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.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Week of 9-12-11
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Weeks of 8-29-11 and 9-5-11
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.
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.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Last few weeks of running +
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...
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...
Monday, August 8, 2011
A down week: Week of 8-1-11
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Week of 7-25-2011, Speedgoat 50k "Training Run" report
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. :)
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. :)
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Week of 7-18-2011
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.
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.
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