Fortitudine Vincimus

Last few weeks

2012-02-16T23:49:00.004-08:00

I had to take 2 more weeks in there to let a banged up foot heal up (could have cleared up faster if I more religiously followed my stretching plan from Pete Egoscue's 'Egoscue Method of Health Through Motion', which cleared it up within a couple days once I finally decided to use it and stick to it).

I did about 30-40 a week for the weeks of 1-23-12 and 1-30-12 and a 17 mile hard nearly tempo effort run near the beginning of the week of 1-23-12 is what seemed to flare the foot. Training seems negligible, but totals were about 70 between the 2 weeks.

Week of 2-6:
Monday: 6 miles, easy: 3 loops of Liberty Park plus an extra 2 miles.
Tuesday: 12 miles, 3500' gain, with Adrian Shipley. Up the west side of City Creek Canyon, over the ridgeline, down to the meadow that leads to eastern North Salt Lake, back up to the ridgeline north of the radio towers, in and around there, down capital hill, and back through a bit of roads.
Wednesday: 10 miles, 2000' gain: Lower Campus to JCC to 5-way and back.
Thursday: 4 miles: 5k on treadmill at 1% decline (to make up for altitude) in 17:24 (5:55, 5:35, 5:24, and last .1 in :30) plus cooldown.
Friday: 16 miles, 3500' gain: Lower Campus up to JCC, up dry creek to city creek along Bonneville Shoreline, and back, with Adrian Shipley.
Saturday: Skiing for a few hours, no running.
Sunday: 7 miles, 1000' gain, easy, City Creek Canyon.
Total: 55 miles, 9000' gain. A good bridge week to get me back to high mileage.

Current week of 1-13-12 is at 52 miles with 11000' climb after Mon-Thurs, so I'm off to a good start. Foot is finally good after a month or so of occasional mild irritation. It never really hurt too much and never was much of an injury per se, but I decided to be careful so as not to drag anything into a big training cycle.

Last 4 weeks

2012-01-16T01:03:00.000-08:00

Week of 12-19-11: 39 miles in the first 3 days, capped with a good 20 mile effort in Afton State Park in Minnesota, but unfortunately, I got a pretty bad virus and had to take the rest of the week off as I was feeling pretty under the weather.

Week of 12-26-11: Rested to finish recovering from the illness, which took through about the 29th. On the 30th, I ran in the Across the Years 24 hour. Having only just over 2 weeks of decent training for this race, I didn't want to go in with too much expectations, especially since I'm just rebuilding my fitness right now. I ended up doing 63 miles, at which point I felt that I had done enough to be happy with the result. I had probably another 15-20 miles in my legs before things got really ugly, but I knew that I didn't have a full 100 miles in me. Hving already made more than 100km, I decided that somewhere between 75-85 wasn't really that much better than 63, considering that both would be shy of 100, so I figured that I would play it safe and just use this as another step in the build to be ready for a good 100 in the summer. This was 25 miles farther than anything else I did all at once in 2011, so I'm pretty happy with what I did, even if I know that I could've gotten in more miles. No running on Saturday or Sunday afterwards, just some fun New Year's Eve celebrations with Matt Taylor and his family in St George.

Week of 1-2-12: Took the first week back pretty easy, especially since my peroneus longus muscle (the portion through the outside bottom of the foot) in my right foot felt a bit strained. 31 miles for the week in 4 days of running, with the longest outing being 11 miles in Mill Creek with Adrian Shipley (Pipeline plus Mt Aire out and back). Also got in a couple hours of skiing at Snowbird, though the lack of snow will probably keep me from going back much until we get a legitimate storm.

Week of 1-9-12: Started the week with a moderate 12 mile run at a hair under 7:00/mile on Monday. Unfortunately, this proved to be a bit much for my still slightly sore foot and it made me relatively sore for a couple days afterwards. Took of Tues/Wed/Thurs to make sure that the foot would recover, then did just a 3 mile pickup test run on Friday (splits of 7:30, 7:20, 5:30). Foot didn't quite feel perfect, but it felt mostly better. Took Saturday off to make sure things would be OK, then did 3 hours, 35 minutes on Sunday. No idea what the length was, but it was certainly well shorter than a typical 3 1/2+ hour outing. Did the run with Jared Campbell, Ryan McDermitt, and Mark Lehmkuhle. Jared is training for Barkley and Ryan likes doing absurdly ridiculous routes, so we navigated what is considered to be one of the most difficult ridgelines in the entire Wasatch range. I don't know the exact name of the route we took, but it was the 2nd ridge to the right of Emigration Canyon (as looking towards the canyon from the city, ie the unbelievably jagged and steep one, as shown as the tallest ridge in this crappy picture, which does not accurately reflect the fact that the ridge is several thousand feet above the valley).

There was no trail for most of the route, the course was littered in massive boulders, the bushes were barkley-thick for most of the way: , there were a lot of very very steep drops and climbs, the wind on the ridgeline was 50+ mph, and there were a number of outrageously tough portions where I had to use hands and knees to get around large obstacles (usually rocks right next to a huge cliff drop), so well over half of this "run" did not involve actual running. I'd give the run 7 miles, as even the very few runnable portions were incredibly steep and slow. So yeah, only 22 miles for the week, but my foot held up fine today and I feel totally ready to start hitting the training again.

Week of 12-12-11

2011-12-19T22:21:00.000-08:00

Monday: 13 miles, 2000' gain, upper Campus to 5-way and back + 2 miles of extra jogging to and from work, with Holly (whose first birthday is on the 22nd, which I guess makes her almost 7 in "people years"), and Adrian Shipley for main run.

Tuesday: 16 miles, 2000' gain, far end of research park to 5-way and back + 2 miles of extra jogging to and from work, solo.

Wednesday: 16 miles, 2000' gain, 5 miles of literally running errands by foot + upper campus to 5-way and back, with Adrian for main run.

Thursday: 10 miles, 8 on treadmill at easy pace (high 7s pace) + 2 miles jogging to and from work, solo, obviously

Friday: Off, spent the night at a Christmas party preparing for the next day's long day (ie, eating Christmas cookies and drinking cognac... hah...)

Saturday: 30 miles, 7000' gain, about 4 1/2 hours (ie around 9 minute pace, so nice and easy), + 2 1/2 hours of skiing, first 72 or 73 minutes with Adrian Shipley, before he turned around to get to work, solo after that, with no music or anything else. This day was obviously a bit on the long side. Upper campus to city creek canyon via shoreline to top of city creek (using as much trail as possible instead of roads to gain an extra mile on both the way up and down in the canyon), back down the trail, and back to upper campus. The climb out of City Creek to the 5-way (around 1500' or so) was pretty tough after the previous 22 miles, but I made it through OK. I think the main reason for toughness of the climb was the intentional calorie/hydration semi-deficit (no breakfast before-hand and only 600 calories + 15 ounces of water for the 30 miles). Finished feeling a bit hungry, but satisfied with how far my metabolism has rebounded since the whole mono incident that trashed it. After running, I went up to Brighton and skied for 2 1/2 hours with old HS cross country teammate Bill Mennell. Overall, this day proved to be really useful for making sure my mental fortitude was where it needs to be as I go into a 24 hour race in a couple weeks with far less than ideal training. I was not happy to have to go up a big climb after 22 miles of minimal calories and hydration, but this is the type of challenge that, when passed, makes me feel ready to tackle the big stuff.

Sunday: 5 miles, super easy, treadmill. Shaking out the legs after quite a bit of physical activity the day before.

Weekly Total: 90 miles, 13000' gain. I was originally thinking I'd do around 100, but didn't have a chance to get out on Friday. I thought about doubling Saturday/Sunday, but figured that the recovery was more important than an arbitrary mileage goal. 2 1/2 hours of pretty intense non-stop skiing (ie, skiing moguls and then bombing the groomers as hard as possible) probably gives my legs the same workout as the extra 10 miles anyway. Pretty satisfied with the week and as of Monday, I got a nice start to this next week with fresh legs.

The next week will probably be a little bit more miles, but with a lot less gain, due to flying home to Minnesota tomorrow. The goal is to once again hit the miles feeling fresh and rather than one long day, I'll probably shoot for back to back longer days on Friday/Saturday. That's still up in the air depending on Christmas Eve plans, etc, but I'm looking forward to a good week on my favorite Minnesota routes.

Week of 12-5-11

2011-12-12T11:26:00.000-08:00

Monday: 12 miles + PhD Oral Qualifier. Started parking a mile from work to be able to get an extra 2 miles in by jogging there and back, so I had that plus an easy 10 miles on a treadmill at night. Jogged in a mile, took and passed my rather intense PhD oral qualifying exam, jogged a mile back to the car, then went to the gym and did 10 miles. Took it easy (first 9 at 7:45-8:00 pace, then sped up a bit for a 6:00 last mile).

Tuesday: 9 miles, 2000' gain: 2 miles to and from work then 7 miles in Holbrook Canyon with Adrian Shipley. The canyon was ridiculously icy and had a ton of creek crossings, so this run was more fun than anything and took about an hour.

Wednesday: 16 miles, 3000' gain: 14 miles from Jewish Community Center with Adrian Shipley and Holly (the pooch), up dry creek, along shoreline trail to just above the final drop down to City Creek, and back, then the now typical 2 miles of jogging to and from work.

Thursday: 2 miles, was short on time, just did the jogging.

Friday: 7 miles, 3000' gain, + skiing. Didn't actually get to do the extra 2 miles, but I did a nice assault of Grandeur Peak with Adrian, which was iced in quite a bit, but not overly snowy due to the minimal snowfall so far this year. Getting above 8000' for the first time in awhile, was slightly more strenuous than usual, due to loss of acclimation, but it was still a blast. The view from the top is actually the same view that I have pictured in my blog header, only this particular run had less snow and much more ice. I had a few spills on the way down (really need to get microspikes), but nothing serious, so it was a pretty awesome run. Immediately afterwards, I went home, threw on ski gear, and did 80 minutes of night skiing at Brighton.

Saturday: 23 miles, 5500' gain, by myself. City Creek Canyon along shoreline, to 5-way, to research park, back to city creek, 2/3 of the way up City Creek canyon, and back down. I took it out pretty hard for the first time this week along the first two hours and paid for it in the last bit in City Creek when my energy started dwindling due to eating a 200 calorie bar for breakfast and then eating just one small pack of M&Ms 2 hours into the run and nothing else, but I made it through OK, although slightly tired.

Sunday: 12 miles, 2500' gain, with Joe Dean and Holly. Nice and easy run, hogle Zoo along shoreline to Dry Creek, up the canyon, another 1.5 or so along Shoreline, and back. The last few miles weren't so fun. Didn't have breakfast beforehand and didn't eat anything during the run, so I was feeling exhausted by the end, especially after the previous day's effort. That being said, it seemed like a good double, as the 12 miles was entirely on relatively tired legs. Grandeur is a ridiculous amount harder than any other 7 mile run that most people will do and followed up by some hard skiing and a mountainous 23 miler that I ran pretty hard, this was a good simulation for running later in an ultra on fatigued legs. Achieved what I wanted with it, which is good.

Collin's Totals: 81 miles, 16,000' climb, one night of skiing.
Holly's Totals: 26 miles, 5500' gain. Not bad for being one year old. :)

Best week in quite awhile, but I plan on increasing on it this coming week.

Weeks of 10-24 and 10-31

2011-11-06T23:20:00.000-08:00

Week of 10-24-11:
Monday-Wednesday: Flu. Definitely had a few bugs catch me this Fall.
Thursday: 8 miles, 1500' gain, JCC to 5-way and back.
Friday: Off, still wasn't really 100%.
Saturday: 7 miles, 1500' gain. Up north gully over ridgeline, down into Mill Creek Canyon via trail to be known as "sketchy trail" (I don't think it's named and the last bit is barely a trail. Came down the rock slide from the lookout point at the end of Pipeline, which I will never do again. Beat the crap out of my hands and forearms through repeated falls on rocks at a 70% decline. Dumb idea.
Sunday: 15 miles, 2000' gain. Up north gully over the ridgeline and down into Mill Creek Canyon via "sketchy trail". Took Pipeline to Burch Hollow Trailhead, back along road. Holly did really well for her longest run yet.
Weekly total: 30 miles, 5000' gain. Missed over half the week due to feeling absolutely horrible. Not fun.

Week of 10-31-11:
Monday: Off
Tuesday: 8 miles, 2000' gain. Up north gully over the ridgeline and down into Mill Creek Canyon via "sketchy trail", dropped down Rattlesnake, back along roads, with Holly. She did pretty well.
Wednesday: 8 miles, 2000' gain, same as previous day.
Thursday: Off
Friday: Off
Saturday: 10 miles, 2500' gain. North Research Park to JCC, up dry creek (not so dry anymore... lots of snow and mud...) along BOSHO trail to the 5-way and back. Brought Holly with me, who did great, once again. My super thin Saucony gloves weren't good enough, will probably just be wearing ski gloves from here on out.
Sunday: 15 miles, 2000 gain. Up and down City Creek including as much trail as possible. Worked my butt off at near max effort for the descent, so hard that I was actually a little dizzy when I finished. Felt great to run so hard. Trail was pretty wet/snowy/muddy, but in all honesty, a bit better than expected. Top of the canyon road was a bit icy in spots, but also a bit less snowy than expected. Semi-interestingly, one of my gels froze a bit. Today reminded me what winter long runs are all about. :)

Total: 41 miles, 8500' gain. Not huge totals, but I've honestly had a bit of a hard time getting out in the cold. Not to mention that, but I'm cutting calories to be back to exactly 160 pounds by the time I race Around the Years 24 hour at the end of December (yes, I am officially registered as of tonight), so this has taken a toll on my energy levels. Weight is coming down, but it's not really that fun to be so careful with eating. In any case, I figure that I'm better off finally being at race weight with less miles in my legs than having extra weight to lug around, even with better training. In any case, time to run some real mileage, or at least as much as possible over the next 7 weeks.

Last 4 weeks of training

2011-10-17T12:18:00.001-07:00

Week of 10-10-11:
Monday: 7 miles with Holly, Rattlesnake + Pipeline, 1000' gain. Cold outside. :(
Tuesday: 10 miles: 2 mile warmup + 10k on a treadmill: 35:25 + 2 mile cooldown. The time sounds like I'm getting really fit again, but the treadmill was stuck in a 2% decline, so it converts to a 36:57. That being said, it would be roughly 45 seconds faster at sea level, I still have to drop a little weight before I'll be down to my typicaly "racing" self, and it wasn't particularly difficult until the last mile or 2, so this does give me some confidence.
Wednesday: 12 miles, treadmill, 2% decline (just for fun this time, to make it a little faster), 1:16. This was overall moderately easy except that my calves were a bit sore from my first "fast" day in awhile the day before.
Thursday: 6 miles, easy, treadmill, 46 minutes, flat. Nice to recover from the previous day, legs were sore after 2 days at faster pace than anything I've been running on the trails.
Friday: 4 miles, treadmill. Just wasn't really feeling it, so I did 4 easy miles. Don't recall the time.
Saturday: Off.
Sunday: 9 miles, 4200' gain. Mt Olympus, up and down (plus some extra around the summit due to getting lost literally 3 times. I actually managed to almost make it up the entire runnable portion of the mountain without stopping, but .25 from the top, I tripped over a rock, faceplanted in the dirt, and just lost all my momentum, so I had to hike a few of the last few ultra steep portions. Oh, and by runnable, I'm talking about the 3.1 mile/4000' gain portion from the road to the saddle, after which almost everything in the last 200' of gain is a rock scramble/climb, so not runnable, even for someone like Kilian Jornet. I'm thinking about getting back up to do this again in the next few days; I now know that it's totally runnable with proper pacing, even if it's the most ridiculously difficult climb, basically, ever.
Total: 48 miles, 5200' gain. Would've liked to have hit more, but those treadmill runs have been surprisingly hard on my legs. Quality was still pretty good.

Week of 10-3-11:
I got in a full 11 mile run of Porter Fork from Mill Creek Canyon road (over 4000' gain without walking or stopping at all, starting from the Canyon Road, going up to the peak to the right of Porter Fork Pass, which I don't know the name of). My next most substantial run was probably the 12 miles I did on an indoor 7.5-lap-to-the-mile track. This was rather interesting since I was pacing just a hair slower than 7:30 per mile, so I kept running splits of 60-62 seconds or so and checking my watch literally every minute. If I run anything on this track again, I won't wear a watch as it just gets ridiculous to check my time that often. Next best run was probably a 9 mile run in Little Cottonwood Canyon on the White Pine/Red Pine trails. I honestly don't recall what I did on the other 2 runs individually anymore, but I do remember that the weekly mileage was 45 miles between 5 runs, which was pretty low mostly because I had some personal crap to sort out all week long (ie, breaking up with my girlfriend of 2 years the previous week, and dealing with the logistics of that). Despite this, quality was pretty good most days with almost no junk miles.

Week of 9-26-11
As soon as I got back into training after the blisters getting better (mentioned below), I got pretty severe food poisoning for about 4 days, so I lost more time, which sucked. Once again, only 3 days for 30-something miles. Disappointing.

Week of 9-19-11:
Those blisters I had previously mentioned got really bad, so I had to take off a couple days. I only ended up getting in 3 days of training for 36 miles. Disappointing.

Life is back to usual now and while mileage has been low lately, the last 2 weeks have been pretty good quality. It seems like my general fitness is pretty decent now, so I'm looking to start boosting that mileage so I can run a 100 mile PR at a 24 hour race in 2-3 months. That's all for now.

Week of 9-12-11

2011-09-18T19:04:00.000-07:00

Monday: 15 miles, full Upper Big Water Loop, 2:01, 3500' gain. No joke, this is the hardest I've worked for any run so far this year. Full on tempo, felt like a race, went out hard and just kept going harder. Heels were bothering me a bit at the end (both bruised-feeling and blistery, will get to that shortly...)

Tuesday: Heels were sore, 5 miles easy, Rattlesnake + Pipeline with Holly, 1000' gain.

Wednesday: Off

Thursday: 14 miles, 5000' gain, Goldminer's Daughter (at Alta) up Collin's Gulch (a littler under 3 miles with 2100' gain from 8400' to 10500') nearly as hard as possible up to Germania Pass, intentionally making me relatively tired for the rest of the run. Went from Germania Pass up to Sugarloaf Pass (10600'), came back down into Upper Albion, went up to Cecret Lake, down to Upper Albion Basin, up and through Devil's Castle, back down to Upper Albion Basin, up the cat track to the top of the Supreme lift, up and over Point Supreme (10600' again, oof...) over to Sunset Peak, down to Catherine's Pass, back down to Upper Albion Basin, down to the town of Alta via the dirt access road, and back to the Goldminer's Daughter. Pretty darn close to the most complete circumnavigation of the Alta resort possible, huge climb, 5000'. Managed to work this quite hard, though not as hard as Monday's 15, given that I walked a few of the most technical sections around Cecret Lake. Somewhere around 2 1/2 hours, don't recall the exact amount of time. Finished the run and my heels felt trashed. I pulled off my shoes and to my shock, the heels of the insoles were collapsing into the soles on both shoes of my nearly brand new New Balance Minimus MT20s. In other words, there was some rubber pieces sticking through the insole and just beating the snot out of my feet. Called up New Balance and they were nice enough to let me send them back to be replaced by a pair of MT10s, which I haven't had this problem with.

Friday: Heels were bad, unfortunately had to take a second day off for the week, which I didn't intend.

Saturday: 22 miles, 3500' gain, 3 hours, 14 minutes, Mill D to the Desolation Trail, to the end of the trail at Desolation Lake, up to the ridgeline, all along the ridgeline to Scott's Transmission Towers, down to Guardsman Road, down to Brighton, loop around Brighton, loop through the Solitude Nature Center, back down the road to Mill D. Heels were a bit tender on the road section, but I had just bought a new pair of MT10s (so now I'll have 2 new pairs to rotate when the new ones show up from NB), so they were definitely better than before. Run was a bit uneventful (beyond the gorgeous views the entire way), but helped me clear my head from some stuff that had gone down in my personal life the day before. I took the climb to the ridgeline as moderately as possible and kept the effort moderate the whole way. If I had to compare to 100% marathon effort, I'd rate this run an 85-90%, as in my legs were somewhat sore and tight upon finishing, but felt fine by the end of the day.

Sunday: 5 miles, 1000' gain, yet another easy day of Rattlesnake + Pipeline with Holly.

Weekly Total: 61 miles, 14000' gain. Miles are on their way up, had one day off more than I wanted. Debated getting another long day on Sunday, but I ended up cutting the blister off my right foot and had unexpected heel pain worsening. It seems that it may recover faster as a result, but it was kind of in pain most of the day, so I just took it easy. :P However, despite somewhat falling short of expectations, I would say that 51 of my 61 miles this week came from high quality runs. Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday were all runs with a definite purpose: Monday was a moderately long run with a very very hard effort (great for Marathon fitness, which I need to have by the Spring), Wednesday had purpose as a strength builder due to the massive amount of climbing I had to do on tired legs, and Saturday had purpose as a near Marathon effort long run, which is beneficial for every type of racing that I do

As a whole, I would say that things are coming along well. I've finally gotten my diet in check, so I expect to be at race weight by November or so. Additionally, despite my mileage not being very high yet, I would say that I can see my fitness coming around. I generally feel that a good fitness marker for me is the speed at which I recover from hard efforts. Three times this week I have felt pretty close to trashed by the end of a run and I recovered faster than I felt that I would every time, so I see this as a very good sign. The ability to get three very high quality runs in one week is also a very good sign. In other words, while my tempo speeds may not be there yet, I expect that it will get there when my weight drops to where it should be since my general aerobic fitness has definitely started to come around.

My current plan is to run a 100K in November as a means of qualifying for Western States (crazy enough, I haven't run anything of 50 miles or more within the past year!!!). I'll probably take this pretty easy so I can train through it and keep building, hoping to be able to have good enough fitness to run a 100 mile PR (and then some) at a 24 hour race in December or so, likely at Across the Years.

Weeks of 8-29-11 and 9-5-11

2011-09-14T13:26:00.000-07:00

8-29-11: The big week of the PhD qualifier. Not much time to run the first 3 days. :(
Mon-Wednesday: Off
Thursday: 8 miles with Mark Lehmkuhle, good to be back running on the trails. Bonneville Shoreline, 1500' gain.
Friday: 5 miles, Rattlesnake + pipeline with Holly, the good old easy run with the dog when I'm tired and have nothing better to do, 1000' gain.
Saturday: 15 miles, Upper Big Water loop with Joe Dean, nice and easy, 3500' gain.
Sunday: 6.2 miles, 10k on a treadmill, 39:0x with 21:0x and 18:0x splits. Felt pretty good, although my calves weren't used to running the sub-6 pace I did for the 2nd half. First "quick" tempo style run in a long time, next time around I'll do 8-9 miles at this tempo type pace. Sadly, this was 4 minutes off my 10k PR (which I already considered weak by at least 30 seconds due to a really bad positive split), but I'm still not down to weight, so this makes sense. No gain.

Weekly total: 34 miles, 6000' gain. Not much climb or miles, but a good 4 days in a row and I also got an 8 hour written exam out of the way that had been scaring me for the better part of a year.

9-5-11:
Monday: Off
Tuesday: 8 miles with Mark on Shoreline Trail, easy, 1500' gain.
Wednesday: 5 miles, Rattlesnake + pipeline with Holly, easy, 1000' gain.
Thursday: 7 miles with Dave Ploskonka up and down Grandeur Peak, took it pretty easy on the way up (well as easy as possible for a run at an average of 17% grade for the better part of an hour), worked moderately hard on the way down, 3000' gain.
Friday: 30 miles, 14 miles of pacing at Wasatch 100 with Mark Lehmkuhle, then another 16 with Ryan McDermott. Felt good, though my heels got a couple annoying hot spots due to wearing my New Balance Minimus on a pretty rocky course. Got back home at 4AM and then had to go to 24 hour FedEx/Kinkos to submit a poster for Saturday's Utah Bioengineering Conference. Oh, also, both runners finished. Mark beat his goal splits by just over 2 hours and Ryan may have been a few hours slower than he wanted, but the dude had a 6 day old baby as of race day. Based on how exhausted he was at night during the race, just finishing was a massive accomplishment. 6000' gain.
Saturday: Annoying conference after almost no sleep due to being out running and submitting a poster until 5:15 AM, then an NPR fundraiser, so I took the day off.
Sunday: Not enough sleep again since I had to get up early for a 9-11 memorial service, had things to do, took another day off.
Total: 50 miles, 11500' gain.

Didn't really want to take Sat/Sun off, but at least I got in 50 miles, which is better than last week and still consistent with beginning to build my mileage up for real. The first 2 days of this current week have gotten me decent mileage and I have a big long run planned for this weekend, among other runs, so I expect to be somewhere in the 60s or 70s this week. If I can get to and keep a good trend of 70+ mile weeks, I think I'm going to run a 100k in November just to see how things are shaping up for longer events.

Last few weeks of running +

2011-08-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have been incredibly light as I have my 8 hour PhD written qualifying exam this coming week. I wanted to start building up, but I decided that running was probably not quite as important as passing this very important exam that covers the entire fields of basic engineering principles, systems neuroscience, cellular neuroscience, computational neuroscience, and modern research in neural interfaces. That being said, I've still had some notable runs thrown in here. Mileage has been light, but among the good runs I've gotten in have been 3 more 3+ hour long runs in an around Big Cottonwood and Little Cottonwood Canyons, an exceptionally good run up and down the 2800' climb to the top of Grandeur Peak (ran it hard on the way up and still tried my best to break Adrian Shipley on the way down, dropping the pace to nearly sub 5:0x/mile a couple times on a couple of the most runnable sections of the very technical descent, but unfortunately, I couldn't quite drop him and he stuck right behind me the whole way), and another couple tempos.

Beyond that, I'm developing some plans for 2012. I'm not committed to anything yet, but suffice it to say that I have big goals for the Spring after I use the rest of the fall to build a monster base. I once again have the focus I need to run at my most competitive level; all I need now is to shrug it off for 3 more days so I can finish preparing for this rather absurd exam. Until Wednesday, I'll hopefully get by just reading the highlights of the current IAAF championships...

A down week: Week of 8-1-11

2011-08-08T13:03:00.000-07:00

Mon-Wed: Off. Took some time to relax before I really start building up my fitness again for real.

Thursday: 2 mile warmup, 2x5k on a hilly and technical section of Pipeline at 6000', 2 mile cooldown. I worked these quite hard, but unfortunately, I hit my foot rather hard on a sharp portruding rock (the one downside to running pretty exclusively in the New Balance Minimus) and developed a painful bruise for 2 days, 1000' gain.

Friday-Sat: Foot hurt, off.

Sun: Foot still annoying, but wasn't getting worse with use, so I did 17 miles with Adrian Shipley with 7000'+ climb between 8500' and 11100'. Started in town of Alta and climbed Grizzly Gulch from 8500' to 10050' Twin Lakes Pass, descending to the Twin Lakes Reservoir:

Next dropped down into the "town" of Brighton (8700') via a rather convoluted route and took the trail up to Lake Mary:

Next, went up to Catherine's Pass (10300') above Catherine Lake (with less snow than pictured here):

Next, followed the trail down into Upper Albion Basin (9200') and ran through Devil's Castle (9900'), in the background of this image:

Dropped back into Upper Albion Basin's main road area, then followed a trail up to Cecret Lake:

Came out the backside and followed the main trail up to Germania Pass (10400'), followed by Sugarloaf Pass (10550'), and then up to Mt Baldy (11100', shown here is the ridgeline we 'ran' on to come down into Snowbird. Yup, it's technical):

Dropped down Peruvian Gulch:

Followed this all the way down to the bottom of the gulch and then took a combination of access roads and short trails back to my car at Alta. All of these big climbs, combined with some rolling, added to 7000' of climbing. Maybe next time I'll just tack on a little more in Mineral Basin/American Fork and make it my own personal even better version of Speedgoat. hah...

Weekly total: an easy 27 miles with 8000' climb. I guess this helped rest me up for a good week starting today.

Week of 7-25-2011, Speedgoat 50k "Training Run" report

2011-08-03T16:46:00.001-07:00

Monday: 5 miles, pipeline, with the pooch, 1000' gain.

Tuesday: 11 miles, Brighton parking lot to Lake Mary, up to Lake Catherine, to Catherine Pass, down to upper Albion Basin, down to Alta town area, and back, 3500' gain.

Wednesday: Off

Thursday: 8 miles, from Alta town area up Twin Lakes Pass (pretty difficult near the top, especially on the steep super rocky sections, ooof), down to Lake Mary, and then back. Ran the whole way without stopping, but still took it pretty easy, despite the high altitude and moderately large amount of climb, 3000' gain.

Friday: Off

Saturday: Speedgoat 50k. Took it quite easy the whole time, so it was slow, but comfortable and well inside my limits as a super long and ridiculously mountainous training run. I ran the vast majority of the non snow covered sections of the first climb up Snowbird, but took it barely faster than the walking pace of those around me so it was nice and easy but consistent. I had 2 gels on the way up the first climb (about 8 miles for the climb since it went up and down and back and forth quite a bit over the 3000' climb). I had about 350 calories of chocolate milk at Hidden Peak (stored in my drop bag) and trucked down the backside to climb Mt Baldy. Having developed quite a bit of lactose intolerance in recent years, I thought this would probably cost me a lot of bathroom time, but considering that I was strictly opposed to racing the clock at this point (considering that I'm still not all that close to top racing shape), I didn't mind losing time.

My stomach held fine coming down into Mineral Basin (Larry's Hole aid station) and I thought maybe I would miss the bullet on that one. However, after climbing out of Mineral Basin over the ridgeline into American Fork Canyon, I started noticing some cramping and felt the need to use a bathroom. Fortunately, I had thought ahead and has stuffed some T.P. into my shorts pocket, so I was well prepared. I ran down to the American Fork aid station (don't remember the name) without any problems, although I ran out of water about a mile before the station, so I walked in the last mile or so as it was the lowest elevation point of the race (around 7500' I believe) and was getting pretty hot.

I used 2 more gels (total of 4 gels, a tiny cup of sprite from the previous station and a chocolate milk in the first 15 miles), but felt relatively hungry when I got to the station, so I sat there and had about 20 ounces of sprite and 4 45 calorie fruit bars. This took around 15 minutes to consume since the Fruit Bars had been on dry ice, were super frozen, and initially stuck to my tongue before warming up. haha... In any case, I was carrying only one water bottle, but had my gels in a second handheld pouch. About a mile after I left the mile 15 station, I realized that I had forgotten my pouch at the previous station. Still not having the best metabolism again yet and needing to eat quite a bit to keep myself fueled (my fat metabolism capabilities are still quite a bit off what they were pre-mono and I can bonk pretty easily if I'm not eating a lot), this concerned me greatly. In any case, I didn't want to do an extra 2 miles roundtrip to go back and pick it up, so I just kept going.

After 5 miles and a big 2000+' of climbing, I was pretty hungry again, but fortunately ran into some local guys I knew and bummed a cookie off one of them. Eating that held me over until I got back to Larry's Hole, where I had another bathroom stop (stomach was really cramping at this point, and I felt a constant need to use the bathroom, whether or not I had already done so recently). This stop honestly cost me 15 minutes and I won't go into the details, but it wasn't fun.

After the "break",I chomped down half a PBJ and began the climb to the tunnel near Hidden Peak from here. This climb was probably the most physically demanding portion of the course (the majority wasn't on a trail and was literally straight up the mountain at a 50-60% grade, climbing to about 10900'. This definitely wasn't so much fun, but at least it shortened what could've been a longer climb. Going through the tunnel, I really had to go to the bathroom yet again, so already having exhausted my small stash of TP, I had to bum some paper towels off the aid station folks.

Having forgotten to eat much at the station (I think I had 6 ounces of Sprite) and more focused on finding a suitable bathroom off the side of the course, I went through the tunnel, got out the other side to the beautiful sight of a middle aged man puking his guts out on the side of the trail, and went down about 1/4 mile before finding some trees to hide behind to do my business. I spent another 10 minutes here and then continued down the trail. At this point, this was farther than I had previously taken my New Balance Minimus shoes out for (what I ran in for the whole race), so rocks on the trail were starting to irritate my feet to some extent. I didn't really fly down the trail down Peruvian Basin as a result, but took it pretty easy.

Getting nearly to the bottom of the basin (somewhere probably around 9000'), we then turned around, climbed up to the Cirque Traverse, and followed that back to Hidden Peak. I wasn't really starving, but my body was starting to get sick of all the climbing and altitude, so I bummed a gel off of someone to help get me up the final 2000'-ish climb to 11000'. This climb was pretty tough, but compared to the 1000'+ feet of much steeper climb in Mineral Basin, it wasn't bad. I got to the top, sat down for a minute to empty rocks out of my shoes, drank a 440 calorie chocolate milk, and continued for the final 5-6 mile descent.

About a mile out of Hidden Peak, I bonked hard. I was still at about 10500', had to slide down roughly 400-500' of snow, and was dizzy. This was very alarming and it took me a LONG time to get down. At the time, I had figured that I would be fine on energy because of all the sugar in the milk, which ought to hit my system fast, but in hindsight, most of the sugar is lactose, which my body can't process very well, so I had to wait for the proteins and fats to kick in before I got any energy. In any case, I was in a pretty uncomfortable spot for a good 20-30 minutes, but started recovering, especially when I started dropping in elevation, so I coasted in to the finish.

My overall calories for the day were roughly 1800, which sounds like plenty for a trail 50K, but Speedgoat has a lot more climbing than the average race, so this may have been low, especially if my body was unable to use a few hundred from the milk.

Overall, this was a good training run and my body felt completely recovered within a couple hours after the race (although I still took a couple days off to relax, just for good measure). In the future, even if I'm doing something where I'm not whatsoever concerned about my time, I will definitely take Lactaid if drinking any chocolate milk, as my stomach and bowels felt horrible for basically the entire 2nd half of the race. Losing time (probably close to an hour) isn't a big deal in this type of situation, but spending quite a few hours with pretty extreme gastrointestinal discomfort is highly irritating. Beyond just the bathroom breaks, I was unable to run at times because my gut hurt too much. Not cool. In any case, the stomach problem was really the only problem during the run, which was good.

A couple people with GPS's (I didn't even bother to bring mine) stated that the course was about 33 miles long and I remember one section in particular that was officially labeled as 4 miles, but took well over an hour, despite being nearly downhill (and probably my fastest section), so I'll take their word for it. Officially the gain is either 11420' or 12000', depending on where you're looking. The first climb was a net 3000', but easily 4000' gross with quite a bit of up and down on the way up to Hidden Peak. After this, the climb to Baldy was a few hundred more feet and the climb next climb out of Mineral was probably 600-700'. The climb out of American Fork was around 2500', the next climb out of Mineral was close to 1500'. The lowest point in American Fork was only 7500' or so, but the course dropped over 500' from the peak of the climb out of American Fork to get back down to Mineral, so I think the 4000' of climbing between American Fork and Mineral to get back to 10900' is accurate. The final climb in Peruvian tacked on yet another 2000', so adding these up, we see a total of 11500' plus whatever roll there was otherwise (maybe 500'). Taking this into consideration, the 12000' statistic seems quite reasonable. In other words, I'm calling this day 33 miles with 12000' gain. Definitely a good long run. :)

Now that this is out of the way and my next race is a marathon in a couple months (which I hope to be able to take more seriously), I will finally need to actually pay attention to what I eat so I can drop the extra 15 pounds that have been sitting on me ever since I had to take 9 or so months off for the most part. I'm hoping to get rid of all of it in 2 months before the marathon, but if I can even drop 10 of it, that will probably be adequate just to coast through an easy 3:10 BQ time.

