Snowshoeing State Champs, Moab Red Hot, "Keep the Quality"

The Colorado high country has been hit with some excellent "pow-pow" over the past few weeks, and it made for some good old fun at the Colorado Snowshoeing State Championship on February 8th.

Nice work, Adam and Smokey!

The pace and distance look less than impressive here, but a foot of powder at 10,500' always makes for a good challenge.


A week after the snowshoe race, Wyatt, Dad, and I headed west for the Moab Red Hot 55k trail run.  Ultras are growing like crazy, and I was impressed by a solid field.
http://www.strava.com/activities/113877479

For those who are interested in endurance training:

1. Keep the quality.
Doing plenty of long runs and/or rides is definitely important if you want to finish the longer Leadville races, but I believe shorter, quality workouts involving high heart rate and faster pace are just as essential. In 2013, I estimated from the start of the year that averaging 12 minutes/mile in the LT100 Run would allow me to compete for the series win. I just about hit that pace on race day, but it was NOT because I did a lot of training at 12 minutes/mile. In order to become more efficient at that relatively slow pace, I focused on becoming more efficient at faster paces. The majority of my running miles–which, at 40-50 per week were not a ton because I focused on speed and hills–were at 7-9 minutes/mile. I also completed regular workouts of 1-mile and shorter intervals at 5:30/mile and faster. I did not plan to do any of the 100-mile run at significantly elevated heart rate, but I did that often in training. Simply put, working alone or with a training group, partner(s) and/or coach to develop intentional high-end interval workouts on regular basis can really pay off.

{Check out the rest at http://www.leadvilleraceseries.com/2014/02/keep-the-quality/ }