Spring Running Training

I love spring. The mountains are full of snow, the days lengthen, and new growth is eminent. In college my best girlfriends and I would head to the Utah desert to backpack and soak in the sun and warmth, which even if it wasn’t yet hot by desert standards, felt glorious on our Montana skin. One year I did a semester backpacking field course on BLM land in the UT desert, and spent two months tromping around learning the geology, natural history, and environmental issues (grazing and mining specifically) of the area. I decided that I’d do a spring desert trip every year for the rest of my life. Since college I’ve been back to the desert a whopping two times (yikes, that’s even worse than I thought), but when February comes around I start daydreaming about the red dirt, and realize that while there is still a lot of snow on the ground at home, spring comes quickly and I need to start training!

This year I’m going down to the Grand Canyon, which I’m SO excited for. It’s been on my list for years, and despite the time I’ve spent in the UT canyons, I’ve never been the big ditch, as my dad called it. Whether you have a plan for a trip this spring or not, I thought others may need a little extra motivation to get out, so I put together a 12-week running program that works up to running 15 miles. You can check that out here.

Not the Grand Canyon, but a good desert sunset, to take one’s mind off the upcoming 45 miles of “running” at the Zion 100.