Hello, My Name is Chris and I'm a Runaholic

45 degrees in 10 miles?

2012-01-24T14:10:00.003-07:00

The plan for Saturday was that I was going to run the backroads from our house in Belle Fourche to Spearfish, where I would meet the rest of the family before heading out to lunch and bowling to celebrate my wife's birthday. Conveniently, it's almost exactly 20 miles from our driveway to my office if I follow the backroads and weave around Spearfish in a specific way. Also convenient is the fact that my office has a shower, so I wouldn't have to stink up the Chinese restaurant or the bowling alley with 20 miles worth of sweat.

Not so convenient was the weather when I woke up. The forecast had called for a high of 45 that day in Belle, but when I woke up it was only 3 degrees. WTF? I quickly checked the current weather conditions in Spearfish and found that it was 48 degrees there. Double WTF?? As the crow flies, Belle and Spearfish are only about 10 miles apart. Was there really a 45 degree difference in those 10 miles? Several times, I've driven to work in the morning to find Spearfish 20 degrees warmer (it's position up against the Black Hills tends to lead to inversions, trapping warm air in), but 45 degrees seemed a bit extreme.

Of course the bigger question was, if it really was that much warmer in Spearfish, what the hell was I supposed to wear for my run? Forty five is shorts and t-shirt weather. Three is, well, not. I ultimately decided on something in between....less clothing than I would wear for a typical 3 degree run, but more than I would for a 45 degree run. As I started running south toward Spearfish, I couldn't really tell if the air temp was rising or if it was just the fact that I was producing heat and keeping warm (having a northerly wind at my back certainly didn't hurt). Then, about 10 miles along my route, just as I was nearing the backside of Lookout Mtn and the outskirts of Spearfish, I felt the wind shift to the southwest and an associated definite, sharp increase in the temperature. I paused to shed a couple of layers of shirts, my gloves and my hat. By the time I finished my run, the bank clocks in town were reading low 50s, although the stiff wind and cloud cover made it feel a little cooler. Still, significantly higher than the 3 degrees I started out in.

It never did really warm up in Belle that day. After lunch and an attempt at bowling (the bowling alley was full, so we couldn't get a lane) we returned home. When we left Spearfish, it was 53, back in Belle it was still 24. That warm air never did make it 10 miles to the north.

An odd occurrence for sure, but at least it worked out the way it did. It would have REALLY sucked to start out in Spearfish in shorts and a t-shirt and end up freezing my arse off in Belle.

Lookout!

2012-01-17T09:26:00.002-07:00

Okay, so I follow Anton Krupicka's blog and I know for awhile he was keeping track of how many times he summitted Green Mtn. outside of Boulder in a year. Green Mtn. is a fairly formidable run, featuring a few thousand feet of climbing and, from what I've heard, is more of a powerhike than a run, unless you're name happens to be Anton Krupicka (who may or may not possess mountain goat genes). In any case, I don't have a Green Mtn. Well, there's probably some protrusion somewhere in the Black Hills called Green Mtn., but I'm not sure where it is nor have I ever run it.

What I do have is Lookout Mtn., a much less impressive geographic landform than Anton's Green Mtn., but it's all I've got that's easily accessible for a quick lunchtime trail run (I can see the peak out my office window, less than a mile away). The route I take up Lookout is just over two miles (for a 4.8 mile loop up and back down) and includes about 900 feet of climbing. That's not an incredible amount, but the thing about the Lookout trails is that whoever constructed them back in the day didn't really believe in switchbacks. Those bastards go straight up the slope for a ways, level off when the terrain takes you onto a bench and then straight up again. It's kind of like running hill repeats without having to run up and down the same hill. But they are all runnable, save for the final crazy steep pitch up to the summit, which is a power hiker (for me at least...Anton maybe not so much). To put the elevation gain in perspective, one of the other local trails I run on a regular basis is the Tinton Trail. In order to achieve the same amount of elevation gain on Tinton, I have to run approximately twice as far.

So, where am I going with all this? Well, while thinking of Anton's Green tally, I decided to look back at my 2011 running log and count the number of times I summitted Lookout last year. The number, like the mountain itself, is much less impressive than Anton's, but if nothing else gives me a target for this year. Turns out I topped out on Lookout a total of 31 times. That includes one race (the Thoen Stone Seven in May) and one double summit (i.e., I ran up the west face, down the east side and then turned around and went back over for double the climbing).

I think 50 sounds like a good round number for 2012. And with Bighorn on my plate, several more of those double summits would probably be a good idea.

What a difference a year makes

2012-01-14T20:38:00.003-07:00

Last January, on MLK day I think, me and few other guys got together in Sturgis and ran the Centennial trail. It was friggin cold....maybe 10-15 degrees with a windchill flirting with negative digits. And there was a good 4-6 inches of fresh snow on the trail, so we were breaking trail the whole way. With the wind at my back, I was comfortable enough, but by the time I'd reached the open area adjacent to the Black Hills National Cemetery, I was getting tired of snow plowing, so decided to turn around...straight into the wind. Almost instantly, my sweaty clothes flash froze around me. It was tolerable again when I got back in the timber, but when I finally got back to my car, I had to turn the floor heat on full blast to thaw out my shoes before I could untie them.

Today, I met up with a couple of guys and we ran the same section of trail, except we went a little further. I wore shorts and while I started out with a hat and gloves, I ditched the gloves eventually and the hat was feeling a little warm by the end. It was in the mid-40s by the time we finished and there was less than an inch of snow on the trail and several sections were totally clear. 20 miles total in weather conditions you don't often experience in January in South Dakota. Or in March, for that matter. I could get used to winters like this (but I probably shouldn't).

A New Year

2012-01-12T09:15:00.002-07:00

I've been meaning to post some 2011 summary stats, but just haven't gotten around to it. I know that I came up a mere 11 miles short of 3000 for the year. That's painfully close, but a full 5 days off in the middle of December while dealing with my blocked salivary gland put the kaibash on any aspirations I had of reaching 3000. Heading into the final day of the year, I basically needed to run a marathon to reach 3000. While I definitely could've slogged my way through 26 miles, I just didn't really see a compelling reason to do so, so I settled for 15 instead.

Winter has been remarkably un-winter like around here. Temps have been anywhere from the 40s to 60s the last few weeks, making for some pretty great January running conditions. Well, up until yesterday, anyhow. We got a dose of reality yesterday with a cold front that brought in sub-zero windchill. But, it's supposed to climb back into the 40s this weekend, so it was a short dose of 'real' winter...for now. The most telling stat is how many times I've run on the indoor track this winter. Haven't been there once yet. Usually by this time of year, I've been there several times. I'm holding out slim hope that I can make it through an entire winter without having to run 200 some laps some morning, but the odds are probably against me on that one.

I'm basically committed to the Bighorn 100. Registration doesn't open until Monday, and while I'll probably hold off for a little bit, I'm basing my training around toeing the line in the Tongue River Canyon on June 15th. One thing I didn't do well this winter is maintain a weekly long run. I ran okay mileage throughout the end of 2011...between 50 and 70 miles per week, I just didn't do many runs of 15 or longer. So now I'm trying to ease my way back into it. The good news is that my body doesn't seem to have forgotten how to do it...kind of like riding a bike (haven't done that in forever either). This past weekend, the first "official" weekend of my Bighorn training, I ran 15 on Saturday and 16 on Sunday and my legs actually felt better on that second run and I ran it faster. Now we'll see what happens when those back to backs turn into 25/15 or 30/10 or 20/20 or 40/10.

The diagnosis

2011-12-20T12:23:00.003-07:00

Got done visiting with the ENT (ears, nose and throat) specialist not too long ago. My submandibular gland is still swollen, but it seems to have receded some since a week ago and is certainly less painful (in fact, I'm totally pain free now). Basically have to play it by ear (and nose and throat...see what I did there?) for a few months. If I have a recurrence of pain or the inflammation simply doesn't go away, then surgery is probably a definite. Otherwise, it will hopefully clear up on its own given time.

In any case, I'm back to running and it's about damn time I started focusing since I'm a mere 26 weeks away from Bighorn. So far away, yet so close. I hammered out 11 miles in two separate runs yesterday, which means my mileage for the day exceeded my mileage from all of last week (for some reason, I didn't feel much like running when I was in agonizing pain or drugged up with Vicodin). My second run yesterday was a 4.8 mile jaunt up Lookout Mtn. The mountain appears to be totally snow free when viewed from town, but of course I found some hidden snow fields once I got up there. Really, though, the snow was pretty minimal and was packed down well, which makes for pretty decent running. The fact that I was running outside in shorts just a few days before Christmas is fairly remarkable in itself. And, I was pleasantly surprised that even after all the time off last week, I was able to run the entire runnable route yesterday, albeit slowly. I say "runnable" route, because there's a bit of rock crawling required just before the summit. That stretch might be runnable by someone with mountain goat genes, but not by me. It's even warmer today (52!...on December 20th!), so the plan is to hit the Tinton Trail just outside of Spearfish after work to assess the snow situation there. Alas, snow is in the forecast for tomorrow, so whatever the conditions are now, they are certain to change in the very near future, but I'm determined to tough it out and do as much trail running as possible this winter (even if it requires snowshoes). If I'm going to survive Bighorn, I don't have much of a choice.

I'm Back

2011-12-15T10:19:00.002-07:00

Believe it or not, I am still alive. Seems like the last few months just flew by. Really I didn't have much to post about running-wise, but I guess that's no excuse. So, here's a quick update.

My son's football season went well. I found out that coaching football is much more stressful than playing football. I'm pretty sure us coaches agonized over the outcomes of the games much more than the kids did. At 6 and 7 years old, they tend not to overthink things and just go with the flow, which is good. In the end, we had a great season for a first year team. Finished the regular season at 4-3, which earned us the #4 seed in the playoffs. Ended up losing in the first round to the eventual champions. All four of our losses on the year were very close games that easily could have gone the other way....we were literally a few yards from winning at the end of a couple of those losses. Looking forward to next year!

On the running front, I wrapped up the 3rd annual Black Hills Trail Running Series in November. I had managed to win the men's open division the first year of the series and took 3rd last year, so I jokingly stated that my goal going into this year was to finish 2nd so I could have a complete collection of trophy rocks. Well, as it turned out, I finished 2nd, so the collection is now complete. Of course, I'll still be back next year.

Speaking of next year, my tentative race schedule is starting to take shape. I'm about 90% sure that I'll register for the Bighorn 100, which will be my 2nd 100 mile run and my first true mountain 100 (my first 100 being Lean Horse). I'm also fairly sure I'll run the brand new Quad Rock 50 in Fort Collins as a tune-up. Other than that, I haven't decided on anything, but will probably look for something later in the summer, maybe Elkhorn again.

Hard to think of all that running right now considering it's now been 5 days since I ran at all. This is not a voluntary break. I've got an infection in my submandibular gland (one of the ones under the jaw that produces saliva). This infection has made it nearly impossible for me to eat solid foods for the last 5 days, so I'm on a soup and pudding diet, which is getting pretty damn old. I'm on antibiotics and painkillers until I can see a specialist next week to determine if the gland needs to come out (it probably does, since this has happened in a less severe fashion before). I'm getting pretty restless though. I wasn't told not to run, but I've been playing it safe. It doesn't help that the weather right now is pretty spectacular for December in South Dakota and here I am sitting inside, sipping soup. Patience is not one of my virtues, and my patience is running out...

While I'm here, I suppose I better do some advertising for the Black Hills 100. Ryan and I are now the principle owners of the event (under the guise of our new company, Dakota Endurance). Jerry will still be helping out, but is gradually retiring from the race directing business (he has sold Deadwood-Mickelson and Run Crazy Horse to his co-director Emily and Ryan and I will be gradually taking over Lean Horse as well). For Black Hills, we are currently offering a post-Western States lottery discount for the 100M event. Through December 31st, registration for the 100M is $24 off ($175). Just go to Ultrasignup and register. Response has been good so far. I don't have the data, but I would venture to guess that our numbers are up from this point last year and we have some returnees, which is good (it means they didn't totally hate it last year).

That's it in a nutshell. I'll try to be more vigilant about posting, but I've said that before. Hopefully, I can get this damn gland thing taken care of and actually have something of interest to post on the running front.

Merry Christmas!!

Change of seasons

2011-09-15T12:16:00.002-07:00

I'm not just talking about summer to fall. Summer racing season is all but over for me. I had thought it was over after Elkhorn the first weekend of August, and I guess it turns out it was thanks to my DNS at Lean Horse a few weeks ago. So, finally, after about 4 months of train, taper, race, recover, repeat, I can just go out and run for the hell of it with no specific goal in mind. I am still finishing up the 3rd annual Black Hills Trail Running Series, where I currently sit at 2nd place in the Men's open division standings. Just had a trail series races this past Sunday actually, the 8.1 mile Thunder Run where I took 5 minutes off my time from last year and finished 6th overall. That 5 minutes is probably a result of two factors: 1) I'm in better trail shape this year and 2) Last year the Thunder Run was my first race after the Lean Horse 100 and I was still somewhat feeling the effects. Only 3 more trail series races left, although I will definitely miss one of them and, hopefully, two (more on that later). The one I will definitely run is the 10-10-10K, which was actually on 10/10/10 last year but is now on 10/9/11....as the directors say, it still adds up the same (think about that one a bit).

Football season has also begun, which directly relates to my mention above that I'm hoping to miss two of the last three trail series races. My son is playing on and I am an assistant coach for the Belle Fourche Cardinals of the Black Hills Youth Football League, which consists of teams from Belle, Rapid City, Wall, Spearfish and Box Elder. It's full pads, full contact, 11 man football on full size fields (which is kind of odd for me since I played 8 man football on an 80 yard field back in my high school days in Montana). We had our first game last Saturday and scored our first win over the Wall Eagles 27-18. The one remaining trail series race I will definitely miss is the Sundance Trail Run on Sept. 24th because we play the Rapid City Steelers that day. As it turns out, the league championship game is on Nov. 5th, the same day as the "unofficial and unsanctioned" South Dakota Trail Championships, the final race of the trail series. The Cardinals still have 6 games of the regular season left to earn a top 4 seed and berth in the playoffs, and then would need to win a playoff game, but I would choose them playing in the championship over the trail race any day. Go Cardinals! (as a die-hard Seahawks fan, I honestly never thought I would ever under any circumstances utter those words)

DNS at Lean Horse

2011-08-29T08:05:00.003-07:00

Well, I jumped out of the Lean Horse 50K just as fast as I jumped into it. I had hoped to run a fairly fast 50K this weekend, maybe even contend for the win in a small field, but I spent most of Friday night tossing and turning with some stomach issues. Woke up a couple of times convinced that I was going to puke, but never did. The stomach settled down for a couple of hours and I actually got some sleep, but when I woke up I couldn't stand the thought of eating anything and everything just felt off. Running 31 miles did not sound like any fun at all, so I pulled myself from the race and spent the day doing race directing duties instead. It wasn't easy sitting at the finish line watching the first 50K runners come in and wondering if it could've been me, but my stomach was still off then. I didn't each much of anything all day...pretty sure the first Hammer Gel I tried to take if I had run would've come right back up. My daughter had the stomach flu earlier in the week and my son ended up getting it on Saturday too. Just unlucky timing, but better that this happen for this race than for one that I trained a long time for and invested a bunch in. If it would've happened before the Lean Horse 100 last year, I would've been devastated. As it was, I was disappointed, but it's not a huge deal. Feeling better now, so time to focus on the remainder of the trail series races.

Congrats to everyone who finished Lean Horse this weekend! Some pretty amazing performances...the overall winner of the 50M crushed the women's course record and ran the 2nd fastest 50 ever at Lean Horse. The 100 winner ran a 15:34, ten minutes off of the course record. Pretty brutal heat this year. It got up to 102 in Hot Springs, a little cooler (mid to high 80s) up in Custer and Hill City.

As an example of why we refer to the Black Hills 100 as Lean Horse's evil stepsister, there were 29 sub-24 finishers at Lean Horse this weekend. Only 32 people finished Black Hills period, and only 2 were sub-24. Yes, Black Hills had a severe thunderstorm, but Lean Horse was hot.

Okay, one more

2011-08-23T09:13:00.002-07:00

When I ran the Elkhorn 50K a few weeks ago, it was with the assumption that it would be my last ultra for the year. Lean Horse and Sundance were both out because of my son's football schedule and I certainly wasn't planning on traveling anywhere outside of the area for another one this year. Well, as so often happens, plans have changed. My son's team won't be participating in the multi-team scrimmage this Saturday (we just got our pads on Sunday, so the kids have barely had a chance to learn how to put them on, much less play with them). That means my Saturday morning is now free and my name is now on the Lean Horse 50K entrant list (along with a whopping 15 others).

This means I will be pulling a double duty of sorts this weekend. The original plan was to arrive in Hot Springs after the scrimmage on Saturday and fulfill some race director-in-training duties alongside Jerry (the race director) and Ryan (the other race-director-in-training). Now, I'll be in Hot Springs on Friday to help Jerry and Ryan out, run on Saturday morning and, after a quick shower, resume some directing tasks.

I've run the Lean Horse 50K once before, back in 2007. That was also my first ever ultra. I ran it in 4:46 (still my 50K PR) and finished 2nd overall after leading much of the race but eventually fading and getting passed at about mile 20. The course is different this year and should be somewhat faster. Back in 2007, the 50K runners never set foot on the Mickelson Trail...the race was a straight up out and back starting in Hot Springs, heading out on Argyle Road and then turning back about a mile short of the Mickelson. This year, all three races (50K, 50M and 100M) will start about 11 miles west of Hot Springs at the Minnekahta trailhead. This will put us on the Mickelson right away. We'll be on the trail for about 14.5 miles before hitting Argyle Road for the final 16.5. So, fewer hills this time, although all of them will come in the last half of the race (but it will still be a net downhill overall). Either way, this is a much faster course than either of the other two 50Ks I've run (Bighorn and Elkhorn), hence my PR still standing from that race four years ago (four years? really??).

To put the Lean Horse course in perspective, consider the Elkhorn 50K I just ran back on the 6th. That course featured almost 7000 feet of elevation gain over 31 miles. The total elevation gain for the new Lean Horse course is under 1000 feet. To further put that into perspective, consider the route I run once or twice a week on the Lookout Mtn trails in Spearfish. A 4.4 mile loop on Lookout includes about 900 feet of elevation gain. So, at Lean Horse I'll be stretching that same amount of gain over a distance that's 7 times longer. Piece of cake, right?

The toughest part of preparing for this race (if you can call what I've been doing preparing....it's been a very low mileage recovery mode since Elkhorn), is getting over the trail mentality when it comes to pace. Most of the ultras I've run recently have been on fairly tough mountain courses, where 11, 12, or 13 minute pace were the norm (for me, at least). I would like to run Lean Horse in 4:30 or so, which would be sub-9:00 pace. In my mind, that sounds really hard for an ultra, but I think I need to get past the idea that the course will affect my pace. In reality, I should be able to maintain a good pace over a relatively flat course fairly easily...I did it in training for the Lean Horse 100 several times last year and I just ran the Missoula Marathon at sub-8:00 pace back in July without pushing myself too much. Of course, I haven't done many flat long runs this year because my focus has been on trail running, so I just don't feel as comfortable in that realm right now.

In any case, this is probably way too much thought to put into a race that I just found out I was running two days ago. My intent is to run comfortably, but steadily, early on and see where that leaves me when I hit Argyle Road. If I do that, I should end up near my PR, and given the small field, probably at or near the front of the "pack" as well.

Elkhorn 50K Report

2011-08-08T07:25:00.002-07:00

I've wanted to run Elkhorn for a couple of years now. I grew up in Montana, have run several marathons in Montana, but had never run an ultra there. Unfortunately, Elkhorn just never fit into my schedule until this year. Still, I kind of wavered back and forth trying to decided if I actually wanted to do it. After running two 50 mile races (Collegiate Peaks and Bighorn) in May and June, I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do, if anything, to finish off the summer racing season. The Lean Horse 50K or 50M was tempting because of its proximity, but a schedule conflict there eliminated that idea. After running the Missoula Marathon in July, I finally took the plunge and registered for the Elkhorn 50K, opting for a "short" ultra (and, man, I ended up being VERY glad I didn't register for the 50M).

One of the draws of Elkhorn is that my cousin John lives in Helena (the nearest city to the race). John ran the 50K last year and was registered again this year. He has also run the Missoula Marathon with me the last few years and we finished within a minute of each other this year. So, free lodging with he and his family and someone to run at least part of the race with. For the cherry on top, John is also a home brewer and a pretty damn good one at that, so free homemade beer too. It's like an ultra runner's dream come true!

I made the 8ish hour drive over to Helena on Thursday and spent that evening and pretty much all of Friday just hanging out at John's place and basically just sitting on my ass. After a fairly rough weekend last week, where my legs just felt totally dead, I was erring on the side of caution and resting as much as possible heading into the race. On Friday evening, John and I drove out to the packet pick-up/pre-race dinner. This is wear things started to get a little crazy. Now, Montana is a big state geographically speaking, but a very small one population-wise. Inevitably, when I tell someone I'm originally from Montana they say, "Oh, do you know so-and-so from Montana?" More often than not, I don't....the population isn't THAT small and it's spread out over a large area. Well, my experience at Elkhorn did nothing to dispel the myth that everyone from Montana knows everyone else from Montana. Beginning with packet pick-up, I ended up meeting four random people who I knew or who knew somebody I knew. First off was one of my friends from college who was at the pre-race dinner with some of his friends who were running. I knew he lived in Helena, but had totally forgotten that fact until I looked up and saw him standing there. Then, the lady handing out the race packets recognized my name...turns out her mom was my grade school English teacher. The next day at the finish line I ran into a guy who was my lab partner in Ecology class back in college and another guy who knows one of my best friends from college. So, yeah, apparently everyone in Montana DOES know everyone else. In any case, the pre-race dinner was fairly decent. Nice relaxed scene and I scored a free pair of shoes at the prize drawing after the meal.

Race morning was nice and cool...about as good of weather as you could hope for in Montana in August. This race has experienced some pretty hot days in its history and I can't even imagine how much tougher the already brutal course would be with temps in the 90s. I'm pretty sure it never got out of the 70s while we were running and I never felt hot...in fact, in some places I actually got chilled.

There are three events at Elkhorn: the 50M, the 50K and the 23K (totally random distance there, but I think that just happens to be how far the lower loop of the trail is). The 50M had already started at 5:00 AM when we arrived. The 50K start was at 7:00 and then the 23Kers took off at 9:00. All three events follow parts of the same course, which is almost entirely singletrack trail save for the first (and last) mile and a half along a dirt road. The 50K course follows the dirt road out to the McClellan Creek trail, which heads basically straight south past the Teepee Creek aid station (which isn't open yet the first time through) at about 4 miles. From Teepee Creek, the trail continues south and starts the first big climb of the day, ascending up and over a ridge to the Elk Park aid station at about mile 7. Elk Park marks the beginning of an 8 mile loop, which first takes you downhill to the Wilson Creek aid station and then up the 2nd big climb of the day back to Elk Park at roughly the halfway point. From there, the course follows the same trail back down to Teepee Creek at mile 19, which is an active aid station this time. And this is where the fun begins....the toughest climb of the day heads up from Teepee Creek and along a ridge, eventually topping out and then descending a little bit to the Casey Meadows aid station at mile 23. Another shorter climb takes you out of Casey Meadows before you drop into the Jackson Creek drainage and start heading down to the final aid station. However, that downhill is interrupted (quite rudely) by one more steep but fairly short climb before heading back down to Jackson Creek at mile 28. From there, it's downhill for a ways on the trail and then back on the road to the finish line. All told, approximately 6,900 feet of elevation gain (and subsequent loss) over the course of 31 miles....nothing to shake a stick at.

My overly optimistic goal heading in was to run a sub-6. This would be only my 3rd 50K. I ran a 4:46 at Lean Horse a few years ago, which means nothing considering how flat that course is. I also ran a 5:46 at Bighorn two years ago on what is certainly a much tougher course than Lean Horse, but I wasn't really sure how it compared to Elkhorn. I knew sub-6 would put me in the top 10 almost assuredly and possibly top 5. A lofty goal for me, but what did I have to lose?

As the race started, I felt okay. Not great, not bad, just okay. The first stretch to Teepee Creek is almost all uphill, but gradual enough that it's totally runnable and John and I ran almost all of it. After Teepee Creek, we hiked much of the climb up to Elk Park and I did not feel good at all on that section. Considering that I was less than 8 miles into the race and was hiking, I felt like I was working WAY too hard. My legs didn't feel into it and I was starting to feel some impending digestive issues. After Elk Park, John started to pull away from me and I eventually decided that a trip to the bushes was necessary if I was going to be able to run this downhill section properly. As I had hoped, that did the trick and soon enough I was feeling much better and running fairly well. In short time, I caught back up with John and we ran into the Wilson Creek aid station together. He pulled ahead of me a ways on the subsequent climb (all hiking) back up to Elk Park, but we hooked up again at the Elk Park aid station and started the descent back to Teepee Creek together. This was the high point of the race for me. It only took me 15 miles or so to find a groove, but I did finally find one. Descending back down to Teepee Creek I pulled away from John and passed three other guys who we hadn't seen since climbing the same hill earlier in the race. By the time I reached Teepee Creek, I was feeling great and was actually thinking that I might be able to make up enough time over the rest of the course to be somewhat close to 6 hours (my pace had drifted so much on the first climb to Elk Park that that goal seemed lost early on).

And then the climb started. Actually, I felt very good for at least 3/4 of the climb to Casey Meadows. I was power-hiking all of it but was consistently passing 23K runners and wasn't getting passed by anyone. My legs and stomach both felt solid. At what I thought was the top, we crossed a meadow and I was all psyched up to start running some downhill. Except there was no downhill. Instead, the course headed up more, steeper than before and extremely rocky. And just like that, I hit the wall. My legs started to quiver, I started feeling lightheaded and was sure I was going to hurl (which is appropriate, considering the race is put on by HURL - the Helena Ultra Runners League). I pulled off the side of the trail, hunched over and waited for the inevitable to come, but it never did. The nausea faded eventually and I continued on. My last mile up that climb was somewhere in the 23:00 range. Just brutal. Finally, the climb did end, but by then I wasn't so eager to run. I tried a few times, but the trail was so rocky that my pathetic shuffle just resulted in tripping every few steps, so I was resigned to more walking. Eventually the trail did smooth out and I was able to achieve something resembling a running gait as I approached the Casey Meadows aid station.

The climb out of Casey Meadows featured more walking. This climb wasn't nearly as steep and under normal circumstances I would have run much of it, but normal circumstances are fairly abnormal during an ultra, so hike I did. Along that climb, I got passed by the 1st place 50 miler, who was absolutely cruising and ended up crushing the course record. John also caught up to me on that stretch. I knew by our position high up on the ridge and the finish line's location at the bottom of the drainage that eventually we would have to lose quite a bit of elevation, but the trail just didn't seem to be cooperating. We were heading down, but gradually. I finally asked John if the damn trail ever went down for real and he pointed ahead. Sure enough, there was the turn onto the Jackson Creek trail. I was able to do some decent running here and again pulled ahead of John. About halfway between Casey Meadows and Jackson Creek, the downhill is interrupted by a short but steep climb. By this point, my legs had absolutely no appetite for going uphill, no matter how slow. I started slogging up the hill and got hammered again by a wave of nausea. Again, I pulled off to the side of the trail, hands on knees, and waited for the inevitable. And, again, it never came. I continued the slog and soon enough was running back downhill into the Jackson Creek aid station.

John caught back up to me at the aid station, although I pulled slightly ahead as I left sooner. There's just a short bit of trail after the aid station and then the course meets back up with the same road we started out on. When I got to the road, I looked back and John was right behind me. I walked for a bit until he caught up and then we shuffled together down the road. By this point, we were both fighting cramps and would each have to take short walk breaks, but always ended up catching back up with each other. With about a quarter mile to go, we saw John's wife Vanessa and his son Jack cheering us on and, as we passed them, Jack ran out to pace us to the finish. John and I ended up finishing side by side (not hand in hand, although I'm sure that would have been a tear-jerking moment) in 6:40:23, about a minute faster than John ran last year.

All told, not a horrible day on the trails. I definitely underestimated the difficulty of the climbs. I had some cramping issues, but nothing debilitating. My nutrition was pretty poor...I don't think I ate any gels after the last big climb and the last two aid stations didn't have any Pepsi, which I had been drinking at all previous aid stations, so I basically didn't take in any calories for the final 10 miles or more (other than a few chunks of watermelon, which doesn't even really count). I was drinking plenty...ended up emptying my 70 oz. hydration pack a couple of times. I just need to learn to force more calories down, something I think I let slide here because it was "only" 31 miles. Of course, it was easily the toughest 31 miles I've ever run. All in all, a great event with some pretty spectacular trails and scenery. They say that if you can finish the Elkhorn 50M you are probably ready for a 100 mile race, and I would say that's true. I myself didn't finish the 50M, but after running the 50K I feel like I ran at LEAST 50 miles. It's a tough course, but well worth checking out.

Taper/Race/Recover/Repeat

2011-07-27T09:05:00.003-07:00

Seems like I've been stuck in a taper/race/recover cycle since late April/early May. After training through the winter/spring, I tapered for Collegiate Peaks 50M on May 7th, recovered, got in a couple more weeks of training and then tapered for Bighorn 50M on June 18th, recovered (somewhat), ran the Missoula Marathon on July 10th and then tried to get in a couple of decent training weeks before tapering for the Elkhorn 50K coming up on August 6th.

If you count Missoula itself, I've gotten in a 20+ mile long run each of the last three weekends in preparation for Elkhorn. The week after Missoula it was a 20 miler on the Centennial trail (which I blogged about last week) and this past weekend it was 22.6 miles, again on the Centennial. My weekly mileage the week after Missoula wasn't all that impressive as I took a couple of days off after the marathon, but I did manage to get in 74 miles last week, which I believe is my highest mileage week since before Bighorn.

The difference between Elkhorn and Collegiate Peaks or Bighorn (besides 19 miles of distance between a 50K and 50M)is that I have a concrete time goal in mind for Elkhorn. I'm gunning for a sub-6:00. Not really sure how ambitious that is since I'm not familiar with the Elkhorn course other than I've heard it's fairly tough. I've only run two other 50Ks, Lean Horse and Bighorn. I ran a 4:46 at Lean Horse, but that's not a good reference point since the course is much easier than Elkhorn. I ran a 5:46 at Bighorn, which might be a better indicator. That 50K at Bighorn was a couple of years ago and was run on fairly minimal trail mileage in training. I've run many more miles on trails this spring and summer, so am hoping that will push me to a sub-6 on what is probably a more difficult 50K course.

With that in mind, I set out for my long run this past Friday morning on the Centennial with the goal of pacing myself the way I would if I were running a 50K. I started at the Alkali Creek trailhead and proceeded south along the trail as far as the Elk Creek trailhead (11.3 miles one way). This section of the trail includes two big climbs. The first is a fairly gradual 4 mile climb up to Bulldog ridge. The climb features enough switchbacks to make it entirely runnable, so I ran the whole thing, albeit fairly slowly. From the top of the ridge, the trail heads straight down the other side into Bulldog Gulch for a little bit of flatish running before you start a real grunt of a climb up to the next ridge. I alternated running and walking on the lower section of this second climb, but power hiked most of the upper portion on the steeper, shale-covered slope. From there, you drop down the other side of the ridge on a fairly gradual descent, eventually reaching Elk Creek (well, the trailhead at least...the creek itself is a mile further down the trail).