Sunday: Off, nice relaxing day.

Weekly total: 57 miles, 19500' gain. That's a lot of climb in 57 miles. :)

Week of 7-18-2011

2011-07-24T12:48:00.001-07:00

Monday: 6 miles, easy, with Holly, actually on the roads, gain negligible.

Tuesday: Body still a little irritated from Sunday's long run, off.

Wednesday: 14 miles, shoreline trail from red butte, took a bit of a break to let Mark (who I was running with) do an extra 2 miles so I could tempo really hard on the last 6 miles or so, worked reallllllly hard in the 2nd half, 2000' gain.

Thursday: 5 miles, rattlesnake plus Pipeline with Holly, 1000' gain.

Friday: off.

Saturday: 10 miles, Alta. Lower Albion Basin to Germania Pass (1900' pure climb from 8500' to 10400'), down to Cecret Lake, over and up to Catherine's Pass (10300'! highest elevation I've achieved so far this year), then back down. 1/2 mile from the end, while running down the dirt access road, I came across a family of moose (father, mother, child) and the father was pretty aggressive towards me, so I had to go way out of my way and tack on an extra mile of running through a meadow with no trail to avoid getting close to them. Ran this whole thing pretty hard, only walked in the more trecherous snow-covered sections to prevent myself from falling off a mountain, despite 3500' total gain.

3 of these giant aggressive beasts can be scary, even (or especially) if one is a child:

Sunday: 22 miles, 4 hr 45 minutes, 7000' gain. Very very tough run on mostly usper technical trails with quite a few snow chute crossing (scary!) starting from the Desolation Trailhead and going through tons of gorgeous high country (lots of running between 9000' and 10000'). Came down through Mill A by Mount Raimond and Gobbler's Knob, got very very lost in Bowman Fork somehow, added on a couple miles of bushwhacking and roughly an hour of time. Did this whole thing with a little under 40 oz of water, a 90 calorie Gu, and about 200 calories of skittles, nothing else, so I was glad to see my metabolism coming back even more. I was pretty drained at the end, but a liter of chocolate milk cleared things up nicely. Great run to help make sure my legs are under me before I run the rather difficult Speedgoat 50K on Saturday.

There are a lot of pretty technical sections on the trail that are difficult going both up and down:

The huge basin behind Mill A that I ran through before crossing the saddle on the right beginning a long descent of quite a few thousand feet (Mount Raimond, 10241', and about 5/6 of a mile above my starting point, pictured on the left, Gobbler's Knob just off the right):

Total: 57 miles, 13500' gain. Mileage is a bit deceivingly low for the work I did this week. If I spent the same amount of time at the same effort on roads, this would've been roughly a 75-80 mile week, so I'm happy with it.

Week of 7-11-11

2011-07-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

7-11: 34 miles of pacing at badwater, most of it was stovepipe wells to panamint springs, 5000' gain

7-12: 18 miles of pacing at badwater, mostly a good chunk starting around mile 100, ben finished in 41:14, no significant gain

7-13: off, after race

7-14: 5 miles, rattlesnake plus pipeline with holly, 1000' gain

7-15: 4 miles, very difficult climb most of the way up gobbler's knob from alexander basin with holly, stopped when we hit snow, which she's not good in. Hahaha... 2000' gain

7-16: off, saving for Sunday :)

7-17: 19 miles with mark, very hot and arduous run, big water to dog lake, almost down to big cottonwood fork on butler fork, up mill a fork (this climb suuuuucked, though we ran into some other dudes training for speedgoat 50k and ran it with them), west on desolation trail up to raimond/gobbler's knob saddle, back on deso trail to dog lake, back to big water, parked a half mile out from trail due to crowding, so first and last half mile was road. 6000' gain. 3:45 of a bit of easy trails and a ton of technical trail, was hot but I survived on 20 oz water and 380 calories.

Total: 80 miles and 14000' gain. Now that's what I'm talking about. :)

Week of 7-4-11

2011-07-17T20:25:00.001-07:00

7-4-11: Skiing at Snowbird for the 4th of July, no running. :)

7-5-11: 11 miles, Pipeline with Mark, 1000' gain

7-6-11: 5 miles, Upper Big Water with Jess and Holly, did an extra mile by myself at the end while Jess and Holly waited for Jess's parents to get back from their hike (happened to see their car at the top), 1000' gain

7-7-11: 12 miles with Mark, Upper Big Water to Desolation Lake and back, really good run, 1:56 for a quite difficult, technical and mountainous run, ran quite hard and didn't walk a single step, despite really wanting to (especially coming back up Mill D to Dog Lake on the way back), 4000' gain

7-8-11: 7 miles, St George with Matt Taylor, 1000' gain

7-9-11: Off, helping Ben prep for Badwater

7-10-11: Off, helping Ben prep for Badwater

Total: 35, 7000' gain, easy week. haha...

Week of 6-27-11

2011-07-06T10:49:00.000-07:00

Monday: Quick 5 miles on Rattlesnake Gulch and Pipeline Trail with Holly. It was 88 degrees when we were running and she really isn't such a fan of the heat, even with her own full puppy water bottle, so we kept it short, 1000' climb.

Tuesday: 7 miles, upper Pipeline out and back, 1500' climb.

Wednesday: 10 miles with Mark, upper pipeline out and back plus a bit more the other way out and back. Lost my key in the last couple miles, took 45 minutes to find on the trail, Mark's 1984 Toyota Pickup started spewing radiator fluid right before the run, so I had to take him to Auto Zone for a new radiator hose afterwards as soon as I found my keys, 1500' climb

Thursday: Off.

Friday: Opening day for upper Mill Creek, did an easy conversational 7 miles to Dog Lake and back with Mark, 1500' climb, low point of 7800', high point a little over 9000'.

Here's a couple nice shots of the trail I used (not my pictures):

Saturday: Long-ish 16 mile day in Upper Mill Creek, Upper Big Water to Dog Lake, down to Mill D trailhead in Big Cottonwood, back up the trail and up to Desolation Lake, along a rather snowy 9900' ridgeline, and back down the north side of the loop via the Great Western Trail down back to Upper Big Water, pretty quick for the distance right now, a bit over 2:40 despite a ton of snow on the north/east halves. 4000' gain, low point of 7300', high point of 9800'.

Desolation Lake, as seen from the ridgeline, near the top of the Canyons Ski Resort (not my photo):
I think it's pretty obvious why I'm so excited to run in the high country.

Sunday: Off

Weekly total: 45 miles, 9500' climb. Not a bad week, would've liked to have gotten one more run in there, but it's all good for now. This current week is bumped up a bit so far, though I imagine I'll only get 5 days of running in once again (skied on Monday, the 4th of July), and probably won't be able to run on Sunday as I'll be helping Ben Clark prepare for Badwater that day.

Oh, and just for kicks, here's a more accurate picture of how Desolation Lake looks right now wi:th a bit of snow left (not my picture, once again):

Last 3 weeks

2011-06-27T10:58:00.000-07:00

I've apparently forgotten to post my updates for the past few weeks. I've had a couple bumps already getting back into things that have slowed the progression of mileage (a ridiculously annoying moving process, which really sucks when you drive a Honda Civic and can barely fit anything in your car, in addition to an ear infection)

Speaking of moving, my new place is in Olympus Cove, right between Mill Creek Canyon and Mt Olympus, so I have very quick access to Mill Creek, Neff's Canyon, Mt Olympus, Big Cottonwood, and Little Cottonwood, which is very exciting. :)

Week of 6-6-11:
Monday: 8 miles, AM, 1500' gain, Bonneville Shoreline from City Creek to about halfway to U of U and back
Tuesday: 8 miles, same
Wednesday: 7 miles, running in City Creek with Holly, 1000' gain
Thursday: Off
Friday: 9 miles, Mill Creek Canyon, Pipeline, Terraces, and Canyon road, 2500' gain
Saturday: 9 miles, Attempt to run Mill D North Fork, only got to Dog Lake before it got really annoying with deep snow, turned around, went up a ways near and around Donut Falls instead, another 3 miles with Jess in the PM, 1000' gain.
Sunday: Ear Infection was annoying :(
Weekly Total: 44 miles, 7500' gain. Wanted 50 and would've had over that without the ear infection. Still a build from before I guess.

Week of 6-13-11 (week was hampered by moving + ear infection)
Monday: 7 miles, running in City Creek, ear infection was annoying, tried to ignore it as best as possible, 1000' gain
Tuesday: 9 miles, with Holly, up to radio towers from City Creek base, back to partway between the peak and Bountiful, back. Holly was panting heavily but didn't seem to want to drink much from my hand on this day, so I've since then gotten a bottle that comes with a dish so she'll have something better to drink from. 2000' climb total
Wednesday: 8 miles, Road + Terraces + Pipeline in Mill Creek, 2500' gain
Thursday: Busy Moving
Friday: Busy Moving
Saturday: 7 miles, running in City Creek, 1000' gain
Sunday: Busy Moving
Total: 31 miles, 6500' gain, moving ruined it, plus the ear infection

Week of 6-20-11
Monday: From new home near the base of Olympus Cove on roads via a very roundabout way to Neff's Canyon (I didn't know exactly where it was), all the way up Neff's to one of the ridges at about 9000'. Took a couple "wrong turns" (I guess it's not really a wrong turn if it's an exploratory run) in the canyon since I wasn't exactly sure where to go and then had an almost equally roundabout way home (roughly 2.5 miles on the road both ways instead of a possible 1 to 1.5). 13 miles with about 4500' cumulative gain (4000' net between start and midpoint) and some ridiculous snow (last mile on the way up took over 45 minutes, literally crawling on my hands and knees in snow and mud to a peak on a rather steep route), so it actually took a hair over 3 hours. Kind of sad for 13 miles, but not as bad as it sounds given the terrain.
Tuesday: Too busy moving to run. :( Lame.
Wednesday: Up most of the way to the meadow in Neff's with Holly, 1800' climb, 5 miles
Thursday: Up to the meadow in Neff's, 2500' climb, 6 miles.
Friday: Busy finishing up the moving. Suckage.
Saturday: Neff's Canyon to Mill B pass (top of Big Cottonwood), 3600' net climb to midpoint since I started higher than my Monday run, maybe 4000' total with a bit of rolling. Went with Mark Lehmkuhle and a grad student from Denver named Douglas that he had just met. Douglas hadn't been training much lately, so we were a bit slow on the uphills, but it was still fun. The whole thing is supposed to be around 7.5 total to the pass, but there was no trail above the meadow due to snow and our route proved rather indirect. What was supposed to be .75 miles took about an hour, despite terrain that wasn't particularly steep. I didn't have my GPS, but I'd peg it around 9 miles total with all the weaving around above the meadow. I also happened to see a pretty big moose on this run, which was pretty cool.
Sunday: 3 1/2 hours of skiing in the morning tired me out, no running. Also, my dad was in town, so no time even if I wanted to.
Weekly Total: 33 miles, 13300' climb. Kind of a joke for mileage, but tons and tons of climb. Will have less distractions from getting in mileage in the future, which is good.

Mileage will definitely be in the 50s this week (especially with a 5-6 hour run planned for Saturday).

Training "for real"

2011-06-05T20:50:00.000-07:00

I'm a few weeks late starting to post my weekly training updates. I haven't had any problems with the running, but I've had a few pretty busy weeks with grad school and other stuff, not to mention a nasty throat and stomach virus that took me out for about a week, so it took me a couple extra weeks to get back into things. I had a couple more non-serious-3-runs-a-week-25-mile-weeks, and then decided to get serious last week.

Knowing how dumb I can occasionally/always be, I decided it would be a great idea to run a 60km trail run off of absolutely no training, so that's how I started my training back. Since last July, my longest run has been 14 or 15 miles, so 37.2 wouldn't be bad, right?

Well, I started the week of Monday the 23rd by not running on Monday or Tuesday. On Wednesday, I did a nice run of about 90 minutes on trails that were way too steep for me to run at even a remotely respectable cadence, so it ended up being around 8 miles with Mark Lehmkuhle. On Thursday, I did a quick 5 miles with Holly (the 5 1/2 month puppy), her first run with me, and Mark. Holly did pretty well and actually pushed the pace until the last mile, when she started to get tired. I took Friday off running and drove up to Pocatello for the Pocatello "50k+", officially 36.2 miles, but the last 2 sections were even slightly longer still, so it was about 37.2. hah...

I had no intentions of running fast at Pocatello and didn't even commit to the race until something like 16 hours before it started, so after arriving at 10 PM the night before and sleeping in my car, I woke up, almost missed the start, and took off, immediately falling into a slow hike up the first climb of 2500' in 5 miles. Throughout the whole day, I wasted around 3 hours in aid stations, I walked every single uphill, and barely jogged the downhills and some of the flats (I still walked some). After having to go a fair amount off the course for a bathroom break at one of the aid stations, I'm officially giving myself 38 miles for the day. Those 38 miles, however, took around 11 hours, 4 hours slower than a 50 mile race that I completed despite breaking my foot, so it's not really anything to be proud of. haha... That being said, the course had 8000' of climb in 38 miles and roughly 75% of the course was either mud, snow, or a stream, so I'd imagine this effort would've correlated to a roughly 8 hour performance on a more standard road type course, to give it a little perspective. Still slow, but not mind-blowingly awful to the most extreme degree.

In any case, my serious lack of testicular fortitude on the course in terms of pushing myself led me to fully recover in under 24 hours, so after taking Sunday-Wednesday off to "play it safe" (ie, get a few more lazy days before really starting to hit the training), I started up training "for real".

After a ridiculously lopsided 51 mile last week, I ran Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday this week. On Thursday, I decided it was time to run fast, so I hammered 60 minutes of tempo on the Bonneville Shoreline trail with 1500' climb/1500' drop as hard as I could. I had to use every last ounce of strength to bring home the last few minutes, so this was about as legitimate a tempo run as one can do, effort wise. The distance was about 7.5 miles for this run.

On Friday, I decided I wanted another run up Grandeur Peak (I had had a crappy run there with Mark a couple weeks back). In any case, the snow still covered the top few hundred vertical feet rather heavily, so I ran 2500' of the 2800' of climb (about 3.25 miles from my car out on and a little up the canyon road), so I managed a whopping 6.5 miles on this run. That being said, the 2500' 3.25 mile climb was extremely difficult right now, especially considering that I ran the vast vast majority of it (other than a couple very difficult technical sections), so the way up was nearly as all out as the day before, and I consider this a great run. To give an idea for the difficulty this posed for me right now, I ran pretty close to as hard as I could the whole way up and the 6.5 mile round trip still took 78 minutes. Ouch.

On Saturday, a running buddy of mine, Adrian Shipley, was in town, so we did 15 miles together in and outside of City Creek in about 1:56. Adrian is a fair amount faster than me at shorter stuff even when I'm at peak fitness, so he definitely pushed me to this time (honestly would've been 2:10-2:15 for this particular course if I was running solo). Total climb and drop was close to 2k, so it was never particularly steep, but it was up or down at least a bit at all times.

As for tonight, I just ran an moderately easy 5 miles in 40 minutes with Holly. I would've liked to have run with her more since the first run, but she got spayed 5 days ago, so today was her first day back to activity. She was actually pretty hyper again ever since the day after the surgery, but we had to keep her pretty contained until today...

In any case, that makes the last 2 weeks 51 miles and 34 miles. For this coming week, I'm planning a more consistent 6 ish days of running with roughly 50 miles and I plan on building from there once my legs become comfortable with running everyday again.

Leadville is looking like something that I would be capable of in August, but, unfortunately, my PhD qualifying exam is 9 days afterwards, so I'll likely have to give up my spot despite probably being ready to at least bring it home under the cutoffs. Oh well, there's always a lot of other races to run now that I'm healthy and have things under control. :)

Continued Progress

2011-05-03T20:32:00.000-07:00

I've gotten my long run up to just over 2 1/2 hours with absolutely no side effects and I plan to up that again tomorrow. I'm only running 3-4 days a week so far, and my weekly mileage is still ridiculously light (~30 miles) to allow my feet to break into not using orthotics, but I'm starting to pick it up (this week is likely to be around 40), not to mention that my weekly 2+ hour long run has been consistent for a few weeks now, so things are looking up. I still have to get down to competitive racing weight, but that ought to resolve itself naturally before I race anything serious. I'm planning for a 3:15-ish run tomorrow and the biggest climb of the day will start around 2:15 and last for 30-35 minutes, so it'll be a tough but fun day out on the trails. I'll make sure to start posting weekly summaries starting this weekend now that I'm actually doing something interesting at least once a week.

While my mileage isn't huge yet, the fact that I managed over 2:30 of running in one session last week without a bonk or any post-run problems leads me to believe that my health problems are finally behind me. I'm of course upping my mileage slowly to be sure of this, but I'm very optimistic right now.

One other note of interest is that I'm now registered for the St George Marathon this fall. I didn't get in via lottery the last 2 years (kind of fortunate last year as I wasn't running at all when the race happened), so I'm guaranteed entry this year. I doubt I'm going to be in my absolute best marathon shape by October 1st, so I'm planning to use it as an early tune-up in a serious fall training schedule for a more serious run at the marathon in Las Vegas in December. That being said, I'm planning to run no slower than 2:59, just so I can at least be able to sign up for Boston 2012 in the 2nd registration group and not risk being shut out from the race.

Like I said, I'll try to remember to start posting my training each week as I build back up to peak fitness.

Kicking butts and taking names

2011-04-14T20:32:00.000-07:00

I started running again a couple weeks ago and I just went out for a moderate effort 67 minute run (my 2nd longest run back so far, time-wise, longest being 80 minutes). I have no idea how far it was, but I do know that I started at 4500' and hit a peak of 6500' after a 30 minute slog up a mountain. I also know that the last 2-ish miles were on a road and that the pace on that section was 7:06 (timed it and mapped it out on mapmyrun). The 7:06 was smooth and the 2000' climb was smooth. I may not yet be kicking butts and taking names as the title implies, but I'm getting back into shape. I'm still a complete fata$$ right now, but that should work itself out in time and my pace will quicken with dropped weight. My mileage is still very low (3 days into 30 miles / 4 runs for the current week right now), but for the first time in what feels like an eternity, running at a moderate or even hard effort levels feels right and it feels good.

I've ditched the orthotics upon coming back and gone to only New Balance Minimus / MT101s and I can actually tell that my feet are getting stronger. I'd wanted to get rid of the orthotic addiction for a really long time prior to the mono incident and now that I'm very slowly building mileage, I was able to do it without all of a sudden changing the way I treat my arches at 100 miles per week and wrecking my feet. If I can ride over the initial wave of occasional foot-bottom and joint soreness from mostly using the Minimus, this ought to help me become even better about avoiding injuries in the future (I still consider my track record of only one minor stress fracture since becoming serious about running 6 years ago to be pretty solid).

I'm starting to feel that competitive fire growing with each run and I can tell that I'm going to want to be racing again in late Summer / early fall. I can't yet say for sure what's going to happen with any of my races specifically (besides Miwok, which I canceled about a month ago), but I'm definitely going to be doing something racing wise starting in August. For now, just being out on the trails is enough though.

Where have I been?

2011-02-22T01:20:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, I've been sitting on my couch since my last post. That 2 1/2 hour run I did back in October ended up being way too much for my body at the time and I started relapsing again (well, I was never really 100% when I was out there, hence my ability to relapse). I can't fully blame that run alone though; I got stupid and skied 15 times in a little over a month between mid November and mid-late December. Well, that started to do me in again. However, I finally resolved to not let this mono become a several year process. December marked a year or continual *issues* with my health and I finally admitted to myself that I have absolutely no sense of moderation, so I issued myself a declaration: I am not to attempt ANY sort of physical activities until my body is 100% better.

Mono, as I have learned, is a tricky thing. It's not technically a virus; it's a condition caused by a virus. That condition can be around a long time after the virus has dropped off in levels and it continues to stick around longer each time you set yourself back. Once you've beaten it, it's gone for good, but I just never truly beat it. I was for all purposes "cured" by Spring, but "cured" for distances runners is different from "cured" for normal people. Normal people don't push their body as hard as they can for hours at a time, so while I was so close to better that I couldn't notice any effects for awhile, I was gradually chipping away at my body with each run I did.

Back to my declaration... I haven't done anything more physical than walking since December 26th, so I've had 2 months off all physical activity now. Additionally, I have finally convinced my doctors to prescribe me an experimental drug that keeps the EBV virus low in my system. As I mentioned above, EBV is not exactly mono, but preventing any spikes in the virus is helping my body to recover (IE, it prevents any mini relapses, allowing a full and proper recovery). I've taken the drug since just before Christmas and I've been doing pretty well. Whether that's as a result of complete rest or the drug, I can't say, but whatever I'm doing is working. I can honestly say that I'm the healthiest I've been since Spring at this point. That means that I'm not better yet, but I'm on the right track. Honestly, I probably won't touch my running shoes for another 3 months at this point, which means that Miwok (which I got into via the lottery) is out. Additionally, I am feeling more and more unwilling to risk it all at Leadville since 100 miles is really hard on the body and I just don't want to have any possibility that things will go bad again whatsoever. I hate to waste $250, but I'd throw away 10 times that much money before throwing away my health and ability to run in the future. I don't think I have a whole lot of additional chances to make this right. I truly believe that if I don't get it right this time around, I will very likely never be able to regain what I had near the end of 2009, so I am determined to get this right this time. Sitting on my butt sucks; I have temporarily sacrificed that strange happiness that only putting one foot in front of the other can bring, but I have replaced it with an even stranger happiness of simply knowing that I am doing the right thing for myself at this point in life.

I will be back in 2011, but I refuse to set timelines. I sincerely hope that I will be training normally this summer, but I cannot and will not set any goals as to that nature. When I am truly convinced that I am cured as a result of my long-term rest, I will wait a few more weeks and the ease back into the high mileage training, gradually building up to a huge winter of 20-30% more miles than I've done in the past. I will use that to slingshot myself into my best ever year of running in 2012. My determination is at an all time high. Unfortunately, I just have to use that determination to force myself to sit on my butt for a little while longer. :)

Snow

2010-11-23T23:30:00.000-08:00

That was the blurry view out my living room window tonight. It might look bleak or even painfully cold, but I really love running in the snow, so it was exciting for me to see. Fresh powder is so much fun to run in that I even seem to forget how cold it is against my uncovered legs (though I always remember the cold later when my legs sting for a good while after the run, thanks to never running in anything other than short shorts, no matter what the weather is like and no matter how many layers I'm wearing on top). In any case, I looked out my window in the middle of what was being called a "severe blizzard" and just decided it was time to go for a run. I had no idea how far I was going to go; I just ran. I often find that a nice snowstorm is one of the few times that I can go out and run and focus purely on the enjoyment of it without letting my head get caught up in all the numbers associated with what should be a simple run. In the end, I had a blast, never ran harder than what I could hold for 50 miles given even moderate fitness, and only looked at my watch once or twice. Part of the run was on pavement, but the ever increasing unplowed snow on the roads (6" at the start) made everything feel like trails. The actual trails were amazing; no-one was in sight, I didn't need a headlamp due to the reflective nature of the snow, and I meandered through a relatively gentle rolling course that allowed me to focus on the enjoyment of it all. How far and fast I ran was irrelevant. I had fun and that's what mattered.

Good long-ish run on Saturday

2010-10-19T12:45:00.000-07:00

I ended up deciding that the run I had planned was perhaps a bit overambitious, so I cut back from a 4 hour planned loop to something around 2 1/2 hours to make sure that I didn't suffer from it too much over the following few days. I ended up running a quick warm up of about a mile followed by a straight ascent of Brighton ski resort from 8750' to Catherine Pass (almost exactly 2 miles up to 10250'), a drop into Alta ski resort around 9400', a rolling rise back to just above 10,000' while running to and through the desolate Devil's Castle, a drop back to 9300' and a circuitous loop back to Cecret/Secret Lake (I think it's actually spelled "Cecret") around 10,000', another drop back to 9300', and reclimbing back to Catherine Pass and a quick 2 mile drop back to the base of Brighton. The total gain with all the rolling was somewhere in the mid 5000's, so it was a very strenuous loop for the seemingly unimpressive 12 miles. I felt pretty good most of the way, but I started to feel a bit sick going up to Cecret Lake and felt pretty crappy on the final 1000' climb to Catherine Pass from Upper Albion Basin. Surprisingly, I seemed to recover well on the final descent and finally picked up some momentum again, so I ended up feeling pretty good afterwards.

I brought along my camera and took a couple quick video clips en route, so here's something I uploaded from it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA6s9F_bLT0 . Pretty bad quality, but you can still get a few glimpses of how amazing the running up there is. I'll probably be back up tonight or tomorrow to continue to get the last bit of running I can squeeze out before it gets dumped on. It will probably snow up there sometime this week, but hopefully I can continue to get some decent running in for a few more weeks, as there's not usually major snowstorms in the until early November. After that, I'll take my training down to upper mill creek, lower mill creek, and finally the bonneville shoreline trail, basically all winter long.

More good runs + pics from the trails

2010-10-13T21:26:00.000-07:00

I've been gradually upping my running lately, and my body has been responding nicely. So far, the best I can do without getting that run down/sick mono feeling is to run 2 days on, 1 day off, but I can usually lift weights in my off day, so I'm managing to be pretty active without any noticeable side effects. Since I am very bad at holding myself back on shorter days, I'm mostly focusing on running moderately long-ish, or what I would define as such right now, (usually around 90 minutes), especially at high altitude. I've been up to Alta and Brighton quite a bit (looping between the 2 over the ridgeline between Big and Little Cottonwood a handful of times) and have had plenty of interesting experiences, such as rounding a switchback to see a black bear 20 feet in front of me, almost stepping on a porcupine, and getting lost in the dark due to a blatantly mismarked trail sign in Brighton. The proof of that one:

Thanks, whoever made this sign. (The trail to Alta/Albion Basin follows right next to Dog Lake on the left, as I finally know now).

For my short term plans, I'm going to shoot for a pretty long run on Saturday. Distance-wise, it won't be all that impressive (maybe a little under 20 miles, based on my estimates), but I expect it to take 4 hours or so due to the 8000'+ of gain (3 major climbs of 2000', plus some additional smaller stuff), all between 8500' and 10700'. This is undoubtedly a bad idea based on the fact that my body isn't quite 100% yet, but I won't have another chance to do this run without snow until next July most likely, so I'm taking the opportunity. I also just signed up to run a local 10k mountain race on the 30th. I guess it runs 1500' up a mountain in the first 5k and 900' down the other side in the next 5k. I think it's a pretty low key race, so hopefully I can avoid getting beaten too sorely without really killing myself. It's all below 7000' and never above a 13% incline, so it should be very runnable the whole way.

In more long term plans, I'm getting very gung ho about running Leadville next summer and having spent plenty of time at high elevation lately, I finally understand the DNF rate (which is around 70%). If you don't train 2 miles above sea level, running that high will absolutely crush you. I've spent the majority of my running time above 9000' (with most of my runs hitting at least 10000') and I'm still finding it to be quite a task to maintain a running cadence while traveling uphill, even at a moderately shallow 10% grade when I get close to the 2 mile elevation mark. I've bounced around a number of ideas for the Spring, but for the time being, I'm leaving it pretty open since most of the races I'm interested in have pretty late registration deadlines. I'll be running as many local low key shorter distance trail events as I can over the winter just to refuel that competitive edge. Right now, I'm very pleased with any running at any pace or effort, but as a rather competitive person, I'll want to make sure I'm racing competitively again next year, so I'll make sure to mix in lots of little 5ks and 10ks to win as many goofy prizes as I can while retooling that leg speed on the trails.

That's all for now. As a closing thought, here are a few more pictures I took about 10 days ago while running the trails between Alta and Brighton (one of which I'm definitely moving to next summer, by the way...):

Albion Basin (Alta):

Me in Albion Basin:

A rugged and nearly unidentifiable section of trail (fortunately, it's usually a lot better than this) at Catherine Pass:

Overlooking Lake Catherine with atrocious lighting (sorry, I couldn't quite convince the sun to move for this one):

Overlooking Lake Martha like a total hippie:

Slightly blurry Lake Martha:

Getting back to things

2010-09-30T18:01:00.000-07:00

I've been running again for about 2 weeks now. I've been focusing on keeping it pretty easy (both in terms of effort and miles, especially miles) so far, but I have had the chance to throw in a few big climbing days. Yesterday, I hit up Alta and ran through Albion Basin from the Goldminer's Daughter (8500') to Germania Pass (10500') then back down through Collins Gulch. The altitude was pretty tough, but it was still a lot of fun.

A nice picture from one of the trails at Alta:

Unlike when I tried to run a month-ish ago, I have some moderate amount of speed in my legs once again. I ran a 5:39 mile without killing myself in my 3rd run back. No, that's not fast at all, but a month ago, I was so sick that even 8:00 pace was much harder than this 5:39 pace was a week ago, so this is a good sign. Obviously, I'm going to be horrendously out of shape after basically not running for 2 1/2 months, so I'm glad that I still have some speed left. A few days ago, I hit a moderately technical 4.8 climb and descent of Ensign Peak from downtown (1400' of gain/loss) at 8:30 pace. Once again, 8:30 pace doesn't sound super impressive, but this is actually quite a tough climb with a few super steep sections that really slow the pace, so this is something that I'd maybe hit at 7:45 pace in absolute peak fitness. 45 seconds per mile slow is quite slow, but at least now I'm starting to just feel like I'm a bit out of shape rather than sick.

Beards and fu manchus.

2010-09-01T18:14:00.000-07:00

I've been biding my time slowly and my official training cycle for April 2nd's Philadelphia 100 starts in 2 1/2 weeks now that I'm feeling healthy, at least in day to day life (took a lot longer than I originally anticipated). What have I been doing with all my running time, you may ask? Well, for starters, I grew a wicked sick beard:

Since I couldn't spend ALL of my time just bearding around, I just today decide to one up the beard with an even wicked sick-er-er fu manchu (which I shaved in a matter of 3 strokes to look even more white trash, I might add):

Considering that no matter how hard I train at the art of facial hair growing, I will always be vastly inferior to the gentlemen in the following pictures,

I have decided that I would be better off focusing on training for long distance running events.

So, I've basically spent the last 2 months sitting on my butt letting my body finally get over mono and am ready to run again.

New schwag that I'll get to run in soon enough

2010-08-04T22:54:00.000-07:00

I'm especially psyched by the pair on the left. For anyone that knows what they are, I bet you're wondering how I got them. :) I haven't run in them yet, but they seem even better than their predecessor. If I feel good (and I'm sure I will running in these) for the last half of August when I get to start running again, I'll be signing up for Hellgate on the 1st of September, at which point, I'll be 2 weeks into my slow build from 35 miles a week to 150 miles a week, which will end with just enough time for a quick taper before the first and only race of the year that I'll go into with adequate health. Time to get pumped.

2 weeks until training begins again, most likely.

2010-08-01T01:25:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow will mark 3 weeks of absolutely zero physical activity. My energy levels are really starting to come back and I'm starting to be really jittery as a result of not running. I've put on 5 pounds in the last 3 weeks and am ready to use it as fuel. The big key now is to make sure I'm truly 100% better from the mono before I start doing stupid things again. My plan is to not race until at LEAST December at this point and I'm still playing it by ear rather than having stupid calendar-based goals. That being said, I'm forcing myself to wait at least 2 more weeks to ensure good recovery. I am going to be very closely monitoring my health over the next 2 weeks and if it continues to look good, I will start doing a VERY easy 5 miles a day 2 weeks from tomorrow (Monday the 2nd). I feel that I was very close to being over mono when I started running again in January, but I went a little too hard everyday, keeping it from fully healing, and when I started pushing the tempo runs as hard as possible in Feb/March, it started the regression. This time around while rebuilding, to ensure that nothing bad happens, I will be focusing on keeping my heart rate low (under 160) until at least October and not really doing much tempo work until I see what happens for next summer's racing schedule. Nothing is set in stone, but future runs I have in mind are the Hellgate 100k, Rocky Raccoon 100, Mount Cheaha 50K, Moab 12 hour, Desert RATS 50, and Old Dominion 100. Given good health, Rocky, Moab and Desert RATS are for sure and the others (especially Hellgate, which I have to decide on in 1 month due to registration) will be a bit more up in the air.

The future.

2010-07-21T11:29:00.000-07:00

I found out today that my body never fully got over the mono I had in December. I was pretty close, but once I started upping my mileage and then attempted to race the 2 big races (which went extremely poorly, I should add), my body started to shut down again, so my health is fairly poor right now. My sports medicine doctor and I have devised a plan for recovery. I'm taking the next 3 to 4 weeks off and then I get to start up again with a whopping 5 miles a day. However, I get to up my mileage 10% per week, which will give me really big mileage by November/December after a long steady build. I'm debating one potential race in November, but I won't know if I'm going to run it until several months from now. I really have almost nothing else that I'm considering running until Rocky Raccoon 100 in February. I am determined to be VERY fit, have the kind of 100 mile race that my marathon and 50 mile performances indicate I am capable of, and I have come to realize that the only way to run well for 100 miles is to run more than everyone else training for the race. I've experimented with fairly high mileage prevoiusly, getting as high as 135-140 miles in a week, but I've always run it at way too hard of an effort to run that much consistently. Before my health plummeted, however, I noticed that if I would simply stop running so HARD everyday, I could do a heck of a lot more mileage and consistently pound out 20+ miles in the mountains over and over. So, the bottom line is that once I start running again in a few weeks, I'm going to start into the biggest overwork of my aerobic base that I've ever done. I suppose my blog won't be particularly interesting in the next month or 2, but one of my goals with that big mileage is going to be to do something of 30-50 miles as a trainer almost every single weekend, starting in around 2-3 months, so that ought to be an entertaining read I would hope.

Training in Death Valley

2010-06-16T15:54:00.000-07:00

(A view from Zabriskie Point last Thursday, when entering the valley, click to view full image)

Since getting that hydration cleared up, I went down to Death Valley to train on the course with 20 year old veteran Nickademus Hollon (www.nickademus.org), who set the age record for the course at 19 last year. After a series of unforunate events (revolving around repairs of absurd maintenance issues in my new condo) kept me in Utah until this past Friday, I ended up driving out to Death Valley and getting there late Friday night. After camping out in Panamint Valley (part of Death Valley's protected area and the 2nd valley of the Badwater course, from mile 60 to 90), we woke up early Saturday, spent the morning and early afternoon hiking around the valley and exploring old mines, and then went running later in the afternoon.

After having a morning of moderate physical activity, running seemed like a moderately enjoyable activity, but not like something that I was really craving. Nevertheless, I started out at the top of Towne's Pass at 4956', 60 miles into the course, and ran the first 9.5 miles down the pass solo until I met up with Nick just before mile 70 of the Badwater course. Despite it only being around 95 degrees, I had fully drained a bottle and was probably already somehwat down on water, so I grabbed a new bottle, drained it in the next 4 miles while we were running, and continued on. While it wasn't particularly hot, it was surprisingly humid for being in the desert, and it wasn't entirely comfortable to run in. When we got to Panimint Springs, 14 miles in, I took a quick bathroom break, and we were off on the neverending climb out of Panimint Valley to Darwin.

