Weekly Summary – 75 miles in 11 runs. A great recovery week after the Time To Fly 50K. Managed to run every day, even with an overnight, 17,000 ft mountain summit in there. Did some first quicker running over the weekend with a nice little fartlek/easy-long-run double. Legs are feeling good. Ready to get back after it.

Don’t forget, you can follow me day to day on Instagram and Twitter (@TylerCAndrews) and my daily training log on Strava (GPS included!). Don’t forget to check out STRIVE’s 2018 Programs – we’ve still got a few spaces available for high schoolers, college interns, and adults! You can come do service work and train with me in Peru or Kenya and for the summer of 2018, we’ll once again have programs for High School and College students, and even 10-day trips for adults and families, so be sure to take a look if you’re interested in an amazing summer experience!

Lunes, 16 de Abril, 2018 – Woke up late and had breakfast with Alex and Dana before they headed home. Fun to see them (even if I missed a lot of their trip being in SB). Spent a bunch of the day going down to old town with Mariana, seeing her work, and renting some gear for our climb up Iliniza Sur tomorrow. Got back in time to get in a jog before a mellow evening at home.

4:30pm: Ran after watching an AMAZING Boston Marathon. Wish I could say I was inspired to crush an amazing run but since this was run #1 since the 50K, it was an easy one.. Easy run around the park. Legs feeling better every day and today was a big change so I decided to give ‘em a test. Started out in the park (i.e. didn’t have to run down the hill) which was nice as my quads were definitely still the most sore of anything. Ran 1 big lap very slowly (17’38) and then looped back around, stopped at the police station to turn in the wallet we found last night, and then over to quicentro to pay my phone bill before jogging back to Portugal. No strides and all flat, but felt better than expected, kept pace under 5’00/km avg. Total run 6km in 29’27.

Martes, 17 de Abril, 2018 – 10:30am: Legs are still feeling better each day. Quads less sore today, so ran easy 40’ around the park (1 big lap in 17’20) and even did 4x “strides” VERY slow, just to get the legs moving a bit. Finished at Portugal. Total run 9km+ in 40’.

XT: Toes

4pm: Left for Iliniza around 1pm and made the easy walk up to the refugio quite quickly. Walking is easy and not too steep, but with a decently heavy pack and 700m of gain (from 4000m to 4700m) it was quite tough aerobically. Great weather with just a couple sprinkles. Had a nice dinner at the refugio and tried to get to bed early. Saw a lot of Andean wolves in the paramo inlcuding one which was basically domesticated by the refugio guy (but which wolf still scared the shit out of me when I walked outside after dark to go to the bathroom and my headlamp reflected back it’s glowing eyes).

Miercoles, 18 de Abril, 2018 – 5am: Slept extremely poorly last night. Woke up just about every 30 min on the dot. 4700m is no joke! HR never got below 60 and sometimes it felt like it was racing. Not much O2 up here.

Left around 5am and walked an easy 30 min or so on the morraine until we got to the first tricky section, a relatively steep rock scramble of maybe 5.6 rating for about 30m. You could probably do this without a rope but we roped up and Jorge led and then belayed us up. From there, it was a short walk to the edge of the glaciar where we roped up and made our way up the first steep ramp. This was maybe up to 65 degrees and was pretty calm except for about 30m of quite exposed ice which required front pointing and more careful ice-axe placement. From there, we traversed over to a second steeper ramp which led up to a giant crevasse which we crossed one at a time. From there, it was one more steep ramp up to the summit ridge and then an easy climb up to the snowy summit. Weather was great but unfortunately cloudy for most of the daylight work, so we didn’t get much of a view other than at the very start where we got some amazing views of Norte and the mountains to the west. Descent was quite easy except for the icy bit which required careful downclimbing. We were back in the refugio before 10am, about 4.5 hours door to door.

Had a delicious breakfast there, packed up, and then walked down quickly to the parking lot where we got a ride back to the city. Home in our apartment by 2pm. Lovely climb and a great start to the day.

5pm: Had a very good nap and was feeling decent so went for an easy run this afternoon. Ran down the hill and 1 big lap (17’07) and a half to finish at the track 8km in 37’30. Did 4x strides there still quite slow and then jogged home. Total run 10km in 46’.

XT: Toes

Jueves, 19 de Abril, 2018 – 11am: Slept until almost 10am! Wow! Really, really tired so I guess I needed that. Ran easy solo down to the park and 2 big laps (16’39, 16’19) – these are more like normal training times for me, so legs are definitely coming back. Stopped at the track and did 6x strides and then 200m in 32.5, all of which felt pretty good. Jogged back to Inaquito to get breakfast and groceries. Total run 12km in 53’38.

