Weekly Review: Montana continues to be awesome

Tuesday night's sunset.

My "no plan" plan: I'm still without a training plan and two weeks from the Missoula Half. I suppose my intention for this "no plan, but I'm running a race soon" thing is to just run those 13.1 miles, hope for the best, and use it as my base for fall. I have no idea what my race pace is these days, so my time will become my "Montana PR" and we'll take it from there.

June 19–June 25
Monday: RUN 3.1 mile
Tuesday: RUN 4.3 mi
Wednesday: rest
Thursday: RUN 5 mi
Friday: rest
Saturday: RUN 4 mi + canoeing
Sunday: RUN 6 mi trail run + 3 mi at home

Total: 25.5 miles / 1,617 ft

This week I tried my new Hoka Clifton 3's from the REI garage sale. My legs hurt on the first two runs, but felt a little better later in the week. I don't think they'll replace my Saucony Omni's for racing, but they're a good option for shoe rotation. Not sure how they work on trails...

Flowers in my neighborhood

There were a few hot runs this week, but nothing like Ohio summers. Sure the sun is brighter (and hotter), but humidity is so much lower and it makes a huge difference. I tend to run close to sunset, so direct sunlight isn't an issue.

Hyalite on Saturday (we live here??!!)

Alex and I went canoeing on Saturday. We've had the canoe since our engagement (he bought it as a surprise, then proposed while we were in it) and moved it to Montana – which required a giant moving truck – so we had to bring it out at least once. It's heavy, so loading and unloading is a pain, but once we got it in the water it was lovely.

Reading spot

Alex fished from the canoe a bit, but my favorite part was when we pulled up to a nice little meadow and I read my book for a while as Alex fished from the shore. Unfortunately, the water was really high and moved too fast to catch anything.

Lone Peak as seen from Beehive Basin

I planed to run 10 miles on Sunday and heard from a new Oiselle friend, Hillary. She was in Big Sky (little over an hour from Bozeman) for the weekend and invited me for a run. Even though we'v been here since March, this was our first time in Big Sky (Alex came along and hiked). Hillary and I tackled the Beehive Basin trail. Or rather, Hillary did and I almost died on the way up.

So pretty

My legs felt like lead and running became almost impossible. At 1.3 I was really honest and told her to go up ahead and I'd keep going til she turned around and we'd run back together. I walked up the steep bits, running occasionally... and took lots of photos.

Last stop before losing the trail...

Just past a snowy pond, I lost the trail. Instead of continuing on what seemed to be the trail, I decided to go back to the pond and wait for Hillary. Luckily, she turned around, too. Running down was soooo easy. In the end, we only got 6 miles BUT when I uploaded my data it turned out we ran from 7,900ft to 9,100ft. My house is around 4,800ft so I felt a tiny bit better about how hard it was. Altitude sure is humbling!

Montana ladies

Linkups
I'm trying something new this week: in addition to Hoho Runs and MissSippiPiddlin's Weekly Wrap linkup, I thought I'd also join Courtney's since I always read her training recaps. Check out her post on getting faster. I know it's all true, but sometimes I need a little reminder.

Have you ever been to Big Sky? 
Have you tried Hokas?