Before writing more, I should mention that shortly into the descent from Towne's Pass, I looked up and realized that I could see all the way to the mountain region marking the finish of the course, the Sierra Nevada, 75 miles in the distance. Such an idea was incredibly overwhelming, so on the way up the Panimint grade, I found myself thinking more and more about how excruciatingly painful 135 miles was going to be and it got to me mentally for a few miles around 20 miles in. Fortunately, Nick's mom Marina was there to forcefeed me with gels, m&ms, and cookies (which is always a good thing on long runs) and give me water, so I quickly bounced back.

This sort of mental low is a little uncommon in training, but it's something that ALWAYS happens in runs over 50 miles, so it was good to experience that in training on a 30 miler and now remember going into the racing season how it was just a mental low that quickly went away.

I am feeling physically prepared for the strenuous Western States 100/Badwater double I have coming up. Most importantly, I am mentally prepared for it. Western States 100 will not be easy, but I am doing my best to consider it a "warmup for Badwater" to make final mental preparations. Obviously, running 100 miles 16 days before running 135 miles is not the best physical preparation possible, but I will be looking to just barely squeak in under 24 hours to get the silver buckle without having to go any faster than possible. Yeah, yeah, my PR is only in the 22s, but I'm a lot more physically and mentally prepared than I was for any of my previous 100s. I almost had all the pieces put together for my last 100 and ran the first 75 miles on par for a PR before absolutely breaking in the last 25 despite it being a course somewhere around 5-6 hours slower than my previous 2. I know exactly which pieces were missing, however, and they have been corrected, so I am positive that I will be able to run strongly the entire way through WS100, get myself a Silver Buckle, and be fully fresh 16 days later when the race of a lifetime starts.

In the mean time, here's a nice picture from the Badwater course, taken while driving back home on Sunday.

The importance of hydration.

2010-06-16T15:28:00.000-07:00

I've had an interesting combination of incredible and miserable running since I last posted. Shortly after my last training post, I underwent a period of fatigue and frequent nausea resulting from running and a total lack of speed, where previously slow paces (7:00/mile, which I can easily hold for hours) would kill me in less than an hour. I underwent a Vo2 max test and found (without quite peaking out due to feeling lightheaded and fatiguedwhile exerting myself) that I registered a 64.5 ml/kg/min (compared to 63.5 last year), so I am probably around a max of 65 right now. However, the test showed that I had very little ability to metabolize fat, which makes no sense based on how I train (and compared to the exact same test from 1 year previously, which showed that I was incredibly efficient at burning fat, requiring only a small percentage of my intake on long races to come from glycogen, ie eating food) and on top of that, I peaked out at a considerably lower work effort despite my higher Vo2 max (an increase in Vo2 is like upgrading to a more powerful engine). Basically, keeping with the car reference, I had somehow developed a more powerful engine, but had a very small tank.

Thinking about this, I could not possibly put the pieces together without factoring that something was physically wrong with my body. I had run as far as 50 miles in recent months with no more than 1000 calories consumed in that time, so based on the tiny percentage of energy coming from fat metabolism during that test, that particular run would either have been physically impossible or would've left my body literally and painfully tearing skeletal muscle from itself to feed my running, which had obviously not happened. The trainer suggested that perhaps I was a. sick, b. dehydrated, or c. anemic.

I went to a sports medicine doctor the next week and found that I was definitely dehydrated and had probably (but fortunately, temporarily) overstressed my kidney, based on abnormally protein levels in my urine (in addition to overconcentrated urine). Due to my dehydration, my kidney had been unable to filter everything out of my urine properly and it left fairly high amounts of albumin. Additionally, it seemed likely based on other testing that I was getting over some sort of flu, so I probably had a combination of factors affecting my odd test and horrible running while back home visiting in MN.

I had been maintaining a weight of approximately 159-161 pounds for awhile, which seemed a bit low to me considering that I was right about 160 3 years ago before I ever lifted weights (and I was very scrawny previously). I got as high as 175 while lifting 2 hours a day when I had a broken foot last fall, in addition to supplementing with lots of creatine, nitrous oxide, whey protein, and hydroxymethylbutyrate. I had since cut all of that out and stopped lifting basically entirely, but maintained considerably more muscle than I previously had, so the 160 number seemed a bit low.

Within 3 days of proper hydration, my weight rebounded to a constant 164 to 166, my symptoms of fatigue went away, and I was running much faster on all of my runs with no increase in effort. The bottom line is, if you're going to spend a ton of time in the sauna, running in the heat, and driving around in a car with the windows up and the heat on full blast, even in the summer, make sure you drink LOTS of water. You can't just weigh the same before and after your sauna session as you'll still pee out a good percentage of that water and eventually get dehydrated if you're not paying attention to your weight over a longer period of time.

Since rehydrating my body (which had been maintaining that low weight for at least 2 to 3 months), I have felt considerably more comfortable in longer runs, back to back long days, tempo runs, and overall increased mileage. In the last week and a half, I have hit 4 long runs of 16, 18, 20, and 30 miles (in that order), all but the 20 miler in 90+ degree weather, and all with at least 4000' of climb, felt extremely comfortable on all of them, and would be doing even more if Western States wasn't in a week and a half, with Badwater 16 days after that.

Training over the last few weeks

2010-05-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

Training has been going well lately. I've been getting in an unbelievable amount of climbing and my last big climb-oriented running consisted a 3.1 mile jaunt up (and 3.1 back down) Grandeur Peak (2800' of climbing the way I ran it) on Friday followed by a really high effort tempo run out of city creek on Saturday with an initial climb of 1000' and lots of additional rolling along the way. The important thing in all of this is to keep myself running and never hiking no matter how steep of terrain I'm on. When I'm running at 8000'+, already very fatigued, and continuing to run at inclines that can easily surpass 30%, it builds an incredible amount of mental strength (not to mention quad and calf strength) to keep going. Some of these peaks, especially Grandeur Peak and Mt Olympus give an incredible view when you reach the peak though, so it's totally worth it. Here are a couple shots from the peak of Grandeur on Friday (I've started running my big climbs with a camera in my water bottle hand-pouch):

(click to view full image)

Saturday's run, I had a pretty bad slam rocking the descent back into City Creek. There are lots of bikers on those trails, so at one point, I glanced over my shoulder to make sure I had no oncoming traffic, tripped over a rock, and slammed hard going a little over 5:00/mile, cutting up my shoulder, hand, elbow, hip, and knee simultaneously. Lots and lots of fun that was...

Other than that, I've had a bunch of really high quality long runs, my favorite recently being a climb from the bottom of Big Cottonwood Canyon, on the road 4.5 miles up the canyon (climbing 1300 feet), then straight up the Mill D North Fork trail. I aimed to get up to Dog Lake, but there was a little too much snow to make a pass near the top and I had to turn around after 2200' of climb on that trail. For an idea of how awesome running in Big Cottonwood is, here's what the road looks like at one point:
(sorry, you have to click it to get the full image, not taken by me)

Up on the trails, you get some beautiful views like this:
(not taken by me)

Another on the road:
(click to view the whole image, not my photo)

Big Cottonwood is quickly becoming one of my favorite places to run, so I'm looking forward to all the snow melting up there in the coming weeks.

Beyond the long runs and pure climbs, I've gotten in some good speed and tempo work. I ran a half marathon a few weeks back that became a lesson in pacing and a good session of "how much pain can you endure". I went out way too fast, hitting the 5k in not much above 17 and started suffering when the big hills kicked in around mile 5. By the end, my legs were really destroyed and I ended up with a super slow 82 minutes. Even factoring a similar performance at sea level (converts to 78:xx), it was a pretty awful time for me, but I'll chalk it up to a poor job pacing and take the tempo workout it gave me (HR around 180 the whole time). Beyond that, I nailed a really solid 3x3 workout recently and just last night hit a flat 8 miles at 5:47 pace. Yesterday's run was fairly painful by the end, especially considering that 5:47s over that distance up here is equivalent in effort 5:35-5:40 at a lower elevation. Workouts like that show me the benefit of starting easy. In my recent half marathon, I went out at 5:30 for the first mile and that became my undoing by the end, but in yesterday's run, I started out in an easy 6:08 and just dropped the pace from there, which helped quite a bit for my ability to maintain the hard effort.

I'll leave you with a view of a mountain I'm craving to run as soon as the snow is gone. Mount Olympus has a straight 4200' vertical over 3.1 miles, no joke. This is the steepest and nastiest climb imaginable with an average gain of 25.6%, split into 2 miles around 20% gain and a last 3.1 at around 35% gain. The last 1.1 is absolutely BRUTAL, but I'm still looking forward to running this again.

(not my photo)

Wildlife on today's mountain run!

2010-04-04T19:49:00.000-07:00

I went out for something like 12 miles today with a pretty huge amount of climb (the total climb was around 3000', while the biggest climb went from 5000' to 5400' in the first mile and then abruptly steepened, climbing another 1100' to 6500' or so in the 2nd mile of the roughly 2 mile ascent).

A section of today's climb (not taken by me):

I expected the run to be very slow despite a pretty high effort level, but what I did not expect was to lose a fair amount of time in a stare-down with a handful of elk. 3/4 of the way up the biggest climb, I happened to glance over a ravine up to a peak about a hundred feet higher than where I was and see a massive elk staring down at me. Elk are generally not very aggressive, especially this time of year, but they can be, and it didn't really seem scared of me. It really couldn't have gotten to where I was very easily, but having a huge muscular animal easily capable of mauling me watching over me while running made things feel a little eerie. 3 mountain lions had been seen within a few miles of where I was just a couple weeks back, so my nerves were up already, and I paused until it eventually walked out of view. A few minutes later, 20-25 elk suddenly bound across the trail about 100-200 feet in front of me. A few more sauntered past and a few of them stopped and just started staring at me, apparently trying to figure out what I was doing on a fairly unused trail way back in the middle of nowhere. I just stood there for a minute or 2 waiting for them to move, but they didn't. After a couple minutes, a few of them started walking down the trail towards me, which definitely made me feel fairly uncomfortable. I shouted at them, but it didn't make them run off; it more just made them pause to reassess the situation. They continued back down towards me, so I eventually just grabbed a couple rocks off the trail, threw them in their general direction, and they finally turned and ran off with the other ones. I'm honestly a little unsure why they would just walk down the trail towards me at a leisurely pace. If they were being aggressive, I would've expected them to do more of a charge then a walk, but if they were particularly scared of me, they wouldn't have approached me.

Nice friendly looking elk (these things weigh up to half a ton...):

Another 15 or 20 of them ran past after the more aggressive seeming ones passed by, but none of the rest seemed to want to stop to look at me. Either way, I was a little spooked for the rest of the run and once I reached the turnaround point, I hauled it back down the trail as fast as I could (though, admittedly, that part of the trail was particularly rocky and tough and there were large sections of the descent where I couldn't break 10 minutes a mile since the footing was so treacherous). I'm really used to running a number of areas of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, its offshoots, and various trails in Mill Creek at this point, and it's easy to think you know everything about it really well, but after hearing about the mountain lions on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail and having a bit of a frightening situation (even if it was me just being a little sissy), I've realized that I really have to be careful and pay attention to what's going on as much as possible when I'm out on these trails.

Moab 100: a bit of an odd report.

2010-03-30T22:54:00.001-07:00

As was clear from my last post, I went down to Moab with the sole intention of running a big PR for 100 miles. Having seen only this picture of the course: http://geminiadventures.com/24U.gif on the official website and not having found an official description, I was expecting a fast and easy desert loop where I could run somewhere around18 to 19 hours. I was quite shocked when I showed up, found out that picture was only relevant for the first and last quarter mile of each 5.37 mile loop, and that the rest of the course mostly looked like: http://twitpic.com/1bdoma , though it was typically much more uneven than this picture. The majority of the course consisted of slickrock or loose sand. Thinking about it, I very quickly realized I would not be able to run much faster than 21 hours on a course like this, so I immediately started debating whether or not to switch down to the 12 hour category and just run 50 miles or so (especially because the footing was awful for nearly the entire loop and I didn't want to risk injury at night). After a loop or 2, I comfortably settled into running with or around 3 guys from the Naval Academy (some of which I've had the pleasure of running or racing with before). 2 other 100 guys were way out front, and it stuck that way the entire time. Had I thought I could win, I'd have allowed myself to run a mediocre time and stayed in, but when the top 2 guys were still way out after 43 miles, I sat down for about 35 minutes to go to the bathroom again and make a few phone calls to get input on whether I should just switch and run 50 miles instead, and realized I was gaining nothing by running the whole 100. Sure, I'd get mental confidence from it, but running 100 miles for no particular purpose is quite detrimental on the body and could have potentially slowed down my progress in Badwater training an unacceptable amount, so I just switched categories, zipped off one more lap (once I actually started the lap, it was one of my fastest of the 9 I did) and then later just ran an extra 1.67 miles on my own to make it a total of 50 miles. My pacing for the 50 miles would've given me a 19:30 100 mile (low 18s had I not sat down and debated what do, which I wouldn't have needed to do), but despite the fact that my legs felt literally totally fresh even after 50 miles, I would've slowed down a lot at night due to the horrendous footing. In hindsight, I feel like I should be a little mad at myself now. It turns out the 2 front runners were both running out of their means and dropped out shortly after I left, so 2 of the 3 guys I was running with finished 1st and 2nd, while the 3rd had knee problems and called it a day after 54 miles. Hindsight is 20/20, but despite the fact that I feel like I could've hung with the top couple guys that finished, I still made the right decision based on the course. I didn't have to take any time off of training and was literally back at it the next day, not to mention that I got one heck of a Saturday long run in. I initially felt somewhat weak for dropping without any sort of injury or problem, but it stems from the fact that Badwater is simply so much more important to me than anything else on my schedule that I wasn't willing to risk the consistency of my training to run the same kind of time that I've previously run for 100 miles. That's about it. Kind of weird, but I'll take it long before I'll take a 22 hour 100 mile that puts me out of commission for weeks.

Another good week.

2010-03-21T21:11:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling reasonably ready for the Moab 100 right now. I had a good week this past week. Highlights would include a solid 15 miler at a pretty high effort level today and a very solid 2x2 mile on Wednesday with a relatively long warmup and cooldown. I did the intervals at just a hair over 5:00/mile (keep in mind that I'm at 5000' elevation), so I was really pleased with it. Today's 15 had somewhere around 2500' of gain with really difficult terrain for most of it and I ran it in 1:53, a really fast time for me for that particular loop. To put it in perspective, I have 14, 15, and 16 mile versions of this loop, and 6 or 7 weeks out from the Fall 2009 marathon that never happened (which I was expecting to run somewhere around 2:40), I hit the 14 mile version in 1:44 and the 16 mile version in 1:58, so I'm pretty close to where I was previously (also, I ran 10 miles at exactly 6:00 last night after skiing pretty hard for a few hours, so I wasn't 100% fresh). I'm just running an 8, 7, and 8 miler this week, so I'll be really fresh going in on Saturday. I'm still seeing this as a bit of an early season test considering that I have no idea who the competition is, but I'm going to run it as fast as I can. I should have a big 100 mile PR next time I post. :)

Lots of running/skiing/sauna time on Sunday

2010-03-16T16:30:00.000-07:00

Sunday was basically my last big day before the Moab 100. Karl had given me a 16 miler on roads on Saturday and 18 on trails on Sunday. However, the weather totally sucked on Saturday, so I kind of put my run off until very late. Still being a wet sloppy blizzard outside, I went to the gym and just put in my 16 miles on a treadmill, starting sometime around midnight, so I actually did the run on Sunday. I was supposed to be running moderately hard (but with enough left over to do a longer run on trails the next day), so I dialed in 6:40/mile and ran the majority of the run at that pace until cruising the last few miles in the mid-high 5s to finish at 1:44 even and a 6:30 average. I went home right away and went to bed, woke up, skied for 3 hours at the Snowbird Resort, came home, and immediately went out the door for my "18-miler". Feeling good near the turnaround of my out and back despite the incredibly sloshy conditions on the trail which often irritate my legs somewhat, I tacked on an extra 2 miles to make it a 20 miler. I ran the 20 miles with rolling hills the whole way and 3 very significant climbs (two around 7-800' and one around 500') and well over 4000' of total gain in a little over 2:50 for about an 8:30/mile average. An hour later, I jogged another 2.5 miles with Jess as a cooldown and finished everything up by doing some sauna time (sat there for 20 minutes at 175 degrees).

Oh, and the best part is that while coming back on the trail, I recalled that a FAMILY of mountain lions had been spotted on the trail I was running on and caught on a security camera in a parking lot adjacent to the trail several days prior. If I had remembered this, I would've taken another route, but it was too late to do that, so I just ran 4 or 5 miles through that area holding a sharp 2 pound rock in each hand in case I had a run-in, feeling incredibly sketchy every time a car drove by. I'm pretty sure I would've had a rather tough time defending myself against 3 mountain lions, but whatever, I felt slightly less afraid of dying while holding the rocks. haha...

Long story short, I did 38.5 miles of running, 3 hours of skiing (which is a very tough workout when skiing at Snowbird), and a decent sauna workout in one calendar day. Interestingly enough, my neck was slightly sore the next day, but everything else was fine.

Moab 100? Why not...

2010-03-10T14:13:00.000-08:00

I was planning on running the Antelope Island 50 in a few weeks, but the registration somehow closed despite the race specifically claiming not to have an entry cap. I had originally considered Moab 100 instead of AI50 to begin with, so I just opted to get in a good 100 mile desert trainer. I know that my base isn't "exceptional" right now, but it's still pretty good and I was definitely in the best shape of my life before I broke my foot on Halloween, so I'm not too concerned about the distance.

What are my goals? Well, first off, to run well the whole way without ever really regressing to walking. Second, I want to absolutely nail my nutrition. Third, I want to have as close to even splits as possible. Fourth, I want to win if the race (assuming it isn't more competitive than it's been the last few years). I should say though that if I hit the first 3 goals and a bunch of competitive people show up and beat me, I will still be very happy.

I'm planning to start out around 10:00/mile and just hold that pace. I will aim to take incredibly minimal breaks, eat lots of high calorie foods (donuts, cookies, etc) at the end of every lap, eat 2 gels per 6 mile loop, take 1 salt pill per hour (it won't be that hot, but I will take more if necessary), and keep a steady pace and effort the entire time.

Badwater. It's on.

2010-02-28T21:45:00.001-08:00

I've been accepted into the 2010 Badwater Ultramarathon. 135 miles, Death Valley, July.

In other news, I've been hitting lots and lots of good running. Starting to get back into the "lots of long runs" style of training, but building up to it slowly thanks to Karl's awesome coaching. I'm doing 6 days a week, 1 day off, with 1 easy day, 2 moderate days, 1 hard day, and 2 moderately hard long runs (both on the weekend). Last week I hit 14 and 18 through very hilly mountain trails on Friday and Sunday with 9 miles in between, this weekend I hit 13 and 20 with 6 miles in between. Next weekend I'll bump up to 16s on both saturday and sunday, followed by 16/18 the next saturday/sunday. I'm doing a 50 mile the last weekend of march as well as one in late april, and probably one in may, and somewhere along the way, I'll be up to back to back 30 milers, which sounds like a pretty aggressive way to train my legs to be ready for long runs. On the "hard day" side of things, I hit that 13.1 trainer in 1:13:28. Last week, i somehow managed to hit 5 miles at a 3% decline (1.5% would account for the elevation, the extra 1.5 made it about 40 seconds fast) in 24:55. I hit the first mile in an easy 5:25 then upped the pace in miles 2-4 to 4:54, 4:56, 4:54. Realizing I could squeeze my way under 25 if I pushed it really hard, I pounded out a 4:43 last mile and finished up in 24:55. Not too bad. I was in the low 27s in 8 months ago for a 5 mile split in a poorly run and somewhat downhill 10k (with a couple legitimate uphills thrown in). I could've probably eked out high 26s at the time for 5 miles, but this was a nice surprise. I'm probably right around the shape I was in right before I got injured at this point and now it's just a matter of building my base over the next 4 months without overtraining.

Training back around normal.

2010-02-16T13:54:00.000-08:00

I haven't really posted my weekly reports, but I've been getting in some really good running. I haven't done much of any speed work again yet, but I've gotten in some solid tempo runs. My most recent long day was 16 miles and I've got 16 and 20 in the same weekend coming up shortly, which should be pretty fun, considering that I've been running my longer runs pretty hard.

This past week, I was supposed to do a 12 and was allowed to run it fairly hard, so I decided to just tack on an extra 1.1 and see what I could hit for 13.1 on a treadmill. Given that I'm running at 5000', I put it downhill at a 1% decline, which, in hindsight, now that I've run the calculation via http://www.runworks.com/calculator.html, doesn't even completely make up for the 5000' fully. Somehow I managed to hit it in 1:14:28, which supposedly corresponds to 1:11:31 for an equally downhill course at sea level or 1:13:00 for a flat course at sea level.

Do I believe I can run a half marathon in 1:13? Well, it sounds unreasonable, but the treadmill I ran on was pretty high-end and probably pretty accurate. I definitely felt like I was hitting around 5:40s (I've done a handful of tempo workouts right around 5:40, so I know what it feels like) and I think it was pretty credible. I started to feel how fast I was going pretty early and wasn't sure if I was going to hold on, but I managed to do so. I've been feeling like I'm fully recovered lately speed and endurance wise, so maybe it's possible. I haven't raced a 10 miler or a half marathon in years, so it's hard to really say that I don't think I can run around 1:13 to 1:15 in race conditions. We'll see though.

I'm back in business!

2010-02-03T13:14:00.000-08:00

My foot injury and mono are both 100% kicked. Training is starting to get really good again. I'm still consistently in the sauna as a means of prepping for 2010 Badwater and I'm sending in my application for that literally tonight. I spent a ton of time on it and I think it's about as good as I can get it at this point. Wish me luck!

Oh, and PS, I'm not doing Rocky Raccoon. It's simply too soon. I don't doubt that I could finish the race, but I wouldn't run a good time, so I'm waiting until late March to race again, at which point I'm either running the Antelope Island Buffalo Run 50 Miler or the Moab 100 Miler.

Running again shortly.

2009-12-23T22:21:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling recovered from everything, so I'm going to play it safe, take 1 more week off, and start running as soon I get back to Utah, probably on the 2nd. I'm very pumped to start hitting it again. I am going to take the first week relatively easy since I haven't run in almost 2 months, but I'm going to waste no time in rebuilding my base after that.

5 1/2 weeks from the start of retraining will bring the Rocky Raccoon 100. It's definitely just a "B" race, but I want to be ready. My goals are big for this race, but anything sub-20 won't be disappointing since I'm not going to have that big of a base going in. Still though, I feel very confident about this year's race since I am one year more mentally prepared and smarter about nutrition and racing very long distances in general. This is MY turn to run a sick time in a 100 miler and it's going down this February. Expect full weekly training reports starting in just over 2 weeks. :)

More time off.

2009-12-14T12:10:00.001-08:00

My foot is better, but apparently I have mono. At this point, I'm basically just going to say screw it and start running again on January 1st. If I'm just building base, it's not exactly strenuous and my first week or 2 will be light anyway, so I'm not going to take another month off here for this stupid crap to go away completely.

Foot is feeling better.

2009-12-13T13:24:00.001-08:00

I will very likely be running again in about a week.

Incredible memories and running nostalgia evoked by music.

2009-12-06T21:45:00.000-08:00

I just finally setup my old desktop computer for the first time since leaving Baltimore since my laptop is temporarily unusable. I had never ripped the majority of my music collection to my laptop due to sheer laziness and just copied like the top 40 or 50 albums I was listening to at the time when I put the most recent hard-drive in it. I was browsing through my music collection on here and found a tremendous amount of old stuff that I used to listen to while running in Baltimore that I haven't heard in months or even years and I am truly shocked by what this is evoking in me.

Discovering some of this music is just awesome to me and it brings back some of the happiest memories of my running career, if not my life. It sounds crazy, but some of the times when I've been most at peace with the universe and just content in general have come from runs through the "Dreaded" Druid Hills, Robert E Lee Park, or Loch Raven Reservoir.

Jason Becker's entire "Perspective" album, which he wrote from a wheel chair completely paralyzed with ALS, a particularly special album to me even apart from any running connections, brings back vivid imagery from long runs through Loch Raven Reservoir, a beautiful place that I wish I had spent more time at.

Dream Theater's "Honor Thy Father", from their prog metal masterpiece "Train of Thought", reminds me of the struggle of pushing my way through the Gilman Trail on 5k-race-pace pickups (of course after hammering the Loyola hill on North Charles and looping around Gilman High School). That album was definitely not one to ever leave my immediate collection, but it's interesting that after listening to some of my other older music from my collection and I start thinking about old runs through Baltimore, memories come back with this as well. One specific section reminds me of one specific part of one specific run on one specific part of the trail, late at night in a state of combined agony and bliss despite being with nothing but my shoes, shorts, headlamp, and music.

Symbyosis' "Famine" from "On the Wings of Pheonix", one of my technical metal guilty pleasures, brings back memories of dodging the cracks in the sidewalks along North Charles just after crossing West University while prepping for a "big" climbs up the hill in front of that ritzy private middle school just up the road and then in front of Loyola while doing a very hard 7 mile tempo run that I was especially fond of.

Between the Buried and Me's entire "Colors" album, an undefineably odd masterpiece, reminds me of the loop around Fort McHenry and the sheer terror of crossing the 10 mile mark in the 2007 Baltimore Marathon way too fast in somewhere around 65 minutes and wondering how I was possibly going to hold on for another 16.2 miles (my first ever Boston Qualifier in 3:04, so I guess I managed to survive at least somewhat).

Not all of the music connects to good times though. I remember listening to Rachmaninoff's irreconcilably despondent 2nd Symphony, 3rd Movement (at least to me) while crushing my body through the poorly cleared, thorny, and rocky back half of Robert E Lee park during a very long trail-hopping run, tears absolutely exploding from my eyes during one of the few times in recent life that I truly let myself absolutely break down as nothing in my life seemed to be going as I had anticipated.

On a lighter note, Origin's absurdly heavy "Informis Infinitas Inhumanitas" super-death-metal album reminds me of the one time I was crazy enough to bring music this fast (on someone else's recommendation) to an 8-10 mile run with 10x60 second extremely-high-effort hill repeats right in the middle on the nasty double-switch-back hill in Druid Hill Park (if you've ever run the road loop circling the zoo starting on the side by the cemetery mini-car thing, whatever it is, you know EXACTLY what hill I'm talking about).

Veni Domine's highly epic prog rock "Last Letter from Earth" from their album "Spiritual Wasteland" reminds me of doing an easy long run along Lake Avenue and around the outside of Robert E Lee Park, up into Towson along Jappa Road, and back on the incredibly sketchy York Road, which had me no longer running "easy" by any means and looking over my shoulder every 30 seconds or so.

One of my most cherished runs in my entire time in Baltimore was a crazy 40 mile trainer I did from North Baltimore to Washington DC, almost entirely along route one. I contemplated this run for the longest time before I got the balls up to do it once, but that one time was enough to build some incredible memories. The mindset in 6 1/2 hours of training is not whatsoever similar to the mindset in long 6+ hour races and I completely phased out of reality and forgot that I was even running for literally 30 minutes at one point. However, I could never forget listening to Megadeth's highly satiric "United Abominations" title track while descending a long gradual downhill on Route 1 shortly after buying Hawaiian Punch, water, and a Snickers bar at convenience store, convincing the store clerk that my Hammer Nutrition HEED (a pure white powder in a ziplock bag that was to be mixed with the water) was cocaine.

Last and perhaps most most vivid are the memories from Shadow Gallery's beautiful prog rock concept albums "Tyranny" and "Room V", which follow each other in the same story line, and which I nearly always listened to in succession. Hearing either of these reminds me of an eerie yet serene run through Robert E Lee Park shortly before the setting of the sun, looking out over the lake to see a beautiful yet incredibly unnerving mist settling. I felt completely effortless and nearly out of body, yet I was in a terrified enough mindset (after all, a stripper had very recently been murdered in this park) to be running with one earbud out and nearly freaking out to the drone of a lightrail passing into the decaying horizon a mile or 2 away.

What does running mean to me? I love to race and respectably fast times over distances previously unfathomable to me can be a reward for the hard work I put in, but nothing compares with the memories I've built up during that work; I wouldn't trade those for anything. It's really bizarre that the simple act of using a computer that I don't normally use can evoke such a palette of emotion and due to the highly reflective mood I've been in for the past few days, I'm glad that I plugged it in today and spent much of the evening just sitting back and remembering the good times I had while running in Baltimore.

A view I frequently saw at Loch Raven Reservoir.

The now structurally unstable and literally crumbling entrance to Robert E Lee Park that I used several times a week for years.

Just about to start up the climb past Loyola College on North Charles Street.

Western States 2010

2009-12-06T21:31:00.000-08:00

I just got into the 2010 Western States 100, so I will be running it. This will be a really interesting and tough double if I also get into Badwater since the 2 races are so close together (16 days apart), so if I get to do both, I'll have to take it a little easy at Western, whatever that means in a 100. hah.

I stress-fractured my foot.

2009-11-28T16:13:00.000-08:00

So, I apparently stress-fractured my foot, likely due to the pounding on pure roads for all but the very first and last tiny bit at helen klein. I had it x-rayed and they found nothing, but it still hurt nearly 2 weeks later, so I got it checked again and they found new bone growth (but no crack since you apparently have to hit it at just the right angle to see the crack), which means i had fractured it. IE, it's been broken for around 3 1/2 weeks now and I'm supposed to rest completely for around 4 qwwka after diagnosis which was 1 1/2weeks ago, mostly since I didn't entirely rest for the first 2 weeks after they convinced me that it was just a sprain or something. Either way, my fall racing schedule basically didn't happen. No half marathon last weekend and no Vegas marathon next weekend. It's definitely getting better and based on the current rate of progress, I expect the discomfort to be entirely gone in regular walking and daily activities within a week.

I should be completely healed and able to start running again in around 2 1/2 weeks, which hopefully gives me enough time to throw enough base back in to my legs to go at least 100 miles in 24 hours in a new year's eve 24 hour run down in Phoenix. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, but I'm going to try. There's no better way to build my base up quickly then to have a few weeks to do TONS of slow but long mileage and then test myself in an attempt to do 100 miles and then whatever else I can manage in a 24 hour period.

I'll probably not really post much until I'm healed, but things aren't all that bad I guess. I was getting into pretty sick shape, so I'm obviously extremely disappointed that I couldn't run my fall marathon, which I imagine would've knocked 10+ minutes off my pr, but a good bit of rest will be useful going into a long string of races and hard training that will basically have to last from February until July.

In the mean time, I've been swimming for at least a half an hour 5 or 6 days a week so I will be able to fulfill my obligation of completing an Ironman Triathlon in exchange for Ryan McGrath running 100 miles. Additionally, I've been lifting pretty hard. I've got a 3 day split in the gym of chest/triceps, back/biceps, and shoulders (never done any legs since it interferes pretty severely with running if I work hard at it at all). My main focus has been on chest/triceps lately and I seem to be gaining faster than normal now that I can't run for a little while. When I came out to Utah in June, I was decline-pressing a max of about 180 and as of today it's up to 260 (I typically decline press rather than flat bench to get as much chest definition as possible with the minimum body weight gain). It looks like I'm on track to hit my yearly goal of 275, which would be pretty cool. I'm sure no-one that runs cares about my lifting goals, but it's still pretty fun to work hard in the gym and see the numbers go up. Lifting and adding extra mass to my body obviously isn't beneficial to running, but my body fat has decreased since I started lifting pretty hard last year, so I really haven't added that much overall weight and I've never noticed it affecting my running at all, so I'm going to keep doing it.

So yeah, foot = fractured, but I'm not going crazy about it. That's about it for now.

A few other new things... (sort of injury, cross training, etc)

2009-11-11T15:26:00.000-08:00

After HK50 (or HK51.5 as I have been calling it... haha...), I felt pretty recovered after 2 days, so I started running again last monday with a short run on Monday and Tuesday. I pushed way too hard on Wednesday, warming up for a couple miles and then hitting an extremely hilly 7 mile course (over 100' gain and loss/mile average) at 5000' in about 7:00 for the first mile and then 6:00/mile after that, which kind of beat me up since my body was still somewhat in recovery mode. Thursday I took it easy for 8 miles, but on Friday, I woke up with a fairly sore right foot.

Walking around on it on Friday, it felt generally disagreeable, but not anywhere near enough to keep me from running. I jogged from my house to the University field house to do a quick 8x400 workout on the very tight unbanked 211 meter indoor track and felt fine on the way, doing the exactly 3 mile route I take in just over 19 minutes with extreme ease (average heart rate 155) due to the fairly huge downhill from my house to campus. Starting in on the 400s, though, my foot started to feel a little finicky. Wanting to do them all in around 69 or 70, I did the first one in 70, feeling fine. On the 2nd one, my foot started to get irritated and I had to let up a little on the very sharp turns, so I ended up hitting a 71. On the 3rd one, it hurt a little more and I had to let up even more for a 72. On the 4th one, the pain became extreme and I nearly walked my way through the turns to hit a 73. I decided after that that something must be seriously wrong, so I quit the workout before serious damage could be done. I sat down and massaged my foot for about 15 minutes, debated asking someone I knew for a ride home, but decided not to be "needy" and that I could walk the 3 miles home. That proved to be a rather bad idea as walking 3 miles on it ended up being rather painful. When I was sitting there massaging it, someone had said "better make sure you don't get a stress fracture with all that running!" and I started to realized while walking home and experiencing pretty bad pain that I might have one. When I got home, I looked up the symptoms for a stress fracture and realized that I had everything except the bruise.

I went to bed and woke up on Saturday with a huge purple/red bruise over my sore spot, which seemed like really bad news. I took Sat/Sun off running and hobbled around in pain all weekend before Sunday night, when I started to realize that it wasn't QUITE as sore as before. I woke up on Monday, feeling slightly better, and went into the doctor, who x-rayed it and found absolutely no evidence of even a slight hairline crack. His official diagnosis was that it was something tendon-related, maybe a sprain. Honestly, that kind of sounds like crap to me since the bone itself was pretty sore, but who knows...

As of today (wednesday), I'm feeling mostly better but still a bit sore. I'm going to try a very short run tonight and do it on something very hilly that will keep my pace super slow (probably just up and down a small mountain for like 3 miles total running).

I've picked up swimming in the last few days as a means of getting some cardio work in and found it to be incredibly tough (not to mention that my triceps, rear deltoids, and hamstrings, are all getting pretty sore). My sense of pace is pretty much terrible and I can't really seem to do more than 100 yards at a time without getting my heart rate up in the 180s and having to rest a minute, so I've just been doing about 1000 yards a day, but I can feel that it's working my body relatively hard. I guess I'm going to have to learn to swim at a legitimate effort level at some point if i want to actually be able to do an Ironman next year as part of the "I have do an Ironman, you have to run 100 miles" bet I have going with Ryan Mcgrath. haha... Honestly, I think we're both a little bit screwed for this...

Totally late race recap for Helen Klein 50

2009-11-11T14:40:00.000-08:00

Race recap from Helen Klein 50 (51.5).

