Monday, February 9, 2009

Swimming Upstream

Today was hill work but my normal training hill was under snow. So I headed down the hill a little bit to do the "salmon ladder". It is named that after the now-defunct Salmon Run 10K race that was part of the Grand Prix race series here in Nevada County. The route consists of 2.5 miles of flat trail along a flume trail, a descent along a dirt road to the Yuba River then a nasty little climb back up to the trail.

I've started incorporating hill work into my routine once a week. This route provided a nice warmup before tackling the 0.3mi climb with 400ft of vertical gain. But I didn't do it just once. I did it 3 times with the goal being to climb it faster each time. Poor Yuba was starting to get a bit tired and worried about how many times we were going to do this crazy climb. My times for the climbs were 8:03, 7:43, and 7:33. I think I almost maxed out my heart rate that last time. I finished with a nice easy jaunt along the flume trail to cool down.

Once again I forgot my camera so here are some pictures from the same trail when my family and I hiked it last week. The only difference is last week it was warm and dry, today it was wet, with puddles, and in the high 30's.


Sara and Pat walking along the wheelchair friendly trail

Enjoying the view of the Yuba River






Caitlyn crossing Rush Creek with the footbridge just behind her.




Caitlyn tackling the nasty little climb, the "salmon ladder". She did great.

Goofing off

Montana de Oro trail run kicked my butt 2 years ago because I hadn't trained properly. I still haven't trained enough this year but it's my first event of the year and I'm treating it as a training run. I hope the little bit of hill work I've been doing will allow me to do a little better this time. I'm really looking forward to getting down there and finding out where I'm at, training wise.

1 comment:

Peter Lubbers said...

Looks like a great outing.
As far as hill training goes, it doesn't get much better than the Salmon ladder. It's really a shame that race is canceled.