As the old saying goes, the third time is the charm. Not that we royally screwed up the first two Black Hills 100s, but it seems as though we're hitting our stride now that the event has reached its third year. In all honestly, when we started this thing in 2011, we didn't really have a friggin clue what we were getting into. Looking back, knowing what we know now, it's almost hard to believe we pulled the whole thing off that first year. Being an ultrarunner and being an ultra race director are two totally different beasts and, at heart, both Ryan and I are still ultrarunners first. But I think we've figured out how to flip the switch to ultra race director mode when necessary.
The biggest thing we've figured out is that we can't do this ourselves. Now, that should be painfully obvious, but during the first two years we still fell into the trap of taking too much on ourselves during the event, which led to us running around like meth addicted striped ass monkeys all weekend and totally burning ourselves out. This year, we made it a point to seek out more help and delegate responsibilities more, allowing us to sit back and manage situations more so that reacting directly to them. In particular, we minimized the amount of course roaming activities we did ourselves this year (delivering supplies to aid stations, picking up downed runners, etc.). We were able to do this thanks to the dynamic duo of Royce Wuertzer (new RD of the Lean Horse Ultra in Hot Springs in August) and Nancy Smidt (a seemingly superhuman lady who apparently does not require sleep to function at full speed). Those two put in an untold amount of miles and effort throughout the weekend and made our lives much, much easier. We both actually got to sleep for a couple of hours on Saturday night/Sunday morning, which has never happened before during the event. Hopefully, Ryan and I can repay Royce by returning the favor at Lean Horse. Not sure if we can ever adequately repay Nancy, other than to petition her for sainthood.
Another major assist goes to Kevin Forrester and Todd Battles, directors of the Tatanka 100 mountain bike race, who did pretty much all of the course marking (I put up some pin flags for about 30 minutes early Saturday morning, they did the rest). One of the major complaints about the event the first two years was the course markings along the motorized section of trail between Dalton Lake and Pilot Knob, particularly for the 100 milers who are running back through that section after dark. It's a gnarly section of trail with a bunch of side trails and the actual route, despite permanent signage, isn't always abundantly clear. Our number one course marking goal this year was to make that section as crystal clear as possible. Thanks to past 100K winner and 100M runner up John Horns hooking us up with a ton of reflective tape from 3M, we were able to put out significantly more course marking this year and, so far, I haven't heard of anyone going seriously off-course (and the few people I talked to who did go off-course took responsibility for it themselves). We seem to have found a system that works well for us, and we will use it for the foreseeable future.
Another major complaint from past years, and something we have no control over, was the weather. The severe thunderstorm in 2011 and the extreme heat in 2012 took a major toll on the finish rate and times those first two years. Going into this year, we still didn't feel like we had good feel for just how fast or hard this course really was. We assumed that, given decent weather, this was probably a sub-20 course (for the winner) and that our finish rate would be significantly above the 35% and 37% we had in '11 and '12. Well, we were right. No storms and the highs Saturday were in the mid-70s. Jeremy Bradford returned to defend his title and broke his own course record by almost two hours, finishing in an impressive 19:05. The real surprise was in the women's race, which was won by Kaci Lickteig. Now, it wasn't really a shocker that she won it, but the way she did it was pretty incredible. Running in her first ever 100 miler and coming from the flatlands of Nebraska, she absolutely obliterated the women's course record (and the old men's course record) and finished just six and a half minutes behind Jeremy in 19:12. That's seven hours under the previous women's record. Don't be shocked if you see her name at the top of ultra race results for years to come at some of the more well known events. The women's course record in the 50M also fell, with Alison Fraser setting the new mark. Oh, and our finish rate for the 100M this year was 69.5%, basically double what it was the inaugural year. We had 14 sub-24 finishers this year, compared to a total of five from the first two years combined. So, there goes our reputation. And I guess we'll have to order more sub-24 buckles much sooner than we thought.
All in all a great weekend. There are always things we know we can work on, but it feels like we're getting the big stuff dialed in. Now, to do some refining and fine tuning. And work on getting this thing qualifier status for Western States.
As for me, back to Leadville training. Obviously, I didn't do any long runs last weekend....the two days of the BH100 were the first two "rest" days I've had since the day after Quad Rock. And they weren't really restful at all...I woke up Monday morning feeling like I had run an ultra of some sort myself (complete with middle of the night leg cramping, oddly enough...sympathy pains??). But, I'm back at it now and as eager as ever to set aside the ultra race director hat for my normal ultrarunner one. I've said it after each of the first two Black Hills 100s and I'll say it again: it's infinitely harder to direct one of these things than to just go out and run it. But both are rewarding in their own way.
To everyone who either volunteered at or ran in the Black Hills 100 this year, THANK YOU!! I look forward to seeing some of you in Leadville.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Monday, June 17, 2013
Leadville Training Part 6: The Bighorn 30K
Hard to believe a year has already passed since I ran the Bighorn 100. But, as they say, time flies when you're having fun and here we are in mid-June again. Bighorn is one of my favorite events; beautiful trails and a great post-race BBQ make for an overall awesome experience and the fact that it's a mere three hour drive away doesn't hurt either. I've been running there since 2009. I was just getting started in ultrarunning back then and the Bighorn 50K was just my second ultra. I returned the next year for the 50M and subsequently was handed my first ever DNF. 2011 brought redemption in the 50M and then I finished my 2nd 100 miler there last year. That left just one race distance at Bighorn that I had never covered: the 30K. While technically not an ultra, it is a trail run and seemed like a good chance to stretch the legs and really race a race for a change, as opposed to just slogging through a longer distance with an eye more on finishing than finishing fast. My mission at Bighorn this year was definitely to finish fast.
As I've mentioned on here before, one aspect of my Leadville training this year is the goal to drop some extra weight before the big race in August. I'm still not sure how much I want to lose, I just know I need to lose some. When I weighed myself back in March before I started my training, I tipped the scales at 209. Definitely not ideal weight for an ultrarunner, although I had been making do for a few years at or near that weight. By the time Quad Rock rolled around in early May, I was down to about 190 and was hoping to see some obvious benefit of that weight loss at QR. That didn't come to fruition as the previously documented digestive issues drove me off the course after just one 25 mile loop. On the day before Bighorn, I weighed in at 183. There's gotta be a benefit to carrying around 26 fewer pounds, right? I was really hoping to find out.
Obviously, since I'm training for Leadville, I didn't necessarily train specifically for this race....it was just kind of jammed into the schedule and the plan was to basically train through it. Good evidence of that was my fairly heavy weekend the week before Bighorn, which left my legs feeling heavy and sluggish all the way through Wednesday of the following week. I "tapered" for Bighorn with very slow, very easy, very flat runs of 6 and 4.5 miles on Thursday and Friday. By the end of the week my legs felt better, but I still wasn't sure just how much kick I would have on Saturday morning and was wondering if maybe the Crow Peak Quad was a bit foolhardy just six days before Bighorn. Only one way to find out...
The race starts at the Dry Fork aid station along the Bighorn 100 course. Although labeled a 30K, which would be 18 miles, it's actually closer to 17 or 17.5 depending on who you ask. And although the route includes the steepest incline (The Haul) along the Bighorn 100 course, it is overall a VERY downhill course. From about 7600 feet at Dry Fork, the route ascends and then descends a bit to the first aid station (Upper Sheep Cr) at 7300 ft. Right after that is The Haul, which is short but steep and takes you to the high point of the course at around 8000 ft. And then the "fun" begins in the form of an absolutely quad killing bombing run of a downhill to the Lower Sheep Cr. aid station at 5000 ft....3000 ft of descent in a few miles. After that, the course continues losing elevation, but along much more gradual, somewhat rolling, trails and gravel roads to the finish in Dayton. If you've still got the legs left, you can really hammer the last 5 miles on the road and make up some time. Of course, if your legs are shot, it's the longest damn 5 miles of your life.
Since the 50K, 50M and 100M all cover the 30K course, I've actually run this course three times before. But, I had never run it on fresh legs, so I was curious to see what I could do without several hours on my legs already. Based on past results, including the results of several local Black Hills runners who I'm familiar with, I was expecting that a top 10 finish was very doable and that, depending on how things shook out, I might even have a shot at a top 5 and an age group award. I pegged 2:20-2:25, which worked out to 8:00-8:15 pace, as a good goal for a finishing time.