Flew out to Sacramento for the HK 50 on Halloween. Before the race they announced that it would be "a little bit" long due to construction that they had found out about 2 days before the race, causing a last minute course re-route. I'm pretty sure I had heard someone say that it was supposed to be .25 miles long, but I was in the bathroom when they were announcing stuff, so I never heard the official scoop. Anyway, talking to 6 or 7 people with GPS watches at the finish, everyone had it between 51.24 and 51.8x, so it was probably around 51.5.

Anyway, the race started out and Chikara Omine, the Japanese-American 50-mile superstar just took off at somewhere just a little above 6:00/mile, IE a totally ridiculous pace for 50 miles for anyone other than him. No-one else wanted to go fast so I settled into 2nd for the first couple miles. The race was on real trails for the first 2 miles or so and we hit the first aid station when my watch said a little over 3 miles (though their splits were instantly off and it said something absurd like 2.2 miles).

After doing 7:30s for few miles, a couple guys caught me and passed me, which kind of made me feel a bit relieved, since I was kind of worried about being a fair amount ahead of everyone other than Chikara. After 5 miles, I went off course for .1 miles, which really pissed me off. There was a ribbon going into the woods, but I guess it was from another race or something. I had been pretty sure that the race never touched "trail" trail after the first 2 miles, but I knew there was some sort of construction, so I had guessed it may have been a detour. Anyway, when I got back to the correct parkway, a couple other guys had caught me, one of them being Sean Lang, who apparently had run probably just slightly ahead of me for a good chunk of Cascade Crest 100 until I totally blew up at 76 and he continued in to finish in the low 21s (me barely surviving my way to a high 26s). Sean had done 6:50 at American River, and I thought this course would be faster, so I figured running near him seemed smart. We continuned to go around 7:30s for awhile and eventually we found ourselves running in a pack in 4th to 8th with Sean, 2 guys he knew, and Adrian Shipley, a recent college grad who had run some totally sick 10k times collegiately (31:40 PR). After maybe 15 miles, Adrian and I decided that Sean and crew were pushing slightly too hard so we let them go and continued at 7:30 pace or so.

The aid stations mileages continued to be horribly off, fluctuating between too long and too short (for example, at one point, the markers between stations stated somewhere right around 3.0 miles, but my watch put at nearly 5). On the other hand, the aid that said 21.1 or 21.2 to the turnaround (which was supposed to be at 24.7 due to an extra .6 miles run past the beginning of the course on the way back) took around 15 minutes to run, so it was only 2 miles or so. In total, though, the marker came up as 25.55 on my watch instead of 24.7, which mentally did not help things. When running at a relatively decent pace for many many hours, each extra mile tacked on to the course mentally hurts quite a bit, so I was not excited about the fact that it would be 51.1 total just to get back to the start plus a bit more after that. I don't recall the exact time that Adrian and I hit the halfway point, but after standing around eating for maybe 2 minutes, we went back and hit the marathon in around or slightly under 3:20.

Still feeling pretty good, but certainly hurting somewhat from running a marathon in 3:20 (which is over 1:00/mile off my PR, but still not like a totally easy jog), we soon caught up to Sean, who was starting to suffer. I believe one person had passed us in the first half after Sean and crew took off, so when we re-passed Sean, we were running 7th and 8th.

Coming up to about 30 miles, I started to let myself think about how much it was going to suck to do 20+ miles more at this pace and I just started to mentally unravel. At mile 31, I had believed that I was within a quarter mile of the station due to the faulty markers, so I told Adrian I was just going to walk it off to the station to stretch my legs and he said he'd be at the station for probably a few minutes, so I'd just catch up to him. I'd forgotten that this was the supposed 3 mile station-to-station section that was actually way too long, so I ended up walking a mile before I got there since I kept thinking I must almost be there. When I got to the station, I was mentally starting to break, so I sat down for 12 minutes and drank a couple cups of sprite and a can of mountain dew. Sean came through the station still running (just a bit slower) and left before I did, leaving me in 9th place. Leaving the station, I still felt totally mentally down about the rest of the race and walked another 1/2 mile or so, at which point I just suddenly flipped out on myself. I literally started screaming at myself while walking down the parkway and got so pissed at myself that I got running again.

Realizing that an extremely hard effort for the rest of the race could still get me under 7 hours for 50 miles, I started to push once again. I knew I couldn't hit that 7:30 pace for the remainder and it would kill my race if I tried, but I settled into an 8:30 or so pace, which I held for about the rest of the race.

Despite slowing, I started to catch other runners soon. I eventually passed Sean and 2 other guys, getting me up to 6th by mile 40 or so. By mile 40, since I had started to take a little more time in the aid stations (maybe 2 minutes or so every few miles) I had to do 10 miles in 80 minutes to go under 7 hours. I realized this probably wasn't going to happen, but kept pushing to see what I could do. Everything after 31 was pretty painful since I had mentally broken for a little while in there, but by mile 40, my legs were starting to hurt and my feet were just getting tired of the continual pounding on pavement.

I caught back up to Adrian somewhere around 45 or 46 since he had apparently just crashed after 42 miles or so. I knew Sean wasn't far back, so I didn't really get to stop to make pleasentries. From about 40 on, Sean had been running slightly slower than me, but not really stopping in the stations for much time at all and he would repass me when I would stop for a minute or 2 to eat salt, food, etc. By mile 48 or so I thought I had him beat and 5th place secured, but a long hill from 49 to 49.5 got the best of me and I walked a bit at the end. Turning around at the top of the hill, I saw him jogging up and I saw that he saw me, so I took off as fast as I could (at that point about 7:00 minute pace). I kept running hard, but he had seen me walking and realized he could catch me, so, shortly after my watch said 50.00 miles in 7:08, he passed me.

I was pretty pissed at myself for allowing that to happen, but I knew 6th was mine and just didn't care what kind of time I ran for 51.x miles since I had split out the 50.0 on my watch already, so I just slowed down and jogged in to the end, finishing in 7:21.

When I finished, I found out that Sean had won the 18-29 category and gotten a really sweet hand-made clock with an award plaque on it while I got the 2nd place age group award very similar to the generic finisher award (cool, but definitely nowhere near the clock...).

All in all, the big problem was that I went out too fast. 6th overall and 7:08 for the 50 split isn't terrible, but if I had gone out slower, I probably could've gone at least 30 minutes faster if I hadn't been so stupid about my pace at the beginning. I lost 23 minutes just between 31 and 31.5 when I walked 1.5 miles in 11 minutes slower than it would've taken to run it and sat down for 12 minutes, so just chopping that out would've put me at 6:45, just 5 minutes from the coveted 8:00/mile 50 mile.

Karl Meltzer, my coach, had encouraged me not to be so aggressive as to go out in 7:30s, but I figured that the smart plan to be able to hit around a 6:30 was to go out at 6:15 50 mile pace since I'd have to stop a bit more in the 2nd half undoubtedly. However, I think that if I had gone out in 7:50s, I probably could've held on. If things had started to come undone around 40-41instead of 30-31, the prospect of only 10 miles remaining probably wouldn't have been enough to mentally break me down to the point of walking. In my marathon PR, for example, I started feeling pretty crappy 10 miles from the finish, so I know it's doable to hold on for 10 miles at the end of a race without sacrificing much of the pace at all.

I'm not sure when I'll have the opportunity to do another fast 50 miler (probably not until this same race next fall since I probably won't be able to run either the Jed Smith Road 50 or American River 50 next year), but I'm pretty confident I can run a fair amount faster the next time, especially if it is a year from now. Maybe at that point, 7:30/mile pace will be a feasible plan...

A few really solid workouts this week.

2009-10-19T22:11:00.000-07:00

I've had a really solid string of runs since my last posting, so I thought I'd post them.

Wednesday last week: 10x400. First pure 400s workout since high school probably, but I can already tell a difference since doing it. I expected to average about 75s, but I averaged 72s. I did the first one in 70 since I wasn't paying attention to splits and then did most of the rest in 73s and then hit the last 2 in 71 and 68. I felt that I could've easily done 15 at my 72 average, but the schedule just called for 10 and I guess the point of a 400 workout isn't to totally trash my body. Having a little more speed than expected, especially on a crappy non-banked indoor track with sharp turns that probably cost me some time was definitely a good surprise.

Thursday last week: 10k. Did 10k in 37:50. Doesn't sound fast, but the course was at around 4700' elevation average and had over 600' of gain and drop, so it was extremely hilly. Didn't quite go race effort, but it still translates to an equivalent performance better than my atrocious PR of 35:08 (though when I ran my 35:08 i was capable of sub 34 if I hadn't run like a frickin retard and split the first 2 miles in 10:15...)

Friday last week: 10 miles in Denver since I was there for the Rachmaninoff Festival. Fairly hilly, but less than Salt Lake City, the equivalent of up and down 3/4 of the Boston Marathon's Heartbreak Hill each mile, IE WAAAAAY easier than the horrendous hills I hit on the trails here. Not a big effort, but put in 6:30s. Also, interesting to note that I walked approximately 12 miles on Friday since I had a hotel 4.5 miles out of downtown and walked the roundtrip in addition to walking around exploring the city for awhile... haha... Surprisingly, I felt that walking that far was somewhat strenuous and came to the conclusion that running a marathon anywhere above 7 minutes per mile would probably be less painful than walking one since I'm just not used to walking so far and it actually strains my quads after 12 miles. haha...

Saturday: no running, my off day, but walked about 10 miles, my legs felt awfully bad for walking that far.

Sunday: My pained quads recovered quickly, probably thanks largely to the 3-4 grams of hydroxymethylbutyrate I take daily. I did a 16 ish mile trail run (by 16-ish I mean that I had it logged as 16, but I think my GPS cuts it short in a few wooded sections, so it may have been a bit longer) in 1:58 with 2600' feet of gain. This translates to about 6:30s @ flat sea level, but the trail is pretty darn technical and has a lot of rocks, so the effort level for 6:30s is much higher here. I was keeping my heart rate right around 170 the whole way, but it dropped on a handful of really technical rocky downhills that were impossible to run at that effort due to the hazard of tripping involved with running that fast, so I averaged 168. I'm looking to be able to average right around the magic 170 at Vegas, so being able to hold it there for 2 hours without trashing myself with over a month and a half to train still was a very good sign. When I finished this run, I declared to my roommate that I thought it was the single best trail run I've ever had in Salt Lake City.

Today, Monday: 7 miles. I said I'd go easy and I did, well, for the first 5 miles at least. I ran on a really good treadmill that I actually believe is credible (in the past, specific paces between here and a track at the same elevation have matched exactly for heart rate values). I did the first mile in 7:00 flat and it felt like a total joke, so I did the next 4 in 6:30s (I was running at a 6:31 and just cranked it every once in awhile to knock a second off each mile). By mile 5, which I hit in 33:00, I was getting bored with the super easy pace (not to mention that my heart rate was barely at 160, which is literally the effort I was able to put in for just over 9 hours in my super tough last 50 miler), I ran mile 6 in 5:59, which surprisingly only brought me to a 172 heart rate. As you recall, last week, a 172 was getting 6:17s or something at this elevation, but I literally feel like my strength is multiplying on a daily basis. I could tell that my legs were running really fast at this point but it just felt insanely effortless. Anyway, after mile 6, it still felt pretty easy, so I cranked up the pace some more for the last mile. I was going to do it in somewhere around 5:30, but I just kept upping it and finished the last .2 at 4:40/mile, so I did mile 5 in 5:21 for a total of 42:20 or an average of 6:20 per mile. I had been wondering if my heart rate monitor was slightly off, but I got up to 190 in the final bit of the run and while it felt very strenuous, I was definitely not maxed, so I believe it actually was accurate and 6:31s really did correspond to a sub-160 effort. Oh, and yes, the treadmills I run on here actually go faster than 12 mph... They actually go to 15 mph, so when I feel like cranking out a 4:00 mile on a treadmill, I can do it... haha... Either way, going harder at the end of a 7 mile easy run doesn't seem detrimental to me. I did it for a short enough period of time that my legs don't have to recover or anything and I'll still get to reap some rewards from working on my speed.

One other note, the fact that I held a 161 for my last trail 50 and that 6:30s on flat corresponds sub 160 BPM heart rate does NOT mean I'm going to go run 6:30s for 50 miles. (My current marathon PR is only 6:36/mile, so that should be obvious.) I guess what that means is that my cardiovascular system is capable of doing a 50 that fast, it's just that my legs are nowhere near strong enough to withstand that pace for so long. On the trails, I'm not running as fast, so my legs don't really break down the same way and I'm able to withstand a much higher effort level and cardiovascular taxation. I've talked to bikers who can hold 180+ heart rates for 4+ hours, which would be unfathomable for running, but it's simply due to the fact that the bikers aren't pounding their legs into oblivion on asphalt. Trail running is the same thing. The insane hilliness on a course like Mt Dis 50 prevents one from running fast and therefore prevents the legs from getting destroyed (given good hillwork of course), but the effort level remains pretty high for a very long period of time.

Some interesting heart rate info...

2009-10-13T21:18:00.000-07:00

So, today I had an 8 mile run that wasn't supposed to be at a moderate effort, not going anaerobic, but not going easy. I decided to go 8 miles on flat at 6:15s at 5000', which I seemed to remember being about 6:07s at sea level, which is pretty close to the marathon pace I'd have to run to do a 2:40. It turns out, it corresponds to 6:02s on sea level, in fact about a 2:38 pace, according to the Jack Daniels Calculator that I am so fond of. I've figured that if I have a great day in December (assuming I continue to train well), I could probably hold an average of 169 or 170 for the duration of 26.2 miles. 6:15s at 5000', similar to 6:02s at sea level, got me an average HR of somewhere between 171 and 172 today, so I'm cardiovascularly right around being able to run a 2:41 or so right now if I can hold up the 169 or 170 the whole way. My legs probably can't hold up on roads well enough to run that right now, but I have 2 months and that's plenty of time to get my legs fully from trail form to road form.

My short distance speed and my ability to keep a lower heart rate at a fast pace is definitely getting better as well, which is a good sign. I did a 4.8 mile tempo on roads the other day (was supposed to be 5, I guess I'm cheating... haha...). The run had very serious hills the first 2 being straight uphill with 600' gain in 14:30, and from 2 to 4.8 rolling downhill (net 600' downhill, but about 250' up, 850' down) in 14:50. Obviously, despite the rolling nature, this is going to be faster than flat, but the 5000' elevation still costs me time. The last 2.8 corresponds to 15:20 on flat at sea level, or just under a 17:00 5k. This doesn't sound fast, but my heart rate averaged only about 177 and never crossed 180 except for the last 1/4 of a mile or so when I picked up my pace to 4:40/mile on the heavily downhill finish. In an actual race, I'd average WAY higher than 177 (actually averaged 191 in a 10k), so the fact that 177 puts me only 25 seconds off pace for a 5k PR during the last 2.8 miles of a run means that I could destroy my marathon PR on a good course right now.

Back to thinking about the marathon... I think with some good training focused on roads, I should be on track to be able to get right around that 2:40 point by December, though I'm sure it will take everything I have to race a marathon in 2:40 this year. I think my half marathon I'm running 2 weeks out from the race should give me a good idea, but I really think it should be possible at this point.

Really kicking it hard in that speed gear and how I plan to break 2:40 this year.

2009-09-22T20:47:00.001-07:00

I've decided that Las Vegas MUST be a breakthrough race for me. 2:40 sounded like an awfully fast goal considering that I'm not going to be doing my fall marathon on a net 2600' drop course anymore, but I've decided that I still think it will be attainable. In the past, I had never done enough track work and very serious tempo workouts to obtain my maximum potential at the time in a marathon, but this time it's different. I'm doing a weekly road tempo now, a very strenuous long run every thursday (should be at least 150 minutes every week at this point), and a weekly 3x3 mile on Saturday in addition to a 3 other runs (1 easy and 2 moderate days on trails) and an off day, totalling around 65-70 miles a week, half of the mileage being in the mountains or at least on extremely hilly trails, far more difficult than any trail I had available to me in Baltimore.

My first attempt at the 3x3 9 days ago failed miserably and I quit after 2 intervals after being totally demoralized by a torrential downpour and heavy winds. Yesterday, however, was much different. I went out and did the workout slightly more conservatively than I could've (heart rate averaging 175 or 176 when I could feasibly due the workout at 179), but it was a nice first super tough threshold-boosting workout after not doing one for 2+ months. My times were 17:40, 17:48, 17:39, but I feel confident that a maximal effort for the workout could net me all 3 in less than 17:30, which I plan on attempting to hit in my next 3x3 workout on Saturday now that I know I can stomach the workout again. Also, keep in mind that I'm running these on a track at 4700' elevation, which costs me nearly 10 seconds per mile at an equivalent effort, even though I'm well acclimated at this point. In July, I had done a 3x3 at 5:40/mile at 4800' elevation, much faster than my 5:54 I did yesterday, but the indoor track I did it on was probably a few seconds short per mile, not to mention that I was running in a nice climate controlled environment free from wind.

Why the 3x3? In my previous marathons, the one thing I lacked physiologically was a high lactate threshold. I had a very strong endurance base going into most of my recent marathons and going 26.2 miles wasn't a big deal, but my legs were not able to hold up to the pace that my aerobic system was capable of for the whole distance, so I was stuck in the low 2:50s while my heart and lungs were capable of propelling me to a hypothetical 2:35, based on some lab testing I undertook. While I doubt that I'll be able to maximize my heart/lung potential from one marathon to the next, proper training can get it pretty close. The best way to boost my lactate threshold is to run tempos or long intervals as close to 179 beats per minute (my threshold point) as possible. Track workouts provide the best way to run pure flats here in Salt Lake City where there really are not many miles of flat roads. While doing tempos at 179 on roads would be beneficial, my speed would have to be slower due to the massive hills that are so abundant, so I'm sticking to the track. Fortunately, Karl is a big proponent of the 3x3 for me as well, so he was more than happy to prescribe the workout on a weekly basis, provided that I was able to use enough common sense to run them evenly, which I did a good job of yesterday (all 400 splits were between 86 and 90 except the very last lap of the last 3 mile, which I ran in 80).

Part of getting myself into top marathon form by December includes listening to my body like I never have before. I've learned from my past, especially when I seriously overtrained for Rocky Raccoon, putting in heavy mileage all at a very strenuous effort, mostly in snow, all last winter. While my endurance base definitely increased, I simply ran too much at too high of an effort and my legs were absolutely trashed by the end of the winter. Now that I have 3 key days per week, I need to make certain that I'm going into the workouts fresh. If I'm not recovered for a 3x3, the most important day of the week, I'm not going to run as fast and I'm not going to get out of it what I should. If I run really hard the day before a serious workout, I might get a little extra out of that particular run, but I'm going to be trashed going into the important workouts and my overall benefit will be lower, not to mention the fact that I will be in jeapardy of overtraining. I'm still having a bit of a problem holding back on my easy days that Karl throws in my schedule since I had always been one to push a little too hard on a daily basis, but having learned my lesson a few times now, I'm willing to do the right thing this time.

2:40 is a very lofty goal for me and I'm not totally sure that I'll be able to hit it, but I decided to run a half marathon a couple weeks out from my marathon to get a great sense for where I'm at. If I can go much under 6:00/mile on this relatively hilly half marathon course at 2500' elevation without much of a taper, I think I should be able to break 2:40 (6:06/mile) on a totally flat course under ideal conditions at sea level with a good taper. Assuming that I feel pretty close to 100% at the half in mid-late November, I'll probably base my pacing at Vegas pretty heavily on how that half goes.

In the mean time, I'm going to still be running the Helen Klein 50 on Halloween, but I don't anticipate this disrupting my training much. I'm going to taper for about a week, during which I'll probalby just run a 2x3 and skip my long run, but if it goes as well as my last couple 50s, I should be back at 100% and training well again within 3-4 days after the race.

In the mean time, my motivation is the highest it's been in a long time. I have a few friendly rivals that are set to run verygood marathons this fall (you know who you are... haha...), so just thinking about that keeps me wanting to be ready for and kill it in my key workout days. :)

Restructuring my fall schedule.

2009-09-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

I'm cutting back to 2 big races that I'm going to let my entire fall success ride on. I was going to be running the St George Marathon in 2 1/2 weeks, but I decided after Cascade Crest that I'm not ready for it. I'd been doing fairly consistent speed/tempo work through July, but didn't really do any in August, so I'm going to want to rebuild a bit of that top-of-the-line speed and add even more on before I run another marathon. I've decided to do the Las Vegas Marathon in early December. That gives me 2 1/2 months to peak, which is precisely what I'll need to hit it perfectly. The course is flat instead of downhill like St George, but since it's basically right at sea level compared to the 2000-5000 feet that St George is at, it shouldn't be much slower.

I'm still going to be running the Helen Klein 50 miler on Halloween, but it's not really a typical ultra. Based on the heart rate I was able to sustain for 50 miles at Mt Disappointment (~160 average), I should be able to hold a little over 160 bpm average at HK50 since it's a faster course that will require less time at any given level of effort. On a flat course at very nearly sea level, 160 will put me well under 8:00/mile, so figuring maybe 10 minutes in for water bottle refills, very quick 30 second breaks to pound down high calorie foods, and an almost certain bathroom break, I think i should be able to run somewhere around the 6:30:00 range (6:40:00 would be 8:00/mile if I never stopped). 6:30 sounds somewhat ambitious, but I split the halfway point at American River 50 (which runs on the same bike path as HK50 for the first 27 miles) in 3:17 and I was able to hold a pretty similar effort for the second half (only it was on much slower trails, which took a lot longer to run). Also, my fitness will certainly be much better going into this race than going into American River, so I think I should be able to have a better performance.

As for training, I've been kicking up the speed. On the easy days that Karl gives me, I'm trying to find the flattest ways to run that I can so even if my effort is low, my pace will still be pretty fast. My long runs are mostly mountain runs right now where the pace is slow, but the intensity and time taken to complete the run are both pretty high due to very long strenuous climbs, etc. I'm also going to be consistently hitting tempo-range track workouts at least once a week pretty much every week between now and December. My cardiovascular system is definitely much more efficient than it was at the beginning of the summer, so my VO2 max has certainly improved, which gives me room to raise my lactate threshold, and therefore drop my racing times a fair amount.

Figured I should post a recap from CCC100

2009-09-13T10:55:00.000-07:00

I totally forgot to write a recap for it and it's been 2 weeks now so I don't really feel like writing out a huge super long report, but here's what happened:

Finished in 26:55. First 74 miles were really good, absolutely died after that and lost a ton of places and time, felt very lucky to finish.

My pace was really good for the first 74 and my effort levels were exactly where the should've been. However, I pulled my calf somewhere around 70 and it just started to get really bad at 74. Also, I had been getting sick (almost threw up the night before the race) and my body was failing to convert calories to energy. In other words, I could sit down in an aid station, eat 1000+ calories, and then just sit there for up to an hour to let it process, go out and run, and within 1 mile, feel like I was so hungry and weak that I was going to pass out. My first 74 miles took somewhere around 16:50 (on pace for a sub 23, about 4 hours faster than what I ran), but I took about 10 hours for the last 26, mostly because I wasted 3-4 hours lying down in aid stations trying to recover. I'm still not quite sure what happened... I don't think I went out too fast and I'd like to think I could've held onto that pace if I hadn't hurt my leg and messed up my energy levels so badly, so I think getting sick was a big part of it.

Overall, Cascade Crest was pretty miserable and the altered course this year (going over a mountain instead of through it via tunnel somewhere around mile 50) was not incredibly well done in my opinion. Right around mile 52, we had to run down a rock-covered ski slope that had lots of boulders and rocks covered by straw, which proved to be a tripping hazard for a TON of people and while I didn't fall going down it, it was totally unrunnable, which cost me a lot of time. Also, the whole "trail from hell" section was pretty obnoxious. It included roughly 6 miles of totally unrunnable and barely hikeable trail with tons of fallen trees, huge rocks, etc. I'm all for a challenging run, but the keyword there is "run". When a part of a course becomes unrunnable, it should NEVER be included in a "running" race. I do these things to run, not to traverse fallen trees and giant boulders, so as far as I'm concerned, this area of the race should either be fixed up or removed.

When I finished, I said I would never do this race again, but I just might. I almost certainly won't next year, but who knows, I might come back for a better time in the future.

Mt Olympus run report, Last 2 weeks of training, also, now being coached by Karl Meltzer, also, ran another 10k

2009-08-26T14:57:00.001-07:00

Last 2 weeks have been pretty light as I expected.

The Mount Olympus run to the summit a a week and a half ago was significantly harder than I thought I would be (the last 1.25 miles apparently has an incredible 2300' of pure gain) so I just did the one climb on Sunday. The whole thing was about a 7 mile round trip, but since it was on such horribly steep and technical hills, running nearly the entire thing still gave me about a 20:00/mile climb for the 3.5 miles up. I did the easiest portion (first 2 miles, with only 1500' of gain or so) in under 30:00, though when I say easiest, that means that a 14:xx/mile pace put my heart rate at a 180 average. After 2.25 or so, the trail quickly steepened and I had to take my first walking break after 2.3 or 2.4 miles and 1800' of climbing when I came to a slippery rock slide at about a 40% grade, that when run on, would cause me to slip and slide backwards. After I walked that, I got to some more runnable portions, but soon ended up in a huge boulder section where each step would require a several foot climb, so I had to hike my way through that part as well, which lasted a surprisingly long time and dropped my pace to something ridiculous like 50:00/mile for a little bit. After I finally finished with that section, I got to run some more on a horribly steep and technical portion on which my pace was like 25:00/mile while RUNNING (partly due to the intense difficulty, partly due to my fatigue from not knowing how bad the last bit was and going out too hard). Basically, it took everything I had to even run to the saddle at that point, at which point I got to run a little more and then scramble until I got to about 100 or 200' from the top, at which point, I decided to skip the last super steep scrambling section (it looked really dangerous) and turn around. I took the downhill really easy to recover and still had to walk through the boulder sections and rockslide, which were apparently totally unrunnable in either direction. All in all, this was a great run and I'm going to have to do it again and try to go for a faster time by not starting out so fast.

Other than that run, I've had about 45-50 mountain miles/week (according to a new system I've developed in conjunction with the Daniels Method of logging mileage via a point system, this would correlate to roughly a similar effort of 70-80 miles/week on flat at sea level) over the last 2 weeks, so while it sounds low, it's actually not bad training.

Most importantly in this post, I'm now being coached by fellow Salt Lake City runner Karl Meltzer. Karl holds the world records for both most 100 mile wins in one year (6, back in 2006 or 2007) and most 100 mile wins in general (26). He has also set course records at races such as Hardrock 100, San Diego 100, Wasatch Front 100. Karl is most distinctive on incredibly difficult courses and has 6 wins at Wasatch Front and 4 at Hardrock, probably the 2 hardest 100s in the continental US and on top of that, he knows what it takes to maintain good footspeed while training for long runs (he was dropping 10ks minutes faster than me at my current age), so while he only really does 100 milers seriously right now, I feel that Karl will still help me to develop the whole package with my running.

I went running with Karl for the first time today and we did a nice 12.3 mile jaunt through a moderate-difficulty - but very high elevation trail - going from 7600' at Mill Creek all the way up to the peak of the Canyons ski resort at 9700' with some downhills along the climb to be made up for and then a nice gradual descent back to 7600' (haven't looked at my GPS statistics yet, but it was easily over 3000' of gain). Most of my runs tend to peak around 7000' and I've only been above 7200' a couple of times this summer, my max being almost 9000' at Olympus, so when I started to get above 9000' or so, breathing became extremely difficult and the effort level felt incredibly strenuous even on a flat, so I was pretty glad to finally hit the peak after 70+ minutes and 6.2 miles of pretty high intensity. We ended up doing the 12.3 in 1:58, which correlates to 9:35s, which probably sounds ridiculously slow for all you road guys, but I actually considered this to be an extremely good trainer for the upcoming St George Marathon in October. Effort level wise, I felt like I did the 2 hours at an average intensity not too far off from how I race in a marathon (though the marathon is typically run at one pretty constant intensity and this was basically all over the place). Since we were done after 2 hours, I was just slightly sore after we finished but am better already now, later in the day, so this run won't affect my ability to perform this weekend at Cascade Crest. Oh, and, Karl said he probably would typically do this run in 2:05 or 2:10, so I guess having a young gun there breathing down his neck the whole way made him have to push a little harder. :)

One other quick thing... I raced some small little 10k on Saturday. I got a free entry and the prize was $100, so I had no reason not to do it. Unfortunately, a few other fast guys wanted the money so I ended up getting 2nd. The course was really tough (out and back with a 2% grade average uphill first half that was fairly rolling and just not fast at all). My first half was an unbelievably slow 19:00 or so and my second half was a fairly lazy 17:50. I led for the first mile (which according to the course markers I ran in 5:19), but according to my watch, I was only at .9 and by the mile 2 mark, the course was back to 1.99, so they obviously just put it in the wrong place. The guy who eventually won passed me with a lot of gusto after a mile and just opened up a lead from there. I don't know why he started so slowly, but I remember looking back around a half mile and not seeing anyone within 150 or 200 feet. Apparently, something clicked though, and he just sped up a lot and had about 45 seconds on me by the half. Since it was an out and back, we passed each other and he looked really smooth and I knew he wasn't catchable, so I just got somewhat lazy in the 2nd half and didn't run as fast as would've been possible. In all, since I made sure not to go out super hard and die in the 2nd half, my heart rate just averaged 182. My tempo workouts are run at somewhere around 178 or 179 if I'm really running it perfectly, so it was basically just an ever-so-slightly harder than normal tempo run as far as my body was concerned, which is definitely good to have done. Anyway, I finished a minute or so back in 2nd in 36:50 with a pretty big margin over 3rd (like 2 minutes I think) and got nothing but a medal that says "2nd place" and doesn't even list the race or anything. haha...

I'm taking the last 2 days before Cascade Crest completely off, despite already feeling well rested. There's not really anything I would be able to do at this point that would help my race on Saturday. The work is already done and I think I'm ready to run a good race. My body is pretty healthy, I've strongly improved my hill running abilities, I'm well-acclimated at elevations exceeding the highest point of the course, and my nutritional strategies and general racing tactics have significantly improved since my last 100. My last 2 50s have been much more consistent throughout the race than my last 50 prior to my last 100 and I also got to run a not insignificant 62 miles as a pacer at Badwater, so I think I'm pretty well prepped. While my overall mileage leading up isn't as high as it has been in the past, I've been running for a longer amount of time on a daily basis at a similar or higher effort to what I'd have been running at on roads and "trails" (if I can even call them that anymore after experiencing a summer of running in Salt Lake City), in Baltimore, so in reality, I've done the equivalent of higher mileage training than what I've done in the past. Since Cascade Crest is such a difficult race (course record is about 20 hours), my #1 goal is just going to be to finish without hurting myself, though I think with my strong performance at the very tough Mt Disappointment 50, despite going in with a painful sprained ankle, and my solid training in general, I think sub-24 is doable and I have this idea of beating my 100 mile PR (despite the course being MANY hours slower from either of my other 100s) in the back of my mind. Who knows... Breaking my PR would require a nearly perfect race, so we'll see if I can manage to put the pieces together with effort levels/pacing and nutrition this time. I think I can.

2 1/2 weeks until Cascade Crest Classic 100

2009-08-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

I haven't really thought much about this race yet since Mt Dis was 3 weeks before it. I originally signed up for Mt Dis intending for it to be a warmup for CCC, but I've realized that 50 is a pretty optimal distance for me, so I didn't quite put in the same training I'd normally do for a 100 and focused on being fast for a hard trail 50. That being said, I think I avoided becoming overtrained this time, so I'm probably going to be in far better shape to run a fast trail 100 miler than I was in my previous 3 100s. So yeah, I'm intending to keep it that way and not get over-trained in the last couple weeks.

I'm planning on a big day on Sunday, probably summitting both Mt Olympus, which boasts a super steep 4000' climb up to 9026', and Mt Nebo, the highest peak in the range, at 11928' with a 3800' climb. The 2 mountains are fairly separated, so I'll run one, drive to the other, and then run that one. Like my other really long climb runs, the goal will just be to run the whole thing without stopping regardless of pace. Oh, and since I've found that hitting the 185-190 heart rate range climbing up a mountain is rather painful, I'll try to keep my heart rate from hitting higher than 185 :).

I'm also finally getting my trailwork done on Saturday by helping out with the Wasatch Front 100 trails for 8 hours... That ought to be a long day. haha...

After this weekend, I'll probably use a strategy similar to what I did before Mt Dis: lots of super hilly runs that tax me but aren't longer than 10 miles and then a good taper for a week or so with almost no running.

Mt Dis >> 8700' of gain

2009-08-10T20:48:00.000-07:00

My Garmin says it's 14395' and my Garmin has seemed very accurate for my trail training here in SLC, when comparing to gains that I know exact measurements for. I was obviously pretty skeptical and figured that the trees threw it off, but I zoomed in really close and only found a handful of unrealistic looking little jagged spots in the profile, which I would expect a whole bunch of if it was inaccurate. I'm sure 14395' is still an overestimate, but everyone seems to assume it's at least 10k' and I'm willing to bet it's somewhere between the 2, probably around 12000'. The problem with their profile online is that it's way too broad. They basically just calculated the elevation at a handful of points that are pretty far apart and took the net between each point, which doesn't account for the rolling nature of the course all, so it's got to be off by a couple thousand feet. That's my 2 cents at least...

Note: Click on the images to see the entire things... For some reason they're getting chopped off on this page.

Their profile (not very accurate looking, says 8700 feet):

My profile (more realistic looking, says 14395'):
Note that mine shows up at about 47 miles. I forgot to restart it a couple times when going out of aid stations (I kept total time on a watch on my right arm and time running on my Garmin so I could see how long I was stopped for, but forgot to start for up to .75 miles a coupel of times, for a total of 1.5 to 2 miles missed). Also note that the one thing I've found inaccurate with my Garmin is that it sometimes straightens out what I've done on a very curvy course such as this one, so the distance is very often estimated a little short, which should make up for the other 1 to 1.5 miles.

Also note that miles 2-5 were modified a little bit this year, explaining the discrepency between them on the profiles.

Race Report: Mt Disappointment Endurance Races: Hal Winton 50 Mile/USA Track & Field So Cal 50 Mile Trail Championship

2009-08-10T12:50:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I ran the Mt Disappointment 50 mile trail run, which doubled as the USA Track and Field Southern California Association 50 Mile Trail Championship. Coming into this, I had read on a number of other blogs and heard from a number of people that Mt Dis was just about the most miserable 50 miler imaginable since it's a race that has the tendency to get very hot, runs through some very steep terrain through the San Gabriel Mountains, and has a lot of extremely technical footing. I had also heard that the name is very fitting: a lot of people go into this race seeing the slow times and read the course description on the course website (which makes it sound a bit more tame than it actually is) and think they should be able to go in and beat almost everyone and are extremely disappointed when they run 12 hours instead of the 9 they hoped for. Fortunately, I was happy with my results and it was only a very very slight disappointment for me since I finished in 9:03:33, 3 minutes and 33 seconds off of my goal of 9 hours.

