Mesa Trail

I spent most of the weekend in Boulder preparing for another season of coaching for the BBTC. Still needing to get in my workouts I ended up the Mesa Trail. I have good memories of past runs on this trail. It is mostly single track with a short service road on the North end starting at Chautauqua Park and a longer wide trail that may have once been a service road on the South end at Eldorado Canyon. I don't know that it has ever been accurately measured, but consensus seems to be that it is about 7 miles from end to end.
This run was not as fun as past runs, but time on the Mesa Trail is never all that bad. To start with I had some stomach problems for most of the run South. I finally pulled off the trail and found a tree to squat behind. With that out of the way I was able to finish the Southern journey without problems. My intention was to run a negative split on the way back, but my energy levels were pretty low and my motivation just wasn't there. The fact that the trail was very muddy on the south slopes and very slushy on the north slopes. I would estimate that 50% of the trail was this way and some parts were very difficult to navigate without getting completely wet. I was able to negative split by a couple of minutes so at least I accomplished that much.
I think that part of my problem is over training. I realized this after listening to Neal Henderson speak about physiology in the BBTC coaches training. I have been running too fast too often. I know that I train a lot, but I usually like to pride myself in knowing when I need a break and appropriately taking it, but I think that I missed the boat this time. I'm looking forward to the BBTC program to start because that usually gives me an excuse to run slow at least once a week. I'm working with one of the faster groups this time so it won't all be easy, but the program is based on lots of slow running so reading the workouts should provide me with some perspective.