The Road To The Superior 100 Trail Race

Saturday has become a weekly tradition of snowshoeing. The snow conditions weren't great this weekend, as it's been a rather quiet winter in the last month or so. That is about to change in the upcoming pattern. Nonetheless, there was enough of a base to snowshoe up at Brainard Lake. It was a nice trip, with intense wind. The warm temperatures prevented an uncomfortable wind chill.

I have been busy and therefore not updating this blog. It's also been a rough few days. I've been active, but have fought through some adversity. For example, I tried swimming Thursday morning at the Erie Community Center. When switching lanes to one that had now become unoccupied, I had to clear a low-hanging water slide to get over there. However, I was not being very observant. When I cleared the slide, I stood up but had missed seeing a metal beam that is used to support the slide that was in my way. The impact was quick, painful, and produced a loud bell ringing sound that caught the attention of the life guards. At the time, it wasn't clear how serious the injury was. But low-grade nausea set in a tad later and lingered a bit. The pain at the impact sight was substantial, and I've had some dizziness for two days now. I am confident it was a low-grade concussion. Otherwise, the event was in no doubt in the category of slap stick comedy. The lifeguards checked on me

Today I attempted my first jog without walking since pausing running for the injury. The run was only 1.5 miles in distance. It was on the East Boulder Creek Trail and a flat run by far. I experienced some mild patella pain in the first 0.25 mile or so, which subsided a bit when I continued. I tried changing my stride to be more hip dominant to minimize impact on knee, which may have helped? It felt great to run again. Exercise details. Strength training at the gym, mostly upper body, 1.5 miles of trail running.

Today's physical activity was mostly restricted to my evening swimming lesson, where we worked on elements of the free style swim and backstroke. I am getting better at freestyle swimming, but still have a ways to go with floating or swimming on my back. Overall, I estimate I got in about 500 yards of swimming today, but it wasn't much of a difficult workout. An updated Superior training plan is attached here. Injury update: Today I felt a strange tingling sensation behind my patella and in my thigh in the vicinity of where I was poked by dry needling last week. Not sure if it's related. This could imply nerve damage or something more significant with the knee injury? Nutrition. 1949 cal, 88 g protein, 44 g fiber

The knee continues its road to recovery? Of course, last night in the dark I ran into a wall with my injured knee. Today I tried more hiking, this time at Rabbit Mountain Open Space to see how the knee would respond. I added about 0.7 miles to my previous foot record of 1.5 miles since stopping running for this injury and got to 2.3 miles. I threw in some gentle jogging intervals at times just to see how the left knee would feel. There were some small signals that it's not 100%, but at the same time, I felt no obvious setbacks. I'll continue to take baby steps back into trail running. I also threw in a small 6-mile bike ride from home. The trails were quite nice today, with 40s for temperature and sunny skies. There were a lot of people out on the trails today. Training data. Nutrition. 1712 calories, 62 g protein, 33 g fiber

Today, I snowshoed up to Finch Lake, on the southern flank of Rocky Mountain National Park. It is accessed easily from Wild Basin or a trailhead near Allenspark, where I started. From where I started, it was about an 8-mile round trip (including some meandering around the frozen lake for views), and sported a decent 1500 ft of climb, which never feels like much on snowshoes. The trail crossed a few frozen and not frozen streams. Where liquid water surfaced, I noticed a lot of animal tracks in the snow, undoubtedly since it was a great source of fresh water for the various fauna roaming these parts in the winter. This area also featured a woodpecker making enough noise to be heard over the intense wind gusts blowing through the trees. I wanted to follow the trail a bit longer, but by the time I reached Finch Lake, the trail was lost in deep snow drifts and it would have been quite difficult orienteering to higher elevations. It was windy, as it often is, and the mountains were typically