Going into the race, I was incredibly anxious. I had pretty solid training, having run quite a bit in the Wasatch Mountains, heat-trained in a sauna for a bit of time, and done some serious track workouts and tempo runs, which have certainly boosted my lactate threshold and pain tolerance. Unfortunately, 9 days before the race, I sprained my ankle fairly painfully while doing one of my last couple serious mountain runs in Utah. For some reason, it couldn't seem to get better and it actually hurt quite a bit the day before the race, so I was really nervous about running at all. I took the entire week off leading up to the race except for a single 1 mile barefoot jog on Monday (which was supposed to loosen it up, but actually made it a fair amount worse). I was hoping that I'd wake up on race morning and feel fine, but when I woke up, walking hurt. Going into the run, I thought I was screwed and was thinking about DNF before the race even started.

As the race started, I started off down the road at a quick pace, a fair amount of soreness radiating through my left ankle and through my shin and foot. The first 6 miles or so were on a road, while the last 45 were on a trail, so I just hoped that the softness of the trail would make me feel better when I got there. Since the race started and finished at the top of Mt Wilson, the first 9 miles or so were entirely downhill with a several thousand foot drop. I was using my Garmin Forerunner 305 with heart rate, so I just focused on keeping my HR around 160 at the start. With a good downhill, despite the relatively high elevation (5650'), this meant sub 7:00 miles for the road section. I knew this was ok since my heart rate was sticking around 160, but it still kind of scared me to go out that fast in a 50 mile race. Fortunately, a lot of other people were running at a similar pace at the start (I did 5 miles in 33:45 and there were probably 20 people in front of me).

Once we hit the trail after the first aid station, which I didn't stop at for more time than it took for them to write down my number, my ankle felt better - for about a half a mile. 6 miles in and BAM. My ankle was weak and the downhill was steep, turny, and technical and all of a sudden, I sprained it again. I screamed loudly, hobbled in pain for 30 seconds, and, all of a sudden, just got super pissed about the whole situation and basically said to myself, "I don't care how bad my ankle hurts, I'm not letting this screw with the one super difficult hot trail race I have this summer to put on my Badwater app for next year", so I just mentally decided to ignore it. Of course it still hurt and I was absolutely unable to attack the technical downhills, which provided lots of room for people to fly by me, but sometime between mile 6 and 15, I literally succeeded in blocking out the pain and it didn't really bother me much the rest of the race (other than the fact that I was intentionally extremely timid on the technical downhills to avoid hurting myself yet again, which probably cost me 20 minutes throughout the entire race, but saved me a lot of pain and a potential DNF).

About 10 miles in, we cut back off the trail and started climbing up a dirt road. We ascended somewhere around 200 feet before arriving at an aid station. I had made up my mind pre race that I was going to waste absolutely as little time as possible at aid stations, so I blew by it, taking just enough time to grab my "heat hat" ( http://media.rei.com/media/m/1492214.jpg ), get rid of my single, which was already starting to get hot, and grab a very quick bite of food. Leaving the aid station, we hopped back on a fairly non-technical and wide - but steep - trail that ascended a net total of 1600 or 1700 feet before arriving at the next aid station a few miles ahead. This first serious climb wasn't so bad and I was able to re-pass most of the people that passed me while I was timidly descending the technical downhill on my bad ankle. Arriving at the top, at mile 13, I spent no more than 30 seconds at the aid station and blew through as fast as I could.

We had a quick descent at this point before ascending again, running about a mile of flat trail (the only flat section in the whole race), and then descending a short bit. After this descent, we started a serious climb around mile 18. Climbing a net gain of 1200 feet (though it was rolling, so there were some downhills that also had to be made up for) from 18 until 20 in somewhere around 100 degrees was enough to start a headache for me and after descending into the Red Box Aid Station at 21 miles, I didn't feel super great. Fortunately, I put some chocolate milk in a cooler that made up my drop bag at Red Box, so I drank it and wasted about 5 minutes sitting there letting it settle. The protein and milk fat were absolutely great and helped me feel full and satiated, but my headache was still there. I had forgotten to pack a couple advil just in case this happened and the aid station volunteers were not allowed to give out any sort of medications, but some random woman who was standing around waiting for a runner to come through heard me asking for advil and gave me 2. I ended up wasting another 5 minutes in the bathroom, so I lost a total of 10 minutes or so in Red Box before I finally got back out. Unfortunately, I had eaten a bit too much in this station, so I had to go slowly for a little bit to keep the food from coming back up (heat + full stomach + running = vomiting... haha...). The advil took a few miles to kick in, so I ran incredibly slowly and lost probably 10 minutes off the pace I should've been running on the steep downhill between 21 and 25.

Around 25 miles, my headache started to clear and a few local California runners in the 50 miler (Rob McNair, a 2:37 marathoner, and a friend of his, whose name I forget) caught up with me, burning their way through the downhill, so I struck up a conversation with them and ran with them until the aid station at 26.2, exactly a marathon in. We split the marathon in 4:05, if I recall correctly. Overall, we had gone downhill to this point, but there had been plenty of significant uphills and some serious and technical terrain, so I felt that the split was pretty solid. Rob kept telling me "Stop caring about your time, you should just be happy to finish a race like this," but by 26.2, I was starting to feel pretty good again, so I kind of ignored what he was saying and just kept shrugging off how hard the finish was going to be. I continued with Rob for another 10 minutes (his friend didn't stop at the aid station and we had taken about 2 minutes to eat) and decided to take off ahead of him since he wanted to walk a fair amount on the uphill from 26.2 to 30. I put in a nice jog-like pace up the 1000 foot climb and kept my heart rate around 172-175 the whole way up, right in the lower end of what's considered my "threshold zone". At one point, I couldn't keep my heart rate below 175 and knew I was going to start building up too much lactic acid, so I walked for about 30 seconds to lower my heart rate, but ran the entire uphill other than that.

I had been in 17th place at 26.2, but leapfrogged up to 12th between 26.2 and 30. 30 to 31.8 was a quick 2 ish mile loop that ended back at the same spot before continuing on down the trail and one person just a couple minutes ahead of me dropped in this section, so I ended up being in 11th place going out of the mile 31.8 aid station.

Mile 31.8 to 41.25 was the most worrisome section of the course for me. I knew going in that this was going to be a tough section since 32 to 35 was downhill, but 35 to 41 was a 2000' climb in the heat of the day without a single bit of shade. I was carrying 2 water bottles the whole race (one with water, one with HEED) and popping 2-3 salt pills an hour, 3 at this point now that it was pretty darn hot, but I was pretty sure that water would be an issue at this point. There was some icewater at mile 39 (not an aid station, but a tent with a chair and a cooler), but in the heat, I didn't think 2 water bottles would be adequate for 7 miles. I tried to ration it, but by mile 37, I was pretty much out of water and had to keep my effort really low between 37 and 39 to keep from sweating out too much and getting dehydrated. By the time I got to 39, I was getting pretty dehydrated, but I drank an entire bottle while I sat down for about 4 minutes at mile 39. I felt sluggish going out of mile 39 and it took 5-10 minutes for me to start feeling hydrated again as my body processed the water in my stomach, but I started feeling like I could have a good finishing kick when I got to mile 41.25.

I wasted another 4 minutes there eating some pizza and drinking a bunch of Mountain Dew (for a total of 20 minutes wasted in the bathroom or at aid stations eating food) before continuing down the last big descent of the course. At mile 41.25, I could see the entire finish of the course: a 1600' descent in 4.25 miles, followed by a massive 2600' net climb in the last 4.5 miles (the majority of that happening within maybe 2.5 miles). I tried to just not think about it, but looking out over the canyon realizing I had to descend one mountain and then climb another, the sheer magnitude of what the last 8.75 miles contained was pretty overwhelming.

The trail from 41.25 to 45.5 was pretty darn technical, but I had just been told by a volunteer at the aid station that there was "almost no way to cover the extremely difficult last 9 miles or so in 110 minutes", ie I couldn't break 9 hours, and I wanted to prove her wrong, so I flew down the ridiculous mountain trail as fast as possible. I got to mile 45.5 at 7:47:00 and was out by 7:48:00, having just taken the time to pop a last 3 salt pills, eat some pringles, and refill my bottles. Leaving the station, someone said it was "possible, but very difficult" to make this climc in 72 minutes. The first mile or so wasn't so bad and I made decent time on the climb. However, at about 46.5, the climb just got ridiculous. It took everything I had to never stop to lie down or just sit on the side of the trail. I was moving very slowly, but I still passed 10-15 middle-back-of-the-pack 50k runners/hikers and 2 50 milers in ths section and no-one passed me. However, I still couldn't quite get up fast enough and ended up being able to hear people at the finish as I watched my watch pass 9:00:00. 3 1/2 minutes later I finished and immediately sunk down in a chair. I ended up in 8th place overall and 1st in the 19-29 age group, plus I apparently broke the 29 and under course record. The top 2 guys were right around 8 flat (world-class runners Guillermo Medina and Troy Howard, the latter of which recently posted an incredible 26:01 at Hardrock 100, the 3rd fastest time on the course, which is almost certainly the hardest "legitimate" 100 miler in the world). The results haven't been posted yet, but it sounded like 4 of the other 5 runners ahead of me were within 14 minutes of me. Last year, my time would've been good for 4th place, though apparently this year was probably a little faster (maybe 5-10 minutes) since the beginning of the course was slightly modified from the previous 2 years due to some sort of permit restrictions, but it's probably still safe to say I would've finished top 5 against last year's field. As for the USATF standings, I'm not sure how I ended up, but I know that only US runners who are members of USATF were elgible, so I'm willing to bet I was top 5 in the USATF standings. As soon as I find out, I'll post it...

I am obviously a bit disappointed that I finished so close to 9 hours without breaking it, especially since I know that my ankle probably cost me around 20 minutes and my headache around mile 20 cost me about 10 minutes, but I'm still pleased with how I finished, especially since I could've used my ankle as an excuse to not push myself. I probably could've spent a little bit less time at aid stations, but 20 minutes stopped overall, including a bathroom break, isn't too bad over 9 hours. My nutrition was pretty much spot on during the race: I consumed about 20 salt pills and ate 6 gels (4 non-caffeinated power bar gels and 2 caffeinated hammer gels with 25 mg caff. each), about 30-40 pringles, 3 PB&J quarters, a Nesquik chocolate milk, a handful of gummi bears, 2 cups of Mountain Dew, 2 cups of sprite, 9 bottles of water, and 6 bottles of heed. Calorie-wise, this is somewhere around 2500 calories. Since my body processes somewhere around half of its calories from fat when running an ultra, this calorie intake was probably pretty close to ideal. 3000 would've been about perfect, so I was pretty close.

Albums listened to:
1. Believer - Gabriel
2. Cynic - Focus
3. Cynic - Traced in Air
4. Sanctifica - Negative B
5. ZAO - The Funeral of God
6. Gorguts - From Wisdom to Hate
7. Living Sacrifice - The Hammering Process
8. Living Sacrifice - Conceived in Fire
9. Martyr - Feeding the Abscess

I had 2 iPods, the death metal one, and the inspiring music one. The DM one was supposed to be used for the 2nd half only, but my "inspiring music" ipod meant for the first half randomly wouldn't work, so I had to listen to the DM one the whole time. haha... I spent the majority of the time listening to music, but the battery didn't quite last the whole way and I spent a little bit of time not listening to music.

Lessons learned:
1. Carry Advil.
2. 160-170 is a good heart rate range for a 50 miler and I can let it climb to 175 for a pretty long period of time on steep hills without screwing myself over.
3. In Cascade Crest 100, I'll try to keep it more at 155-165 and typically keep it under 170 on the climbs since 100 miles is still MUCH harder than 50 miles.
4. Ultras truly are all about confidence and mindset. Even if you are hurting, a little confidence and a positive outlook can take you a long way.

Ok, I think that's about it... Overall, I definitely did not enjoy this race as much as some other ultras (ie American River 50) due to the difficulty, but I think with more mountain training, I'll have the ability to really run well here, so I'll probably be back for more next year (despite the fact that I claimed at the finish that I would rather have any single body part surgically removed than have to run that hard of a 50 mile course again)

*****In case you're thinking about doing this yourself, here are my 2 most important pieces of advice:
1. Train in the mountains. Hill training will not be enough for a good performance in a race like this. I had LOTS of incredibly difficult mountain runs covering as much as 3000' of gain within a few miles and I still felt that I could've been more prepared for the finish. You will need VERY long extended climbs in your training; try to find something where you're going up steep climbs for 30 minutes plus or you're going to get rocked.
2. Train for the heat. If you have a sauna you can use, spend time in it. You don't need to actually run in it; just being in the sauna will help you with your acclimation. While you're in it, drink lots of water and eat salt for 2 reasons: a. to get your stomach ready to handle things when all of your blood is being diverted to your skin to cool you, b. to keep you from getting dehydrated, duh. If you don't have a sauna, run when it's hot out. Don't wimp out on training, it'll only hurt you in this type of race.
Rating the difficulty:
Heat: 4/5, it can break 100, but not by much. It's a little humid, but not terrible.
Technicality: 4/5: the rocky parts are tough, but there are some dirt road sections that have good footing (unfortunately, those are all incredibly hilly)
Hilliness: 4/5: They estimate around 8700 feet gain and loss; I need to check my Garmin when I get home, cause I bet it was a little more than that... Overall, even if it was like 10000', it could still definitely be worse.
Overall: 5/5, not from one individual factor, but from a combination. It's not like Badwater where the heat alone is enough to destroy you or Hardrock, where the elevation is ridiculous enough to give you problems, but it's bad in a number of ways, so it's overall an extremely challenging race.

Training, weeks of 7-20-09 and 7-27-09

2009-08-03T09:47:00.000-07:00

The last 2 weeks have been incredibly light, mileage-wise.

The week of 7-20 was a bit unintentional, but after barely sleeping all week surrounding Badwater and spending a bit too much time in the sauna prepping for Mt Dis, without taking salt and probably getting a little bit dehydrated, my body was incredibly fatigued all week and I couldn't run all that well, so I had my lowest mileage week of the year.

Monday 7-20: 0 miles: Felt like crap, rested (maybe related to 20-26 minutes a day in the sauna for the last 4 days?)

Tuesday 7-21: 7 miles Was going to do a good track workout, ended up doing 1.5 warmup, 2x2 in horrible splits (11:30 range) with unbelievably high heart rate (up to high 180s, where as I can normally do 3 2 milers in about 11:15 keeping my heart rate in the 170s), so I called it a day before I hurt myself and just did another 1.5 cooldown very slowly. The fatigue and dehydration was the culprit I think.

Wednesday 7-22: 0 miles: felt like crap, rested

Thursday 7-23: Super easy 8 mile, avoided hills as much as possible, still over 8 minutes a mile

Friday: 12 miles Deseret News 10k plus long warmup and cooldown (about 3 a piece), felt like I wasn't affected nearly as much, but still split poorly and didn't run the kind of time I expected (35:08)

Saturday: 0 miles: woke up and felt like garbage, legs hurt worse than after most marathons.

Sunday 0 miles: legs were still a little sore, definitely could've run, but didn't want to push it with Mt Dis coming up.

Weekly total: 27 miles, but you know what, doing more would've been stupid. I felt sick (headaches, sneezing, coughing) and I was totally fatigued, so training hard would've set me back a lot.

Week of 7-27-09: This was a low mileage week as well (41 miles), but there was a lot of running that directly prepped me for Mt Dis and I covered an unbelieveable amount of elevation, so I'm actually quite happy with it. Doing anything very high mileage would've been a bad idea with the race coming next weekend and it would be too late to get much benefit from high mileage training anyway. What I focused on was mountains and confidence building runs. My energy levels seemed to be back, so while I had taken off the sauna training after last Monday, I started it again this Monday at lower levels (15-20 minutes a day at what I believe is ~185 degrees, enough to get some benefit, but not enough to mess me up)

Monday 7-27-09: 6 miles: Super super high intensity tempo on trails, was actually about a mile of warmup and a mile of cooldown sandwiching 4 incredibly intense miles. I threw in one of the steepest hills, covering only 5 or 600 feet of gain, but doing it at an average of 30-35% grade, hitting as high as 50%. I'm usually just happy to run the whole thing without stopping, so I was putting up 14:00/mile with a heart rate in the low 180s for most of the hill until the very end which levels to an easier 20% grade, which I ran pretty hard. I ran really hard for the rest of the run and managed to average in the 7:40s/mile, which sounds slow, but is still quite fast for a run with this much gain (about 1200 feet total in 4 miles). Average HR was mid 170s, max was 191 (pushed REALLY hard at the end), total gain: 1200 feet

Tuesday 7-28-09: 6 miles: 1.5 warmup, 1.5 cooldown, 3 miles of increasing pace on a track. Decided not to push the track workout hard at all compared to normal this week. Splits were 6:12, 5:46, 5:10. HR got to 181 on the 2nd mile, which is about 4 or 5 BPM higher than it should've been, but not nearly as high as the previous week and I've found that I can sustain higher heart rates for longer periods of time lately, so it wasn't a big deal. I hit 188 on the last mile, but I would've expected at least mid 180s at that pace, so it didn't really scare me to get that high.

Wednesday 7-29-09: 6 miles: Total quality run here despite the shortness: 5.5 in 72 minutes plus a quick cooldown. Sounds slow? That's because I covered 2350 feet of gain and loss, literally just running straight up a mountain and back down. That corresponds to about 43000 feet of gain over a 100 mile course. Hardrock, the hardest legitimate 100 miler in this country (not counting Barkley, which isn't really a real race) has something like 33000 and I'm willing to wager that the trails I did this on are WAY more technical than any part of that course (consider that in my slowest portion of the descent, it took me roughly 15 minutes to do a single mile since the course was so treacherous). I never stopped, walked, or anything, which doesn't sound all that impressive, but when the ascent takes 40 minutes and my average heart rate during that period is somewhere around 175-180 (well above 180 at the peak, where it's the steepest), I felt like that was an accomplishment.

Thursday 7-30-09: 9 miles: I decided up to up the ante from Wednesday and did 7 miles with a 1 mile warmup and 1 mile cooldown. I scaled 1 500 foot mini-peak, went down the backside, came back up, and then linked over to hit the same ascent I had done the previous day. Total was nearly 3000 feet of gain, once again never walked, which I was very proud of. However, that seemed to be a bad idea since I rolled my ankle fairly badly attacking one downhill and just kept running through it, which has made it somewhat sore for a couple days. Oh well, lesson learned, and at the very least, it built a heck of a lot of confidence for me.

Friday 7-31-09: 2 miles: Jogging pace, ankle was pretty sore, total gain: 100 feet.

Saturday 8-1-09: 7 miles: 75 minutes, 2200 feet of gain, high effort, ran a well groomed but steep trail the whole way except for one portion of descent that was so miserable that 1 mile took 20 minutes. I ran the whole way except a couple sections of the downhill, which could've caused me to fall off a cliff if I ran them (doesn't sound fun). While running a part of the downhill that I shouldn't have been running, I tripped on a rock, scraped the crap out of my right leg, splashed my perpetuem bottle open all over me (mostly my face), and literally flipped and rolled, so I'm lucky I didn't get hurt too badly. I stopped my watch and sat there to collect myself for a minute or 2 and carefully finished the descent before tempoing the finish back home as hard as I possibly could. Max HR 187, broke 185 on 3 different portions of the run.

Sunday 8-2-09: 5 miles: easy, did the loop around the outside of the neighborhood, which unfortunately still has at least one huge hill no matter how you run it, total gain: 700 feet.

Total: 41 miles, roughly 9500 feet of gain, about 8750 of that coming within 23.5 miles (Mt Dis is 8700 feet in 50 miles, so this is a major confidence booster). Overall, low mileage, but some extremely high quality. If I was doing all road running this week and spent the same amount of time at an equal effort level, I'd have done roughly 70 miles, so I consider this to be the perfect amount of running the week before my race.

Mt Dis 50 is coming up on Saturday and I think it should go well. I'd love to finish this in under 9 hours and I think it's definitely possible, but we'll have to wait and see. Times in ultras are extremely dependent on how hard the course is and I hear nothing but bad things about this one, so I don't want to get my hopes up. Only one person (Jorge Pacheco, who has the 2nd fastest time ever at Badwater, and the 2nd fastest ever trail 100 time, 13:16) has broken 8 hours here (he did a 7:42 last year), though some people with comparable marathon and 50 times to me have broken 9, so I think it's possible if I race well. Part of this race for me will be in experiment in blocking out what my body tells me and listening only to what my GPS/HR watch says. I've actually had a lot of success with it in training lately where I'll start to feel like crap going up a big hill, look down at my watch and see that my heart is still going at a maintainable rate and I can actually convince myself that I don't hurt as much as I know I do and keep going without lowering my effort. I have the feeling that that sort of mind-set will come into play a lot over the last 19 miles (with gradual 2000 foot climb without shade from 31 to 40 and a nasty 2000 foot climb in the last 5 miles), so if I can keep my mind from breaking down at all, I think I should do well. I'll just blast some good angry tunes from mile 31 onward and hope it's enough. :)

Afterthought from Deseret News 10k

2009-07-25T12:37:00.000-07:00

Haha, so, I have more evidence that I ran like an idiot yesterday (beyond my first half being 2 minutes faster than my 2nd half). I woke up today and my legs felt worse than they have after a lot of my marathons. Yeah, bad pacing yesterday I guess...

Deseret News 10k race report

2009-07-24T12:52:00.000-07:00

Important stuff:
Time: 35:08
Splits: HORRIBLE...
Mile 1: 5:04
Mile 2: 10:15 (granted the first 2 miles were pretty downhill compared to the rest)
5k (3.107 miles): 16:35 (a major uphill in here + intentionally slowing down)
Mile 4: 21:35 (starting to hurt a LOT)
Mile 5: 27:35 (totally dying)
10k: 35:08 (HR of 194 ever since mile 5, couldn't go any faster than 6:17/mile pace for last 1.2)

So, this morning, I ran in the Deseret News 10k. I'd been feeling like absolute crap after spending too much time in the 185 degree sauna over the last week, so I wasn't even sure that I was going to race, but I decided to just go for it last night. No, they don't normally have 10ks on Friday mornings in Utah, but today is Pioneer Day, a state-wide holiday that commemorates the day that Brigham Young and other Mormons made it in to the valley after a very long walk from halfway across the country in Illinois. I'm obviously not Mormon myself, but the perilous 1300 mile trek they made is definitely a pretty cool story and one worthy of remembrance. Anyway, some Mormon newspaper puts on a big 10k and marathon every year on Pioneer Day and while i didn't feel like doing a marathon at this point in the summer, this seemed like the one good opportunity to run a 10k comparable to sea level running due to a net downhill on the course that roughly evens out the elevation factor, according to the Jack Daniels calculator, which I've used quite a bit lately just to compare runs in Baltimore and Minnesota to runs here. Anyway, I've only ever done one 10k previously, which I felt went extremely poorly, probably mostly due to me having run it the weekend immediately after the Boston Marathon, a Monday race that I wasn't yet recovered from. My previous time was a 35:30 and I was hoping to run about a 34 flat here today. Unfortunately, I seem to really suck at pacing for a 10k. I went out too fast and didn't really contemplate my mistake until I hit the 2 mile split in 10:15 and my heart rate was already at something like 192. I backed off the pace in mile 3, but by that point it was already too late. I hit the 5k split in 16:35, 1 second off my official PR that I ran back in Minnesota recently and despite trying to back off, my heart rate was up 1 BPM more, at 193. At this point, I just mentally convinced myself to keep the effort as high as possible until the finish no matter how bad it hurt, and believe me, it was already starting to feel pretty painful by the 5k. I hit mile 4 in 21:35, which meant that I didn't fall off pace too horribly in the 4th mile, but the 5th mile took 6 minutes of misery, putting me up to 27:35. Funny enough, this was still faster than my 5 mile time I ran at Celtic Solstice in December (27:55), though I'd unofficially run a 26:59 on a treadmill previously under perfect pacing conditions (although treadmills are supposedly slightly easier than running on roads when you have them at a flat). Anyway, my heart rate hit 194 beats per minute around mile 5 and I'm not sure how, but I managed to keep it there for the entire last 1.2 miles, the agony of which was literally completely indescribable. Assuming my max is still 200 (and honestly, it's very possibly a beat or 2 lower than that since I haven't tested in 2 years or so), I was running at 97% of max for 1.2 miles, something which is usually saved for maybe a quarter mile, or at most, half mile sprint at the very end of a grueling race. Despite the net downhill, the last mile was entirely uphill and my body was completely trashed, so the last 1.2 miles took me 7:33, a pace of 6:17/mile, despite my dangerously high heart rate. Due to my piss-poor pacing job, I finished in 35:08, a far cry from the 34 flat I was looking for, but my ridiculous splits (16:35, 18:33) make it obvious that I'm capable of faster if I could just pace a little better. Officially, this is a PR, but I'm going to still consider myself to not have a 10K PR because I'm embarassed by this stupid of a performance. Lessons learned: 1. Do NOT race so fast in the first half of a 10k next time I attempt the distance. A more reasonable way to do it would be to keep my HR below 185 in the first half and then let it climb as the going gets tough int he 2nd half. 2. I apparently have an incredibly high tolerance for pain. Apparently, very few people can withstand having their HR that high for that long, so that's good to know that I'm able to take it like that and keep pushing when I feel like quitting, even if my pace goes to crap. I don't know when I'll try another 10k, but I think I should be a lot faster next time...

Training, week of 7-13-09, Badwater report

2009-07-24T11:54:00.000-07:00

This is like way behind, so my bad if anyone was actually curious to read this...

7-13-09: 33 miles: pacing at Badwater (from mile 26 to 63 with 4 miles off at one point)

7-14-09: 29 miles: pacing at Badwater (from somewhere around 76-82 and 100-123)

7-15-09: off

7-16-09: off

7-17-09: 20 miles: 2 5 mile runs, somewhat long-ish trail routes to and from campus in the morning, 10 miles in PM, also, 20 minutes in sauna

7-18-09: 16 miles: 2x4 to and from campus, more direct route than previous day, 8 miles in PM, running with fuel belt, which TOTALLY sucks since it bounces everywhere unless you tighten it so much that it's basically cutting off all circulation, 22 minutes in sauna

7-19-09: 2 miles: laaaaaazy after sauna, ran just enough to get to 100 miles for the week, basically just down to the end of the street, slightly farther, and back... hahah..., 23 minutes in sauna

Weekly total: 100 miles.

Anyway, about Badwater:
I've told this story like x-million times now, probably anyone that actually cares to hear it, so I'll be brief. haha...

I went out to crew for Pierre Ostor. 1 hour before the race, we found out that another French guy, Alain Prost-Dumont, was missing 1 crew member due to something happening with customs (I'm not really sure what...). You can only run if you have 2 crew members or more and he was down to one, but there were 4 of us with Pierre and Pierre said it would be ok, so I offered to switch, which was obviously very good news for Alain and his only crew member Theo, who had spent some insane amount of money to get there (plane tickets for both of them and the other crew guy, rental van for 5 or 6 days, $795 entry fee, food, insane amounts of water, etc). I'm not sure how much they had total in supplies, but when Pierre and crew went out to buy supplies, he ended up with 25 gallons of water and 100 pounds of ice (ice being refilled during the trip, probably over 200 pounds total). Anyway, I ended up officially switching 10 minutes pre-race. In case you're wondering, Alain and Theo spoke nearly no English and I haven't spoken French since high school. I was fairly good at speaking it then, but it's been 5 or 6 years since my last class and it took awhile for it to come back. During the race, my vocabulary improved substantially just because I was forced to dig back into my memory so much, so I was a lot better by the end of the race, but still by no means fluent or even close. Anyway, Alain started off at 8 AM monday and ran pretty well with no problems for about the first 26 miles. Around 26, he threw up a bit (probably just because he was pushing a little too hard in the heat) and started to complain about his stomach, the heat, and his left leg. He really wasn't taking very much salt (no S!-caps or anything, just the electrolytes in one of his French sports drinks, which I was pretty sure wasn't close to enough). I decided around 26 to go and run with him for awhile. From 26 to around 36, things were ok, but he really started to cramp around 36 (which I suspected to be from the lack of sodium). 36 to 42 was incredibly slow, almost all walking, and he was in a lot of pain, so I just did my best to try to convince him to take more sodium, as well as giving him mental support through my poor French. The cramps got to their worst around mile 40, right around Devil's Cornfield, where the temperatures swelled to a sweltering 130 degrees or so. Being out there pacing with him, I was very thankful to have good sunglasses and an OR-brand SPF-30 hat with a long floppy face and neck cover, which shielded me from the intense 130 degree headwind, which literally felt like running into a hairdryer on at full power. At this point Theo and I finally said something like, "look, there is no alternative, you have to take the S!-caps", or in French, "Regardes, il n'ya pas d'alternative, c'est necessaire que tue prends les S!-caps". haha... Anyway, we got him taking them and he made it to mile 42's time station in Stovepipe Wells. At 42, at which point it was starting to get dark out, I ran into the convenience store, bought a ton of good food (milk, chocolate, yogurt, gatorade, 5-hour energy, which doesn't work for more than an hour by the way... total lie in the name..., etc) and called my family just to let them know of the change of plans and that I'd probably be up for at least 48 hours straight pacing/crewing if the pace didn't increase much. Anyway, by the time I got back in the car with Theo and drove down the road to find Alain, he had already made it 2 miles and was no longer cramping, thanks, I presume, to the 341 mg of sodium/s-cap we'd given him. I jumped out with a pleasantly full stomach and continued pacing him. Mile 42 to 60 was an 18 mile, 5000', climb up to Towne's Pass, the top of a mountain, but his pace was significantly improved from what it had been before. The only problem during this section was that he tended to break longer than other runners, so there was a lot of cat-and-mouse going on where we'd pass other people then take too long of a break, during which time they'd re-pass us, and then we'd go back out and repass them, etc. etc. I took a 25 minute nap in here while he was doing a mile and a half or 2 miles at one point, just to make sure i'd be nice and totally rested for the next day. Yeah, i'm kidding... It did nothing for me... Anyway, by 60, he'd passed a few people and he picked it up a lot on the descent, and by a lot, I mean, probably so much that it could've potentially messed up his quads. I ran with him from 60 to 63 and then said, all right, you're doing ok now and i've paced 33 of the past 37 miles, so I went back to the car to help Theo with the crewing. I ended up getting the better part of an hour of sleep at some point around mile 65 and when I woke up, it was just starting to get light out. He made it to the station at mile 72 in Panamint Springs by 7 AM I believe. The general prediction for the race is that the amount of time it takes to get from 0 to 72 is about equivalent to the amount of time it takes to get from 72 to 135 since there are 2 huge climbs in the last 63, but only 1 in the first 72, so we expected somewhere around 46 hours at this point. 60 to 72 had been almost entirely a descent from Towne's Pass down to 1000', so at 72, he had another long climb, which nearly leveled off somewhere in the low-80s, but still continued gradually uphill until the Darwin checkpoint at mile 90. I ran 6 miles from somewhere around 76 to 82 just to keep him going at this point and then helped Theo with crewing again until about 100. At the 100 mile mark, I got back out and ran until mile 123 in Lone Pine. This section was really where Alain started to pick up the pace. He was taking a good amount of sodium, his legs were doing ok, and he was running a fair amount, probably more than he was walking. The course was mostly downhill from 90 to 123, dropping from 5000' at Darwin to 3000' in Lone Pine, before the last major mountainous uphill, so I just went along with him right on the side of the road and everytime I thought that he was walking for a little too long, I'd say "Est-ce-que tu peux courir?", French for "Can you run?" and he'd start going again. We did really well about not letting him take many breaks in this section, so he made up a lot of time and passed a fair amount of runners. We ended up cathing up to Pierre around 110 or 115 and he was feeling pretty trashed, so we wished him luck and continued on. By mile 123, Alain was slowing down again and I decided to crew in the car rather than stay out for another number of hours on the course, mostly due to my horrible shoes and socks and the big blister I was developing on the inside my pinky toe on my right foot. I quickly grabbed some McDonald's at mile 123 and hopped in the car. I dozed off for about 10 minutes at one point while we were waiting on the side of the road for Alain, but that was it for sleep: a total of maybe an hour and a half during the entire race. Around mile 128, someone mentioned that there was a massive fire at the finish, so there was a new finish only about 1 mile ahead. Unfortunately, that person was clearly not a runner because we told this to Alain and continued to the finish to meet him there, which happened to be more like 3 miles ahead. 129 vs 131 might not sound like a big difference, but when you've gone 128 miles already, there's a huge difference between 1 more and 3 more. Anyway, Alain eventually made it up to the top and asked us to run across the line together as a team, which we did, and that was it. Alain finished in 40 1/2 hours or so, got his sub-48 buckle (which was switched to a sub-46 buckle due to the shortened course), his medal, and his finisher's t-shirt. I sat around and waited about 1 more hour, at which point Pierre finished and I got to go back to a nice spacious motel with him and his crew for a few hours of semi-restful sleep. Anyway, I obviously cut out some details, but I don't feel like writing more and it's already pretty long. I'm very much hoping that I'll be able to run it myself next year, so hopefully a year from now you'll be able to read my very own race report. They only let in 90 or so runners from a few thousand applicants every year, but having paced should help my application, which I feel is already reasonably strong. I have a few more very difficult races coming up in the remainder of the year that I think should help prove my worth and I'm leaning towards running Badwater's sister race, the Arrowhead 135, a 135-mile trek across frozen northern Minnesota in early February, to help cement my place in next year's event. That's all for now...

Week of 7-6-2009 training, new gear

2009-07-17T22:58:00.001-07:00

7-6-2009 was mostly about recovery. I kept it super light so I'd feel fresh and be able to run a lot with my runner at Badwater (will have a separate post about this).

Anyway:
Monday 7-6: 8.1 trails, with Garmin, 7:41/mile, 1716' of gain

Tuesday 7-7: 10 miles: 1.5 warmup, 1.5 cooldown, 3,2,2 on 0,20,35 minute in 17:05, 11:19,11:12. Was sore, so only did this instead of 3x3, felt ok, but not as strong as I could've been.

Wednesday 7-8: 8.3 miles: 1:06:30, 1683' gain/loss, ave hr 156 (around 160 once i settled in), max HR 177, hit several times, about 8:00/mile, not terribly easy or hard, max grade of 60%, min elevation about 4800, max about 5900

Thursday 7-9: 4.6 miles: did 3.1 fast on trails in 19:20 with 700' of gain, felt like garbage, right leg felt super shot, jogged in last 1.5

Friday: 9 miles: Garmin was charging, slightly longer version of wednesday's run, only slower, took SUPER easy, right leg still sore.

Saturday: fly out to Badwater, nothing, needed rest.

Sunday: rest.

Total: Only 40!!!! Shortest week I've had in a long time, glad I kept it there though because I'm 5 days through the upcoming week as of posting this and will probably be hitting an all-time mileage high this week!

New Gear:

1. Saucony Fastwitch 3s: First off, replaced my Saucony Fastwitch 3s after having my last pair for maybe 2 months. They get destroyed fast, but I still love them so I bought my 5th straight pair, which Wasatch Running Center gave me for $68, a pretty solid price. I can't believe how much better it feels to be in new shoes.

2. Injinji micro-socks: Only used them once so far, but these seem like the answer to bad blisters between toes. I actually have one right now from Badwater pacing, but running with these today made everything feel great!

