Rocky Mountain.... How High????

With a little over 5 weeks to go before my next half marathon, I decided to look up the elevation that I'll be dealing with for both the 1/2 in Wyoming Sunday and the 10k in Boulder the following day.  (I was asked the day before as to the elevation and had a deer in the headlights look so figured I needed to educate myself.)

First the good news (well relatively good news)....  Bolder Boulder has a max elevatin of 5391 and a min elevation of 5284.  The Woodlands has an elevation of 160 so I'll be right around 5000 feet higher than I'm used to running.  That really shouldn't be a problem as I'll be running at 8700 feet in Wyoming the day before.  The trail 1/2 between Laramie and Cheyenne starts at 8700 feet with a nice descent to around 8100 feet before ascending back to around 8500 feet at the 1/2 turnaround.  The last 5 miles should be pretty much all uphill gaining back the 600 feet descent that we got to enjoy the first 1/2 of the course.

8700 feet will be the highest elevation that I've run in to date.  I started the Georgetown to Idaho Springs 1/2 just west of Denver back in 2007 at 8500 feet.  That course had a 1000 foot descent to a finish in Idaho Springs.  That race didn't go so well for me as I pulled a hamstring around mile 4.   The other western event that comes to mind is the Race to Robie Creek 1/2 that I ran in 2007 as well in Idaho.  That 1/2 started at an elevation of 2725, climbed to 4797 and then dropped to 3065 at the finish.  Thats the only race where I had a nose bleed along the course.  Yet another Rocky Mountain disaster. 

So maybe I was better off with the deer in the headlights look when asked about the altitude I'll be facing at the end of next month.  My goal is to finish around 2:10.  This will keep Georgetown and Robie as my 2nd to last and PW times respectively.  Of course that goal will be secondary to enjoying myself on the course and logging my 42nd state.

Buckeye Upgrade

I was able to remember my login information and get back into the new and improved Buckeye Outdoors website.  Its been about a year since I started using Buckeye as my training log for all my runs. I also went back and entered all my prior marathon and 1/2 marathon races in the Buckeye calendar. 

Buckeye now uses garmin connect so that I can now download my run information directly from my Garmin into the Buckeye training log.  The prior version required a download from Garmin to SportTracks (Zone 5 software) and then upload to Buckeye. 

Syncing with Facebook and Twitter is now easier as well.  This seems to be the case where new & improved is actually an improvement!

Buckeye Upgrades

I guess the Buckeye Outdoor upgrade happened late on April 2nd as advertised on their website.  None of my Buckeye sidebar boxes are presently visible on my blog; no PR's, no completed races, no upcoming races, no workouts.  Hopefully there is a quick fix to get the information back.  I've become spoiled with the no data entry required log maintenance that I've been able to do with Buckeye the past year or so.