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!
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
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.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Leadville Training Part 1: Winter, Spring and a 5K Win
Okay, so I may or may not consistently provide updates on my Leadville training....I guess you'll just have to sit there at your computer every day in giddy anticipation to find out. But I'll give it a shot, so here goes with part 1.
I "officially" started training for Leadville a couple of weeks ago. No gun went off, no gong was rung (do you ring a gong?), I just went for a run. And it was a cold run at that, a balmy 25 degrees with a brisk 25 mph breeze. Good times. Of course, three days later I was running Lookout Mtn. on a sunny, 70 degree afternoon. Such is the end of winter/beginning of spring in South Dakota.
My training plan is pretty much entirely homebrewed, based on random crap I found via Google and my own experience of what has worked for me before. It's 24 weeks long and split up into six, 4 week cycles. Within each of those cycles, the first 3 weeks are relatively high mileage (the mileage getting progressively higher with each cycle), and the 4th week is a cutback week. Every single Monday and Friday are recovery days, just an easy 6ish miles. Tuesdays and Thursdays are either doubles (with the 2nd run being a 5 mile grind up Lookout) or medium distance trail runs. Wednesday is speed day, either 800s on the track or 0.2 mile hill repeats on a road outside of Spearfish (those bastards suck). Saturday and Sunday are long run days. I started off with 30-35 miles total for those two days and will bump it up in subsequent cycles. Of course, these days get shuffled sometimes to make room for real life like, for example, when my son has a basketball tournament all day Saturday and I have Friday off, well then Friday becomes my longest run day. You gotta take the miles when you can get em.
In any case, it's working out well so far. The last two weeks I've logged 75 and 82 miles respectively. This past weekend I ran 15 on roads on Saturday morning and then a 20 miler on the Centennial on Sunday morning. My legs still felt good, so I jumped into a local St. Patty's Day 5K on Sunday afternoon and won the damn thing. It was a small field and it wasn't a blazing fast time (19:39 on a short course), but it still felt good to be able to stretch the legs a bit and still be able to push the pace only hours after a 20 miler. As a bonus, I took home a $25 cash prize, which I think technically makes me a professional runner. I expect the sponsorship deals to start coming in any second now.
Oh, and I've started doing some core work again for the first time in a long time (we're not talking weeks or months, but years here). I was pathetically sore after the first ab workout and even more sore after running 800s that afternoon (with a side stitch the whole time), but it's getting easier. Amazing how hard it is to make myself commit to 15-20 minutes of core work three times a week, but I have no problem getting up at 5 AM on a weekend morning so I can spend 4 hours running in the mountains. Like a wise man once said, 50% of it is 90% mental.
So, I think I've got the workout routine down pretty well. Now if only I could add about 5,000 feet of elevation to the Black Hills...
I "officially" started training for Leadville a couple of weeks ago. No gun went off, no gong was rung (do you ring a gong?), I just went for a run. And it was a cold run at that, a balmy 25 degrees with a brisk 25 mph breeze. Good times. Of course, three days later I was running Lookout Mtn. on a sunny, 70 degree afternoon. Such is the end of winter/beginning of spring in South Dakota.
My training plan is pretty much entirely homebrewed, based on random crap I found via Google and my own experience of what has worked for me before. It's 24 weeks long and split up into six, 4 week cycles. Within each of those cycles, the first 3 weeks are relatively high mileage (the mileage getting progressively higher with each cycle), and the 4th week is a cutback week. Every single Monday and Friday are recovery days, just an easy 6ish miles. Tuesdays and Thursdays are either doubles (with the 2nd run being a 5 mile grind up Lookout) or medium distance trail runs. Wednesday is speed day, either 800s on the track or 0.2 mile hill repeats on a road outside of Spearfish (those bastards suck). Saturday and Sunday are long run days. I started off with 30-35 miles total for those two days and will bump it up in subsequent cycles. Of course, these days get shuffled sometimes to make room for real life like, for example, when my son has a basketball tournament all day Saturday and I have Friday off, well then Friday becomes my longest run day. You gotta take the miles when you can get em.
In any case, it's working out well so far. The last two weeks I've logged 75 and 82 miles respectively. This past weekend I ran 15 on roads on Saturday morning and then a 20 miler on the Centennial on Sunday morning. My legs still felt good, so I jumped into a local St. Patty's Day 5K on Sunday afternoon and won the damn thing. It was a small field and it wasn't a blazing fast time (19:39 on a short course), but it still felt good to be able to stretch the legs a bit and still be able to push the pace only hours after a 20 miler. As a bonus, I took home a $25 cash prize, which I think technically makes me a professional runner. I expect the sponsorship deals to start coming in any second now.
