Frost Giant Double to end a 90 Mile Week

I went up to Estes Park this morning with Nick to run the Frost Giant 5K and 10K. I had no great hopes of running fast times due to the 7500 feet of elevation, the rough cross country sections of the courses and the 75 miles in my legs already this week including 22 miles of hilly trail yesterday. We arrived in Estes with over an hour until race time, so Nick, Ryan Burch, and I did an easy warm up on the 5K course which started with a mile up the road out of town to a mile loop on a dirt road and though a lumpy field at McGregor Ranch and then back to the finish down the same road we'd come up. When the gun went off, I ran hard but could feel the fatigue in my legs up the hill and never felt like I had the umph to really race. I finished in 22:30 just ahead of Fort Collins running great Jon Roeske who won the 60-69 age group.

I went with Nick and Ryan who placed 1st and 3rd in the 5K on a between race jog of about 1.75 miles over the first mile+ of the 10K course and back down to the finish. Back at the car, I grabbed something to eat and a drink of water, tried to do a little stretching, made a quick trip to the bathroom and then got back on the starting line. I had already decided to take it out very conservatively on the 10K which started with an even bigger hill than the 5K and this paid off. I ran the first mile in 8:17 and felt good. I was feeling even better when I hit the 2 mile mark at the top of the course in McGregor Ranch and I passed 5-6 other runners. I really enjoyed the 3 miles of cross country on the 10K course and cruised through it comfortably, being careful not to turn an ankle or take a low hanging branch in the face. My energy level dropped some in mile 4 and I was passed by a few of the guys that I'd passed earlier. After 5 miles, the course headed off the fields and back on to the road for the same downhill mile to the finish as the 5K. I worked pretty hard to catch the runner ahead of me and ended up finishing about 1 second behind him in 46:24.

We (Nick and Ryan placed 1st and 2nd in the 10K) went out for another mile and half cool down jog which brought the day's total miles to just over 15. It was a fun couple of races on a really nice day in the mountains.

This was another good week with 90 miles in 10 runs including a good 20 x :30-:30 fartlek on Tuesday, 3 runs on Thursday, the last one being a 38:27 run up Towers and a comfortable 22 miles on Saturday. I plan to make this next week a bit easier and cut the miles back a little. It would be nice to run the T&H 8K next Sunday with fresh legs and see if all the miles of the last 4 weeks have paid off.