We’ve raised $2,555.54 for Animal House …and there may be additional company matching funds that will bump this total up even more once they are confirmed later this week. I originally figured I’d bring in a few hundred bucks for the shelter so this completely blew away my expectations.

701 Miles beat my previous largest month by 200.5 miles.
91,240 Feet beat my previous highest month by 1573 feet. And that was my best month of training for the Hardrock 100!
30 sub 6 minute miles may have been more than I’ve run in the entire past year. And my last mile was a new PR on the Pineridge mile and second fastest mile ever in 5:10.
143 Miles run with the Animal House dogs
100.25 Miles with Baxter
62 Miles with Sheba

Rocky, Joah, Harley, and Alphie are just a few dogs I’ve run with who found new homes this month.

I’m pretty tired right now and am ready for a rest and recovery week. But I don’t feel in the least bit over trained and a couple nagging tendon pains on my Achilles and knee that have bothered me for months are gone now. Overall, running 701 miles this month hasn’t been too bad – it just took some extra motivation to get up for early weekday runs, stay out a bit later each evening, and put the long hours in on the weekends to get it done. Fortunately, I have an incredible group of friends who came out to run with me almost every day this past month. We’ve also had the most amazing weather with clear, dry trails and sunshine almost every day. It seems like summer has arrived early here on the front range. And in the past week, Mary, Mindy, Kristel, Alex, and Jennifer have all helped treat me to dinner every day of the week. So I can’t really say this has been much of an ordeal. If I didn’t need to balance my time with a full time job and a new 50 mile race to direct, I’d do this again in April.

The meadows below Greyrock. Spending time out on these trails in this weather sure didn't suck. (Photo by Kevin Hurd)

It’s been fun watching the donation numbers grow throughout the month and it’s been nice to see people get involved. In addition to donations, several people have considered volunteering. And thanks to Slush, we now have about 20 Otter Box employees putting their company fund raising incentives to use for Animal House which puts them in the running for a very generous bonus donation from Otter Box.

The latest report of pledges is included below. Here are the options for final payments.

1. Submit your donation online here.
2. Mail your check to:
   Animal House Rescue & Grooming
   1104 W Vine
   Fort Collins, CO 80521
3. Hand off your donation to me this week if it’s more convenient. I’ll be out at the usual Tuesday social run and Thursday Towers Time Trial.

Checks can be made out to Animal House Rescue & Grooming. If you send your donation directly, you can make a note that it is for my March Madness Run and email me at pete@k9runner.com to confirm. Some people have already submitted donations and rounded up and I’d like to keep track of the actual final total – every bit counts to help Animal House win the bonus donation from Otter Box.

Additional 501(c)3 info and tax ID for Animal House are online here if you need it..

After a few days of rest and recovery and some much needed down time to catch up on miscellaneous things like laundry and grocery shopping, I’m looking forward to getting back to work with more focused training for the Colorado Marathon and Bighorn 100.

And there is still more work to do to find Ross, Titan, Lilly, Scout, Samantha, and my favorite here, Ashley homes.

Relaxing with Ashley at the Animal House Anniversary BBQ today. (Photo by Kevin Hurd)

As of the end of day today, pledges are up to $1831.09 and there are still a few bonuses left to get by Saturday.

Tomorrow I plan to finish up the last of my vertical on Greyrock and depending on how many miles I get in on the hill, I’ll have about 50 miles left to finish on Saturday. For my final day this month, I plan to just run from Animal House to run laps with the dogs until I’m done. I’ll start the day at 7:30am when they open and will take Scout out for a longer solo run first. So any time after about 10am, I’ll just be running loops around the ponds behind the shelter. This will be the easiest way to break up the day and get out with as many different dogs as possible. And if anyone wants to drop in and run a few miles with me, I’ll be easy to find since I’ll be within 2-3 miles of the shelter at all times.

I’ll tally up the final pledges Saturday evening or Sunday morning and will follow up with more details to collect payments. Anyone who has pledged donations can send checks directly to Animal House, donate online, or give me the donation to bring to Animal House sometime in the next week.

On Sunday Animal House is hosting their 5th Anniversary Celebration BBQ. I plan to be at the BBQ ….not running. Event info is on the Animal House Facebook page here. I would love to see anyone who has supported me this month out for a run on Saturday or anytime at the BBQ on Sunday.