Oh, and I've started doing some core work again for the first time in a long time (we're not talking weeks or months, but years here). I was pathetically sore after the first ab workout and even more sore after running 800s that afternoon (with a side stitch the whole time), but it's getting easier. Amazing how hard it is to make myself commit to 15-20 minutes of core work three times a week, but I have no problem getting up at 5 AM on a weekend morning so I can spend 4 hours running in the mountains. Like a wise man once said, 50% of it is 90% mental.
So, I think I've got the workout routine down pretty well. Now if only I could add about 5,000 feet of elevation to the Black Hills...
Friday, February 22, 2013
Red Hot 55K Report
When Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer made an appearance, I knew things weren't going well. Now, to be clear, I didn't actually see Rudolph....I wasn't quite that delusional. But at some point in the final miles of the Red Hot 55K this past Saturday, I realized that the song, along with that other Christmas classic "Rockin Round the Christmas Tree" had been playing on a constant loop in my head for quite some time. Why those songs? Who knows? On the bright side, at least I wasn't singing them out loud (as far as I know).
So, yeah, as far as the race goes, it was basically an exercise in doing everything wrong that you can possibly do wrong. Underestimate the course? Check. Go out too fast? Check. Don't eat enough? Check. Don't drink enough? Check. Excusable for a rookie, I guess, but not for someone who's done this before. All of that combined to turn a hoped-for 5:30 finish into a painfully slow 6:51. But yet I had fun, in a sick and twisted kind of way, which just helps to prove that ultra runners really are batshit crazy....and that we're totally cool with that.
If nothing else, the trip to Moab made it all worthwhile. Moab is just a cool place. I love the mountains and I will always want to live in (or very near) them, but that doesn't mean the desert canyonlands aren't cool as hell. And, really, February might be the time to go, before it's gets blazing hot. We made the trip down in a couple of days, staying in Grand Junction, CO on the way, which put us in Moab fairly early on Friday morning and gave us a chance to scout out the course a little and just check out the sights in general.
The race day weather was about as perfect as it can get, with highs in the mid-40s. Thanks to similar weather in the couple of weeks leading up to the race, the course itself was also in fine form and the RD, Chris Martinez, made the prophetic claim just before the race started that it would be a good day for course records to fall. I lined up somewhere in the middle of the pack and before I knew it (literally, I didn't hear a countdown or "ready, set" or anything) we were off.
I actually felt really good at first, which may actually have worked against me in the end. Rather than try to reign it in and plan ahead for the long haul, I decided to just go with it. Up the first climb and onto the lollipop loop that encompasses the first half or so of the race, my legs felt strong and there never really seemed to be any reason to slow down or walk, other than on a few very short but also very steep pitches of slickrock. The course basically has two high points; the first in the middle of the initial lollipop loop and the second afterwards along the Gold Bar Rim, after the 55K merges back into the 33K route.
During that first loop, I felt like I was drinking plenty and ate 4 or 5 gels, so I got off to a good start there. But at some point just after we started climbing up to Gold Bar Rim, I started to fade. My legs were suddenly more tired than they should be given the pace I was going and my stomach was starting to abandon me, which threw me into the negative loop of not wanting to eat or drink, even though doing so would've helped in the long run (no pun intended). After passing multitudes of people on the lollipop, they started going right past me in a seemingly neverending Conga line as I trudged up the slickrock. At this point, it seemed fairly apparent that 5:30 was out of the question, but I held onto the uber-optimistic thought that once the course turned back downhill I would be able to salvage a sub-6. Wrong.
By the time I reached the aid station just below Gold Bar Rim, and the start of the infamous Golden Spike trail, I was toast. It just felt like I had absolutely nothing left in the tank. Still hopeful that I could catch a second (or third) wind heading down Golden Spike, I trudged on. And then I found out just what makes the infamous Golden Spike so damn infamous. I knew ahead of time that we'd spend a lot of time running on the slickrock, but what I didn't realize was just how technical the slickrock would be. Cracks, holes, and 2 or 3 foot drop-offs keep you on your toes and prevented me from being able to fall into any kind of rhythm whatsoever. Also, I didn't expect as many ups during the downhill as there were. We did ultimately lose a lot of elevation along Golden Spike, but not before running down and then back up steep sections of slickrock along the way. By the time I finally got off Golden Spike, I was in all-out death march mode, Christmas songs blaring in my head as I dreamed of the relatively plush single-track forest trails back home.
I did manage some running once we hit the Poison Spider road closer to the finish, which probably salvaged a sub-7 out of the mess.
