December training

I had a very good month of running in December. We have been experiencing very warm temps this winter and without much snow in the mountains it has been great for getting out into the mountains to run. One of my favorite runs in December was a Friday night/Sat morning run with Matt Van Horn. We decided on a whim to run View Benchmark peak and Lake mountain back to back in the middle of the night. This would be summit #76 and 77 for the year and we had an excellent time laughing and joking the whole way while most of the world slept. Here is a short report:

View Benchmark/Lake Mountain run. 12/17/11

I was frustrated that I couldn't make it out on the trails the last few days and with a very busy Saturday coming up I decided to do a late night mountain run and I was happy Matt wanted to come along. I suggested View Benchmark via Ann's trail and Lake Mountain as possibilities. Matt said why not do both. I like the way he thinks.

We met at Ann's at 11:00 and we were running up the snowy trail a few minutes later. It was bitter cold and it took about 5 minutes to start to warm up. After that I felt fine, but whenever we stopped it would chill me within about a minute and I had steam flying off of my head. We were having a blast though. It took us longer than I had hoped because of the snow, but we made it up to the summit in about an hour (That included breaks for Matt to move some product). On top we checked out the views, but after a few minutes we were VERY cold, luckily there wasn't much wind.

The run down was a lot of fun. We laughed pretty much the whole way down and had a decent running pace most of the way. Back at the cars we decided to add in Lake Mountain as well, so we drove to Lehi and after taking a break to eat, warm up and change some clothes we parked and were on the trail just before 2:00 am. It was COLD!

We had both changed into our Altra Lone Peaks and after running the first 1.5 miles we could feel the extra strain on the calves and tendons. After the first mile we were in snow the rest of the way. After two miles we settled into a nice fast hiking pace for the rest of the way, but we would still run the slopes that aren't quite as steep.

About a mile from the top the nice 4X4 track we had been following ended and we had to break the trail the rest of the way which did slow us some. There was a slight wind after the saddle and the snow was very light powder and you could see bright crystals sparkling in the headlamps. It was pretty cool. We reached the summit a little before 3:30 am. It was cold, so we didn't stay long. We tried to snap a few pics, but they didn't turn out so we headed down.

The run down as incredible. We picked up the pace with each mile and the Lone Peaks provided plenty of traction on the steep snowy grade. We were singing to various songs that were blaring on my ipod, laughing and just having a fun time. The last two miles were in the 7's and felt really good. We both had an excellent time and I made it to bed just before 5:00 am and it was definitely more fun than sleeping.

We had just under 5K elevation gain for the night and we were able to run all but about 2.5 miles of the 16.2.