And mark your calendars for Scott’s benefit concert on April 9th. The Swashbuckling Doctors will be playing at Avo’s at 6:30pm.

Full stats for the month are updated here.

Right now I am pleasantly surprised at how good I feel.

Yesterday I ran the full 50 mile of my new Quad Rock race. I didn’t think it would be right to expect other runners to complete a course that I designed and hadn’t run myself . I won’t lie – the course is pretty damn tough. It was a brutal 12 hours and 24 minutes out on the trail but the weather was incredible and I had good company to keep me going all day. Justin met me for the 6am start and ran most of the first loop back to the Arthur’s Rock trailhead. Brian and Kari met up with me at Horsetooth and ran 30 miles out to the Soldier Canyon start/finish and back. And Steph came out for the full second loop.

Heading towards Arthur's Rock on the Quad Rock 50 route.

After finishing the full 50 miles yesterday, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to run today …or even get out of bed. But after sleeping in and getting off to a late start with an easy dog run with Sheba, Baxter, and Mojo, my legs felt surprisingly good. I split the rest of the day up with a couple runs at the shelter with Scout and Ashley and finished the day with a nice run around Pineridge with Mindy and Lindsay for another 25 miles.

With 540 miles so far this month, other than being a bit slower than usual, I feel fine. So right now it looks like 700 miles for the month might be within reach. I just need to run 20 miles per day Monday through Friday and spend the full day Saturday finishing off the last 60 miles. With what I’ve done already, that seems perfectly reasonable.

And there’s a bit more at stake here. Scott was the original instigator of this fund raising challenge. In addition to setting an example with his Doctors without Borders and ALS fundraising events, this brainstorm started with a donation from his employer Otter Box. Otter Box allocated funds for each employee to give to whatever charity they liked. But rather than have employees simply donate the money, they encouraged each employee to use the funds to raise even more money for their cause. And to make it interesting, Otter Box is offering a substantial bonus donation to the employee who raises the most money. Scott is also putting together a fund raising concert with his new band and Cat has joined the cause with donations from her 24 Hours of Utah run this last weekend. Between the 3 of us, I think we have a pretty good shot at winning the Otter Box donation for Animal House.

The weather looks good this week, I have plenty of friends to run with every day, and Mary and Mindy have coordinated to start bringing me food every day. I’m actually not starving and have been managing to stay pretty healthy cooking for myself this month. But this dinner from Mindy and Mary sure was a nice surprise this evening. Cutting out some cooking time should give me time to get out for at least 3-5 more miles each evening.

Thanks Mindy and Mary!

If anyone needs to put a cap on their original pledge or wants to throw in a bonus for 700 miles, email me at pete@k9runner.com.

I think as of today, I’m starting to get tired. Thanks to Slush, I managed to get out for an easy jog this morning with Baxter and Sheba and at least got my legs moving. But after work, I was still completely wiped out and cut my evening run short to take a little extra recovery time.

As of today, I’ve run 400.5 miles with 50,133 vertical feet. Total pledges so far are up to $792.20!

This last week started off pretty well. I was tired and definitely a bit slower than usual but most of the week really felt just like any other normal training week. On Tuesday I managed to get a decent speed workout in and cost Celeste another $3 in sub 6 minute miles. On Thursday I made it over to Horsetooth to run a good set of repeats on the rock trail with Steph. And I even managed to squeeze in some weight training.

The incredible warm spring weather we’ve had this last week is probably the reason I managed to get through the week so easily. Every morning has been warm with an incredible sunrise. And each evening I’ve been out, I haven’t had any trouble staying out on the trails just a little bit longer each day.

Tuesday evening at Reservoir Ridge with Scout.

The weekend started off with the Sharin’ O’ the Green 5k at O’Dells in Old Town. Celeste and I each took a dog from Animal House. Friday morning, we ran with several dogs to try to find the best match up for the race and decided that I would run with Ashley and Celeste would run with Joah.

Celeste with Titan and Ashley.

