Wednesday run was in Iroquois High School, the track. This is the second time that some morbidly obese parents watch some sweet little kids, who are running extremely slowly (it actually looks like a parody of running - and this is no joke). Last time I saw them there were only a few adults (one fat woman walking in the inner lane) and the kids seemed to have a structured workout, and they were even somewhat considerate of me. This time, the workout seemed to be over, and the adults just hung around for an hour or so, while the kids were playing around. Everyone was standing, walking, talking in the inner lane with almost zero consideration of me trying to run fast. Amazingly poor track etiquette.

Nevertheless, I had a somewhat decent workout. I got hot and dehydrated at the end, but I managed to run 4 x 1600 meters with acceptable splits: 5:58, 5:56, 6:01, 6:05. The last one was less than satisfactory, and I spent a good portion in the pain cave... I seriously thought about just giving up. But apparently this is still good enough to satisfy some kind of decent Pfitzinger paces.

Then I ran Thursday morning 4 miles only, because I was teaching and I had a plane to catch to Denver. I thought maybe I would finish the workout on the hotel treadmill in Boulder at 10 or 11 o'clock, when I was scheduled to arrive. Well, weather was bad in Atlanta, so we got delayed at the transfer, and only made it to Boulder at 2:00am. So no more running on Thursday.

We hiked with a group in the Rocky Mountain National Park on Friday almost all day. We climbed a 3000 meter mountain. It was fantastic. I thought that would be the exercise of the day, but then, in the afternoon, reading around about Boulder, I couldn't resist, and I went for a run. My first run over 1600 meters of elevation. It is definitely harder than sea level, but I think I already felt partially acclimated, because it wasn't all that hard.

Today (Saturday), we have had a long lunch break at the conference, so I went out to do my planned tempo and to finish the 64-mile week with an 8-miler. I decided to run 2 easy, 4 hard, 2 easy. Because of the elevation and the hilliness, times are essentially meaningless, so I just jumped into my 2-1 breathing pattern, and pushed my pace as far as I could with this pattern. I decided to stay out of the pain cave this time. If I really honestly just want the training effect, it is not necessary to enter there. I finished, and my splits for the fast portion are: 6:57, 7:39 (steep climb), 6:27, 6:07. The average was 6:47.8, which is meaningless, but it still feels good that I did this pace a mile high and with the hills (and no pain cave). I hope it did help my lactate threshold.

Tomorrow I'm not going to RMNP, as I originally intended. I will probably just climb/run one of the beautiful mountains around Boulder.