Since it's a point to point route, they bus you to the start and I rode in the back (like the cool kids in high school) with Ryan, who was going for a sub-2 and a new CR, and a few other Black Hills runners. After a fairly long ride, we finally arrived at Dry Fork just in time to see the 50Kers start at 8:00. Because of the popularity of the 30K, they split the race into two waves this year, with the "competitive" wave starting at 9:00 and the "family and friends" wave at 10:00. This meant we had an hour to hang out and talk and basically just mill around. It actually passed fairly quickly and, thankfully, it was a little warmer than it usually is at Dry Fork, so we weren't numb and shivering by the time the race started. I knocked out about a mile warmup run up the road just before the start and the legs felt okay, not great, but the heaviness from early in the week seemed mostly gone. After the national anthem, we were lined up and ready to go.
Immediately after the start, Ryan and last year's winner took off in the front of the pack. I settled into the top 10 or 15 and tried to find a groove. The first mile or so is a gradual uphill, first on a dirt road and then onto some singletrack. As we neared the top of this uphill I started to find the groove a bit and get my breathing/striding in sync and was in about 7th or 8th when we topped out and started the mostly gradual downhill to the first aid station. Along this trail section I started feeling pretty good and was cranking out the miles fairly consistently. And then the first fall happened. The trail through this section is fairly narrow and infringed upon by large sagebrush. As I was cruising along, my foot and/or shoelace caught on a sagebrush branch and before I knew it, I was down. I managed to catch myself a bit, but not all the way. I bounced up and started running again immediately, but lost a position in the process. I realized quickly that my left shoelace had been pulled loose in the fall, so just before a short but steep uphill I pulled aside and re-tied it, losing another few positions. But, pretty much all of those guys walked that uphill and I threw it into low gear and ran it, so picked the positions back up in short order. Immediately after the hill was the first aid station at Upper Sheep Cr., which I ran through (I didn't use any aid stations all day, as I was carrying a single handheld and had two gels with me).
Right after Upper Sheep Cr. is The Haul, which seemingly took me about 2 hours to climb last year in the 100 (it wasn't that bad, but it was a slow process of walk ten steps, rest, repeat). This year, I started off back in low gear, with aspirations of maybe running the whole thing. That quickly revealed itself to be a foolhardy strategy, so I started power hiking like everyone else and continued until the grade leveled out a bit near the top, where I started running again. I lost another position on The Haul, but also drew closer to a guy who was in front of me. After the shoe-tying and then subsequently passing one or two guys through the aid station, I had kind of lost track of where I was in the field, but thought it was around 7th or 8th. At the top, I glanced at my Garmin and my average pace up to that point was exactly 8:15, at the low end of my goal for the day, but virtually all of the uphill was now behind me.
And now the fun begins. The downhill after The Haul is just brutal. It's not smooth, it's not easy and it's not really all that much fun. It's a narrow, sometimes rocky, sometimes rutted out, mostly steep, singletrack that will absolutely obliterate your quads and seems to go on forever. The plan was to run it hard, and I did. Probably harder than I've allowed myself to run downhill in quite some time. That was partly because I was in lockstep with a guy right in front of me (the guy who had passed me on The Haul) and another guy right on my heels. About halfway down, the guy in front of my took a pretty good spill and after asking if he was okay (he was), me and the guy behind me took off ahead of him. Up ahead was another runner and we started gaining on him as we continued dive bombing down the hill. After awhile, it was apparent that the guy behind me was better at this downhill stuff than I am and he bounced around me and was quickly around the next guy and gone. And then it happened again. As I was pounding down the narrow trail, my right foot got caught in the loop of my shoelace on my left foot and I hit the turf. Hard. I took most of the impact on my left knee, which was already bleeding from my first fall, and my right hand, which was holding my hand held bottle. I hit hard enough that the plastic strap that secure the bottle to the carrier snapped, rendering the carrier basically useless. I jumped back up again, picked up the bottle and considered just leaving the useless, broken carrier there until I remembered my car keys were in the pocket. Might need those later. So then I was running down the trail with the bottle loose in one hand the and the carrier in the other. I knew that my left knee/shin were sore and bloody, but it didn't appear as though anything was truly injured. And no one passed me, so no big deal, right?
Until it happened yet again. Not much later I again bit it, the foot in the shoe lace again the culprit. Sonofabitch! (I actually yelled out a different word in the moment). Again, I took most of the impact on my left leg, which didn't really help things. Frustration setting in, I took a few moments to re-tie my shoes again in an attempt to alleviate the problem (which has never been a problem with these shoes before, although I'd never run this fast downhill on a narrow trail in these shoes either). While doing this, one guy passed me and the other guy I had been gaining on pulled further ahead. I quickly regained my lost position though as he slowed going through the Lower Sheep Cr. aid station, which was just up ahead. At that point, the worst of the downhill was, thankfully, over and the trail leveled out considerably and even included a few short stretches of rolling uphill. By this point, my left shin and knee were pretty sore and my legs were feeling pretty beat up from the downhill. It felt like I was suddenly running at a snail's pace without gravity helping me anymore, but my Garmin told me I was still doing just fine and had cut my average pace down to 8:00, at the high end of my goal range. Would I actually be able to come in under 2:20? If I could hold it together for 6 more miles...
I was fairly astounded that I had already managed to bite it three times in one race, which is far and away a new record for me. But I wasn't done yet. Not long after Lower Sheep Cr. I took one last swan dive. This one had to resemble a baseball player sliding headfirst into home place, as I landed on my chest with my hands/arms stretched out in front of me and then managed to bounce my chin off the trail to finish it off. I reached up to my chin to feel for blood, but found none, although I now had a bit of a headache to add to the sore knee and shin. I finally decided at this point that I needed to remedy the situation before I did some serious damage to myself and took a few moments to tuck my shoelace loops into my shoes, which, of course, would've been a brilliant move after the first fall. No positions lost, so I was thinking I was in 6th or 7th at that point and I knew I had at least one guy not too terribly far ahead of me, although I wasn't sure how far as the curving, rolling trail didn't offer much in the way of sight distance. Well, turns out it wasn't actually that far at all as not much later I came around a curve in the trail and saw him hiking a short uphill right in front of me. I ran up and over and passed him quickly. Not long after that, I ran past some mountain bikers and I thought I heard one of them say I was in 4th, but that didn't seem right based on who I knew to be ahead of me, so I guesstimated that 5th or 6th was more likely.
By this time, the trail running was done and the final 5 mile stretch of dirt road to the finish had begun. This stretch of road took ffffffooooorrrrreeeevvvvveeeeeerrrrrr last year in the 100M as I ended up walking 90% of it. Although my legs were tired by this point and my left leg was sore from the extra abuse it had taken, I was still cranking out what I thought was a pretty decent pace for that point in the race, around 7:30 miles. The road is mostly flat with a few gradual ups and downs along the way and I could not see anyone ahead of me within range, so I wasn't really expecting to gain any positions in the final miles. As far as I knew, no one was hot on my heels either, so I was thinking that I was probably locked in position-wise, it was just a question of what my time would be. So, of course, I begin thinking not only about my overall position, but also about where I sat in my age group. I knew Ryan was older, but I suspected that at least two, possibly three, of the other guys I knew for sure to be ahead of me might be in their 30s. So I was right on the brink, possibly outside looking in already. And then I heard footsteps. When this happens toward the end of, say, a marathon, you immediately begin to hope it's just a relay runner. Well, no such luck here. I was running the shortest/fastest distance....seemed highly unlikely that a 100 miler was suddenly running sub-7 miles and about to overtake me. Indeed, it turned out to be the guy who had fallen right in front of me on the downhill. He had recovered nicely and was cruising the road at a good clip, much better than I could maintain at that point. He passed me and was gone in short order, despite the fact that I had dropped my pace into the 7:20s. Not much longer after that, it happened again; footsteps right behind me, a quick "good job" and gone. This was a guy I hadn't seen all day but he had apparently been lingering back in the pack and waiting for the final push. Again, although I felt like I was running well for that point in the race, I just didn't have the speed to keep up at that point.
By then we were past the last aid station, Homestretch, with only two miles to the finish. I risked a few glances behind me when the road offered a long view and didn't see anyone else sneaking up, so now it really did seem as though I was locked into my current position, whatever it was. It also seemed certain I was definitely outside the age group hardware now, but nothing I could do about that anymore. So I just kept chugging along and in no time was coming into Dayton with the park and finish line just ahead (amazing how much faster that road stretch goes by when you actually run it). For the first time all day I switched the screen on my Garmin to display my total elapsed time and saw it just clicking over to 2:10. Sonofabitch! Of course, that's much faster than I expected to run, but I immediately started thinking about where I could've shaved time (by, say, not falling four times) and come in under 2:10. But, again, nothing to do about it at this point so I continued pushing to the finish. As I came into the park I immediately saw/heard Ryan and his four daughters cheering for me and pushed across the line in 2:11:49. Final check of the results put me at 7th overall and 5th in my age group. Being in your 30s sucks sometimes!
