There are few things that have made running more enjoyable for me than my Vibram Five Fingers.
Early in my running days, while living in Boston, I gave barefoot running a try. The less than savory city sidewalks brought that to a quick halt and I found myself wishing I could just paint a layer of protective rubber on the soles of my feet. When I finally saw a pair of Vibrams, many years later, I was instantly smitten. It took a while to get a pair, but now I have three.
It would be difficult to get into the exact reasons why I love them so much without going into a long discussion about barefoot running. Suffice it to say that if you asked me who designed the better foot, Phil Knight with his waffle iron or thousands of years of Evolution, I side with Evolution. Vibram Five Fingers enable evolution's work to apply seamlessly in the modern world. They fit like a glove, shed water faster than you'd believe, they're light and warmer than you would expect. I even ran in slush in them with less discomfort than in other running shoes which hold water next to your skin. I have also found them to be absolutely amazing for blister prevention. Beyond amazing really.
One complaint I have is that they seem to get stinky faster than most shoes. Fortunately, tossing them in the laundry is also less of an issue than it would be with other running shoes. The other potential drawback is that they stand out and draw a lot of attention. This isn't necessarily bad, but when I'm out on a run I don't want to have to stop and explain how much I like my shoes all the time.
If I didn't love them, I wouldn't run the hundreds of miles in them that I have.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Focus: In Running & Life
I happened to pick up an article today at lunch on Scott Jurek from a year ago. As it turned out, it was the somewhat infamous King of Pain article, which I had never read.
The underlying theme of the article was focus. Having it, losing it, and trying to regain it. It was a topic I could appreciate as I've been having trouble with my own focus lately.
Focus is important in running. A loss of focus is a factor in non-running mind. Focus is what got me through my 400+ miles in February. The lack of focus, and an ensuing breakdown in mental discipline, I have determined to be the core of my letdown in Moab. I felt a slipping of my focus this past weekend at the Horsetooth Half. I've even felt the loss of focus recently in my professional work.
So, I've lost my focus, now what do I do about it? There are a few things that I find to be important to regaining focus, as I've had to do before. Or perhaps they're all different facets of one thing.
The first thing is, as the song says, to accentuate the positive. Find those elements in life that bring focus to your life. If you've wandered away from those things, bring them back, but be careful of overdoing it.
Second, eliminate the negative. Are there specific things that are distracting you or breaking your focus? Find ways to deal with them, whether that's moving away from them or integrating them more healthfully into your life or some other approach.
Third, and probably most important, is balance. For me, life cannot be one completely driven, focused action. To focus well, I need parts of my life to be unfocused as balance to the focus.
This is all common sense stuff of course, but sometimes I find it helpful to go over the basics in order to move forward.
The positive: running is a great focus for me. It's there, it's trying to do its thing, but stuff is getting in the way. The negative: there's a lot of stress built up over my performance in Moab. This is making me more stressed about my upcoming events and compounding itself.
What drove the loss of focus at Moab itself though? Balance. Rather, imbalance. I don't think I gave myself the mental break after February that I needed. After a month of real intense mental and physical focus, I didn't really let up. The physical tension I've felt lately is mirrored mentally. I need to take time to relax mentally.
Another important element here is the realization that I've simply taken on too much lately. I've kept myself so busy that finding time to unwind simply hasn't happened.
The prescription? Simplify. Cut back some of the clutter that's getting in the way. Then take that free time and keep it free. Goof off, relax, unwind, and give myself the mental break that I need.
And try not to think about what will happen if I don't get that focus back in time for the Leadman.
The underlying theme of the article was focus. Having it, losing it, and trying to regain it. It was a topic I could appreciate as I've been having trouble with my own focus lately.
Focus is important in running. A loss of focus is a factor in non-running mind. Focus is what got me through my 400+ miles in February. The lack of focus, and an ensuing breakdown in mental discipline, I have determined to be the core of my letdown in Moab. I felt a slipping of my focus this past weekend at the Horsetooth Half. I've even felt the loss of focus recently in my professional work.
So, I've lost my focus, now what do I do about it? There are a few things that I find to be important to regaining focus, as I've had to do before. Or perhaps they're all different facets of one thing.
The first thing is, as the song says, to accentuate the positive. Find those elements in life that bring focus to your life. If you've wandered away from those things, bring them back, but be careful of overdoing it.