At the halfway point of the run I was still feeling really good and was averaging just over 11:00 pace (sub-6 for a 50K would be about 11:36 pace). I figured I could drop that pace some on the return trip since it was a net downhill, although I faced two big climbs going that direction too. I was able to run a fairly good portion of the first climb, much more than I've been able to run on previous Centennial trail excursions. The second climb back up to Bulldog ridge is fairly short (0.4 mile) but steep as it goes basically straight up (no switchbacking), so that was a power hike. The beauty of an out and back course is that if you start off with a 4 mile climb, you get to finish with a 4 mile descent and I was able to push the pace fairly well on that last 4 miles back to Alkali. Final time was 4:05, for a 10:53 pace. Could I have maintained that for another 9 miles? Probably. Can I do it on the Elkhorn course? Well, that remains to be seen...

For you data nerds: Garmin Connect link

Heat training

2011-07-19T14:56:00.003-07:00

After what has really been an unusually cool and wet summer so far, the heat hammer has fallen in the last few days. The last few days we've flirted with triple digits, but I don't think we've quite reached that magical milestone quite yet. The real issue is the humidity. Although I don't like it, I can handle 90 and dry, but 90 and humid is a whole other animal.....a wet, hazy, sticky, miserable animal.

My training in the week plus since Missoula has been kind of stop and go. While I didn't push it all that hard in Missoula and my legs felt just fine after the race, I've still had some struggles getting back into the groove. My legs aren't sore and I have no pain, but on some days when I run, they are just dead. Of course, when I get up at the buttcrack of dawn to "beat the heat" and it's already 75-80 with matching humidity, it doesn't help matters. But, then again, on some days the legs feel fine.

Case in point, last Friday I got up to run and was planning on maybe 8-10. It was warm and sticky and my legs had no desire to be in motion, so it ended up being a very slow 5 miles. The next day I didn't run at all as I was helping my mom move and then it was freakishly hot in the afternoon (and my legs probably needed the break anyhow). On Sunday, I got up early and drove to Sturgis for a planned long on the Centennial Trail. It was 80 already when I started at 6:00 AM and I was honestly ready to call it a day only a mile into the run. I told myself I could re-evaluate at the Alkali Creek trailhead, about 6 miles out. By the time I got there, my legs had warmed up and I was actually feeling alright, despite the fact that I was sweating at a ridiculous rate. So, I pressed on and on the 4 mile climb up to the top of Bulldog, I felt really good...it didn't hurt being in the shade of the timber for most of the climb. Once I got up there, which is where I was planning on turning around, I realized I was at 9.6 miles, so only needed another 0.4 to get in a 20 miler. So I bombed down the steep descent to the location of the Black Hills 100 Bulldog aid station and then power-hiked back up. The run back to Sturgis went well, other than the last flat mile along the paved city bike path, which was pretty miserable in the 93 degree heat. Legs felt fine afterward and I spent a good 5 hours that afternoon "swimming" (there was no actual swimming involved) at the Spearfish waterpark with the kids. Got up the next morning, hoping to knock out 8 miles or so and, again, the legs were just dead (again, it was crazy warm and sticky). So, again, 5 very slow, wet miles.

With Elkhorn looming, I'm hoping this dead/not dead cycle will eventually cease (on the side of not dead, of coursehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif). One more long run on the Centennial planned for this weekend, and then it's taper time, I guess (really, it feels like it's been taper time pretty much since early May, just before the Collegiate Peaks 50).

I included the link to my Garmin data HERE to show the elevation profile from Sunday's 20 miler only because I think it looks cool...like somebody took a giant axe and chopped a wedge out of the high point. Or maybe that's just the heat getting to me...

Elkhorn 50K

2011-07-14T07:01:00.002-07:00

I have officially registered for the Elkhorn 50K on August 6th in Helena, MT. I've been thinking of running Elkhorn for a couple of years now, but it never really fit into my schedule since it fell right at the beginning of the Sturgis Bike Rally and I've worked at the Rally for the last two years. This year, though, I'm helping coach my son's youth football team (GO CARDINALS!....as a Seahawks fan, you have no idea how it pains me to say that). Football practice starts the same day as the Rally, so I had to retire from my Rally gig to accept the coaching gig (which pays significantly less....as in zero). But, since football doesn't start until the 8th, that frees me up to head over to Helena and run Elkhorn on the 6th. My cousin John (who is featured in my post about Missoula below) will be there too. Haven't run a 50K since June of 2009 (Bighorn), so I'm looking forward to a "short" ultra. I had gone into Missoula with the intent of treating it as a long training run....now I know what it is that I was training for!

5th Annual Missoula Marathon

2011-07-12T09:36:00.002-07:00

Having grown up in Montana and attending college at The University of Montana in Missoula, I was very excited when the Missoula Marathon was created 5 years ago. I was there for the inaugural running, stumbling through the heat in the midst of the hottest July in Missoula's recorded history, and swore I'd be back as long as I was able. So far, so good as I just finished my 5th Missoula Marathon this past weekend. I've only run one other marathon multiple times (Deadwood-Mickelson, twice). It's no secret that Missoula is my favorite place in the world, and running is as good of an excuse as any to go back there at least once a year.

However, the direction of my running has taken a turn since I ran that inaugural Missoula Marathon back in 2007. Back then, I was still relatively new to marathoning (I think the Missoula race was my 5th marathon) and I was striving to work toward a Boston qualifying time. I didn't try to BQ at the inaugural race....even if I had, the heat would've put the kaibash on that really quickly. I would BQ at Missoula the following year, though, in perfect weather conditions (that first year has proven to be an anomaly, as each of the last 4 races have been run under almost perfectly cool conditions). After finally achieving a BQ in 2008 and then running Boston in 2009, I came to a crossroads in my running "career": pursue a sub-3:00 marathon (my PR, set at Missoula in 2008, is 3:09) or take the road less traveled (literally) and delve into ultramarathons. As many of you know, I chose the latter. I haven't specifically trained for a marathon since Boston and have only run Missoula and Deadwood-Mickelson as training runs since deciding to focus on ultras. As I've started accumulating 50K, 50 mile and 100 mile finishes, and subsequently running more and more miles on trails, my interest in road marathons has waned significantly. In fact, my interest had waned to the point that in the week leading up to Missoula this year, I wasn't entirely sure why I was even bothering anymore, other than the fact that I just so happened to be in western Montana for my sister-in-law's wedding, which was a few days before the race. But, during the race I was reminded of why I go back to Missoula every year....it's a great event in an awesome town and, despite being entirely on pavement, is still a good time. And, I gotta admit, after running two 50 milers in the past couple of months, it was nice to be able to stop after "only" 26.2 miles.

Of course, training for an ultra in the mountains is very different than training for a basically flat road marathon. As such, I've been running an increasing number of miles on trails instead of roads, which subsequently works different muscles. Also, my pace has been necessarily slower...you just don't run as fast at the same effort level uphill on a narrow trail as you do on a road. Speedwork has been virtually non-existent because, well, what's the point? When you're goal is to cover 50 miles, you don't worry too much about how fast you can run 800m intervals. Sure, there's probably still some benefit to doing speedwork, but it's not as critical. So, after training for the Collegiate Peaks and Bighorn 50 milers this spring/summer, I was very prepared to spend half a day on my feet in the mountains, but not all that prepared to run 26.2 miles at a decent clip. Of course, I know I can cover 26.2 miles now without much of a problem, but the question was how long would it take and how much would that much pavement pounding hurt? It didn't help that I spent the entire week before the race with my wife's family in the Bitterroot Valley south of Missoula. The Bitterroot has some pretty spectacular trails and I just couldn't resist the urge to do some exploring. I didn't run a ton of miles the week leading up to the race, but certainly more than I would've if I had actually been concentrating on the marathon.

Given all that, my strategy for the race was basically identical to last year, when I used Missoula as a long training run leading up to the Lean Horse 100. My general goal was to run it in under 3:30 (besting my worst Missoula time of 3:32 at the inaugural race) without destroying myself and derailing my training. Last year, my cousin John and I tucked in with the 3:30 pace group for the first 10 miles or so and then made a break for it. John eventually dropped me at about mile 17 and ran strong to finish in 3:25. I faltered a bit over the last 9 miles and finished in 3:27. This year the plan was pretty much the same. John and I took off with the 3:30 group and, once again, dropped them at mile 10. We ran strong up and over the one hill just past the halfway point (that hill seems much smaller and less intimidating now that I've witnessed The Wall on the Bighorn course). This year, I was feeling a bit stronger and was able to keep up with John until about mile 21, when he slowly but surely started to put a gap between us. Up until that point, we had been running fairly consistent 7:45-7:50 miles, but my pace started to falter toward the 8:00 range and then further toward 8:20. That gap closed a couple of times when he stopped for water at an aid station and I ran through (the aid stations are only a mile or so apart in the last 10K and I didn't feel the need to stop at EVERY one). With about 3 miles to go, I caught a bit of a 2nd wind and started to push the pace a bit. John was still running pretty strong, but with a couple of miles to go I was within a block of him and thought I still had a chance of catching back up. That never happened though as he turned on the jets and my 2nd wind abandoned me. I still ran the last couple of miles fairly well, but just didn't have a lot of extra to give until the last 2/10ths across the Higgins St. bridge to the finish. John ended up running an almost identical time to last year (3 seconds slower) and I finished about 50 seconds faster than last year in 3:26:21 (and felt stronger overall in the process).

So, all in all, a somewhat surprisingly "easy" moderate effort. The pavement didn't take too much of a toll...I'm sore but not any more than would be expected. Fairly safe to say I'll be back in Missoula next year for #6 (and probably also safe to say that I probably won't run another road marathon before then).

Up next, seriously eyeing the Elkhorn 50K near Helena, MT the first weekend of August. John ran it last year and is running it again this year. I'd like to get in one more long race this summer, but I'm not really feeling up to another 50 miler, so 50K sounds really appealing. The timing of Elkhorn is pretty good since it's before my son's football practice starts (I'm one of his coaches this year). And, I've heard good things about the race, so I'd like to check it out. All I need to do is take the plunge and actually register before it fills up.

Belle Fourche Rodeo Run 10K

2011-07-03T07:03:00.003-07:00

Apparently a few people out there in internet land are googling for information on the 33rd Annual July 4th Rodeo Run 10K in Belle Fourche. This post is in the hopes that Google leads you here for the most up to date information. So, here it is:

Registration: 6:00-6:45, Herrmann Park
Race Starts: 7:00, Herrmann Park
Cost: $10 (which gets you a t-shirt, refreshments and a chance to win some prizes)

We will be raffling off door prizes while the race is going on, so when you get done, be sure to check the prize table. We will also be recognizing the male and female overall winners as well as the top 3 runners in each age group. The overall winners and age group winners will receive an extra-special, appropriate for the 4th of July award.

In a previous post I made about this race, I said that we might do a kids' run before the 10K, but that is NOT the case (maybe next year). So, the 10K will start at 7:00.

If you'd like to see a map of the race course, follow this link (FYI - the loop is run clockwise): http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/1350354

A view from the other side: Directing the Black Hills 100

2011-06-29T08:52:00.003-07:00

Wow. You truly can't comprehend what all goes in to putting on a 100 mile race until you've actually gotten in there and done it. I've volunteered at ultras, I've run ultras and now I guess the trifecta is complete. Trust me when I say that, in many ways, running 100 miles is easier than directing. When you run the race, you have one mission in mind: get yourself to the finish. I spent the better part of 39 sleepless hours on Saturday and Sunday (not to mention all the time put in before then), stressing out about getting 150+ runners to the finish. Of course, not all of them made it....not nearly so, but it was rewarding nonetheless and we'll definitely do it again next year.

So, a not-so quick recap. I spent most of Wednesday and Thursday and part of Friday marking the course. Ryan had already done some marking before that, so we were just finishing up. Our intent going in was to mark only the intersections and trouble spots that we knew of (i.e. the places where we have gotten off course ourselves while running the trail). For the most part, the Centennial is easy to follow and has dedicated trail markers, but there are some confusing areas. We ("we" being the three co-directors; myself, Ryan and Jerry) had thought that we got everything marked sufficiently, but apparently not as a few people had some trouble. Sounds like most of the confusion was along the motorized portion of the course, so we'll definitely focus on making that easier to follow next year. It's so hard to estimate how much is enough....we don't want to go out there and hang a flag every ten yards when the trail seems obvious, but we also don't want people lost. So, something to work on for next year.

Everything pre-race (expo, pre-race briefing, dinner, etc.) went very well. The only big snag was when one of our EMTs, who was supposed to be at the finish line on Saturday, bailed because of a scheduling conflict. We scrambled to find a replacement on short notice and I eventually got in touch with one of my co-workers who is an EMT and she was able to fill in. Other than that, everything seemed to be running like clockwork right up until about 10:00 on Saturday night, about 16 hours into the race. That's when a massive thunderstorm moved across the northern Hills and started unleashing rain, hail and lightning. I stepped out from under shelter for about 15 seconds to try and rescue the $5000 race clock and was instantly drenched (the clock was fine, by the way). I can only imagine what it was like for the runners on the course, but I think the storm led to a lot of DNFs....kind of hard to leave a nice warm aid station and face the prospect of running through hail/rain for an unknown amount of time.

In the midst of the chaos caused by the storm, we got a report of a runner stranded at an unmanned aid station who needed a ride out. We got someone headed that direction and the runner also managed to place a 911 call. Our rescue vehicle and the local ambulance got there at about the same time and brought the runner back in (they were fine, basically just cold, tired and a little freaked out by the storm). One other runner was transported to the ER in Rapid City with chest pain, which turned out to not be serious, fortunately. Other than that, there were no serious health issues that I know of, although my own blood pressure was probably sky high for the duration of the storm.

Because the course crosses Elk Creek five times, we were concerned about runners getting safely across in the dark after the torrential downpour had bloated the creek. Ryan and I actually discussed holding runners at Dalton Lake, the last manned aid station before the crossings, for a while, but as the storm tapered off we decided against that. Luckily, we had placed ropes across all of the crossings before the race, which allowed everyone to get safely across.

One of the things we were most curious about before the event was just how long it would take someone to run 100 miles on this course. Thanks to the storm, I still don't think we have a good answer for that. The winning time was 23:01 and we only had two sub-24 finishers (at that rate, we have enough sub-24 buckles to last us 25 years). Out of 91 starters in the 100, only 30 finished. That's a ridiculously low finish rate. How much of that can be attributed to the storm and how much to the course itself is hard to say, but I think a good 30% of the drops could have been storm-related. I mean, I know the course is hard, but not THAT hard. Having said that, there were a lot of people who underestimated just how hard this course is. The most common comment I heard at the finish was "that was way tougher than I thought it would be". It almost sounds blasphemous, but I heard from more than a few people that the course is harder than Western States or Leadville. The 2nd place finisher ran it only 10 minutes faster than his most recent time at Wasatch. We "only" have about 16,000 feet of elevation gain (Leadville and Wasatch are around 28,000), but the course is just relentless, constantly hitting you with relatively short ups and downs that eventually take their toll. I'm still curious to see how fast someone could run this under better weather conditions. Hopefully, the word gets out that this is no walk in the park and we get some big guns to put it to the test.

We also heard from several runners that the course is actually 104-105 miles long. One of the hardest aspects of setting up an event like this is getting the course laid out and measured accurately. Our measurements, which put it within a mile of 100, were gathered by a local mountain biker who rode the entire course in one day (well, the out portion anyway). I've GPSed it section by section and some of my measurements were a little off of what he got, but not drastically so. But I've also run the same section on different days and gotten different measurements using the same GPS. It doesn't take much variation per mile to add up to a signficant chunk of mileage over the course of 100 miles. In any case, I'm not sure if the course is long or not, but it's something we'll try to get nailed down before next year.

All in all, the weekend went well, despite the high stress moments (and I knew there would be some). I know the event isn't perfect, but I think we got off to a good start and the vast majority of the runners I talked to were impressed and had good things to say. Of course, people will rarely give you negative comments to your face, but I got a good vibe overall from the people I did talk to. We'll take what feedback we do get and try our hardest to improve for next year.

Thanks to everyone out there who participated in the inaugural Black Hills 100 and a huge thank you to the volunteers we had. We got incredible support from the local running community and it was a huge part of our success.

Bighorn 50M: Slaying the Demon

2011-06-20T06:16:00.003-07:00

Last year, I started the Bighorn 50 with no doubt in my mind that I would finish. After all, it was just a training run for the Lean Horse 100 later in the summer and I had never once before, in any race of any distance, not finished. What could go wrong? Approximately 19 miles into the race, I was on my hands and knees in the bushes alongside the trail heading up The Wall, the steepest and longest incline of the course, puking my guts out. Suddenly, finishing didn't seem so certain. In fact, I wasn't quite sure just how I was going to make it to the next aid station at Bear Camp a couple of miles up the hill. I did, eventually, and actually death-marched another 13 or so miles further before finally accepting my fate and dropping at the Dry Fork aid station at mile 34.

As a result of last year's humbling experience, this year was all about Bighorn. Instead of serving as a training race for a later summer ultra as it had the last two years (I also ran the Bighorn 50K in 2009 as a training run for the Lean Horse 50M), this year Bighorn was THE race, the one race that I was focused on all winter and spring. I did run the Collegiate Peaks 50 as well, but I basically entered that on a whim and treated it as a training run. With Bighorn as the focus, I made a concerted effort to get in more trail miles this winter and spring. Last year, I didn't really start any trail running until March or April, when most of the snow was gone and even then I didn't get in many long trail runs. In fact, just one of 20 miles with the rest of my long runs done on roads. This year, I hit the trails early and as often as possible, snow or not. I also hit up the trails for many more long runs and ran over twice as many trail miles as I had leading up to Bighorn last year (see my last post for all the nerdy details on that). The hope was that my body would be better conditioned for the abuse it was going to take in the Bighorns. I needed to convert my road runner legs into trail runner legs, or at least enough so to avoid another DNF. By the time May and June rolled around, I could notice a definite difference. My legs started to feel more comfortable on long trail runs than on long road runs and many of the local trails that I had to walk portions of before, I was now able to drop into a grind gear and run the entire distance. On my last long trail run before Bighorn, a 30 miler on the Centennial Trail, my legs felt good all the way to the end and were minimally sore afterward. On my last long road run, a 15 miler the week before Bighorn, my legs felt like crap....my pace was decent, but my legs just did not enjoy the experience all that much. I took that as a good sign.

I headed over to Sheridan on Friday afternoon. I was flying solo, which is kind of boring in that you have no one to hang out with all weekend, but it's also relaxing in a way because you can just chill and do whatever you want. What I did was check in, drop off my drop bags, grab some dinner and head to the hotel. I fell asleep reasonably easily and slept really well considering what lay ahead in the morning. Good thing I did sleep well, because I didn't sleep long as the alarm went off at 2:30. Now, I've been up at 2:30 many times before, but nearly all of them were back in my college days and no sleeping had yet been involved (plenty of hydration, though). It's times like 2:30 AM when you're sitting on your hotel bed, struggling to fully wake up and realizing that you're about to run 50 miles in the mountains that you really start to question your state of mind. Regardless, I got up, ate a Clif Bar, a bagel and a banana, had some really bad hotel coffee and hit the road for Dayton, 20 miles away. From the Dayton city park, the location of the finish line, you catch a bus that hauls you up into the Bighorns and leaves you behind with no way back but your own two feet (or, as I learned last year, the vehicle of a another runner's crew if you happened to drop at Dry Fork...I was hoping to stick with my own two feet this time).

Normally, the Bighorn 50 mile course is actually 52 miles and is run point to point, starting at the Porcupine Ranger Station deep in the Bighorns and heading down to Dayton. Thanks to high snowpack and a cool spring, the upper elevations near Porcupine still had significant amounts of snow (as in 80+ inches), forcing the organizers to revert to an alternate course. The alternate course starts at Dry Fork, which is normally mile 34 of the regular course, and follows the regular course backwards to the Footbridge aid station 16.5 miles away. From Footbridge, it turns back and follows the same route back to Dry Fork and then on to the finish as usual, adding up to exactly 50 miles (or close enough for government work). On paper, the two courses would appear to be similar in difficulty since either way you run generally downhill into Footbridge to start out and then run the same route from Footbridge to the finish, with all of the big climbs from the regular course included in the alternate course. The results tell a slightly different story though as this year's winning time was nearly an hour faster than last year and the times overall were also faster this year.

In the minutes leading up to the start I was feeling surprisingly good. The proper level of anxiety, but I felt rested and ready to face the day. And, following a live singing of the national anthem and a quick ten count, the day began. My plan was to run the downhills and walk the uphills for as long as possible. For the most part, the first 16.5 miles to Footbridge are downhill; Dry Fork sits at about 7600 feet while Footbridge is down in the Little Bighorn Canyon at 4200 feet. A big chunk of that descent comes in one big bite though as the course drops 2100 feet in about 3.5 miles from Bear Camp down The Wall to Footbridge. I followed the plan all the way from Dry Fork to Bear Camp, approximately 13 miles. I had a pace chart made out that showed times for 10, 11, and 12 hour pace. I basically knew that 10 hours was probably a little far fetched for me, but I wanted a point of reference. Eleven hours seemed somewhat realistic, maybe closer to 12 hours if the course was as muddy and snowy as I expected going in (turns out, it wasn't). When I hit Bear Camp, I was about 20 minutes ahead of 10 hour pace, but I knew not to read too much into that considering I still had all of the major climbs ahead of me. Heading down The Wall was downright treacherous in some areas with mud covered rocks covering the trail on steep descents, but the lower we went, the more solid (and more runnable) the trail became. I fell in with a couple of other guys and followed them down a majority of the descent, maintaining a steady pace. One of them commented that the longest run he had done in training had been 25 miles and had been just a week ago. Really curious as to whether that guy finished, but I never caught his name or bib number.

I hit Footbridge exactly 3 hours into the race, 16 minutes ahead of 10 hour pace. I was feeling good and took a few minutes to refill my hydration pack, guzzle an Ensure and strip off the long-sleeve shirt and gloves I'd been wearing. I opted against changing shoes and socks here since I knew they would just get muddy and wet again right away. Although the mud wasn't horrible, there were quite a few small stream crossings and getting muddy, wet feet was inevitable. Once I had everything squared away, I set back out to tackle The Wall, the place where my race basically came to a screeching halt last year. This year, I was able to get into a good hiking groove and do a little bit of running on the few and far between sections where that was realistic. I tried to remember the exact spot where I had puked last year, but I couldn't recall for sure. This year, I think I only got passed once along The Wall, near the beginning, and managed to out-hike several others, a definite improvement over last year. Slow and steady wins the race...or at least allows you to finish it.

After Bear Camp, the course levels off somewhat with some rolling, twisting single track. It took me a little bit to get back into a running/walking groove after The Wall, but I eventually did and hit the Cow Camp aid station about halfway between Bear Camp and Dry Fork feeling pretty good. The stretch between Cow Camp and Dry Fork starts off with some pretty good rollers, so I was walking the ups and running the downs. At some point along this stretch, you come over one of those hills and can seed the Dry Fork ridgeline from what seems like 10 miles and 10,000 feet of elevation gain away. Of course, it's not nearly that far, but seeing the aid station and vehicles perched up on the ridge with a long stretch of road heading up to it is kind of daunting. That last climb up the road to Dry Fork just about did me in last year....I was honestly hoping that someone would see me struggling and stopping every 10 yards and send an ATV down to retrieve me, but they never did. This year, I was able to get into the slow, steady hiking groove and maintain forward momentum up to the ridge. When I DNFed at Dry Fork last year, it had taken me just over 9.5 hours to reach that point. This year, I hit the aid station in just under 7.5 hours. That put me at 20 minutes OVER 11 hour pace, so I had lost a fairly significant chunk of time on the return trip from Footbridge, but I was still moving and feeling good...more than can be said for last year.

At Dry Fork I took another few minutes to down another Ensure and change into dry shoes and socks. I knew they would get wet eventually, but my Cascadias were so saturated and mud covered that I needed to get them off. I tried to eat some solid food at the aid station before I left, but my saliva level was low and nothing was really looking all that good. Up to that point, I had been forcing down Hammer Gel and the two Ensures, but felt like I should be taking in more. I also made the decision at Dry Fork to abandon Nuun and go with straight water in my hydration pack. I had been drinking pure Nuun up that point, but the taste was starting to bother me and I noticed that my hands felt a little swollen, which I assumed was from too much electrolytes. So, I went with straight water and it seemed to work...I found that I could drink more and my stomach seemed to tolerate it a lot better.

After Dry Fork, the course follows a gravel road for a mile or so, mostly uphill, so there was more walking in store. Eventually, the course diverts off the road onto a series of trails and smaller roads. The course also levels out at this point and then heads downhill some, so I was finally able to start running for extended periods again. When I ran the 50K two years ago, I made up a ton of time on this section and this year was no different. My stomach and legs had managed to agree on a working relationship, which allowed me to maintain a nice easy running pace for the most part. My legs actually felt really good considering I was 35ish miles into the day. Just before the Upper Sheep Creek aid station at mile 38, you can see the final big climb of the day aheah, dubbed The Haul. The Haul is steep, but much shorter than The Wall. After a brief stop at Upper Sheep Creek for some Pepsi (the one source of calories I've found I can consistently stomach during an ultra), I started in on The Haul and was quickly able to get back into the slow, steady hiking groove. Once you top out on The Haul you're faced with what, on paper at least, seems like the kind of descent that might be kind of fun. From the summit of The Haul to the Lower Sheep Creek aid station, the trail descends approximately 3000 feet in a little over 4 miles. With 40+ miles on your legs though, this is really anything but fun. I don't know that the descent itself has a name, but it should be called The Tenderizer, because once you get done your quads are guaranteed to be quivering. The thing is, walking down it really isn't any more comfortable than running, so you might as well run and get it over with. So I did.

After Lower Sheep Creek, the course finally levels off and follows the Tongue River trail along the surging Tongue River. This section is very runnable, assuming your legs are still functioning after the last four miles of downhill pounding. My legs still felt decent so I ran the majority of this section, passing a few other 50 milers, a couple of 100 milers and some back of the pack 50Kers and 30Kers. At mile 45, the trail ends at the Tongue River aid station. At this point, I glanced at my watch and the pace chart and was surprised to discover that if I covered the last 5 miles at just under 10 minute pace, I would finish in under 11 hours. As easy as that would be under normal circumstances, 45 miles into a 50 mile run is far from normal circumstances and I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to maintain that kind of running pace for 5 miles straight. And I was right. After leaving the Tongue River aid station, the course follows a fairly flat gravel road into Dayton. This would seem to be the easiest, most runnable part of the course but instead it was the point where I ceased to be able to run for any significant stretch. I would do the ultra shuffle for awhile, walk and repeat, but could never maintain a run for very long as my legs were getting tighter and tighter. With about three miles to go, I was basically resigned to just walking it in. At the final aid station, Homestretch, with just under 2 miles to go, they had popsicles. Nothing in the world at that moment sounded more magical than a nice, cold popsicle, so I grabbed one and resumed my walk toward the finish. I don't know if it was because of the popsicle or not, but at some point I decided to try running (if you can call it that) again and managed to shuffle to the next turn in the road. I walked for a bit and then picked out another point to run to and made it there. Finally, I saw blacktop ahead, which I knew meant we were getting into Dayton. I ran to the point where the blacktop started and then took my last walk break. When I reached the intersection at the edge of town, I started running again, made the last couple of left turns into the city park and onto the bike path and, finally, the finish line was there. 11:15:48. A year in the making, but I finally finished the Bighorn 50.

Immediately after finishing, one of the friendly volunteers gives you your finisher's award. Bighorn doesn't give out medals like most other races. Instead, they give out apparel. And not cheap apparel either, but good quality running gear. One of the most disappointing things about DNFing last year was that I didn't get the fleece finisher's pullover. This year it was a New Balance quarter-zip thermal running pullover, much more useful than any medal I've ever received. I think I might wear it for, oh, the next three months straight, summer weather be damned.

After retrieving my cell phone from my car and placing the requisite post-race phone calls/text messages/Facebook updates, I headed back to the finish line with a camp chair and a couple of cold beers to take part in one of the coolest scenes in ultra running: the Bighorn post-race BBQ. The start times of the four races (30K, 50K, 50M and 100M) are staggered so that the majority of runners finish on Saturday afternoon. They bring in a caterer to grill up brats and burgers while everyone hangs out in the park, cheering in the finishers and telling war stories. Very relaxing after a long day on the trails.

That's about it, or all that's worth telling (including some that probably wasn't worth telling). Although my finish time at Bighorn was slower than at Collegiate Peaks, I would rate my performance much higher. Collegiate became a death march with a good 15 miles to go and I never really felt all that strong past mile 30 or so of that race. At Bighorn, I was purposefully conservative for the first 33 miles and it paid off, because the next 14 miles I felt great. Of course, that left me with 3 miles of feeling not so great at the end, but what're ya gonna do? Three is certainly preferable to 15. So, even though it was a slightly slower time (I ran 10:54 at Collegiate), I think it was a stronger effort overall and, given my DNF last year, much more rewarding.

Senseless Number Crunching

2011-06-17T09:06:00.002-07:00

Okay, so what better to do the day before the big race than sit down and crunch some numbers in an effort to make myself feel better about the impending challenge. Welcome, everyone, to my taper madness. Actually, the taper hasn't been too bad overall. I tend to freak out less before ultras than I ever did before marathons. When I was training for a marathon, I knew that everything needed to go damn near perfectly for me to achieve my goal. For an ultra, you know that even if things start off perfectly, they're probably going to go to hell in a handbasket at some point. You may very well emerge from hell and finish strong, but there will be highs and lows. For ultras, I put less pressure on myself to run fast and have more of a focus on just finishing (something I didn't do at Bighorn last year).

In any case, here's where my number crunching led to. I tried to get in as many trail miles as I could this year in preparation for Bighorn, feeling that I didn't do enough trail running last year and that it contributed to my DNF. Ideally, when training for an event like Bighorn, I would do pretty much all of my training on trails. But, winter/spring weather in South Dakota, along with not having trails immediately available (I have to drive to them), just doesn't make that realistic. So, I end up running the vast majority of my miles on roads and hope I can hit the trails enough to survive a trail ultra. Not the best scenario, but it's what I have to work with. I was pretty sure I had run significantly more trail miles this year leading up to Bighorn, so I decided to actually take a close look at my training logs and find out. Here's what I found:

From Jan. 1st up until Bighorn in 2010, I ran a grand total of 163 trail miles out of 1,610 total miles, for a paltry 10% of my mileage on trails.

In the same time period this year, I've run 334 trail miles out of 1,522 total miles for 22%, over twice as much as 2010. Those miles include 50 at Collegiate Peaks and four other long trail runs of 21, 29, 30 and 30 miles. I logged only one long trail run prior to Bighorn last year, and it was only a 20 miler (I did many other long runs, but all on roads or the Mickelson Trail, which doesn't really count as a "trail").

Granted, 22% still isn't all that impressive. That number would ideally be reversed, with 20% or less of my mileage occurring on roads. But it is what it is and I do feel that my trail running has improved as a result of the extra trail miles.

Hey, if 10% trail mileage got me to mile 34 of Bighorn last year before I DNFed, then twice as much mileage should get me twice as far, right? Lucky for me, I don't need to go twice as far, just an extra 16 miles. Of course, it probably helps that I'm not nursing a raging sinus infection this year. I guess there's only one way to find out...