Okay, so I won't lie and say I'm not disappointed that I didn't get to bring home one of those big ass Bighorn river rock age group awards, but you can't really complain too much about coming in 9 minutes under your stretch goal time. Other than getting up close and personal with the trail more times than I would've liked, the race really couldn't have gone much better for me. I feel like, for the first time, I've really experienced what it's like to race with less weight. I'm fairly convinced that there is no way I could've run this race this fast 26 pounds ago. I'm happy with how things went and even more excited now about the rest of my Leadville training.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention Ryan's race here briefly. As mentioned before, he was gunning for the course record, which was 1:59. Ryan is in phenomenal shape this year and I suspected he'd give it a run for its money. Well, he did that and more, finishing in 1:57. But, turns out last year's winner was in phenomenal shape too as he ran a 1:56. Sonofabitch! It was a fast day at the Bighorn 30K!
As I've mentioned on here before, one aspect of my Leadville training this year is the goal to drop some extra weight before the big race in August. I'm still not sure how much I want to lose, I just know I need to lose some. When I weighed myself back in March before I started my training, I tipped the scales at 209. Definitely not ideal weight for an ultrarunner, although I had been making do for a few years at or near that weight. By the time Quad Rock rolled around in early May, I was down to about 190 and was hoping to see some obvious benefit of that weight loss at QR. That didn't come to fruition as the previously documented digestive issues drove me off the course after just one 25 mile loop. On the day before Bighorn, I weighed in at 183. There's gotta be a benefit to carrying around 26 fewer pounds, right? I was really hoping to find out.
Obviously, since I'm training for Leadville, I didn't necessarily train specifically for this race....it was just kind of jammed into the schedule and the plan was to basically train through it. Good evidence of that was my fairly heavy weekend the week before Bighorn, which left my legs feeling heavy and sluggish all the way through Wednesday of the following week. I "tapered" for Bighorn with very slow, very easy, very flat runs of 6 and 4.5 miles on Thursday and Friday. By the end of the week my legs felt better, but I still wasn't sure just how much kick I would have on Saturday morning and was wondering if maybe the Crow Peak Quad was a bit foolhardy just six days before Bighorn. Only one way to find out...
The race starts at the Dry Fork aid station along the Bighorn 100 course. Although labeled a 30K, which would be 18 miles, it's actually closer to 17 or 17.5 depending on who you ask. And although the route includes the steepest incline (The Haul) along the Bighorn 100 course, it is overall a VERY downhill course. From about 7600 feet at Dry Fork, the route ascends and then descends a bit to the first aid station (Upper Sheep Cr) at 7300 ft. Right after that is The Haul, which is short but steep and takes you to the high point of the course at around 8000 ft. And then the "fun" begins in the form of an absolutely quad killing bombing run of a downhill to the Lower Sheep Cr. aid station at 5000 ft....3000 ft of descent in a few miles. After that, the course continues losing elevation, but along much more gradual, somewhat rolling, trails and gravel roads to the finish in Dayton. If you've still got the legs left, you can really hammer the last 5 miles on the road and make up some time. Of course, if your legs are shot, it's the longest damn 5 miles of your life.
Since the 50K, 50M and 100M all cover the 30K course, I've actually run this course three times before. But, I had never run it on fresh legs, so I was curious to see what I could do without several hours on my legs already. Based on past results, including the results of several local Black Hills runners who I'm familiar with, I was expecting that a top 10 finish was very doable and that, depending on how things shook out, I might even have a shot at a top 5 and an age group award. I pegged 2:20-2:25, which worked out to 8:00-8:15 pace, as a good goal for a finishing time.
Since it's a point to point route, they bus you to the start and I rode in the back (like the cool kids in high school) with Ryan, who was going for a sub-2 and a new CR, and a few other Black Hills runners. After a fairly long ride, we finally arrived at Dry Fork just in time to see the 50Kers start at 8:00. Because of the popularity of the 30K, they split the race into two waves this year, with the "competitive" wave starting at 9:00 and the "family and friends" wave at 10:00. This meant we had an hour to hang out and talk and basically just mill around. It actually passed fairly quickly and, thankfully, it was a little warmer than it usually is at Dry Fork, so we weren't numb and shivering by the time the race started. I knocked out about a mile warmup run up the road just before the start and the legs felt okay, not great, but the heaviness from early in the week seemed mostly gone. After the national anthem, we were lined up and ready to go.
Immediately after the start, Ryan and last year's winner took off in the front of the pack. I settled into the top 10 or 15 and tried to find a groove. The first mile or so is a gradual uphill, first on a dirt road and then onto some singletrack. As we neared the top of this uphill I started to find the groove a bit and get my breathing/striding in sync and was in about 7th or 8th when we topped out and started the mostly gradual downhill to the first aid station. Along this trail section I started feeling pretty good and was cranking out the miles fairly consistently. And then the first fall happened. The trail through this section is fairly narrow and infringed upon by large sagebrush. As I was cruising along, my foot and/or shoelace caught on a sagebrush branch and before I knew it, I was down. I managed to catch myself a bit, but not all the way. I bounced up and started running again immediately, but lost a position in the process. I realized quickly that my left shoelace had been pulled loose in the fall, so just before a short but steep uphill I pulled aside and re-tied it, losing another few positions. But, pretty much all of those guys walked that uphill and I threw it into low gear and ran it, so picked the positions back up in short order. Immediately after the hill was the first aid station at Upper Sheep Cr., which I ran through (I didn't use any aid stations all day, as I was carrying a single handheld and had two gels with me).
Right after Upper Sheep Cr. is The Haul, which seemingly took me about 2 hours to climb last year in the 100 (it wasn't that bad, but it was a slow process of walk ten steps, rest, repeat). This year, I started off back in low gear, with aspirations of maybe running the whole thing. That quickly revealed itself to be a foolhardy strategy, so I started power hiking like everyone else and continued until the grade leveled out a bit near the top, where I started running again. I lost another position on The Haul, but also drew closer to a guy who was in front of me. After the shoe-tying and then subsequently passing one or two guys through the aid station, I had kind of lost track of where I was in the field, but thought it was around 7th or 8th. At the top, I glanced at my Garmin and my average pace up to that point was exactly 8:15, at the low end of my goal for the day, but virtually all of the uphill was now behind me.
And now the fun begins. The downhill after The Haul is just brutal. It's not smooth, it's not easy and it's not really all that much fun. It's a narrow, sometimes rocky, sometimes rutted out, mostly steep, singletrack that will absolutely obliterate your quads and seems to go on forever. The plan was to run it hard, and I did. Probably harder than I've allowed myself to run downhill in quite some time. That was partly because I was in lockstep with a guy right in front of me (the guy who had passed me on The Haul) and another guy right on my heels. About halfway down, the guy in front of my took a pretty good spill and after asking if he was okay (he was), me and the guy behind me took off ahead of him. Up ahead was another runner and we started gaining on him as we continued dive bombing down the hill. After awhile, it was apparent that the guy behind me was better at this downhill stuff than I am and he bounced around me and was quickly around the next guy and gone. And then it happened again. As I was pounding down the narrow trail, my right foot got caught in the loop of my shoelace on my left foot and I hit the turf. Hard. I took most of the impact on my left knee, which was already bleeding from my first fall, and my right hand, which was holding my hand held bottle. I hit hard enough that the plastic strap that secure the bottle to the carrier snapped, rendering the carrier basically useless. I jumped back up again, picked up the bottle and considered just leaving the useless, broken carrier there until I remembered my car keys were in the pocket. Might need those later. So then I was running down the trail with the bottle loose in one hand the and the carrier in the other. I knew that my left knee/shin were sore and bloody, but it didn't appear as though anything was truly injured. And no one passed me, so no big deal, right?
Until it happened yet again. Not much later I again bit it, the foot in the shoe lace again the culprit. Sonofabitch! (I actually yelled out a different word in the moment). Again, I took most of the impact on my left leg, which didn't really help things. Frustration setting in, I took a few moments to re-tie my shoes again in an attempt to alleviate the problem (which has never been a problem with these shoes before, although I'd never run this fast downhill on a narrow trail in these shoes either). While doing this, one guy passed me and the other guy I had been gaining on pulled further ahead. I quickly regained my lost position though as he slowed going through the Lower Sheep Cr. aid station, which was just up ahead. At that point, the worst of the downhill was, thankfully, over and the trail leveled out considerably and even included a few short stretches of rolling uphill. By this point, my left shin and knee were pretty sore and my legs were feeling pretty beat up from the downhill. It felt like I was suddenly running at a snail's pace without gravity helping me anymore, but my Garmin told me I was still doing just fine and had cut my average pace down to 8:00, at the high end of my goal range. Would I actually be able to come in under 2:20? If I could hold it together for 6 more miles...