Second, eliminate the negative. Are there specific things that are distracting you or breaking your focus? Find ways to deal with them, whether that's moving away from them or integrating them more healthfully into your life or some other approach.
Third, and probably most important, is balance. For me, life cannot be one completely driven, focused action. To focus well, I need parts of my life to be unfocused as balance to the focus.
This is all common sense stuff of course, but sometimes I find it helpful to go over the basics in order to move forward.
The positive: running is a great focus for me. It's there, it's trying to do its thing, but stuff is getting in the way. The negative: there's a lot of stress built up over my performance in Moab. This is making me more stressed about my upcoming events and compounding itself.
What drove the loss of focus at Moab itself though? Balance. Rather, imbalance. I don't think I gave myself the mental break after February that I needed. After a month of real intense mental and physical focus, I didn't really let up. The physical tension I've felt lately is mirrored mentally. I need to take time to relax mentally.
Another important element here is the realization that I've simply taken on too much lately. I've kept myself so busy that finding time to unwind simply hasn't happened.
The prescription? Simplify. Cut back some of the clutter that's getting in the way. Then take that free time and keep it free. Goof off, relax, unwind, and give myself the mental break that I need.
And try not to think about what will happen if I don't get that focus back in time for the Leadman.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Leadman Prep
The first event of the Leadman, the Leadville Marathon, is now just eleven weeks away, which means the final event of the Leadman, the Leadville Trail 100, is eighteen weeks away. Time is getting short!
In spite of my shortcomings in Moab, I remain confident that the 100 mile distance is within my grasp. The biggest challenges will be the hills and the altitude. I've been running Sanitas fairly regularly during the week to get stronger as a climber, I've certainly gotten faster, chopping seven minutes off my best time in the last two weeks.
I'm also going to work Bear Peak and Green Mountain into my weekend long runs, at least on those weekends when I'm not doing a race, as I did with the Horsetooth half this past Sunday.
So, until the Leadman is done, hills will be the name of the game. Short, intense hillwork during the week and long hills combined into my weekend long runs. Love them or hate them, I've got to embrace them.
In spite of my shortcomings in Moab, I remain confident that the 100 mile distance is within my grasp. The biggest challenges will be the hills and the altitude. I've been running Sanitas fairly regularly during the week to get stronger as a climber, I've certainly gotten faster, chopping seven minutes off my best time in the last two weeks.
I'm also going to work Bear Peak and Green Mountain into my weekend long runs, at least on those weekends when I'm not doing a race, as I did with the Horsetooth half this past Sunday.
So, until the Leadman is done, hills will be the name of the game. Short, intense hillwork during the week and long hills combined into my weekend long runs. Love them or hate them, I've got to embrace them.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
An Ultrarunning Tale - 400 Miles of February
I wrote the following for the bi-monthly newsletter of the Boulder Triathlon Club. A few things to note, first, I ran almost the entire distance in Vibram five-fingers. The days I didn't wear them were so cold, slushy and nasty I considered trying to run in my snowshoeing boots, but almost 400 of my total miles came in Vibrams. Second, I finished with a grand total of 423 miles, good for fourth overall, though I consider it to be third. Some guy didn't log any miles until the last night. Imagine running a race and having someone pull off an invisibility cloak as he crosses the finish line five feet in front of you. It's a shady move.
Without further ado... An Ultrarunning Tale.
_______________________
I'm not fast.
Even before I moved to an area populated by the likes of Dave Scott, Tony Krupicka and Scott Jurek (who moved here in January) and which regularly plays long term host to people like Macca, Chrissie Wellington and the Japanese Olympic marathon team I knew that the likelihood of me placing, much less winning, in an individual athletic event was pretty low. Which is fine, I don't run or bike because I want to win, I do it because I love it. This particularly applies to running. I once commented to my grad school classmates that the only thing better than running is sex. Not the sort of comment you live down, but I still believe it.
Being less than gifted in the area of acceleration I was shocked last March to discover that I had placed thirteenth among men, sixteenth overall, in that year's run focus for the USAT Challenge. Sure, I had stepped up my training mileage after deciding to take a stab at running Leadville (an attempt that dissolved halfway through training), but I hadn't been pushing all that hard, had I? How did I manage to finish 16th out of 1200+ competitors? I stared at the rankings for a while baffled. I absent-mindedly did some quick math while looking at the leaders versus myself and found myself thinking an odd thought.
I could win this thing.
