World Mountain Running Champs

Shifting myself back into the uphill grind mindset these days...ran 3x1.5 miles uphill fairly hard in Duluth a few days ago, going from basically under the highway downtown all the way up the hill and finishing either at Duluth Central High School or on Cliff Avenue. It's a good steady climb with some nice variation in steepness. Preparing for Mount Washington I basically set the treadmill at 12% and ran...which was great training for running at 12% incline, but not so much for the steeper sections. The World course is more varied than Mount Washington, so I definitely need greater variety of inclines in my training.

On that note, I also busted out an old classic from the Team USA Minnesota days...threshold 1200s in the park. Thanks to Dennis Barker for that one. That workout has been largely responsible for putting quite a number of people on the World XC team over the years. The varied terrain makes it tough to go fast, but that's sort of the idea.

I'm making an effort not to make each post a small novel, so I'm shutting it down here today, with the final note that I'm off to Canada for a steady diet of training, fishing, eating and sleeping. Should be a nice respite before the high school XC season gets underway and my schedule starts to really fill up.