Hello everyone!
My apologies for the lack of blog posts lately. I’ve been incredibly busy with coaching at Centaurus High School, helping organize the Warrior Marble Relay, as well as my own training. The Warrior Relay was a huge success due to the unbelievable support of the Centaurus track team, their family, friends, and the Lafayette/Boulder community. The program ran approximately 1,450 miles during the relay and the kids raised nearly $20,000! There is an excellent video story by Denver’s Channel 9 News here - http://www.9news.com/news/article/257180/188/Track-team-school-support-athlete-with-Leukemia. Thank you to everyone for supporting the team and the Marble family. A special thanks to Dave Lehn for helping provide Noodles and Company for lunch as well as running a bunch of miles with me on the track!
Running some miles with good friends to support the Marble Relay.
Coaching the high school team has been a pleasure this season with a bunch of motivated kids. I’ve learned so much from them in the last month of coaching. I’m looking forward to the start of state qualifying meets April 7th weekend. I’m also looking forward to that weekend because my wonderful mother is flying out to Colorado to help me design my backyard and plant gardens. The most important part of life is family, I’m so lucky to have a supportive and loving family!
Picture of Dad, Mom and I during a Rockies vs Phillies game I took them to last year.
Onto what this blog has normally been about, my running & training. I made a simple, yet very complicated mistake, from November-February I over-trained. I over-trained to the point that my Central Nervous/Hormone System became overly fatigued. I couldn’t do any intense workouts because of an awful feeling of ‘lack of power.’ I finally addressed it after bonking in a workout, and have spent the last 5 weeks running mileage in the 70s. I’ve been able to do some shorter and intense workouts, but been keeping the overall volume lower and trying to take one day off per week. Next weekend I’m really going to give my fitness a better test at the USATF Colorado 5 Mile Champions at the Boulder Reservoir. I wanted a short 5k race last weekend and found one in Fort Collins. Friend and training partner Trent Briney and I traveled up to Fort Collins and went 1-2 in the 5k with me getting the win in 15:22 and Trent 2nd in 15:32. However, the 3rd mile of the race was noticeably long, so it was actually a little longer than 5k. I took the race out very fast in 4:43 net uphill and hung on. It felt good to feel a lot better when running fast!
I have also been trying to enjoy the beautiful trails in the Boulder area. Last week Trent Briney and I traveled South towards Littleton to run in the newly opened Waterton Trail, which took us to the Colorado Trail. It was one of my favorite long runs with great trail conditions and amazing views. I saw my first big horned sheep too! Yesterday I went up to Switzerland Trail and ran a quality 12 miles with views like the one below during most of the run between 8500-9100ft.
Switzerland Trail View from Start
The most important thing about running is to enjoy the training. I’m back enjoying running, loving the trails, and having to hold myself back from running more miles. Speaking of running miles, time to head out for a run with an excellent group of folks at the Boulder Reservoir on a gorgeous morning!
Happy trails (literally),
Tyler