So while the run focus of the USAT challenge is not a race per se, the 2010-11 edition is the first athletic competition I've entered where I went in with the goal of winning. Anything less would be a disappointment. The 2010 winner had 350 miles, I targeted 400 as my goal. I didn't just want to win, I wanted to rock it and not have there be any doubt about it.
I wanted to rock it because 2011 is a huge running year for me. The USAT 400 is a target that I set both because I want to win it and because it will lay the foundation, partly physically but mostly psychologically, for the rest of my year. Even if I just get my 400 for the USAT and the miles from the races I plan to run this year I'll log over 900 miles on my feet. Coming into the year my calendar was blocked out for four 100 mile race, one 50 mile race and two marathons along with a handful of shorter races. The confidence from having run 400 miles in one month was something that I felt could really help me through all of that.
There was a catch though, the competition didn't open at all like I expected. One woman, Kathleen Brush, opened the month with almost 200 miles of running in the first week. Last year's winner, Hunter MacLean, also opened up extremely strong. Meanwhile I had decided to dial back my first two weeks a bit to avoid tipping my hand. I quickly realized that not only was that not going to work, but I was going to have to step up my mileage significantly. Looking at that first week's results rattled me and I had to come to grips with the fact that this competition, which I had set my heart on winning, might be out of reach.
A combination of that gut check, bad weather and allowing myself to get distracted by social engagements put my second week off to a poor start and I totaled only nine miles the first two days of the week. I managed to recover though with a strong weekend, I woke up feeling great on Sunday after doing 28 miles on Saturday, so I put in 13 more. I'd have gotten even more in that day, but a midday break to take care of some chores turned into an all afternoon hassle and I didn't get outside again.
Week three I opened with a roar, faded a bit in the middle due to some some soreness in my hip, then wrapped up with a 40 mile effort on Sunday. The hip soreness was troubling, but I was positive it was muscular as opposed to skeletal and a renewed emphasis on icing, and cold water baths after my runs kept it from returning. With week four about to dawn, I braced for war.
Maclean had been posting a ton of miles and wasn't showing much sign of letting up. I had been tracking his daily mileage and figured I had to average 30 miles a day just to catch him. Hopefully he was wearing down a bit while I was preparing to hit my big surge. I considered backing off, shooting for the 400 as I originally planned and having some semblance of a personal life the final eight days, not to mention some well deserved rest. However, with the way my friends and coworkers had been pulling for me, and with how badly I wanted this, I decided to keep going for it. By the end of the week though, it was clear that it wasn't going to happen.
MacLean had put on a surge of his own and by Friday I figured I would need to average 40+ miles per day the last four days of the competition in order to catch him, he was on pace for 540 miles! To that point 40 miles had been my single day high for the month and while I had a 50 miler planned for Sunday, I knew I couldn't do 40 miles a day for 4 days, not as tired as I was and not with work and other commitments. I briefly toyed with the idea of skipping work on Monday and doing an all-day run, starting at whatever time I got up and ending at the stroke of midnight, the close of the competition.
That was the moment when I realized there had to be something very, very wrong with me. I had to be demented to call out 'sick' at work in order to do a fifteen, sixteen or even eighteen hour run with no organized support the day after a fifty mile run to win a competition that no one outside of a small community had ever heard of, and even fewer cared about. That was when I discovered I really was an ultrarunner.
As of this writing, the event is not over, it's Friday and I have logged 350+ miles. This weekend I'll do my fifty miler and wrap up my 400. I'm not going to skip work in order to make an insane attempt at catching MacLean the day after a fifty mile run and hurt myself (the Moab 100 is in four weeks after all). I may not have won, but I have gained the confidence I felt like I needed. I've run more miles in February than I ever really believed I could, I enjoyed just about every step of the way and I felt far better than I really had a right to feel.
I'm not fast and I may be crazy, but I'll never let either fact slow me down.
Without further ado... An Ultrarunning Tale.
_______________________
I'm not fast.
Even before I moved to an area populated by the likes of Dave Scott, Tony Krupicka and Scott Jurek (who moved here in January) and which regularly plays long term host to people like Macca, Chrissie Wellington and the Japanese Olympic marathon team I knew that the likelihood of me placing, much less winning, in an individual athletic event was pretty low. Which is fine, I don't run or bike because I want to win, I do it because I love it. This particularly applies to running. I once commented to my grad school classmates that the only thing better than running is sex. Not the sort of comment you live down, but I still believe it.
