My Old Friend

I hadn't been on Flagstaff in a long long time. But it's my favorite uphill trail around Boulder, and I used to "run" it quite a bit.

The "run" is in quotes because I either (a) did it continuously, without stopping, which meant I walked a ton of it or (b) I did it in Matt Carpenter intervals (1min on, 1min off) where I could run most of it.

It's more fun to do (b) for a few reasons: the pain comes in measured doses, I get to stretch in between, and mostly because I can pretend that my overall running time is "real" and compare it to the big name runners.

I past years I had run about 20:50 PR "pretend" time (in other words, it was 40:50 elasped, but I was stopped on the trail for 20 of those minutes). Pretty pathetic when you think that Bill W has run 19:08 and the FKT is 16mins or so. But comparing myself to people who are much fitter is really pointless. I'm just having fun in my own slow way.

I had borrowed a watch that could take splits, but really didn't figure out how it worked very well. I went out at what felt like a roaring pace, doing my 1on, 1off thing. I hit the first road crossing in 14:28 (so 7:28 running time), but had hiked the majority already even with the rest breaks. So out of shape! I weighed just over 200lbs, whereas the last time I had done this I weighed about 165. Potato chips can do that to a person.

The watch wasn't working as I expected, so I gave up on the 1on, 1off thing and just slow-hiked to the summit in 44:41 total. I don't even know what my continuous PR is for Flagstaff.

Sandra picked me up on top. This is part of my "amazing strategy" to not get injured: I'll go uphill only, and avoid running down so my body has very little impact. Uphill running is low-impact (the ground "rises up" to meet you!) but still gets the HR up!

Disappointed at being this slow, but I'll get faster and the weight will drop too, adding to the improvements.