Snow, snow go away

2011-06-13T09:42:00.003-07:00

Seems like snow is a hot topic this year in the ultra world. Western States, Hardrock, San Juan Solstice....a lot of the big gun ultras in the west are struggling with crazy amounts of snow pack. While I'm happy to report that the Black Hills 100, which I'm co-directing, is NOT one of those events, I'm not so thrilled that the Bighorn trail run, which I'm running this weekend, is very affected.

Snotel data at Bald Mountain, near the 50 mile start/100 mile turnaround at Porcupine ranger station, shows 85 inches of snow on the ground. That's just wrong. At this time last year, Bald Mtn. showed 30 inches of snow. There were a few patches of snow to traverse near the start last year, but overall it wasn't bad. This year, though, I doubt the start is even accessible, unless you have a snowmobile or plan on snowshoeing in. And the snow ain't goin anywhere either....in fact, in the middle of last week Bald Mtn. actually got 5 inches of new snow. It just simply hasn't been that warm around here (or over in Wyoming) this spring, causing the snowpack to linger longer than normal.

So, it's a certainty at this point that we'll be running an alternate course at Bighorn. What that course looks like remains to be seen. So long as it doesn't involve running laps around the Dayton city park, I really don't care...I'm confident the Bighorn organizers will come up with the best route possible given the uncooperative conditions. But it looks like I'll have to plan a return trip to Bighorn next year to truly get revenge for that DNF on the regular course from last year.

Taper is going just about how you would expect it to. My legs felt like absolute, total crap, for no apparent reason, for the first few days last week, but they came around as the week went on. The Dino Hill trail race, 2nd race of the Black Hills Trail Series, was on Thursday evening. While I ran it about 30 sec./mile faster this year than I did last year, I finished 3 spots lower in the overall standings. Just more faster guys there this year. I was pretty happy with the run, though. Last year, I was forced to walk a few of the hills. This year, I ran the whole thing. And, I ran close to 2 miles of it with my left shoe untied. I felt it come loose, but I had a guy right on my butt and didn't want to stop to tie it and give up my position. So, I kept going and the shoe got looser and looser...by the end, my heel was slipping out on the uphills. The gamble paid off though as I finished just ahead of that guy...I'd pull ahead on the uphills, he'd catch up on the downhills, but could never get the momentum to pass. Lucky for me, the race ended with a series of uphills (and my shoe stayed on). Next time, I'll triple tie those laces.

Edit: Of course, just after writing this post I went to the Bighorn website and the alternate course for the 50 mile had been posted. In fact,they posted two of em. Apparently getting in to the Dry Fork aid station with a vehicle is still touch and go. If Dry Fork is accessible, we'll be starting at Dry Fork, running backwards (compared to normal) to Footbridge and then turning around and heading back to Dry Fork and then on to the finish (the same snow course they used in 2008). If Dry Fork isn't accessible by vehicle, we'll be starting further up the road at Twin Buttes, running to Dry Fork and then to Footbridge and back (and will actually end up closer to 53 miles, whereas the first option would be 50...the normal course is 52). In any case, not knowing is the worst part. Now I know and am ready to tackle either one!

The race is on!

2011-06-10T13:13:00.003-07:00

Okay, this post basically serves as shameless promotion for a race I'm directing, the Rodeo Run 10K in Belle Fourche. But, I need all the promotion I can get since I just discovered that I would in fact be directing this race a week ago and the race is on July 4th. Yeah, not much time to get ready. Lucky for me, it's not like I'm starting from scratch. This race is as old as I am (33) and has been directed for the last 3+ decades by Rod Woodruff and his wife Carol, who own and operate the biggest concert/campground venue at the annual Sturgis Motorcyle Rally. They decided to hand over the reins of the Rodeo Run to someone else this year and that someone else ended up being me. So, my number one priority now is to just get the word out that the race is in fact ON! I think many people who run it each year just assumed that it would be, but in case anyone was having doubts, now you know. July 4th, Herrmann Park in Belle Fourche. $10 gets you 6.2 miles of fun and a t-shirt. Registration from 6:00-6:55. I think we'll introduce a free kids' race this year around the park bike path, so that will start at 7:00 and the 10K will start at 7:30ish (how's that for specifics??). If you're a Black Hills local, spread the word, if you wouldn't mind. Hell, spread the word if you're not a Black Hills local.

For myself, I'm going to be doing just as much race directing in the next two months as I will race running. In addition to the Rodeo Run, I'm co-directing the inaugural Black Hills 100 on June 25-26 and then the Crow Peak Ascent trail race (part of the Black Hills Trail Running Series) on July 31. Running-wise, I've got the Bighorn 50 next weekend, the Missoula Marathon on July 11 and then, maybe, the Heart of the Hills 10.4 mile race on July 16. I thought summer was supposed to be relaxing??

Taper Time

2011-06-06T08:40:00.002-07:00

It's that magical time again....taper time. Really, I don't know think I freak out quite as much while tapering for an ultra as I do when tapering for a marathon. When I run a marathon, I'm typically shooting for some distinct goal that I know is going to be relatively hard to achieve, which leads to a few weeks of mental anguish leading up to the race. I'm still new enough at ultrarunning that I don't really worry about the time so much as just covering the distance. But, Bighorn has some special meaning this year since I DNFed there last year, so I am starting to get the "did I do enough?" thoughts passing through my brain.

So, did I? Hell, I don't know. I had several weeks of 80+ miles including four runs of at least 29 miles (including the Collegiate Peaks 50). One thing I noticed when looking back at my log is a distinct lack of back to back long runs. In fact, I really only did back to backs on one weekend and that was back in March. Not sure how that happened, as I'm pretty sure I planned on doing more. But, the number of 30 milers (I count the 29 as a 30) is encouraging and I think is equal to, or maybe even more than, what I logged when training for the Lean Horse 100 last summer. I also managed to get in many more trail miles than I did last year. While I would always like to run more on trails, I got in enough miles this winter/spring that I've noticed a definite improvement in my trail running ability....I've learned the hard way to find a grind gear and power up hills instead of just hammering them and then burning out.

This last week was kind of a mystery. After running relatively low miles with no long run the week before while I was vacationing in Minnesota, I expected my legs to feel fairly good this week. Wrong. My first trail run of the week, a 5 miler, felt like too much of a chore and a 9 mile road run the next day just felt absolutely horrible. The next day was better, including 4.5 miles on Lookout Mtn. I did my long run in Friday, knowing that I wouldn't get it done over the weekend because of the Deadwood-Mickelson Trail Marathon (I didn't run it, but my wife ran the half and we both volunteered at the expo on Saturday in addition to the kids finishing the kids marathon that day).

I was determined to get in one more long trail run before Bighorn, so headed to the Old Baldy trailhead south of Spearfish. This location is convenient because you can link together three separate loop trails (Old Baldy, Rimrock and Little Spearfish) to get in a decent-sized long run. I started out with Old Baldy and the legs didn't feel all that great right off the bat. But, I took it slow and easy and, after a couple of miles, thing loosened up and I started feeling pretty good. After running the Old Baldy loop, including the spur up to the Old Baldy summit, I followed the connector trail over to Rimrock, which features some awesome rolling single track for a couple of miles before you drop rather quickly through the rimrocks (hence the name) to the Little Spearfish Canyon. Rimrock and Little Spearfish share a trailhead in the canyon bottom where I jumped onto the Little Spearfish loop. The first part of this loop is a fairly gradual but long climb out of the canyon. I did a good bit of walking here, but also threw in some running as I was still feeling pretty good. After topping out, you're rewarded with an equally long downhill on the backside of the hill to finish out the loop. I jumped back on the Rimrock trail and took a different route up. This route is a grind for sure. It was about 0.8 miles and I power hiked all of it. When I got back to the top, I headed back to the Rimrock Old/Baldy connector and back toward the Old Baldy trailhead. The climb up Rimrock took a bit out of me, but I was still feeling decent and was at 21 miles when I got back to my vehicle. With time becoming an issue (had to get back to town for my kids' baseball games), I decided that was sufficient (or would have to be) and called it a day. All in all a good run in almost perfect weather conditions. If you're a numbers/charts geek, here's the link to my Garmin data: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/89937710

One thing I've noticed is that I usually feel suprisingly good the day after a long run such as this one. Not so this time. My legs felt totally fine after the long run and throughout that evening, but when I got up the next morning for a planned 10 miler, they were not happy. Just no energy whatsoever and it was a chore to get in 5 miles. Not all that encouraging, but hopefully something taper will take care of.

Let the madness begin!

Unbreakable

2011-06-03T06:42:00.004-07:00

No, not Unbreakable as in the Bruce Willis movie. Unbreakable as in the upcoming documentary about the 2010 Western States 100 (i.e., one of the greatest ultra races of all time). Check out the trailer, it looks extremely bad ass:

It's freakin wet, dontcha know?

2011-06-01T15:16:00.002-07:00

I guess I spoke to soon when I claimed last time that the exorbitant amount of rain we've received wasn't causing any major problems. Last Tuesday, creeks and rivers starting leaving their banks. Our house wasn't affected....it sits just outside the designated floodplain (the boundary of which is the street in front of our house), but there was a ton of water where it shouldn't be in Belle Fourche last week. Getting from the north end of town to the south end was like running an obstacle course, trying to figure out which roads to detour on in order to avoid roads closed by flooding. It became enough of an issue that they canceled the last day (half-day, actually) of school on Wednesday. This meant that we could began our mini-vacation a little bit earlier; instead of leaving for my grandma's place in west central Minnesota at lunchtime on Wednesday, we left bright and early Wednesday morning.

I've been to grandma's house once before, 4 years ago, but didn't do any running when I was there back then. That year, we made a stop in Fargo on the way and I ran a PR (at the time) at the Fargo Marathon before continuing on to grandma's. The day after the marathon, I caught the flu bug that my son had been battling all week and spent most of the time there feeling generally shitty. This time, no illness, but my daughter developed a severe rash on the way there. My first thought was that she was allergic to driving across North Dakota, which is totally understandable, but a visit to the doctor in Alexandria, MN revealed a delayed reaction to anti-biotics she had just finished taking for bronchitis. Apparently, we are cursed when it comes to Minnesota trips....wonder who will get what next time we go??

In any case, I did get some running in while I was there this time. I had expected to endure miles of total flatness along section line roads, but the area ended up being hillier than I remember (but, like I said, I didn't run the last time I was there and you don't truly notice hills until you run them). No major hills and no trails to speak of, but a lot of rollers that at least broke up the monotony somewhat. I fully intended to get in a long run of 20 while I was there, but a night of drinking Grain Belts with my dad and cousin followed by an early morning of walleye fishing kind of put the kaibash on those plans. So, I guess I started taper for Bighorn a little early. Well, not really because I plan on getting in some decent miles and a decent long run this week before really starting to taper next week. Really, I don't know what the hell I'm doing....just flying by the seat of my pants here.

Speaking of Bighorn, looks like a good possibility that we'll be on an alternate course this year. They've still got some pretty incredible snowpack up at Porcupine, the start line for the 50 and turnaround for the 100. I may have to go back again next year to get true vengeance on the route that I DNFed last year.

Monsoon

2011-05-23T09:07:00.002-07:00

While certainly not as severe as the flooding going on along the Mississippi right now, we do have some areas under water around here that shouldn't be. I had to take an overly circuitous route to drop my son off at school this morning because Hay Creek (which normally doesn't even flow) was up and across the main road leading to the school. This same situation gained me some bonus miles this morning as I had planned on running that route but had to take a detour around. It rained pretty much every day last week, including an almost solid stretch of precipitation from Thursday through Sunday. In fact, lucky for me, the only window of non-rain during that four day stretch was when I ran my long run on Friday. How's that for planning? In any case, other than some wet basements (not mine, thankfully) and some inconvenient detours, we haven't had any major flooding issues that I know of and the rain finally stopped last night, so hopefully the creeks will be receding soon.

In spite of all the rain, last week went really well for me running-wise. The biggest challenge was scheduling. Right now both my son and my daughter are playing both soccer and baseball (teeball for my daughter) and they're in different age groups, which results in two different practice and game times for them each week. On top of that, we had my daughter's birthday party yesterday, a couple of weeks before her actual birthday, so that she could invite all of her school friends before the school year ends this week. So, with that and two soccer games planned for Saturday morning, my window of opportunity for squeezing in a 30 mile long run was pretty narrow. It takes a long damn time to run 30 miles, after all. Lucky for me, while filling out my timesheet, I discovered that I only needed to work 2 hours on Friday to get in my 80 for the pay period. So, I cranked out those two hours early and then set off for the Centennial Trail, praying for a break in the rain (which, as I mentioned, I got).

I met Ryan at the Pilot Knob trailhead, which is approximately mile 42 (outbound, 58 inbound) of the Black Hills 100 course. The plan was to run from there to the Rapid Creek trailhead, which is the 50 mile point, and then back to Pilot Knob where we would continue in the opposite direction toward the Boxelder Creek trailhead (but not all the way to the trailhead....just far enough to get in 30 miles total). I actually drove through an area just past Deadwood where it had snowed overnight, which was NOT all that heartening, but by the time I got to Pilot Knob, the snow was gone and the sun was actually trying to burn through the clouds. Ryan and I took off on what was a new stretch of trail for me. And let me tell you, it was an awesome stretch of trail. I'm not just saying that because I'm one of the RDs for the Black Hills 100 either. The stretch of the Centennial from Pilot Knob to Rapid Creek, about 8.6 miles long, is the kind of rolling, twisting, smooth singletrack that reminds you why you are a trail runner. We hit Rapid Creek in no time and headed back. I started to labor a bit on the return trip as there is a bit of a rise in that direction....not a real grunt of a climb, just a steady gain that makes you work a little harder. We noted a few intersections where we'd need to clearly mark the course before the race and actually got confused and started down the wrong trail at one intersection (funny how an intersection you didn't even notice running one direction confuses the hell out of you when you come across it from the other direction). By the time we got back to Pilot Knob, about 17.5 miles into the run, I was feeling pretty good again and ready to keep going. Ryan wasn't feeling so great and, considering he's running a marathon in a couple of weeks, decided to call it a day.

After a quick change of clothes (we had gotten rained on a bit near Rapid Creek) and guzzling an Ensure (not just for old people), I set off to the north of Pilot Knob to finish up the 30 miles. The difference between this section of trail and the first one we ran was like night and day. The first section was non-motorized, pure singletrack. Pilot Knob is the southern-most terminus of the motorized section of the Centennial Trail. Despite all of the rain that had fallen the past couple of days, the non-motorized stretch we ran was in perfect shape. Not true of the motorized section. It was a sloppy mess, with huge puddles (I expected to see fish jumping in some of them) occupying the entire width of the trail in some places and water running straight down it in others. Add in some rocky technical sections and a pretty good climb coming out of Pilot Knob, and it was pretty damn slow going. I pushed forward for a bit, hoping conditions would improve, but after awhile I started thinking "why am I putting myself through this when there's a perfect section of trail back the other way?". So, after a little over 3 miles of skipping between puddles and sliding on mud, I turned back.

I ran right through Pilot Knob and needed another 6 miles or so to finish out the run so headed south again on the non-motorized trail Ryan and I had run earlier. I was in a groove by this time and, although I wasn't running fast by any means, I was able to run consistently without having to force it and my stomach was being very cooperative. I did get off track once and made about a mile long detour (I'll personally mark that intersection before the BH100), but all in all I felt great and honestly was wishing that I could stay out a little longer. By that time, though, it was getting close to time for me to head home so I could take the kids to soccer and baseball practice (which ended up being canceled due to all the moisture, but I had no way of knowing that without cell phone coverage). Overall, a very satisfying day on the trails (even with the 6 miles of slogging through the mud) and a good confidence boost being able to run that long that well so soon after Collegiate Peaks in what will probably be my final really long run before Bighorn. Really, you can never go wrong with a day that includes two hours of work and five and a half hours of running.

Rapid Recovery

2011-05-16T09:32:00.002-07:00

I still remember the struggle I endured when trying to recover from my first 50 (Lean Horse 2009). It was rough. Probably the worst part of it was that my legs weren't really sore for more than a few days, but it took a good month before I could get them to respond the way I thought they should. Almost every run in that month turned into a chore as I just had no energy whatsoever and it was a struggle to even maintain what should have been a very easy recovery pace. So, the big question when I decided to run the Collegiate Peaks 50 a little over a month before the Bighorn 50 was whether or not I would be able to bounce back and resume training in a reasonable amount of time. I didn't want my run at Collegiate Peaks to sabotage my Bighorn training. Based on how last week went, I'm fairly certain that it didn't.

I took two days off from running after Collegiate and, while the legs had the expected level of soreness, nothing really hurt or felt like it had taken an abnormal amount of abuse. I've felt much worse immediately after some road marathons, Boston and Colorado namely. My first run after Collegiate was a simple, easy 5 miler around town. Immediately I knew that my legs were feeling much better than I had expected them to. The next day I ran a double with 6 miles in the morning and a fairly tough 5.8 mile trail run, which included climbing up and over Lookout Mtn. and then turning around and going back up and over, in the afternoon. My legs felt great on that trail run and I was able to run the entire thing fairly strongly other than the stupid steep, rock crawling sections near the summit, which basically require scrambling rather than running.

Feeling so good, I faced a bit of a dilemma: take it easy on the mileage for the remainder of the week just to be sure or go ahead and crank it back up? I opted for the safe route, partly because I was planning on running a trail race on Sunday and wanted to have somewhat fresh legs for it. I ended up with around 52 miles for the week including a long run of 16 (on roads). Legs felt good the entire week, marking a surprisingly quick recovery from what was a pretty rough 50 miles last Saturday.

As for the trail race, Sunday was the second annual Thoen Stone Seven in Spearfish, which was also the first race in this year's Black Hills Trail Running Series. I've been looking forward to this one because part of it takes place on Lookout Mtn., where I do the bulk of my trail running during the week. Lookout is conveniently located within a mile of my office, allowing me to get out at lunchtime two or three times a week to hit the trails. The entire race course actually encompasses more pavement than trail as it follows a loop from the city park to the trailhead, up and over Lookout, down the other side and then back on the city streets and bike path to the park. After drawing only 24 runners last year, there were over 80 signed up this year.

Immediately after the race started, a pack of 5 guys who were clearly faster than myself, including my friend Ryan (who also ran Collegiate last week), took off together. I settled into what felt like a comfortably hard pace and soon found myself running next to another local, Tanja, who is routinely the first female at local races. Tanja and I finish within one position of each other more often than not, so I figured this meant I was at my appropriate place in the field.

When we hit the trailhead, the pack had started to pull away, there was one guy in between me and them and Tanja and another guy were hot on my heels. Not long after the real climbing on the trail section started, I ceased to hear breathing behind me so assumed I had dropped my pursuers (and it turns out I had). Unfortunately, the dude in between me and the pack was pulling away from me at the same time I was pulling away from Tanja and the other guy. I ended up running the rest of the Lookout section on my own, like I was just out for one of my lunchtime runs. After hitting the summit, I started to push the pace on the downhill, hoping to make up some ground on the guy in front. By the time we hit the city bike path with a couple of miles to go, it seemed like I was making up some ground, but he was still a ways ahead of me. Then, I saw him glance back and see me and it was pretty much done after that. He pulled away some more and I started to lose some steam. Ended up running the 7.1 miles in 56:25, 7th place overall. Ryan, who had labeled the race as a "fun run" earlier in the week, ended up winning (fun run my ass). All in all, not a bad day at all on the trails (and pavement) just a week after Collegiate Peaks.

Insanity

2011-05-13T11:35:00.004-07:00

Check this thing out.....it's the latest and greatest (?) from Mizuno, dubbed the Prophecy. Apparently, the 'prophecy' says that thou shalt spend $200 for a pair of shoes with a support structure resembling something you'd build to span a waterway. On the plus side, I'm pretty certain I could fit a tube of Nuun tabs and at least six gel packets in those holes.

I have nothing against Mizuno in general....I had a pair of Wave Riders once and they were a good shoe. And I'm not all-on the minimalist bandwagon either, although I do own a set of Saucony Kinvaras and Saucony Peregrines (which are basically the trail version of the Kinvara). But for crying out loud, I can buy three, maybe four, pairs of the Kinvaras or Peregrines (or pretty much any other shoe I run in) for the price of one pair of the Prophecy if I shopped around hard enough. Or I could make a payment on my new-to-me 2005 Hyundai Santa Fe.

Obviously, I haven't tried them, but it seems like Mizuno is looking to make a quick buck off of the casual running crowd who will just automatically assume that the most expensive shoe is the best. They may be a fine shoe for all I know, but I'm fairly certain you can find just as fine of a shoe for at least 1/3 the price.

Collegiate Peaks 50

2011-05-09T11:50:00.001-07:00

Immediately upon finishing the Lean Horse 100 last August, my thoughts turned to what would come next (well, maybe not IMMEDIATELY following….finding a chair was the first order of business). In the few months following Lean Horse, I considered damn near every ultra in the west. Ironically, Collegiate Peaks was not one of them. I was aware of the event, had even heard some good things about it, but for whatever reason it just didn’t enter my mind. Until, that is, occasional fellow Black Hills runners Paul, Ryan and Nathan mentioned in January or February that they were running it and asked if I wanted to tag along. Well, hell, if you’re gonna twist my arm….

By that time, I had actually settled on a race plan for 2011 (or thought I had, anyhow). After I suffered my first ever DNF at any distance at mile 34 of the Bighorn 50 last June, it was obvious that I had to go back for redemption this year. So, I had formulated a training plan that would build toward that race on June 18^th. As it turned out, that training plan called for a 30 mile long run on May 7^th and a 10 miler the following day for a weekend total of 40 miles. Tack on another 10 miles and cram all of em into one day, and I’m set, right?

As for the actual training, my one mission this year was to get in more trail miles. I’ve progressed as a runner over the years from 5Ks to 10Ks to marathons (I skipped the half-marathon step) to ultras. As a result, I’ve also started delving more and more into trail running in the last couple of years. I’ve now reached the point where, if it were logistically feasible, I would run the majority of my weekly miles on trails. Unfortunately, that’s just not possible, so I still find myself pounding pavement for the most part while hopefully catching a couple of short trail runs during the week and then maybe a long one on the weekend. Not the most ideal training for a mountain ultra since, well, mountain ultras take place on trails in the mountains. I did manage more trail miles this winter/spring than I ever have before, including a 30 mile run on the Centennial Trail (the first 30 miles of the Black Hills 100 course) a few weeks before Collegiate Peaks. I tapered the last couple of weeks before Collegiate Peaks and was feeling reasonably good by the time race day rolled around.

We made the 9ish hour drive from South Dakota down to Buena Vista (which is either B-you-na, B-way-na or B-when-a depending on who you’re talking to….most locals go with B-you-na) on Thursday evening. Lucky for us, an old college buddy of Paul’s lives in BV and offered up his camper, which was large enough to sleep all four of us, for the weekend. Free lodging! Can’t beat that. On Friday, we loaded up in the vehicle again (because we just hadn’t gotten our fill of driving on Thursday) and headed up to Leadville, about 35 miles north of BV, to check it out. Paul had lived there before, so he showed us around and took us on a mini-tour of the Leadville 100 course. I was actually quite surprised by how much of the course consisted of roads. Not that that makes it an easy race, because the climbs we saw were pretty insane (Hope Pass, in particular). Plus the fact that it starts at over 10,000 feet. Maybe I’ll come back someday and find out how hard it really is. Maybe. After the Tour de Leadville, we headed back to BV and checked out a small portion of the Collegiate Peaks course. While doing so, we noted how overly warm it felt, even though it was actually only mid-60s. The cold spring in South Dakota hasn’t offered up much in the way of heat acclimation with only a handful of genuinely warm days. This observed “heat” (which we will consider “chilly” in a few months) would prove to be a factor on Saturday. After dinner at the race-sponsored pasta feed, which was actually fairly decent, we headed to the pre-race meeting and then back to the camper for a surprisingly decent night of sleep.

We were up at 4:30 on race morning to get dressed and down some breakfast before we headed into town to seek out coffee, which we found at the 7 Eleven. We pulled up to the community center, which serves as race headquarters, about an hour before guntime and got a rockstar parking spot very near the start/finish line. This was desirable since the race does not have any accommodations for drop bags on the course….if you want to resupply you have to wait for the halfway point and get your supplies from your vehicle. Having a parking spot so close allowed us to do so fairly efficiently. We milled around a bit, fighting off the pre-race nerves, before we were ordered to line up. Immediately after doing so, I spotted Mike, who I’ve met at a few other races in Colorado and South Dakota and at the Boston Marathon and we chatted for a bit. Then, with absolutely no warning whatsoever, no 10-count, nothing, an air horn went off and the race was on.

The Collegiate Peaks course is a 25 mile loop mostly consisting of ATV trail and Jeep roads with a short section of pavement and couple of sections of single-track trail. They have a 25 mile race in conjunction with the 50 mile. Participants in both events complete the loop clockwise. After the first loop, the 50 milers turn around and run the loop again, but counterclockwise the second time. 50 milers are also given the option of stopping after the first loop and becoming a 25 mile finisher. The first couple of miles included the paved section that took us along the Arkansas River and eventually onto what seems to be a twisting maze of ATV and Jeep trails through the hills east of BV. Fortunately, the course was marked very well, so taking a wrong turn was never really a concern. Early on, I was feeling pretty good and actually ended up running much more of the first loop that I had thought I would. There were a few climbs, primarily in the second half of the loop, where it seemed more prudent to hike, but for the most part I was cruising along and didn’t feel like I was putting too much effort forward. I ran and chatted with a couple of other guys along the way, one of whom told me he was considering running the Black Hills 100 or the Bighorn 100 as his first 100. Lucky for him, I told him, he had randomly managed to find and run with one of the Black Hills co-directors. I told him a bit about the race before we eventually parted ways. We’ll see if it worked. The course starts at about 8,000 ft. in BV and tops out at about 9,300 ft. I really didn’t feel like the elevation was affecting me much during the first loop, but I did take note that the last 6+ miles of that first loop included quite a bit of downhill, which of course would become an uphill during the 2^nd loop. As I was heading down that long decline, I passed Ryan, Mike and Nathan on their way back up, who were all looking good. I hit the bottom in exactly 4:30, resupplied at the vehicle and headed toward the start/finish. When the dude with the clipboard asked if I was going out for the 2^nd loop, I didn’t hesitate and said “yes I am” thinking I was on pace for a possible sub-10 hour finish. Wrong.

The first few miles going back up really weren’t bad and I was still feeling good. I passed Paul, who was on his way down, not far into the climb and that was the last familiar face I’d seen until the finish. I wasn’t running everything at this point, but taking walk breaks every now and then. I didn’t really feel like I NEEDED to walk at this point, but I thought it was prudent to do so knowing that I would be going uphill for awhile. A few miles into this climb, the course switches from trail to Jeep road and the steepness of the ascent sharpens noticeably. I swear to God, I do NOT remember running down that steep or long of a hill on the way down during the 1^st loop. I was definitely walking because I HAD to at that point. I could see the road stretching out above me for a long ways and every time I got to the point that seemed like it should have been the top, the damn thing just kept going further. Finally, I did reach the aid station at the high point of the course. At this point, I was definitely feeling the elevation as my heart was hammering in my chest and my stomach was starting to voice its disagreement with the current state of affairs. My legs, while definitely feeling like they had covered 30+ miles, still felt reasonably okay. I still had aspirations of being able to run a good portion of the downhills for the remainder of the race. Those aspirations were quickly shot down as I discovered that running only caused my stomach to feel worse, which forced me to walk much more than I really wanted to. It was at this point that I started playing a very delicate balancing act between taking in enough water and calories while not upsetting my stomach. I ate a ginger chew at some point, which seemed to settle my stomach a bit and allowed me to start running the downhills again. The problem was, I knew that I needed to be taking in calories too but as soon as I did, whether in the form of a gel or solid food, my stomach would start to go south again and I would be back to square one. I would repeat this process of feeling bad and walking until I felt better, to running for awhile and feeling okay, to feeling bad again for the rest of the race. There was never a doubt in my mind about whether or not I would finish, it was just a matter of how long it was going to take.

Finally, I reached the last aid station, and was actually feeling pretty decent at that point with only five miles to go. Or was it six? No one seemed to definitely know the answer to this question. I thought it was six, but the sign at the aid station said I was at mile 45. By this point, my new goal was to finish in under 11 hours. Why? Who knows? Really, I think I just needed something tangible to work toward at that point. Whether it was five or six miles to the finish, I had an hour and a half to cover it. I decided I should probably just assume it was six miles and pace myself accordingly just to be safe. I left the aid station reasonably confident sub-11 would happen but still resolved to run as much as possible and started off pretty well in that regard. Then, after running a downhill section of trail, the course made a sharp turn up a hill. This hill was fairly steep, but also very short, something I would definitely power up under normal circumstances (of course, “normal circumstances” don’t apply to an ultra). I walked up it, slowly, and as soon as I reached the top I was hammered by a wave of nausea. I reached into my pocket for another ginger chew, but it was too late. I stepped off the trail and, for the 2^nd time ever, I puked during a run (maybe not coincidentally, the 1^st time was also during a 50 miler). I didn’t have much to throw up, water mostly, but I felt immensely better after it was done with. By that point, I was only about four miles from the finish and still on pace for sub-11. For the first couple of miles after emptying my stomach, I felt pretty good and was able to run quite a bit. After that, the course left the trail again and I was back on the road. This definitely should’ve been entirely runable, but as I ran down the road my stomach started feeling a little off again. I would run for a bit and then would have to walk for a bit while it settled down. Then I’d run some more until the nausea built up again. Wash, rinse, repeat. I got passed a few times along this stretch and really didn’t give a damn. My Garmin battery died at about mile 48, so I couldn’t track my pace, but I was at least able to walk strongly when I was walking and with the little bursts of running thrown in, I knew I was probably going to make sub-11. Finally, I made the last few turns and the community center came into view. Obviously, I had to save my last bit of running for the charge across the finish line, which I did, crossing in 10:53:59.

And, honestly, after finishing I didn’t feel all that bad. The nausea immediately went away. My legs were definitely tired, but not debilitatingly so. I met up with Paul, Ryan and Nathan and caught up on the events of their day. Paul proved to be the smartest one of our group as he called it good after 25 miles. Ryan hammered out an impressive sub-8 finish, good for 2^nd in the Master’s division and top 10 overall. Nathan also fought off stomach problems (no puking for him though) and still ran a sub-9. All in all, a successful day. Yeah, I would’ve preferred to run this thing an hour or 90 minutes faster, but it just wasn’t in the cards for me on that day. I was able to fight through and finish, which is all I ultimately cared about (and more than I can say about Bighorn last year). After a quick shower in the coin-operated facility at the community center, we headed down to the Eddyline Brewery for some post-race beer and food. It was good. Real good.

Overall, Collegiate Peaks is well done. I have some small gripes, such as not having gels or ice at the aid stations and the fact that the last two aid stations ran out of Coke by the time I got there, but overall it’s a good event, especially as an early season training run for something bigger later on (say, the Black Hills 100, for example *wink wink*). Nice course, some great scenery, but you might want to bring your own oxygen if you’re not a Coloradan. Hopefully, it will prove to be good preparation for my return to Bighorn next month.