3. Princeton Tec Apex Pro: Scored this for $53 new on eBay, normally a fair amount more. 80 lumens at max setting, previous headlamp was the lowest-end 15 lumen petzl, which was the sorriest excuse for a headlamp I've ever seen. This one is much much better and while the 80 lumen setting uses a halogen lamp that burns out the batteries in a few hours, the brighter of the 2 LED settings is still incredibly bright (such that if you look at the lamp straight on, you can't see well for about 10 minutes. Trust me, I tried it. haha...) I took this out for the first time for my 2nd of 2 10 milers today, tonight around 9:30 or 10:00, in total darkness, and I absolutely loved it. I flipped on the halogen on the most technical rocky sections on the trail, but the LED settings were totally adequate for everything else (would've been for the bad sections too, but if I've got a halogen, I'm going to take advantage ot it). I remember having blown $30 on that Petzl headlamp, so if you can afford to not be a total cheapo, but don't want to drop $200-$450 on the top of the line stuff like the Petzl Ultra or Duo, this is a great buy. In fact, I briefly used a $200 Petzl Duo at Badwater and I actually think this Princeton Tec is brighter and better.

I'll post about Badwater tomorrow or sometime soon when I'm not exhausted and wanting to sleep.

Got my Garmin Forerunner 305!

2009-07-06T20:05:00.000-07:00

I finally got this sucker in the mail today, popped it on the charger for a couple hours, and then went running as soon as it was done charging. I have to say, this is absolutely everything I hoped for. Pace, heart rate, calories, and distance all seem accurate. Apparently I had been underestimating my elevation gain/loss, so that was actually a really nice surprise. I did a fairly but not insanely hilly run today and figured I had covered somewhere between 1000 and 1500' of gain, but apparently I hit 1716' of gain and 1724' of loss (started at my doorstep, ended at my driveway... haha...). My total stats today, to give an example of what I get off this sucker, were 8.11 miles, 7:41/mile, max speed of 5:07/mile, average HR of 156 bpm, max HR of 182 bpm, elevation gain of 1716', elevation loss of 1724', max grade of 41% climb, max negative grade of 38% drop, 983 calories burned, minimum elevation of around 4895 feet, max elevation of 5575 feet, and a maximal climb from 4920' to 5575' with only 20' of drop the entire way, all within 1.1 miles (ie, average grade of 11.3% climb for 1.1 miles... ouch... haha...) Anyway, if anyone is considering getting one of these, I HIGHLY recommend it. This is going to be, without a doubt, the best thing to happen to my training in a LONG time.

Week of 6-29-09 training report: what started as garbage ended well

2009-07-05T18:17:00.000-07:00

To sum up the week, Monday and Tuesday were absolutely terrible, Wednesday could've been good, but it was raining and I felt lazy, so it was mediocre, and Thursday through Sunday were spectacular.

Oh, and one other thing, I ended up not racing this weekend, primarily because I didn't even go home. My flight home got canceled a few hours before I was supposed to leave on Thursday and United was being retarded and offered me only an EARLIER flight that I couldn't make in time. I really was starting to change my mind about racing and going home in general (not to mention that moving in here in Utah has cost me a TON of money and I could use the $350 back from my flight), so I decided not to argue with them and just took the refund money for my flight.

Anyway, here's the scoop on the week:

Monday 6-29-09: 6 miles: Went to the indoor track for repeats and nothing felt right. I cut it way short and did 1.5 warmup, 2xmile, 2x800, 1.5 cooldown. Not only did I feel like crap, but I had accidentally packed basketball shorts, which are NOT fun to run fast in. My splits were WAY off normal (5:38,5:36, 2:34,2:33). I don't know why I felt so out of it, but my energy levels were just way off.

Tuesday 6-30-09: 12 miles: Downtown SLC loop from campus, all on roads for what may be the first time ever here. I did the first 9 or 10 all right, not much above 6/mile. However over the last 2-3 miles just felt like crap going back uphill from downtown to campus and I basically slowed down to a crawl. I went from 10 miles in maybe 63 or 64 to 12 miles in somewhere around 83 minutes. That's how bad I felt at the end. I didn't have water and I was dehydrated since I had eaten a salty Arby's Roast Beef sandwich right before hand, not to mention that this was after a pretty brutal day in the gym, which included the typical creatine monohydrate and NO Explode, both of which dehydrate me. Needless to say, I am carrying water on pretty much anything over 8 miles or so now.

Wednesday 7-1-09: 6 miles: Rainy, felt lazy, did a 6 mile pseudo tempo run on roads in 37 or 38 minutes.

Thursday 7-2-09: 12 miles: Now this is the type of crap I like. I did a 3x3 mile workout sandwiched by 1.5 mile warmups and cooldowns on the indoor track. I had previous done 3x2 and 2x3, but hadn't upped the ante to 3x3 yet. Now I know why this is considered a good lactate threshold workout. By the end of interval 3, my legs were BURNING. I still don't have my HR monitor/GPS watch (though it's supposed to be here in the mail tomorrow), so I did it by pace and feel, which seemed to work out all right. Before I say anythign else, I should note that when I do these type of workouts, I consider 3 miles to be 4800 meters. In actuality, it's like 4817 meters or something, but people usually compete the 1600 rather than the 1609 and I don't feel like figuring out where 47 meters is on a non-marked indoor track. :) The first interval was a pretty easy 17:05 (5:41.67/mile). I rested until the 20 minute mark (ie, about 3 minutes of rest) and took off for number 2. Since number 1 was pretty easy, I did number 2 a hair faster in 16:56(5:38.67/mile). I once again started after about 3 minutes of rest (this time on the 40 minute mark) and I knew going into #3 that it was the loop that was going to separate the men from the boys. The first mile or so was ok, mile 2 started to feel pretty ugly and I wasn't sure if I could hold on, and mile 3 just felt like an all-out war of attrition. I remember my comment afterwards being that around 2 miles in, I felt as though someone was beating me with a ton of bricks with every step. How I managed to hold onto pace is beyond me, but I finished #3 in 17:04, (5:41.33/mile and 1 second faster than #1). If you altitude correct these, it'd be about 6 seconds faster/mile, so had I been doing these at sea level at an equal level of effort, I would've been averaging around 5:35/mile for 9 miles with pretty minimal rest, which is a pretty beastly workout for me. My legs were definitely hurting afterwards and I was feeling pretty drained, so I walked my bike back most of the 3 miles home rather than riding it. haha...

Friday 7-3-09: 20 miles: Sometime on Friday during the day, I decided that it would be wise to do a fairly strenuous mileage push over the weekend since I have some big ultras coming up and haven't had all that much along the lines of super high quality long runs and back-to-back efforts since maybe April. I decided that I should do at least a minimum of 100 KM over the weekend (~62 miles), so I decided to do 20+/day for each of the 3 days. Friday was actually my shortest of the 3, but it had a very hardcore climb in the beginning of the run (over 2000' feet within 4 or 5 miles, starting a few miles in) and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the run: very hard work despite the technical trails and relatively high heat. I ended up running from my apartment through a bit of a misguided way up to one of the highest local peaks, running along ridgeline for awhile, and then tracing my steps back almost identically. Total time was 2:45 and I felt that I was pushing myself REALLY hard for this run, probably about 8:00/mile, having taken a 2-3 minute break at the top of the highest peak to just soak in the scenery, so the total was about 20 miles. Total elevation was somewhere near 4000'. Man it's going to be nice to have a Garmin so I don't have to guess on these long trail runs.

Saturday 7-4-09: 24 miles: After spending the morning buying furniture, I went out for a 3 hour and 9 minute run that I pushed even harder on than I had the previous day. The total climb was similar to the previous day, around 4000', but it was more spaced out rather than having half of it within 20% of the run, so I was able to push myself pretty hard. A small section (20-30 minutes) was on roads so I could get home before it got dark out, and I took a detour on the first part to get a spectacular and painful 1500' climb in (though this was a longer more gradual climb than the previous days that was pushed out over a number of miles), so it was roughly out and back, but not totally. The final hour of the run was actually the fastest part I'm pretty sure and I felt like I was really pushing hard near the end. I was definitely under 8:00/mile on average since I took zero breaks and only walked for 5-10 seconds at a time here and there to drink water and on one super poorly maintained section of trail that lasted a couple minutes. Overall, I figured definitely under 8/mile, total of 24 or so in 3:09.

Sunday 7-5-09: 24 miles: Similar to Saturday's run, just minus the 1500' climb, having maybe 500' in its place, and out slightly farther along the Bonneville Shoreline trail, so the total climb was 1000' less, but the total distance was about the same. I did this one in the middle of the day in pretty bad heat (mid to high 80s), so it was somewhat painful. I ended up running out of of my 2 .5 L bottles of water within an hour and a half and having to cut back to a neighborhood and going down the street until I saw someone outside that I could ask for a refill. I drained one of those instantly and drained the other one right about the time I was passing the U of U, where fortunately, I was able to get more water in both from a fountain outside. I ended up draining another 1 1/2 of those in the last 30 minutes since I was so dehydrated (my urine was somewhere between dark yellow and orange, which is never a good sign). All in all, I definitely took this run a little bit slower, despite having only 3000' of climb rather than 4000', but I can just blame that on the lack of planning with water since my legs still felt pretty good despite coming into the day with 2 long runs in the previous 2 days. Overall, I was very glad to be done with the run, but I guess that it was only because my stomach was starting to get messed up from repeated underhydration and binge hydration to make up for it. Once you enter that cycle, it's never much fun to keep running, so I'll just have to be careful to stay on top of hydration in my August ultras, 1 or both of which could end up being pretty hot. Total time, 3:17.

Overall: 104 miles, but 68 of that was in a 48 hour span from Friday through Sunday. Despite a piss-poor first 3 days, this was one of my better weeks I've had in awhile. Not only did I do a phenomenal lactate-threshold elevating interval workout, but I hit back to back to back long runs and did 9 hours and 11 minutes of running over the weekend, hopefully a hair more than the amount of time I'll have to spend running at Mt Disappointment. I think in that 50, due to the extremely tough conditions, I'll probably have an official goal of 10 hours, but if the course is a little over-hyped (which I have the feeling it it is based on the overall description, trail descriptions, elevation profile, etc, given online, which mostly match or fall short of my new training rounds here in the trails in SLC), I think somewhere around 9 hours might be possible.

Next week: I'm leaving to crew for Badwater on Saturday, which should be an interesting experience. :) I definitely need a lactate trainer in here, probably another 3x3. My mileage will definitely be lower than this week, but I'll probably try to get at least 1 reasonably long 20-ish or so miler in before I leave.

Training, week of 6-22-09

2009-06-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

A day late to post, but whatever... Overall, this was a pretty good week. The mileage was reasonable, 73 miles, nothing crazy, but I felt that I had a lot of quality work. I started incorporating threshold work and did it 3 days this week.

Monday 6-22-09: 10 miles: As of Monday, this was the best I've felt on trails. I was sick of having so many super steep climbs and having to go so slow, so I found a trail that had a gradual climb of somewhere around 1500 feet and tempo'd it as hard as I could. There were 1 or 2 pretty nasty steep sections, but other than that, the whole climb was pretty gradual and was spaced out over 35 minutes or so of doable climb. I felt that I was pushing pretty close to my limit the whole way up without ever having to slow significantly to catch my breath, so it was a really solid climb. After 35 minutes or so, I took a turn onto some random steep looking downhill rather than continuing further back into a more treacherous section of trail. I soon realized that I was running down a banked downhill racing style mountain bike track with several big jumps in it. It was such a steep grade that I dropped down to an even lower point than where I had started within about 2 miles, so I flew down with probably less concern for my well being than I should've, pushing a pace that felt to be well under 5 minutes a mile. When I got off the trail, I found myself on the edge of a neighborhood that ended up being kind of windy, so I had to get through a lot of random back roads for another 2 miles or so before hitting the edge of campus and then running a mile back from the edge of campus to my car. Overall total, probably just about exactly 10 miles in just under 65 minutes. It doesn't sound like a terribly fast tempo run, but with the climb in the first 5 miles and last 3, it worked me pretty hard.

Tuesday 6-23-09: 9 miles: 1.5 mile warmup, 2 x 3 mile, 1.5 mile cooldown. I felt pretty good on Tuesday too and hit my first of many threshold training sessions for St George. I have ordered my Garmin Forerunner 305 so I can watch my heart rate, but I haven't gotten it yet, so I did these at pretty close to the prescribed pace of 5:40 or so. My 2 3 mile times were 16:57 and 16:56, very consistent. I'm supposed to be doing 3x3 mile, but the trainer that tested me for the cardiopoint said I should start carefully with 2 instead of 3. I did these on the 20, though I probably should've done them on the 19 since 3 minutes of rest was probably more time than I should've taken. Overall, I finished still feeling pretty good. When I hit 3x3 w/ 2 minutes rest this Wednesday the 1st, I feel like I should be feeling considerably worse by the end. :)

Wednesday 6-24-09: 9 miles: This was kind of a dumb run. I took the same start to the trail I had done on Monday but decided to offshoot partway up. After a couple minutes on the offshoot, the trail started to get muddy, then very muddy, and then it turned into a stream since all the rain over the past few weeks had flooded the stream next to it onto the trail. Being somewhat stubborn, I decided to follow it up and just ignore the facts that my shoes were getting submerged with every step and that bees were swarming around me. After quite awhile of running a fairly gradual uphill (a total climb probably a bit under 1000 feet since the very start of the run), the stream veered off and it became a trail again with 2 possible directions to follow. I randomly picked one and found that it gradually decayed into nothing after a few minutes. I headed back and picked the other direction and once again unfortunately found the same thing. Oddly enough, there was a tent and a bunch of camping equipment up the 2nd way but no-one around, so there must've been some alternative route, but I couldn't find it. I figured that there was no way that the people had walked up the stream to get there (I was absolutely caked in mud and completely soaked, so it seems unlikely other people would've hiked that with a crapload of chairs, a tent, etc), but no-one responded when I shouted to see if someone else was around, so I eventually just opted to take the stream back down. Going back down was a lot less fun and I rolled my ankle pretty badly on one of the rocks in it, so I was in a pretty sour mood by the time I got back on to the regular trail, but being able to hammer the crap out of the downhill all the way back to campus (even passing a few mountain bikers on the way down) made things better. Overall, 65 minutes or so, never running terribly slow since the uphill wasn't really that bad, about 9 miles.

Thursday 6-25-09: 8 miles: 1 mile warmup, 3x2 mile in 11:11, 11:14, 11:12, (on the 13 1/2 to 14, probably should've done on the 13, but whatever...) 1 mile cooldown. I didn't quite have enough time to get the workout I wanted (4x2 at 5:40/mile) since the gym with the indoor track closes pretty early, so I opted to just go slightly faster and cut one repeat out. Overall, this felt pretty good and I feel like I could've easily hit 1 more at this pace. 2 more would've been doable as well, but I would've likely been pretty wrecked and I don't like to push so hard on track workouts that my next day will significantly suffer, so I doubt I would've done more than 4 if I had had more time.

Friday 6-26-09: 8 miles: very easy run, out along fairly flat trails (well, flat for SLC, would still be considered pretty darn bad compared to trails I had trained on in baltimore), back along the road. I had decided to race a local 5k on Saturday, so I kept this run easy, going over 7 minutes a mile.

Saturday 6-27-09: 18 miles: AM: 1.5 mile warmup, 5k, 1.5 mile cooldown. I opted to run the Run for Youth 5k since it was a small event with a $2o entry fee, pretty decent t-shirts, and iPods for the winners. I showed up and found there to be less than 100 people running and I couldn't spot anyone that looked particularly fast other than local Provo runner Mary Ann Schauerhamer, who wins the women's division in pretty much everything. Mary Ann runs in the 17s, which is pretty darn solid at elevation, even for a man, but was doing a 5k double that morning and had just won the women's division of another 5k down the road with just enough time to jog over to this one, so she wasn't planning on killing this one too hard. Figuring that their would be little between me and an iPod, I ran at a comfortably fast, but not all out, pace and took the win in 17:04. There were no mile markers, so I have no idea what my splits were, but it felt pretty steady and I never felt like I was pushing myself very hard. At 6000' elevation, this corresponds to a 16:43 at sea level, so I guess I'm making improvements if that felt as easy as it did. I got my iPod + case + arm band and drove home, went immediately to the gym for my 6th day of lifting in a week, and then spent most of the day organizing crap in my new apartment before doing another 12 mile PM run. I didn't think to eat before my PM run, so I felt low on energy and pretty lousy in general. I did about half on trails and half on the road and just kept it slow, around 90 minutes total, avoiding steep hills as much as possible.

Sunday 6-28-09: 11 miles, tempo for most of it. This had a net downhill of probably 1000 feet or so since I finished at my PI's house, where I had to pick up my bike, which was still being stored in his garage. I did the first half out on the tamest trails possible looping around the university. After coming off the trails, I had a very steep downhill for a mile or so and then a more gradual downhill for a couple miles while cutting into and then over through downtown, before eventually heading partway back up towards campus and ending at Chuck's house, where I got to pick up my single speed mountain bike and bike 4 or 5 miles with a 1000 foot climb back to my apartment (NOT fun, by the way). Total time was just under 70. While it was a net downhill, there were still some significant climbs, so it probably wasn't a whole lot easier than a totally flat course (1000 net down is from about 2000 down cumulative and 1000 up cumulative, that 1000 up being enough to slow me down a bit). Overall, I could've gone faster some of the time, especially in the first half, but I worked pretty hard for the majority of the run.

Total: 73 miles, pretty solid week. The threshold days were good to have and I have to make sure I'm doing that twice a week most weeks until October, so I'm glad that the first couple days of them weren't completely body-destroyingly hard.

This week: Probably only one very serious track workout (Wednesday) since I have an important trail race on this Saturday, the 4th of July, the Afton 25k, back home in MN. I've wanted to run this race for about 2 years, so I decided that this was the year to do it. Ideally, I'd like to break 100 minutes on the fairly tough course. The first year, back 15 years ago, the winner was 85 minutes and a number of guys were right behind, also under 90 minutes, but since then only 5 or so people have broken 100 with no-one faster than 93, so I'm willing to bet that the first year was either too short, or at the very least, a significantly easier loop. Anyway, I'm hoping that I can become one of the few people on the short list of runners to have broken 100, but anything to keep up my streak of top 3 finishes (which is now at 5 straight races) would be nice. There are 300 or so runners registered right now plus another 150 to 200 in the 50k, so it'll be interesting to see what happens. A win over a fairly long distance on trails would make me pretty happy, so I'm hoping that that will be possible.

Training report

2009-06-22T22:11:00.000-07:00

Week of 6/8/09:
Monday: 6
Tuesday: 8
Wednesday: rest, unintentionally, as i recall
Thursday: rest (in a car driving all day)
Friday: rest (in a car driving all day)
Saturday: 27 (light jogging plus Bear Lake)
Sunday: 10 (felt like I recovered from Bear Lake in an hour or 2 due to my lack of effort, so I did a fun 10 mile trail run in SLC)
Total: 52 (total waste of a week if not for having earned my St George spot)

Week of 6/15/09 (everything on very very tough trails at 5000' to 8000' elevation, so the mileage isn't quite indicative of the effort I put in):
Monday: 12
Tuesday: 13
Wednesday: 9
Thursday: 11
Friday: 12
Saturday: 0, had a phenomenal lift in the gym in the morning but had to spend the rest of the day moving furniture and other junk into my new apartment
Sunday: 14
Total: 71 (like I said, I felt that I got a ton out of this week of training. I'm starting to adapt to the low oxygen here and it felt a little easier everyday). Of note is that my Saturday-Friday 7-day total (the first 7 days in Utah) was 94 miles, quite a bit considering that it was raining everyday except Thursday (and that includes the marathon on Saturday...)

My mileages since Sunday are all estimates since you can't exactly mapmyrun a course in the mountains, but on all days other than Wednesday's 9-mile tempo (where 3 miles were on road), I'm estimating based on a very conservative 8+ minutes per mile. Back in Baltimore, it was extremely rare that anything would be slower than 6:45/mile, so estimating 8:30s for a few of the runs seems very conservative and I'm definitely not overestimating the mileage. Either way, the plan is to buy a Garmin GPS watch whenever I have time to get to a running store here in Salt Lake to make sure which one I want, so everything should be accurate very soon.

Also of note (and I don't have time to post on this thoroughly right now): I'm about to start on some very specific heart rate focused interval training to boost my lactate threshold. I did a VO2 max test 4 days before Bear Lake and found that my lactate threshold is only 78% of my VO2, while it should be baout 85%. I was told by the trainer that based on the pure science of my physiolgical testing if I do very specific interval training such as 3 x 3 mile at around 5:45/mile and other longer tempo runs (focusing on making sure that my HR is EXACTLY in the 175-179 range to benefit most), I should be able to significantly increase my lactate threshold extremely quickly, potentially getting down below 2:40 this year. In fact, if I just get my lactate threshold where it should be without even increasing my VO2 max, I should be able to run about a 2:35 and the trainer made it sound like it really shouldn't take much time to get to that 85% threshold if I train properly, so I'm pretty excited needless to say. I don't want to officially have a goal of 2:40 for the year since that seems so unbelievably fast, but not-so-secretly, that's probably what I'll be gunning to break at St George. I'm obviously a bit skeptical that it could be that easy to run sub 2:40 based on where I am right now, but the trainer said that for the last few marathoners he had worked with, he had been able to predict within a minute of what they ended up running based on similar tests, so he seemed to know his stuff. Anyway, I have been feeling for a little while that my marathon really ought to be faster than it is, so my 78% threshold at least physiologically explains it. I've sort of subconsciously known (and even mentioned to a few people) that I felt that I had the speed and endurance to run a much faster marathon, but I needed more longer tempos and very long interval type stuff to put the 2 together better, so this testing confirms what I somewhat knew before and now that I know it for sure, I'm going to actually train the right way. Even a small PR always makes me happy, but if I train right and avoid overtraining myself, I would say a 2:45 at St George (my official yearly goal) ought to be relatively easily achievable since the course is already so much easier than my PR course. A sub 2:40 would make me ecstatic since I've really come to consider 2:40 to be the mark of an elite in the past year or so. Granted, St George is a fast course, but anything with a 2:30 in front of it just sounds ridiculous. 2:37 puts you under 6:00/mile and that just honestly sounds absurdly fast. Getting a marathon down into the 5's per mile would be a dream come true and if I train right, I should be very close to that cutoff come October, so here's to heart rate training and painfully long intervals!

Oops, I've been lazy about blogging. First up, Bear Lake report

2009-06-22T21:56:00.000-07:00

First things first: Bear Lake report:

Yeah, so Bear Lake was kind of funny... I realized pre-race that I had very little chance of winning since uber marathoner Chuck Engel was there (he runs a marathon about every weekend and most of them are in the 2:30s) Fortunately though, Chuck didn't want the spot in St George and the RD had said that it would go to the fastest person that wanted it, so I decided it would be rather unwise to try to run with Chuck, so I settled for 2nd before the race even begin. As it started, I immediately felt awful. I knew instantly why people complain about running at elevation; I just didn't feel that breathing was as easy at 6000 feet. I had originally thought the race was lower, like 4 or 5000, but 6000 was pretty nasty. The first half was outrageously boring (not a single spectator for the 106 person marathon) and I hit the split in 1:27. I hadn't worked all that hard in the first half, but I was very much doubting that I could run another 1:27. Mentally I wasn't really there, and I think having the mile marker signs backwards was a huge part of it for me. When you're getting to, say, mile 10.2, starting to feel it a little bit, and you see a sign saying "Only 16 miles left!", it's just really not cool. Near the beginning, it just sort of weighs you down I would say that it should help near the end, but by that point in a marathon, when you've already thought about how far you still have to go around 10 times in the last minute, the markers are irrelevant. Anyway, by the half, I decided to just be lazy until someone caught up with me, at which point I'd just run with him and conserve my energe enough to ditch him at the end, therefore doing the minimum work possible to achieve 2nd place. The point when the guy caught me came at mile 17 (well, mile 9-to-go! or so according their signs). I was feeling even crappier at that point, so I just straight up asked the guy if he was going for the St George spot and he said he had already gotten in via the lottery and he'd pass it down the line if he finished ahead of me, so I was just like "screw it, I don't even want to be here, I'm not going to run hard and keep up with you". I decided to just do the same thing until 4th place caught me since I now only needed 3rd for the spot. I got REALLY lazy, but there was a good gap and 4th place didn't catch me until mile 23 (3.2). At that point, I hadn't really been pushing at all for a good while, especially since my abs were hurting super badly from having done too many static ab exercises out of boredom during my 18 hour drive from MN to UT. However, at mile 23, I finally dropped the hammer enough to own the 4th place guy, gaining a minute back over him in the last 5k or so. I finished in a pathetic 3:12:08, but I hadn't wanted to run it anyway since I felt that I was getting past my seasonal peak, so I basically just did the absolute minimum necessary to get my spot in St George (which I did in fact get) and I got a really awesome 3rd place rock/plaque/trophy thing for my ?efforts?.

Training, week of 6-1-09

2009-06-08T22:19:00.000-07:00

This week was a bit hit-or-miss for me. I intended to run 70-80 miles, but a few things came up that kept me to 52.

Monday: 7 miles: loop through older Mahtomedi residential area, around 5:50s

Tuesday: 10 miles: 3 mile warmup, 3 mile cooldown (both still reasonable pace, around 7/mile), 4x mile in 5:24, 5:21, 5:18, 5:19, done on the 8 minute, good anaerobic work to some extent, but not terribly hard

Wednesday: 14 miles: This was probably the best quality run of the week. I goofed around with a long loop in Kathryn Abbot like, then popped out on the exit near the road leading to Hilton Trail, went right on hilton trail, and left right before the highway to get to the gateway state trail at the entrance I don't usually take. There's a decent little 2 to 3 minute loop in someone's backyard near the entrance, so I may or may not have trespassed to run it before jumping back on the trail. This first bit was pretty easy, but I started to hammer it when I hit the trail. I took the trail past Stillwater Road and all the way to Jamaca, where I turned left. I ended up going way farther on Jamaca than I intended (usually I turn left at 80th, ie the dirt road, but I decided to explore a bit more today). I figured I'd have another good left turn, but I eventually realized that wasn't going to happen. I ended up going all the way to Dellwood Road or Avenue (whichever one crosses Jamaca, I can't keep them straight), going left, looping through on Ivy Avenue, doing the little cul-de-sac loop that runs off in the middle and taking a right back onto Jamaca since Ivy intersects both Dellwood and Jamaca (sort of just cuts the corner between the roads). By this point, I was getting pretty tired since I was still tempoing hard, but I was out later than I intended and Jamaca is pretty unsafe at night (lots of car accidents, don't even want to think what could happen when running), so I kept up the pace. I took a right on 80th, a left by St Andrews, right on Stillwater, left on Mahtomedi, and then back the usual way. In total, this was just under 14 miles on mapmyrun and I did it in 85 something, so I was somewhere around 6:10s for the whole thing, pretty fast, especially considering that the first 2 miles were probably around 6:30s. When I finished I felt pretty sore...

Thursday: 17 miles: I ran about 8 3/4 miles out to a house in Dellwood to meet a girl that had run on my cross country team in high school that I've been hanging out with while back home. She declined running super far with me, but instead road her bike along side me. The way back was a little shorter, more like 8 1/4, after which she road home the other way around WBL. I really didn't feel very good before/during/after this run since Tuesday probably slowed me slightly and Wednesday slowed me quite a bit. My left shin was really quite sore by the end, which had me a bit worried (it's getting better now, but I'm having to be really careful and stretching a lot). Total running time was around 1:50 for an average pace of roughly 6:30, though that has to be taken with a grain of salt since I took a 10-15 minute break when I got to her house (obviously stopped the clock) and a 2 or so minute break (also stopped the clock) halfway through the run home to hydrate and eat a gel since I wasn't quite feeling on top of my game. When I finished, my leg was super sore, so I decided at this point that I probably wasn't running on Friday, especially since I was debating the idea of doing a 5k on Saturday.

Friday: Rest

Saturday: 4 miles: mile-ish warmup, plus 5k in the horrible rain out at Finnegan's Get Lucky 5k Run (or crawl) which was held in conjunction with the World Beer Pong Championship and some concert at the CaBooze bar (basically a biker bar) in minneapolis. New PR, 16:34 as described in my last blog post.

Sunday: Rest. My leg was feeling close to fine and I wanted to run, but my dad had paid somethign crazy like $120 to get a fitness assessment for me (VO2 max test, body fat, and other things) on Monday and I was instructed not to exercise the day before. (unfortunately, the stupid thing had to be postponed a day since their equipment wasn't working right when I showed up on Monday, so I could've run. There was no chance that I was going to take 2 days off and end up with 4 miles over a span of 4 days so I ended up ignoring their instructions about not running the day before and running today, Monday, so hopefully that won't screw me over too badly for my testing tomorrow... haha....)

Total: 52. 48 was in 4 days, which is reasonably good, considering the pace at which I was running.

Next week: Bear Lake Marathon in Utah is on Saturday, so I did a 6 mile tempo today at a pace that I could've held for at least a few more miles (monday, will discuss in next week's post), have plans for a short/easy track workout tomorrow, an easy trail run on Wednesday, and I probably won't run on Thurs/Fri since I'll be driving out to Utah and arriving on Friday night just in time to get a bad night's sleep before the marathon. :)

I didn't want to run Bear Lake at all since I'm getting awfully sick of this "run really well for a week or 2 and then taper for yet another race" crap and I want to just do consistent high volume at this point, but I need it to get into St George, so whatever... After this, odds are extremely high that I won't race anything major until August, and really, I'm going to do my very best not to do anything that will put me out of training for more than a day or 2 in either of my August ultras so I can focus on my October marathon, so really the marathon is the one race that's really consuming my mind, not my summer ultras. That being said, I'm going to probably do a local 5k or 2 over the summer just to get my time under 16 minutes, but those don't really count as major races and they don't require more than a 1-day taper or any sort of recovery, so whatever.

One other thing added to the schedule: Helen Klein 50. This is run on Halloween this year and I'm very psyched to run this. Since I'm now planning on an early October marathon, I'll have 4 weeks between the 2, which would give me enough time for 2 major long runs on back to back weekends in October just to make sure I've got the ability to run fast for 50 miles. HK50 is completely on roads and it will be the first road ultra I've done since my loop-course ultramarathon debut and that 24 hour (that got cut at 60 miles due to rain) back in 2007, so I'm setting high, but reasonable expectations for this. I think it's possible to run it entirely under 8 minutes/mile (6:40:00), but to be conservative I'm setting my goal at 7 hours, still a good time for 50 miles on any course.

New 5k PR: 16:34

2009-06-06T21:24:00.000-07:00

So, I took a break from training yesterday to rest up for a 5k that I was considering running today: The Finnegan's Get Lucky 5k Run (or crawl), hosted in conjunction with the World Beer Pong Championship. I ended up staying out until 4 in the morning hanging out with some friends, but woke up today and decided around 1:30 PM that I would indeed run it despite the torrential downpour outside (the race was at 3:30). I got there around 2:30 and found out I was the first person there (no surprise due to the rain). I hung out in the biker bar that was hosting the event until about 3:20 and finally went out and jogged a mile or so just to see how miserable it was in the rain. It did indeed prove to be horribly miserable outside, so I decided that since there were only 100 people or so and the competition didn't look too tough, I would just go for a win and do whatever I needed to do to get it. When we lined up, a few faster looking guys that I hadn't seen lined up near me, so I figured I'd actually have to run well to get the W. When we took off, some other guy and I ended up taking off about side by side, neither of us wanting to let the other get ahead. We did the first mile in 5:14, which sounded a little fast, but really didn't feel that uncomfortable. At that point, we were still matching almost exactly stride for stride and I was feeling fairly confident, but somewhat worried, because I had no idea what this guy's background was. He didn't have a watch and asked me about the first mile, so we struck up a conversation for about 20 seconds and exchanged PRs (he was very slightly faster, but I had only done 1 in the last 2 years and hadn't worked very hard for my PR since I had an easy win in that race, so I felt I had an advantage). I felt that we slowed down slightly after conversing, though we still remained together. The course was an out and back and I crossed around the cone at the halfway point in 8:20, right before he did since I was on the inside. After going around the cone, he didn't quite catch back up to running beside me, but I could hear his feet splashing in all the puddles right behind me, so I knew he was close. I made a conscious effort not to push too hard in the 2nd mile, since I was worried that he might have a kick and didn't want him to be able to surge past me if I ran out of energy. I ended up doing it in 5:30, for a 10:44 2-mile. One other point to keep in mind was that there was a very tall bridge that we had to summit and descend in both mile 1 and 3, but mile 2 was flatter and easier, so it really was considerably easier than mile 1. When we got to the bridge again right after the beginning of mile 2, I dropped the hammer and that's when I knew the race was mine. He had been around 2 or 3 seconds back at the 2nd mile mark, but I edged it to something like 5 or 6 seconds on the uphill and burned the downhill as fast as I could to increase the lead as much as possible. Shortly after the downhill, while sustaining a faster pace, I noticed that I couldn't hear his steps anymore, so I just grinded it out at that pace to the finish and hit the last 1.1o7 miles in 5:50, good for 5:16/mile after mile 2. My total time was 16:34, just a hair under 5:20/mile on average. I finished feeling somewhat tired, but sure that I had room to run faster if I'd have needed to. My nearest competitor that had run with me for 2 miles finished, I believe, 23 seconds back, so my smart race tactics definitely helped. This drops 28 seconds off what I ran at the Fiesta 5k back a month or so ago and I'm sure that I have room to run plenty faster. The rain was pretty painful, the wind seemed to be whipping everywhere but never really helping, and the 2 major uphills definitely did not help my time. I claimed the win in my last 2 5ks (and the only 2 I've done recently), so I think what I'll need to do to run the fastest time possible is to run something on a totally flat course in good conditions where a number of people are definitely going to be faster than me and I will have to run my hardest the whole way. I'm glad that I got pushed somewhat today because I honestly probably would've settled for an 18 minute win if no-one had been close by me. I'm going to have to pick another 5k or 2 throughout the summer when I get to Utah and if I can find something fast and flat with good competition, I'm sure that sub-16 will not be a problem whatsoever. For now though, I'm happy to have dropped to a 16:34.

Week of 5-24-09

2009-06-01T10:15:00.000-07:00

I decided to do a reasonable mileage push from Sunday through Saturday rather than Monday through Sunday, so that's how I'm going to count my 7-days of running last week.

Sunday 5-24-09: 35 miles, as described previously

Monday 5-25-09: 12 miles, nice recovery run at Afton state park, stuck to just the easy trails, not fast, but not as slow as I thought it would be, average per mile pace was somewhere in the range 7:00-7:10.

Tuesday 5-26-09: 8 miles, 3 miles tempo, 2 miles on track (wanted to do 3, but got kicked out after 2 due to some lacrosse game being played on the field), 3 miles cooldown home, track work consisted of 1600, 800, 800, (was supposed to be 16,8,8,16) with 3 and then 2 minutes rest. All laps were about 2 seconds slow because I had to run out to lane 6 and back to avoid a bunch of bags and a car (yes, a car) parked on the track in the final 100 meters of every loop. However, I still ran these pretty darn fast (5:06,2:26, 2:28), so they actually would've been around 4:58, 2:22, 2:24 without said obstructions. I had enough left to do one more mile at about the pace of the first mile, but that would've been about it since this was a pretty fast workout.

