Bruise is fake.  Took a wilderness first aid class two weeks ago with NOLS through REI.  As my distances in the mountains/trails get longer, I feel much better feeling a little competent around how to help myself or someone else with an injury.

I also debriefed with my PT biomechanics master, Mike Roberts, this week about last years races and my current hip pain.  Had a few interesting thoughts:

• Durability takes time to build up.  I slowed down the second half of both long races.  This year I hope to be more consistent with a year of experience/mileage under me.
• Even though I still have hip pain, which started on the flatter long runs after Killington, he thinks its not because of some mobility issue to fix but normal recovery and a little beefing up of my glue mead will help as well.
• Training/performance for a high elevation race like Killington (12,200′) vs. the Stone Cat 50k (2,500′) is different.  Going up and down hills alternates which muscles are being used.  Continuous flatter runs are beating the crap out of the same ones the whole race.  That didn’t occur to me when I thought StoneCat would just be super easy vs Killington and it crushed me.
• He thinks a little run downtime during my upcoming shoulder surgery is great timing and will help me fully recover from last year.

My questions remain:

• How long do you need to recover between races?  How many can you do a year vs. years of experience… I’d like to lay out a plan between now and 100 mile UTMB qualifiers.
• What does recovered mean?
• When do you need to just run vs. cross train with bicycle to build up that endurance?  At some point cycling may not stress you enough to get used to it.