Race week is upon me

2011-05-02T08:27:00.002-07:00

Well, hell. Somehow a 50 mile race snuck up on me and the reality that I'll be covering 50 miles in the mountains on foot this Saturday is starting to set in. May 7th seemed like a long ways away when I registered for this thing back in February (or whenever). Plenty of time to get ready, right? RIGHT?? I mean, it's not like I'm totally not ready, but I don't feel totally ready either. Then again, I don't think I've ever felt totally ready for a race 5 days out, so that's nothing new.

I guess I've kinda sort been tapering. After back to back 89 mile weeks (including two long runs of 29-30 miles), I've scaled it back the last couple weeks with about 68 miles the first and then 54 this past week. My legs certainly feel like I'm tapering, which basically means that they feel like crap. I've had various aches and twinges in my knees and achilles over the last couple of weeks and just a general feeling of sluggishness for the past week and a half. Yesterday's final long run before Collegiate Peaks was a good example. I headed out for a planned 17-20 miles and felt pretty crappy for the first 7 miles or so. No aches or pains, just no energy and felt like I was working way too hard for a relatively slow pace. Then, magically, my body decided to cooperate and the last 11 miles came fairly easily. This week, I plan on getting in a few short to medium runs, nothing spectacular, before a couple days of rest. The aches and pains seem to have gone away (knock on wood), now I'm just waiting for dead feeling to leave my legs.....so that I can pummel them and make them wish they were dead on Saturday.

Stay tuned for the gory details...

89

2011-04-18T13:34:00.002-07:00

Eighty-nine has been a prevalent number for me the last couple of weeks. That's how many miles I ran each of the last two weeks and both of those weeks included runs on the Centennial Trail (Forest Service Trail #89). One of those runs was significantly longer than the other, but I'll get to that later.

The week started off on a downer. Monday afternoon I was running the trails on Lookout Mtn. and cruising down a nice section of trail through an oak stand. As I was barreling down the hill, my headphone chord got snagged on a branch that was sticking out partially across the trail. Of course, when the music stopped blaring in my ears, I stopped, thinking that the chord had merely been pulled free of my ipod shuffle, which was clipped the pocket of my shorts. Well. when I looked down, I noticed that the ipod was missing altogether; the branch had dislodged the chord from the ipod and the ipod from my shorts in one shot. I figured it would be easy enough to find a bright silver ipod (even though the shuffle is pretty tiny) amongst a bunch of brown grass and oak leaves, but I was wrong. Apparently, when it got ripped free of my shorts it also got sent flying. I spent a good 20 minutes searching for it, raking leaves around, walking a grid pattern...it was not where that it logically should have ended up. I mean, I know exactly the point on the trail where it was lost, but yet I could not find it. Finally, I gave up and continued down the trail. I did head back up Lookout on Friday afternoon hoping to search for it again, but a fresh skiff of snow that fell Thursday night was still holding strong in the shaded area where I lost it, so now it's both lost and lost and under some snow. My birthday's coming up in May, in case anyone is wondering what to get me.....an ipod with a heavy duty clip would be ideal.

Other than that, it was a decent week running-wise. Pretty typical week, really. A few doubles and a hard workout on Wednesday, which this week was 8x800 on the track. This workout always leaves me pretty wiped out for a couple of days afterward. I can run 30 miles and bounce back the next day just fine, but some fast intervals knocks me on my butt.

The long run this week was my last and, really, first big test before the Collegiate Peaks 50 in a couple of weeks. Ryan, Nathan and I met up in Sturgis and ran the first 29+ miles of the Black Hills 100 course to Dalton Lake. I was reminded just how tough the Centennial Trail is. There were a total of four good climbs on this route and they get harder as you go. I mean, obviously you get more tired as you go, but I honestly think that each successive climb is harder than the last, with the exception of the first and second. The first one is a pretty steep almost two mile long haul up some fresh timber harvest roads. Of course, since it occurs early in the run (starting at about mile 3), it's possible to run a good portion of it before power hiking near the top and then making a semi-controlled bombing run straight down the other side of the hill to the Alkali Creek trailhead.

The second climb starts a couple of miles later. This one is easier than the first merely because the trail switchbacks up the ridge instead of just heading straight up. Also, this is the section of the Centennial I've run the most times, so I know exactly what to expect and how to pace myself so that I can run the whole thing (I used to have to power hike some if it, which I guess is a good sign that I'm getting stronger). After that one, you drop straight down the hill to a creek bottom and after a little bit of nice, relatively flat single track running down in the gulch, the work begins. The third climb is a grind up rocky, loose shale that pretty much requires a good amount of power hiking. After that, another drop to the Elk Creek trailhead.

From that trailhead, there's some more nice, relatively flat running through the Elk Creek drainage, including five crossing of Elk Creek itself which, in late April, is approximately 33 degrees. Nothing like trying to run with numb feet. Luckily, there's some pleasant rolling trail after the creek crossings to get the feet warmed back up followed by a short uphill and then back down a bit again. And then it starts. The real climb out of the Elk Creek drainage begins and lasts for what seems like 10 miles (although it's probably more like three). It's a good uphill grind made all the harder by the fact that you can't really see what you're goal is...there's no hilltop to focus on as a finish point. You just keep huffing up the hill and every time you round a corner, there's more hill ahead. Of course, like I said, having legs with 20+ miles on them doesn't help matters much. Finally, you do top out on the ridge and then make another short climb before descending to Dalton Lake.

Overall, a good way to spend five and a half hours on a Sunday. I would've like to have been able to run a bit more of the uphills, but I was satisfied that I was able to run the flat and downhill sections fairly strong all the way through (that hasn't always been the case on past runs on the Centennial). I was also satisfied that Ryan remembered to leave both his vehicle and the keys at Dalton Lake the night before, because it was gonna be a long haul if we had to turn around and run back to Sturgis too.

The last big long run before Collegiate Peaks is in the books! Not sure if I'm tapering now or what. Guess I'll play that one by ear. Collegiate is, after all, a training run for Bighorn, but I probably will take it fairly easy the week leading up to the race. Don't want to drive all that way and come home with (another) DNF.

Slacking again

2011-04-12T07:49:00.002-07:00

Oh man, I've been slacking again. Fortunately only as it pertains to blogging and not in the the running department. Things are moving right along as far as that's concerned. Rather than a day by day account of what I did the last few weeks, I'll just summarize.

As I think I've mentioned before, I've got my ultra training plan laid out in four week blocks, with the first two weeks of each block being high mileage (80+), the third week being moderate mileage (70-80) and the fourth being a cutback week (50-55). The latest block worked out almost perfectly in that regard with two weeks of 84-85 miles, a week in the mid-70s and then last week with 52. I've read numerous times that the rest days are really where you improve as a runner because it gives your body an opportunity to repair the damage you've inflicted upon it during training. I only take one rest day per four week block (the Monday of the cutback week), but I really did notice a difference during the cutback week itself. My legs felt fresh and I was running faster at an easy effort level than I normally do.

I felt so good, I decided to run a 4 mile road race the Saturday of that week, the Fools 4 Mile race put on by the Black Hills Runners Club. This is somewhat remarkable because I've recently (in the past couple of years) developed an aversion to short road races. As I began to delve deeper and deeper into the world of trail running and ultras (deeper and deeper into The Abyss, some might say), running a hard 5K or 10K on pavement just seemed less and less appealing. For one, it hurts. And I'm not really referring to the pounding of the pavement. I still do the majority of my training on pavement because it's just not logistically possible for me to get to a trail for every run, or even most runs. I'm referring to the physical pain of pushing that hard. Yes, there is physical pain involved with running for 30 or 50 or 100 miles, but it's different. At least after you've run an ultra, you have 30+ miles to show for it. After going through all that pain in a 5K, you've only got 3.1 miles to show for it. The cost/benefit value just isn't there for me anymore. But, since my legs were feeling good and I only had a 4 or 5 mile run planned for that day anyhow, I decided to run the Fools 4 Mile to see how the legs would respond. Turns out, they responded fairly well. I averaged 6:25 pace, faster than I've raced in awhile (although, like I said, I don't have many shorter races to compare to) and finished 3rd overall in a fairly small field (maybe 40-50 runners). For my effort, I got a $10 gift certificate to the local running shop. So, overall, a worthwhile experience (although I still don't have much desire to run another short road race anytime soon).

Despite hitting my weekly mileage targets, the one thing that's been missing thus far is some overly long long runs. Last year while using the same general plan while training for the Lean Horse 100, my longest long run was 40 miles. I don't plan on going that far this year since I'm only training for a 50 miler (two of em, actually), but I was hoping to get in a couple of 30 mile runs. Up until last week, I had only gone 25 miles once with a few 20 milers thrown in. So, last week I made it a goal to get in a 30 miler during the weekend. I was hoping to be able to do that on some trails, but the logistics of that just didn't work out due to kids' soccer games and the weather, so I ended up running 30 on mostly dirt roads. As usual, I started out with a run/walk ration of 10 minutes to 2 minutes and maintained that for the first 25 miles. At that point, I was feeling really, really good, so I just said to hell with it and ran the final 5 and was still feeling great when I got done. Best 30 mile run ever. Now I just need to get one of those done on some trails with significant elevation changes and I'll be set. I've been getting in a decent number of shorter (4-6 mile) trail runs and Ryan and I ran 20 on the Centennial a few weeks ago, but I really need to get something longer to prepare my body for being on the trail for several hours. Lucky for me, I'm planning on doing just that with Ryan and Nathan this weekend. We're hitting the first 30 miles of the Black Hills 100. After that it'll be time to taper a bit for Collegiate Peaks.

Yup, Spring

2011-03-21T15:15:00.002-07:00

I guess if it lasts for a week plus, it's safe to say that spring is here. Of course, there's still a significant chance that we'll get snow, and lots of it in a short amount of time, sometime in the next couple of months, but at least the weather has taken a distinct turn for the better. As a result, I was able to get out and hit some trails last week, which is something I desperately need to prepare for Collegiate Peaks and Bighorn.

Monday - 6.2 AM, 5 PM. First one was on roads, second one was on the Lookout Mtn. trails. Got to try out my new trail shoes, the Saucony Peregrine, for the first time. Felt good. Much more nimble than the Brooks Cascadias I've been wearing (and will continue to wear occasionally...they've still got a lot of miles in em). The trails were pretty muddy, but mostly free of snow and ice.

Tuesday - 8 AM, 5 PM. Same as yesterday basically. Still a lot of mud on Lookout, but it had dried some.

Wednesday - 10.1 with 8x800m intervals. I haven't done a true speed workout on the track since sometime last spring, probably in May. As such, I wasn't expecting much out of this one, so I was actually kind of surprised by how well it went. I was tired as hell by the end of the 8th interval, but I averaged somewhere around 3:10 for each one, which isn't much slower than what I ran these in when I was training specifically for marathons.

Thursday - 5 AM, 4 PM. Whoa. My legs were not happy about that track workout. Had no energy whatsoever in the morning. Felt a little better in the afternoon, but still had dead legs. Kept to the roads to keep the effort as easy as possible.

Friday - 6.5. Just an easy recovery run in the morning.

Saturday - 15. Didn't get out the door until after lunch and, even though I didn't really eat lunch but instead just had a light snack, it wasn't sitting all that well, so I had to deal with a side stitch for awhile. Eventually worked through it and started feeling better. Overall didn't go too bad, although I got pretty hot a few times when I had the wind at my back. This is actually pretty pathetic because it was all of 60 degrees and I was bitching about the heat. I would never make it at Badwater. And, come August, I'll be praying for 60.

Sunday - 19.7. Met Ryan in Sturgis and we ran an out and back (kind of) on the Centennial. We had planned on going somewhere between 20 and 25, but we hit knee deep snow after about 10.7 miles. It was the kind of snow that was almost solid enough to walk on, and in fact would support you for a couple of steps, but then you broke through to your knee (and scraped the hell outta your shin in the process). So, we turned back and then on the return leg decided to explore a different trail we hadn't been on before. It was actually a pretty good trail but it ended up cutting a couple of miles off of the run. I wasn't really complaining at the time (nor am I now) since my legs were feeling the effects of an afternoon 15 the day before combined with an early morning 19+. Still felt okay, just tired (which is kind of the point). Good day on the trails overall.

Total - 84.5. Like I said last week, almost identical mileage-wise, but I did get more trail miles in.

Back to back weeks in the mid-80s, which is pretty much exactly where I wanted to be. I'll be down into the 70s this week before a bigger cutback next week and then I'll start the whole cycle over again. Hopefully, this near perfect running weather holds on for the next, oh.....forever. One can dream...

Spring? For real?

2011-03-14T14:20:00.002-07:00

A week that started out very winter-like ended in a spring-like fashion with the forecast for more mild temps ahead. Is spring really here? Probably too early to make that declaration quite yet seeing as how we often get hammered with a March or April (or even May) blizzard, but for now things are looking pretty good. The snow is pretty much gone from the lower elevations (aside from the huge piles that accumulated over a winter's worth of snow removal) and some of the lower trails are clearing up and becoming runnable. Hopefully, the trend continues.

Monday - 6 miles AM, 4 PM. Negative windchills in the morning sent me to the indoor track, something I despise normally but even more so once March arrives. It "warmed" up to 20 or so during they day, so I at least got outside for the afternoon run.

Tuesday - 8.2 AM, 4 PM. Still fairly cold, but better than the day before, so both runs were outside.

Wednesday - 10.1 with 6 at marathon pace. A little windy, but definitely warmer. Ran a hilly loop, so the first few miles of MP were a little rough, but I finished strong running (mostly) downhill with the wind at my back. For some reason, my quads took a real beating on this run. Not sure why...I've run this loop at MP (or faster) several times before.

Thursday - 6.6 AM, 4 PM. The temp continues to trend upward.

Friday - 6 miles. It was fairly warm in the afternoon, 40s and 50s, but the wind was also blowing 30 mph+. I got the run done early in the morning before the wind got too bad.

Saturday - 25.1 miles. Longest run since Lean Horse. With less than two months before Collegiate Peaks, it was high time I got in some miles. As I did last year while I was training for Lean Horse, I did a run/walk of 10 minutes/2 minutes. This isn't so much because I'm unable to run straight through for 25 miles, but more to give my body practice in incorporating walk breaks and walking at a fast pace, plus it gives me a good opportunity to eat and drink on a regular basis (if I'm just running, I tend to forget and consequently get dehydrated and low on calories). In any case, the run went great....seemed like I got stronger the further I went. Even with the walk breaks I still averaged 9:32 miles, so it's not like I was totally sandbagging it.

Sunday - 10.2 miles. My legs felt surprisingly fresh after the long run on Saturday. I didn't push the pace on this one, but I didn't really purposefully hold back either...I just took what came, which ended up being 8:17 pace overall. I noticed last year during Lean Horse training that my legs tend to feel pretty damn good the day after a really long run....in fact I ran a 10.4 mile race last year at sub-7:00 pace the day after a very hard 30 miler. One of those weird things you discover about your body when you start ultra training.

Total - 84.2 miles - first time over 80 in a very long time

This next week will look very similar mileage-wise, although I'm hoping to get in many more trail miles (of course, it's not hard to exceed the zero from last week). With the snow receding, I'll be hitting the trails as much as possible, hopefully including the longer run this weekend. Running long on roads is great and all, but nothing really prepares you for running long in the mountains except actually running long in the mountains. Crazy how that works...

Cutback

2011-03-09T09:09:00.003-07:00

The most exciting thing that happened last week really had nothing at all to do with running. After 142,000+ miles, I traded in my 96 Ford Taurus for a newer, more dependable ride. That Taurus had been in the family for its entire existence. I still remember the day my mom bought it back in September of 1995. I was a senior in high school at the time and it was the day before our first home football game of the season. I had no clue she was considering buying a new car until I got home from football practice and saw it sitting in the driveway. It was passed down to me about a year and a half ago as my mom began driving less and less and then the transmission went out on my 1992 F-150, leading me to junk it rather than pay far more than its value to have it repaired. The Taurus was a good car for a long time, but a series of relatively minor problems and subsequent repairs prompted me to start shopping for something newer and I finally found it last weekend: a 2005 Hyundai Santa Fe. I was looking for something a little bigger than a car but still with somewhat decent gas mileage (especially with prices rising every damn day), and the Santa Fe fit that description pretty well. Plus, it's maroon and dark grey, which are basically the University of Montana's colors (maroon and silver, officially, but the football team starting using dark silver last year). First time I've ever owned a foreign vehicle. Very happy with it so far, but I was kind of tripped out when I opened the fuse box and everything was in Korean and English.

Anyway, back to the running thing. Last week was a cutback week. It ended up being a little bit more of cutback than what I intended, but maybe that's a good thing.

Monday - Rest. First rest day in a few weeks. My plan is to take one day off completely every four week cycle.

Tuesday - 7 miles. For the life of me, I can't remember a single thing about this run.

Wednesday - 8 miles. My hope every winter is that my last indoor track run will take place in February. That hope was crushed this year as negative windchill sent me scurrying inside.

Thursday - 10 miles. I had an appointment in Rapid City after lunch so took my running gear with and ran on the bike path after the appointment. A decent enough run, but I didn't allow enough time after lunch to do it, so if felt like I had a bag of rocks in my gut. It was also warm....after running the previous day on the indoor track, I ran this one outside in shorts and a t-shirt. Such is spring in South Dakota.

Friday - 6 miles. Again, don't remember much about this one. Just a recovery run.

Saturday - 7.1 miles. Hoped to get in 10+ but it was a crazy day with trading the car in and getting the new one and driving home and grocery shopping etc., etc. Plus, once again, it was cold outside and while I did run outside, it wasn't all that comfortable.

Sunday - 11.9 miles. Met with Jerry and Ryan in Spearfish. Jerry tagged along for a couple of miles and then Ryan and I continued on a loop around Lookout Mtn. (not on trails, just on the roads that circle the base of the mountain). Pretty cold again, but it's more bearable when you're running with someone. Legs felt pretty good overall.

Total - 50 miles

Needless to say, I'm pretty damn sick of winter by now. It's March damn it, and I'm ready for the snow to go away. The Collegiate Peaks 50 is only two months away now, and I've got a lot of work to do if I'm gonna survive 50 miles in the mountains at elevation.

The weather rollercoaster

2011-03-02T07:29:00.002-07:00

Eventually, spring will grab hold and maintain its grip, but until then the weather is just going to be difficult. The craziest thing about the weather these last couple of weeks is the extremes we've been alternating between. It goes from 40s and 50s (warm for this time of year) to below zero (cold for this time of year) with very little in between (i.e, there is no "normal"). This past week was a good example.

Monday - 12.7 miles. Met up with Paul, Nathan and Ryan to run the Centennial Trail. The four of us are all running the Collegiate Peaks 50 in May and Paul and Nathan are both running the Black Hills 100 (the 100k for Paul, the 100 mile for Nathan). It was pretty cold out (teens with some wind making it feel closer to 0) and there was some fresh snow (6+ inches in some areas). Honestly, if I hadn't made plans to run with other people, there's probably no way in hell I would've opted for a trail run in those conditions. But, not wanting to wuss out, I manned up, made myself some screw shoes to prevent a repeat of the previous Saturday's hard fall on the Centennial, and headed out. I had planned on going 10, Nathan and Ryan were going for more like 15 and Paul I think was going for 10ish too. After a few miles, we got spread out on the trail with Ryan and Nathan ahead together, myself in the middle and Paul not far behind. About seven miles in, while running across an open area exposed to the wind, I started getting pretty damn cold so decided to turn back (I had planned on running until I met Ryan and Nathan on their way back). I met back up with Paul shortly after but then we split apart again as he decided to follow the trail back up over a big hill and I opted for a faster dirt road route to try and get out of the wind sooner. I ended up with 12.7 miles and by the time I was done my calves were trashed. Running through the fresh snow, which was over ankle deep in most areas and even deeper in some, caused me to run up on my toes, putting more strain on my calves. But, on the bright side, I didn't fall or even slip a single time, so I guess the screw shoes worked.

Tuesday - 6.8 miles. My calves were more sore than they have been in a long time...felt like I'd run a marathon the day before. But, interestingly, when I headed out for my run (on relatively flat roads and bikepath), they felt perfectly fine. Just goes to show how different my stride is under different conditions. Apparently I don't work my calves much at all during a "normal" run.

Wednesday - 10.2 miles w/ 6 tempo. Again, my calves were still sore but felt fine once I started running. I ran a fairly hilly loop (for a road run) so the pace on the tempo miles varied quite a bit, but I felt good overall. Temp was near 40 for this one.

Thursday - 6 miles AM, 4 PM. After relatively balmy weather on Wednesday, the bottom fell out on Thursday and both runs ended up being on indoor tracks (2 different ones) because of negative windchills.

Friday - 6 miles. Again, frigid cold. Again, indoor track.

Saturday - 5.1 miles. It was 6 degrees out and sunny when I ran and it felt friggin tropical compared to the last two days. The screw shoes worked great on the snowpacked city streets.

Sunday - 20.2 miles. Again, wore the screw shoes although the streets were slightly more clear (it was all the way into the 20s by the time I got done), so running on bare pavement with them was kinda awkward. Never felt great during the run, but felt okay for the first half. For some reason, I hit a little wall after 10 miles, but still didn't really feel bad. Just okay.

Total - 71 miles

Spring or winter??

2011-02-22T13:53:00.003-07:00

We now enter the time of year in South Dakota where it seems as though Mother Nature is going through menopause with mood swings as wild and severe as a hungry school of piranhas that just smelled blood in the water. Early last week, temps were spring-like, with afternoon highs in the 50s and 60s...Rapid City even set a record high of 64 or something like that one day. Hell, overnight lows were in the 30s and 40s, which I'm usually pretty happy with as the high temp this time of year. Of course, that couldn't last and as quickly as it left, winter returned in the form of a winter storm that rolled in on Saturday, dropped temps to the teens with negative windchills and left behind over 6 inches of fresh snow (to add insult to injury, almost all of the snow we had before had finally melted by Friday). Son. Of. A.....

Monday - 7.1 miles. Beautiful day, had every intention of heading up Lookout Mtn. at lunchtime. Only problem was that I forgot to pack a shirt with my running gear in the morning. So I had to settle for a road run after work.

Tuesday - 6.2 miles in the morning, 6 in the afternoon. Made damn sure to pack a shirt for the afternoon run this time and did get up on the Lookout Mtn. trails. They were mostly free of snow, but there were some pretty slick ice patches and one section of still deep snow near the top.

Wednesday - 10.2 miles with 6 tempo. The term "tempo" takes on a new meaning during ultra training. Back when I would actually focus on a marathon, my tempo pace was faster than my marathon pace by 20 or 30 seconds. Now, I'm just happy if I can actually get to what used to be my marathon pace. Doing a tempo run early in the morning doesn't help matters any....just can't get my legs to turn over that fast that early.

Thursday - 6 miles in the morning, 4 in the afternoon. A little chillier out. Nothing at all remarkable about either run.

Friday - 6 miles. Back up on Lookout Mtn. The snow and ice was much reduced since Tuesday, but it had been replaced by mud. I managed to slip on said mud once, but also fell onto the same patch of mud, so a pretty soft landing.

Saturday - 15.2 miles. Got up at the buttcrack of dawn to meet up with Ryan in Sturgis and run the Centennial Trail. We ran the first section of the Black Hills 100 course, starting at Woodle Field and following the trail out and back. Like Lookout, the trail was mostly clear but had a few patches of ice in the shady areas. With about 2 miles left in the run, I managed to find one of those ice patches and fell. Hard. Landed on my left side, with my upper buttcheek (for lack of a more technical term) taking the brunt of it. Usually when I fall on a run I bounce back up and keep going (while looking around to see if anyone saw me fall). This time, though, I had to sit there on the trail and catch my breath for a little bit before I got up. I knew nothing was seriously damaged, but it sure as hell hurt. After the initial pain wore off, I felt fine running back to the vehicles but after I cooled down it got pretty sore.

Sunday - 7 miles. The winter storm struck in earnest overnight, dropping at least 6 inches of snow. My butt was sore from the fall the day before and the weather/road conditions left me with very little motivation to run outside, nor was the idea of running 15 miles (as I had planned for the day) on the indoor track all that exciting. I seriously contemplated ditching a run altogether and just calling it a rest day, but I finally forced myself out the door in the afternoon and managed to get 7 miles done on the indoor track. My legs (and sore butt) felt fine, but I just was not into it mentally, which is half the battle.

Total - 67.7

So, three trail runs this week, which isn't bad for February. Of course, if the weather would cooperate that number could increase, but I won't hold my breath on that one.

Collegiate Peaks/Bighorn Week 1

2011-02-14T09:49:00.002-07:00

It's the dead of winter, so must be time to start cranking out some miles and training for spring races, right? Nothing like kicking off training for two trail runs in mountains than by running laps around a perfectly flat indoor track. The last couple weeks have seen a similar weather pattern around here.....colder than sin early in the week and then warmer over the weekend. Running on the indoor track a few days a weeks sucks, but better that it happens early in the week rather than when I have my long runs planned.

At this point, I'm going forward with the notion that Collegiate Peaks is basically a training run for Bighorn. I've never run a marathon as a training run for another marathon before, much less a 50 mile as a training run for another 50 mile, but I'm gonna give it a shot anyhow. Bighorn has been in my crosshairs ever since the moment the friendly aid station volunteer cut my bib off my shorts last year, so it will remain my focus during training. Before I registered for Collegiate Peaks, I had planned on running 30/10 that weekend....now, I'm just running an extra 10 miles that weekend but doing it all on one day.

In any case, here's how the first week of "official" training shook out:

Monday - 6 miles on the indoor track.

Tuesday - 6 miles indoor track in the morning, 4 miles with 8 strides indoor track in the afternoon (different indoor tracks though....a little variety to running in flat circles).

Wednesday - 10 miles indoor track (115 laps of pure, unadulterated fun).

Thursday - 6 miles. Finally got to run outside and it felt horrible. For one, I expected it to be much warmer than it actually was, so I was underdressed and consequently cold. For another, I just didn't have any energy and my stomach felt off.

Friday - 6 miles in the morning, 4 miles in the afternoon. Both outside and felt much better.

Saturday - 15 miles. Totally effortless. Got done and felt like I'd run 5 miles.

Sunday - 15 miles. Took more effort than on Saturday, but still felt pretty good. The 20-30 mph wind sucked hardcore, but overall a pretty decent run.

Total - 72 miles

The biggest thing missing from last week were trail miles. With two long trail runs coming up, I need to get away from the indoor track and city streets as much as possible and get the trail legs going. Unfortunately, Mother Nature makes that a difficult endeavor this time of year. But, the temperature is supposed to be in the 50s and maybe even 60s for most of this week, and was in the 50s over the weekend, so massive melting is occurring. I plan on heading out for a trail run this afternoon and getting as many in as the weather allows for the next few months. I'm guessing today's run is going to be a snowy/muddy mess, but that's just part of the fun of trail running, right? Better than running in tiny circles, for sure.

I'm Back

2011-02-08T16:09:00.002-07:00

Hey, it's only been two months. Give me a break. Nothing really exciting happened anyway. I managed to exceed my 2010 mileage goal of 3,300 with just over a week left in the year. 2011 has gotten off to a slower start, thanks largely to a voluntary (and minor) surgical procedure that I underwent on New Year's Eve and resulted in taking the first 8 days of 2011 off. Once I started running again, it was low mileage for the first week to make sure everything as A-OK and then I ramped it up from there, hitting 70 miles for each of the last two weeks.

I guess the biggest news is that I seem to have settled on a race schedule for 2011. In fact, just today I registered for the Collegiate Peaks Trail Run 50 mile in Buena Vista, CO. This race wasn't even really on my radar until this past weekend when Black Hills 100 co-director and occasional running partner Ryan mentioned that he was probably going to do it along with two guys who are using it as a training run for the BH100 and asked if I wanted to tag along. The seed was planted in my head and festered from awhile before I gave in and registered (I held out for all of three days....such willpower). It's six weeks out from the Bighorn 50, which is my main goal race for the summer, so hopefully if I don't go too crazy I'll have some time to recover and still exorcise my Bighorn demons. I've been intrigued by the Colorado ultras (and admittedly intimidated by the high elevation) for a couple of years now and CPTR seems like a good place to test the waters. Ultimately, I couldn't pass up a running road trip to the Colorado Rockies.

Other than CPTR and Bighorn, I'm planning on running the Missoula Marathon for the 5th time (i.e., every year it has existed). And that's about it. I'll try and hit as many of the local Black Hills Trail Running Series races as I can (and am directing one of them, the Crow Peak Ascent on 7/31). And, of course, there's the big debut of the Black Hills 100, which I'm co-directing with Ryan and Jerry Dunn, on 6/25. Two 50s and a marathon in a two monthish span seems sufficient right now. I would like to run another 100 sometime, but don't think it's in the cards for this year. Maybe Bighorn or Leadville (if I overcome my altitude fear at CPTR) next summer...

Just putting in miles

2010-12-06T15:24:00.002-07:00

Nothing spectacular about last week, just getting the runs in and accumulating some mileage for a yet-to-be-determined goal race (although it's appearing more and more likely, for a variety of reasons, that the Bighorn 50 will be my "big" race of 2011...but a return to Lean Horse may also be in the cards).

Monday - Woke up. Looked outside. Looked cold. Checked temp. Negative windchill. Didn't feel all that inspired to run at the gym, so went back to bed. About a half hour later I hear the answering machine pick up a phone call saying school has been canceled. I hold out hope that the office will also be closed, but eventually accept the fact that I have to go to work. I waffled back and forth about whether to run at all, but finally forced myself to the gym after work for 6 miles on the track.

Tuesday - Another 6 track miles in the morning. Warmer temps are supposed to be coming, but they haven't arrived as of 5:00 AM. I tacked on another 6.4 miles at lunchtime running with my friend Jerry and his friend Bob. That run was outside and it was still pretty damn chilly, but much better than running in circles.

Wednesday - Ran outside and was determined to get in 10 miles, even though I really did not feel all that good. Legs were really heavy and the pace was pretty pathetic, but I did finish the 10.

Thursday - Another double, 6.2 in the morning and 5.4 in the afternoon.

Friday - Only had to work 6 hours, so worked through lunch and then ran a big 12.1 mile loop from the office around the backside of Lookout Mtn. and then back through Spearfish. It's a nice loop with some good variety of terrain (lots of hills in the first 7 miles) that I've only run twice ever, for some reason.

Saturday - This was one of those cruise control runs. I started running, my body took over and I flew through 8 fairly quick miles with very little effort. If every run was like this, I'd run 200 miles a week.

Sunday - I knew I wanted to run kinda long, but I was sitting at 60 miles for the week so knew in the back of my head that I only needed 10 to get to70. So I told myself I'd go at least that far and see how I felt. I ended up feeling pretty good (not as good as Saturday, but still good) and ultimately ran a big loop around Belle Fourche that totaled 16.2, so the necessary 10 plus a bonus 10K.

Total - 76.3 miles (biggest week since Lean Horse)

Running for pie

2010-12-02T15:20:00.002-07:00

Hot on the heels of the first snow of the year came the first sub-zero temps, another dubious landmark that I'd rather not see each year, but is basically inevitable when you live in South Dakota. To top it off, it seems like the lower the temperature goes, the more the wind blows, which creates mind-numbing (literally) wind chills and results in me running in a bunch of circles on the indoor track at the gym. Ugh. You know it's getting bad when you get excited about the mercury breaking 20. In any case, enough bitching about the weather (well, not really, because I'll pretty much bitch about it for the next 5 or 6 months until it warms up and then I'll bitch about how it's too hot outside....it's a vicious cycle).

Monday - First run of the year on the indoor track. 7 miles (80.5 laps).

