Coming along

I've started running again painlessly. It's a good thing too...considering the Hellgate 100k race is in two weeks. Needless to say, I'm a bit nervous about it but I'll give my best to the next two weeks. I'll train as hard as I possibly can for about 10 of those days and then make sure I'm well rested on Friday, December 9th at midnight when the race starts.

I'm mostly just relieved that I'm able to run with no problems now. This is due to an incredible amount of stretching, and no running. In all, I took 2 solid weeks with no running at all and that was the longest I've ever taken off.

On Thanksgiving, I ran the Turkey Trot in Fredericksburg. It was a 5k PR for me 17:56, which put me somewhere around 6th for my age group. The leaders were out there. Way out there and I didn't stand a chance.

As far as staying in shape during my no running time, I've been biking on a stationary bike and walking on a treadmill quite a bit. The treadmill was nice because i was able to find one that turned up to a 30% grade and so i was able to ascend a couple thousand feet in a relatively short, yet intense, period of time. Luckily, neither seemed to hurt my injury. And hopefully all that hiking will help me tackle the 13,500 ft of gain at Hellgate. Here's the elevation profile courtesy of
Keith Knipling.


We'll see how this goes...

-- Patrick