Days 71-72 = 3,700', 2700'

Made it out this weekend to hit Mt. Mitchell and Mt. Pisgah. I can feel some fitigue setting in again, a little bit of forced rest coming up will be good.
117,729 up, 32,271 to go.
I'll be spending a few days in a flat area, but will try to hit a 400' stair climb a few times just for the fun of it. Then I'll be heading to an area where I should be able to get some climbing in near the French-Italian border. Not completely sure where I'll be, but hoping for some opportunity to get in some beautiful runs. Then I'll be in the UK, up north, minutes away from this course, so I'll be sure to experience some fell running. I've been told that whatever I'm wearing on my feet now won't work where we're going. Looking forward to the no trail, straight up climbs.

Days 66-70 = 4,354'

Day 66 - 0'

Day 67 - 851'

Day 68 - 1,326'

Day 69 - 851'

Day 70 - 1,326'

111,329' up, 38,671' to go. Gimme another 2 weeks vacation and I'll have this thing finished!

70% of the days are finished and 74.2% of the vertical is finished.

This was a pretty uneventful week as far as climbing goes. Certainly no match for the previous week. Looking forward to another solid weekend to keep me ahead as some travel is coming up again. Will be following the UTMB through tomorrow morning. Looking forward to a battle between Roes and Jornet.

Days 64&65 - 2,114', 2,283'

Check out some race reports in the next few days from a group of guys that had a great weekend of epic racing.

GZ, - Top Master's at PPM. Only guys over 40 to go faster than GZ this morning were legends Matt Carpenter and Bernie Boettcher.

Tim W, - 1st 100 miler - 6th at Leadville 100, passed 11 guys in the final 50 miles of the race. I have a feeling he's not done with this race.

Nick C, - 5th at PPM and I'm sure he's quite happy with this, but will certaily be looking for the 36 seconds somewhere to have a sub 4 hour under his belt.

I'm sure we'll have a great report from Tony as well. Appears as though he went for a CR again at Leadville 100 and ended up needing some medical attention around the 80 mile mark and was unable to finish. Well wishes for Tony and a quick, complete recovery.

I ran into this view this morning.
The past 9 days I've run 8 times for a total of 28,897'. That's an average of 3,210' per day for 9 days, or 3,612' for the 8 days of running. But tomorrow it's back to work! I actually feel pretty good and feel like I could keep this up for a little while longer. At the 2/3 mark, day 67, I will have about an 8,000' cushion which translates into about 5.33 days. I'll need every bit of it with the travel I have coming up.
I have climbed 107,775' in 65 days and have 35 days to get in the remaining 42,225'.

A Vertical Vacation

Lotsa vertical for days 56-63, was able to ascend during the 6 days sandwiched between travel days 56&63. However, the highlight of this Vertical Vacation was the time I was able to spend with my family. Most of what I ran during the 6 days was very low milage and very high % grade, an average of 17%. This type of terrain allowed me to get in my runs early in the morning and then have loads of time with the family. I summited Mt. Washington 3 times and was met at the summit by my family; so yea, I took the easy way down! We slept in a tent and had an outdoor kitchen, livingroom and shower. We even had a garden that the kids picked and ate directly from along with blackberry and blueberry bushes. Riley was often found deep inside the berry patches. Here are some shots of where we stayed.
Livingroom with fire place

Bedroom

Smores at the campfire

Kitchen

View from outdoor shower

Vegatable and Berry garden

Cog

And here are the numbers. 24,500' of ascending and 11,250 of descending on a total of 38.8 miles. 27.4 miles up and 11.4 miles down. That's an average of 17% grade on the climbs and almost 19% coming down. It was actually the Auto Road that brought my average percent down on the climbs!

Day 56 = 0'

Day 57 = 4,300' - MW via Tuckerman's Ravine trail. Up only.

Day 58 = 6,650' - MW via the Auto Road, then Wild Cat via the Pole Cat trail. Up only on MW, up/down on Wild Cat.

Day 59 = 4,500' - Mt. Adams via Airline Trail. Up/Down.

Day 60 = 2,750' - Mt. Jefferson via Caps Ridge trail. Up/Down.

Day 61 = 2,000' - Wild Cat via the Pole Cat trail. Up/Down.

Day 62 = 4,300' - MW via Tuckerman's Ravine trail. Up only.

Day 63 = 0'

103,378' in 63 days, with 46,622' to go.

I've got another nice cushion to work with here.