Tuesday - Even colder than Monday, so back to the track for another 10 miles (115 laps).

Wednesday - What sucks more than running 115 laps around the track. How about 161 (that comes out to 14 miles)? Actually, my legs felt REALLY good, which is why I ran so far, but I couldn't help but thinking how much awesomer (that's a word, trust me) the run would've been if it wasn't -15 outside and I could actually see some sights instead of the same four walls of the gym 161 times.

Thursday - Even though it was still cold enough that your spit might freeze solid before it even hit the ground, I ran outside. Why? Because I'll do damn near anything for the chance to win a pie. So I drove to Rapid City for the annual Turkey Trot and, thanks to the cold, there were more pies to give away than there were runners to win them, so I got one. Well worth it. Oh and I was reminded of why I haven't run a 5K in over a year....because they suck. I did run a 20:50, which is decent for me considering I haven't done speedwork since....uh....May?? I don't really remember. What I do know is that I'd much rather run far at a steady pace than short at a fast pace. I mean, if I run a marathon or ultra, I feel like hell afterward, but I also feel like I've freakin accomplished something. When I run a 5K, I still feel like hell and I've only added 3 miles to my training log. The cost/benefit analysis just doesn't work out. It's for that reason that I tacked on 3 miles of warmup/cooldown so I could at least claim 6 miles for the day.

Friday - I've always known that I'm not very good at doing math in my head, like trying to calculate splits near the end of a marathon. I found out on this day that I can't even do simple math. I headed out for a 10 mile loop (the temp had finally risen to a reasonable level) but got confused at some point and was somewhat surprised when I got home and my Garmin said 11 miles instead. Oh well, better to run too many than not enough.

Saturday - DOMS!! If you're not familiar, that stands for Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. It's a phenomenon where you put in a hard effort and feel fine the day after, but then 2 or 3 days after, you suddenly feel like crap. It happens a lot after a marathon, but I guess for me it happens after a 5K too (after all, my body is more adjusted to marathons by now). I set out to get my long run of 16 in, but immediately (like within one block) could tell that that was NOT in the cards. My legs were dead and sore in places that they haven't been sore in awhile (stupid 5K....but it was still worth it for the pie). So I ran an easy (albeit painful) 7 instead.

Sunday - Still felt a little of the DOMS, but better than Saturday so I made another attempt at 16. I made it through alright, although I was pretty damn glad when I got home that I hadn't set out for 17....or even 16.5.

Total - 70.2 miles

SNOW.......!@#%!^

2010-11-17T10:13:00.002-07:00

Well, my dreams of brown Christmas.....and a brown winter altogether have been utterly crushed by Mother Nature. Granted, November 17th is pretty damn late for our first real snow here, but I was holding out the slim hope that there wouldn't be a first snow. Of course, I probably have a better chance of winning the Powerball 10 times in a row than that happening, but one can hope anyway. Getting myself in shape for the Bighorn 50 would be so much easier if I could actually run trails all winter long (I'm not hardcore enough to strap on snowshoes and give er hell).

So, not a ton of miles last week, mostly due to two days off on the weekend while I was back in Missoula with some old college buddies watching a little Griz football and drinking a lot of beer. And I do mean "old"....we all called it a night by about 8:30 on Saturday. But of course, we started at 10:00 that morning, so it was a long day. Still, I don't remember that stopping us back in our college days. In any case, I ran 40-some miles during the week (I honestly don't even know off the top of my head...it was less than 50 though), including a good 8 mile on the Centennial Trail and a surprisingly fast 11.6 on roads the next day. Hoping to get back over 70 this week, but this damn weather isn't helping...well, it's not really hurting either (it's not THAT bad), just making motivation a little harder to come by.

The big obsession this week is Griz football. It's Griz-Cat week, the most important week in the football year if you're from Montana. Of course, there's smack flying back and forth pretty fast and furious between Griz and Cats. Much more often than not (69 times compared to 38, to be exact), the Griz win this game, but this year is a little different. This time it's the Cats sitting in position to win the Big Sky and the Griz maybe needing a win to secure an at-large playoff berth (they might get in with a loss and a 7-4 record, but would definitely get in with a win). If it weren't for the fact that the game is in Missoula, the Cats would probably even be favored, which is just damn odd. I have faith, though, that the Griz will make it 5 in a row and 21 out of the last 24. Up with Montana!! In honor of Griz-Cat week, here are a few of the better jokes that have been floating around Facebook this week:

How do you get a Bobcat cheerleader into your dorm room?......Grease her hips and push like hell.

Why do Bobcat grads put their diplomas on the dash of their cars?....So they can qualify for handicap parking.

Why is a dollar bill better than a Bobcat?....You at least get four quarters out of a dollar.

Why don't they serve ice at Bobcat Stadium any more?.....The senior who knew the recipe graduated.

Give em hell, Griz!!

Catching up

2010-11-08T09:38:00.003-07:00

Believe it or not, I am still alive. It's been over a month since I posted here. Not really sure why, just been lazy (about posting, anyway). So, time to get back at it.

Running has been going pretty well. I've managed to get back up to 70 miles per week a couple of times and have started getting long runs in (which significantly helped in achieving 70 mpw) the last four weeks. Most of those long runs have gone very well, but I did run an 18 miler last weekend that was a struggle. Not sure why, but my legs died on me at the halfway point, but I was 9 hilly miles from home and had no choice but to keep plugging. But then yesterday I ran a 16 miler where my legs still felt fresh when I was done. The mysteries of running....

This past weekend I wrapped up 3rd place in the men's open division of the Black Hills Trail Running Series....and I didn't even run. I had accumulated enough points throughout the summer that I was assured of 3rd in the series going into the last race. Still, I would have run the final race but my son's football team was playing in the league championship (more on that later) at the same time so I was at the game instead (which was MUCH more nerve-wracking than any race I've ever run). I won the men's open division last year, but only missed one race. I missed a few this year, which hurt my chances of repeating so, really, third is about as good as I could've hoped for.

Back to football, this year my son played for the first time in the Black Hills Youth Football League. There isn't a team in Belle Fourche, so he played for the Spearfish Rams mitey mite team (6-8 year olds). The league had 6 teams in the mitey mite division and the Rams finished the regular season with a 5-1 record. Their one loss came on the last week of the regular season to the Rapid City Steelers, a team they had beaten in the first week of the season (which turned out to be the Steelers' only loss of the season). So, it was pretty clear that the Rams and Steelers were the best two teams in the league. The top 4 teams advanced to the playoffs, where the Steelers beat the Bears and the Rams beat the Broncos to advanced to the Super Bowl. Everyone was expecting a good game and it definitely lived up to it. The Rams took a 12-0 lead early in the 3rd quarter, but the Steelers managed to pull within 12-6 at the end of the 3rd. The game ultimately came down to the final minutes when the Rams stopped the Steelers on 4th down with a couple of minutes remaining, but then couldn't convert enough first downs to run the clock out. So, on 4th and short from deep in their own territory with only 13 seconds left, the Rams opted to intentionally take a safety and run the clock down as much as possible. That left 5 seconds on the clock, the score was now 12-8 and the Rams had to kickoff. The kickoff was immediately covered, leaving the Steelers with one play to score from about 40 yards out and 3 seconds left. The ensuing pass attempt was knocked down and the Rams were champions! Pretty exciting to say the least. One thing I know for sure is that it's much, much harder watching a game like that from the stands, as a parent, than it is actually playing the game. I was in some pretty close, intense games in high school and never once did I feel as nervous then as I felt watching that game on Saturday. Now I know how my mom felt during all those football games I played in.

So, there are the highlights from my last month plus in a nutshell....hopefully they'll come more frequently from now on.

Taking the good with the bad

2010-09-30T12:31:00.002-07:00

The last couple of weeks have represented a sharp contrast for me running-wise. After getting back from a work-related trip to Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, it was like I had been shot out of a cannon on every run. I was cruising through runs effortlessly at paces faster than any I've averaged in a long time. It was my definition of the fabled "runner's high"....being able to just get into cruise control and not feel the effort at all while still moving at a decent clip. It was a fun ride while it lasted, but when it ended, it ended with a thud. I set out for a longish run, 14 miles or so, last Sunday and knew within the first mile that that was not going to happen. I just felt horrible....legs felt weak and I had no energy or ambition. I forced myself through 7 miles, giving me 50 for the week, before calling it quits. Things haven't really gotten better as the week has gone on. I'm getting runs done and some miles in, but they're slow, much slower than last week, and I've had some digestive issues that I can't pinpoint the cause of. If it's not one thing (dead legs) it's another (digestive issues). For example, today I headed out for an 8 mile run on the Tinton Trail, my first trail run since the Thunder Run race a few weeks ago. My legs didn't feel too bad and the run would have been pretty damn enjoyable if not for the fact that my bowels were in revolt for much of it. Too much information or not, a trip to the bushes was required midway through and even after that I didn't feel much better. Again, what to do, what to do?

In any case, I also made a change to my racing schedule last week, which was difficult because of how great I was feeling last week. It turned out that if I ran the Sundance 50K, I would have to miss my son's football game that afternoon (he's playing his first year of youth football). I decided to drop down to the 10K instead, thinking that I could run the race and haul ass to Rapid City in time to watch his game at 1:00. Well, I forgot that the 10K doesn't start until 10:30 and then, to top things off, his game got bumped up to 11:30, making it totally impossible to do both. So, I ditched Sundance, my first ever DNS, and watched the game instead. And it was the right choice. The Spearfish Rams beat the Box Elder Patriots 37-12 and Caid had a blast. And now I know how my mom felt all those years watching me play junior high and high school football....being the parent of a player is nerve-wracking!

As for next year, which I posted about last week, I'm heavily leaning toward the Where's Waldo 100K. The timing is fairly good, right at the start of the school year and before youth football starts again, and the course looks pretty damn awesome (which translates to "harder than hell"). The Deadwood-Mickelson Trail Marathon and the Bighorn 50 in June and the Missoula Marathon in July should give me a solid build-up and I'll probably use a plan very similar to the one I used for Lean Horse this year, but hopefully with more trail miles to prepare me for running in the Cascades.

Okay, excuse me now while I do a little bit of advertising. As you may or may not know, I am one of the co-race directors of the brand spankin new Black Hills 100 (and 100K and 50 mile), which is set to debut June 25, 2011. Registration will open tomorrow, October 1st, at www.ultrasignup.com. As is usually the case, you can save some dough if you register early. For more information on the race itself, check out www.blackhills100.com, and look up Black Hills 100 on Facebook or Black Hills Ultra on Twitter (Black Hills 100 was already taken on Twitter, believe it or not). We've recently added an elevation profile to the website. Not sure if it is going to attract more people or scare more away. The word I use to describe the Centennial Trail is "relentless"....it doesn't ever really give you much of a break. Regardless, if you have any questions about the event, feel free to ask them here or through Facebook/Twitter.

What to do, what to do?

2010-09-22T09:48:00.002-07:00

Well, now that Lean Horse is over there is a significant void in my running life. For the first time in the last several years, I don't really have any concrete running plans. My legs feel great, I get up every morning (or, if I don't, I go out at lunchtime) and run, but I have no clue what I'm training for and my runs generally just evolve as they go (if I feel done at 6, I stop; if I want to run faster or longer, I do). There are a TON of races out there that I want to run, but I'm having some difficulty choosing which one to do next. Here are the races that I'm kicking around in my head:

Texas Trails 50K (December 11, 2010) - I actually just learned about this one yesterday from a running friend who lives in Dallas. I think she was half joking when she suggested I fly down there and run it, but now I'm actually intrigued by the possibility. It's held on the same trails as the Rocky Raccoon 100, which is a well-respected ultra. Having a relatively cheap direct flight from Rapid City to Dallas doesn't hurt matters.

Rocky Raccoon 50 or 100 (February 2011) - See above. On the one hand, running either the 50 or 100 here is appealing because of the fast, relatively easy course. On the other, I feel like I just ran a fast and easy course at Lean Horse and that I should step up the difficulty a little.

Fargo Marathon (May 2011) - Part of me wants to really train for and run a marathon next year. I ran two marathons in 2010, but both of them were just training runs for Lean Horse, so I didn't put much thought or effort into it. A sub-3 marathon is still a goal and Fargo has a fast, flat course.

Deadwood-Mickelson Trail Marathon (June 2011) - This one is pretty much a given. I live 30 miles away and my friend is the RD. The only question is whether I'll run the half or the full.

Bighorn 50 (June 2011) - This one is pretty much a given too. After my first ever DNF at this race this year, I need to go back and exorcise the demons. Plus, a college buddy just moved to Sheridan, so I have a place to crash.

Missoula Marathon (July 2011) - Another given. I've run this race all four years it has existed. Why stop now?

Leadville Silver Rush 50 (July 2011) - I would really like to do this one to test the Leadville waters (or, more accurately, the oxygen-deprived Leadville air), but it's only 6 days after Missoula, which is a lot of travel in a short amount of time.

Angeles Crest 100 (July 2011) - I've heard good things about this one, although I'm no so sure about running in the high desert mountains in late July....seems like it might be kinda warm.

Where's Waldo 100K (August 2011) - It's relatively near Eugene, which is where my dad lives. And, I've never run a 100K (and there aren't many around). Big problem is travel....getting to Oregon from South Dakota ain't cheap and this would likely be a whole-family trip (you know, since my dad would probably like to see his grandkids).

Cascade Crest 100 (August 2011) - I've seen pictures from the course and it's pretty amazing. Close to Seattle, where I have family. Again, it would be kind of expensive to get there.

Anything after August is pretty much out, with the kids in school and my son playing youth football.

Decisions, decisions....maybe I'll go for a run and think about it.

Lean Horse Post-mortem

2010-09-09T10:06:00.002-07:00

Well, it's been over a week since Lean Horse (seems like ages ago already) and the recovery is going fairly smoothly. Of course, I expected to be a total wreck afterward and the first couple of days I was pretty sore, especially my feet. But by the third day my legs actually felt pretty damn good...much better than they did after I ran Boston (the downhills absolutely obliterated my quads). My feet were another story...they were pretty tender still, mostly from blisters but I also had some swelling in my left foot and still, a week and a half later, there's some loss of sensation in the toes on my left foot. Apparently, this is somewhat normal and probably due to a pinched nerve that will eventually get better. My friend Ryan has the same issue and, in my mind, if it occurs to two or more people, that means it's not a cause for concern (kinda like how if you notice something weird on your left arm and then check your right arm and see that the weirdness is there too, it must be okay). Perfectly logical to me. Certainly not something to waste a $25 co-pay on to go see a doctor about.

I've run four times now since the race. First one was an easy 4 last Thursday. The next day we jetted off to southern California for a family vacation to Disneyland. I didn't run at all Saturday or Sunday, but I did walk at least 500 miles, I swear to God. Well, give or take. I shoulda gotten a buckle for that too. I did run once while we were in California, a 6 miler with my friend Jeff, who until we met up for the run had been an internet friend only. It was good to finally meet him in person after communicating for a few years in various running forums and on facebook. He took me past Angels Stadium and the Honda Center (where the Ducks play) and then along the Santa Ana River trail. Apparently, the definition of "river" is a little different in SoCal than it is in South Dakota. Around here, our rivers generally have water in them. And aren't made of concrete. In any case, since we got back to SoDak on Tuesday, I've run a 7 miler yesterday and then 8.3 this morning. So far, so good, which is good because the next race in the Black Hills Trails Series is coming up on Sunday, the 8.4 mile Thunder Run. I have no idea how my legs will respond to a hard effort on trails, but I'm gonna find out (probably the hard way).

One more note from Lean Horse, after the race it was pointed out to me that my time might be the fastest ever run by a South Dakotan in the Lean Horse 100. I did some checking and, sure enough, it was. There were only 6 finishers from South Dakota in the first 5 years of the event and there were 8 South Dakotans who finished this year. My 20:21 puts me atop that list, but I'm guessing it's a record that won't last long as more and more locals really get into this ultra thing.

Lean Horse 100 Report

2010-08-30T11:24:00.004-07:00

You know what? Forrest Gump was right when he said “Life is like a box of chocolates…You never know what you’re gonna get.” At least he was right when it applies to running, and since he was a runner it’s all the more appropriate. Some days, you set out for a run expecting great things and are sorely disappointed. Others, you expect nothing and are shocked by what you get. It’s happened to me before. At the Colorado Marathon in 2008, I KNEW that I was going to qualify for Boston. I didn’t. Hell, I didn’t even come close. But ten weeks later, on a wing and a prayer, I ran the Missoula Marathon and got my BQ. This year, I entered the Bighorn 50 mile with every expectation that I would finish and get in my longest training run before the Lean Horse 100. Instead, I started puking at mile 19 and then did 15 miles of death marching before finally dropping from the race, my first ever DNF, at mile 34. This past weekend at Lean Horse, the cycle came back around. If you want the Cliff Notes version of this story, here it is: I finished in 20:21:55, 7^th overall and 3^rd in my AG. If you’ve got time to kill, read on…

I really don’t remember the moment in time when running 100 miles went from something I swore I’d never do to something I decided I definitely wanted to do. A big factor might have been the Lean Horse race back in 2008, a race I didn’t even run. My plan for that year had been to qualify for Boston at Colorado and then run the Lean Horse 50, my first 50, in August. After failing to BQ at Colorado, plans changed and after I did get the BQ in Missoula in July, there just wasn’t time to focus on the Lean Horse 50 in August, so I volunteered instead. Now, here’s a word of advice if you’re going to volunteer for an ultra. Do not tell the race director, especially if he’s a friend of yours, that you’d be “willing to do anything”. I ended up stationed along a lonely stretch of dirt road for approximately 28 hours, manning the Morph aid station at miles 11 and 89 of the Lean Horse 100. It was a long day, but I was astounded by the people coming through the aid station. Sure, I was tired by the end, but I had mostly been sitting on my butt and snacking on aid station food. These people had been on their feet that entire time and were still moving. And none of them appeared, at least at first glance, to be superhuman. They were like me. I began to wonder if running 100 miles was so crazy after all.

Flash forward to 2009. After running Boston in April, I knew I needed another running goal to keep me motivated and avoid a post-Boston letdown. That goal became the Lean Horse 50 that I hadn’t been able to run in 2008. I think I knew then that a 100 mile attempt was probably in my future, but it seemed prudent to test the waters a bit more. The funny thing is the Lean Horse 50 didn’t go all that well. I was ready for the distance, but obviously not ready for the heat and the 95 degree temps led to calf cramping that reduced me to walking most of the last 20 miles (swearing the whole way that I would never do this again, much less a 100). Still, I finished that race in a respectable time (9:32, 8^th overall, 2^nd in AG) and after the initial pain wore off, I began thinking about the possibility of running 100 miles. By the time the snow flew, my mind was pretty well made up: I would run the Lean Horse 100 in 2010.

I don’t really want to go into the gory details of my training plan, but I feel like I should mention some of the key pieces. Ultra training is MUCH less set in stone than marathon training. You can’t go to a bookstore and buy a book with an ultra plan laid out for you day by day. Much of how to train for these things is an experiment with yourself based on advice from others who have done it. Of course, as with anything, different people have different opinions on what works best, so you’ve got to figure out what works best for you. So, I feel somewhat obligated to share at least some of the key principles of my training for others who are looking for ideas. The basic structure of my training was to have two high mileage weeks followed by a moderate mileage week and then an easy cutback week and repeat that 4 week cycle throughout. The amount of mileage during the week didn’t really change all that much from week to week; the big difference came with the weekend mileage. For me, a “high” mileage week was around 70-75 miles, moderate was around 65 and easy was around 55-60. I know that may not seem like much, but on those high mileage weeks, the bulk of those miles came on the weekend. I used a mix of back to back and single long runs, sometimes running something like 25/15 and other weekends running 30/10 or 40/0….the goal was to get around 40 miles for the weekend. Some weekends were shorter mileage-wise, but because of tough terrain I was still spending a lot of time on my feet. I ended up with one 40 mile long run, three 30 milers, the 34 mile Bighorn DNF, and four marathons (two were actual marathons and the other two were just 26.2 mile runs on my own). I had several other 35-40 mile weekends with the mileage split between two runs. I topped out at 80 miles the last week before taper and then knocked the mileage back about 25% each week, running only 14 miles the last week, with two full days of rest before the race. I started out doing speedwork once per week in the spring, but when summer rolled around and the local trail series got going, I began using those shorter races as occasional speedwork and didn’t do any specific speed workouts for the last few months before Lean Horse.

Really, the summer flew by and before I knew it I was taking my son and daughter to their first days of school, my son was starting his first season of youth football (Go Rams!) and Lean Horse was upon me. I made the two hour drive down to Hot Springs on Friday afternoon. I pulled into the hotel parking lot, climbed out of the car and was hit by a blast furnace like wave of heat. Super. It was near 100 degrees and windy. The forecast for Saturday was slightly cooler, but this still wasn’t all that comforting. I checked in and then headed to the expo at the civic center across the street where I had to buy S-Caps because, like a rookie, I had failed to realize that I didn’t have enough for the race until two days before. I had contacted the expo vendor and she had been nice enough to set some aside for me (and she later told me that she sold out of them, so I’m extra grateful to her). I met up with several familiar faces at the expo and we exchanged nervous chatter. Amongst those faces were my friend and training partner Ryan and another friend from Colorado, Mike, who were both running their first 100.

Before too long, it was time for the pre-race briefing to start, so we filed into the auditorium. At some point during the briefing the race director, Jerry (another friend of mine), brought up the Black Hills 100, a new ultra event that he, Ryan and I are developing. Jerry brought Ryan and I up on stage to talk about the event and during our introductions said something along the lines of “Chris and Ryan are training partners. Ryan is a fast guy and we expect big things out of him in the ultrarunning world in the future. Chris is slower, but they train together…..uh….I guess I’ll let him tell you about himself” (side note: Jerry tends to start talking before the thought is entirely complete in his head). It’s true though, because Ryan is fast….really fast. Our training runs either involved him running really slowly to stay with me, or him charging ahead to the next ridgetop or trailhead and then waiting for my slow butt to catch up. Regardless, we started talking about the Black Hills 100 and next thing you know, the briefing for Lean Horse becomes a question and answer session for Black Hills. Oops.

After the briefing, I caught some downtime at the hotel before heading back to the civic center for the pre-race cookout. After that, I headed into town to watch some high school football, the Hot Springs Bison versus the Winner Warriors (Winner being an appropriate name for the town since they won the state championship last year) and then back to the hotel to try and sleep. Amazingly, I drifted off fairly early, 9:00 or so, and probably slept better than I ever have the night before a big race. I was up at 3:45 Saturday morning and that’s when the nerves really hit: “Holy !@#$, I’m going to run 100 miles!” After a quick, simple breakfast (Frosted Flakes and an English muffin, the breakfast of champions), I headed back over to the civic center to check in and nervously stand around. Once there, I huddled up with all the familiar faces in the room, as if there were safety in numbers from the dangers that lay outside. Just before 6:00, Jerry booted us outside and with a ten count and “GO!”, we were off.

Originally, I was going to break this report down into sections from aid station to aid station, but there were just too damn many (9 aid stations that you go through twice each for 18 total) and I really don’t remember many details (or anything noteworthy) between all of them, so instead it’s broken down from drop bag location to drop bag location.

Start to Argyle Loop (16.6)

The first three miles follow city streets and a bike path through Hot Springs before hitting a gravel road up and over the first significant hill and then down to the Coldbrook campground, and the first aid station, at mile 4. From Coldbrook, a two track road heads across a pasture to the Argyle Road, the most dreaded part of the Lean Horse course because of its constant rolling hills. The Morph aid station is at mile 11 and then the Argyle Loop aid station, where Argyle Road and the Mickelson Trail meet, is at mile 16.6.

I started out slow. Really slow. Well, it felt really slow, but I didn’t really know for sure because I was running without my Garmin. I knew that the battery on it wouldn’t last for the entire race, so I had put it in my Harbach Park drop bag and was relying on my trusty old Timex watch for timing at the beginning. We hit a small waterfall along the bike path that I knew was the one mile point because I had made a note of it last year and I was at about 9:30 pace, which was just about where I wanted to be early on. My plan for this first section was to walk the uphills and run everything else, and that’s exactly what I did. I stopped quickly at the Coldbrook aid station to grab an extra Hammer Gel and then charged on. Just before Coldbrook, Mike charged past me. Ryan had also charged ahead right from the start. I would unexpectedly meet up with one of them much later in the day (how’s that for building drama??). I stopped again at Morph to refill my handheld bottle and also ate half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which tasted REALLY good at that point. I should point out that for hydration purposes I was wearing my Nathan hydration pack with water inside and also carrying a 20 ounce bottle that I was drinking Nuun (an electrolyte tablet that dissolves in water, kinda like Alka Seltzer but better tasting) from. I should also point out that I didn’t record split times at aid stations, but I did have a pace chart in my pocket showing the time of day I’d need to be at each station to maintain 24 hour and 30 hour pace. By the time I hit Morph, was about 30 minutes ahead of 24 hour pace already and a little further ahead of that pace when I arrived at Argyle Loop. I had no need for my drop bag at Argyle Loop, so I topped off my hydration pack and handheld, grabbed another half of a peanut butter and jelly and took off. Actually, I totally forgot about refilling my hydration pack until I got about 20 yards past the aid station and decided it was probably best to go ahead and go back to refill it rather than running another 4 miles down the trail to do it.

Argyle Loop (16.6) to Pringle (24)

From Argyle Loop, the course takes to the Mickelson Trail, a rails to trails path that features long, gentle grades. There are no lung searing uphills, but when you do go uphill, you do so for a long time. Of course, you also go downhill for a long time (although it always seems longer going up). The entire thing is really very runable, but I knew that I wasn’t going to run the whole thing. Because of the long hills, I also didn’t want to walk the uphills for miles at a time. So, the plan was to use a run/walk ratio of 10 minutes to 2 minutes. That plan actually didn’t last long. I was having some trouble finding a groove and decided to break it up more, so started going 5 minutes to 2 minutes and that seemed to work better.

I topped off my handheld again at the Lime Kiln aid station at mile 20 and grabbed some more food (I don’t remember exactly what). My fueling plan was to consume Hammer Gels and Clif Bars between aid stations and then grab some more substantial food from the stations. As it turns out, I quickly discovered that chewing Clif Bars takes a lot of time and effort, especially when you’re not producing much saliva, so I relied more on Hammer Gels, which I was surprisingly able to tolerate for a majority of the race (usually my body rejects them after 3 or 4). I arrived in Pringle at mile 24 feeling pretty good. Again, I had no need for my drop bag. I did grab a turkey and cheese sandwich and maybe a banana….it’s all a blur already. As I left, someone warned me that the next section was long and warm. They were right.

Pringle (24) to Harbach Park (35.5)

The section just past Pringle sucks. It’s long and straight and the trail is right next to the highway. I remembered running this stretch to the 50 mile turnaround last year and it being really hot. It wasn’t as warm this year, but it still seemed to take forever and I was starting to not feel so good. My stomach wasn’t happy about something and I could feel the sensation of nausea building, bringing back some unhappy memories from Bighorn. The run/walk went out the window and it was just a walk for a little while. I had read that ginger helped and had packed some ginger chews in my hydration pack. I took one of those and, lo and behold, it worked. My stomach calmed down and I was able to start running again. Right about this time, a lady who was running the 50K (which ended at the Carroll Creek aid station) pulled up alongside me and we started talking and running/walking together. Running with her helped immensely as it took my mind off the crapiness I was feeling and made the time go by a little faster. She took off ahead to finish her race just before Carroll Creek at mile 30. At the aid station, I topped off with water and Nuun and grabbed some more peanut butter and jelly for the road. It was quite a chore to choke down half a sandwich, but I forced myself to do it as I walked down the trail. After Carroll Creek, I started back in on my run/walk strategy and got into a nice groove. Little did I know then that this groove would last for most of the next 70 miles. The 5.5 miles to Harbach Park, in the middle of the town of Custer, went smoothly and I was starting to have some fun. At Harbach Park, I grabbed some spray on sunblock from my drop bag. Although I had put some on before the race, I could tell my shoulders (I was wearing a sleeveless shirt) were starting to get red. I again refilled my fluids and grabbed a cookie and half a potato before setting off.

Harbach Park (35.5) to Buckaroo (49.2 and 50.8)

From Harbach Park, there’s a long uphill grind to the high point of the course at the Crazy Horse monument, just past the Mountain aid station (mile 40.5). I was unable to choke down either the cookie or the potato, so I took some Hammer Gel instead and then got back into the run/walk groove. As I was nearing Mountain, I started feeling another familiar and unwelcome feeling; my right calf was showing the first signs of cramping. It did seize briefly a couple of times and I took another S-cap and made sure to keep up on the Nuun. After walking a bit longer, I tried a slower run and nothing happened, so I kept charging on. It seized one more time, with the Mountain aid station in sight, but that was the last I heard from it. At Mountain, I stretched the calf a bit, refilled with fluids and was off. Just a short bit later, the course topped out at Crazy Horse and I was really able to get into a nice groove running (and walking) the long downhill toward the turnaround point.

I knew at some point along this stretch I would see the frontrunners as they came back from the turnaround. The first guy was WAY out in front of everyone else and he was a first timer (all first timers had a green sticker on their bibs to signify their greenhorn status). I stopped for a quick fluid refill and maybe tried another turkey sandwich at the Oreville aid station (mile 45.2). Not long past Oreville, I was surprised to see Mike running along in 5^th place overall. I gave him a high five as we passed each other. At this point, I began wondering where in the hell Ryan was as I had expected him to be one of the front runners. About halfway between Oreville and Buckaroo I finally found him and we exchanged some quick words of support. I stopped very briefly at Buckaroo on the way out to top off my bottle and then headed out for the short 1.6 mile stretch to the turnaround and back. At the turnaround, I pulled my cell phone out of my pack and called my wife to let her know I was still alive and halfway done. I hit the turnaround in 9:40, two hours and twenty minutes ahead of 24 hour pace. Once back at Buckaroo, I made my longest stop of the day to refill the hydration pack and change shoes. I also grabbed my headlamp from my bag. I had put it in this bag expecting to be here much closer to dark. It’s nice to be wrong about some things.

Buckaroo (50.8) to Harbach Park (65.5)

Of course, that nice long downhill from Crazy Horse to Buckaroo became a seemingly MUCH longer uphill on the way back. But, still, I was able to stick with my run/walk strategy and was constantly banking time. At this point, I was really surprised by just how well this thing was going, but at the same time I was trying not to get too excited about it because, after all, I still had half the race to go. Back at the Oreville aid station, I decided that chewing food was just too much damn work….I couldn’t work up enough saliva to do it properly, although I was maintaining my hydration fairly well and taking a leak at least every couple of hours. So, I decided to try some Coke and chicken soup and it was the awesomest thing EVER. Like nectar of the Gods. I tried some more at Mountain, after finally cresting the neverending hill, and it was still awesome. So I tried some again at Harbach Park. Still awesome. Back at Harbach, I made another pit stop to change into a t-shirt since it was getting closer to dark and starting to rain. I decided against taking my longsleeve shirt, gloves and beanie because I wasn’t expecting it to get that cold during the night and, as it turns out, that was a good choice….I was never cold for the remainder of the race. I also grabbed my Garmin out of my bag so I could know my pace for the final miles. As it turns out, I didn’t rely on it at all, just looked at it out of curiosity every once in awhile.

