April training:

April was a horrible training month for me. The day before we ran the "Wedge" in February I ran up Lake Mountain with my friend Nate Greenwood. We had a solid day and I pushed it pretty hard, but on the way down I felt some tightness in my hamstring. It was tight and sore the rest of the day and I thought about bailing out on the Wedge run, but I just couldn't do it because I wanted to run with the boys down there. On the Wedge run it was tight almost from the start, but it didn't start hurting until about 5 miles in and from there it got progressively worse until I took some Ibuprofen around mile 20. The Ibuprofen really helped and I was able to run it in strong, but my hammy has been bothering me ever since. In March I ran 31 miles on Antelope Island and then paced Matt 28 on the Buffalo run, so that didn't help it, but it never seemed to get worse. I did take it easy for a few weeks in April and it seemed to help it a lot, but it still hasn't gone away.

At the beginning of the year I made a goal to run at least one ultra (over 31 miles) distance every month for the entire year. I just wasn't able to pull it off in April, so I'll have to make up for it by doing two in one month at some point. I have also switched back to running in the Brooks Cascadia. While I really like the Altra Lone Peak, I did notice that I was injured in some fashion almost the entire time that I was wearing them (lower back and hammy). While it might not be related, I had to go back to Brooks to see if that would help. So far I have been really happy with the switch, although I could go back to the Lone Peak at some point because I think it is an awesome shoe.