Training does not necessarily stop because of the holidays, actually with only a few weeks left before our run these are probably the more critical training sessions of our whole program. Anyway, my training while in Elko got off to a not so good start due to some snow early in the week. I had to run a couple of days in the treadmill which has never been my favorite choice. Midweek, I was able to get outside and I found a nice 6 mile loop that took me through the town.

I decided to do my long run for the week today (friday) instead of the scheduled saturday since I was on an off schedule routine already and I can also enjoy the holiday weekend without being too tired. Our schedule called for a 20 mile run today but given that I am a few thousand feet higher in altitude I decided to shorten it a bit. Since I had a 6 mile loop mapped out I decided I would run this path 3 times, this would also give me a way to grab a new bottle of water every time I would come by the house.

The run was far more complex than our usual canal runs, the difference is mostly based on some pretty heavy hills that I had to climb. Because of where my parents live, it was a 10 minute downhill run to the town’s center, a good 20-25 minutes through the town and then a climb back to the house. The climb involved 4 hills (and their downhill part too) which had not been part of my previous training. I completed the 3 laps in 2:14:56 which leads me to believe it was not quite 18 miles but a little less. The pace of 18 miles would’ve been 7:29 which seems too fast, for 17 miles it was about 7:56 which feels a little more appropriate.

We are three weeks away from our race (Jan 15th) and this was the last run trying to build up milage. We start tapering down now leading to race day so you can say that we have finished the second phase of our training. Now it is more a matter of remaining injury free and more importantly try to avoid that common cold typical of this time of the year.