Getting back in a routine

Trail Near the House

Well, it's been a while since my last post about finishing the Leadville 100. I took some time off from running after the race (not 'off' but definitely tuned down compared to my usual mileage). It really took a lot longer to recover from the race than I thought it was going to. My legs/ankles/knees/feet hurt during all my runs for a good month afterwards. I was in good enough shape to finish a 100 miler but not in good enough shape to recover quickly after finishing.

But, now I'm starting to get back into the swing of things. It's funny, whenever I take some time away from real running I start to forget how much it means to me. Then, when I start doing higher mileage runs again, it all comes back to me, "Oh yeah, this is TOTALLY AWESOME!!!!". I love getting out of the city and just spending time on the trail.

I've started to look ahead and loosely plan my running schedule for next year.

I'm hoping to take part in the informal Ponderous Posterior 50K in January (though I won't be very prepared, but that's never stopped me before).

I'm looking into potentially attempting the White Rim In A Day adventure that a few other ultra-runners have done in the past.   For those of you that don't know, the White Rim Trail is a 100 mile dirt road that snakes through Canyonlands Park outside of Moab, UT.  I mountain biked it in 3 days about 6 years ago and I've been itching to do the whole thing again ever since (run this time, not bike).  Stay tuned for updates on that adventure as I get further ahead on planning/seeing if I can make it work.  I'm shooting for the end of March (2012).

If I can't make the White Rim trip work then I'll find a 50K race to fill the Feb./March timeframe.

Next, I'd like to do either the Collegiate Peaks 50 miler on May 5th (I attempted this race two years ago but wasn't prepared for the distance and had to settle for a 25 mile finish time) or the Greenland Trails 50K on April 28th (I did the 8 mile version last year and loved it).  After that I'd love to do the Sage Burner 50k in Gunnison.  I did the race two years ago and it was pretty awesome--it totally killed me.  But, I the website doesn't seem to be up right now so I can't find the specific dates.

I'd love to do Leadville again but I'm having trouble pulling the trigger on the $290 registration fee right now.  Soon...we'll see.

New Feature: for those of you who hate having to check blogs for updates when they don't post very often (I'm one of you) and those of you who don't use some kind of RSS reader, I've addded Feedburner functionality to my blog.  You can sign up to get all new posts to the blog via email.  See the right sidebar for the signup form (just enter your email address).  Although, I do hope to start posting more frequently in the future....

You can also follow me on Twitter to get all of my updates: @NicholasBLee