June 24 - July 7

Motivated. It's been more than just the trail, the silence, the vulnerability. It's been more than the agony, the failures, the pain. It's been natural. To give credit where credit is due, the Earth, for the Northern Hemisphere, is the farthest away from the sun than at any other time of the year. We've escaped our perihelion and assimilated into our aphelion; it's July: 23.5 degrees of tilt on the spin axis. The giant landmasses we reside on are heating up faster than the other 139.4 million square miles of our floating blueberry and we're experience what humankind has dubbed, "Summer." Alas, the sultry ultraviolet rays are baking us like toast in a toaster. The trails are slightly overgrown; the thorns ripping at my epidermis with cheerful violence, and my desire to sit like a hippie handcuffed to a tree is ever increasing. The American cordillera is stubbornly releasing the frozen hydrogen and two-parts oxygen molecules from the erosion formed talus and scree fields, and my mountain man instincts are salivating. I'm ascending at personal best efforts and grabbing tan lines at every break in the forest canopy. This is mountain running. This is trail running. This is running. This is my life.

July 1 - July 7
Weekly Totals, Time: 8:43:08 Distance: 49.43 mi. Vertical: 11,731 ft.
Weekly Average, Time: 1:14:44 Distance: 7.06 mi. Vertical: 1,676


Any time my week starts out with a race, I feel satisfied. Plus, two weeks in a row of 10,000 ft. of vertical. This week's race, went well. I blew up, got my shit back together, and finished in a respectable time and place. That is a very poor race report, but I've been running and writing is on a backseat. Importantly, I confidently feel I can improve. I started out way too fast, but I was having so much fun, so I just kept going until my mind and body refused. Later on in the week I raced a 5k (road) and led the Top 10 in the wrong direction within a 1/4 mi. of the start. Oops, I guess this is why trail run. Laughing, I jogged the rest of the race and chatted in up with Ryan P. at an easy 6:13 min./mi. pace. Everything else this week is summed up above. I found new views, and legs that I haven't had in years, as I ran around the Issaquah Alps. Yes, I'll take more.

June 24 - June 30
Weekly Totals, Time: 8:14:03 Distance: 36.88 mi. Vertical: 12,634 ft.
Weekly Average, Time: 2:03:31 Distance: 9.22 mi. Vertical: 3,158 ft.


What a week, what a month. I really hunkered down this week and got the job done, and in ascent and descent PR fashion. The beginning of the week started out with a great run up Granite Mountain with my training partner, and friend, Robert B. Finding ourselves about 1/2 mi. from the summit we ran into a lot of snow, took what we thought was a direct line to the summit and found ourselves scrambling over large boulders and standing in awe of the large amounts of snow still left in the valleys between the mountains.
My average run time is looking better and better in preparation of Gore-Tex TransRockies-Run. My lungs feel great on recent climbs, by arms are working amazingly, and my legs are turning-over faster than they have in at least 7 years. Quite the experience.