5:30pm: Ran later with Brittany. Nice run and still very pleasant out. Seems that the afternoon showers are peetering out this time of year. Ran nice and easy down to the park and 1.5 big laps (17’04) and then tacked on up to Portugal to get to 8k. Made it all the way up the hill! No strides. Total run 8km in 38’38.

XT: Toes

Viernes, 20 de Abril, 2018 – 10am: Slept late again and ran solo on a beautifully sunny day. So bright and warm! Love running at this time. Ran two big laps 16’24 and 15’36 – much quicker today! Legs definitely turned a corner in the last 24 hours. Another half lap to the track, 6x strides, 200m in 32.5. Jogged home after. Total run 13km in 56’.

XT: Toes

4:30pm: Ran solo in a prototype pair of HOKAs called the Carbon X. Felt amazing – really nice shoe, light and really poppy off the ground and the roll forward feels great. Running much quicker out the door, some of which is probably the shoe and some of which is just having my legs come around. Ran 1 big lap in 15’20 and then back to the track. It’s locked off for what looks like some kind of big concert or event, so did 4x strides on the bike path. Jogged home via portugal. Total run 7km in 29’.

XT: Toes

Sabado, 21 de Abril, 2018 – Sparknotes:10km fartlek in 35′ w/ 15x[1′ on/1′ off], 4x 30s on, 30s off, 500m quick (1’29) @ 7,700 ft. Hilly!

10:30am: First quicker running today (8 days after the 50K). Legs felt very good yesterday, so decided to give it a go. Workout was very much by feel. Drove down to Chaquiñan at 7700 ft and warmed up 3km easy in 12’, stopped and did drills but no real strides.

Workout was (1’ on, 1’ off) x 15 (30’) and then 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off for the remainder. I figured I’d shoot for 30-40 minutes which would be 8-12km.

The chaqui is very hilly, so there was a lot of variation in the paces of the reps, so I mostly ignored the garmin and just ran by feel. The 1’ reps felt good and were anywhere between 3’00/km (downhill) to 3’30/km (uphill), with recovery between 3’30/km (downhill) and 4’10/km (uphill). I turned around right around 5km, so figured I’d shoot for 10km. I did 4 reps of 30 seconds which felt very good to turn the legs over quicker (~2’55/km) and then ran the last rep as one continuous 500m in 1’29 (2’58/km) downhill. This felt very good and was a nice way to finish up.

Ended up just over 10km on the garmin in 35’31 (3’32 avg). This is very good as this was a net even run and quite a hilly route. Moreover, it’s great to have the legs moving again after feeling so destroyed last weekend. Excited to get back after it for these last few weeks here!

Cooled down easy – definitely felt like I could have done more which is just how I want to feel on these first workouts back. 3km in 14’.

Beautiful, sunny morning, in the 70s but very dry so didn’t feel bad. Finished with some sunshine ethio. Another day in paradise.

Total run 16km in 61’.

4:30pm: Ran from Nate and Ryan’s house mid-pizza-party. Planned to run afterward but turned out it was going to go much later into the evening than I’d realized, so snuck out for an hour. Felt remarkably good. Ran 1 big lap of the park in 15’40 (!) and then to the track, 8km in 34’. Stopped and did 4x strides. Nice that the storm has just come through as the track was empty. Jogged back to their place and stretched there. Total run 10km in 42’.

XT: Toes

Domingo, 22 de Abril, 2018 – 11am: Woke up at 4am to watch London Marathon and then went back to sleep for a few hours, so didn’t run until quite late. Nice to run mid-day with lots of sun, though! Ran on the ciclopaseo out/back all the way to the north terminus, up the big hill. Felt surprisingly decent given yesterday and let myself run a bit quicker. 4’20s down to 4’00s and then turned around and came back down 3’40-50s down the hill, kept the pace pretty consistent sub 4’00 on the last flattish 8km or so. Finished at the track to meet up with Mar and Greg et al and then went over to Greg’s brother’s place for a fantastic afternoon of relaxing on their beautiful terrace complete w/ pool, bbq, etc. Absolutely lovely morning. Total run 22km in 1h29.

4:30pm: Ran solo easy down to the park and 1 big lap (16’36) and then to the track for strides (4x). A bit of a shitshow on Sunday afternoon as always trying to get strides in as the track is so damn crowded but very relaxed as the body felt pretty tired on this one. Ran home via portugal. Total run 7km in 30’.

XT: Toes.