I was fairly astounded that I had already managed to bite it three times in one race, which is far and away a new record for me. But I wasn't done yet. Not long after Lower Sheep Cr. I took one last swan dive. This one had to resemble a baseball player sliding headfirst into home place, as I landed on my chest with my hands/arms stretched out in front of me and then managed to bounce my chin off the trail to finish it off. I reached up to my chin to feel for blood, but found none, although I now had a bit of a headache to add to the sore knee and shin. I finally decided at this point that I needed to remedy the situation before I did some serious damage to myself and took a few moments to tuck my shoelace loops into my shoes, which, of course, would've been a brilliant move after the first fall. No positions lost, so I was thinking I was in 6th or 7th at that point and I knew I had at least one guy not too terribly far ahead of me, although I wasn't sure how far as the curving, rolling trail didn't offer much in the way of sight distance. Well, turns out it wasn't actually that far at all as not much later I came around a curve in the trail and saw him hiking a short uphill right in front of me. I ran up and over and passed him quickly. Not long after that, I ran past some mountain bikers and I thought I heard one of them say I was in 4th, but that didn't seem right based on who I knew to be ahead of me, so I guesstimated that 5th or 6th was more likely.
By this time, the trail running was done and the final 5 mile stretch of dirt road to the finish had begun. This stretch of road took ffffffooooorrrrreeeevvvvveeeeeerrrrrr last year in the 100M as I ended up walking 90% of it. Although my legs were tired by this point and my left leg was sore from the extra abuse it had taken, I was still cranking out what I thought was a pretty decent pace for that point in the race, around 7:30 miles. The road is mostly flat with a few gradual ups and downs along the way and I could not see anyone ahead of me within range, so I wasn't really expecting to gain any positions in the final miles. As far as I knew, no one was hot on my heels either, so I was thinking that I was probably locked in position-wise, it was just a question of what my time would be. So, of course, I begin thinking not only about my overall position, but also about where I sat in my age group. I knew Ryan was older, but I suspected that at least two, possibly three, of the other guys I knew for sure to be ahead of me might be in their 30s. So I was right on the brink, possibly outside looking in already. And then I heard footsteps. When this happens toward the end of, say, a marathon, you immediately begin to hope it's just a relay runner. Well, no such luck here. I was running the shortest/fastest distance....seemed highly unlikely that a 100 miler was suddenly running sub-7 miles and about to overtake me. Indeed, it turned out to be the guy who had fallen right in front of me on the downhill. He had recovered nicely and was cruising the road at a good clip, much better than I could maintain at that point. He passed me and was gone in short order, despite the fact that I had dropped my pace into the 7:20s. Not much longer after that, it happened again; footsteps right behind me, a quick "good job" and gone. This was a guy I hadn't seen all day but he had apparently been lingering back in the pack and waiting for the final push. Again, although I felt like I was running well for that point in the race, I just didn't have the speed to keep up at that point.
By then we were past the last aid station, Homestretch, with only two miles to the finish. I risked a few glances behind me when the road offered a long view and didn't see anyone else sneaking up, so now it really did seem as though I was locked into my current position, whatever it was. It also seemed certain I was definitely outside the age group hardware now, but nothing I could do about that anymore. So I just kept chugging along and in no time was coming into Dayton with the park and finish line just ahead (amazing how much faster that road stretch goes by when you actually run it). For the first time all day I switched the screen on my Garmin to display my total elapsed time and saw it just clicking over to 2:10. Sonofabitch! Of course, that's much faster than I expected to run, but I immediately started thinking about where I could've shaved time (by, say, not falling four times) and come in under 2:10. But, again, nothing to do about it at this point so I continued pushing to the finish. As I came into the park I immediately saw/heard Ryan and his four daughters cheering for me and pushed across the line in 2:11:49. Final check of the results put me at 7th overall and 5th in my age group. Being in your 30s sucks sometimes!
Okay, so I won't lie and say I'm not disappointed that I didn't get to bring home one of those big ass Bighorn river rock age group awards, but you can't really complain too much about coming in 9 minutes under your stretch goal time. Other than getting up close and personal with the trail more times than I would've liked, the race really couldn't have gone much better for me. I feel like, for the first time, I've really experienced what it's like to race with less weight. I'm fairly convinced that there is no way I could've run this race this fast 26 pounds ago. I'm happy with how things went and even more excited now about the rest of my Leadville training.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention Ryan's race here briefly. As mentioned before, he was gunning for the course record, which was 1:59. Ryan is in phenomenal shape this year and I suspected he'd give it a run for its money. Well, he did that and more, finishing in 1:57. But, turns out last year's winner was in phenomenal shape too as he ran a 1:56. Sonofabitch! It was a fast day at the Bighorn 30K!
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Leadville Training Part 5: A different kind of quad rock
Okay, it's been awhile (which is a great Staind song, by the way), so time to get caught up here.
After my abbreviated training run at Quad Rock, I've been pretty much head down, grinding out as many miles as I can in an attempt to wash the bad taste out of my mouth. And, for the most part, it's been working. As I noted in my last post, the training has gone very well since QR and I'm definitely feeling stronger. It's been too long to go into the intimate details, so I'll just touch on some highlights:
5/23 - My birthday. The big 3-5. Ran 10 miles on the Tinton trail. Nothing too exciting about it, really, but I am in a new age group now, depending on how they split em. Oh, and one of my birthday presents was a brand spankin new Garmin Forerunner 910.
5/26 - Ran from the Dalton Lake trailhead (miles 29/71 of the Black Hills 100 course) back to the BH100 start/finish in Sturgis with Johnathan, who will be double-dipping as the BH100 photographer and a 100K runner this year. 29 miles and I was still feeling pretty damn good when we got done.
6/2 - My daughter's birthday. Much more exciting than my own. Besides a rockin One Direction-themed party, I also ran a marathon (Deadwood-Mickelson), where I paced a friend from Texas to a 4:11 finish. I don't run many marathons anymore and found myself extremely disappointed in the lack of food choices at the aid stations. Bananas and oranges? That's the crap I eat during the week when I'm watching my calories. I want bacon and cookies, damn it! There was one aid station that had homemade banana bread, which was pretty awesome.
6/7-6/9 - This ended up being an interesting three day stretch of training. At some point last week, I got a wild hair up my ass to do a night run, so after my son's baseball game on Friday evening I headed to Sturgis and met up with Ryan for some night running on the Centennial. We started at about 9:30 and covered 20 miles between the Ft. Meade trailhead and some random point between the Bulldog and Elk Creek aid station locations on the BH100 course. Got done a bit before 2:00 AM, drove home, showered and crashed for about 4 hours of somewhat fitful sleep before getting up to run the Hayfever 4 mile race in Belle Fourche. I managed to win that race against a fairly small field, went home, showered again and did some yard/housework for most of the rest of the day. On Sunday, I got up early to tackle Crow Peak, which has become my go-to training location for Leadville. In my last post, I wrote about the Crow Peak Triple I ran the week after Quad Rock. Being an ultrarunner, I'm always looking to up the ante, so the goal for Sunday was my first ever Crow Peak Quad. The first two laps went well and I again managed to run the entire ascent both times (noting that running the entire ascent just one time was an enormous accomplishment in the very recent past). The third ascent was a bit slower, but I ran all but the 2 or 3 steepest pitches near the top. By then, it was becoming a bit of a mental battle as I cruised down the hill the third time, trying to convince myself that I should in fact run one more lap. After eating a snack and refilling my water, I forced myself away from the car for a fourth ascent and came very close to turning back around a few times within the first half mile. Eventually, I managed to remind myself that Leadville will include a fair amount of hiking and that it is, in fact, okay to do some hiking in training. So I did a mix of running and hiking and ground out the fourth ascent in what was actually an okay time (it always seems so much slower in the midst of the fatigue). With that out of the way, the fourth descent was actually my fastest and I felt pretty good, both mentally and physically, when I reached the trailhead again after 25.2 miles and 6200 feet of total ascent. A good 2+ day training block, both mentally and physically.
