

I haven't been Blogging for a while because my high school team had their X-C camp this past weekend up in Grand Lake, CO.Most of our runs were between 9 and 10,000 ft! It was awesome. Here’s the update.

We drove out there Thursday morning and then did our run on the East Shore trail. It’s a nice trail that we call the “Dam Run” because the route we take ends up spitting us out right at the Dam (and because as underclassmen none of us liked the run especially but then it was the Damn run). The trail is pretty flat and cruises right along the lake for the first 3 miles or so and then passes the dam and there is a little climbing. I went out for 40 minutes very relaxed and then came back a bit faster to the trailhead and went an extra mile and a half to end my run at 11.5 miles. It’s a fun run with super soft footing for the whole trail. We followed our run up with a team stretch and a super tough core and strength workout.

The next day we did a 9 miler in the morning. This was a new trail for the whole team but I liked it a lot. It’s about a mile and a half from our cabin, maybe a little more, and then we hang a big left on to an ATV trail. The trail takes us up almost 3 miles with some steady climbing before coming to the Bull Creek Loop. The loop is a mile long, has super technical climbing up, and then mellows out a little once you get to the top. The descent for the loop is really steep though and too rocky and full of roots to take very fast. Then we cruised back to the cabin for a total of about 9 miles. The rest of the day, we all just chilled out at the lake and swam until the late afternoon when we did ANOTHER tough core and strength workout.

Saturday we didn’t run (so it was my day off for the week) but we hiked the 14er Mt. Bierstadt. It’s a tough climb just because it was so hot out. The trail is pretty straightforward, nothing out of control, but on the final ridge, it’s so rocky that there isn’t really a defined trail. That was awesome because we got to sort of Baja up and over a bunch of big boulders and just take our own path. There were some pretty awesome drop offs to the right and the more adventurous got to dangle their feet a bit. After the climb down, (which was tougher than going up) we drove back to camp and did….you guessed it: another core workout.

Sunday we did our last run of camp the “Long run”. It goes on so many different trails and service roads and ATV tracks that you can’t really call it by any of the names and typically it’s the longest run we do at camp so we put our creative minds together to come up with the name “Long run”. It’s a step up from naming one of the runs last year “The Downhill”. Anyways the run is a point-to-point run that we do for anywhere between 8 and 12 miles. The younger kids will do 8 or 10 and the older people will do 12. It goes up some rolling hills on Route 41 for about 4.5 miles and then puts you back towards the Bull Creek Loop run, but you go past it onto a different ATV trail. Then you get about a half-mile of climbing and then a mile of down hill to the water station that our coaches set up. It was super hot and there isn’t a ton of shade on the run so that was much appreciated. From the water station, you get onto Route 4 service road that heads to Stillwater pass. We head down for about 1.5 miles and then take a serious climb up for 2.5 miles. We really pushed on these sections despite being gassed by a bunch of ATVers and breathing in all the dust they were kicking up. Then we sort of just chilled on the last mile down to finish in just under an 1:29. I’m pretty sure that that’s the fastest I’ve ever done the run, and it was a great way to end the camp.

Monday some of us did a pool workout in the morning. Then at practice that night, we had a serious strength workout and some even more serious ultimate Frisbee to recover from Sunday’s run and camp a bit. So that was my day off of running for this week.

Tuesday we did hill repeats…sort of. We did 2 min 3min 4min 2min 3 min 4 min 3 min repeats on our home course which is a hilly one, but the hill isn’t quite long enough to get more than 2minutes going up. We all got a lot of practice running downhill hard though so it was a good workout especially after we did so much hurdle mobility and shin and ankle strength exercises.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. Sorry for the length! I’ve been super busy!

-Jonny