Grindstone Training, Week #9, August 11-18

Ski Slope Repeats and Olympic Dreams

This was an easy week, about 50 miles total with one day of tempo and the rest at easy, 100-mile pace. I am totally into the Olympics and have been staying up late every night, so it's good timing to have a cut-back week and be able to sleep in. Next Friday and Saturday I am running the Cheat Mountain Moonshine Madness 50 miler in WVA. It starts at 9:00 pm and will be an excellent training run for the start of Gstone (a 6:00pm start time). I am planning to run CMMM at 100 mile pace and not push it---just have fun, enjoy the beauty of running at night in the mountains, and get a good training run in...and of course, make every moment count!

Speaking of making every moment count...how about Michael Phelps' fingertip touch to get the 7th gold medal? Here is an inspiring interview with Michael and Mark Spitz, who is incredibly gracious and supportive of Michael. This is worth watching, and has footage of Mark Spitz swimming to his 7th gold.

OK here's the week:

Monday, August 11: Day off after huge week of training. Slept late, no lifting, swimming, just eating, napping, and relaxing with the kids.

Tuesday, August 12: Swim and lift. I wanted to take an extra day off given the next few weeks of hard training that are coming up...plus we celebrated Rusty's 48th birthday. Good times!

Wednedsday, August 13: Tempo run, total 9 miles. Started with 3 miles easy on the Rivanna Trail, then 2 miles at 7:15 pace on rolling dirt. Easy 2:00 recovery, then 15:00 climb and descent on hilly single track, then another 2 miles at 7:15 pace. Finished with 2 miles easy on rocky trail. Tough workout!

Thursday, August 14: 5 miles easy on trail, 30 minutes of lifting focusing on core and upper body.

Friday August 15: Wintergreen Ski Resort ski slope repeats! I was at Wintergreen for a work retreat, so I decided to descend and climb up every ski slope at the resort. This took me about 1:30 at a steady pace, trying to keep my heart rate below 135. Ever wonder what lies beneath the snow on ski slopes? Weeds, wildflowers, brush, and fire roads (I used the fire roads). I have no idea how much climb and descent I got but it was a great quality workout.

Saturday, August 16: I was the keynote speaker for the Women's 4 Miler Training Program. Last year I wrote about this wonderful experience on my Montrail blog, and this year I was invited back, which was a huge honor. There were about 300 women getting ready to run their longest training run before the 4 miler on August 30, and I talked about the importance of setting race-day goals, being flexible when things unravel in the race, and having a mantra for training and the event itself. I am totally inspired by these women, most of whom had never run a step before June and who were now running 4 miles with no problem!

Afterwards, I ran 10 miles very easy on the Rivanna Trail.

Sunday, August 17: 21 miles on the Moormans, AT and Sugar Hollow trails with Jeff, Greg, and Ed. We added the Rip Rap trail today and did at least 5,000 total feet of climb. This is my new fave training run---the trails and views of the valley are awesome and all very runnable. Thanks, guys, for the great company!