Devils at Devils Rest

Since this is a recovery weekend we didn't have any Black Saturday or Red Hot Sunday type of workouts. My schedule called for 2.5 hours with 15 min of threshold on Saturday and 2 hours of cruising on Sunday. For our 2.5 hour run we like to do the Angels Rest/Devils Rest/Quad Busting Road route. This is a loop in the Gorge that we have done many times. We climb all the way from the Angels Rest parking lot and at the summit we traverse for about 3 miles then climb to the top of Devils Rest (where this picture was taken). We did our 15 minutes of threshold up to Devils Rest as this climb is not super steep but offers enough of an incline to cause your lungs to scream. After we summit the Devil we catch the road that lies behind Devils Rest all the way back to the parking lot. We estimate this road section to be about 5.3 miles of serious quad killing downhill. The reason we love this back road is for it's relentless downhill, all cars are locked out, and its rough gravel surface. There is not much better training for our quads and the relentless downhill we will experience at WS100. We race down this road, headphones on, legs spinning and no looking back. Micheal is always the winner and by a nice margin. He had enough time to get to the car, turn around, run back and take my picture as I was coming in. I am working on closing the gap but it will be a tall order. I thought I was flying today but he still had a good 3 minute lead. Micheal is an awesome downhill runner as is Stacey so chasing them down the hill is great for my training. :)

This morning I showed up in grey shorts while all my friends were dressed in black and they let me know they're feeling about me breaking from uniform. I didn't think this was a Black Saturday since we didn't have any hill repeats but they were not of the same opinion. Next time we need to have an email consult before our recovery run to determine if the workout warrants all black.:) Steve joined us all the way to Devils Rest but then we parted ways and he headed towards Larch Mountain for more many more miles.

Sunday was a 2 hour run and no threshold. We met for a run on Wildwood trail and hooked up with Jim who is finishing up a "build" week. He was out at Herman Creek yesterday pounding out hill repeats all on his own but Jim is focused and determined so being by himself had little impact on his metal toughness :). Today he had to do a medium long run of about 4 hours so he started early and met us just as we were getting started. We ran up and over Pitock Mansion which is located at mile 3.5 on the Wildwood, it's a beautiful place to take in the views of the city and outlying mountains on a clear day. The Spring gardens at Pitock are in full bloom so we thought this would be a great place for an "ultra running family" photo. Jim and Micheal lead the charge up to Pitock and then we all bolted down the back side where we said goodbye to Jim who headed home. Stacey, Micheal and I turned around and headed 6.25 miles back to our car parked at 53rd ave. Micheal definitely lead us home dragging us with our tongues hanging out of our mouths the whole way! I predict a nice finish at WS100 for him this year, he is getting in stellar shape and moves on the trail really fast.

It was a nice recovery weekend and I feel rebounded and ready for the next phase of training. My hamstring got poked, rubbed and iced for the first part of the week and I can now report it's fine. Thanks for everybody's concerns and advice....I need all the help I can get and it's much appreciated! From January to now I have been on 4 week cycles, Build 1, Build2, Peak, Recovery. I now move to 3 week cycles and am looking forward to it. Next is a Build week and at this point everything gets increased so this weeks Build will be more like my last cycles Peak week. No rest before Miwok 100K, don't want to be real fresh going into the race because it's not my main goal and more like another awesome training day in a race environment.

BTW: Bill just got back from his last run before the Eugene Marathon next weekend. He, Scott Diamond, Jim Rudig, Darrin Swanson, Rich Kokesh and Dave Strong are all running it on the 29th. They are all ready and should have a great time. Alex is happy dad is back so he can fix something :)