Being less than gifted in the area of acceleration I was shocked last March to discover that I had placed thirteenth among men, sixteenth overall, in that year's run focus for the USAT Challenge. Sure, I had stepped up my training mileage after deciding to take a stab at running Leadville (an attempt that dissolved halfway through training), but I hadn't been pushing all that hard, had I? How did I manage to finish 16th out of 1200+ competitors? I stared at the rankings for a while baffled. I absent-mindedly did some quick math while looking at the leaders versus myself and found myself thinking an odd thought.
I could win this thing.
So while the run focus of the USAT challenge is not a race per se, the 2010-11 edition is the first athletic competition I've entered where I went in with the goal of winning. Anything less would be a disappointment. The 2010 winner had 350 miles, I targeted 400 as my goal. I didn't just want to win, I wanted to rock it and not have there be any doubt about it.
I wanted to rock it because 2011 is a huge running year for me. The USAT 400 is a target that I set both because I want to win it and because it will lay the foundation, partly physically but mostly psychologically, for the rest of my year. Even if I just get my 400 for the USAT and the miles from the races I plan to run this year I'll log over 900 miles on my feet. Coming into the year my calendar was blocked out for four 100 mile race, one 50 mile race and two marathons along with a handful of shorter races. The confidence from having run 400 miles in one month was something that I felt could really help me through all of that.
There was a catch though, the competition didn't open at all like I expected. One woman, Kathleen Brush, opened the month with almost 200 miles of running in the first week. Last year's winner, Hunter MacLean, also opened up extremely strong. Meanwhile I had decided to dial back my first two weeks a bit to avoid tipping my hand. I quickly realized that not only was that not going to work, but I was going to have to step up my mileage significantly. Looking at that first week's results rattled me and I had to come to grips with the fact that this competition, which I had set my heart on winning, might be out of reach.
A combination of that gut check, bad weather and allowing myself to get distracted by social engagements put my second week off to a poor start and I totaled only nine miles the first two days of the week. I managed to recover though with a strong weekend, I woke up feeling great on Sunday after doing 28 miles on Saturday, so I put in 13 more. I'd have gotten even more in that day, but a midday break to take care of some chores turned into an all afternoon hassle and I didn't get outside again.
Week three I opened with a roar, faded a bit in the middle due to some some soreness in my hip, then wrapped up with a 40 mile effort on Sunday. The hip soreness was troubling, but I was positive it was muscular as opposed to skeletal and a renewed emphasis on icing, and cold water baths after my runs kept it from returning. With week four about to dawn, I braced for war.
Maclean had been posting a ton of miles and wasn't showing much sign of letting up. I had been tracking his daily mileage and figured I had to average 30 miles a day just to catch him. Hopefully he was wearing down a bit while I was preparing to hit my big surge. I considered backing off, shooting for the 400 as I originally planned and having some semblance of a personal life the final eight days, not to mention some well deserved rest. However, with the way my friends and coworkers had been pulling for me, and with how badly I wanted this, I decided to keep going for it. By the end of the week though, it was clear that it wasn't going to happen.
MacLean had put on a surge of his own and by Friday I figured I would need to average 40+ miles per day the last four days of the competition in order to catch him, he was on pace for 540 miles! To that point 40 miles had been my single day high for the month and while I had a 50 miler planned for Sunday, I knew I couldn't do 40 miles a day for 4 days, not as tired as I was and not with work and other commitments. I briefly toyed with the idea of skipping work on Monday and doing an all-day run, starting at whatever time I got up and ending at the stroke of midnight, the close of the competition.
That was the moment when I realized there had to be something very, very wrong with me. I had to be demented to call out 'sick' at work in order to do a fifteen, sixteen or even eighteen hour run with no organized support the day after a fifty mile run to win a competition that no one outside of a small community had ever heard of, and even fewer cared about. That was when I discovered I really was an ultrarunner.
As of this writing, the event is not over, it's Friday and I have logged 350+ miles. This weekend I'll do my fifty miler and wrap up my 400. I'm not going to skip work in order to make an insane attempt at catching MacLean the day after a fifty mile run and hurt myself (the Moab 100 is in four weeks after all). I may not have won, but I have gained the confidence I felt like I needed. I've run more miles in February than I ever really believed I could, I enjoyed just about every step of the way and I felt far better than I really had a right to feel.
