G & T 39, More Transvulcania, Metabolic Costs Of Running, Training Question

G & T 39, More Transvulcania, Metabolic Costs of Running, Training Question


Ran up G & T yesterday for my 39th time in a row. After last weeks perfect weather and conditions, this time around it was back to full winter conditions. A-Basin was reporting around 20" of fresh over the course of the week, so I knew it was not going to be the best, but was still hoping for minimal slogging. The lower first half of the road up to the Stevens/Grizzly split was still runable and I carried my snowshoes in my hands. After that, however, the new snow became a bear and by the time I got to the abandoned mining cabin I had to put them on. Another storm was moving in, so I had to move as fast as possible and hope that the weather held throughout the morning. Above treeline the winds were fierce once again, blowing the fresh powder around and instantly cover my tracks. Any exposed skin was beaten and sliced raw by the micro-tears caused by the blowing snow/ice crystals. Up on the ridge, and between the saddle, it was a constant gale, forcing me to rely heavily on my poles to not get blown over. Needless to say, I was not happy with another run in winter conditions. I'm really hoping that this was the last time and I can leave the snowshoes and poles behind. Filled up another bag of trash at the trailhead - as the snow melts, it is amazing to see all of the trash that has accumulated over the winter from lazy people dumping bottles, cups, diapers, foam seat cushions, wrappers, and other crap.

 Started using List of John recently. It's a fairly simple, but cool website that lets you track your peak bagging excursions. You can use it for free, but I donated so that I could get use of its full features. I've logged 85 summits on the year so far, with 38 14er summits.

Another video from this years Transvulcania.


Interesting new article on the metabolic cost of running. Looks like body weight and forward propulsion compromise the majority of the metabolic cost of running. Propulsion is hard to work on, but body weight is something everyone can tweak. As most know, training weight versus racing weight can have all of the difference in terms of putting up a fast time - and this study backs up that commonly held wisdom. There is a reason for being lean and mean.

Something that has been on my mind lately in terms of training philosophy is the idea of doing two fairly hard workouts back to back, such as a 15 mile tempoish run on Saturday and another 15 mile tempoish run on Sunday versus the more common 20 mile slow run on Saturday and a 10 mile recovery/shake out/tired legs run on Sunday. Both give you the same miles (30 total), but the 15/15 allows you to go harder on each workout and often in my case results in a faster overall time. If you are training for longer races, which would be the more productive set of workouts? Perhaps alternating between the two every other week? Assume total vert. is the same across the 30 miles.