My Backyard: Sugarloaf and Flagstaff

The past two weeks I haven't been able to get out and go on some of the last hikes on my agenda before winter due to weather and time commitments, but I was able to enjoy some nice quick scrambling along the ridge to Flagstaff for my first time, a rainy White Pine Lake, and snowy Sugarloaf. Two weeks ago it snowed the first time for the year in the mountains and it was awesome running in it. Over the past two months I have been able to average over 20 miles running in the mountains a week and have improved a lot in some areas but have been frustrated with the lack of growth in running up stuff 15-20% and steeper for long periods. I realized that this is because I get up to my VO2 max so quickly on steeper stuff and since I wasn't doing any super high intensity interval workouts my VO2 max is probably no better than it was 2 months ago. The last two weeks I have been going to the Brighton track and running 800's as fast as I can then walking two laps then running hard for two laps again as long as I can before I feel like I am going to die. I've been doing the same thing on the long hill by the La Caille restaurant and it seems to already be making a difference when I'm running in the mountains on the weekends.