So, chalk that one up to experience. All in all, it's a great event....the fact that I sucked it up big time there doesn't change that. It's definitely worth checking out sometime. On the bright side, putting forth such a crappy performance is a good motivator to not do it again....one of the first things I did when I got back home was to sit down and start formulating my training plan for Quad Rock and Leadville. Hopefully, I've learned from my mistakes.
*All photos are courtesy Katie Anderson, who should receive special recognition for putting up with three stinky runner dudes for the entire weekend (albeit one of them was her husband).
So, yeah, as far as the race goes, it was basically an exercise in doing everything wrong that you can possibly do wrong. Underestimate the course? Check. Go out too fast? Check. Don't eat enough? Check. Don't drink enough? Check. Excusable for a rookie, I guess, but not for someone who's done this before. All of that combined to turn a hoped-for 5:30 finish into a painfully slow 6:51. But yet I had fun, in a sick and twisted kind of way, which just helps to prove that ultra runners really are batshit crazy....and that we're totally cool with that.
If nothing else, the trip to Moab made it all worthwhile. Moab is just a cool place. I love the mountains and I will always want to live in (or very near) them, but that doesn't mean the desert canyonlands aren't cool as hell. And, really, February might be the time to go, before it's gets blazing hot. We made the trip down in a couple of days, staying in Grand Junction, CO on the way, which put us in Moab fairly early on Friday morning and gave us a chance to scout out the course a little and just check out the sights in general.
The race day weather was about as perfect as it can get, with highs in the mid-40s. Thanks to similar weather in the couple of weeks leading up to the race, the course itself was also in fine form and the RD, Chris Martinez, made the prophetic claim just before the race started that it would be a good day for course records to fall. I lined up somewhere in the middle of the pack and before I knew it (literally, I didn't hear a countdown or "ready, set" or anything) we were off.
I actually felt really good at first, which may actually have worked against me in the end. Rather than try to reign it in and plan ahead for the long haul, I decided to just go with it. Up the first climb and onto the lollipop loop that encompasses the first half or so of the race, my legs felt strong and there never really seemed to be any reason to slow down or walk, other than on a few very short but also very steep pitches of slickrock. The course basically has two high points; the first in the middle of the initial lollipop loop and the second afterwards along the Gold Bar Rim, after the 55K merges back into the 33K route.
During that first loop, I felt like I was drinking plenty and ate 4 or 5 gels, so I got off to a good start there. But at some point just after we started climbing up to Gold Bar Rim, I started to fade. My legs were suddenly more tired than they should be given the pace I was going and my stomach was starting to abandon me, which threw me into the negative loop of not wanting to eat or drink, even though doing so would've helped in the long run (no pun intended). After passing multitudes of people on the lollipop, they started going right past me in a seemingly neverending Conga line as I trudged up the slickrock. At this point, it seemed fairly apparent that 5:30 was out of the question, but I held onto the uber-optimistic thought that once the course turned back downhill I would be able to salvage a sub-6. Wrong.
By the time I reached the aid station just below Gold Bar Rim, and the start of the infamous Golden Spike trail, I was toast. It just felt like I had absolutely nothing left in the tank. Still hopeful that I could catch a second (or third) wind heading down Golden Spike, I trudged on. And then I found out just what makes the infamous Golden Spike so damn infamous. I knew ahead of time that we'd spend a lot of time running on the slickrock, but what I didn't realize was just how technical the slickrock would be. Cracks, holes, and 2 or 3 foot drop-offs keep you on your toes and prevented me from being able to fall into any kind of rhythm whatsoever. Also, I didn't expect as many ups during the downhill as there were. We did ultimately lose a lot of elevation along Golden Spike, but not before running down and then back up steep sections of slickrock along the way. By the time I finally got off Golden Spike, I was in all-out death march mode, Christmas songs blaring in my head as I dreamed of the relatively plush single-track forest trails back home.
I did manage some running once we hit the Poison Spider road closer to the finish, which probably salvaged a sub-7 out of the mess.
So, chalk that one up to experience. All in all, it's a great event....the fact that I sucked it up big time there doesn't change that. It's definitely worth checking out sometime. On the bright side, putting forth such a crappy performance is a good motivator to not do it again....one of the first things I did when I got back home was to sit down and start formulating my training plan for Quad Rock and Leadville. Hopefully, I've learned from my mistakes.
Before
Me, Ryan and Paul
Almost Done
Done
*All photos are courtesy Katie Anderson, who should receive special recognition for putting up with three stinky runner dudes for the entire weekend (albeit one of them was her husband).
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