The background work

I'm racing a lot less this summer than I have in past summers, and replacing the time with some solid training blocks. The hope, obviously, is to make myself faster for the races that count. The Laramie races did wipe me out pretty good, and it took a solid week of easy workouts before I felt ready to tackle the quality again. Remind me not to do three hard races at altitude in a row, next time I'm floating that idea. Anyway, it's been a good summer. I'm healthy, and starting to feel really fit. I've been working with my head as well as my body, getting more into mindfulness, meditation, and deliberate practice. If I believe in myself hard enough, that makes up for a lot. I think I can I think I can I think I can!

The numbers for May and June were pretty close between 2015 and 2016, but overall I think the quality is up this summer. I'm a little more settled at my job, figuring out how to balance that better with the rest of life. I've been building my running mileage carefully, and trying to really enter every quality session with the freshest legs I can muster. It's about time for another running race, but the last one (Corporate Challenge) had a Vdot equivalent to my PR, so I'm on track with flat speed (heh). My navigation feels strong right now, though obviously it can always use more work. Since May, I have lost 17:48 minutes in mistakes over 20 orienteering races covering 80km. 13.4 seconds per kilometer that I can pick up, just through navigating with more attention and focus. Sort of a wacky way to calculate navigational acumen, but sometimes you've gotta reach to find any metrics worth measuring with orienteering!

Good training camps mean proper recovery between sessions. 

I swung by the CSU summer camp for ice cream, mini golf, a long run, and more ice cream. Really great group of skiers this year, great cohesion.


I swear one of the most important things we teach them is that ice cream is the ideal recovery food after a long run.


Skiers warming up for their annual Winchendon time trial.


Barb, one of my local heroes, finishing on the podium at the Forest-X race that Ed and I put on. The race was a fun twist of trail running and orienteering, and people seemed to really enjoy it.