Good long-ish run on Saturday

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.