That one run

            Recovery from the Mac went pretty well.  Sunday I took off, Monday and Tuesday I did an easy 6 mile recovery run around the neighborhood.  The Wednesday morning phone interview for a meteorologist position in Petaluma left me with some extra energy for my regular tempo run from the OSU gym to Bald hill.  Ever have one of those runs where everything just feels right?  This was it for me.  An absence of mud definitely helped but I just pushed and pushed.    Easily my best tempo run of the year, I knocked 3 minutes off my PR for this course, and ran it way faster than I used to last year.  Awesome!

Dixon to Bald Hill tempo run for this year.  This weeks effort was way faster than previous efforts. 

            Thursday I went up Dans Trail to Dimple hill and Saturday was my last big quadsmashing workout before States in late June.  McCollough repeats again but with ante upped a bit.  5 times for this go around, maybe 37 miles and 9000 feet of cumulative elevation gain, with almost all of the descent done on logging roads to maintain a good quadkilling tempo.  The Delphiniums and Vanilla Leaf were peaking.  It was a tough workout but I felt strong almost the whole way through.   Plantar issues plagued the last repeat, my feet always seem to hurt on any run over 7 or 8 hours but never on any short runs.  I'm working to address that issue, but so have haven't found any magic bullet.  The other funny thing that happens to me on long runs is nosebleeds.  I think I might farmer blow too much since I've gotten 3 nosebleeds on runs so far this year, all late in the game on runs over 7 hours.  Weird.  I needed to look presentable at the end of this run since I wanted to stop for a burrito on the way back and I hadn't brought a change of clothes.  Since I couldn't just wipe the blood on my shirt I wadded a bunch of Oregon filbert leaves and stuffed them up my nose to stop the nosebleed.  Guess what?  It worked.  MacGuyver style!