Training in Montana

Needed a change, so hit Noon Boot Camp. It was great to work some other muscles. I'll be sore now for a week. Wahoo!

Woke up early to run but then went back to bed. Decided I needed a Noon run. Ran from the Y and headed up to the rims above Billings and ran a couple miles on a real trail. Ah. I need more of that. Very refreshing. Quite a climb to get up there, but a nice downhill on the way back.

AP: 8:33

After running, did 4 sets of 5 lunges with 30 lb weights. I'd like to progress to 50 lbs before June 20th. We'll see - I should've started doing these last month or so but I kind of forgot. A buddy got up to 50 lb lunges and he had no soreness from The Rut 50K, which was an insane sky run won by Kilian Jornet at Big Sky, MT with lots and lots of downhill.

Decided to run uphill today, so ran down and up and down and up. 682 feet of elevation in 6 miles. Not bad. 

AP: 8:37

Rest day today so I hit the gym and walked 1 1/4 mile on the treadmill at 3 mph and 15% incline while I watched Law & Order: SVU. It's one of my favorite shows even though the content is icky as it's very real and well written.

After the walk I did 20 lunges with 35 lb weights; 30 pushups; 25 situps; 1 minute of bicycles. Then sat in the steam room for 5 minutes. Ah.

8 miles from home on my standard 8 mile route. Nice morning, 44F with a 10 mph West wind. I could do without the wind. Felt pretty good.

AP: 8:33

Ran into a guy last night who's doing the Bighorn 100 and he invited me to come train this morning with friends of his. The task was to run up this nasty trail and back down 13 times for 5500 feet of vert. I was all in. I showed up at 6 am and thought nobody else would show as it was cold (41F), windy, and raining. After a few minutes they showed up and we hit the trail. It wasn't horrible, but it is a really rough hill. With weeks of training I might be able to run all the way up without stopping, but its brutal. 

I had to leave at 8 am as we drove to Bozeman today for our youngest son to play soccer games. I got in 8 times up and back for nearly 8 miles. I got 2210 feet of up and 2269 feet of down. A great morning, just wish I could've done all 13. The rain let up in the middle but then returned with wind towards the end. My hands were freezing. It was nice to warm up on full blast heat on the drive back. 

On our drive to Bozeman and during the first soccer game we got snowed on...April 25th. Yep, that's the great state of Montana for you. It was 80 degrees a couple weeks ago and will hit 81 this Thursday.