I had a chance to run with Ashley a few weeks ago and initially I thought she might be a bit difficult since we didn’t really seem to connect. But after working with her this weekend, she’s one of my all time favorites. She’s fairly quiet and reserved and I think she just takes a little longer to warm up to people. She is really very sweet and eager to please. I’m surprised that she hasn’t been adopted yet.

When we arrived at race check in, the O’Dells parking lot was packed. They sold out the race with 1,000 more runners than last year’s race and the parking area where the start/finish was staged was about half the size they really needed for such a large crowd. Ashley seemed a bit nervous but handled it all pretty well and stayed glued to my leg the entire time. Since this was my first time at a race with Ashley, I decided not to get up in front on the starting line and Celeste and I thought we might be able to just squeeze by the timing mat off to the side of the crowd. We were only about 20 feet back and off to the side of the starting line but after the gun went off, it still took me almost half a minute to get to the timing mat. From the start, we were stuck in the crowd and had to walk to the 50 yards out of the parking lot to the road where I thought we might be able to find some space on the outside of the lane. Unfortunately they only sectioned off half a lane and had volunteers telling everyone to say inside the cones. Ashley and I had to cut and weave our way back across the crowd to find an open spot to run on the grassy incline on the side of the drainage ditch. It took us the first half mile before we could really start running and even after that we had to dart and weave our way through traffic until the last half mile to the finish. I was amazed at how well Ashley ran. She could have run faster and pushed the pace the entire time but never got out of control to pull too hard. And she didn’t have any problem dodging and weaving through heavy traffic. Our first mile ended up being pretty slow at 6:31. I pushed the second mile as hard as I could – I was determined to get at least 1 more dollar from Celeste out of this race. Ashley and I ran the 2nd mile in 5:49. By the 3rd mile my legs were burning but we were running back against the crowd of walkers and joggers at the back of the field and people were yelling that we were the second dog. So I pushed a little harder to see if we might catch them. We ran the 3rd mile in 5:50 and crossed the finish in 19:08 just 23 seconds behind the lead dog. The race didn’t have any awards for dogs but I was still pretty happy with Ashley’s second place finish. With a better position on the starting line, that other dog wouldn’t have had a chance.

Ashley and I kicking it into the 5k finish. (Photo by Kevin Hurd)

It was really after the race where Ashley really got to be a star. After regrouping with some of the other FCTR runners, we headed over to the St Patrick’s Day Parade to walk with the Animal House team. (And no I didn’t log this in my mileage). It was crowded, hot, and noisy and the streets were a gauntlet of little kid’s grabby hands. This would be a nightmare for most dogs but Ashley wasn’t in the least bit phased by all the commotion. Any time kids would ask to pet the dogs, she would stand or sit down calmly. I was really amazed at how well behaved and tolerant she was. She still needs her fair share of training work just like any other young dog but whoever adopts her and puts the time and effort into working with her is going to end up with an incredible dog.

Ashley working the crowd at the St Patrick's Day parade.

Showing the kids how to pet a dog nicely.

Joah bonked by mile 2 of the 5k so Celeste let him ride up on the float.

After the parade, I made it back over to the shelter to get Scout out for a nice 10 mile run. Overall, it was a pretty good holiday for the dogs!

It looks like Ross has finally found a home but Ashley, Joah, Titan, Scout, and many others are still available. The best news of this week is that Harley is going home with a couple of our local ultra runners. I can’t think of a nicer couple to adopt her.

So that was only Saturday ….Sunday was an even bigger day with our annual FCTR March Madness run around the reservoir. Scott and I decided to meet at my place to get a few bonus miles in before the start. We wanted to get in at least 40 miles and needed all the time we could get.

You can find a bunch of other great posts about the FCTR MM Run from Alex, Nick, Ryan, Rob, and I’m sure a few others who I haven’t found yet.

I’m exhausted just thinking about the day but to sum it up, it was another fantastic day. I ran into a bunch of good friends and some new runners along the way. And the May’s were excellent hosts as usual with an awesome BBQ potluck gathering after the run.

FCTR on the Stout trail. Starting the day with a fun social run.

Scott staring out strong charging up Audra Culver to Horsetooth Rock.

Nice view of Longs Peak from the south ridge of Horsetooth.

Zeke, Burch, and Nick catching up with us on Horseooth Rock.

