First race of the year - SLC Winter Series 5K

Off the starting line at the first race of 2012

It feels like its been a year since the Philadelphia Marathon, our last race. Over the past two months I quickly recovered from that race and started re-building the base. By Christmas I was at full volume, and put in a 6-week base cycle with weekly totals of 122, 124, 135, 143, 140, and 143 miles. The super-mild "winter" weather we've been having has made training a lot easier than it usually is this time of year. I've been doing short (3-5 mile) tempos and some random fartlek workouts - but nothing too hard quite yet (Full January training log). Still, I wanted to close out the month with a rust-buster race before I started my "real" buildup towards the Boston Marathon in April.

On Saturday (Jan 28th) I opened up the racing season at the SLC Track Club Winter Series 5K. I can't say enough good things about these races (they also hold a 10K and 15K in February)... well organized, accurately marked (and flat) courses, chip timing, inexpensive, great raffles and prizes, etc.

The race went about as expected. I won in a time of 15:20 with a very controlled effort. You can read my full recap on the Fast Running Blog: SLC Winter Series 5K Recap. I ran the first mile in 4:46, opened up a gap, then was able to cruise home at threshold effort (5:00, 5:01) for the remainder of the race. I'm at a good fitness level right now, and I'm excited to get into the real marathon workouts. I won't race too much between now and Boston - a pair of 15Ks and a 5K, most likely... enough to keep the competitive juices flowing and have some fun, but the focus is on the long, grueling workouts :-)

Lots of good photos - Andrea didn't race, so she was on camera-duty and did a great job. A couple volunteers from the SLC Track Club also took some action shots (the finish line ones).

Warmup

Starting line, with the mountains overlooking Magna in the backdrop

Off we go

Finishing stretch

After the race we went up to Alta w/ friends to hike around - they all snowshoed while I played around on my rando-race skis. Things are very sketchy for backcountry skiing this year (there was an avalanche fatality just a few miles away that afternoon)... so we're not skiing much. The focus is on Boston, and we'll get our backcountry skiing in once spring rolls around. Just not worth the risks right now.

Some pics from Alta...

Of course, we have lots more photos of both the race and playing around in the snow:

SLC 5K Photo Gallery - Snowshoeing at Alta Photo Gallery

I'll also add in that Andrea and I went to see Scotty McCreery, The Band Perry, and Brad Paisley on Friday night. It was a pretty awesome concert, and action packed weekend!