Wednesday 5-27-09: 10 miles, around 6/mile, picking up the pace for 1 mile in the middle along a hilly dirt road @5:41 (an old mile repeat course that I ran in high school), whole run consisted of a big Kathryn Abbot loop, the OHA loop, warner to stillwater road, that to jamaca, jamaca to the dirt road (whose name I can't remember), some fooling around on backroads in old-school mahtomedi, and eventually back home through KA park, overall, pace felt a little more strenuous than I wanted it to, legs were slightly beat up

Thursday 5-28-09: 22 miles: Loop through kathryn abbot park, to the gateway state trail, all the way to the end, a tiny extra loop in pine point park at the end, back along the trail, through KA park again. This run was very miserable... Mentally I wasn't there, it was really hot and humid, and I felt really low on energy and only had Sport Beans with me, which I realized are just sugar more than anything, so they're not at all good for long-term energy for endurance type stuff. I started off reasonably well, doing the first half in about 7 minutes a mile like I wanted to run the whole thing in, but I was so exhausted that I walked a couple miles near the end, rounding it out to just a hair under 8 minutes a mile when all was said and done.

Friday 5-29-09: 9 miles: Tempo, around 5:50s, through KA park, around OHA elementary trail, through old-school Mahtomedi, and back up along White Bear Lake.

Saturday 5-30-09: 21 miles: Long run in Afton, about 7 minutes a mile average. Started out on the toughest trails, going really fast for that long of a run, under 6:30s, but backed it off significantly at around the halfway point, opting to just have some fun in the 2nd half with a pace around 7:30s for an average of 7s or so. Sport Beans once again proved to do nothing more than give me a sugary burst, but I had hammer gel for backup and that worked well for me. I forgot to bring water and it was quite hot, so I was only able to get water at a couple points in the run and I felt relatively dehydrated, but not terribly bad.

Weekly total: 117 miles. Surprisingly, this felt really good. Thursday's run was a bit of a flop, but other than that, I felt reasonably good all week and managed to recover from Sunday's marathon extremely fast while still averaging 10 miles/day over the next 3 days. My legs aren't sore whatsoever, and that's an extremely good sign. I did a push for 111 miles in 7 days in late May 2008 since I realized I wasn't in very good shape and had to do a big ultra soon after, and it absolutely beat the living crap out of my feet and legs, basically crippling me for a few days afterwards. The fact that I can do 117 miles in 7 days right now in late May 2009 and still feel great afterwards, (especially with day 1 being a marathon PR plus extra mileage and the next few days being somewhat of recovery) means that my endurance is getting a lot better and my legs are way stronger.

Sunday 5-31-09: Rest. I didn't necessarily need a day off, but I felt that I had no reason to go out and do heavy mileage. I have to race one more marathon in the near future (Bear Lake Marathon, 2 weeks from now) to get my spot in the St George Marathon this October and I have to win the stupid thing to get my spot, so this is a pretty important race and I have to make sure that I don't jeapardize my ability to perform at 100%.

Week of 6-1-09 plans: Reasonably big, but nothing like last week. I'll have 1 speed workout, 2 if I'm feeling REALLY good.

The 3-month summer season officially starts today on my eTRaXC.com training log. In both summer 2007 and winter 2008-2009 (december through february), my 2 heaviest base sessions, I came very close to running 1000 miles in 3 months (breaking 980 in summer 07 and being something close to that in winter 08-09), but didn't quite do it. This June-August, my goal is to easily exceed that number. In fact, if I want to run my fall marathon exceptionally well, I think 1100 miles would be a good number to shoot for. Ideally, I want to be pegging 90+ per week, but more consistently and without much off time since I won't be racing much. At this point, my racing plans are just Bear Lake in 2 weeks and Cascade Crest 100 at the end of August, probably also running the Mt Disappointment 50 (an extremely tough 50 miler in SoCal) in early August as a warmup for CC100. My goal with Bear Lake is to win without any specific time goals. Last year's winner was 3:07 and they have fewer registered runners for this year's, so I'm hoping to be able to win without setting my training back. The course is easy, but almost nobody does it, so there isn't much competition. Cascade Crest is something that I'm somewhat regretting at this point because it probably won't benefit my Fall marathon that much, which is my entire focus right now, but at least it will force me to have an extremely high amount of base mileage, which will itself help significantly for the marathon.

Week of 5-18-2009, Stillwater Marathon race report

2009-05-24T20:17:00.000-07:00

Most of these days were previously mentioned, but whatever:
Monday:6
Tuesday:6
Wednesday:7
Thursday:Rest
Friday:Rest
Saturday:6, wanted to make sure I wasn't cramped after 2 days of car travel, ran around 6:30s
Sunday:35, marathon in the morning, 3 mile cooldown @ 9/mile when I got home, another nearly 6 mile run later at 9 pm just to ensure that I'm not going to cramp and will be good to start reupping mileage tomorrow
Total: 60 miles, though over 58% of the week's mileage was in one day. hah...

Stillwater Marathon Report:
The important stuff: Time: 2:52:55, Place: 3rd/533.
The time may be debatable. Officially it says 2:53:00 right now, but the clock, my watch, and the announcer all said 2:52:55 when I finished, so who knows why it says 2:53:00 online...

I thought I had a sub 2:50 right now and I'm still pretty sure I do, but in hindsight, this was not exactly a PR course, so I'm actually surprised to have beaten my Boston time now that I'm finished. For those of you familiar with the Druid Hills, I'd liken this to a marathon version of Dreaded Druid Hills 1ok; there were some flat sections, but very large portions of the course contained monstrously terrible hills. I counted at least 6 hills that were equal or worse than Heartbreak Hill and a number of other smaller ones that still took their toll. I split 1:25:0x for the first half, but my quads hurt around mile 10 already since the first 10 miles contained a large majority of the terrible uphill sections. The 2nd half could've been relatively fast (other than 2 absolutely atrocious uphills and a few other fairly bad ones), but the first half was so terrible that the 2nd half was more about survival and I ended up doing the second half somewhere around 1:27:50, not the negative split I had envisioned being possible. I managed to run on pace for a 2:50 until around 18 or 19 and it's a good thing that the biggest downhills were in the last quarter because I was just focusing on surviving as best as I could coasting through the last 4 or 5 miles. How did this happen? Well, my legs weren't really a big problem in the 2nd half. I made sure to have elecrolytes pre-race and 1 and 2 hours in, but my energy just got sapped. I took one gel a few minutes before the start and another at 5, but after that, all I had was gatorade. I had planned on one at 5, 10, energy beans at 15, and another gel at 20, but my stomach didn't feel good and any consumption just sounded terrible, so I kept putting off taking any sustenance until "after the next water station", despite my knowledge that doing so was slowly going to kill me. The fact that I was able to run another 9 miles reasonably well later in the day is a testament to how good my legs feel at this point and really shows the importance of taking gels incredibly consistently. I definitely could've gotten more out of my legs if I had more energy, but the lack of gels limited my energy and that directly slowed my race. I have vowed numerous times not to let this happen, but it has happened again. I'm not totally sure if I could've broken 2:50 if I had taken my other 2 gels and the beans, but it sure would've gotten me close. As far as place goes, I was in 4th for quite awhile, though I didn't know this until the half since there were 20-milers, half-marathoners, and 12-kers scattered throughout the course and i wasn't always sure who was who. When someone said I was in 4th around the half, I made up my mind that I absolutely needed to finish on the podium. I held 4th for awhile and bided my time and finally caught 3rd place when he succumbed to a walk in the last monster uphill at mile 19. Unfortunately, someone blew by me at around 22, bumping me back to 4th and another guy took me at 23. Fortunately, the first guy that passed me was apparently just surging as he passed me and he soon dropped back again and I retook him. The guy that passed me at 23 somehow went on to pass everyone else ahead of me and took the win (he ran extremely conservatively and had a ton left in the tank), but I was able to take the guy that had been in 2nd when I was in 3rd) and finally jumped back to 3rd place with a mile to go. I finally was able to run a decent mile for the last mile (as opposed to a bunch of 6:50s to 7s for a handful of miles there), going from 25.2 to 26.2 in the low to mid 6's. I crossed in 2:52:55 and was pretty happy to have a PR and a 3rd place finish after being fairly certain by mile 10 that a PR wasn't going to happen on this ridiculous of a course. Overall, I'd give this a B+. The nutrition stupidity undoubtedly cost me a couple minutes, but I still finished 3rd and missed the win by less than 2 1/2 minutes (winner was 2:50:32). Undoubtedly, a ton of fast guys will try to cherry pick this thing next year and I'm sure a bunch of them will be surprised at the insane hilliness, but I'm also sure that the course record ought to drop with bigger fields and better competition.

Week of 5-11-09, week of 5-18-09 (through Friday), Thoughts about TWSS running

2009-05-22T19:12:00.000-07:00

I forgot to post this at the end of the week, so this is a bit late and I decided to just throw together 2 weeks... I'm running the Stillwater Marathon on Sunday, so I'm pretty much just resting yesterday, today, and tomorrow to ensure a proper taper.

Anyway, I took it very easy last week as well as the first half of this week. I was going to do about 10/day all 7 days last week, and I ended up averaging 10/day for 5 days with 2 off days for a total of exactly 50 miles, a very easy taper compared to the last few weeks. I don't like to hit weeks this low, especially right after running so much for a few weeks (it makes me feel quite lazy), but I know that I need to be fresh for Stillwater on Sunday or I will have sacrificed a few more days of hanging out with college friends for the last time for nothing.

Monday 5-11-09: 6 miles: Federal Hill run, harbor loop, somewhere around 6:30/mile, maybe a little faster due to a very fast finish (forgot my watch).

Tuesday 5-12-09: 9 miles: 2.5 there, 2.5 back, 4 on track, broken miles.
Mile 1: 1600 in 5:21, 2-3 min rest,
Mile 2: 1200 in 3:53, 60-90 s rest, 400 in 69, 2-3 min rest
Mile 3: 800 in 2:30, 90 ish rest, 800 in 2:30, 2-3 min rest
Mile 4: 400 in 76, 75 rest, 400 in 73, 75 rest, 400 in 71, 75 rest, 400 in 63
4 miles total of 20:06. I finished this feeling pretty strong still. I was joking that we should've done a 5th and 6th mile comprised of 200s and 100s, which would've been stupid, but I definitely could've kept the pace for a few more miles of longer repeats like the ones in previous miles, as evidenced by my very fast finishing 400. In the future when I have more time before a race, I would like to try a 7 mile version of this, hopefully around the same pace, of 1600, 1200/400, 800/800, 4x400, 800/800, 1200/400, 1600 (ie decrease the intervals the same way and then re-increase them). Workouts like this will definitely help build the type of enduring speed I need for an exceptionally fast fall marathon.

Wednesday 5-13-09: 12 miles: Typical 7 miles in Canton with a 5 mile roundtrip warmup and cooldown. I don't remember the time, but it was probably somewhere around 6:40s to 6:50s. We started somewhere around 7s and a few of us rocked the last couple miles a little faster.

Thursday 5-14-09: 14 miles: Last trail run (perhaps ever? maybe not, but at least in the near future) in Loch Raven. :( I rode out with Dave and we had a nice relatively fast (roughly marathon pace) run somewhere around 6:30s/mile. Somewhere around 10 miles was on trail and the last 4 was on road. I think we started probably more in the range of 6:40s, but we absolutely killed the road section, especially the last 2 miles. By the time we got to the road, it was starting to rain and it was really pretty epic. I definitely had some room to speed up, but it was very slick and dark, so pushing something like 5:30s along the winding and fairly dangerous Seminary Road felt crazy enough. I think both Dave and I were trying to test each other at this point (well, at least I was trying to test him... haha...) and we both held on really well.

Friday 5-15-09: Rest. Legs felt good, but I realized that nothing I could do at this point could really benefit my race that much, so I took an easy day.

Saturday 5-16-09: Rest again. Decided the same thing. :P

Sunday 5-17-09: 9 miles: 8 miles of tempo, relatively fast, around 5:50s, but not fast enough to make it hurt. Finished at campus and just jogged home the mile from there.

Monday 5-18-09: 6 miles: Fed Hill harbor loop for the last time, around 6:30s.

Tuesday 5-19-09: 6 miles: 3 mile warmup, 3 miles on track of 4 x (800, 100 jog rest, 300) on the 7 to 7:30 depending on the set, IE a fairly generous amount of rest, probably more than we needed:
Set 1: 2:34, 54
Set 2: 2:32, 52
Set 3: 2:30, 50
Set 4: 2:28, 49
I ran pretty decent times here, pretty comparable to other track workouts recently, but I honestly just didn't feel that great and it taxed me a bit more than normal. I hadn't eaten since lunch and my lunch was pretty small, so I felt like I was pretty low on energy and that was probably the reason why. The one excellent thing with this workout was that every single split was faster than the previous. I was hoping to line up the 4,4,2,2,0,0,8,8, but I ended up missing the last 300 by 1 second. One interesting note is that the time between sets decreased with every set, but the 100 meter jog was slightly slower each set, so I had less time before the 800s but more time before the 300s as time went on.

Wednesday 5-20-09: 7 miles: Biked to Canton, 7 mile canton run in 6:30s (almost on the nose), biked back. I had previously said I was going to by everyone a beer afterwards but ended up having to jet out to meet my parents back at my apartment, so I fully expect people to hold me to this obligation in the future when we meet up at Boston or some other race. :) This was sadly my last team run with Team TWSS and I'll definitely miss training with them.

Thursday 5-21-09: Graduation! Took the day off on the advice of Ryan who said I should just rest a few days before the marathon due to too much mileage (in his opinion) so far this week. I wouldn't have had time to run anyway, so it all worked out.

Friday: 5-22-09: Traveling all day in the car from Baltimore to Chicago (2/3 of the way back to MN), rest again.

Tomorrow, Saturday 5-23-09, I'll probably just run a few miles to make sure everything's still feeling good and stretch out really well.

Sunday is the big race day...

I could talk about race strategy and all, but it's the same as Boston, just at a pace to go under 2:50. Instead, I should mention how grateful I am to have been able to train with TWSS over the last year or 2. This is a great group of runners with some really inspirationally fast folks and a very large amount of wisdom to go around, so I think I really prospered lately with their help and camaraderie. Over the past 6 months or so, I've been considerably more open to other peoples' advice and I think my Boston time reflects that. I think the speedwork lately ought to help me a lot at Stillwater and I think that Ryan, etc, did an excellent job designing workouts which ought to benefit me very well in the near and distant future. The past month or 2 has honestly been the first time in my life that I have legitimately enjoyed track workouts and I blame/attribute that (whether you consider that to be a good or bad thing) on my much higher mileage base than I've ever had in the past when doing track work. I never did any consistently within the last 2 years, so being much faster on the track and having the endurance to do the workouts and do them well is literally exciting. Anyway, back to the point... Not to sound cheesy, but I really appreciate having been able to run with TWSS and I'm quite convinced that, while I'll have more fun terrain to run on in Utah, I won't have nearly as varied and fun a group of runners to train with.

Training, week of 5-4-09

2009-05-10T20:19:00.000-07:00

Monday 5-4: 14 miles. 3 mile warmup, 7.25 to 7.5 mile run at Fed Hill in around 6:30/mile (Ben had some crazy route that ran through some ridiculously sketchy areas... I would never have done this run by myself), 3.5 mile cooldown back to JHH (took a longer route to bump up the mileage to 14 or so).

Tuesday 5-5: 10 miles. 3 mile warmup, 4 miles on track, 3 mile cooldown (slightly longer warmup and cooldown in a fruitless attempt to avoid getting muddy in the insane rain). Track workout was 1600, 800, 800, 1600, 800, 800 with 90 seconds rest between each, 140 or so between the 8 and 16. People seemed to think the times would be a bit slow due to the heavy rain and wetness (which subsided as the workout went on), but I still really strong and ran the workout well. My splits were 1600: 5:26, 800: 2:36, 800: 2:35, 1600: 5:16, 800: 2:34, 800: 2:32 and I finished still feeling pretty good, so it was a succesful workout that made me push, but not to the point of serious fatigue, which is what I wanted, given that I wanted to hit fairly high mileage this week and couldn't afford a few days of soreness.

Wednesday 5-6: 12 miles. 2.5 mile warmup, 7 mile canton run in 46:xx (pretty easy), and 2.5 mile cooldown.

Thursday: 5-7: 17 miles. This was definitely the big run of the week. I did a 16.5 mile tempo with a .5 mile cooldown at the end. I went out with the intention of going out too fast and trying my best to hold on as well as I could as a sort of mental trainer for difficult long races. I ended up going out in a little over 6 minutes a mile, but surprisingly, it ended up not being too fast to hold for the whole run and I ended up averaging 6:06/mile for the whole run, which really surprised me. Most of the run (about 13) was on roads and 3.5 was on trails. Both the raods and trails portions contained challenging sections, but I worked my hardest on the trails to keep the same fast pace that I had on the roads. The 2nd half was extremely difficult with hills on both Circle Road and Bellona (absolutely massive uphills), but I was able to hold on and sped back up to a slightly faster pace after the hills were done, hitting a mile that I had tracked out from about 15.4 to 16.4 in 5:50. Overall, I was extremely pleased with the run and I registered for the Stillwater Marathon as soon as I got back.

Friday 5-8: 16 miles: I first did 14 miles around Towson pretty easy. I forgot my watch, but it felt like around a 6:50 per mile. This run was more just to recover from the previous day, so I really tried not to push myself to hard. After the run, I ran into a girl from my church while I was stretching at the gym who was about to go running 2 miles and I was just joking around saying I would pace her, but she took me up on it, so I did another 2 miles, which actually served as a really good cooldown.

Saturday 5-9: 12 miles. I first ran a mile to get to the gym to lift. After lifting, I ran another 11, from the gym along the ROTC trail to Druid Hills, did the longest possible loop around the zoo and then the lake (with a couple cut backs in the trail section), ran back to campus, ran a loop around campus, and then ran home. I couldn't find my watch, but my pace was probably about 6:30/mile and it felt very manageable, which is good considering this is the pace I need to hit for 26.2 miles at the Stillwater Marathon.

Sunday 5-10: 10 miles: I did a very fast 9 mile tempo around Druid Hills from my apartment and then back to the gym before lifting and eventually running a mile back home. I haven't been able to find my watch for a couple days, but I could tell that this was extremely fast for the distance and the difficulty of the course, probably around 5:45/mile.

Total: 91 miles. Overall, this was an excellent week for me. My legs still feel excellent after 2 90+ mile weeks, so I'm feeling really confident going into Stillwater.

I'll do around 70 miles this week, focusing on speed and tempo. I'm definitely feeling like I can top that Boston time and hit a sub-2:50 at Stillwater as long as I'm careful over the next 2 weeks.

You know you're training well when...

2009-05-09T16:37:00.000-07:00

... you feel lazy after 12 miles of running and an hour of lifting. Haha... No, but really, I've definitely cracked back into that incredible "more mileage" mindset where I'm actually training hard enough that I get pissed at myself on days when I barely crack the double digits, such as today. I love when I'm in the zone like that because it means that I simply won't allow myself to get lazy and my training is guaranteed to be awesome. I really think I'm going to be very well peaked for the Stillwater Marathon at this point, and I'm really getting excited to race again. That is all... I just thought it was funny that I felt lazy after 12 miles...

Mid-week post, doing another marathon in 2 1/2 weeks

2009-05-07T21:44:00.000-07:00

Quick post... The training has been going exceptionally well in the last 2 weeks or so and I feel that my truest spring peak is coming after Boston. That means I need to run another marathon soon. I've decided to just drive home to MN the day after graduation (4 days earlier than the original plan) so I can run the inaugural Stillwater Marathon on May 24th. Officially, the goal is to break 2:50 and I'm fairly sure it's doable if I run well. I feel like I'm somehow already in much better shape than I was when I ran Boston, probably just due to the fact that I've finally started doing some good honest speed-work on the track. Additionally, I've been doing most of my runs at or faster than marathon pace, so that helps too. Boston was probably a hair conservative, and my 2:53:46 was obviously 80 seconds slower than it should've been with the bathroom break and all. Stillwater won't be an easy course, but it'll be easier than Boston and running my first ever home-state marathon ought to help my cause. As a whole, even dropping 4 minutes in the shape I was in at Boston would be doable if I ran a very good race, but I think I'm in better shape now, so it should definitely be doable. The plan will be to start in a 1:24 and see what happens from there. Also, I'm going to avoid eating something stupid like Wendy's the night before and I'm not going to consume any dairy for a couple days before the race to see if that can help keep me out of the porta-john while I'm running... I'm going to have an awesome post about this week's training in a few days and I'm really looking forward to the last couple runs of the week.

Week of 4-27-09

2009-05-03T20:43:00.000-07:00

I'm sort of counting this week 2 ways, Sunday through Saturday, and Monday through Sunday. Sunday through Saturday gives me 100 miles, Monday through Sunday gives me 92.

Sunday 4-26-09: 15 miles AM: Pike's Peek 10k + about a mile warmup (well, very fast run) to get to the start on time: sort of a disaster, wrote about it in the last post, but I ended up running 35:30, 2 minutes off what I wanted. I'm not sure if 33:30 is totally realistic off a track, but I'd like to think that I should've been able to hit 34 if I wasn't still somewhat of a post-Boston cripple. PM: I was angry with myself about my bad run, so I came home and ran another 8 miles in the blazing 90-something degree heat, which was really quite painful since I'm not used to the heat yet this year.

Monday 4-27-09: 13 miles: 3 mile warmup from JHH to fed hill + Shady 7 (started at 7/mile, finished really fast, with everyone sort of just trying their hardest to keep up with Kris Simms and Ben Ingram, hit the finish in 44 high) + 3 mile cooldown. The high of the day was 93 and someone mentioned that it hit the high shortly before we started, so it must've been 93 when I was running over from JHH. I downed 20 ounces of gatorade and 40 ounces of water throughout the 13 miles of running and was probably still a little bit dehydrated when I finished. Man I need to get better with the heat...

Tuesday 4-28-09: 12 miles: 2.5 mile warmup with Jaffe and newcomer Nina to track workout (2 x (mile, 60 rest, 800, 400 jog for rest, 400). Hit the first mile in 5:40, wasn't supposed to be too fast, felt really easy, 800 was in 2:30, felt pretty good, 400 in 71, also felt all right, 5 minutes rest, followed by the next mile in 5:29, still felt good, 800 in 2:34, fell off in the second lap, wasn't so happy with that, 400 jog for rest, 400 in 70, felt pretty good. Most of the team did a 3rd set, but I knew my weekly mileage was going to be high already and I had just decided that morning to do a 5k on Saturday, so I decided to save it. Everyone else said the 3rd set was really what hit them hard, so maybe I should've done it, but no-one else that had done Boston did more than 2 sets, so I guess I can't really be too hard on myself. After the 2.5 mile warmup and 4 miles on track, I jogged home with Jaffe and Nina, but realized when I was within about a half mile that I had forgotten my ipod, so I sprinted 2 miles back, making it a 4 mile cooldown by the time I got back to the track. At that point, I just got a ride back to Hopkins, but had to run home from the opposite side of campus (another 1.5), so my total was about 12.

Wednesday 4-29-09: 12 miles, Canton run, pretty easy, around 48 or 49 for the 7 miles. The warmup and cooldown from JHH were both about 2.5 miles, so the total was 12.

Thursday 4-30-09: 22 miles, Me, being mileage hungry, decided on an easy 15 miler. That turned into a not-so-easy 22 miler. I ran it in just under 2:30, so it just a hair under 7/mile. A few miles were on a fairly technical section of the Robert E Lee trail, so it wasn't really all that easy of a run. Oh, and I found a new section of trail in Robert E Lee that I hadn't known about on the far side from Hopkins. It's not that much extra trail, but either way, there's a beast of an uphill followed by a best of a downhill, so it's a really good way to elevate the heart rate for a few minutes in the middle of a run. As a whole, the run was basically a run to Robert E Lee, the largest loop possible on the inside, cutting out to Falls near the highway, running that little extra chunk I just found, crossing up to Bellona, taking Joppa to the far side of Towson, and then finally running home from Towson. When I finished, I was just getting to that point where I was getting fairly fatigued and happy to be done (not like in a marathon, but maybe how I'd feel about 18-20 miles into a decent marathon), so I pushed it right about as hard as I should've for the distance. I feel like the last chunk of the marathon is usually what does the damage and causes the need for recovery, so pushing until you're feeling about how you would around 18-20 miles in gives a great training run. I was slightly sore afterwards, but not sore enough to really jeapardize my Saturday race, so it worked well.

Friday 5-1-09: 0 miles. I took an off day just to make sure I wouldn't be sore for Saturday's race.

Saturday: 26 miles: ~2 mile warmup plus Fiesta 5k in the morning. That long of a warmup sounds a little obscene considering that it's 2/3 the length of the race, but I really need a lot of time to get a rhythm going, so it's what I have to do... Anyway, the race went somewhat well, in that I took 1st out of 996 runners, but I didn't really feel like I earned a reason to celebrate that much. I ran a 17:02, which isn't really anywhere near what I know I'm capable of, but I got lazy and decided to be satisfied with a healthy win rather than really going all out for time. The course wasn't the same flat fast course as the previous 2 years, so even going all out definitely would not have gotten me the race record (currently 15:58), but I probably should've been able to edge myself to a 16:30 or so there if I had someone pushing me and making me fight harder for the win. As it was, I started off in 1st and momentarily almost lost it when I briefly went off course about 100 meters in, but only 1 guy really stayed with me for long, so I got progressively more lazy as the race went on. It was pretty windy, so some guy drafted off me for the first mile (which we ran in 5:22). After 6 to 7 minutes, I was sick of giving him the advantage of drafting, but I certainly was not going to give up my lead, so I sped up for around 15 to 20 seconds and he just fell off instantly. At that point, I slowed back down to a little slower than the original pace, but he continued to fall behind, so while I definitely had another gear or 2 to kick into, I never really used them. I hit the 2 mile, which was up and over a decent hill, in something like 10:51. I hit the 3 mile in 16:28 or so and realized that I would go under 17 only if I really really kicked the last .1, but I just wasn't feeling that motivated since I couldn't even see the guy behind me anymore, so I coasted into a 17:02 and pretty much instantly regretted not pushing at the end. Either way, a win out of 996 competitors is pretty fun and I have to say, I realized that I really enjoy winning. However, no serious runner is going to say that a 17:02 is a very impressive time, so the fact that I won doesn't really mean that much. In most instances, I'd rather run a 16:30 and take 10th place than run 17:02 and take 1st, but a win is still pretty awesome, so I'm not going to sit here and complain about it too much. Oh, and if it matters, I somehow won by 37 seconds. I don't know why there was no-one faster in a 996 person field, but whatever... Oh, and you might wonder how a 5k and a 2 mile warmup makes 26 miles... It doesn't. I came home and felt bored, so I went for another 21 miles. hahaha... I ran to Hopkins from my apartment, took the Gilman trail followed by Roland and did the same loop inside Robert E Lee that I had done the other day. I then doubled back and took the exit that goes out on the really muddy section near that elitist country club (or whatever it is) that comes out on Ruxton right next to the bridge that hits Bellona, took a left on Ruxton, and did the ultra hilly loop on Circle Road (the uphill here was extremely painful and I was really glad to have a hammer gel with me here...). Next, I popped back onto Bellona, hit another massive uphill going up Bellona and circled back over 695 onto Falls, took the longest route back through Robert E Lee, followed the train tracks out to the left to my sort-of-secret super technical section of trail, took the hill out of Robert E Lee back up to Charles, and then eventually crossed over at Northern Parkway and took Roland home. Whew, sort of hard to keep straight. In other words, to and from Robert E Lee with a loop inside, loop around the back of the outside with a mini loop in the middle of this loop, then another loop on the inside. Complicated, no? When I finished this run, I felt like absolute garbage. My legs were somewhat sore and I was extremely fatigued due to the very high humidity and dehydration from sweat loss. Overall, I hit the run in 2:26, which is almost exactly 7/mile. It was definitely a tough run and it felt a lot harder than Thursday's 22, probably just because I had run somewhat fast in the morning. This afternoon run bumped me to 100 miles in a week, which was pretty nice, since I haven't hit a week that big in a couple months.

Sunday: 7 miles. I took it slow for this short of a run, around 6:30/mile. It was raining (admittedly not terribly hard) and everything was just soaking wet and generally miserable. I would've gone farther, but the weather brought down my motivation low enough to keep my run in the single digits.

Total: 100 miles if you count Sunday through Saturday, 92 if you count Monday through Sunday. I start my weeks on Monday, but it's still important to keep cumulative 7 day stats in the back of my mind, so I'm keeping both stats in my total log just so I remember that I did in fact hit 100 in 1 week at this point.

Next week: I'm debating how much to hit, but it will be at the very least 70 and probably a fair amount more. I'll have 13 on Monday, somewhere around 10-15 on Tuesday, depending on the track workout, and 12-18 on Wednesday, depending on whether the team run is in Canton or Robert E Lee, so I'll be starting the week off well. Assuming I feel good, I'm going to do something massive on Saturday or Sunday (debating between the 39-mile DC run with a train ride back or the 35-40 mile, depending on how I do it, Loch Raven run). In order to hit this, Friday will certainly just be a chump change day and probably one other day will be too, but if I feel good, I'll push for 100-110.

I'm throwing around the idea of splitting my training into very heavy (120-130) and medium (70-80) weeks back to back over and over rather than just consistently trying to hit 100-110, which was my original plan, as I build up for summer ultras, but I guess we'll just have to play it by ear. I do know that I want to shatter my weekly training mileage record of 125 a couple times. Ideally, I'd love to hit a 140 mile week so I can average 20 miles a day for a whole week at some point before August, but I don't really know what kind of toll that would take on my body and I would estimate it being very high, so that's not necessarily going to happen. I've always had in the back of my mind that I would be in "reasonable" endurance shape when I could consider 20-milers incredibly routine and I think being able to do one every single day for a week would constitute them as fairly routine, so we'll see. haha...

One other thing, as far as racing goes, I'm canceling Mohican. I realized that it falls on the Saturday right after I move out to Utah and I am absolutely unwilling to set a horrible precedent by missing my first Friday of grad school lab work to travel to Ohio for running. Quite frankly, having just July's 12-hour and August's 100 miler sets me up better to keep from burning out from too many uber-long races and it gives me more time to just focus on training. I obviously want to destroy Around the Lake's 12-hour course record (66 miles, which I will hopefully beat by at least 10 miles). However, my focus at this point is shifting towards marathons, so I'm treating these 2 races as part of the endurance build-up process so that I will be able to run as fast as possible in a fall marathon. My original goal for the year was to break 2:50, but I've decided to lower than to 2:45 since I don't feel like dropping less than 4 minutes after a summer of training in the mountains and a fall focused on getting fast is a good enough goal, especially if I end up getting a lottery spot in St. George's Marathon, which is MUUUUUUCH faster than Boston, my PR course.

Anyway, this was an absolutely absurdly long post, but what can I say? I love running, I love thinking about running, I love talking about running, I love writing about running... etc... You get the point...

April racing, racing schedule, training

2009-04-26T10:43:00.000-07:00

I'm going to start putting weekly training up again since I'm upping my mileage again this coming week for the fairly difficult summer racing schedule I've decided on:
1.Mohican Trail 100 Mile Run, mid-late June
2. Around the Lake 12 hour run, mid-late July (hoping for at least 75 miles, but the 78.6 mile triple-marathon would be really nice)
3. Cascade Crest Classic 100 Mile Run, late-August
I'm debating which marathon I'm going to run in the fall, but I'm leaning towards anything in late-October into any time in November. NYC is fairly appealing, especially since my 2:53 at Boston automatically qualifies me without making me sit through the lottery, but the price-tag on that one (including airfare from Salt Lake to NYC) is pretty ridiculous, so I'm still not sure. I have to decide within a few days since registration closes on May 1st.

As for a summary of my April racing, I had:
American River 50 Mile Run: 7:44:57 (9:17/mile). My goal was really just to break 8, though I secretly kind of wanted to be under 9/mile. I was pretty happy with my time since the course wasn't quite as easy as I expected, though. I'm pretty sure I have a lot more potential waiting to be tapped in the 50 and I think that in a good fast 50 mile road race (this was half fast roads, half slow trails), I might eventually be able to drop to mid 6's or even faster.

Boston Marathon: 2:53:46 (6:37/mile). My goal was officially to break 2:55, so I was pretty happy. I also wanted negative splits, but I didn't quite hit that. My 2nd half running pace was slightly faster, but I ended up going 86:33, 87:13, only because I lost 80 seconds in the bathroom at mile 16. Overall, I'm still happy with it, though I'm sure the time will continue to fall. My semi-long term goal will be to get this down to sub-6/mile, hopefully by 2011 and I think it should definitely be doable.

Pike's Peek 10k: 35:29 (5:42/mile). I thought this was pretty horrible performance for me... I was shooting for mid-33's, but everything went wrong. I wanted to do a 17-minute first 5k and speed up to a mid-16s 5k in the 2nd half, but I ended up doing 17:10, 18:19. My quads are apparently not 100% after Boston yet and I think I now realize why a fair number of more experienced runners were telling me this was a terrible idea. I mentally wasn't in this one at all; I accidentally got directions to the finish rather than the start, so I ended up making it to the start about a minute before the race started (having to run the last 3/4 of a mile in 4 minutes due to closed roads), giving me just enough time to sprint to packet pickup, pin on my bib with a single pin, and jam my chip in my shoe without tying it down. I was still winded as the gun went off and I never felt good throughout the race. The first 5k in 17:10 was only 10 seconds off what I wanted, but I knew pretty much from a mile in that things didn't feel as good as they should've. I guess this is a lesson learned about racing anything, especially speedy stuff, the same week as a big important marathon... On the up side, I have a lot of room to improve, but this was a pretty disappointing 10k debut for me...

As for my near future training, I'm going to be upping the mileage a lot in the next week or 2 and trying to run as much as possible over the next 6 or 7 weeks. I'm going to try to get one really massive run in most weekends since I've found those trainers to be the best for ultras.

My training ought to set me up very well for a late-fall marathon since I'll have about 4 months of huge base training before focusing on speed for about 2 months before running a marathon. I'll definitely be shooting for a sub 2:50 in the fall and if my training goes well, I might even shoot for a 2:45, which I think could be possible given very good training.

New Marathon PR at Boston

2009-04-20T12:59:00.000-07:00

So let me start by waying that I apologize for apparently being too lazy to write a report for AR50. If you want to know anything about it, just post about it. If you're considering doing it next year, do it, it's a great race, one of my favorites I've ever done.

As for Boston, I hit a 2:53:46 today. My first half was a 1:26:35 and my second half was 1:27:11, so it was pretty even splits. My pace in the 2nd half was actually a bit faster, but I took a huge crap at mile 16 and lost 70-some seconds as a result, putting my 2nd half split a bit slower. My overall pace amounted to 6:37 or 6:38 per mile. I saw it reported both ways and I'm apparently too lazy to figure out what it actually is. I felt pretty good the whole way through and definitely felt like I dropped the hammer throughout the newton hills. I maybe should've gone out a minute or so faster, I think it would've been tolerable. My 2nd half might have been a bit faster, but I felt so good coming out of Heartbreak that I hit mile 22 in 6:02, which definitely caused me to have to slow down a bit from about 22 to 25 until running from 25.2 to 26.2 in 6:10 or something relatively fast. I was pretty happy with my performance, given that it was a bit over a 5 minute PR, though I realized near the end that if I could've shaved less than 2 minutes and gone under 2:52, I would've hit the women's olympic qualifying time for the marathon, which sounds pretty cool, so I'll have to keep that in mind the next time I race. I'm debating racing a marathon next month in May now that I've run a relatively big PR, just to see if I can go faster at this point (I really want to break 2:50 this year and I think it might be possible now given ideal conditions), but I'd have to find a pretty fast course to be willing to commit to doing it since it would interfere with my buildup for summer ultras.