Still having fun on the way to Arthur's Rock.

Steph - just stretching. Ugh.

The last hill of the day. On top of the A behind the stadium.

Scott in Pineridge just 1 mile from Alex's house. This pretty much sums up how we felt at the end of the run.

As of today, current pledges have earned $424.15!

Last week I planned to be a bit more conservative with mileage to make sure I kept on pace for 600 miles this month. That didn’t quite go as planned and I came in over goal with 144 miles for the week. Vertical gain was a bit soft with only 16,738ft but I expected this to be low since I’ve been going out of my way to try to go out on different routes and runs that I don’t normally do.

I’ve been pretty tired this week but overall, the extra miles have been a lot of fun. I’ve been able to get out to run with a lot of different friends and since I’ve had more time and have slowed down considerably, I’ve been able to take Sheba out with me more often. She usually doesn’t make it more than 2 to 3 miles on a run but this last Friday, she finished the full 7 mile loop around Pineridge.

On Saturday, I met a good friend for her birthday and went out for an ice cream cone run. We started out pretty well running the cone part of the route but later in the day, the ice cream loop melted away ….much like our will to continue running. But I still ended up with a solid 41 mile day out in the most gorgeous warm, spring weather. Next week I’ll go back and run a proper double scoop at Alex’s official FCTR March Madness Run around the reservoir.

For Animal House dog runs, I took Scout out for a couple longer runs. We went out to the usual Tuesday FCTR social run at Reservoir Ridge and went out for another run around the ponds behind the shelter on Friday. Celeste and Lindsey came out Friday morning and ran shorter laps to take Ashley, Ross, Sapphi, Hedwig, Dino, and Titan out. If anyone else is interested in volunteering, feel free to contact Animal House.

Current pledges have already raised $98.53 and my current daily average is on track to bring in over $1,000. I plan to take some lighter days to get through the work week so projections should taper off to a little more realistic level over the next few days.

Today was possibly the best day of running in a very long time. After spending almost 7 hours going up and down Bear Peak on icy trails on Saturday, my legs were pretty tired. I haven’t put in that much time and vertical gain in one day in a very long time and it took quite a bit of effort to get up and get moving again this morning.  But the gorgeous spring weather and clear, dry trails made it worth spending the day outside regardless of how bad my legs felt.

The few south from the top of Reservoir Ridge looking back along the foothills that run the length of Horsetooth reservoir.

After a nice run along the Foothills trail system, I headed over to Animal House to get in a few extra “easy” miles with the dogs. The highlight of my day was getting to the shelter just in time to meet Rocky‘s new family. They seemed like a perfect match and I was pretty happy to see him head out the door for good.

I took Scout out for an easy 4 mile run around the streets and through City Park and then took Harley out for 5 more easy miles around the ponds behind the shelter.

Harley has been in a foster home for several months now and it’s obvious that they’ve been doing a great job working with her. She already knows sit and down and is very smart and eager to learn. She’s very friendly and gets along with any other dogs or people. There really isn’t anything wrong with her. Except one minor detail – she’s deaf.

I never really realized how much I use voice commands with the dogs to correct and praise them so it takes a little bit to get used to working with Harley. She’s been learning hand signals very well and on leash, the gentle leader works perfectly to give her direction. For the most part, she just naturally stayed at my side. But any time we went by dogs or other distractions, just a tiny tug at the gentle leader was all it took to get her back on track. And any time she was good and payed attention, I made sure I leaned down to scratch her ear and she seemed to respond very well to this extra positive reinforcement. Unfortunately Harley won’t ever be a dog who can run free off leash since there’s no way to reliably call her back. But this is a fairly minor inconvenience. My own dog Baxter (who can hear perfectly well) has a tendency to panic and run and can’t be trusted off leash. He’s managed to escape a couple times and it’s definitely something I always worry about. But it really hasn’t been a huge hassle to keep him on leash when he’s out in public or supervised when he’s in my fenced yard. Anyone willing to put the time and patience into working with Harley is going to end up with a fantastic dog.

Harley is a gorgeous little lab mix.

Contact Animal House for more info about adopting Harley.

Today I went out for runs with Joah and Rocky. For the past few weeks I’ve been running with Scout regularly.

