40 days until the 2012 Leadville Trail 100 Mile Run....
Friday morning I played basketball at the high school at 5:45 am - good time. Hot and humid but hey, it's July in Iowa.
At 9:30, Rick and I decided to try a different type of workout - the "Exterminator". My wife Joan went with us and did some hills, running, and exercises. She introduced us to the "Incinerator" and the "Exasperator" - two hills in Crow Creek Park that are fairly close together. Rick and I decided to run each of these hills 5 times - they were good hills but not too steep so we ran up and down both of them. The Exasperator hill was longer, less steep, and had sprinklers running which felt good on this very hot, humid day.
Following this, we headed back to the Exterminator, a steep hill that is dreaded by many in our community - which is exactly why wanted to tackle it. Rick recommended that we get some practice on this hill and I was in full agreement. We decided to work this hill for about an hour.
I'm not exactly sure how long the hill us but I am guessing that it is 60 yards. We had no intentions of running this hill - hiking it uphill was difficult enough. There were two reasons why we wanted to do this.
#1 - climbing one of the steepest hills (if not the steepest) in the Quad Cities on natural ground, best simulating the mountain trails we will be running in August.
#2 - getting practice running down steep hills - something we have not practiced but is very important at Leadville. Running too fast and hard down the steep mountains can result in trashing the quadriceps, causing pain in the hips and knee joints, and creating blisters on the toes due to the feet slamming into the front part of the running shoes.
With the two dimensional pictures it is difficult to capture the steepness of the hill but this hill is difficult to climb even once. We scaled the Exterminator 30 times. It was a great workout! We certainly could feel the fatigue on our muscles as we increased the number of trips up but we kept pressing on and completed our hour long workout.
We decided to trade in our Wednesday morning Jumer's Tower workouts for 'Exterminator' workouts for the next several weeks. We'll continue to run stadium stairs on Tuesdays, continuing the regimen we started last fall.
On Saturday morning, this was the crew that met at 4:30 a.m. to get in a good long run. Emily was sweating more than the rest of us because she had already completed 3 miles before we started! Our original plan was to run two 90 minute loops. Even at 4:30 a.m. it was hot and humid - the temperature was already in the mid 80's and the humidity was high. We ran for about an hour (nearly 7 miles) before taking a break.
We dropped off Jen Paul after 7 miles and Aaron Maurer after 8 miles. We picked up Phil Pancrazio and Anne Ryerson for the final 5 mile run.
We then ran about a mile for another 10 minutes before taking another break. Our final trip lasted close to an hour, capturing another 5 miles. In the end we ran closer to 2 hrs instead of 3 hrs and knocked out 13 miles instead of the 17 - 19 miles we were anticipating. Part of me was disappointed that we didn't follow through with our original plan. The other part of me didn't mind. We had been working hard the past 4 days in very hot and humid weather and our bodies were wearing down a bit. Rick and I decided to cancel tomorrow's run - hopefully we'll play basketball on Sunday night :o)
Friday morning I played basketball at the high school at 5:45 am - good time. Hot and humid but hey, it's July in Iowa.
At 9:30, Rick and I decided to try a different type of workout - the "Exterminator". My wife Joan went with us and did some hills, running, and exercises. She introduced us to the "Incinerator" and the "Exasperator" - two hills in Crow Creek Park that are fairly close together. Rick and I decided to run each of these hills 5 times - they were good hills but not too steep so we ran up and down both of them. The Exasperator hill was longer, less steep, and had sprinklers running which felt good on this very hot, humid day.
Following this, we headed back to the Exterminator, a steep hill that is dreaded by many in our community - which is exactly why wanted to tackle it. Rick recommended that we get some practice on this hill and I was in full agreement. We decided to work this hill for about an hour.
I'm not exactly sure how long the hill us but I am guessing that it is 60 yards. We had no intentions of running this hill - hiking it uphill was difficult enough. There were two reasons why we wanted to do this.
#1 - climbing one of the steepest hills (if not the steepest) in the Quad Cities on natural ground, best simulating the mountain trails we will be running in August.
#2 - getting practice running down steep hills - something we have not practiced but is very important at Leadville. Running too fast and hard down the steep mountains can result in trashing the quadriceps, causing pain in the hips and knee joints, and creating blisters on the toes due to the feet slamming into the front part of the running shoes.
With the two dimensional pictures it is difficult to capture the steepness of the hill but this hill is difficult to climb even once. We scaled the Exterminator 30 times. It was a great workout! We certainly could feel the fatigue on our muscles as we increased the number of trips up but we kept pressing on and completed our hour long workout.
We decided to trade in our Wednesday morning Jumer's Tower workouts for 'Exterminator' workouts for the next several weeks. We'll continue to run stadium stairs on Tuesdays, continuing the regimen we started last fall.
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| The "Exterminator" |
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| Looking up near the top of "Exterminator" |
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| Looking down "Exterminator" |
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| John 2/3 of the way down "Exterminator" |
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| Aaron Maurer, Jen Paul, Emily Bucy, John O'Brien, Curt Johnston, Rick Fountain - John Byrne photographer |
We dropped off Jen Paul after 7 miles and Aaron Maurer after 8 miles. We picked up Phil Pancrazio and Anne Ryerson for the final 5 mile run.
We then ran about a mile for another 10 minutes before taking another break. Our final trip lasted close to an hour, capturing another 5 miles. In the end we ran closer to 2 hrs instead of 3 hrs and knocked out 13 miles instead of the 17 - 19 miles we were anticipating. Part of me was disappointed that we didn't follow through with our original plan. The other part of me didn't mind. We had been working hard the past 4 days in very hot and humid weather and our bodies were wearing down a bit. Rick and I decided to cancel tomorrow's run - hopefully we'll play basketball on Sunday night :o)
Sunday night I played some basketball - had fun!
Until my next post, have a great day! DIG DEEP!
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