I'll be racing a 10k on Sunday, so it's fortunate that I don't feel beat up whatsoever. After that 10k, if I don't find a marathon for May, I won't be racing again until late June, so I'll be working on hitting pretty high mileage to buildup my endurance again.

American River 50

2009-04-05T19:16:00.001-07:00

Race report coming soon, but I had a pretty darn good race at AR50, running 7:44:57, 57 1/2 minutes faster than my previous PR of 8:42:25. The first half of AR50 was pretty fast, with me splitting the marathon in 3:26, but the 2nd half was considerably more technical and hilly, so while I was considerably slower in the 2nd half, I didn't really feel that I ran poorly in the 2nd half. I was in 46th out of 650 starters after 26.77 miles and somehow finished in the exact same place. I was worried I had gone out a bit fast after hitting the marathon in 3:26, but I guess my placing shows that I ran pretty similarly to the other runners in terms of first vs second half pacing. Apparently, only 510 people finished, which was a bit of a surprise, since I didn't think it was incredibly terrible other than the last 3.5 miles, which were straight up a mountain (to get from the bottom of the valley to the top of Auburn). Anyway, I'll post a full report in the next day or 2...

Last 5-ish weeks of training, racing updates

2009-03-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

I've been super lazy about this blog. Anyway, I'm too lazy to write out all my training since it hasn't been all that impressive mileage wise. Suffice to say, I've been trying to hit a lot more shorter tempo runs. I've done a LITTLE bit of speed work, but not that much. I've been doing about 1 consistent long run a week lately (20-ish miles) and my weekly mileage has been ~60 miles/week. I had plans to do a considerable amount last week, but things have been super busy, so I kept it pretty easy. I wanted to do another very long trainer about the same distance as that 39 mile DC run, but it rained the whole weekend and I didn't want to be all blistered up, so I skipped it and did speed work instead. Today I ran the National Marathon as a pacer, which was a pretty solid trainer for me. I was supposed to do a 3:15 and I ended up going slightly fast in the low 3:13s, but I was still pretty darn close to target, so it all worked out. The run left me pleasantly tired, but I'm feeling good enough that I'm probably going to hit a little bit more mileage so today can be 30+ miles overall. Speakin of racing, I ended up missing out on the Greenway 50k a few weeks back. I was really looking forward to the race, but a death in my family caused me to miss it for the funeral out in Michigan. It was nice to spend some time with my relatives, but the circumstances obviously weren't the best, so that wasn't the happiest of weekends. I'm debating how to train this upcoming week. 2 weeks from today is the American River 50. I'm in pretty good shape for it I think and my goal is to run sub 8 hours. I'm just debating whether I'll be better off going pretty hard this week or taking 2 relatively easy weeks. I have the feeling I'll be going medium to heavy mileage (75-80 miles) and then taking the next week pretty easy, but it's not yet set in stone. I still want to make sure I have a handful of good tempo runs in there, so the mileage could be a bit less due to the fairly strenuous pace of a lot of the runs.

Anyone want to pace the 2nd half of the B&A Marathon tomorrow?, Also, near future plans for training and racing

2009-02-28T11:08:00.000-08:00

I wouldn't mind having a pacer. I really want to throw down a decent pr, so having a pacer in the 2nd half would be nice. Ideally, I want to break 2:50 tomorrow, but the weather could potentially prevent that from happening. It might be snowing a bit during the start, so things will depend on if anything accumulates, etc.

I've only done a few particularly serious runs in the last 2 weeks to make sure that I would be rested for this, so I hadn't posted any mileages yet, but I did do my first hill repeat session since November and, while each repeat felt fairly slow, my endurance was terrific and I felt good doing a pretty large number of them. I also got in a couple pretty long runs down in the Wasatch Mountains of Salt Lake City, Utah, last weekend when I visited the U of Utah Bioengineering program, my longest run there being almost 3 hours. The runs in the mountains felt good, the only issue being that I was just finally starting to break in my new orthotics and they were hurting my feet quite a bit. I think I'm used to them now finally though, so I doubt I'll have any orthotics-related issues while racing tomorrow.

Anyway, my near future schedule looks like this:

Tomorrow (3-1-09): B&A Marathon

Next Saturday (3-7-09): Seneca Creek Greenway Trail 50k (I'm not 100% sure if I'm going to "race" race this... Last year I just did a good training run at the marathon since it was only $20 to enter, but if I feel recovered enough, I'll probably take it out pretty hard and see what happens)

Rest of March: HARDCORE training. I'm going to be doing only 1 or 2 long runs a week, but my saturday run every week will be VERY long, ie at least a marathon and a half. Ideally, I would like to do a 50 to 60 mile trainer on 3-14 and 3-21, but I don't know if I'll have the balls and/or recovery speed from weekend to weekend to pull it off. During the week, I'll be focusing on speed, trying to do around 3 tempo/hill/speed interval sessions every week in addition to other runs. I'm going to try to hit a couple 15 to 20 mile tempo runs here and there at a considerably faster pace than what I need to do when I race. These will probably hurt quite a bit/almost as much as racing, but this is the kind of training I need to do. I want to be faster and more explosive at Boston and I definitely want to be posting under 2:50 by then if I don't hit that sort of time tomorrow. Additionally, I will be racing a 10k the weekend after Boston, which for several reasons, is a very important race to me. I've actually never raced a 10k before somehow and I have some very big plans for my debut of the distance. I'm not going to go into it too much, but suffice it to say that there will very likely be a showdown between myself and some huge morons that need to be knocked down a couple pegs (if they have the balls to show up and race me). I'm not usually cocky about racing other people and I don't usually enter races to blow up other people's egos, but this is a bit of an interesting situation, so I'll just leave it at that. Anyway, one other race that falls in at the beginning of April is Sacramento, California's American River 50 Mile Endurance Run. I just ran a 50+ miler in November and did reasonably well, but I think that an unfortunate stomach problem involving me puking EVERYWHERE cost me valuable time. AR50 is legitimately 50 miles while the other course was a bit long, my training has been absolutely perfect for 50 mile ultras over the past few months and I'm in much better shape now, and I'm not planning on throwing up and losing all my nutrients at AR50 (fingers crossed), so I think that I have the ability to drop a LOT of time off my PR there. Ideally, I'd want to break 7 1/2 hours there, despite having run 8:42 in November. If things go right, I think it's completely feasible. The much easier (and slightly shorter) course, much better endurance and conditioning, better nutrition plan, and overall better game plan going into the race this time ought to help me out quite a bit.

I'll post some mileages for the last 2 weeks after I race tomorrow.

Training for Weeks of 2-2-09 and 2-9-09

2009-02-16T18:04:00.000-08:00

I don't really feel like writing a lot more, so I'm not going to post much about many of these runs.

Week of 2-2-09
Monday: 4 miles, very easy
Tuesday: 5 miles, very easy
Wednesday: 2 miles, very easy
Thursday: rest
Friday: rest
Saturday: 100 miles, Rocky Raccoon 100 mile Endurance Run, see last post for report
Sunday: rest after finishing race at 4:57 AM and only sleeping for 10 minutes
Total: 111 miles

Week of 2-9-09
Monday: 7 miles, VERY easy, took about an hour
Tuesday: 11 miles, long druid hills loop plus to from and around campus, not super fast, but not terribly slow, a bit under 7 minutes a mile
Wednesday: 5 miles, sort of an illegitimate run... I ran back home from dinner with people from the Cellular and Molecular Medicine PhD program at the JHU School of Medicine since I didn't feel like waiting around for a shuttle. Unfortunately, I was wearing slim-fit jeans and Sperry dock/boat shoes with no arch, so it was a bit uncomfortable, but whatever..., didn't time
Thursday: 7 miles, druid hills, high 6's per mile
Friday: 0 miles, didn't have time to run
Saturday: 39 miles, ran from my house to the edge of DC, took a train back, and then ran home from Penn Station, a total of about 5 1/2 hours running, so it was a reasonable pace for the distance.
Sunday: 8 miles, tempo work around druid hills, back to campus, and then back home, VERY fast for the distance, mid 5's per mile.
Total: 78 miles, a great week after coming off a 100 mile race...

Race Report for Rocky Raccoon 100 Mile Endurance Run

2009-02-16T18:01:00.000-08:00

So, this past weekend, I finally ran the Rocky Raccoon 100 Mile Endurance Run, something that I'd been talking about and training for over the past few months. Of all the ultramarathons I've run, I had more training time specifically devoted to Rocky Raccoon than any other previous race, so this was a pretty important race for me. When I ran the first of my 2 marathons of the fall back in October, I was in pretty bad shape and I just hadn't been training properly. As a result, I ran extremely poorly and totally faded in the 2nd half of the race. I wanted to have a huge race on the radar neaer the end of winter/beginning of spring so that I'd have to get back into top form over the fall/winter, so I chose Rocky Raccoon after hearing that it was one of the "easier" 100 mile runs in the country. A 100 mile run is never easy obviously, but at least compared to other more mountainous runs, Rocky is definitely less difficult, so it was a good pick.

A lot of my training for Rocky came in really cold conditions either in Baltimore or in Minnesota. When I was home in Minnesota on break, we posted wind chills in the negative 40s a couple times and even the straigh temperature was negative more often than not, so I had to do a good chunk of my training on treadmills to avoid freezing to death out in the cold. My long runs consequently suffered a bit since even a 20 mile run on a treadmill is enough to make me go out of my mind. I did still get some marathon-length runs in on warmer (single digit temp) days, and maintained my fitness reasonably well. While in Baltimore, I posted a good amount of mileage and while training for this run, I posted days with more than a marathon's worth of running at least 10-15 times, sometimes running 2 marathon length runs in one week. My longest training run building for this specific race was a 50+ mile race in Boston in November.

On to the actual race... After a huge 3 week taper, during which I only ran one 20+ mile run, I flew down to Houston. I flew out on the same flight as fellow runner Dave Ploskonka and we met another runner, Matt Condron, and his wife, in Houston. Unfortunately, we landed at different Houston airports without realizing it, so Dave and I had to wait around at Houston Hobby Airport for awhile before we finally realized that we were at Hobby and they were at Bush. After finally straightening things out and driving up to Huntsville State Park, where the race was to take place, we had a pre-race briefing and then went to sleep pretty early. My bed of choice was the floor in the trunk of the rental car, which wasn't big enough, so I just left the door open and stuck my feet out the back. This might seem like a bad place to sleep before running 100 miles, but compared to some previous sleeping arrangements I've endured for the sake of running, such as a hard cement floor without a pillow or soaking wet grass with no sleeping bag, this definitely was not all that bad.

I woke up at 5 AM the day of the race after getting 8 to 8 1/2 hours of sleep. I changed into my running clothes and got my water bottles, headlamp, and electrolyte and food supplies ready to go. The race started at 6, so I got to the line ready to go literally as the gun was going off. Unfortunately, I started behind some pretty slow runners and the beginning of the trail was quite narrow, so it took me awhile to get to the part of the pack that I should've been in.

The race consisted of 5 20 mile loops and I ran the first loop pretty fast, probably much faster than I should've, coming through in 3:10 or 3:15. The first loop was pretty uneventful other than a ton of people around me tripping over the roots in the dark. I made sure to learn from everyone else's mistakes and I watched the ground the whole time through the bad parts, which kept me from falling. None of the hills were particularly bad, but there were a few sections that definitely rolled up and down quite a bit more than I expected for a "very flat" course as I had been told. No matter what though, the first loop felt very comfortable.

I started on the 2nd loop at about 3:20 after eating for 5 or 10 minutes. After 5 or 10 miles into the 2nd loop, I started to realize that it was getting uncomfortably hot. By 11 or 12 AM, the temperature spiked to 80 and, with the high humidity, it got pretty uncomfortable. I realized that while I had trained a pretty healthy amount of mileage, I didn't have any heat training within months, so the high temperatures were a bit of a shock for me. While 80 degrees would be nothing during the summer, I was not ready for it in the middle of winter. I decided to just play it safe and I intentionally kept the lap pretty slow so I wouldn't die out later. Giving myself ample breaks to drink LOTS of fluids at every aid station, I came across the end of the second loop in 7:50 or so, markedly slowing from my fast first lap. I didn't feel particularly good at the end of the 2nd lap and I felt that things were not going particularly well at that point. The heat was starting to wear on me much earlier than I wanted and there wasn't a lot I could do about it. I was really craving chocolate milk and fortunately someone was able to give me a Nesquik that they had in a cooler, so that really hit the spot and gave me the boost I needed.

Starting on the 3rd loop after a long-ish break, I immediately felt better after having the chocolate milk. I didn't really push it in the first half of the lap since it was still pretty hot, but the sun was at enough of an angle by the 2nd half of the loop that I was able to speed up quite a bit. I sometimes like to surge for a few miles just to keep my legs from getting too used to going slow, so I pushed pretty hard from miles 50 to 55 before deciding that I should probably slow down given that I still had 45 miles to run. I played it safe for the last 5 miles of the loop and came across the 60 mile point in somewhere around 12:30. I actually felt better at 60 than I had at 40, which was almost certainly due to the fact that the temperatures had gone down.

The 4th loop was definitely an interesting test of endurance. Since the race was running in February, the sun obviously went down a bit earlier than it would in Summer. Starting into the 4th loop, the sun was going down. Typically, when the sun is going down, it means that you're near the end of the race, but I still had 40 miles to go in this one. I knew mentally that I still had a lot of running left, but I had this innate feeling that I was almost done, which definitely could've become quite dangerous if not kept in check. I ran the first bit of the loop fairly conservatively once again, but I absolutely surged from 66 to 72, hitting 68 to 72 in 27 minutes. Obviously, this was a pretty dangerously stupid idea, but I just felt like having some fun for a bit and I was definitely at a higher point of the run, so it didn't seem to be that bad of an idea. After the surge, I kept the rest of the lap relatively slow.

Starting into the 5th lap, I began to have some issues. I was getting really tired and starting to stumble all over the place. I wasn't really sure why, but I began to trip over a lot of the roots and it was really messing with my stride. After a few miles, I realized that my handheld flashlight was really starting to die out and, because I have a complete POS Petzl headlamp, my field of vision was just terrible. By mile 87, just a mile after the 6-mile aid station and 5 miles short of the 12 mile aid station, my handheld completely died out and I couldn't see worth crap. I tried running and by the time I hit my face on a tree branch, I realized that I needed to walk until I could get a new battery. Finally, when I was within 1/2 mile of the next aid station, I finally came across someone with a spare AA battery, so I got my handheld working again. Unfortunately though, my legs had cramped so much by that point that running was extraordinarily painful.

The last 8 miles after that point were an absolute hell. I wanted to just walk it in for the rest of the race and I had an excuse to do so since I had cramped so badly, but I knew that I needed to keep my pace at a slow jog at the very least if I wanted to PR and break my previous time of 23:09. I stopped for about 10 seconds just to fill my water bottle at each of the last 2 stations (12 and 16 miles into the loop) and took off as fast as possible to make sure that I'd make it under 23 hours. Even by mile 97 and 98, I remember thinking that I was still unsure if I was going to finish since my quads were burning so badly and every step was pure torture, but I somehow just kept going until I made it in with 22:57 on the clock. I wasn't sure that I would finish with a PR until I was literally close enough to the finish line that I could have tripped and fallen over it.

Once I made it to the finish, I could barely even stand up and I immediately sunk into a chair and just sat there for awhile. I dozed off for about 10 minutes, but that was all the sleep I got for the night since it was already almost 5 AM when I finished. I was expecting a ridiculously long recovery since I had to push myself so incredibly hard over the last bit of the race, but somehow I managed to be back out running again the next day and somehow felt good enough for a 39 mile trainer run from Baltimore to DC within 6 days of finishing, so I guess my body somehow recovers remarkably fast. I guess I have to thank the incredible amount of protein shakes and glutamine-fortified Recoverite by Hammer Nutrition that I had over the few days after the run.

In hindsight, I learned several valuable lessons from this race:

1. No matter how many miles you have in the bank from training, it is incredibly important to train for the weather conditions you will experience during the race. I was not ready for the heat and it definitely showed.

2. I need to fuel better and take more electrolytes. I really like the analogy of the human body during an endurance race to a car. The food is the fuel and the electrolytes are like the motor oil. If you don't have proper amounts of either, your performance will suffer. Whether you're running on fumes or you don't have enough oil, your car is going to give you issues, and the body works similarly. I didn't take enough electrolytes during the heat of the day and the few times that I had cramps, they were REALLY bad. My legs were twitching completely uncontrollably near the end of the race and simple electrolyte supplementation could've helped out with that quite a bit. I'm not really sure how I fell behind on the electrolytes, I guess I just underestimated how much I needed since I usually get away with almost nothing in most races of 50 miles or shorter. Also, with the food, that is easily correctable. When you're in a lot of pain, any sort of food sounds horrible, but it's still as important as ever to eat properly in those situations. By the end of the race, I was eating almost nothing and I almost thought I was going to fall over and not be able to get back up at a few particularly bad points. Fortunately, I didn't end up having any issues, but I need to be more careful in the future.

3. While my training mileage was pretty good, I need a higher emphasis on longer runs, rather than day in and day out training. When training for my first 100 miler 18 months ago, I had 3 other ultras leading up to it in the 2 months prior to the race. I didn't have a lot of training runs of more than a marathon, but the other races served as excellent trainers, especially considering that I had 2 60+ mile runs in there. This time, I had just as much mileage and ran my training at a higher intensity for the most part, but I only had 1 ultra and 1 trail marathon in the 3 months prior to the race. I had more runs of longer than a standard marathon, but my longest run that was specifically part of the buildup for this race was a single 50 mile race and that is definitely not enough. For my future 100s, I'm going to have to be a bit more balls-to-the-walls about my training tactics and throw in some good 50, 60, or 70 mile trainers. This will mean running for an entire day on a Saturday or something to train up, but that's what I need to do, so that's what I'm going to do. I have a huge 65-ish miler that I have planned for mid-March and I'm going to hit a couple really big 50+ers in late April through mid May, so I think that for my next 100 miler in June, the distance will feel slightly less out of the norm.

4. Always carry an extra battery and don't rely on a lowest-tier Petzl headlamp. I still can't believe I paid $30 for that garbage Petzl headlamp that I have. I'm going to be replacing it in time for my next racing excursion and I will make sure that I carry a battery for replacement in a handheld if necessary. This is definitely an easy and obvious way to make racing less painful next time.

Overall, I'm not too unhappy with my performance, though I feel that changing a few things could've led me to a considerably faster time. I still PRd slightly and I learned some lessons that will help me to race better in my 3rd 100 miler this coming June. I'll post a couple pictures shortly...

Rocky Raccoon report coming shortly...

2009-02-12T21:41:00.000-08:00

I've been slacking on finishing my write-up/haven't had any time due to graduate interviews, but it'll be finished and online in the next 2 days or so. The short story: I made it through in 22:57, a PR by 12 minutes. Obviously, it wasn't as fast as I wanted, but the course was adjusted this year and definitely slower than before, I also suffered some problems related to not fueling properly, and it was pretty hot, so I think those factors slowed me down a bit. I'm not terribly unhappy with my race by any means since I finished and still slightly pr'd, but I'll discuss the merits and problems of my race in much more depth in the race report.

Rocky Raccoon 100 is almost here.

2009-02-05T16:17:00.000-08:00

So, 2 days from now, I'll be running the big 100 mile race. The last several months of my life have been very focused on this specific event, so I ran a tremendous amount of miles throughout the 2nd half of October, November, December, and the first half of January to prep for this. I've been tapering the last few weeks and it's going to pay off this weekend. I'm going into the race with an incredible endurance base, but still managing to have very fresh legs, thanks to my extended taper. The one serious long run I've done in the past 3 weeks was last weekend and I felt absolutely EXPLOSIVE.

This is probably the most confident I've ever felt for any sort of 50+ mile race and I'm sure that, barring any injuries, I am going to run a massive PR this weekend. In fact, just to boost my confidence even more, I've decided to unretire my Falls Road Racing Team red jersey that I last wore when I broke 3 hours at the Boston Marathon last April. As nasty as this sounds, I've never washed it since then, in part to preserve how glorious I felt when I crossed the finish line under 3 hours at the world's most prestigious marathon. It's been hanging on my wall with salt from my sweat still crusting its sides ever since then. I don't believe in good luck charms or any of that nonsense, but I feel like just wearing the jersey while I race at Rocky will help me to always think about all of the best performances I've had in the past and how much Rocky Raccoon deserves a place among them after all of the arduous training I've put in specifically geared at this sole race.

Everytime I've started thinking about Rocky over the past few days, I've felt adrenaline just pulsing through me and I can literally feel my heart rate and blood pressure rising. The time has come for me to race and I am literally in the best shape of my life right now. The long part of this race was the last 3-4 months of training and all that remains is the short part: less than one day's worth of running on Saturday. In a 100 mile race, a lot of things can go wrong; you can have stress fractures, twisted joints, dehydration and heat stroke, kidney failure, hyponatremia, and you can even die, but the fact that I've trained incredibly well makes me supremely confident that my body, and even more importantly, my mind, are much stronger than anything this course can throw at me.

I'm not going to go into specifics about my strategy since I could write about that for hours and I'm sure that I will already write about this race for hours after I finish it in a massive personal record time. Here is what is important: this race and these trails will not defeat me. No matter what happens, I will continue on until I finish no matter what the cost.

The next time I post, I will be describing my conquest over a formidable 100 mile course. It will have proven to be a powerful foe, but I will have defeated it in such a conclusive way that I will be forced to declare this the greatest race I will have ever run at this point in my life.

Weeks of 1-19-09 and 1-26-09

2009-02-02T20:47:00.000-08:00

Neither of these past 2 weeks were particularly high mileage. The focus of each week was just on getting my body as recovered and healthy for next weekend's race as possible. I decided not to post anything last week since my mileage wasn't very high and there just wasn't really much to post. I did 40 and 52 miles in the 2 weeks, which is really low for me right now and only a few of the runs are worth really mentioning in much detail.

Week of 1-19-09:
Monday: 12 miles: Towson loop. I had done 36 miles the day before and this wasn't all that bad, but the fact that it had snowed a lot during the day made it less tolerable. I think I was more sore after this than I was the previous day. I still managed to do the run fairly fast and was around mid 6's per mile.

Tuesday: 4 miles: Quite sore from doing 48 miles in the last 2 days, especially with the previous day in the snow, so I just ran to the gym to lift, ran around campus, and then ran home, untimed, slow.

Wednesday: 7 miles: Zoo loop, very easy, untimed.

Thursday: 9 miles: Was going to do one more long run, but decided after a couple miles to keep it short and turned around early. I was pretty sore and I needed to start recovering, so I decided that a long run wouldn't be beneficial to me much anymore. I had run around campus, the Gilman trail, and a bit farther up Charles before coming back along the trail and going back to Hampden.

Friday: Rest.

Saturday: 8 miles: a bit of a long zoo loop, easy, untimed.

Sunday: Rest.

Total: 40 miles. Feeling a bit better already by the end of the week, especially after only doing 8 miles over Friday-Sunday.

Week of 1-26-09:
Nothing timed unless noted otherwise.
Monday: 7 miles, Gilman loop from Hampden, easy.

Tuesday: 7 miles zoo, easy.

Wednesday: 9 miles, can't recall what my run was... I'll edit this if I remember. I have 9 miles logged, but didn't make a note of where I went. All these easy runs seem to blend in to one another... lol...

Thursday: Rest, flying out to ASU.

Friday: 6 miles, tempo. This was my first fast run in a while and I felt almost completely better after all my rest, tapering, and easy runs. I did about 6 minutes per mile and I ran this down in Arizona by the ASU campus. I definitely could've gone faster still, but I didn't feel like really pushing myself into oblivion since I wasn't at 100% yet.

Saturday: Rest, did some fun hiking down in Arizona though.

Sunday: 23 miles of crazy trails (oops...), 3:05. I had said that I wasn't going to do more than a half marathon or so on Sunday, but the amazing trails I hiked on Saturday in Phoenix got the best of me and I went for a little over a 3 hour run on Sunday. Atlantic Ocean 4-woman rowing world record holder Sarah Kessans brought me out to the South Mountain Park, about 7 or 8 miles away from campus, and she mountainbiked with me as I ran. Some of the course was way too technical to ride on a bike, so I spent roughly 10 minutes of the run standing around at summits waiting for her to catch up, which I didn't really mind cause my heart rate was almost always through the roof by the time I got to the top of any of those climbs. I ran a bunch of National Trail, which is considered one of the most technical and well-known trails in the country apparently and spent additional time on the Mormon Trail and the Desert Classic Trail. I felt great at the end, probably partly thanks to the couple gels I ate during the run, one of them containing 100 mg of caffeine (that's a lot in case you don't know...). I feel like I could've done around 35-40 miles at the pace before I would've had to slow down, so that's a good sign for Rocky Raccoon this coming weekend, which will be run considerably slower. My favorite part of the run was definitely racing up the steepest ascent of National right before the end of the run, covering roughly 1000 feet of gain in under 6 minutes. Wow did I have to stop to catch my breath before I tore right back down the trail... Sarah was really fun to run with and it sounds like there are a ton of other really cool endurance athletes down at ASU, so it would probably be an amazing place for my training (not to mention my PhD... haha...) This may have been the single most fun run I've ever done, but the one downside was that a ton of time spent sitting down in the plane on the way home a couple hours later, caused some really irritating cramping in my legs. Oh well... Either way, it was probably stupid to do this long of a run 6 days before Rocky Raccoon, but I'm still glad that I did and I wouldn't change the run even if I could.

Total: 52 miles. I was a bit sore on Sunday night when I got back, but that run was well worth it. I'm not worried about still being sore at Rocky, so it shouldn't matter, as long as I'm not crazy and doing long runs in the next couple days.

Weeks of 1/05/09 and 1/12/09

2009-01-19T13:10:00.001-08:00

Ok, so I totally forgot to post my training last week and didn't think of it until a few days ago, so I decided to just wait and post 2 weeks all at once.

1/05/09
I kept this week to an average of just under 10 a day. I finally got somewhat acclimated to MN snow training enough that I could successfully do some very good quality long runs without really feeling it the next day, but I definitely wasn't up to how I feel training without snow.

Monday: 5 miles, treadmill, not particularly fast, roughly 7 minutes a mile... There's not a whole lot to be said about this run.

Tuesday: 13 miles in snowy/icy conditions in 1:28:xx. This was actually the same run that took me about 2 hours on the nose a couple weeks before. The conditions were definitely a bit better on this second running of the course and I was definitely pushing much harder, but it still made me pretty darn happy to run it this fast. 1:28:xx is clearly not a very fast time for 13 miles normally, but when running in pretty harsh conditions in a lot of gear, it's not nearly as easy. This was definitely a tempo run and I was pretty exhausted when I finished.

Wednesday: 6 miles, treadmill, easy, 7 minutes a mile or so, mostly just recovering from the previous day.

Thursday: 8 miles, treadmill, a bit faster, 6:30 or so per mile, still not really pushing too hard, mostly just saving up for one last big run in MN during the weekend.

Friday: 8 miles, outside. This run consisted of a couple loops through the hilly Kathryn Abbot Park trails, a loop around the fairly flat, but very snowy OHA elementary trail, and some running on Hilton Trail (an actual street, not a real trail) before returning home. Felt good, kept the pace decently high, well, at least decently high for being in thick snow for a lot of it.

Saturday: 20 miles, outside, Afton State Park. For some reason, I never seem to get out to Afton State Park until I'm about to leave MN. I've only been out there a few times, but I absolutely LOVE running there. The trails are so challenging that, in a 50k race that takes place here, only a couple people have ever broken 4 hours in the nearly 20 years that they've been running the race. Either way, I hammered out the pace on this run, putting in pretty close to 7 minutes a mile despite thick snow and huge hills. Afton State Park snakes around the majority of Afton Alps Ski Resort and has numerous climbs and descents that might as well have been skiing runs in the skiing resort, so it really is a pretty formidable course. I did one massive loop around the entire park with a number of offshoots along the way. When I finished this run, I was pretty much exhausted, but it was still a very enjoyable run and I'm definitely thinking about flying home this July to take part in the Afton 50k Trail Run just so I can race these trails.

Sunday: 8 miles, outside, in Baltimore! I flew home on Sunday and went out for a nice run when I got home. I didn't push too hard since I was pretty sore after Saturday. It was nice to be running on straight-up pavement with only a single layer of clothing.

Weekly Total: 68 miles. The mileage is pretty low, but I still felt like my 2 particularly strong runs made this a decent week of training.

1/12/09
I decided several weeks beforehand that I was going to do a big 35-40 mile trainer, mostly on trails, during this week's weekend, so having that in the back of my head, I focused this week on having a huge run at both the beginning and end of the week with VERY easy days in the middle. My total still hit an average of 12 miles a day despite taking 2 days off and taking another 3 days really easy, so it was a pretty successful week.

Monday: 26 miles. I was definitely still sore on Monday, but I decided to push it hard with a marathon-length run while I was still hurting from my MN training. I completed the run in right around 3:15 for about a 7:30/mile pace. My legs were sore at the beginning, so by the end, I was feeling like absolute crap, but it was still incredibly enjoyable. The course was as follows: Home to Gilman trail, all of the trail to left on Northern Parkway, right on Roland, left on Lake, right on some neighborhood street leading down to Robert E Lee Park, cut through the broken fence blocking the bridge that most certainly is not broken or damaged in any way but is still for some reason labeled as such, run into the park, run one big loop, run a second half loop to get back to the exit by Falls Road a couple blocks from FRRS, take a right on Falls, run Falls until whatever that road is called that bridges over 83 (the first one to cross 83), take that to Bellona, left on Bellona, take Bellona all the way until it merges into Kenilworth, take Kenilworth all the way to York, right on York, cross the circle in Towson and follow York up to Lake, right on Lake, left on Charles, loop around JHU campus before running home. The running in RELee Park was pretty tame and the trails weren't particularly wet or bothersome. When I finished, my legs were all but screaming in pain, but I was really glad to run this whole thing.

Tuesday: 6 miles, easy, over 7 minutes a mile, running around the zoo. Even this was super painful. After Monday, my entire legs, including even my hamstrings, which are never sore, were pretty beat up. After the run, I felt even worse and anyone that saw me walking anywhere that evening must've thought I looked pretty funny.

Wednesday: 0 miles, REST

Thursday: 8 miles, EASY, over 7 minutes a mile, running a Lake Ave loop. This was still pretty painful and my legs were still fairly sore.

Friday: 0 miles, REST

Saturday: 7 miles, run to the gym, run a Northern Parkway loop, run home after lifting, a bit sore still, but not terribly bad.

Sunday: 36 miles. Sunday was the 2nd major run of the week. In fact, this was probably the longest run I've ever done outside of a race. In previous very long ultras, I've always had a couple shorter ultras as my really long training runs for the biggest one, but for Rocky Raccoon, which is now in less than 3 weeks, my last 2 major races were November's Stone Cat 50 mile run and NCR Trail Marathon. Both are certainly helpful for Rocky, but they're a bit too far back now to be directly and completely beneficial. Being a bit worried that, while my mileage has been pretty high, I haven't had a whole lot of runs longer than a marathon to train up, I ran 10 miles more than a marathon on Sunday, running with Dave Ploskonka. We ran to, through, and from Loch Raven and we had a pretty exact mileage measurement with his Nike Plus wristband mileage counter thing. We took trails as much as possible on the way there and back and threw in as many major hills as possible throughout the run. The course was probably, on average, much hillier than Rocky Raccoon, so it'll be nice to run on the very tame Rocky course and not have to deal with tremendous hills like the ones in this run. The first marathon was completed in almost exactly4 hours, and by that time, we were back off the Loch Raven Trail and just on roads for the rest of the way, but unfortunately, neither of us had brought a whole lot of food and Dave suddenly just crashed right around the 4 hour mark. The weather had been decent, around 30-35 degrees, but it started snowing shortly before this point. Dave needed to walk, but I knew we would start to freeze pretty quickly if we didn't run. Dave had only brought a mix of gatorade and protein powders, maybe 150 calories at best, so I gave him the last serving I had left in my 5-serving Hammer Gel container and we walked very slowly for that mile, hitting it in something like 23 minutes. By the time we got to Seminary Road, which meant that we had about 9 miles to go, I said that we really needed to run because I was starting to freeze, so we slowly jogged up the rest of Dulaney Valley Road to Towson area until we got to Superfresh. The lines in Superfresh were absolutely ridiculous, so the stop cost 15-20 minutes, which I was not particuarly happy about. We both bought a couple beverages and some food and the calories alone were enough to get Dave moving again, so we started running again. After pounding down too much food in too short a period of time, I had to stop at the Towson commons to use the bathroom, and by the time I realized that the main public bathroom was locked and I had to convince someone to let me into the theater to use the bathroom, that wasted almost another 10 minutes. By the time the 5th hour and all of its breaks were over, we had gone maybe 2 1/2 miles in one hour, which didn't really make me too happy, but we picked it up pretty hard for the last hour and ran a sub 8 minute mile for the remainder of the run, which very likely was the fastest pace of the entire run. When all was said and done, I had easily enough energy left to tempo the last half mile, which included the really long and fairly steep hill going up 37th, so I was happy with the run. The total time was just over 6 hours, our average pace had slowed to 10 minutes a mile with that joke of a 5th hour, but to hit my goal pace at Rocky, I'll only need to hit 12 minutes a mile, so since I still felt pretty fresh at the end of the run, I'm starting to feel pretty confident about my ability to break 20 hours at Rocky.

Weekly Total: 84 miles. The total is pretty decent, not particularly high, but my 2 long runs this week were some of the best long runs I've had lately, so I'm very satisfied with this week's training. Beforehand, I had contemplated trying to hit considerably more mileage than this, but I realized that I was really sore after training in MN for a few weeks and I really needed Sunday's run to go well, given that it may have been the single most important run of my endurance base buildup for Rocky Raccoon, so I couldn't afford to be absolutely wrecked going into the run.

Next week: This coming week is my last real week of training before I taper for 2 weeks before Rocky Raccoon. Normally, I only taper for 1 week for most major races, but I'll have been pushing myself pretty hard for a few months, having hit nearly 1000 miles in the 3 month buildup to the race, so I'm going to want 2 weeks of easy running to make sure that I'm totally ready to do my best. If I go into the race sore, everything I've done will be far less useful, so I need to really make sure I'm feeling my best. I don't have a direct goal for this week's mileage, but I'm planning on hitting a 30 mile-ish solo run this coming weekend and 1 or 2 other 15-20 milers throughout the week before then in addition to some shorter easier runs, so my mileage ought to be pretty high. I feel like no matter what happens this week, though, the majority of the work for my race is finished and I am going to be ready to throw down a big PR.