Did a warm up mile to the trails, then an hour on the trails, and a mile back home. I felt pretty sluggish, but I was able to run up and down the hills for an hour with walking. I wasn't tired enough at the end, I slacked off a bit.

7 miles running on trails
3 miles walking on trails and roads

Jill and I did a 14 mile bike ride yesterday, out to the Little Walnut picnic area which is part of the Gila National Forest. There is a nice system of trails in this area, small but nice. We followed the ride there with a 2 or so mile walk on the trails, then road back. The ride was much easier than we were expecting. We both get pretty intimated with hills while biking, but they weren't so bad. We are going to try to spend more time on the bikes.

Today I ran about 3 miles on trails, the first mile was at an easy pace, then the last 2 were a pretty good effort with a nice 4 minute hill climb effort near the end. I'm trying to hit as many hills as I can. I'm determined to turn myself into a mountain runner.

I woke up early this morning and ran over to Boston Hill, the plan was to try to run whatever I could remember of the 6.5 mile loop we ran Monday, but I knew it wouldn't be much. I did a 1 mile warm up run on the road to get to the trail, it's a very slow first mile with a big hill in the way. Then I ran on the trails for an hour. My plan was to run for one hour on the trails then another cool down mile back home, but after the hour on the trails was up I wasn't back at the trail head, and I didn't really know where it was. It was another 20 minutes of running until I found it, then ran the mile on the road back home. in all, I'll use the accountants principle of conservatism and call it 8 miles. I ran with pretty good effort and didn't hit any of the really steep trails we ran on Monday, but it was still consistently hilly throughout. I'm trying to work on increasing my uphill speed, which means running all hills. I've been encouraged as to how my body has reacted with the increased mileage. I feel slow on the up hills, but as soon as it flattens I'm able to recover and continue at a good pace.

I went out with Tony and Jim yesterday for a tour of the 6.5 mile loop which will be the home of the new half-marathon in the Boston Hill area just south of downtown Silver City this year. It's a great area for trail running. It's a small area, but is packed with an intricate trail system. Boston Hill is an old mining area that was purchased by the city and is being turned into a great open space area. As the name indicates, it's up on a hill, with great views of the city and surrounding desert, forest, and mountains. It's got some really nice technical single track and plenty of hills to climb and bomb down. I've been running much more consistently lately, but my mileage is still pretty low so I was hoping that Tony and Jim would take it easy...No chance. I got worked hard. I was sucking wind after the first mile. and that was the easy part. They were keeping a really nice pace. I was able to keep up on the flats and down hills but they would pull away on the ups. Whenever I got to far back they would stop and wait for me so I didn't miss any key turns. We were bombing down the rocky hills at break-neck pace. It was a great run, and a lot of fun to be out on the trails with some other good runners. Also a good indicator of how out of shape I am :) We finished the 6.5 mile loop in 1:05 Which is only 10 minute pace, but there was a lot of hill climbing in there. I look forward to running in Boston Hill a lot this spring and in to the summer and Hopefully I'll be ready to run a good race for the 1/2 in July. There were to many turns for me to remember them all, but Jim (the rd) is working on a map of the course. The trail head is only 1/2 mile from our place, so it's a really convenient place to train. and with technical trails, and plentiful hills, what more do you need?

I've put in a good amount of miles this past 5 or so days, not because I was trying to, but because it just sort of happend. Thursday was an 18.3 mile hike with full pack with Jill, Friday was a 2 mile run on trails, then 8 or so miles with tony on trails, followed by us getting lost for 4 hours and bushwacking up and down a mountain. Sunday was a 9 mile hike with Gary. Yesterday was 3 miles running on trails, then 3 miles walking, then the 6.5 mile run. Today was 2 miles running on trails, which 2 or more to go later on today with Jill. That's 51 miles in 5 days. More miles than I've put done in that short of a time in more than a year. But my body feels really good and I'm looking forward to getting back to some more consistent training...and blogging.