Harbach Park (65.5) to Pringle (76)

After leaving Harbach, I called my wife again to update her on my progress. I was now 2 hours and 45 minutes ahead of 24 hour pace. I told her I wasn’t sure if I could keep this up for another 35 miles, but so far so good. Not long after I hung up the phone and stashed it back in my pack, I noticed I was catching up to someone who didn’t look to be feeling very good. As I got closer, I realized that it was Ryan. I pulled up alongside him and he gave me a casual “good job” then did a double take when he realized it was me. I asked him how he was feeling and the look on his face said it all. He’d been cramping and was just feeling generally crappy. We exchanged words of encouragement and I ran on. It was this point that I really started to realize how good of a day I was having. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I would ever finish ahead of Ryan in a race. Of course, there was still a lot of race left, but the fact that I felt so strong this far into it gave me a huge confidence boost.

Back at Carroll Creek they were cooking up grilled cheese sandwiches. I had a quarter of one with some more Coke and chicken soup. That was pretty awesome too. I headed out of that aid station feeling great and was treated with one hell of a lightning show off to the east as I ran toward Pringle. The storm was never really close to me...the thunder was pretty distant, but I did get sprinkled on a few times. By this point, it was pretty much dark out, but I still had my headlamp stashed in my hydration pack. I was hoping to not use it at all and run only by moonlight, but the thunderstorms were kind of screwing with that plan. I hit probably the toughest stretch for me mentally between Carroll Creek and Pringle. Back on that long straight stretch along the highway, I was struggling. Physically, I was fine, but the headlight heading towards me were pissing me off, the fact that it was warmer than expected and there was no breeze was pissing me off and the fact that the trail was straight and seemed to go on forever was REALLY pissing me off. I KNOW that it wasn’t that long on the way out and if I ever find the bastard that lengthened it, I’m gonna kick his ass. Despite my attitude, I still ran/walked fairly strongly and finally arrived at Pringle. On a small side note, I should mention that even when I was walking, I was usually gaining time on the 24 hour pace. I made sure not to just walk too casually, but to walk with a purpose and my Garmin was telling me that my walking pace was generally around 13:30-14:00 per mile (24 hour pace is 14:24), a little slower on uphills. But I never got so tired that my walking pace slowed to a crawl; I was able to walk strongly the whole way, which played a big part in my overall finish.

Pringle (76) to Argyle Loop (83.4)

I had made the decision long before to ditch my hydration pack at Pringle. I figured that having all that extra water wasn’t really necessary at night and I had another handheld stashed in my Pringle drop bag. So, I transferred all the stuff I REALLY needed (Nuun tabs, cell phone, headlamp) from the hydration pack to my pockets (or head, in the case of the headlamp). The aid station didn’t have any chicken soup, so I went with tomato instead and headed out. It was just after Pringle on the way out that I had hit my first rough patch and it would be just after Pringle and way back that I would hit my second. I don’t know if it was the tomato soup or what, but not long after finishing it, I started to feel kind of queasy again. Of course, the logical solution would be a ginger chew since that worked so well before. Only problem was that they were still in my hydration pack and I sure as hell wasn’t backtracking for them. So, instead I just walked for a bit and hoped my stomach would settle down. Eventually, thankfully, it did and I was able to start the run/walk routine again. By this time, it was no long 5 minutes to 2 minutes. It was much more random. I would start running and go until it started to feel uncomfortable and then I would walk. Eventually, my feet and legs would start to ache while walking, so I would start running again and they would feel better. And the cycle would repeat itself. Back through Lime Kiln I got more Coke and, thankfully, they had chicken soup. I pressed on to Argyle Loop and the Mickelson running was done for the day. More Coke and more chicken soup and then it was back onto the rolling hills of Argyle Road.

Argyle Loop (83.4) to Finish (100)

My strategy for the return trip on Argyle was the same as before: run the downhills and walk the uphills. I could tell immediately that this section might be uncomfortable. I had developed some blisters on the balls of my feet, especially my left foot. The Mickelson is finely crushed gravel and nice and smooth. Argyle, however, is a gravel road with much larger pieces of gravel that did NOT feel good at all if I stepped on one wrong. Upon leaving Argyle Loop, I was about 3 hours ahead of 24 hour pace and still moving strongly. So now, the question became just how quickly I was going to be able to finish this thing. I decided at this point that it was safe to assume sub-24 was in the bag, but could I finish sub-21? That became my new goal.

The storms had rolled through and the nearly full moon finally made an appearance, so I ran much of this final section with my headlamp off. I was able to see perfectly well enough without it and was enjoying the calm night, under the stars and moon. Although the finish was getting close, I tried really hard not to think about it and just focus on getting to the next aid station, as I had been all day. I refueled with more Coke and chicken soup at Morph and headed out for the last aid station. Just before the 95 mile point, there is a long downhill. I was able to run almost all of it and when I got to the bottom was done with Argyle Road and back on the two track toward Coldbrook. They didn’t have any chicken soup at Coldbrook, which was kind of a buzzkill, but I decided that it didn’t really matter at that point. I drank some Coke and headed out, only 4 miles to go. Right after Coldbrook, there’s one last steep hill before the course drops back down into Hot Springs. At the top of the hill, I turned my phone back on and tried to call my wife to let her know I would be in shortly. Unfortunately, the cell coverage in Hot Springs blows, and none of my calls went through. The last word she had, from when I had called at mile 65.5, was that I would be done around 3:00 AM, so she had set her alarm for 2:30. I left Coldbrook at approximately 1:40, knowing that I had sub-21 in the bag. After topping that last hill, there was just over 3 miles left and I ran almost all of it. My feet were sore, but my legs felt great and I could feel the finish line pulling me in like a magnet. I was flying down the streets of Hot Springs, sure that I must be running 6:30 pace. I glanced at my Garmin and saw that it was more like 9:10 pace but whatever; it felt really damn fast 99 miles into a 100 mile day. I hit the bike path leading to the civic center and it just seemed unreal….was I really running the final few yards of a 100 mile race? Up and over one more tiny bump in the trail and across the finish line to the clapping of a few guys who had finished not long before me and the ladies keeping time.

I dropped my bottles on the grass, asked the lady if I could stop now and planted my butt in a chair. It was the awesomest feeling in the world to finally sit down and know that I didn’t have to get back up until I damn well felt like it.

I guess the best way to describe how I felt when I got done is “content”. I was somewhat shocked by what had just occurred. Another guy I talked to the next day, who had also finished his first 100, described it as the best executed race tactically he’s ever run. I think that applies to my race too. I couldn’t have planned it better if I tried. Eventually, I asked to take a peek at the results and discovered that I had finished 7^th overall. Mike had come in exactly one hour before me in 19:21, a spectacular 100 mile debut for him also. The winner, another first timer, had run a blistering 15:25, just 5 minutes slower than the course record.

Ryan’s wife and sister in law were at the finish and told me he was on Argyle Road and should be done shortly. I decided to wait and see him in. And, really, I was just enjoying sitting there and soaking in the atmosphere of my first 100 mile finish. I talked to my mom on the phone, who had suddenly awoken for no apparent reason just minutes before I finished, and my wife, who should’ve set her alarm for a half hour sooner. After awhile, I started to get cold and wasn’t sure just how much longer Ryan had, so I decided I should probably go take a shower and try to sleep. Those blisters on my feet hurt much more now, so I began a very slow shuffle toward the hotel. I hadn’t made it very far when I Ryan’s family start cheering, so I did a quick shuffle/hobble back to the finish to see him come in at 21:44, another awesome 100 mile debut. We congratulated each other and talked about the race a bit before I resumed my shuffle back to the hotel to shower and sleep. I was almost scared to take my socks off and see my feet, but it wasn’t as bad as I feared. A few blisters on my toes and some bigger ones on the balls on my feet, but not as horrible as pictures I’ve seen from other 100 mile finishers. I wasn’t really tired at all, but considering I had to drive back home in several hours, I figured I should probably at least try to sleep. I lay down and could not get comfortable at all. My legs and feet were aching and I couldn’t get comfortable in any position. And my brain was reeling. It just would not shut down and go into sleep mode. After about an hour and a half of kinda sorta dozing off here and there, I finally gave up, got dressed and went back to the finish line (this time, I drove the one block from the hotel to the civic center).

And that’s about it. I went to the awards ceremony later that morning to get my buckle and award for 3^rd in my age group and then drove home. Today, the day after, it already seems like so long ago. My legs are tired, but have been more sore after some marathons I’ve run. My feet are another story. They have been abused and are not happy about it, especially the left one, which had the bigger blister and also was swollen pretty good yesterday. But, hey, it was worth it.

Wow, 9 pages….if you’ve made it this far, maybe you deserve a belt buckle. What can I say, a long race necessitates a long report. And I’ve got nothing to do today but sit and type. Thanks for reading and all the words of support and congratulations I’ve received; it’s been great!

Counting down the minutes

2010-08-26T09:01:00.002-07:00

Lean Horse is upon us. Well, it's upon me, anyhow. A few of you out there might be running it along with me, but the rest of you just get to sit back and await the carnage report. Enjoy that.

The last couple of weeks have had their ups and downs (both figuratively and literally). For the most part, last week went well as I tapered down to 44 miles for the week. That included a nice night run on Friday night where I left the house at 9:30 and put in 15 miles under a nearly full moon. It was pretty sweet. I rested the next day (if you can consider a trip to Chuck E. Cheese and a day full of school shopping "rest") and then ran the McGovern Hill Trail Race on Sunday. It was one of the more miserable 5 mile runs I've had. The race was an out and back with the first half up the hill and the second half back down. I didn't feel all that great going up and I got passed by quite a few people, but figured I'd be able to catch them on the way down. Wrong. I didn't feel much better going down and just could not push the pace at all. It sucked. I keep telling myself that just means the bad mojo is outta my system and now I'm due for a good day(s) at Lean Horse.

As for this week, the running is done and it's full on taper obsession mode. I ran 8 miles on Tuesday and another 6 yesterday. Two days of full rest and then I'll try to conquer the Lean Horse. My number 1 goal is pretty damn simple: finish. Goal number 2 is sub-24. Anything besides either of those would just be gravy on the cake....or something like that. My strategy is pretty simple too. Walk the uphills and run the flats and downhills on Argyle Rd. and then try to stick to a run/walk strategy (10 minutes to 2 minutes initially) on the Mickelson. It's supposed to be hot (lower 90s) at the lower elevations but significantly cooler (upper 70s) at the higher elevations, so I need to be up near Custer (miles 35.5 and 64.5) by the heat of the day, which shouldn't be a problem. By the time I reach the lower elevations again, it will be dark and I'll probably be more worried about being too cold (amongst other things there are to worry about 80 miles into a 100 mile race). After my night run last week, I'm really looking forward to the sun going down on Saturday. It's become branded in my brain that if I can just reach sunset, I'll make it to the finish. The moon will be 4 days past full on Saturday night, so should provide ample light if it's a clear night (which it looks like it should be). Basically, I want to hit the halfway point at Deadbroke St. with some time to spare on the 24 hour pace and hopefully enough energy to take advantage of the cooler temps at night and do as much running (no matter how slow) as walking the last half. And now I'm rambling....damn taper madness...

Okay, I'd probably better go check the weather forecast for the 1,472nd time and look over my drop bag list again....and again.....and again...and again......

Stand by for a full report. Hopefully it's a good one.

Into the taper

2010-08-17T08:30:00.002-07:00

Apparently this is becoming a bi-weekly blog for me. My excuse this time is the Sturgis Rally. It's big, it's loud and it's a royal pain in the ass if you live near it. I mean, consider the fact that there were an estimated 600,000 bikers at the Rally this year. The normal population of the entire state of South Dakota is roughly 800,000. Yeah. In any case, there are two popular strategies for dealing with the Rally if you're a local: either pack up and leave for a week or find a way to take advantage of it for personal (monetary) gain. I chose the latter and, for the second year in a row worked in the paid parking lot at the Buffalo Chip campground, which is also a major concert venue (this year included Drowning Pool, Tesla, Buckcherry, ZZ Top, Bob Dylan, Kid Rock, Stone Sour, Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne, Disturbed and Scorpions, among others). Needless to say, Rally week was hectic for me between running, going to my regular job in the morning, out to the Buffalo Chip in the afternoon, back home late at night (11:00 or later) and then up the next morning to repeat the whole process. It doesn't pay all that great, but it's fairly easy extra money and I got to hear some bands I've wanted to hear for awhile for free (namely Drowning Pool, Stone Sour and Disturbed).

Anyhow, on to running. My last week of "real" training (the week before the Rally) looked something like this:

Monday - Rest
Tuesday - 9.3 miles
Wednesday - 10.5 miles
Thursday - 8 miles
Friday - 6 miles
Saturday - 16 miles
Sunday - 30 miles
Total - 79.8 miles (yes, I would've run an extra 0.2 if I would have realized soon enough)

The weekend total of 46 and the weekly total of damn near 80 were both highs for my Lean Horse training. Does that mean I'm ready to run 100 miles? I have no friggin clue, but at this point I'm as ready as I'm gonna get.

The week of the Rally, and the first week of taper, looked like this:

Monday - Rest
Tuesday - 8 miles
Wednesday - 10.2 miles
Thursday - 6 miles
Friday - 15 miles
Saturday - 15.5 miles
Sunday - 7.3 miles
Total - 62 miles (notice the extra 0.3 on Sunday to hit an even number for the week...I learned my lesson)

You can see the mid-week miles didn't change much, but I ran fewer on the weekend. The best run of the week was that 7.3 on Sunday...I didn't head out until late afternoon, which is a time when I rarely run, and my legs felt great. What was supposed to be an easy 8:30-8:45 pace effort turned into a mini progression run that finished at sub-7 pace for the last 0.3. Now, that's not blazing fast by any means, but it's faster than I have been running for most of ultra training and it felt really fast after back to back 15s the previous two days. Let's see....I ran a PR at Heart of the Hills last month the day after a 30 miler and then I had a great run this past week after a combined 30.5 miles the two days before. Apparently, my legs need about 30 miles on em to get into the zone...

And the highlight of the week had absolutely nothing to do with me (well, I was there, but all I did was stand and watch). Shannon ran her 2nd marathon on Sunday at Leading Ladies in Spearfish. She's been getting steadily faster in the past year and was hoping to better her time of 5:06 from the same race last year. She did that and then some, finishing a full 30 minutes faster in 4:36 (and that was after cramping calves slowed her down in the final 3 miles). At this rate, she'll be faster than me after just 3 more marathons. I'd better stop slacking off!

Okay, so the Rally is over and Lean Horse is looming large. I feel like I've done what I can do and like I've not done nearly enough all at the same time. Isn't taper awesome??

Catching up

2010-08-06T08:56:00.002-07:00

Okay, so I've been a major slacker around here. I am still alive and I am still training for Lean Horse and, actually, it's going fairly well. Since Heart of the Hills, I've put together a couple of solid weeks. My mid-week mileage is pretty much identical from week to week, so I won't even bother discussing that. The weekend after Heart of the Hills, I decided to go for back to back 20 milers. Shannon was running the CASA Half Marathon in Spearfish on Saturday morning, so when she got done I laced em up and ran from Spearfish back to Belle Fourche. I've run the opposite direction several times, but for some reason had never run to Belle. This is particularly odd since it's a fairly big net downhill to Belle, which would make it seem like the easier direction. I didn't feel all that great, but I also didn't push all that hard knowing that I was running another 20 the next day. For that second 20, I met up with my friend Ryan in Deadwood and we ran on the Mickelson Trail. Ryan is significantly faster than I am so even though he was plodding along at an easy pace for him, I was going slightly faster than I might normally go for a 20 miler, especially when it was my 2nd 20 in as many days. But, I felt much better than I had the day before and we ended up running that 20 seven minutes faster than I had run the first. Although I felt good during the run, apparently the two of them combined took a toll because I ended up driving home and basically passing out on the recliner for the rest of the day....I was wiped out. Not like hurt or anything, just really, really tired.....could not keep my eyes open.

Last week was my debut as race director as I was responsible for organizing the fifth race in the Black Hills Trail Running Series, the Old Baldy trail race. Of course, I ended up scrambling around all week doing last minute things that I should've done weeks ago, but everything came together and the race went off without a hitch. I ended up running the 5.6 mile course twice, once the day before to put up signs and flagging and once after the race to take everything back down. I didn't get a lot of miles in on Saturday, the day of the race, but I wasn't too worried about it because I knew I had a big day in store on Sunday. Ryan and I had made plans to meet at the Alkali Cr. trailhead of the Centennial Trail and run the 23.6 miles to Dalton Lake. We had done this stretch once before about 4 weeks ago, but had done it in the opposite direction (the downhill direction) and it had totally wiped me out....the last several miles that day were a massive struggle. I wasn't even able to run very much of the final 4 miles, which were downhill. So, I was a little nervous about how things would go. Even though it was "only" 23.6 miles, I knew it was going to take a while and would be one helluva workout. We also had a local mountain biker, Jake, riding along with us to shoot video and mark the trail with GPS as part of our preparation for the Black Hills 100, which Ryan and I are co-directing with Jerry Dunn (of Deadwood-Mickelson and Lean Horse fame). In any case, we took off bright and early from Alkali Cr. and Ryan mentioned that it would be about 2 hours to the next trailhead, Elk Cr., about 11 miles away. I joked that 2.5 might be more reasonable, but sure enough, I ended up cruising into Elk Cr. feeling pretty good at exactly 2 hours. The next stretch from Elk Cr. to Dalton Lake was a little longer, a little over 12 miles, and included a llllloooonnnngggg climb, but I took it easy, did some extended power hiking on the climb and made it into Dalton Lake still feeling pretty good. Tired for sure, but I felt like I could've kept moving if I'd had too, unlike the last time we had run that same stretch in the "easier" direction. And, although it was the uphill direction, I somehow ran it faster than I had run the downhill direction last time. Bonus. If you're interested in a good butt whoopin, check out www.blackhills100.com and make plans to come see us next June.

So, that brings us to this week, which is, believe it or not, my last week before tapering for Lean Horse. I'll be running 15-16 miles (however far it is from Custer to Hill City) on the Mickelson tomorrow and then I'm hoping to get in one last 30 miler on Sunday before the taper truly begins. Damn, the summer went by fast. As usual, I can think of at least a thousand different things that I coulda, shoulda, woulda done differently for my training, but it's too damn late now. Taper madness is gonna be a doozy for this one...I don't envy my wife for the next three weeks. If nothing else, July ended up being my highest mileage month (320) since I started Lean Horse training in mid-March, so hopefully that will get me through. I can tell from my long training runs in the heat that hydration is going to be key (duh). If I can keep my fluids and electrolytes up, I'm confident I can cover the distance. If not, well, it will get ugly (notice the use of "will" instead of "might"...I know from experience). Well, it's gonna get ugly either way, but I'm hoping to prolong the onset of ugliness for as long as possible. Isn't that what ultra running is basically all about?

Heart of the Hills Report

2010-07-19T10:05:00.001-07:00

I call this PR unlikely for a few reasons. First, I haven't been doing much in the way of speedwork lately; ultra training has been more about teaching my body to move forward steadily for a long time, not quickly for a short time. Second, I wasn't even planning on running the race until the day before. Third, on the day before, I covered 30 miles, a "run" (the walk breaks became more and more frequent as the miles accumulated) that ended in 93 degree temps and that left me pretty severely dehydrated despite guzzling what seemed like a ton of water. Probably not the best recipe for success, but it's races like this that keep running interesting.

The race I'm referring to is Heart of the Hills, a 10.4 mile road race that starts in Hill City, SD and follows the old highway east to Keystone, which is the closest town to Mt. Rushmore (in other words, if you look up "tourist trap" in the dictionary, there should be a picture of main street Keystone). The race is 10.4 miles long because that's just how long that stretch of road happens to be. The race is also unique in that it starts at 6:30 PM. I'm not sure why this is, it just is. I've run the race twice before. In 2006 I finished in 1:28:29 after suffering mightily in the heat and on the hills (and seriously considering dropping at one point). In 2008, just six days after BQing at the Missoula Marathon, I ran a 1:17:15 and was pretty happy with it considering how tired my legs were. This year, after again running Missoula six days prior (albeit much more slowly than in 2008) and the aforementioned 30 miler the day before, I wasn't really expecting much, just hoping to get in a 10 mile run. I love being wrong in these circumstances.

The course is a fairly big downhill overall as Hill City is about 700 feet higher than Keystone, but there's more to it than that. There's one huge hill in the first 2 miles, a smaller huge hill in the next mile and then several smaller hills sprinkled throughout the course to keep things interesting. At several points, bystanders will tell you that "it's all downhill from here" and they are basically always wrong (unless they're along the last mile and a half or so). It is a beautiful course, as you might expect one so close to Mt. Rushmore to be.

My race strategy was pretty simple here. Start running and see what happened. I was totally unenthusiastic about this thing in the moments leading up to it. My legs felt tired from the 30 miler the day before, but not horribly so. I knew I would be able to run 10 miles with no problem, but memories of past misery at this race were lingering in my head. When the race started, I just went and tried to work into a pace that felt somewhat reasonable. Turns out that pace was faster than I thought it would be.

Right off the bat, I was moving faster than I thought I would be (or thought I'd be able to maintain). Heading up the first big hill, I could see the field strung out in front of me (the leader, a college cross country runner at South Dakota State, had already gapped everyone by that time and went on to win ridiculously easily) and counted 15 people ahead of me. As we chugged up the hill, barely moving at faster than a walk, I caught a few people and when I was able to drop the hammer and start running hard immediately after cresting the summit, I passed a couple of more. Eventually, I found myself behind a local trail runner, Andy, who I know is faster than me on trails, but maybe not so much on roads (at least when I'm rested). I would end up following Andy up and down the hills until I finally mustered enough momentum to pass him just past mile 4. At that point, it basically became a race with myself. I could occasionally catch a glimpse of the next guy in front of me, but he was never within striking distance. I wasn't sure how much of a gap I was putting on Andy until I finally snuck a couple of glances in the final miles. Basically, my goal became to maintain sub-7 miles and finish in the 1:13 range. Amazingly, the pace felt pretty good up until the last two miles when I had to work a little harder to maintain it. As I rounded the last bend and saw the finish line, I started pushing and realized that not only would I definitely break 1:13, but I was going to be really close to 1:12 as well. Alas, it was too late that I realized this and finished in 1:12:02, a PR of over 5 minutes, 8th overall and 3rd in my AG.

1 - 6:46
2 - 7:41 (big damn hill)
3 - 6:53
4 - 6:39 (chasing Andy down the hill)
5 - 7:22 (inexplicably slow, maybe let off a little after passing Andy)
6 - 7:00
7 - 6:48
8 - 6:44
9 - 6:51
10 - 6:54
10.4 - 2:21 (6:14 pace)
Total - 1:12:02

My AG award was a railroad spike. I've got three of em now (two from Heart of the Hills and one from the Deadwood-Mickelson half marathon). If I can place in my AG long enough, I can build myself a railroad!

So, the moral of the story is, if you wanna PR at a race, just go out and run 30 miles the day before. Guaranteed to work! (Disclaimer: results not typical).

Missoula Marathon Report

2010-07-19T10:02:00.001-07:00

Okay, I have a confession. I have a mistress. But it’s cool, because my wife not only knows about it, she’s fine with it. Most of you know about it already too. Her name is Missoula and every July I make a ridiculously long drive to run a less ridiculously long ways there. Heck, my wife even came along and joined in the festivities last year. Jealous, aren’t ya?

Okay, so it’s well established that Missoula, MT is my favorite place in the world and that the Missoula Marathon has become my favorite race. For those that don’t know, I went to college in Missoula and the only thing keeping me from living there is a job (small details). I mean, I guess I could get a gig at McDonald’s and move the family into a trailer park, but somehow I think that would take the luster off my obsession with Missoula. Or, at the very least, it would definitely take the luster off my marriage. So, I was overjoyed when the Missoula Marathon was created back in 2007, providing me with a perfectly valid excuse to go back at least once every year. It doesn’t hurt that the Missoula Marathon has developed into a damn fine event and was also the site of my one and only BQ run (which is still my PR) back in 2008. All the more reason to run the race every July.

One interesting thing about the Missoula Marathon is that it draws people in from a much wider area than you would expect of a relatively small race in a relatively out of the way location. Other than Boston, where I met a bajillion forumites all at once, I’ve met more forumites at Missoula than at any other race. This year was no different as I enjoyed a pre-race meal and post-race beers/lunch (both of which have become traditions….dinner at Carino’s, beer at the Iron Horse) with Neil and Mike, although I guess I had met most everyone previously. Neil and I have both been present at all four Missoula Marathons and I first met Mike there two years ago. This year, I also got a chance to talk a bit with Sam, who I think I might’ve met in Boston in 2009, but it was a fleeting intro (there were a lot of people to meet). We actually got to talk a little bit this time, although he had to skip out on lunch to catch a plane in Spokane that he ended up not catching….might as well have stayed in Missoula, Sam!

This year I was approaching Missoula with a more casual attitude than my previous three visits. I had no aspirations of a BQ or a PR, I was just looking to put in a solid long run that would allow me to recover quickly and continue on with my training for the Lean Horse 100. In the spirit of ultra training, and as a way of ensuring that I wouldn’t try to do anything stupid on race day, I went for a 10.2 mile trail run in the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area on Saturday morning, the day before the race. I used to hike in the Rattlesnake with my dog quite a bit when I was in college, but I wasn’t a runner back then, so this was my first time running them. I’ll just say they gave me one more reason to wish I lived in Missoula; there are some pretty sweet trails up there and I barely even scratched the surface on my 10 mile loop.

I spent the rest of Saturday hanging out at the expo, watching my cousin John’s son finish the kid’s marathon, making my mandatory visit to the Big Sky Brewing Company for some free samples and cruising around the University of Montana campus. Eventually I did sit down and chill for a bit, but I was on my feet for much longer than I would normally be the day before a marathon.

The forecast was looking pretty typical for Missoula in July. Pretty damn hot during the afternoon, cooling off significantly overnight. As we sat in Frenchtown waiting for the start, the announcer said it was 55 degrees. By the time I finished, it was probably in the mid to upper 60s and eventually reached the mid 80s that afternoon. Probably about as well as you can hope for when you register for a marathon smack dab in the middle of summer.

Mike and I had made plans to run with the 3:30 pace group. Sam was pacing the 3:50 group, so our ultimate goal was to not let him catch us, no matter what. My cousin John also decided to run with the group, so we lined up together in the mass of humanity (the race doubled in size after being named by Runner’s World as the best overall marathon in the country last year) at the start line. As usual, the ROTC cannon fired and at least half the field damn near crapped their pants. Then they started running.

Frenchtown to Kona Ranch Road (Miles 0 to 9.4)

This first stretch takes you across open fields near the western edge of the Missoula Valley. Across the valley, at what seems like 100 miles away, you can see Mt. Sentinel and Mt. Jumbo, which butt up against the east side of Missoula and are fairly near the finish. Running 26.2 miles always seems pretty far, but when you can actually see just how far, it makes it seem even more daunting. The first 9+ miles are all on Mullan Road and I’m always happy when they’re over. Nothing against Mullan Road and its residents, but that’s just a long ways to run in one straight direction.

The 3:30 pace took off a little hot and Mike, John and I had to beat feet to catch up with him, which we finally did just before the first mile marker. One of the problems with this race (yes, I will admit there are problems) is the mile markers along Mullan Road. Every year a few of them are off significantly. Our pacer wasn’t running with a Garmin, just a watch, so he was trying to pace according to the splits between markers. You’ll see by the splits that that was difficult and, ultimately, we were running a little too fast for 3:30 pace (8:00/mile).

Mile 1 – 7:40
Mile 2 – 8:09
Mile 3 –7:57
Mile 4 – 7:59
Mile 5 – 8:07 (I stopped at a portajohn to take a leak somewhere in here)
Mile 6 – 7:36
Mile 7 – 8:08
Mile 8 – 6:45 (the pacer actually looked at me and John here and said “is that right??”; no, it wasn’t)
Mile 9 – 7:47

Kona Ranch Road to River Pines Road (Miles 9.4 to 15.6)

After finally turning off of Mullan Road and onto Kona Ranch Road, you hit what I think is the most scenic part of the course. Kona Ranch takes you across the Clark Fork River and then on to Big Flat Road (which includes the only significant hill….go figure). Big Flat takes you up along the hillside into the pine trees with view of the river and the valley beyond it below. What goes up must come down, so Big Flat drops you to River Pines, where the full and half marathon courses merge.

At some point before Kona Ranch, Mike had dropped off the pace a little and John and I continued to run alongside the pacer. Shortly after making the turn onto Kona Ranch, Mike suddenly pulled back up alongside me, but then dropped back again. Just past mile 11 or so, the pacer started to realize that he was going too fast for 3:30 and dropped back a little. John and I kept pushing at the same pace for awhile, but eventually John pulled away as we neared the hill. I pushed and eventually caught back up with John and two other guys he was running with just after we topped the hill and ran with them to the aid station at the bottom.

Mile 10 – 7:31
Mile 11 – 7:57
Mile 12 – 7:49
Mile 13 – 7:24 (made a little push before the hill)
Mile 14 – 8:12 (up the hill)
Mile 15 – 7:25 (down the hill)

River Pines Road to Reserve Street (Miles 15.6 to 20.3)

Immediately after descending the hill, you cross the Bitterroot River and enter the residential area on the western edge of Missoula. From here, the course follows city streets with some long, straight stretches that sometimes feel like they’re taking forever (although they’re really much shorter than the Mullan Road section).

After crossing the river, I was still in a loose group with John and a few other people. But, the pace was starting to feel a little bit faster than I really wanted to go. I had said before the race that I wanted to go no faster than 3:30 and we were ahead of the 3:30 group by this time and pushing further forward (we crossed the halfway point at about 3:23 pace). I thought it would be cool to run the entire race with my cousin and cross the finish line together, but ultimately I didn’t want to feel like hell afterwards and I had a suspicion that continuing at this pace would lead to just that. So, I backed off and let the group go on ahead. As a result, I ended up running the rest of the race by myself. Occasionally, someone would pass me and I would pass someone else, but I never really ran with anyone the rest of the way.

Mile 16 – 7:41
Mile 17 – 7:54
Mile 18 – 7:52
Mile 19 – 8:12
Mile 20 – 8:04

Reserve Street to the Finish (Miles 20.3 to 26.2)

Just after mile 20, the course passes under Reserve Street into what could be considered the central residential area of Missoula. More city street running, although in this area the straight stretches are shorter and there are more turns, which helps break things up a little. Also, there are more trees, so more shade, and there were a ton of people who had their sprinklers set out to run through if you wanted to (it really wasn’t that hot, but still a nice option). Eventually you run north through the neighborhood bordering the UM campus and then make a relatively quick series of four turns that deposit you onto the south end of the Higgins Avenue bridge with the finish just across the Clark Fork River on the north end. The city closes this stretch of Higgins for the race, so there are tons of spectators lining the final stretch and once you get on the bridge, it’s a nice gradual downhill for the last 0.1 or so. Like Mike said to me later, it’s not really enough to have a significant impact on your overall time, but it does at least make you feel fast as you cross the finish.

There’s not really much to say about this section other than that out of four Missoula Marathons, this year I felt the best on this stretch. Technically, this is only the third year the marathon has followed this route; for the first one the final 6 miles and finish line were different. The new route is much better (more shaded), but I suffered some each of the last two years running it. In 2008, I was pushing for a BQ and was not feeling all that super during the final miles. Last year, I was pushing for a PR early on, but started suffering just past halfway and was hurting pretty bad by the time I passed under Reserve. This year was the first time I was able to run this stretch and not be in total agony the entire way. Sure, I was tired, but it was a manageable tired.