This coming weekend is the Bighorn 30K in Dayton, WY. Since I ran the 100M at Bighorn last year, the 30K seems like kind of a cop out, but it's the only distance (out of 30K, 50K, 50M and 100M) that Bighorn offers that I haven't run. And, honestly, I'm really looking forward to hammering out a fast, hard trail run. So much of ultra running is just grinding out slow miles for hours on end. This time I'm actually going to race the thing and see what happens. I'm hoping to bring one of those big damn rocks (the traditional Bighorn age group award) back to Belle with me!
After my abbreviated training run at Quad Rock, I've been pretty much head down, grinding out as many miles as I can in an attempt to wash the bad taste out of my mouth. And, for the most part, it's been working. As I noted in my last post, the training has gone very well since QR and I'm definitely feeling stronger. It's been too long to go into the intimate details, so I'll just touch on some highlights:
5/23 - My birthday. The big 3-5. Ran 10 miles on the Tinton trail. Nothing too exciting about it, really, but I am in a new age group now, depending on how they split em. Oh, and one of my birthday presents was a brand spankin new Garmin Forerunner 910.
5/26 - Ran from the Dalton Lake trailhead (miles 29/71 of the Black Hills 100 course) back to the BH100 start/finish in Sturgis with Johnathan, who will be double-dipping as the BH100 photographer and a 100K runner this year. 29 miles and I was still feeling pretty damn good when we got done.
6/2 - My daughter's birthday. Much more exciting than my own. Besides a rockin One Direction-themed party, I also ran a marathon (Deadwood-Mickelson), where I paced a friend from Texas to a 4:11 finish. I don't run many marathons anymore and found myself extremely disappointed in the lack of food choices at the aid stations. Bananas and oranges? That's the crap I eat during the week when I'm watching my calories. I want bacon and cookies, damn it! There was one aid station that had homemade banana bread, which was pretty awesome.
6/7-6/9 - This ended up being an interesting three day stretch of training. At some point last week, I got a wild hair up my ass to do a night run, so after my son's baseball game on Friday evening I headed to Sturgis and met up with Ryan for some night running on the Centennial. We started at about 9:30 and covered 20 miles between the Ft. Meade trailhead and some random point between the Bulldog and Elk Creek aid station locations on the BH100 course. Got done a bit before 2:00 AM, drove home, showered and crashed for about 4 hours of somewhat fitful sleep before getting up to run the Hayfever 4 mile race in Belle Fourche. I managed to win that race against a fairly small field, went home, showered again and did some yard/housework for most of the rest of the day. On Sunday, I got up early to tackle Crow Peak, which has become my go-to training location for Leadville. In my last post, I wrote about the Crow Peak Triple I ran the week after Quad Rock. Being an ultrarunner, I'm always looking to up the ante, so the goal for Sunday was my first ever Crow Peak Quad. The first two laps went well and I again managed to run the entire ascent both times (noting that running the entire ascent just one time was an enormous accomplishment in the very recent past). The third ascent was a bit slower, but I ran all but the 2 or 3 steepest pitches near the top. By then, it was becoming a bit of a mental battle as I cruised down the hill the third time, trying to convince myself that I should in fact run one more lap. After eating a snack and refilling my water, I forced myself away from the car for a fourth ascent and came very close to turning back around a few times within the first half mile. Eventually, I managed to remind myself that Leadville will include a fair amount of hiking and that it is, in fact, okay to do some hiking in training. So I did a mix of running and hiking and ground out the fourth ascent in what was actually an okay time (it always seems so much slower in the midst of the fatigue). With that out of the way, the fourth descent was actually my fastest and I felt pretty good, both mentally and physically, when I reached the trailhead again after 25.2 miles and 6200 feet of total ascent. A good 2+ day training block, both mentally and physically.
This coming weekend is the Bighorn 30K in Dayton, WY. Since I ran the 100M at Bighorn last year, the 30K seems like kind of a cop out, but it's the only distance (out of 30K, 50K, 50M and 100M) that Bighorn offers that I haven't run. And, honestly, I'm really looking forward to hammering out a fast, hard trail run. So much of ultra running is just grinding out slow miles for hours on end. This time I'm actually going to race the thing and see what happens. I'm hoping to bring one of those big damn rocks (the traditional Bighorn age group award) back to Belle with me!
Monday, May 20, 2013
Leadville Training Part 4: Bouncing back
Training for an ultramarathon (or any race, for that matter) has its ebbs and flows. Some days you feel great, like you could run forever and never feel tired. Other days, grinding out a 6 mile recovery run takes everything you've got. Obviously, you hope that everything comes together and you have one of the good days on race day. In my last post, I whined a bit about how that has not been the case so far this year, with two of the down days miring my runs at Moab and Quad Rock. Fortunately, it seems when your confidence is most shaky, you get a string of the good days to bring it back up, and that's what I got this past week.
Well, not the entire week. Early in the week I was still have some issues associated with the malady that affected me at Quad Rock. Nothing major, but an inconvenience nonetheless. Once that finally cleared up, I resolved to put Quad Rock behind me with a solid weekend set of long runs. Normally, I would run back to back long runs on, well, back to back days, but this past weekend real life intervened. I am one of the coaches for my son's little league team and we had a tournament in Deadwood Friday evening and most of the day Saturday. So, I tweaked the schedule and decided to run long on Friday and Sunday mornings rather than the traditional Fri/Sat or Sat/Sun.
Friday's run was the longer (but not necessarily harder) one, 25 miles on the Centennial trail from the Elk Creek trailhead (miles 17/83 of the Black Hills 100 course) to Dalton Lake (miles 29/71). This is arguably the toughest section of the trail with a couple of shorter climbs and then a nice (or horrible, depending on your state of mind) grinder to the top of the ridge above Dalton Lake before finally descending to the lake itself. On this day, after my legs got warmed up on the earlier, shorter climbs, I got into a good groove and was able to drop it into what I call my "grind gear" and run most of the uphills. The return trip from Dalton to Elk Cr is theoretically easier since there is more downhill, but I am inevitably surprised by the amount of relatively short uphills there are along the way, which is one of the reasons this section is so tough....mentally, it's just hard to keep grinding on the short uphills when you think you should be running entirely downhill. But, in reality, it's pretty much all runnable if your legs are feeling good. Mine weren't great, but they were good enough and I ground out the entire run feeling pretty good (and finished the 25 miles about 30 minutes faster than my Quad Rock 25, albeit with less elevation gain).
After an easy 8 on roads before the baseball games commenced on Saturday morning, I was up at the asscrack of dawn on Sunday to tackle the real beast of the weekend, a triple summit of Crow Peak. The Crow Peak trail is about 6.4 miles total, 3.2 up and 3.2 back down with around 1500 ft of elevation gain per lap. I've run Crow Peak several times and had only ever run the entire ascent once before. On Sunday, my climbing legs felt great and although I thought maybe I should hold back and save something for the 2nd and 3rd ascents, I couldn't "waste" the feeling so just rode the wave and ran the entire first ascent. The descent is a good chance to stretch your legs a bit, but also features some good technical downhill running on the steep rocky pitches near the summit. After refueling at the trailhead, I headed up for ascent #2 and found that the grind gear was working well....well enough to run the entire ascent again. Another cruise back down to the car, another quick pit stop, and back up for ascent #3. I was expecting this one to be a real slog, with a lot of hiking involved, and while it was definitely slower, there were only a few pitches I had to power hike. A quick rest break at the top (it was pouring rain and a bit windy) and I cruised back down, feeling great. I reached the trailhead after 19 miles and a little over 4500 ft of ascent in 3:35, a full 22 minutes faster than the only other time I've run a Crow Peak triple. And, since I still felt great and since nice round numbers have some stupid magical aura, I cranked out another mile on the dirt road to get to an even 20 for the day.
So, as they have a way of doing, things have bounced back quite nicely. I'll happily ride the wave while it lasts.
Well, not the entire week. Early in the week I was still have some issues associated with the malady that affected me at Quad Rock. Nothing major, but an inconvenience nonetheless. Once that finally cleared up, I resolved to put Quad Rock behind me with a solid weekend set of long runs. Normally, I would run back to back long runs on, well, back to back days, but this past weekend real life intervened. I am one of the coaches for my son's little league team and we had a tournament in Deadwood Friday evening and most of the day Saturday. So, I tweaked the schedule and decided to run long on Friday and Sunday mornings rather than the traditional Fri/Sat or Sat/Sun.