Rocky is a Boxer/Shepherd mix

Rocky is is a super friendly, energetic, goof ball. He could use a bit more practice with leash manners and he can be pretty stubborn. But his happy and friendly personality tends to make up for it. It takes a little patience to give him direction and get him to cooperate but he does catch on eventually. This morning he started out throwing a fit trying to get the gentle leader off but quickly figured out that if he ran nicely, it wouldn’t bother him.

Joah is some sort of a Bull Dog/Pit Bull mix.

With a face like this, I have no idea why someone hasn't snatched him up yet. (photo by Animal House)

Joah is really a great dog all around. He’s attentive, eager to please, and already has excellent manners. I didn’t use a gentle leader with him today and he’s a bit of a puller on the run. He doesn’t chase after anything or really try to take your arm off. He’s fine walking around and he didn’t seem to be interested in other dogs, people, or birds along the way. I think he just likes to pull like he has a job to do on the run. Next time I take him out, I’ll use a gentle leader to give my arm a rest.

Scout is some sort of Deerhound, Scottish/Terrier, Airedale mix. ...whatever he is, he's an impressive looking dog!

Scout is a ton of fun to run with. He occasionally wants to chase things but he’s super easy to control with a gentle leader – kind of like leading a horse around. And as long as he isn’t distracted by something, he’ll run nicely on a slack leash right at my hip. He’s very friendly and affectionate towards people and likes to lean into you for attention. And he learns quickly and responds very well to attention and loves treats.

Contact the staff at Animal House for more details about adopting any of these dogs. And if anyone wants to meet these guys or any other Animal House dog on a run, feel free to email me. I always bring a dog out to our Tuesday social run and this month, I’ll be running plenty of extra miles and will gladly make time to meet for a run.

I will continue to update this report on a regular basis throughout the month with my progress and any new pledges.

Full details about the project are posted here.

To make a pledge or invite me out on a run, email me directly at pete@k9runner.com

The plan is pretty simple. I’m putting my entire running volume up for pledging for the month of March.

My goal for March is to run as much as I possibly can.

My biggest month of mileage so far has been 500.5 miles. I think with a consistent focus on daily volume over the full 31 days of March, 600 miles should be a reasonable target to aim for.

And just to make sure I don’t get lazy and run a ton of easy road miles all month, I will welcome pledges for total vertical feet or specific challenges. The only restriction is that I won’t be running very fast this month so pledges related to any speed performance at races or time trials won’t be very helpful.

I will consider any reasonable challenge for volume and difficulty. And I’ll probably even consider most unreasonable challenges for volume and difficulty too:-)

My only rules and limitations are that I need to stay healthy and uninjured to continue to run every day, I need to keep up with my full time work schedule, and all miles will be outdoors – treadmills don’t count. I won’t be doing any huge 24 hour or 100 mile efforts that will require too much time to recover from. My longer runs will be around 30-40 miles and I probably won’t run any single day over 50-60 miles. I also plan to keep up with my volunteer running and will aim to get out with the shelter dogs for at least 3-4 runs per week.

Here are some stats for a frame of reference for pledges.

Mileage:
Largest Month: 500.5 miles
Largest Week: 222 Miles
Recent volume: Feb – 273.25, Jan – 274, Dec – 322, Nov – 328.75, Oct 405

Vertical PRs:
Largest Month: 89,667ft
Largest Week: 43,935ft
Recent Volume: Feb – 25,380ft, Jan – 32,503ft, Dec – 42,294ft, Nov – 59,876ft
Greyrock: 6 loops. 45.25 miles, 15,361ft, 13 Hours 59 Minutes
Sanitas: 13 loops. 40 miles, 17,339ft, 14 Hours 24 Minutes.

Some ideas for pledges:

• Cents per Mile (i.e. 5 cents would be $20 at 400 miles, $25 at 500 miles, $30 at 600 miles)
• Flat Donation for a specific goal (i.e. X dollars for 500 miles, X dollars for 600 miles, etc.)
• Dollars per 1,000 Vertical Feet (i.e. 50 Cents per thousand would be $20 at 40,000ft, $30 at 60,000ft, $45 at 90,000ft)
• Dollars per local Peak (Horsetooth, Arthur’s, Greyrock, Round Mtn)
• Dollars per mile or per dog that I run with from Animal House

Feel free to be creative and set limitations if you need to place a cap on your maximum donation.