Mile 21 – 8:28 (I had a goal of not running any miles 8:30 or slower; came close a couple of times)
Mile 22 – 8:10
Mile 23 – 8:13
Mile 24 – 8:27
Mile 25 – 8:20
Mile 26 – 7:35
Mile 26.2 – 1:33

Chip Time – 3:27:12
Overall Pace – 130 out of 1276
AG Place – 12 out of 91

John finished almost exactly 2 minutes ahead of me in 3:25:16. He was also one spot ahead of me in the AG rankings. I woulda been kicking myself for that one if we had been 3rd and 4th. As for Mike and Sam, well, I’ll let them tell their own stories (actually Sam’s is already posted on his Operation Jack blog).

So, that’s my second marathon as a training run during this training cycle for Lean Horse. The first was a 3:38 at Deadwood in June and I was able to bounce right back from that one and continue training. Would running 11 minutes faster change that? Well, it doesn’t appear so. I had minimal soreness yesterday during the long drive home and ran 9 miles this morning just like it was any regular ole training run. So it doesn’t appear that I pushed too hard after all. Crazy, considering that not so long ago I had to push myself to the brink to break 3:30 in the marathon.

Oh, and I have to share my story of a totally random post-race encounter. As I was standing in Caras Park (just below the finish line, along the river) enjoying my free post-race Moose Drool, a guy walks up to me and says “Are you Chris Stores?” Now, I have no idea who this dude is, but I say “yeah”. Turns out, we lived next door to each other in the dorm our freshman year of college. As soon as he said his name, I knew who it was, but I have no clue how he knew who I was (I’ve lost 60 pounds since then….all he did was cut his hair). He mentioned casually that he had run the half marathon that morning, but didn’t say any more about it. Later that evening, Neil gives me a call and informs that not only did my former dorm neighbor run the half marathon, he WON the half marathon in 1:11. Small details.

Still alive

2010-07-19T09:57:00.002-07:00

In case you were wondering, I am still alive and kickin, just been lazy about posting lately. Fortunately, I haven't been nearly as lazy about running and have put in a string of three straight 70+ mile weeks since my last post. I've got a Missoula report to post, which I'll do here shortly and I also ran the Heart of the Hills 10.4 mile race (which I hadn't planned on) this past Saturday. I'll post my report on that too.

All in all, Lean Horse training is going well. I feel like I should be doing more, but then again I always feel like that, whether I'm training for 26.2 miles or 100. Mother Nature is providing ample opportunity for heat training, which I guess is both good and bad. Chances are, it will be hot during Lean Horse so I've got to prepare myself somehow. This past Friday's 30 mile suffer fest in 93 degree heat was as good a training run as any, I guess (well, it didn't FEEL good, but it should prove helpful in preparing me for race day conditions). In any case, I really don't have that much longer to train for this thing...just a couple more weeks and then it'll be taper time. Scary.

Trying to get back in the groove

2010-06-28T07:11:00.002-07:00

Well, needless to say, the Bighorn 50 mile was pretty rough. Ultimately though, it was a training run and although I didn't get 50 miles in as planned, I did cover 34, which is a sizeable chunk. Still, I wanted to put Bighorn behind me and get right back in to training this week. Unfortunately, this damn cold I've been fighting since right after Deadwood just would not let up...in fact, after Bighorn it got even worse. I finally decided that I likely had a sinus infection (after a few days of blowing a seemingly never ending supply of bright yellow snot out of my nose) and went to the doctor on Thursday and got some antibiotics. Too little too late, though, and I ended up basically writing this week off as a recovery week and hoping things will improve in the coming week.

Monday - Scheduled rest day. Feeling a little sore from Bighorn, especially my quads, but not too bad.

Tuesday - 9 miles. First post-Bighorn run and it went surprisingly well. Really well, in fact. Maybe there is hope for a quick recovery?

Wednesday - 8.2 miles. Maybe not. Much more of a struggle than the day before. Just felt sluggish overall. I know this feeling...it's the same way I felt for a good month after the Lean Horse 50 last year.

Thursday - 7 miles. Well, since I felt slow and sluggish on Wednesday, I may as well just run up a mountain in the afternoon when it's 80 degrees with 50% humidity. With a raging sinus infection. Brilliant! I had absolutely no energy on the climbs, but I made it to the summit of Lookout with a generous helping of power hiking thrown in. Good heat training, I guess.

Friday - 6 miles. Just a slow recovery jog around town. Felt alright.

Saturday - 12.3 miles. Met up with my friend Ryan to run the Centennial Trail from Dalton Lake to Elk Cr. The idea was to park a car at each end and then decide once we got to Elk Cr. if we wanted to run back for 24+ miles or call it a day. This section of trail is awesome. Nice single track, awesome views, nice mix of uphills and downhills and a total of 5 creek crossings. Unfortunately, my energy level was not awesome at all. My legs felt alright, but I had absolutely no energy on the uphills and we did a lot of power hiking. It didn't help that the humidity was atrocious, had to be over 90% (we ran up into fog at one point). The downhills felt much better, but I just was not in to it mentally and decided I was done when we got to Elk Cr. Felt kinda bad, because I'm sure Ryan would've pushed on and done the full 24. It was obvious by then that I would just have to write this week off as recovery and hope things improve next week if I take it relatively easy (i.e., no long run this weekend).

Sunday - 10.2 miles. Shannon rocked out an awesome 21 miler in the morning, so I didn't start my run until about 3:00 PM. By then it was pretty warm (low 80s) but there was a decent breeze, so at least there was some cooling effect. Felt reasonably decent, considering and got in some more heat training if nothing else.

Total - 52.7 miles

Actually, 52 miles is right on what my "easy" weeks are under my Lean Horse plan, so even though I didn't get a long run in, I did get some okay mileage. I was obviously hoping for more, but it is what it is. As of this week, I am officially registered for the Lean Horse 100, so now I'm feeling the extreme need to get in some good high mileage weekends, and this week certainly did not include that. Hopefully, by taking it relatively easy I'll be able to get back into ultra training mode this weekend. Ryan and I are planning another long run on the Centennial this weekend (probably close to 30) and I fully intend on finishing the damn thing this time.

Bighorn DNF: A Day of Firsts

2010-06-21T08:11:00.000-07:00

Apparently, there really is a first time for everything. Up until yesterday, I had never DNFed a race before. Thirteen marathons, two 50Ks, one 50 miler and numerous shorter races and I’d finished them all and, honestly, a DNF was the furthest thing from my mind when the Bighorn 50 started yesterday morning. I was sure I was going to finish, it was just a matter of how long it would take. I figured that no matter how bad my legs started to feel, I would be able to push through like I had done in other races before. As it turns out, it wasn’t my legs that failed me. It was my stomach, which was something I didn’t expect. Up until yesterday I had also never puked while running, whether in training or in a race. That changed too and directly led to the breaking of my non-DNF streak. In a nutshell, I finished 34 miles of the Bighorn 50 yesterday. It took me 9:15 to cover that distance. To put that in perspective, I ran the Lean Horse 50 mile last year in 9:32. I also ran the Bighorn 50K last year, just two miles shorter than the distance I covered yesterday, in 5:46. It was a rough day, to say the least. For the gory details, read on…

I made the trip to Sheridan, WY, which is about 20 miles from the finish line in Dayton and serves as the race headquarters, with two friends, Jerry and Ryan, who were both running the 30K. Actually, Ryan was not only running the 30K, but is the defending champion and went back this year hoping to set a new course record (he ended up defending his title, but coming up 2 minutes short of the record). Ryan is also an occasional training partner for the Lean Horse 100, which will the first attempt at 100 miles for both of us. Needless to say, when we run together the pace is much easier for him than it is for me, but what doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger, right?

Based on my time in the Bighorn 50K last year (5:46) and past results of other runners I recognized, I came to the conclusion that I would likely finish in a fairly broad window between 10 and 12 hours. I made myself a pace chart showing what time of day I would need to be at each aid station for a 10, 11 or 12 hour finish. Sub-10 seemed highly unlikely given that Ryan had run a 9:56 a couple of years ago and I know he is significantly faster than I am, but he contended that he made a lot of rookie mistakes that day and shuffled most of the last 10+ miles, so I left sub-10 as “perfect day” goal with the more realistic expectation of 10.5 to 11 hours barring any major setbacks. In hindsight, that was highly optimistic. Even if I hadn’t started puking, I doubt I would have finished in under 11 hours. It would have been much closer to 12; the Bighorn course is just flat out tough.

The 50 mile race starts at 6:00, but since the start line is 60 miles from Dayton and I had to ride a bus from even further away in Sheridan, I was up a the ungodly hour of 2:15 to get ready and be on the bus by 3:15. I did manage to doze most of the ride up there. The bus dropped us off at the Porcupine Ranger Station at 5:40 and I immediately got into the porta-potty line and stood in the cold (lower 40s), where I would remain until 5:57 when I finally made it to the front and took care of some business just before the race started. After the singing of the national anthem, we were off.

Porcupine to Footbridge (Start to mile 18)
This first 18 mile stretch is big net downhill, but there are a few short ups along the way. Shortly after leaving the ranger station, the course takes to the Little Horn Trail and follows it down the Little Bighorn Canyon passing through a few small aid stations before arriving at Footbridge, the first major aid station and drop bag location. Although I have been utilizing a run/walk ratio of 10 minutes to 2 minutes during my long training runs, I decided that I would run, albeit slowly, the majority, if not all, of this stretch to take advantage of the downhill, realizing that I would be doing a fair amount of power hiking on the uphill sections later in the race. This stretch of trail is absolutely beautiful, or at least the scenery I took in when I dared to take my eyes off the trail for a couple of seconds were. But, despite the downhill, the running was far from easy. It struck me early on that even the “easy” sections of Bighorn are hard. Early on there was significant snow on the trail and in fact part of the course was rerouted to avoid the worst of it. At one point, I misstepped and ended up knee deep in a snow bank. Where there wasn’t snow, there was mud and lots of it. When there wasn’t snow or mud, more often than not there were rocks. And to add to the challenge, there was a crossing of a raging, snow-melt bloated creek. It wasn’t very wide, but the water reached up to my thighs, and I’m 6’3”. And it was moving fast….one wrong step and you could easily be knocked down by the current.

Despite all that, I was feeling pretty good when I arrived at Footbridge, right on about 11 hour pace. I had been drinking water and fueling with Perpetuem, which I’ve been doing for all my long runs, and refilled both at the aid station. I also changed out of my soaked, mud-caked shoes and socks and put on a dry set I had in my drop bag. I was probably in the aid station for less than five minutes, although I didn’t really keep track.

Footbridge to Dry Fork (Mile 18 to 34)
The first major uphill of the course comes right after Footbridge and it’s a doozy. Appropriately dubbed “The Wall”, the trail scales a seemingly never ending hillside that takes you out of the canyon and back up onto the plateau above (all told, it’s approximately 2000 feet of elevation gain in about 2 miles). At the top of The Wall is the Bear Camp aid station, which is accessible only by horseback (or by running, obviously). After Bear Camp, the trail levels out some for 7 miles into Cow Camp. One of the more cruel sections is between the Cow Camp and Dry Fork aid stations; you can see the tent and vehicles at Dry Fork on top of the ridge from what seems like 100 miles away and there’s a seemingly never ending slope between you and them. Dry Fork is another big aid station and the 2nd (and last) drop bag location.

After leaving Footbridge, I felt awesome. Having dry socks and shoes felt great and I cruised a short section of trail before The Wall started and then began power hiking up. This feeling wouldn’t last long though. Appropriately, I hit the wall on The Wall. And I hit it hard. As I hiked, I started to feel my stomach start to turn. My hiking pace slowed more and more, but the feeling kept growing. Eventually, I pulled off to the side of the trail, found a secluded spot in the bushes and took care of #2, hoping that would relieve things. It didn’t. I resumed hiking and the feeling of nausea just kept worsening. Eventually, I decided the only way to relieve it was to actually throw up, so I purposely pushed the hiking pace a little faster and in no time I was spewing what seemed like gallons and gallons of water and Perpetuem into the shrubbery. It really is truly amazing how much fluid the human stomach can hold. After that was over, my stomach did feel better, but my legs and entire body in general felt weak, kinda like how you feel when you’ve got the flu. I kept walking, extremely slowly, up the seemingly vertical never ending slope. By that time, a DNF was seeming like the likely end to my day, but the question was, where could I do it? Bear Camp was too remote and unless I was seriously injured, I had no interest in being packed out on a horse.

I did stop at Bear Camp and sat for several minutes while sipping on some chicken broth and water. Eventually, I pulled myself up and set off for Cow Camp, which was 7 miles away but at least was on a four wheel drive road accessible by ATVs. That was a long 7 miles, let me tell ya. I think it took over 2 hours to cover it, considering I was traveling at 20+ minute pace because my body still felt weak. But then, magically, just as I crested a hill and could see Cow Camp about a quarter of a mile away, I started to feel better and ran most of the remaining stretch to the aid station. When I got there, I was very unsure what to do. Thirty minutes before, I had been sure I was going to drop at Cow Camp and I told the aid station captain I was thinking about it. He encouraged me to sit down and drink for awhile, which I did. By this time, it was past 1:30 and the cut-off at the next aid station was 4:00. If I moved as slowly along the 6 miles between Cow Camp and Dry Fork as I had along the stretch between Bear Camp and Cow Camp, it was likely that I would miss the cutoff. But, I decided I didn’t want to be hauled out on an ATV either, so I refilled my hydration pack and handheld and told the aid station captain I was going to see how things went and reevaluate at Dry Fork.

After I left Cow Camp, I caught a second wind and I caught it hard, like a surfer catching the ultimate wave. Immediately after leaving the aid station, I realized that I felt really good….better than I had felt since before Footbridge. So, I started running the downhills and power hiking the uphills and was “flying” along at 12:00 pace or better (there were a lot of uphills to be hiked). I started passing several people who had passed me during my rough stretch and one guy even commented as a I flew by that I had made a miraculous recovery. I was feeling great for a couple of miles and suddenly the world seemed a little sunnier again. I started doing the math in my head and thought that if I could continue like this I would easily beat the cut-off at Dry Fork and be able to finish the race in the 13 hour range. Not what I expected, but pretty damn good considering the dire circumstances I had been in not 20 minutes before. And then, just as quickly as it had come, my second wind was gone. I was reduced to walking again, and walking slowly at that as I felt the contents of my stomach start to revolt. Once again, everyone who I had just passed, passed me again and although they offered words of encouragement and told me I’d make it through, I knew then that my day was done as soon as I got to Dry Fork. Reality began to set in as I hiked the hill up to Dry Fork. I hadn’t taken in any “real” calories since before Footbridge, and I had thrown most of those up. All I’d been able to stomach since then was a small cup of chicken broth and a few pieces of cantaloupe, neither of which have much caloric value. I had been drinking quite a bit of water and Heed, but the way my stomach was feeling, that wasn’t going to remain with me much longer. I actually stopped 4 or 5 times in the last mile to Dry Fork and started heaving, but nothing came up. I could not imagine attempting to cover another 18 miles, including another big climb (“The Haul”), feeling like this and possibly not being able to keep down any calories or fluids to keep me going. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I arrived at the aid station.

Although it was only 3:15, 45 minutes ahead of the cut-off, my goose was cooked. A volunteer asked I needed my water filled and I said no, I was done. A nice medical lady directed me to a chair and told me to sit and relax for a bit, which I was more than happy to do. She asked if I really wanted to drop and I immediately said yes before I could talk myself out of it. I told her my sad tale and she immediately asked me for my bib and asked if I needed a ride down to Dayton. As luck would have it, there was a lady who was crewing for her husband who was in the aid station at the same time. She was just getting ready to leave and graciously offered to give my muddy, sweaty butt a ride. Sadly, I don’t even remember her name, although I do remember her dog’s name (Samson). That isn’t the first time I’ve done that. He was a cool dog. And he had a cool owner too.

So that’s my tale. I have no idea what caused my sickness. I will say though, that even this morning, the day after the race, while I was eating breakfast I started to feel a little off again. I’ve been battling a cold for almost two weeks now. Maybe the bug caught up to me when I stressed my body at Bighorn? Maybe the altitude (we started at almost 9000 feet) played a part? It wasn’t heat related, because it was only in the 60s. I didn’t commit one of the cardinal sins of running and try something new on race day; everything I consumed was stuff that I’ve used regularly in training. So I really have no solid answers. The only thing to do is move on. At least I got a 9+ hour long, 34 mile training run out of the deal.

From here, I’m fairly certain I’m still going to attempt the Lean Horse 100 in August. In fact, one of the friends I traveled with this weekend, Jerry, is the director of Lean Horse and as we were riding home he asked if I wanted him to sign me up. As I was puking in the bushes earlier in the day, I was 100% certain that the answer to that question was “no”, but of course that’s probably not the best time to be making decisions on such matters. So I told Jerry yes and today I’m even more certain of that. What doesn’t kill ya only makes ya stronger, right? Not to mention that Lean Horse is a MUCH easier course than Bighorn.

I’d be lying I guess if I said I wasn’t disappointed in yesterday’s result, but I am glad I pushed on as long as I did. If I had dropped earlier, I think I would’ve doubted the decision. But by the time I reached Dry Fork I KNEW that I was done; there was no longer any doubt in my mind. The only thing left to do is move on, go tackle Lean Horse and then come back next year for some revenge on Bighorn.

Bighorn Preview

2010-06-16T12:44:00.002-07:00

Here's a combination map/elevation profile for what I've got ahead of me on Saturday:

As you can see, we start a ways up, well over 8,000 ft., but then run downhill for the first 17 miles, with what looks like a pretty wicked downhill from mile 8 to 17. Then, it's 17 miles of uphill to Dry Fork, a little more uphill after that and then down into Dayton. I ran the stretch from Cow Camp to Dayton as part of the 50K last year, so I'm at least familiar with part of the course. I know that downhill from Horse Creek Ridge down into the Tongue River Canyon is a quad tenderizer and this year I get the added bonus of doing it after having already done that first steep downhill from Spring Marsh to Footbridge. I have a feeling I won't be walking down any stairs without liberal use of the hand rails for a few days after this thing is over. Oh, and let's not forget The Wall and The Haul. I have yet to experience The Wall, but I remember standing at the base of The Haul last year and wondering where in the hell the ski lift was. The Wall looks to be twice as long and even more steep. Suffice it to say, I'll be doing some power hiking along those sections....or possibly some power crawling, depending on how the day is going.

Recovery/Taper/Neither

2010-06-14T07:13:00.002-07:00

I guess under normal circumstances, this past week would have been used to recover from the Deadwood-Mickelson Trail Marathon and taper for the upcoming Bighorn 50 mile. But there's nothing normal about ultra training and, in the spirit of using both of those races as training runs for Lean Horse, it ended up being just another week. Well, just another week with a massive head cold. In June. Which sucks. I had been developing a cough prior to Deadwood, but it really only affected me after I ran, when I would start coughing uncontrollably for a few minutes. In fact, right after finishing the marathon last Sunday, I started coughing so hard I was practically dry heaving. The next day, it went from a cough to a full on head cold, with snot-filled sinuses and massive sinus pressure. I swear I must have blown 10 pounds of snot outta my nose last week. Nice visual, huh? Fortunately, the one time during the day when I really felt pretty good was while I was running. I felt pretty miserable the rest of the week, but at least I got all my runs in. And, as it turns out, I paced Deadwood just right, because I was able to jump right back into training without skipping a beat. Definitely my fastest ever recovery from a marathon.

Monday - Rest. Just my regular Monday rest day. My legs felt a little sore, but not too bad. Certainly not on par with what I usually feel like the day after a marathon.

Tuesday - 9 miles. This would be the test. And I passed. Legs felt a little tight when I started out, but loosened up nicely and ran a really solid 9 miles. In fact, my overall pace was faster than my Deadwood pace.

Wednesday - 10 miles. Another solid run.

Thursday - 4.7 miles total, including the 3.7 mile Dino Hill Trail Race. Dino Hill is the 3rd race in the Black Hills Trail Series and is different in that it's held on a weekday evening rather than a weekend morning. The reason for that is the Summer Nights Festival, which is held every Thursday in Rapid City throughout the summer. So, the idea is to run the race on Dino Hill and then head down to Summer Nights for a free beer. Early in the day, I was wondering if the race would even go down since thunderstorms started popping early in the afternoon and running on top of a hill is pretty much the last place I want to be when lightning is in the area. But, the storms tapered off before the race started, so it was just nice and humid. I felt alright during most of the race, although the course was pretty difficult....probably the most difficult trail race so far with almost constant ups and downs, which makes it hard to get into a good rhythm. My legs did feel kind of heavy and I couldn't push as hard as I know I can, but I still ended up with my best placing so far, 8th overall and 4th in my age group. Even though I didn't feel that bad during the race, as soon as it was over I felt horrible. My legs felt like jello and my gut felt like there was an alien inside trying to gnaw its way out. Not pleasant.

Friday - 8 miles. Still felt kinda crappy, both with sinus pressure and the angry stomach. I seriously considered not running at all, but forced myself to at least give it a try and, amazingly, I actually felt much better while running and finished the 8 miles with no problems.

Saturday - 14.1 miles. It's been awhile since I put together back to back longish runs, so I figured I better get back into it. My legs didn't feel all that great to start out, but the further I ran, the better they felt and the last few miles were actually the best.

Sunday - 26.2 miles. Another week, another marathon. Not officially this time, though. I had planned on 25 miles, but if you're gonna go 25, what's another 1.2? I paced this one like I would an ultra run, 10 minutes running with 2 minutes walking and felt pretty fine the entire way. This makes at least a marathon distance long run in 4 of the last 5 weeks (40, 26.2, 20, 26.2 and 26.2) and, with Bighorn coming up this next weekend, I'll practically get two marathons for the price of one.

Total - 72 miles

So, it turned out to be neither a recovery week or a taper week, which is just fine with me. I'll probably take it a little easier this week to get rested up for my 52 mile jaunt through the Bighorns on Saturday, but I'm trying as much as possible to treat Bighorn as a training run, just as I did Deadwood. A really, really long training run.

Deadwood-Mickelson Race Report

2010-06-07T08:56:00.001-07:00

The Deadwood-Mickelson Trail Marathon is the closest thing I have to a hometown marathon. I live about 25 miles north of Deadwood, so this is the one and only marathon where I can sleep in my own bed the night before and be home in time for lunch afterward. That alone would probably motivate me to run this race. The fact that it’s a really well organized event on an absolutely spectacular course is just frosting on the cake.

Unfortunately, I missed out on DMTM the first two years I lived here because I had to go back to Montana that same weekend, first to move the rest of my family out here and then for a sister-in-law’s graduation. So, although this is my fifth June in South Dakota, it was only my third year running one of the DMTM events. Two years ago, I ran the full marathon as a training run before my BQ effort in Missoula five weeks later. That training run ended up being a 3:36:55. Last year, I ran the half marathon instead in the hopes of breaking my extremely stale, nearly two-year old PR and going sub-1:30 in the process. That mission was accomplished as I ran a 1:28:17. This year it was back to the full, which would again serve as a training run but this time for the Bighorn 50 coming up in two weeks and, ultimately, for the Lean Horse 100 at the end of August.

My short history of using the full for training runs and the half for a PR effort makes total sense if you’re familiar with the DMTM course. Almost the entire route, save for a little over a mile at the start of the marathon, is on the Mickelson Trail, which is a rails-to-trails project spanning the Black Hills for 109 miles from north to south. This is really a “trail marathon” in name only. The Mickelson is really more of a glorified dirt road with very gentle, but long, grades. There are no single-track, rocks, roots, stream crossings, or near vertical slopes to speak of. It’s a great running venue, but lends itself to faster times than a typical trail marathon might. Having said that, though, the full marathon course isn’t necessarily a fast one. From mile one through about 13.5, it’s an almost constant, albeit gradual, uphill. At times, you can barely even tell you’re going up and at others it’s more noticeable. It’s not enough to grind you into the ground, but it does slow you down some. After topping out, the route heads downhill for the majority of the second half, save for a mile stretch of very gradual uphill from about 19-20. It’s definitely a course begging to be negative split as long as you don’t go too crazy in the first half. The half marathon course, on the other hand, is lightning fast. It starts at the halfway point of the marathon, so after a brief, gentle uphill you drop down for most of the rest of the way.

This was my lucky 13^th marathon overall and would be my first since Missoula in July of last year, so I was kind of itching to lace em up and go. Consequently, I was worried about letting the excitement of the moment get the best of me and pushing too hard. Based on my experience at DMTM two years ago, I figured a finish time in the 3:30-3:45 range would be reasonable and would likely allow me to continue on with my ultra training just as I would after any other long run. In the spirit of ultra training, I decided to try and make sure I wouldn’t run too fast at DMTM by logging a solid 10 miler the day before. I then drove down to Deadwood and worked at the marathon expo handing out bibs for 5 hours before going to run the last 2K of the Kids Marathon with my son and then heading back home for my daughter’s 5^th birthday party. Exactly the kind of day you would want to avoid at all costs if you were running a goal marathon the next day, but I tried my hardest to think of DMTM as a long run and not a race.

My wife, who ran the half marathon, and I were up bright and early to drive to Deadwood and hop on the buses to our respective start lines. I felt pretty relaxed and my legs felt surprisingly good considering the long day they’d endured on Saturday. We arrived at the start line in Rochford (population 5, give or take) with plenty of time to spare and thankfully, unlike the last two years, it wasn’t totally freezing ass cold outside, so it was actually kind of pleasant hanging out and talking with a few other people I knew who were running the marathon. Just before 8:00 we were herded onto the road and in short time were off for Deadwood.

Since I’m such a totally awesome and thoughtful husband, I gave my Garmin to my wife for the day since she had a more tangible goal in mind. Ironically, the first marathon I ever ran with the Garmin was DMTM two years ago and this would be the first time I had run any race without it since then. To be honest, I felt a little naked and vulnerable not knowing what my pace was at any given time. I mean, I did have my Timex Ironman watch on so I could see where I was at each mile marker, but it didn’t help that the mile markers were almost certainly off in a few places. I’ve been running long enough to know the difference between 7:29 and 9:05 pace, and I can guarantee that I was alternating between the two on consecutive miles. So, take these splits with a grain of salt.

1 – 7:53 Don’t know if this was off or not, but much faster than I want to be going.

2 – 7:29 Almost certainly too short.

3 – 9:05 Yup, it was. Ran briefly with a guy I know, Phil, who was running his first marathon and hoping to

break 4 hours. He ended up with a 3:55. Nice job, Phil!

4 – 8:54 Stopped here to take a leak.

5 – 8:32

6 –9:27 Uh….what? Had to be long, which means the last one must’ve been short.

7 – 8:49 More reasonable. Started running and talking with two other guys. One of them is also

running his first marathon, hoping for sub-4.

8 – 8:48

9 – 8:37

10 – 8:38 Left the two guys behind. The first timer ended up with a 3:49.

11 – 8:10 Seems a little too fast for an uphill mile.

12 – 8:20

13 – 8:31

14 – 8:32

15 – 8:16 On the downhill now and actually expected a faster split.

16 – 8:15

17 – 8:28 Went through a little rough patch for the next few miles.

18 – 8:26

19 – 8:27

20 – 8:39 This mile was mostly uphill again.

21 – 8:08 The uphill is followed by a fairly steep, but short downhill.

22 – 7:51 A more gradual downhill now and I’m starting to feel pretty good.

23 – 8:35 Inexplicably slow.

24 – 7:51 Feeling REALLY good now. Guess I might as well push a little.

25 – 7:25 Effortless. And I’m passing a lot of people.

26 – 7:17 Starting to feel some strain, but my legs feel pretty good, I’m passing people and I’m almost

done.

26.2 – 1:23 (6:55 pace)

Chip time – 3:38:58

1^st half split – 1:52:17

2^nd half split – 1:46:41

38^th out of 326 overall

8^th out of 34 in my AG

So, basically, just how I planned it. I really didn’t think I’d have that much energy at the end after all the time I spent on my feet the day before, but it was there so I decided to take advantage of it. It’s not every day you can run the last three miles of a marathon the fastest and still feel good at the finish. A look through the results shows that I passed 20 marathoners in the 2^nd half and got passed once, by a guy who blew by me in the final mile, so he must’ve been doing sub-7 pace. And, more importantly, as I sit here the next morning my legs don’t feel any worse off than they typically do after a long run. Mission accomplished. Next up, the Bighorn 50 in 12 short days…

Racing fool

2010-06-03T15:07:00.002-07:00

It just dawned on me that by the time the Bighorn 50 is done in a couple of weeks, I will have run 5 races in a 4 week span:

May 23 - Alkali Cr.
May 30 - Fat Tire
June 6 - Deadwood-Mickelson
June 10 - Dino Hill
June 19 - Bighorn

A grand total of about 93.2 miles of racing. This isn't necessarily problematic, just a higher volume of racing than I think I've ever done before. Of course, it's not like I'm going for a PR at Deadwood and a "fast" time at Bighorn. Both of those are intended to be long training runs (in the case of Bighorn, really long). Now I'm just wondering what the hell I'm going to do between Bighorn and the Missoula Marathon on July 11th....I'm going to feel lost!

Ups and downs

2010-06-01T11:39:00.002-07:00

I guess that title pretty well describes most trail runs. You run up. You run down. Repeat. As I've said before on here, it also describes my running in general. I typically have a couple of weeks where I feel great followed by a couple where I feel not so great. Sometimes, it's a day to day thing too. It's amazing how great you can feel one day and how horrible you can feel the next. Such are the mysteries of running, I guess. In any case, that's kind of how this past week was. More on that later.

It occurred to me early in the week that if I ran a 26.2 mile (or longer) long run this weekend it would make for 4 weeks in a row that I ran at least a marathon (40 miles two weeks ago, 26.2 last week, another 26.2 this week and then Deadwood-Mickelson next weekend). I heavily considered doing it just for shits and giggles, but the running gods conspired against me. More on that later too.

Monday - No running, played basketball and managed not to re-tweak my touchy left calf. Small victories.

Tuesday - 9 miles. Felt absolutely effortless, the awesome cruise control feeling you get that is the reason why I run (it's my definition of the elusive "runner's high"). I felt like I should probably pull back and slow down, but I just couldn't.

Wednesday - 10.2 miles. Not nearly as effortless. No runner's high today. It didn't feel bad, mind you, but I actually had to try (God forbid).

Thursday - 6 miles. HOT. What the hell? Is it summer all of a sudden? It actually wasn't THAT hot, maybe mid-70s, but the humidity was much higher than is typical around here and the combination of the two wasn't cool (no pun intended). I had planned on 8 but settled on just 6 soon after I started but then I actually ended up running into a slight breeze on the way back and probably could've done 8 fairly easily, but whatever.

Friday - 20 miles. Another hot and sticky day, so I headed up into the Hills in the hopes of cooler, dryer conditions and, maybe, a trail marathon. Turns out, it was a little cooler and noticeably less humid in the high country, but the 26.2 miler was not in the cards. I ran three separate trail loops - the Old Baldy, Rimrock and Little Spearfish trails - and right from the beginning, my legs felt horrible. Not painful, just like they were totally sapped of energy. I was able to chug along, running the flats and downhills and hiking the uphills (of which there were many) and eventually arrived back at my car after 20 miles and called it good. Another 6.2 miles did not sound appealing, or seem really necessary, at that point.

