So on Saturday, 7/19 I ran up the Barr Trail for the first time in a long while...just a couple of miles due to time restrictions but enough to inform me that I am woefully under-prepared for the Ascent. Let me just say that I'm glad they keep a light on all night at the visitors' center so I'll be able to find my way to the finish. I was thinking of incorporating some of teammate Sean O'Day's suggested Lactate Threshold training into my regimen but I think I'm lactate intolerant. Besides I…

At the Church of the Hidden Root. There is no greater soul-cleansing on a Sunday morning than an 8.5 mile run. Did repeats on the service road (pictured here) at Spruce Mountain. Can’t claim to know exactly how the clinometer app on my phone works but I measured this road at a grade of about 23% at one of its steepest parts. I do know that it’s a half mile long. With the repeats it was a nice, 2-hour workout. I ran comfortably in the second leg of the Triple Crown, the Summer Roundup…

The highlight of the second leg of the Triple Crown of Running was passing teammate Sean O’Day. This was made possible by virtue of the new course for 2014 which involved an outer and Inner loop. I passed Sean at the merge point of the two loops as he was finishing up the inner or second loop, probably a good 25 minutes ahead of me. It didn’t take him but a few seconds to pass ME but nevertheless I reveled in my fleeting glory. It’s not every day that a plodder such as I gets to enjoy…

This year’s attempt to complete the Triple Crown and the Ascent seems snakebitten. Intermittently I’ve lost about two weeks of training due to physical ailments. Now I’m not looking for sympathy because I know there is none to be found, at least not with the crowd I hang with. One of the real joys (not) of aging is the innumerable, inexplicable aches and pains that pop up as in “What did I do to deserve THIS?!” It’s one thing to twist an ankle on a trail and immediately know what’s…