Live Epic

Hello and welcome to my blog. After establishing this online platform several months ago, I now feel compelled enough to actually publish some thoughts pertaining to my daily activities. The reason for this change of heart doesn't have as much to do with any new occurrences, but comes more from a genuine excitement about the spring thaw we are currently experiencing in the Aspen area.

Even though spring is making its presence rather obvious with rising temperatures and longer days, I still woke up to about a foot of new snow on Aspen Mountain this morning. This allowed me to push around some freshies in the morning, accumulate miles in the early afternoon, and still make it to work by 3pm. Not a bad daily schedule.

While this winter certainly has been memorable and enjoyable in many ways, the mountains will be closing in a few short weeks and Aspen will turn back into a relative ghost town for almost two months. Most people my age tend to use this "mud season" to either visit exotic ends of the Earth or return home to enjoy some quality family time. I, one the other hand, can afford neither and plan on using this time to decompress and train as much as possible.

My recreational priorities have witnessed a bit of a shift recently as I increasingly feel more drawn to my running shoes than my ski boots. As such, the weekly mileages have been increasing steadily for about 6 weeks now to the point that I am beginning to feel pretty darn fit. Here is a look at my mileage from the last week:

3/21-- 12 miles (felt excellent)-- 1.5
3/22-- AM:12 miles (very tired) PM: 6.25 miles (Felt awesome) Total: 18.25 miles-- 2.25 hours
3/23-- 12 miles easy in the snow-- 1.5 hours
3/24-- 24th birthday! 24 miles + ski-- 3.5 hours
3/25-- 12 miles (Easy effort. Felt great. No fatigue from yesterday.)-- 1.5 hours
3/26-- 12 miles (A bit tired)-- 1.5 hours
3/27-- 12 miles (painful last couple miles) + Ski (Pow!)-- 2 hours

102.25 miles + Ski time-- 13.75 hours

You'll notice that Wednesday was my 24th birthday. Since I tend to get my long runs in mid-week it felt only natural to run my age in miles. Definitely gonna be a tradition for years to come.

With my fitness consistently improving I am becoming more and more excited about this year's race season. Here is a look at my tentative race schedule for 2010:

April 18th-- Fruita 50m
May 8th-- Quicksilver 50k or 50m (Fruita recovery dependent)(San Jose, CA)
June 19th-- San Juan Solstice 50m
August 21st-- Leadville 100
September 19th-- Steamboat 50m
October 17th-- Denver 26.2

This seems to be enough introductory information for the first post but please do check back often as exciting things are sure to happen! Live Epic.