Saturday - 9.1 miles. Didn't feet as good as Tuesday, but much better than Friday, so I guess that's something. I actually only planned on running 8 but misjudged my loop and ended up with a bonus mile. Oh well.

Sunday - 5.5 miles total, including the 3.4 mile Fat Tire Trail Challenge. Fat Tire is the 2nd race in the Black Hills Trail Series and is held in conjunction with the Fat Tire Festival of mountain biking in Rapid City. The trail race is held on M Hill in Rapid City, which is spiderwebbed with a series of great running/biking trails. I had no idea how my legs would feel, but it turns out they felt pretty good....similar to last week at Alkali Cr, which was also just a couple of days after a long run. The race itself went uphill for the first 2+ miles before dropping down the other side of the hill. And when I say "dropping" I mean it. The downhill route took us down Dirk's Draw, which is normally closed to runners/hikers and features steep pitches and several jumps that were built into the trail for the crazy ass downhill mountain bikers (you couldn't pay me to ride a bike down that thing). It was a fine line between hammering the downhill and skidding off trail on one of the many tight switchbacks. Heading up the hill, I was outside the top 10 for much of the way but towards the top started picking off a few runners. Just before cresting the ridge, I got passed by one guy who pulled away on the downhill. About halfway down the downhill another guy passed me and I didn't have the downhill skills to keep him in range. I thought I was fairly secure in my position at that point, but as we drew nearer to the bottom, and the finish, I noticed that two other guys were closing in. The last 0.4 or so was as much of a dead sprint as I could manage without wiping out. I could hear people cheering below as others were finishing, but I couldn't see the finish yet and I knew the two behind me were getting closer and closer. Finally, I came around a switchback and saw one final straight stretch to the finish and managed to outsprint my two pursuers and finish 2 seconds ahead of them. If the race would've been much longer, I would've been screwed. Ended up 9th overall and 5th in my division.

Total - 59.8 miles

So, coming up this weekend is the Deadwood-Mickelson Trail Marathon, my first marathon since Missoula last July. I've run the full once before, two years ago, and the half last year. My strategy this year will be similar to the other time I ran the full: take it easy and don't kill myself. Last time, the full was a training run before another, ultimately successful, BQ attempt in Missoula. This time, it's a training run for the Bighorn 50 mile, which is in turn a training run for the Lean Horse 100. Since Bighorn is just 13 days after Deadwood, I don't planning on setting any land speed records this weekend. Two years ago I ran a 3:36:55 at Deadwood. That time, or even slower, would work just fine for me this year. If I'm unable to jump right back into training come next Tuesday (after my usual rest day on Monday), then I've effed up. Stay tuned...

Off to the races

2010-05-24T14:07:00.002-07:00

Almost as important as completing a 40 mile run last week was finding out how my body would respond this week. I knew I'd probably be a little sore and stiff early in the week, and I was, but I was hoping to bounce back and get a good long run in later in the week AND have some energy left for a strong trail race to close the week out. That seems like asking for a lot, but for the most part it actually worked out.

Monday - Rest. I did play basketball, which may or may not have been a good idea. A few minutes into it, I stopped suddenly to grab a loose ball and felt my left calf pop and big knot form. This happens quite often, almost always in my left calf. It didn't stop me from playing, but it was sore and did slow me down some.

Tuesday - 9 miles. I wasn't sure how this was going to go with the sore left calf from basketball and a lingering soreness/tightness in my right knee from the 40 miler on Sunday. But, it actually went fairly well considering. The soreness was there as background noise, but didn't really affect me. This was also my first run in my brand new Nike LunarFly shoes. They are nice. Real nice. Although, the only color left in my size was black with a red midsole, which makes them look like Air Jordans, but they feel good, so I guess I can live with that.

Wednesday - 6.1 miles in the morning and 4 in the afternoon. I ran my first double in a long time for a couple of reasons. First, I ended up having to drop my son off at school in the morning and my wife was also running in the morning, so I was pinched for time. Second, when I did start my morning run, I was noticeably more sore than I had been the day before, so I decided to take it easy and split the run up.

Thursday - 8.1 miles. Decided to get back in the habit of running on trails on Thursdays, so headed up to the Tinton trail just outside of Spearfish. Got about 1/4 mile up the trail and ran into some loggers cutting timber along the trail and was forced to turn back. Got back in the car, drove back into town and headed to the Lookout Mtn. trails instead and ended up running all the way up to the summit for the first time (I've hiked up there a couple of times, but never run to the top).

Friday - 26.2 miles. Yup, I ran a marathon. Not an official one, just my own personal marathon for the hell of it. I had planned on running 25 miles, so what's another 1.2? I headed back to Deadwood to run on the Mickelson trail, hoping that the snow was gone by now (a few weeks ago I got turned back by knee deep snow across the trail). Although the trail was wet from rain the night before, it was in good shape and the snow was gone. I started my run at the Deadwood trailhead, which is also the finish line for the Deadwood-Mickelson Trail Marathon that is coming up in a couple of weeks, and ran up to the half marathon start line and then back down. I say "up" to the start line because it is up, although fairly gradual, pretty much the entire way save for a mile or so stretch of downhill about halfway. Conversely, that means it was almost all downhill on the way back to Deadwood and, as a result, I ended up posting a 9 minute negative split even though I most definitely was not pushing hard....I maintained my run/walk ratio of 10 minutes to 2 minutes the entire way. The 9 minutes difference was purely due to gravity lending a hand.

Saturday - 6 miles. Felt pretty tired and sluggish most of the day and did not really feel like running at all, but I figured I needed to get the blood flowing after the marathon the day before, so I forced myself out the door and it turned out being a fairly good run, which oddly enough is often the case in that situation.

Sunday - 9.3 miles total including the 8 mile Alkali Creek trail race. For the 2nd year in a row, the Black Hills Trail Series kicked off on my birthday, although with a different race than last year. The Alkali Creek race is a new one to the series, but I was fairly familiar with the course after running it twice with the race director, Ryan, who is also my occasional Lean Horse training partner. It's an out and back course, 4 miles up the hill (about 1000 ft. elevation gain) and then back down. Based on those two runs, and the fact that I had just run 26.2 miles two days before, I was expecting to finish somewhere in the 1:15 range. As it turns out, my legs actually felt really good when I woke up and the lingering soreness in my calf and knee were magically gone. A birthday present from the running gods?? After a short warmup jog with another local runner, Luke, we lined up for the start and were off up the hill. I was immediately in 8th or 9th place as a group of faster guys took off ahead. Rains the night before had muddied the trail up some, especially in the lower section that didn't have any tree cover, but it wasn't horrible and the creek crossing about 1/2 mile into it allowed us to rinse the mud off. The first mile was a gentler uphill and I covered it at a decent trail pace for me. Miles 2-4 are where the uphill grind really begins as the trail switchbacks up the ridge. Steep, very slow pitches were alternated with more gradual and even flattish sections where I could open up some. My mission was to maintain a sensible pace that allowed me to run the entire way and push it at least a little on the less steep sections. During that uphill stretch I got passed a few times, but also passed a couple of other guys. By the time I reached the turnaround on the ridgeline, I was right behind a local runner, Joe, and had another guy breathing down my neck. As we headed downhill, both Joe and I opened it up and pushed the pace, leaving the other guy behind. I pushed the downhill as much as I dared but no matter what I did, it seemed like Joe was able to maintain the gap between us. I was fairly confident that if I could keep that gap small, I might be able to catch him when the trail flattened out some near the finish, but after a mile and a half or so of pounding the downhill, my legs threw in the white flag and I was forced to back off and watch Joe pull away. When we did hit that flatter section I was able to push the pace again and I think I closed the gap a little on him, but it was too little too late at that point. Final result was 11th overall and 5th in my division with a 1:07:25, a solid 7+ minutes faster than I thought I would run. So basically, I ran faster than I thought I would, but also finished lower in the standings than I expected. You take the good with the bad, I guess. Looks like I'll have my work cut out for me defending my division title from last year, especially with the bulk of my training focusing on endurance more so than speed (excuses, excuses...;) ).

Total - 68.7 miles

40 miles of fun

2010-05-17T06:34:00.003-07:00

I'm pretty sure I did something this week that I've never done while training. Well, I know for sure I did one thing I've never done during training, which is to run 40 miles in a single run. But I also think this is the first time I've had a single long run exceed my mileage for the rest of the week (40 miles on Sunday vs. 38.8 for the six days prior). It probably happened when I ran the Lean Horse 50 last year, but that wasn't a training run, it was a goal race. Regardless, since I already killed the suspense and mentioned the 40 miler, here's how the rest of the week shook out.

Monday - Rest. Played basketball at lunchtime.

Tuesday - 9 miles. Nothing spectacular, but I did feel pretty good.

Wednesday - 8.6 miles with 8 hill intervals. It was snowing pretty hard, but it was warm enough that it wasn't sticking to the streets. The hill I ran was about 2/10 of a mile long and basically I sprinted up it and then jogged back down for recovery and repeated.

Thursday - 10.1 miles. It was overcast when I started and then about 4 miles in I felt a few rain drops and then it started sleeting.....hard. Sleet hurts. Especially in the eyes.

Friday - 6.1 miles. Recovery.

Saturday - 5 miles. More recovery. Didn't have time for my long run on Saturday (like I would prefer) because of soccer/rugby/grocery shopping. I know the "didn't have time" excuse is a classic when it comes to running, but when your planned run is going to last about 6.5 hours, then it becomes a valid excuse.

Sunday - 40 miles. My goal when I started training for the Lean Horse 100 was to get in at least three runs of 40 miles or more. This was the first of those and, with the Bighorn 50 just a month away, would also serve as my longest long run before that race. As with my other long runs, I implemented a run/walk ratio of 10 minutes to 2 minutes right from the start. I had my hydration pack with 70 oz. of water, a handheld bottle with 22 oz. of Perpetuem, a gel flask filled with Hammer Gel and some S-caps to prevent cramping. I started off with two big loops of just over 10 miles each and ended up back at home after 21 miles so I could refill the Perpetuem bottle and gel flask and top off my water pack. Then I headed out for an 18 mile loop that would bring me within spitting distance of 40 when I got back to town. As might be expected, things started getting a little rough during that last big loop. At around 32 miles, my stomach started expressing some dissatisfaction with the way things were going. Oddly enough, the slight nausea was only noticeable when I was walking. Once I started running again, my stomach felt fine, but of course by that point my legs were also bitching, especially when I was running so it was pretty much damned if I do, damned if I don't. Regardless, I made it back to town, ran an extra mile to get to 40 and was done, 6:26:21 (9:40 pace) after I started. If I had run 10 more miles at that pace, I would've broken my 50 mile PR by 90 minutes.

Two big positives from this run were that my pace was pretty steady throughout. Yeah, it drifted slightly toward the end, but my running pace didn't drift too much....early on I was running at about 9:00 pace and toward the end it was more like 9:10. I think my walking pace is actually where I started to slow down some as I was getting lazy toward the end and not pushing the walking pace as hard as I did early on. The other positive is that I didn't really feel that bad afterward. In fact, after sitting for awhile and watching a couple of periods of the Sharks-Blackhawks game, I got up and mowed the lawn and today my legs don't really feel any worse than they do after a 20 miler.

Total - 78.8 miles

All in all, a really good week. My legs felt great during the weekday runs and I was able to hammer out a solid long run. This is a week where I feel like I made some progress, which is good because a couple of weeks ago that wasn't the case.

Coming up this week is my first big race of the year, the Alkali Creek Trail Run on Sunday (which also happens to be my birthday). Alkali Cr. is the first race in the 2010 Black Hills Trail Series. I'm not really sure what to expect mostly because it's so hard to predict who will show up competition-wise. I could be anywhere from top 3 to barely top 10. One advantage is that I know the course since I've run it twice in the last month and a half. But, I'm still not sure I've got my trail legs going as well as they could be, especially since the winter-like weather kept me off the trails all of last week, so the entirely uphill first half might take its toll. I guess there's only one way to find out...

Better late than never

2010-05-12T06:19:00.002-07:00

Holy crap. I'm a little behind here, I guess. Since I totally spaced posting last week, I guess you get a two for one deal this week. The problem with that is that I'll actually have to try and remember what in the hell went on two weeks ago. I've got the mileage written down, but any details about specific runs might be sketchy at best, so I guess I'll just have to make something up. Okay, here goes...

Monday (Apr 26) - Rest. Played some basketball.

Tuesday (Apr 27) - 7.2 miles. Met up with Ryan Hall for a short recovery run. He told me all the super secrets of elite marathoners. Or maybe I just ran around Belle alone in the dark. Can't really remember....

Wednesday (Apr 28) - 10 miles. This one I do remember because it blew chunks. I ran a progression run and while I was able to ratchet the speed up at least 15 seconds every mile, it felt like crap and I didn't go as fast as I normally do for such a run, but the effort felt much harder.

Thursday (Apr 29) - 8.5 miles. If I remember correctly, I headed up Lookout Mtn. and it went fairly well. Much better than the progression run the day before.

Friday (Apr 30) - 6.3 miles. Another run with Ryan Hall. Or by myself. You decide.

Saturday (May 1) - 20 miles. Another one I remember, not so much because I felt like crap (I didn't) but because the weather was crap. Shannon ran a 5K in the morning in Spearfish and I started running immediately afterward while she and the kids went to Walmart and then McDonald's. I ran a huge loop around Spearfish and Lookout Mtn. and for the first 10 miles or so managed to keep the wind at my back or my side. But, the crux of a loop is that eventually you have to go back the direction you came from and when I did the wind almost stopped me in my tracks. I finally made it into Spearfish Canyon, which is sheltered from the wind and finished up my run there.

Sunday (May 2) - 7.7 miles. Met up with my friends Jerry and Ryan and went for a run in the Canyon (the wind was howling yet again). Afterward, we talked some running business. I can't divulge that business just yet, but an announcement is coming in the near future and I'll be writing more about it then. You're on the edge of your seats now, aren't ya?

Total - 59.7 miles

The next week (which is now last week....try and keep up here) was a cutback week, hence the lower mileage (which actually ended up not much lower than the week before, which was supposed to be a moderate week, but whatever...this ain't rocket science).

Monday (May 3) - Rest. Basketball. The standard Monday routine.

Tuesday (May 4) - 8.15 miles with 6x800m intervals. Yet again, the wind was howling but I decided to throw caution to the wind (bad pun, haha!) and run on the outdoor track. It kind sucked running hard into the wind, but yet the intervals went well overall. This was also a day that will go down in history for local hockey fans as the Rapid City Rush defeated the Allen Americans 4-3 in double overtime to clinch the President's Cup in only their second year in the CHL. We were there and it made for a lllooonnnggg night, but well worth it.

Wednesday (May 5) - 8 miles. After the late night hockey on Tuesday, there was no way I was getting up early on Wednesday to go for a run, so I had to skip out on basketball and do it at lunchtime. And that's all I remember about it. Apparently I ran 8 miles.

Thursday (May 6) - 6.1 miles. Drawing a blank. Probably around Belle. Maybe not. But probably.

Friday (May 7) - 13.9 miles. This one I definitely remember. Jerry, Ryan and I met up again with the initial plan that Ryan and I would run approximately 24 miles of the Centennial Trail with Jerry serving as our crew. Again, I can't discuss the reason for this quite yet, you'll just have to wait until next month. However, Mother Nature intervened with wind, rain and snow. Concerned that one section of trail along our planned route is difficult to follow in good conditions, much less when it's under snow, we decided instead to run a simple out and back on a more familiar section. That out and back featured over 2,000 feet of elevation gain. Fun. Fortunately, the trail running I have been doing seems to be paying off as my quads didn't feel like ground chuck afterwards.

Saturday (May 8) - 16 miles. Since I didn't get in a true long run the day before, I decided to do back to back kinda long runs and ran from Belle to Walmart. Not as much elevation gain as the day before (only 1,000 feet), but a good, hilly run nonetheless.

Sunday (May 9) - 5 miles. Just a recovery run around Belle before the Mother's Day festivities kicked off (which included Shannon running a 5K PR in Spearfish!).

Total - 57.2 miles

So, there you have it, the last two weeks of my life in a nutshell. For my sake, I'll have to try and remember to keep this weekly...trying to remember that far back hurts my head...

Rush for the Cup

2010-04-27T11:49:00.002-07:00

Okay, so the title really has nothing to do with running, but it does describe what's been dominating my non-running life lately. The local Central Hockey League (a professional minor league roughly equivalent to AA baseball) team, the Rapid City Rush, are in the midst of a title run in only their second year of existence and we've been catching a few of the home playoff games (and watching the others online). By my memory (which is admittedly suspect) we've been to a total of 6 games this year (2 regular season and 4 playoff) and the Rush have won every single one. Caiden is convinced that if we had season tickets, the Rush would go undefeated at home. The playoff run has been an exciting one. The first playoff game we went to was just me and Caid for his birthday. That night, the Rush beat the Missouri Mavericks 7-6 in OT to finish off a first round sweep. A few nights later, the entire family went to game 1 of the Northern Conference finals against the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs. Again, the game went to OT and, again, the Rush pulled out the win 5-4. That series ended up going to 7 games and Caid and I went to game 7 and saw the Rush dominate the Bugs 7-3 to win the conference championship and advance to the President's Cup finals. A few days later, it was the entire family again at game 2 of the final series against the Allen Americans and, yet again, the Rush won in OT 5-4 after scoring the game-tying goal with only 39 seconds left in regulation. That series stands at 1-1 (Allen won the opener 4-1) and we're eagerly awaiting the outcome of the next three games down in Texas to find out if/when we'll get a chance to watch one more Rush game before the season is over. Of course, if they were to win all three in Allen to clinch the Cup, it wouldn't hurt my feelings too bad.

Okay, on to running I guess. This was a "hard" week in my training cycle and it certainly felt like it. For some reason, the end of the week was pretty rough. Much rougher than last week, which included a 30 mile long run. Such is the mystery of running.

Monday - Rest. I didn't even play basketball. We were supposed to conduct a prescribed burn at work, so I didn't bother to bring my basketball clothes but then the burn got canceled because it had rained too much the night before and we ended up getting back to town just in time to play. Oops.

Tuesday - 9 miles. Don't really remember much about this one. I think I waited and did it at lunchtime, but I can't really remember why.

Wednesday - 10.2 miles w/ 6 at tempo pace. The term "tempo pace" is relative in this situation. I generally don't like doing tempo runs at 4:30 in the morning because it almost never turns out well and this one was no exception. Under normal conditions (i.e. later in the day when my body is actually awake), I would run tempo miles at around 6:30-6:45 pace. On this morning, it was more like 7:00-7:05 pace, although I did finally dip under 7 minutes for the last couple of miles (but just barely).

Thursday - 6.2 miles. Wow. My legs were REALLY sore after that tempo run, which is odd because it's not like I haven't been totally ignoring speed and temp work. But my quads were shot, like I'd just run a downhill marathon even though the route I ran on Wednesday was fairly flat.

Friday - 25 miles. Actually felt pretty decent for most of the run. Well, except for the fact that I got soaking wet. Scattered showers turned into steady showers at approximately mile 22. Around that same time, I started feeling a significant twinge in my left calf, which for some reason is my problem calf....I never get knots or pulls in the right one. It wasn't so bad that it affected my running, but I did notice it. Regardless, I finished the 25 miles feeling pretty good overall.

Saturday - 15 miles. Oh. My. God. Hands down the most miserable training run I can remember from recent history. By mile one I was ready to call it quits and it just did not improve from there. My legs were sore and dead tired and I just was not into it mentally. The only thing that got me through was telling myself that it was good preparation for Lean Horse because I am very sure that I will feel the same way at some point (probably several points) during that race.

Sunday - 6.3 miles. We had spent the night in Rapid City after the Rush game since Shannon was running a 10K on Sunday morning in Rapid (where she rocked out a PR on a pretty damn tough course complete with a frigid head wind heading up the mile long hill at the beginning). Before the race, I headed up to the Hansen-Larsen trail system on M Hill in Rapid and got some trail running in. I spaced out at some point and was convinced that I had actually run 7.3 miles, but when I got back to the car and clicked the screen on my Garmin over to the page that shows total miles it disagreed with me and I didn't really feel the need to tack on another meaningless mile, so 6.3 it was. Felt better than Saturday's run for sure, although the pace was much slower thanks to running up and down a mountain.

Total - 71.7 miles

Exactly two miles shy of last week's total. I ain't losing any sleep over it.

Oh, and hey, while I'm rambling about totally unrelated topics, the NFL Draft was last weekend. Once again, I didn't get selected (bastards), but the Seahawks actually had what appears to be a damn fine draft, at least on paper. Of course, we won't know for a year or two, but maybe there's actually room for optimism about the coming season. For the record, I wasn't a big fan of hiring Pete Carroll as their new head coach but so far, so good I guess. We'll see if it translates to the playing field.

Spring below, snow above

2010-04-19T12:05:00.002-07:00

After a cutback last week, the plan was to ramp the mileage back up into the 70s this week. Coincidentally, the temperature also crept up near the 70s for much of the week as spring seems to have a pretty solid foothold in western South Dakota. Unfortunately, the warm temps were accompanied by 20-30 mph winds pretty much all week. Buzzkill. Regardless, I imagined to get in all of my runs with only one hiccup on Wednesday:

Monday - Rest, played basketball.

Tuesday - 9 miles

Wednesday - 10 miles w/ 4 x 1 mile tempo intervals. I had planned on doing a straight up tempo run (i.e. 2 miles warmup, 6 miles tempo, 2 miles cooldown) but after a half mile the howling wind convinced me that that wasn't such a great idea. That and an inexplicably unhappy digestive system. So, I turned back (stopping at the house on my past to take care of some business) and headed to the high school track, which is at least partly sheltered from the wind, to run tempo intervals instead. The first one felt like crap and the urge to just say to hell with it was pretty strong. The next two felt better, but after the third I was forced to run over to the nearby rec center to use the bathroom (again). I went back out and finished off the 4th interval and felt pretty wiped out after that....more wiped out than I should after a relatively easy hard workout (if that makes sense).

Thursday - 8 miles. Made my first venture of the year up the Tinton Trail. Ran into some snow in the shady spots up higher, but for the most part the trail was in great shape.

Friday - 6.5 miles. Headed up Lookout Mtn. for some more trail running.

Saturday - 30 miles. I planned this one to be a Lean Horse simulation of sorts. I drove to Deadwood so that I could run on the Mickelson Trail. Although this is a totally different section of the Mickelson than the one that Lean Horse covers, the terrain is virtually identical, so as far as my legs know it's basically the same. The plan was to start at the trail terminus in Deadwood and run 15 miles out (backwards on the Deadwood-Mickelson Trail Marathon course) and then turn around and head back down. Problem was, spring hasn't full arrived yet above 5,000 feet. I got about 6.5 miles up the trail and ran into soft, knee deep snow that continued on for as far as I could see. So, I created Plan B on the spot. Lucky for me, the spot where the snow started was also right at the point where the trail forks, creating a loop that goes back past Lead and then toward Deadwood again. As it turns out, this loop is almost exactly 15 miles. So, two loops, 30 miles and 4:49 later, I was done. It actually felt pretty good too. My legs were definitely tired the last 5 miles or so, but not "oh my God this bites I can't take this shit anymore when the hell can I stop??!!" tired (trust me, I know that feeling).

Sunday - 10.2 miles. Just an easy cruise around the countryside. My legs felt really heavy at first, but they loosened up after awhile and I actually pushed the pace down to 6:48 for that last 0.2, just for the hell of it.

Total - 73.7 miles

This coming week should be pretty similar mileage-wise. The only real difference will be the weekend, which will feature 25/15 instead of 30/10.

Oh, and today was the Boston Marathon. Hard to believe that at this time last year I was out there, my race done, probably hobbling my way back down Boylston St. to find meet up with some friends for a post-race beer (or ten). Sounds like perfect running conditions this year....Ryan Hall ran the fastest time ever by an American at Boston but still finished in 4th (one place lower than last year). Robert Cheryiout absolutely crushed the course record in 2:05:52. That is insanely fast for that course. Man, being away makes me want to go back, but I've got some other (much longer) business to take care of first.

Back on the trails

2010-04-12T06:24:00.002-07:00

We're finally reaching the point where the trails are clear enough of snow to get off the roads and do some trail running. Running roads is all fine and dandy, but as I learned the hard way on Friday, it does little to prepare you for running trails and if I'm gonna get through the Big Horn 50 in June, I'm gonna need to hit the trails more often.

This was a cutback week, as it turns out my first real one since late January. I hadn't planned on going that long without a big cutback, it just kinda happened. But, I knocked the mileage back this week in preparation for another couple of big weeks coming up.

Monday - Rest, played basketball at lunchtime.

Tuesday - 7.3 miles

Wednesday - 9 miles with 5 hill intervals. The new issue of Trail Runner magazine has a "Beginner" section. I'm not sure if I'm still considered a beginner when it comes to trail running, but there was some good advice in there including the suggestion to run hill workouts every once in awhile. This isn't anything groundshakingly new, but I've never done hill intervals and reading that article planted the seed in my head that maybe I should, so I did. I found a hill in Belle and ran up it (about 0.3 mile) hard and then jogged back down for recovery.

Thursday - 7.2 miles. I headed back up onto the Lookout Mtn. trails and this time encountered much less snow (hardly any, in fact). I made a big loop around and eventually over the top of the mountain that ended up being longer than I had planned on running (the plan was 6), but who's counting? Oh, wait, I am....oh well.

Friday - 18.66 miles. I find it highly ironic that in the last few years of training for and running marathons, I have never been able to find a training partner. There just aren't a lot of marathoners around here, much less many that run at around the same pace as me (not that I'm blazing fast, just faster than average). But then, after I decide to run a 100 miler, I find a training partner right away. I just had to quadruple the mileage, I guess. In any case, I met up with another local runner, Ryan, in Sturgis and we ran an out and back on part of the Centennial Trail. According to my Garmin (http://connect.garmin.com/activity/29481251) we gained about 2,500 feet of elevation (and lost it all too) and let me tell ya, my quads were feeling it. Later that day and the next I felt like I had just run a marathon. My legs definitely aren't in trail shape right now, something I need to remedy soon as the Black Hills Trails Series kicks off in a little over a month. As luck would have it, we covered the route of the first race in the series (Alkali Cr.) during our run, so at least I know what I'm in for.

Saturday - 8 miles. Like I said, my quads were mighty sore but once I started running everything loosened up nicely. I actually only meant to run 7 but again misjudged a loop (seems to be happening a lot lately) so I picked up a bonus mile.

Sunday - 4 miles. Just a short easy run to flush some crud out. The quads felt much better, ready for another week of abuse.

Total - 54.16 miles

The goal is to bump the mileage back up into the 70s this week with my biggest long run yet, a 30 miler, planned for either Saturday or Sunday (depending on when I can best fit it in....5 hours is a big chunk of time to account for).

How about some non-running rambling? This past Saturday was my kids' first soccer game of the spring. If you've never witnessed U-6 soccer, you haven't really lived. It's more like rugby than soccer in that there's usually a big scrum with the ball in the middle, eventually the ball pops out and then everyone gives chase. As luck would have it, I got recruited to be the assistant coach for my kids' team and, since the real coach was out of town this weekend, I also got to be the interim head coach for the first game. At this level, it's less about strategy and winning the game and more about time management and trying to get everyone on the field for roughly an equal amount of time. So, in the midst of shuffling kids in and out, I kind of lost track of the game but Caiden tells me that we won 8-6 (with him accounting for 6 of our goals). Chloe did good too....she actually went after and kicked the ball (last year she just ran around but never tried to play the ball, even when it was right in front of her). So, I can now end my head coaching career with a perfect record. It's always good to go out on top.

Also on Saturday, we drove to Rapid City for game 1 of the CHL (that's the Central Hockey League, which is a professional league roughly equivalent to AA minor league baseball) Northern Conference finals between the hometown Rush and the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs (how a team from Louisiana ended up in the Northern Conference is beyond me, but whatever). For the 2nd straight game, the Rush came back from a 3rd period deficit to tie the game and send it to OT. Just over 5 minutes into OT they scored the game winning goal to take a 1-0 lead in the series. Unfortunately, the Mudbugs came back last night and won 4-3, knotting the series at 1-1. Buzzkill.

Spring snow (sucks)

2010-04-05T07:28:00.002-07:00

In South Dakota, you're never really sure if spring is here until, oh, July. By then, it's pretty safe to assume that the last snow has fallen, at least until September or October. Inevitably, April rolls around and teases us with awesome running weather only to pull the rug out with a spring snowstorm. Last year was a good example as we got hammered with three blizzards in a 10 day span during the last week of March and first week of April. It wasn't that bad this year, but we did have a winter storm roll through Thursday night and Friday morning. By Friday afternoon, the roads were clear again and in many areas the snow had melted away, but the Hills (and, consequently, the best running trails) are still covered in a fresh layer. Of course, spring is far from over, so I would be hesitant to call this winter's last gasp, but one can dream.

Monday - Rest. Played basketball at lunchtime.

Tuesday - 9 miles. Ugh. Tuesday's have proven to be rough for me ever since I started Lean Horse training. Something about back to back long runs on the weekend combined with a rest day on Monday (and basketball too) leaves my legs dead on Tuesday.

Wednesday - 10 miles. Headed to the track and ran 4x1 mile tempo intervals. My tempo pace isn't what it once was (like when I was peaking for Boston last year), but I guess that's to be expected when I'm trying to teach my body to run a long damn ways.

Thursday - 8 miles. Inevitably there's a run from the previous week that I really don't remember. I can't recall much of anything about this, I just know that my calendar says I ran 8 miles, so I guess I probably did.

Friday - 5 miles. I definitely remember this one. The aforementioned snow struck overnight. Typical of a spring snowstorm, it was barely cold enough for the rain to switch over, so the snow was of the heavy, wet variety. When I headed out for my run, the streets were covered with an inch of slush. Within one block, my feet were soaked.

Saturday - 15 miles. After staying up late the night before at the Rapid City Rush hockey game (a 7-6 OT win!), I had to get up at the buttcrack of dawn on a Saturday morning to squeeze in a run before heading back to Rapid yet again where my wife and kids were all running the Fools 4 Mile race (well, the kids ran the 1K). After that, it was back home for my son's 6th birthday party. I knew if I didn't get this run in early in the morning, it might not get done at all, so I forced myself out of bed and headed out. I probably ran this faster than I should when I'm ultra training, but because of the time crunch I felt compelled to get it done.

Sunday - 20 miles. I felt the overly fast pace from Saturday early on in this one, but eventually my legs loosened up. I also ran this one on a fairly tough, hilly route, just for kicks. Rather than incorporating a set run/walk ratio like I have been for my 25 milers, I decided I would run the entire way up until about 14 miles where it gets really hilly and then I would walk the uphill and run the downhills, which is basically what I'll end up doing for the first hilly 16 miles of Lean Horse. Well, turns out the road I was running on totally went to hell right at 14 miles. It was pure mud for over a mile. I was able to run some shorts stretches of it, but ended up walking most of it with what felt like 20 lbs. of mud caked on my shoes. Finally, I reached a more solid stretch of road and was able to run again. When I got done I actually felt really good, definitely didn't feel like I'd just run 15/20 back to back and the soreness afterward was minimal. Maybe this ultra training is really working...

Total - 67 miles

This coming week is a planned cutback week, as is every 4th week of my training schedule. I'm hoping to hit the trails this weekend for a long run with another guy who's training for Lean Horse, but we'll have to see how cooperative Mother Nature is in that regard. Right now, the forecast looks good for later in the week, so I guess there is hope.