I'm not fast and I may be crazy, but I'll never let either fact slow me down.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Stuff I Love - Touchnote
Ever found yourself on an exotic trip taking gorgeous pictures and wishing the postcards you found better reflected your experiences? Enter Touchnote.com!
Touchnote is a website, and more conveniently an app, which allows you to select a stock photo, or upload your own, and make a postcard out of it which they mail for you.
This is incredibly convenient for traveling, but I've found it to be even better for something else. Like many in the digital generation, my grandparents aren't as savvy or comfortable with digital photos. Since I also live several time zones away, I find myself wishing I had a better way to share some of my life adventures with them. I recently went snowshoeing and then spent a weekend in Moab.
This is where Touchnote comes in. I just pick out my favorite photo in the midst of my adventure, type up a nice message to the grandfolks, enter their address and presto! In a couple days they get a photo they can share with others and know that I'm thinking of them on my adventures.
Touchnote normally costs $1.49 per card, which is pretty reasonable, but HP has bought 50,000 Touchnote postcards for their webOS users to send free of charge. It's a limited time thing, but I know I'll be sending them even once the promotion is over.
The app is simple to use and navigate, though it doesn't always autopopulate addresses from my contacts correctly. Fortunately, once you have sent a card to someone, the app remembers their address for future use.
All told it's a great service and app that needs only a couple tweaks to be perfect.
Touchnote is a website, and more conveniently an app, which allows you to select a stock photo, or upload your own, and make a postcard out of it which they mail for you.
This is incredibly convenient for traveling, but I've found it to be even better for something else. Like many in the digital generation, my grandparents aren't as savvy or comfortable with digital photos. Since I also live several time zones away, I find myself wishing I had a better way to share some of my life adventures with them. I recently went snowshoeing and then spent a weekend in Moab.
This is where Touchnote comes in. I just pick out my favorite photo in the midst of my adventure, type up a nice message to the grandfolks, enter their address and presto! In a couple days they get a photo they can share with others and know that I'm thinking of them on my adventures.
Touchnote normally costs $1.49 per card, which is pretty reasonable, but HP has bought 50,000 Touchnote postcards for their webOS users to send free of charge. It's a limited time thing, but I know I'll be sending them even once the promotion is over.
The app is simple to use and navigate, though it doesn't always autopopulate addresses from my contacts correctly. Fortunately, once you have sent a card to someone, the app remembers their address for future use.
All told it's a great service and app that needs only a couple tweaks to be perfect.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
The Three Minds of Running
I've alluded to this subject on a couple occasions, but a run the other day left me feeling inspired to expound on the topic of what I call the three minds of running. So here they are, the three minds of running (and their arch-nemesis, non-running mind).
The first mind of running I call zen mind. In this, all the meditative qualities of running are brought to the fore. You are wholly in and of the run without conscious effort. The run is effortless regardless of pace and you may find yourself crossing many miles with little memory of it. Autopilot or cruise control are terms that could be applied, though they carry connotations that are too mechanical. Zen mind is not mechanical, it is reflexive. It is without thought, without being thoughtless. Zen mind is a difficult thing to seek, personally I find it easier to let it come to me. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Those occasions when it does are among the best runs I have had.
The second mind of running is racing mind. In this state, you're focused on how you're running. You're thinking about things like pace, times, mileage, turnover, heart rate, the hotspot on your toe, your hydration level, when to eat next and all those little things that make for a successful race. Racing mind is important both in training as well as during a race and maintaining the necessary discipline of racing mind can mean the difference between a new personal record or slamming into the wall early and hard. In some ways it is the opposite of zen mind as it is very actively focused and very mechanical. Racing mind might be the easiest state of mind to reach for this reason. You simply turn it on. At the same time though, it is like zen mind in that it is wholly of the run, unlike the third mind...
Grocery mind. This is the often wandering mental state where we ponder what to pick up for dinner, how to deal with a problem at work, what to get your girlfriend for her birthday and the millions of other problems we solve when we lace up. This can be good or bad. Sometimes running in grocery mind can lead to running in a distracted fashion, thoughtlessly. We end up going farther than we have time for, get lost, trip over a curb or even step into traffic without looking. Other times it leads to running without thought and bridging to zen mind. As someone who is a big believer in the stress relieving power of running, I have met few problems that didn't feel more manageable after a good run. I have also found grocery mind to be a more effective bridge to zen mind than racing mind is. While your thoughts may be everywhere but on the run, the stress reduction of working things out mentally combined with the reduction in conscious emphasis on the run seems to make for an easier route to the zen mind state.