Days 53,54,55 - 851',1,323', 0'

78,878' in 55 days, with 71,122' to go.
I have averaged 1,434' per day, 66' off the pace for a total of 3,622' behind schedule at this point.
I will need to average 1,580' / day for the next 45 days to meet the goal.
My goal for the next 7 days is to be at 100,000' on day 62. I'll need to average about 3,018' per day to do this. I'm looking to have a couple big days to make this happen.

Days 51&52 - 2,838', 851'

On the Sunday morning run I saw this huge mushroom that something had been nibbling on. Then, a few minutes up the trail I saw this white knight and he was talking backwards. It was hard to understand him, but it sounded like he was saying something about the Beatles. Anyway, got some good vertical in on a day that I really didn't feel like running. Then, that evening we had a great game of kickball with the kids. Kickball might just be my favorite sport. Got an easy climb in this morning on my staple 851' er.

Days 44-50 = 4,400'

2 days of travel, 5 days in SLC with 4 days on the same 1,100' climb out of downtown up to Ensign Peak. Quick and easy and a great way to start the morning. I only missed one run while there, but that was just because I had too many conversations with a little hottie named Tequila the night before! Didn't have a chance to talk to these guys, but happened to see Timmy P, Scott J and Tony K at the OR show. These guys are celeberties at this show. I wanted to chat a bit, but they were just being swarmed and I imagined they were answering the same questions all day long. If you're ever in SLC and pressed for time I highly suggest this little climb out of the city.

At the halfway mark I'm 73,015' up and 76,985 to go, 1,985' behind schedule. However I have major plans for some serious vertical August 14-19. If all goes well and I can hang I plan on averaging no less than 3,000'/day during the 6 days I'm in the White Mountains which would put me somewhere around 95,000' by day 62 and back ahead of schedule. I do, however, expect to be closer to 24,000' for the 6 days in the White Mountains, only an injury can hold me back on this one. I'm thinking of planning 3 days of up/down and 3 days of up only to go for the 24,000' in 6 days.

Days 41, 42, 43 - 851', 851', 4,790'

Another tough run today, did the same run as I did last Sunday, day 37, with a little extra added on the end. Felt a little better than I did last week, but still a run that's out of my league. I plan to keep running this until I belong in this route's league.

The staple weekly run, 851', is a 2.7 mile climb broken up in 3 sections, a 1 mile 450' climb, .7 mile 76' climb and a 1 mile 325' climb, turn around and head down.

Was nice to get a little ahead of the game. For the next 7 days I'll be looking at alot of vertical, but my schedule won't allow me to get a whole lot in. I'll be lucky to reach day 50 with 75,000' finished.

Here area few shots of todays run.

Day's 39&40 - 1,290', 851'

Although I've done alot of climbing the past 40 days I have not really been training. For example, if I'm out on a run and a steep climb comes and I feel like walking, I walk. This has been great, but doesn't really fit my personality. I'd rather bury myself for an hour 3 times per week than do the solid base training needed for long distance running. Last weekend I went out and did a run that I wasn't really fit enough to do, but in the end I got through it and was glad to feel a little pain. So, yesterday I thought I'd go out and do 6 intense uphill reps on a 12% grade road that covered 215' in a third of a mile with an easy jog back down. My goal was to max out by effort at the top of each rep and I did with more hurt than I cared to experience. In fact, reps 3,4 and 5 were spent battleing in my head if I'd stop after 5. Funny how I was still battleing myself on the way back down from the 5th rep and just turned around and went up for the 6th rep. I guess that's a good thing. But I did see that I had gotten too soft with all the "easy" effort I've been doing masked by some nice vertical numbers. For the first time in this 100 day effort I feel tired and sore, but that's good. After the recovery I hope to add a little more of this intensity to my runs.
Day 39 - 1,290' by way of 6 x 215'.
Day 40 - 851' very easy up then down.
40% of the days are finished and 41.41% of the vertical is finished.
I have averaged 1.553.1'/day so far, 2,124' ahead of schedule, that's only 1.4 days ahead of schedule and in my book will be called right on schedule. I will have a couple opportunities soon to try and get ahead, and will take full advantage of it.

Breakin' Webs

During the winter after an overnight snowfall it's nice to be out early breakin' trail. It's very easy to know that you're the first one out. In the summer, however, there are no footprints in the snow to validate this simple pleasure. Instead there's the breaking of spider webs across the trail anywhere from the kneee to the face that validates that I'm the first one out in the mornings. I prefer to be second out this time of year. Nice easy rolling recovery run this morning.
Day 38 - 538'.