Early mornings and big hills in Utah!

No beehives here.

I adore the color-coded, neatly ordered grid of numbers that is my training schedule. Each square holds a number for the miles that will unfold on trails and roads that day, maybe in early morning light, possibly in humid evenings. I have a printout of it at my desk at work, and I stare at it on a chalkboard in my kitchen.

Months ago, the numbers seemed monstrously big, inconceivable! Now that I'm in the thick of it, the numbers are still big enough that I feel nervous looking ahead to each run, but really psyched to see how many miles I've logged already this summer.

Mormon Temple, SLC.

Last week I had to throw out my schedule and fit in the miles around a week of travel. (Possibly the biggest news week of the last decade occurred while a few hundred public radio news managers were not in their newsrooms, but at a conference in Salt Lake City. Cue mass pandemonium and overheated cell phones.) Getting up early is rarely a choice I make willingly, but highs of 97 degrees made early morning runs the only option.

Each day I ran 6-8 miles from our hotel in City Center to the Mormon Temple, then uphill to the state Capitol, and then way up the canyon on Bonneville Road. Looping back into town, the sun would be high enough to cast buttery light across the basin of the city. The craftsman bungalows and desert architecture were a treat, and the light rail system was so impressive! (Less impressive: the cascade of wasted water running off the sprinkler system from the capitol lawn.)

Switchbacks at Snowbird.

Friday afternoon, the conference organizers set us loose at Snowbird Resort in the mountains above Salt Lake City. Gorgeous! We took the tram up to 11,000 feet and I ran the trail 5 miles down to 7,700. Quad burner, but awesome!

By weekend, I was out of Utah and in San Diego. Sunday morning run was a tour of Point Loma, Liberty Station and Shelter Island, plus I got to cheer for racers in the bike leg of the San Diego International Triathlon while I was running in the opposite direction of their ride. Go cyclists!

All in all, I got in around 50 miles on the week, which was the original goal, but those miles were spread all over the week in a weird configuration that did not respect the orderly color-coded schedule that has ruled the rest of my summer so far. Next week I resume the mantra I learned from Jess Cover: Consistency. Discipline. Consistency. Discipline.

Also adding to that: Sleep. Don't get sick. Sleep. Don't get sick. (Darn airplanes....)

Nearing the bottom of the descent at Snowbird.