There is a fourth mind as well, or perhaps it should be called a non-fourth mind. The non-running mind. It's a state of mind that is antithetical and inhibitive to running. You're stressed or distracted and just keeping moving for so much as a mile is a struggle. Sometimes the relaxing, meditative qualities of running overcome the non-running mind quickly. Other times you find yourself struggling for ragged mile after ragged mile. Non-running mind is the flip side of grocery mind's path to zen mind. If we get stressed out or overly distracted by the mundane issues it can become easy to slip out of grocery mind and into non-running mind.
The first mind of running I call zen mind. In this, all the meditative qualities of running are brought to the fore. You are wholly in and of the run without conscious effort. The run is effortless regardless of pace and you may find yourself crossing many miles with little memory of it. Autopilot or cruise control are terms that could be applied, though they carry connotations that are too mechanical. Zen mind is not mechanical, it is reflexive. It is without thought, without being thoughtless. Zen mind is a difficult thing to seek, personally I find it easier to let it come to me. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Those occasions when it does are among the best runs I have had.
The second mind of running is racing mind. In this state, you're focused on how you're running. You're thinking about things like pace, times, mileage, turnover, heart rate, the hotspot on your toe, your hydration level, when to eat next and all those little things that make for a successful race. Racing mind is important both in training as well as during a race and maintaining the necessary discipline of racing mind can mean the difference between a new personal record or slamming into the wall early and hard. In some ways it is the opposite of zen mind as it is very actively focused and very mechanical. Racing mind might be the easiest state of mind to reach for this reason. You simply turn it on. At the same time though, it is like zen mind in that it is wholly of the run, unlike the third mind...
Grocery mind. This is the often wandering mental state where we ponder what to pick up for dinner, how to deal with a problem at work, what to get your girlfriend for her birthday and the millions of other problems we solve when we lace up. This can be good or bad. Sometimes running in grocery mind can lead to running in a distracted fashion, thoughtlessly. We end up going farther than we have time for, get lost, trip over a curb or even step into traffic without looking. Other times it leads to running without thought and bridging to zen mind. As someone who is a big believer in the stress relieving power of running, I have met few problems that didn't feel more manageable after a good run. I have also found grocery mind to be a more effective bridge to zen mind than racing mind is. While your thoughts may be everywhere but on the run, the stress reduction of working things out mentally combined with the reduction in conscious emphasis on the run seems to make for an easier route to the zen mind state.
There is a fourth mind as well, or perhaps it should be called a non-fourth mind. The non-running mind. It's a state of mind that is antithetical and inhibitive to running. You're stressed or distracted and just keeping moving for so much as a mile is a struggle. Sometimes the relaxing, meditative qualities of running overcome the non-running mind quickly. Other times you find yourself struggling for ragged mile after ragged mile. Non-running mind is the flip side of grocery mind's path to zen mind. If we get stressed out or overly distracted by the mundane issues it can become easy to slip out of grocery mind and into non-running mind.
Friday, April 01, 2011
Mount Sanitas
Leadville is known for some of its hills. The mid point is the top of Hope Pass at 12,600 and is preceded by a 7 mile 8% grade climb of 3,000 feet. Not an easy climb, I expect I'll probably hike much of it.
Knowing that hills and I haven't always been on the best of terms, something highlighted at Moab, some intense hill focus is called for. That's where Mount Sanitas comes in.
Sanitas is a popular local hike in Boulder and while it only reaches 6,863', its 1300' of elevation gain comes in just under a mile and a half (1.4 miles), making the rocky ridge trail a muscle burning 17.5% grade. While Sanitas does not have the length of the Hope Pass ascent, climbing the steep grade and rough, technical footing a couple times a week, in conjunction with some other, longer hillsets, should give me the strength I will dearly need in Leadville.
Knowing that hills and I haven't always been on the best of terms, something highlighted at Moab, some intense hill focus is called for. That's where Mount Sanitas comes in.
Sanitas is a popular local hike in Boulder and while it only reaches 6,863', its 1300' of elevation gain comes in just under a mile and a half (1.4 miles), making the rocky ridge trail a muscle burning 17.5% grade. While Sanitas does not have the length of the Hope Pass ascent, climbing the steep grade and rough, technical footing a couple times a week, in conjunction with some other, longer hillsets, should give me the strength I will dearly need in Leadville.
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