Friday's run was the longer (but not necessarily harder) one, 25 miles on the Centennial trail from the Elk Creek trailhead (miles 17/83 of the Black Hills 100 course) to Dalton Lake (miles 29/71). This is arguably the toughest section of the trail with a couple of shorter climbs and then a nice (or horrible, depending on your state of mind) grinder to the top of the ridge above Dalton Lake before finally descending to the lake itself. On this day, after my legs got warmed up on the earlier, shorter climbs, I got into a good groove and was able to drop it into what I call my "grind gear" and run most of the uphills. The return trip from Dalton to Elk Cr is theoretically easier since there is more downhill, but I am inevitably surprised by the amount of relatively short uphills there are along the way, which is one of the reasons this section is so tough....mentally, it's just hard to keep grinding on the short uphills when you think you should be running entirely downhill. But, in reality, it's pretty much all runnable if your legs are feeling good. Mine weren't great, but they were good enough and I ground out the entire run feeling pretty good (and finished the 25 miles about 30 minutes faster than my Quad Rock 25, albeit with less elevation gain).
After an easy 8 on roads before the baseball games commenced on Saturday morning, I was up at the asscrack of dawn on Sunday to tackle the real beast of the weekend, a triple summit of Crow Peak. The Crow Peak trail is about 6.4 miles total, 3.2 up and 3.2 back down with around 1500 ft of elevation gain per lap. I've run Crow Peak several times and had only ever run the entire ascent once before. On Sunday, my climbing legs felt great and although I thought maybe I should hold back and save something for the 2nd and 3rd ascents, I couldn't "waste" the feeling so just rode the wave and ran the entire first ascent. The descent is a good chance to stretch your legs a bit, but also features some good technical downhill running on the steep rocky pitches near the summit. After refueling at the trailhead, I headed up for ascent #2 and found that the grind gear was working well....well enough to run the entire ascent again. Another cruise back down to the car, another quick pit stop, and back up for ascent #3. I was expecting this one to be a real slog, with a lot of hiking involved, and while it was definitely slower, there were only a few pitches I had to power hike. A quick rest break at the top (it was pouring rain and a bit windy) and I cruised back down, feeling great. I reached the trailhead after 19 miles and a little over 4500 ft of ascent in 3:35, a full 22 minutes faster than the only other time I've run a Crow Peak triple. And, since I still felt great and since nice round numbers have some stupid magical aura, I cranked out another mile on the dirt road to get to an even 20 for the day.
So, as they have a way of doing, things have bounced back quite nicely. I'll happily ride the wave while it lasts.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Not a great start to the ultra year
So, here it is early May and I've already run two ultras this year....well, check that. I guess technically, I've run one ultra and one 25 miler (although I guess you could debate until the cows come home about what makes an ultra an ultra....distance or difficulty??). So far, the results have been less than stellar.
Back in Moab in February, I blew up pretty hardcore at the Red Hot 55K and ended up slogging much of the last half of the race. This past weekend in Fort Collins I was hoping for better results at the Quad Rock 50. I mean, after all, I had run, and finished, this race last year. Weather conditions this year were near-perfect, my training has been going well and I'm 20ish pounds lighter than I was a year ago, so what could possibly go wrong? Well, I've noticed this phenomena where at least one of my kids tends to get sick in the last two weeks before I have a big race. Of course, this is mass paranoia time for any runner, so thoughts of biohazard suits, dowsing the house in Lysol or moving into a hotel room become serious considerations. In the past, their illnesses have never affected my races, although I did come down with my son's flu bug the day AFTER the Fargo Marathon back in 2007. I can't say for sure what happened this time, but I know my son was home sick from school one day in the last couple of weeks before Quad Rock and then on Thursday, just a couple of days before the race, my daughter was diagnosed with strep throat. Awesome. I never caught a fever or felt nauseous or had a sore throat of any kind throughout this period, but on Wednesday I did start to come down with some rather unpleasant diarrhea (too much information?....tough, it has major bearing on the remainder of this story). I was hoping my bowel problems would clear up before the race, but they persisted all the way through Thursday and Friday. By Friday night and Saturday morning, I was popping Pepto Bismol in an attempt to keep things at bay, but it didn't seem to be helping much.
I woke Saturday morning feeling pretty okay and the race actually started quite well for me. I was keeping the pace under control, my legs felt great and I didn't feel any unpleasant urges whatsoever for the first several miles. At one point, I found myself leapfrogging with Karl Meltzer as we ascended the first climb of the course, which led me to believe that I was either having the awesomest race of my life, or that Karl was having the absolute unawesomest race of his (the fact that he kept stopping to stretch his calves made me believe it was probably the latter). I hit the Towers aid station at the top of the first climb and was still feeling good, ready to pick up some time on the downhill to the Horsetooth aid station. And then the wheels came off. About halfway down the descent, the urge that hadn't yet made an appearance hit suddenly, and I had to make a quick dive for cover to squat in the woods (spectacular pre-planning on my part had included putting some baby wipes in my hydration pack, thankfully). Okay, so I lost a few minutes there. Hopefully that's the only one. I can still hit my goals. My legs still feel good. So back on the trail I went and continued on, feeling great again. For a couple of miles. Then the urge hit again, this time as I was nearing the Horsetooth aid station. Knowing that there were toilet facilities there, I was able to hold off until the bottom of the hill, where I had to wait in line to use the facilities. Another several minutes lost. Sonofabitch. But my legs still feel great. Hopefully THIS was the last time. Onward and upward. I passed through the aid station, said a quick hi to Rob (sorry Rob, I was in kind of a pissy mood....or, more accurately, a shitty mood) and headed up the hill. Okay, feeling good again. I can still meet my goals if I can hold my bowels together. Surely it's done with now, right? Wrong. Again, near the top of the ascent, I found myself squatting in the bushes. Son. Of. A. BITCH.
By that point, I was mentally defeated more so than physically, which is dangerous in an ultra. Thoughts of stopping after the first 25 mile loop started entering my head and never really left. My legs still felt good, but thanks to the unplanned pit stops I was now well behind my goal for the day and had no idea how many more times I would end up searching for cover. I argued back and forth with myself for the remainder of that loop. I never had another episode after that third one, although I did have a couple of contractions that made me think one was imminent. When I started descending the final hill toward the turnaround, I passed my friend Bob, who was on his way back up on the 2nd loop and he told me that Ryan had dropped at the turnaround (after attempting to run on only one hour of sleep). That pretty much cemented my decision. At that point I couldn't come up with a compelling reason to continue on for another 5, 6, or 7 hours battling an unpleasant condition I had no control over whatsoever. So, I ran the remainder of the downhill fairly hard, called it a day when I hit the start/finish and commenced drinking beer to drown my sorrows. Okay, that's a little dramatic. I really wasn't that shook up about it. Looking back on it now, of course I can armchair quarterback myself and think that maybe I would've been fine and still could have had a respectable finish, but it was always "just" a training run. It just turned out to be a 25 mile training run instead of a 50. And, strangely, the fact that I did finish the 50 last year brought me some peace.....like, I've been there and done that, so it's not as big of a deal to not do it again this year. Ah, the things we'll come up with to justify our actions. Regardless, Nick and Pete put on a great event and I'll likely be back next year. For the 50. All of it.
As for the rest of this year, one benefit of only running 25 miles of a 50 miler is that your legs don't take all that much abuse. So, my training rolls on. On the car ride home, I briefly considered switching from the 30K at Bighorn to the 50M to try and make up for Quad Rock, but I don't think I will. I'm really looking forward to racing the 30K hard and going for a solid finish (top 10 for sure, maybe top 5??). I have plenty of weekends to put in miles for Leadville, no sense in radically changing my plans now. Right? Well, maybe... Nah... Well..... ???
Back in Moab in February, I blew up pretty hardcore at the Red Hot 55K and ended up slogging much of the last half of the race. This past weekend in Fort Collins I was hoping for better results at the Quad Rock 50. I mean, after all, I had run, and finished, this race last year. Weather conditions this year were near-perfect, my training has been going well and I'm 20ish pounds lighter than I was a year ago, so what could possibly go wrong? Well, I've noticed this phenomena where at least one of my kids tends to get sick in the last two weeks before I have a big race. Of course, this is mass paranoia time for any runner, so thoughts of biohazard suits, dowsing the house in Lysol or moving into a hotel room become serious considerations. In the past, their illnesses have never affected my races, although I did come down with my son's flu bug the day AFTER the Fargo Marathon back in 2007. I can't say for sure what happened this time, but I know my son was home sick from school one day in the last couple of weeks before Quad Rock and then on Thursday, just a couple of days before the race, my daughter was diagnosed with strep throat. Awesome. I never caught a fever or felt nauseous or had a sore throat of any kind throughout this period, but on Wednesday I did start to come down with some rather unpleasant diarrhea (too much information?....tough, it has major bearing on the remainder of this story). I was hoping my bowel problems would clear up before the race, but they persisted all the way through Thursday and Friday. By Friday night and Saturday morning, I was popping Pepto Bismol in an attempt to keep things at bay, but it didn't seem to be helping much.
