Week in Review: March 19 – 25

San Gabriel Mountains

Finally, a good week. I made my mileage for only the 2nd or 3rd time since ac100 training began in earnest at the beginning of the year.

I attribute this almost entirely to my new Hoka Mafates. I was skeptical of this shoe when I first saw it – it looked like something only mid 90s ravers or extremely short people would wear, but eventually I started seeing elite runners wearing ’em, which is not something I’ve seen with, say, VFFs, and I started recognizing that the thing that was making every long run a difficult slog & crippling my training was not exhaustion or muscle fatigue but chronic forefoot pain. The downhills in particular were killing me.

As usual, I could not buy the shoe in LA. I could only find two stores in this minimalist-obsessed town (we are at the forefront of blindly following every trend here in LA) that carried Hokas. One of the stores was out-of-stock, and the other (ARC) only carried them in tiny sizes. I ended up emailing Karl Meltzer for information and ordering them from Boulder Running Co.

And this is how I came to run a 35 miler with 6,700 feet of climbing on Saturday, up El Prieto to the top of Mt. Lowe, and back down again via Brown Mountain. It was, sort of, a significant chunk of the last 15 miles of ac100. As I was heading up I came upon and “ran” with Jai Ralls, who finished under 24 hours in 2008. We wound our way up the Mt. Lowe railroad road for a few miles. (If anyone has contact info on this guy, I’d love to talk to him about pacing me).

Sunday’s run was done in the rain. The lesson: Hoka Mafate’s are not good mud shoes. The tread holds the mud perhaps more than any other shoe I own. Luckily, it doesnt rain enough down here for that to be much of a problem.

Tues: 14 miles, Arroyo (6), Griffith Park (8)
1,500 feet climbing

Wednesday: 7 miles, Cherry Canyon
1,500 feet climbing

Thursday: 16 miles, Cherry Canyon (8), Griffith park (8)
2,700 feet climbing

Saturday: 35 miles, Mt. Lowe summit
6,700 feet climbing

Sunday: 12 miles Griffith Park
2,200 feet climbing

Total: 84 miles, 14,600 feet climbing.