After my amazing fun adventure running up and down both Tiger and Cougar Mountains near Seattle Washington, I had to make some decisions.

The weather was awesome. Forties and raining. The trails were wet and smooth. I loved it. I managed to get in about seven or so miles each of the three days I had there. That’s about the most sequential running I’ve done in quite a while. I had some really good paces on the flats, uphill, and downhill. It was inspiring.

But then I had to suffer from the backlash of that. Recovery sucked. 

With my goal of doing a VK this coming year, and possibly Elbrus, it became obvious that my running training needed to change somehow. That how evolved into going back to ground zero so to speak. I needed to start at one mile a day a few or so days a week and work my way back up from there.

It was simply that my mind and body were primed and ready to crank out seven miles for a few days, but no more than that. In the bigger scheme of things this wasn’t a really bad thing. Quandary is a 6.5 mile out and back. Cake. But the bigger implication was for training. How many miles a day do I need to run how many days a week to effectively achieve my maximum speed?

Right. Enough that my body isn’t really ready to do on a daily persistent basis. Back in 2010 I began with baby steps doing various stepmill, elliptical, and treadmill workouts. I started with very low targets and worked my way up on the way to Elbrus Race. Now Elbrus Race Classic is a 9-ish mile out and back with a lot more elevation gain than Quandary.

So back to square one, which is an outside run over a mile a handful of times a week. Outside because I need to get my shivers out of my system prior to either a fast winter Quandary or any Elbrus.

And that’s what I’ve been doing. Our ‘hood at large contains a large semi-circular area adjacent to a golf course and outlining the edge of some hills near the mouth of American Fork Canyon. The knots of streets are cut by a local connecting highway or two, and some of the rec paths. If you zigzag around a bit you can hit just about any mile goal pretty easily without too much elevation gain or loss. If you do want some elevation, there are a few nice steeper roads along the hills.

I started running in the morning, normally after a circuit training routine that I’ll share later. I’m up to about 2-ish miles a day a handful of days per week. My pace is decent enough. One day in spikes due to recent freezing rain and snow mixed I averaged around 13:00 + but mostly I’ve been moving closer to 11:00 + pace. Not too shabby for someone who hasn’t run outside in the cold in a very long time.

Those are some of the screenshots from the Wahoo Fitness App I’m using on Android. It’s got some klunky bits, but otherwise works good in combination with my Wahoo Tickr Run heart rate strap.

I’ll share more on that later, but for now, I’m working my way toward a hike or even run up Quandary here pretty soon.

TTYL!