I woke Saturday morning feeling pretty okay and the race actually started quite well for me. I was keeping the pace under control, my legs felt great and I didn't feel any unpleasant urges whatsoever for the first several miles. At one point, I found myself leapfrogging with Karl Meltzer as we ascended the first climb of the course, which led me to believe that I was either having the awesomest race of my life, or that Karl was having the absolute unawesomest race of his (the fact that he kept stopping to stretch his calves made me believe it was probably the latter). I hit the Towers aid station at the top of the first climb and was still feeling good, ready to pick up some time on the downhill to the Horsetooth aid station. And then the wheels came off. About halfway down the descent, the urge that hadn't yet made an appearance hit suddenly, and I had to make a quick dive for cover to squat in the woods (spectacular pre-planning on my part had included putting some baby wipes in my hydration pack, thankfully). Okay, so I lost a few minutes there. Hopefully that's the only one. I can still hit my goals. My legs still feel good. So back on the trail I went and continued on, feeling great again. For a couple of miles. Then the urge hit again, this time as I was nearing the Horsetooth aid station. Knowing that there were toilet facilities there, I was able to hold off until the bottom of the hill, where I had to wait in line to use the facilities. Another several minutes lost. Sonofabitch. But my legs still feel great. Hopefully THIS was the last time. Onward and upward. I passed through the aid station, said a quick hi to Rob (sorry Rob, I was in kind of a pissy mood....or, more accurately, a shitty mood) and headed up the hill. Okay, feeling good again. I can still meet my goals if I can hold my bowels together. Surely it's done with now, right? Wrong. Again, near the top of the ascent, I found myself squatting in the bushes. Son. Of. A. BITCH.
By that point, I was mentally defeated more so than physically, which is dangerous in an ultra. Thoughts of stopping after the first 25 mile loop started entering my head and never really left. My legs still felt good, but thanks to the unplanned pit stops I was now well behind my goal for the day and had no idea how many more times I would end up searching for cover. I argued back and forth with myself for the remainder of that loop. I never had another episode after that third one, although I did have a couple of contractions that made me think one was imminent. When I started descending the final hill toward the turnaround, I passed my friend Bob, who was on his way back up on the 2nd loop and he told me that Ryan had dropped at the turnaround (after attempting to run on only one hour of sleep). That pretty much cemented my decision. At that point I couldn't come up with a compelling reason to continue on for another 5, 6, or 7 hours battling an unpleasant condition I had no control over whatsoever. So, I ran the remainder of the downhill fairly hard, called it a day when I hit the start/finish and commenced drinking beer to drown my sorrows. Okay, that's a little dramatic. I really wasn't that shook up about it. Looking back on it now, of course I can armchair quarterback myself and think that maybe I would've been fine and still could have had a respectable finish, but it was always "just" a training run. It just turned out to be a 25 mile training run instead of a 50. And, strangely, the fact that I did finish the 50 last year brought me some peace.....like, I've been there and done that, so it's not as big of a deal to not do it again this year. Ah, the things we'll come up with to justify our actions. Regardless, Nick and Pete put on a great event and I'll likely be back next year. For the 50. All of it.
As for the rest of this year, one benefit of only running 25 miles of a 50 miler is that your legs don't take all that much abuse. So, my training rolls on. On the car ride home, I briefly considered switching from the 30K at Bighorn to the 50M to try and make up for Quad Rock, but I don't think I will. I'm really looking forward to racing the 30K hard and going for a solid finish (top 10 for sure, maybe top 5??). I have plenty of weekends to put in miles for Leadville, no sense in radically changing my plans now. Right? Well, maybe... Nah... Well..... ???
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Leadville Training Part 3: Spring has sprung (again), back to Quad Rock
Okay, so I'm now two full cycles (8 weeks) into Leadville training and everything seems to be clicking along nicely (knock on wood). The big thing for me is routine. Every week of my training plan is virtually identical in structure. The mileages may vary slightly, but the type of workout doesn't really change much from week to week. Mondays and Fridays are recovery days (6-7 easy miles), Tuesday is a double (usually 8 easy in the AM and 5 trail miles in the PM), Wednesday is speed day (either 800s on the track or hill repeats), Thursday is medium-distance trail day (10-12 miles) and Sat/Sun are long run days.
It's actually fairly incredible how quickly your body can adjust to the abuse you throw at it. In fact, one thing I've noticed so far is that in some ways my body actually seems to thrive on the abuse. During my cutback weeks, which are in the 55-58 mile range (as opposed to 85-90 miles), I have actually felt more fatigued and rundown than when I'm in a high mileage week. Of course, that could be because I'm coming off of three straight weeks of high mileage by the time I reach a cutback week, but I have yet to really feel heavily impacted by the mileage in the midst of a high mileage week, whether is the 1st week of the cycle or the 3rd. I'm not a physiologist, nor did I sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night, so I have no explanation for this, just an observation.
In any case, now that spring has returned, hopefully for good, I'm hoping to really be able to put this training I've done so far to the test, the first test being the Quad Rock 50 in just over a week. I ran the inaugural QR last year as a training run for Bighorn and had a blast. It was definitely the best paced (not fastest, by any means, just best paced) 50 miler I've done and I finished feeling relatively fine, which was the goal. Like I mentioned, my time wasn't blazing fast (11:11), but considering my goal going in was a sub-12 and to not feel like a steaming pile of shit afterwards, things went pretty okay. This year, with more time between my goal 100 and QR, I feel like maybe I can push for a faster time. I'm not going to redline it by any means, but I'd definitely like to go sub-11 and maybe sub-10:30. Of course, thanks to the April snowmageddon (or snowpocalypse, if you prefer), my trail mileage took a hit recently, so I don't feel as prepared as I could be. And I'm not really tapering for this thing, just training through it, but like I said above my legs don't generally seem happy with cutback weeks anyhow (although I still recognize and respect their necessity), so maybe that's for the best. Most of all, I'm just looking forward to some good beer with the Fort Collins crew after the race. After all, that's the reason the vast majority of us run ultras, isn't it??
It's actually fairly incredible how quickly your body can adjust to the abuse you throw at it. In fact, one thing I've noticed so far is that in some ways my body actually seems to thrive on the abuse. During my cutback weeks, which are in the 55-58 mile range (as opposed to 85-90 miles), I have actually felt more fatigued and rundown than when I'm in a high mileage week. Of course, that could be because I'm coming off of three straight weeks of high mileage by the time I reach a cutback week, but I have yet to really feel heavily impacted by the mileage in the midst of a high mileage week, whether is the 1st week of the cycle or the 3rd. I'm not a physiologist, nor did I sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night, so I have no explanation for this, just an observation.
In any case, now that spring has returned, hopefully for good, I'm hoping to really be able to put this training I've done so far to the test, the first test being the Quad Rock 50 in just over a week. I ran the inaugural QR last year as a training run for Bighorn and had a blast. It was definitely the best paced (not fastest, by any means, just best paced) 50 miler I've done and I finished feeling relatively fine, which was the goal. Like I mentioned, my time wasn't blazing fast (11:11), but considering my goal going in was a sub-12 and to not feel like a steaming pile of shit afterwards, things went pretty okay. This year, with more time between my goal 100 and QR, I feel like maybe I can push for a faster time. I'm not going to redline it by any means, but I'd definitely like to go sub-11 and maybe sub-10:30. Of course, thanks to the April snowmageddon (or snowpocalypse, if you prefer), my trail mileage took a hit recently, so I don't feel as prepared as I could be. And I'm not really tapering for this thing, just training through it, but like I said above my legs don't generally seem happy with cutback weeks anyhow (although I still recognize and respect their necessity), so maybe that's for the best. Most of all, I'm just looking forward to some good beer with the Fort Collins crew after the race. After all, that's the reason the vast majority of us run ultras, isn't it??
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Leadville Training Part 2: Damn you, Mother Nature
Okay, so I've been doing a fairly shitty job of consistently updating the masses (all 2 or 3 of you) on my Leadville training. The first update was after two weeks, I'm now in the middle of the third week of my second 4 week cycle, so that comes out to....a long time ago. In any case, I'll just list some highlights (and lowlights):
--Overall, things are going well. Weekly mileage has been 80+ for the most part, other than cutback weeks, and I hit 90 last week.
