Taste of Colorado

Easy Sunday

I met up with my teammate Lauren for a run up to the Taste of Colorado happening this weekend at Civic Center Park in downtown Denver. It was only a fifteen-minute run to the site and we passed through the gates to join the crowd of Coloradans shuffling from booth to booth to sample a variety of food and refreshments or peruse the craft makers and artisans who had come to peddle their merchandise. The city closes down a large space including the streets around downtown to support this sprawling event. The festival is meant to offer something for everyone with culinary demonstrations, a fine-dining section, activities for kids, and carnival rides. With the food tickets we bought we were able to get some drinks, some sugared almonds and pecans, and after double-checking to see that the coaches weren’t around, a funnel cake. The festival also had a number of sound stages set up for live music. I haven’t done a run where I stopped in the middle to wander around for an hour and eat junk food, but fortunately it was an easy run today and we were able to make it back to Lauren’s without cramping up too badly. Her new golden retriever puppy joined us for a cool down-relaxing on the lawn outside. I’d have no complaints if every training run goes like this but I think I’d need to reassess my racing goals.

The Long Run

The Highline Canal Trail in Autumn

Seventeen Miles

We’ll be using the 66-mile-long Highline Canal Trail for the rest of our long weekend runs. It is simply the longest, most accessible running path in Denver City Limits so it offers the best opportunity to get in the long runs we’ll need as the marathon nears. The long run has always been an important part of training for these long races. Athletes train at paces far slower than their race pace. That approach would be damaging and the recovery to extensive to go through this close to the race. The long run allows your body to get used to the sensation of going and going, but just as importantly it prepares your mind too. Team in Training athletes will take between three hours and seven hours to complete the race next month and your mind needs to be equally as strong, if not more so than your body. By subjecting ourselves to long runs we’ll be better able to cope on mile 19 when we still have seven to go and wonder if we’ll make it. Today’s run was set for a specific time instead of a specific mileage and I ended up going 17 miles over two hours of running. My pattern on long runs is to run each successive half-hour faster than the previous run and I was successful in that today, but I started off more slowly than I would have liked. Next week’s long runs will get even longer and the mileage even greater. I’m feeling ready for it.

Killer Workout

Crunch Time

The next few weeks are considered the most critical time in the preparation for the Denver Marathon. I’m glad to be coming into this period with my fundraising goals met so I can just concern myself with the running. Tonight’s workout was specially crafted for me by Coach Rick to push me to the same level of exertion I’ll need to complete the marathon in a Boston-qualifying time. I began with 3 miles of warm up. Then the real workout began. Everything I did was at a 6:20 mile pace today. It started with an 800 meter (half-mile) run, then a short rest followed by a 1200 (3 laps), a 1600 (4 laps or 1 mile) then a 1200, an 800, a 400, and a fast 200. This type of workout is called a ladder because you step up the distance and then step down the distance. By practicing this at a 6:20 mile pace, far quicker than I’ll be running on race day, I’m preparing my legs and lungs to withstand the expected strain of the race. The workout went pretty well, but exhausted me and caused soreness in my quadriceps and hamstrings for the next several days. I’d done a poor job of hydrating and staying well-fed that day and I think it made the effects of the training more severe than they would have been otherwise. I’ll need to adjust my eating and sleeping habits to ensure that I’ll be able to get the most out of the coming weeks. My performance today however tells me that I’m on track right now to meet my racing goals and as long as I can stay healthy and committed I should be successful. The thing about the marathon though is that you just never know. It’s a long race…

Mountain Multisport

Rainbow Over Elk Meadows

Hike and Bike

The city of Denver has more park land than any other city in the country. Much of the acreage is found in the traditional urban parks, ball courts, and swimming pools that come to mind when someone mentions a summer barbecue or picnic. But most of Denver’s park acreage is up in the mountains and features flowery meadows, shady evergreen forests, and rocky trails to mountain views. My friend Bre, and I took bikes along on the short drive to the park this morning for a planned biking/hiking route that would tax our lungs and legs and take us to the 9708 foot summit of Bergen Peak. The first half of the trail followed a ridge of the massive Bergen Peak up a number of switchbacks. After a few miles of this we were happy to take a break and visited with a hiker chugging up the same trail. He turned out to be the proprietor of a hot-air balloon company and told us that the chance of your hot-air balloon exploding is actually quite low. More likely is that the heat of the gas fire would destroy a seam of the fabric and deflate the balloon, sending passengers swiftly back to Earth. I don’t know if that’s any better. We continued on steadily, sometimes riding and sometimes pushing the bikes along. This is never a preferred method of travel for a biker. We agreed that biking uphill is tougher than hiking uphill, but pushing a bike uphill? Definitely the hardest. Eventually we came to a trail junction the spur trail that would climb to the summit. We stashed our bikes off the trail and took off on foot to reach our summit goal. The view from the top looked down upon Elk Meadow below and some of the narrow trails that we would be zipping along near the end of our ride. After some snacks to energize the descent we returned to our bikes and saddled up for the scenic plunge into Elk Meadows and the rolling trails below. A day like this in the mountains is, in my mind, one of  the greatest benefits to living in Denver. We were back in town in time for lunch and had gotten a great workout in the fresh air and big views that are one-of-a-kind Colorado. Not bad.

Stairs

Red Rocks Amphitheater

250 million years ago, Denver looked very different from what one finds here today. The area was a vast and shallow sea filled with life forms long extinct. The mountains that predated the current Rocky Mountains stood nearby and for many years eroded sediment from high on it’s valleys and deposited it in the basin below. Over time, the sediment was buried miles below overlying sediment. The great pressure and heat produced miles below the surface compressed the sandy sediment into stone. Many years passed and the buried stone lifted once again. During the uplift of the Rocky Mountains this sandstone, richly hued in red due to a concentration of iron-oxide, was exposed again at the surface and tilted as the massive movements of the Earth’s crust bent and warped on the fringe of the great mountain chain. All of this happened just west of Denver and that uplifted sandstone stands as frozen waves of rock today. In the early 1900s a champion of both Denver and music, John Brisbin Walker, envisioned a grand amphitheater among the prows and monoliths of these tilted layers and set in motion a 50 year project to design and construct one of the most unique concert venues anywhere. From its humble beginnings to its current standing as a premiere performamce setting, Red Rocks Amphitheater, owned and operated by the City of Denver has played host to legendary musicians and performers from around the world. The Beatles, John Denver, Jethro Tull, Carole King, the Grateful Dead, Flletwood Mac, the Dave Matthews Band, and others have all held the stage below the angled formations and open sky. In 1983, a relatively unknown band recorded a concert called Under a Blood Red Sky at Red Rocks. The album and video launched U2 on its ascendant career.

As a city park, the concert site is open to the public when no event is underway. This Tuesday my teammate Lauren and I woke up early to meet Coach Rick at the top of the seating area. We were not alone as other members of Denver’s more active community had congregated in small groups to run the stairs and aisles that are often filled with concert-goers. A powerful wind swept over the hills above, but the steep shape of the bowl blocked the strongest gusts. We started with plyometrics, exercises designed to build power and strength. We followed this with a stair workout; down, then up and back down and up. Push-ups and lunges piggy-backed on that. If it hadn’t been for such an extraordinary setting and spirited team members it would’ve been tedious drudgery, but a brilliant sunrise,  friendly encouragement and the reward of hard work left us weary but contented.