If you’re short on funds and still want to contribute to the cause, come run with me!

I already have several offers to help drag me out for 5am and 6am starts before work. With the volume of miles I’ll be running, I’m sure that at some point during the month, I’ll have an opportunity to run with anyone who wants to join me.

To send me a pledge or invite me out for a run, email me at: pete@k9runner.com

I will publish all pledges and fundraising totals in a Google spreadsheet online here. My mileage and vertical will be recorded based on the measurements from my Polar G3 GPS. My daily running log will be updated regularly on Attackpoint and I will post regular blog updates with my weekly progress.

Click here for a current list of pledges and progress.

Going into the race, I wasn’t sure how it would turn out but hoped to break 4:30. So I figured I’d just go out, push hard, and see what happens.

From the start, Shannon took the lead and a chase pack of about half a dozen other guys fell in behind at a brisk pace. After a few miles, the pack thinned out and other than a couple words exchanged with Karl around mile 2, I pretty much ran the entire race solo. I was a little disappointed that Slush couldn’t make it out for the race this year – it’s always so much more fun to run these events with good friends to pace with.

Moab Red Hot 55k Start (Photo by Chris Hinds)

From the start my legs felt pretty weak on the climbs and my quads didn’t feel up to really hammering the downhills very hard. But I managed to catch up with Shannon on the ridge at the top of Metal Masher and pulled ahead on the next downhill into the second aid station. And none of the other guys from our starting pack looked like they were catching up.

The jeep road going back down on the back stretch of the first loop was much, much easier without the nasty headwinds that hit us last year so I made good time back to the base of Gold Bar. I figured Shannon or some of the other fast guys would catch back up but by the time I started the climb up onto the second section of slickrock, there wasn’t anyone in sight behind me.

I kept my momentum all the way up to the aid station at the top of Gold Bar. I caught up with Stephen on the way up the climb. He was having some bad muscle cramps and I gave him a spare S-cap and continued up the hill.

After the Gold Bar aid station, I started to fall apart. Last year I remember running this section of slickrock from mile 21 to 28 much better. I think the flagging may have been a bit more noticeable and last year I remember seeing more 33k runners spread out at convenient intervals to help spot the route. This year I ended up out on my own through most of this section and I kept losing sight of the flagging and had to come to a complete stop to look around about half a dozen times. My quads were already fried so it was really hard to keep stopping and starting and changing direction. I was pretty sure that someone would easily catch up with me before I made it back out of the slickrock. Looking back at my 2011 splits, I only ran this section 27 seconds slower so I guess I didn’t do quite as poorly as it felt.

Running across this slickrock is brutal but the scenery is incredible. (Photo by Laura Backus)

33k runners on the slick rock "trail" (Photo by Kristen Alvarez)

After I made it past the last aid station and out of the worst of the slickrock, my legs were completely trashed. For the last 5 miles, I just kept my focus cranking my legs over. I didn’t have any final finish kick left in me but I managed to hold on and grind out the last few miles to finish in 4:35. Good enough for 5th place and a new PR by 9 minutes and 13 seconds.

The final push to the finish line. (Photo by Chris Hinds)

While the end result turned out extremely well, I can’t say that this was my best run. Running fast and running well aren’t always the same. I managed to finish well and did the best I could with the training and preparation I had going into the race. So I don’t have any complaints or regrets. My speed on the flats was better than it’s ever been. And this was the first race I’ve run where I’ve been able to consistently get down a high volume of calories – 800 calories from start to finish. My friends over at Vi Endurance have developed a pretty good formula and I’m really happy to finally have something that I can run with that doesn’t make me want to vomit. I’m just a bit disappointed in my hill climbing and technical downhill running – it just wasn’t up to the level that I’m used to running. But it’s February and I have the next 3 months to get back in top shape for the Bighorn 100. So after this weekend, the rest of 2012 looks very promising.

It's always a good sign that you ran a hard race when gravel feels comfortable. (Photo by Stephanie Lynn)

The best part of the event - just a few of the FCTR's at the race. (Photo by Jennifer Swanson)