--Had a good 25 mile run on the Centennial a couple of weeks ago where I forced myself to eat something (I've been using Honey Stinger waffles and chews lately) every half hour on the half hour. This equates to about 320 calories per hour. It seemed to work well. I found that before when I was guesstimating a good time to eat, I was grossly misjudging just how well I was doing about getting enough calories consistently and subsequently falling behind and feeling like shit late in the run.
--The day after that 25 miler, I ran 15 miles on a 1.25 mile out and back. That sounds like borderline torture , but it actually ended up being a lot of fun. A friend, Johnathan, put together a low-key event to showcase a new trail he and a group of volunteers have been constructing in the town of Whitewood. The plan was that he was going to run for 24 hours and see how many miles he could get in. He had sponsors lined up to donate a certain amount per mile or just a set amount, and they also gathered donations at the start/finish to help fund future trail building activities. Since only 1.25 miles of the trail is complete, that's what we ran on. Johnathan ended up with a 100K; I put in 15 in the evening after a day of watching/coaching my son's basketball team at a tourney in Rapid City.
--Ran on the Tinton trail just outside of Spearfish a couple of weeks ago for the first time since the first week in December. Tinton gets snowed in pretty bad during the winter because of the topography and lack of overall use in the winter, but it was finally clear and runnable.....or at least it was briefly, which brings me to my next point....
--Mother Nature is a dirty, dirty whore. Last week we got a two day long winter storm that dumped over a foot of snow, more snow than we've had all winter. It didn't warm up much over the weekend, and then we got another storm last night and today, although this most recent one ended up not being nearly as bad. Still, it's mid-April and suddenly all the trails are snowed in and I'm running in full-on winter gear. Bullshit, I tell ya.
--Because of Mother Nature, my longest run of my Leadville training so far, a 30 miler this past Saturday, ended up being on roads. Not ideal, but at least I got some miles/hours in. I ended up running the backroads from Belle Fourche to Spearfish and back. I've run from Belle to Spearfish or vice versa several times before, but I'd never done the whole round trip in one go, so it was somewhat exciting in that sense. Adding to the excitement, my brand new Ultraspire hydration pack (I've probably run with it fewer than 10 times) sprung a leak 9 miles into the run. Luckily, I had my cell phone and was able to call my wife and have her deliver a couple of trusty handheld bottles to Spearfish. Other than that, not a bad 5 hour run....my legs were minimally sore later that day or the day after.
--I've began focusing on how many calories I actually consume every day versus how many I burn and have found that I was a horrible judge of how many calories I could justifiably eat, which is why my weight has consistently been in the 205-210 range for the last several years, despite reasonably high weekly mileage. In the last month of actually tracking this stuff, I've dropped a little over 14 pounds, down into the low 190s. I'd like to get in the 170-180 range before Leadville, which seems doable. After an initial quick drop (I lost like 9 pounds the first week), things have slowed a bit, which is to be expected, but the trend continues to be downward. One interesting phenomenon I've picked up on is that long runs actually result in a short-term weight gain. In the 2 or 3 days after my long run(s), I'll typically add 2-3 pounds, but then those pounds will go away again mid to late week and by Friday or Saturday I'll end up with an overall loss for the week. I've researched the subject a little (i.e., I googled it) and it seems fairly commonplace for distance runners; some sort of reaction by the body to retain water in response to trauma (like, for instance, 5 hours of running).
--This has nothing to do with my Leadville training, but a quick word on the Boston Marathon bombings. At one point in my running life, qualifying for and running Boston was the holy grail, as it is for many runners. After a few attempts, I did finally qualify after at Missoula in 2008 (that race remains my PR and my one and only BQ). I ran Boston in 2009 and it was one of the most memorable running experiences of my life. The atmosphere there is something you really can't describe...you just have to experience it. So, needless to say, the bombings were quite a shock. Besides the obvious tragedy of loss of life and the severe physical injuries that occurred, the bombings shattered that one of kind of aura that surrounds the Boston Marathon. It really just sucks that an occasion that should be so memorable to 25,000+ runners and their family and friends has been absolutely and forever tainted by such a vicious, pointless act. In a strange way, it almost makes me want to run Boston again even more now, and I suspect that that will be the case for a lot of runners.
--Overall, things are going well. Weekly mileage has been 80+ for the most part, other than cutback weeks, and I hit 90 last week.
--Had a good 25 mile run on the Centennial a couple of weeks ago where I forced myself to eat something (I've been using Honey Stinger waffles and chews lately) every half hour on the half hour. This equates to about 320 calories per hour. It seemed to work well. I found that before when I was guesstimating a good time to eat, I was grossly misjudging just how well I was doing about getting enough calories consistently and subsequently falling behind and feeling like shit late in the run.
--The day after that 25 miler, I ran 15 miles on a 1.25 mile out and back. That sounds like borderline torture , but it actually ended up being a lot of fun. A friend, Johnathan, put together a low-key event to showcase a new trail he and a group of volunteers have been constructing in the town of Whitewood. The plan was that he was going to run for 24 hours and see how many miles he could get in. He had sponsors lined up to donate a certain amount per mile or just a set amount, and they also gathered donations at the start/finish to help fund future trail building activities. Since only 1.25 miles of the trail is complete, that's what we ran on. Johnathan ended up with a 100K; I put in 15 in the evening after a day of watching/coaching my son's basketball team at a tourney in Rapid City.
--Ran on the Tinton trail just outside of Spearfish a couple of weeks ago for the first time since the first week in December. Tinton gets snowed in pretty bad during the winter because of the topography and lack of overall use in the winter, but it was finally clear and runnable.....or at least it was briefly, which brings me to my next point....
--Mother Nature is a dirty, dirty whore. Last week we got a two day long winter storm that dumped over a foot of snow, more snow than we've had all winter. It didn't warm up much over the weekend, and then we got another storm last night and today, although this most recent one ended up not being nearly as bad. Still, it's mid-April and suddenly all the trails are snowed in and I'm running in full-on winter gear. Bullshit, I tell ya.
--Because of Mother Nature, my longest run of my Leadville training so far, a 30 miler this past Saturday, ended up being on roads. Not ideal, but at least I got some miles/hours in. I ended up running the backroads from Belle Fourche to Spearfish and back. I've run from Belle to Spearfish or vice versa several times before, but I'd never done the whole round trip in one go, so it was somewhat exciting in that sense. Adding to the excitement, my brand new Ultraspire hydration pack (I've probably run with it fewer than 10 times) sprung a leak 9 miles into the run. Luckily, I had my cell phone and was able to call my wife and have her deliver a couple of trusty handheld bottles to Spearfish. Other than that, not a bad 5 hour run....my legs were minimally sore later that day or the day after.
--I've began focusing on how many calories I actually consume every day versus how many I burn and have found that I was a horrible judge of how many calories I could justifiably eat, which is why my weight has consistently been in the 205-210 range for the last several years, despite reasonably high weekly mileage. In the last month of actually tracking this stuff, I've dropped a little over 14 pounds, down into the low 190s. I'd like to get in the 170-180 range before Leadville, which seems doable. After an initial quick drop (I lost like 9 pounds the first week), things have slowed a bit, which is to be expected, but the trend continues to be downward. One interesting phenomenon I've picked up on is that long runs actually result in a short-term weight gain. In the 2 or 3 days after my long run(s), I'll typically add 2-3 pounds, but then those pounds will go away again mid to late week and by Friday or Saturday I'll end up with an overall loss for the week. I've researched the subject a little (i.e., I googled it) and it seems fairly commonplace for distance runners; some sort of reaction by the body to retain water in response to trauma (like, for instance, 5 hours of running).
--This has nothing to do with my Leadville training, but a quick word on the Boston Marathon bombings. At one point in my running life, qualifying for and running Boston was the holy grail, as it is for many runners. After a few attempts, I did finally qualify after at Missoula in 2008 (that race remains my PR and my one and only BQ). I ran Boston in 2009 and it was one of the most memorable running experiences of my life. The atmosphere there is something you really can't describe...you just have to experience it. So, needless to say, the bombings were quite a shock. Besides the obvious tragedy of loss of life and the severe physical injuries that occurred, the bombings shattered that one of kind of aura that surrounds the Boston Marathon. It really just sucks that an occasion that should be so memorable to 25,000+ runners and their family and friends has been absolutely and forever tainted by such a vicious, pointless act. In a strange way, it almost makes me want to run Boston again even more now, and I suspect that that will be the case for a lot of runners.
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