Altitude Running

On Monday, I ran 7.5 miles. 50 minutes up, then 30 minutes back down.

Yesterday, Marty and I ran up to Beaver Creek to get the kids from ski school. We tried to cross and stream and run up a trail. The trail turned out to be a strictly animal trail, impossible to run. So, we turned around, recrossed the stream, and decided to run up to get the kids. From that point, it was 24 minutes to get up. The run down was 18 minutes. In between the up and down runs, we ate chocolate chips cookies (Beaver Creek hands out 20,000 cookies every afternoon at 3pm), looked for the kids, walked around in shorts and got lots of looks, and sat by a fire to keep warm.

There is no place in MN where one can run up continuously for 50 minutes. All right,it could be done on a treadmill. Let me restate it: there is no place in MN where on can run up continuously for 50 minutes at altitude.

I know that if I could train out here, I could finally complete the Leadville 100. The first pass at Leadville is very similar to what I ran on Monday: an hour steadily up. Hope pass is simply 2-3X that.

One last sad note. I'm still recovering from last Friday night's ankle sprain during soccer. It was a right ankle sprain; the ankle that has been kept safe from recurring ankle sprains for the last 18 years.

What I'm struggling with is the fact that I need to stop playing soccer on Friday nights if I hope to have a good running season this year. This is going to be a tough decision.