Studies in Clydeology

The Four-fecta?

2012-02-05T09:26:00.000-08:00

Trifecta originates from horse racing and it means to correctly bet on who comes in first, second and third. The term has also been taken over by sports generally to denote succeeding at something on three consecutive attempts. Personally I like the term “Hat-trick”, which means the same thing as trifecta, because it just has a more jaunty air. In any case, last night I was selected for Wasatch straight out of the draw and didn’t have to use my potential as a Grand Slam runner to get in. This year you had a 71% chance of being drawn for Wasatch but I still take it as a good omen that I was drawn “naturally”.

The draw for Wasatch completes the four lucky circumstances required to become an official Grand Slam aspirant; get drawn for Western States, register for Vermont and Leadville before they close, which is always a moving target, and then get drawn for Wasatch. I had no idea that Vermont sold out so fast because I’ve never looked at it before. I’m still on a quest to finish several of the 100 mile mountain races in the Western U.S. That goal used to be ALL the 100s in the West but with the growth of the sport I have to draw the line otherwise I’ll never get to some of the Midwest and east coast runs I’ve wanted to do: Mohican, Superior Sawtooth, Pinhoti or the Georgia Jewel, Kettle Moraine, Grindstone and the list goes on. So many races, so little time.

In any case, when I was drawn for Western States I immediately went to register for Vermont just in case and there were only 25 slots left! I then scrambled over to the Leadville website and registered for it and it closed about a week and a half later with 850 runners! I wonder if anyone has the pull, and if it would make sense, to have a lottery for the Grand Slam and if you were drawn you could get into all four races, kind of like a Golden Ticket. It would undoubtedly be controversial.
Now that I am officially entered into all these races the real hat trick begins. I have to 1) successfully stay in shape and lose weight while I’m injured, 2) heal quickly and 3) still have time to put in some solid mountain miles before Western States.

I am now in week three of my injury and as far as staying in shape and losing weight I can obviously count my calories, which I have been doing religiously, and I am down about 3 pounds but it is maddeningly slow. However, I entered this year already within a couple pounds of my usual racing weight so I’m not all that concerned on that front but as far as the fitness thing goes, well, that is more worrisome. At this point I have discovered I can swim, use any type of elliptical trainer or similar machine, use any stair climbing machine, climb stairs, swim, walk and now I can finally hike in the foothills. Today I’ll see if I can tolerate hiking up a mountain trail, just part way, just a test. I can also to things like pushups and various core exercises. I suspect I can do P90X stuff, which has been suggested but which I’ve never done so I’m not really sure what it’s like. Yoga has also been suggested so maybe I’ll look at some classes at out gym and see if I can fit them in.

I know with all this I can maintain a certain level of cardiovascular fitness but the pounding your body has to learn to take is not happening and the endurance, well, I don’t see doing 5 hours on an elliptical trainer, stair master or any combination of the above. My hope is that I’ll be able to do the mountain hiking. If I can do that I should be good through, god forbid, the end of March. After that I’m looking at training just to survive Western States with the hope that I can continue to increase my fitness between then, Vermont and Leadville so that I’ll be ready for Leadville and Wasatch. Oh, I have logged my trail hiking as “running” in BT simply because it is good time on the feet, which is critical in ultrarunning. I’m not actually running.

The healing, well, who knows how that’s going. I went to see a chiropractor a week ago Friday and he did a lot of good. He adjusted my hips and low back, which felt amazing and sounded like a tree branch snapping. He then did some electro stimulation and trigger point massage to try and take care of the muscles he thought had probably spasmed. I’m not sure what may have helped the most but all I know is that after seeing him I was able to walk again at a normal pace without a severe limp and for longer than 20 or 30 minutes. I see him again twice this coming week as well as a pain specialist.

As good as the chiropractor is I’m just not sure it will get me where I need to be, which is running, hence the pain specialist. I did attempt to run this last Wednesday, just very easy on flat dirt trail at about a 12:30 pace. It took about 50 yards before I could tell it was going to be a problem and sure enough I had increased pain for the next three days. I continue to take a startling amount of ibuprofen, diclofinac and now, on occasion, some Tylenol with codeine. The hope is that the pain specialist will discover that this is an injury that can be treated with a shot of cortisone into the SI joint. Quite honestly, I’d even be happy to discover that I had a fracture of some bone down there because that has a very easy and time-limited healing process. I still hold out some hope that it may be that. Fresh fractures, I have learned, don’t show up on x-rays very well if at all. It’s only fractures that are healing that show due to the line of calcification.
In my quest for a cure I did run across, and then research, Platelet Rich Plasma shots, more commonly referred to as PRP shots. At first it sounded like the ticket to a rapid recovery but after extensive research in the actual medical literature not in the more common Muscle and Fitness, Pumped, or Runningguyatblogspotdotcom type of “literature” I discovered that the shots were, at best, equivocal. They seem to work well at speeding the healing of acute traumatic injuries that are intentionally caused like cutting a rat’s tendon so you could study the effect of injecting Platelet Rich Plasma, or using it to speed healing in humans who have just undergone plastic surgery or a jaw reconstruction, which is what it was originally used for in the medical world. I also learned that the first doctor who used PRP shots to heal overuse injuries in athletes was recently arrested for mixing Human Growth Hormone (HGH) into his PRP shots. Of course HGH is a banned substance. Oh, one final bit, I learned that they go for about $1000 per shot so Tiger Woods, an athlete who has used PRP shots which is why their popularity skyrocketed and exploded onto the amateur athlete scene, can afford to get them regardless of whether or not they work. Hell, if I had Tiger’s bank I’d spend $1000 a pop just in the hopes of getting a decent placebo effect.

Number three, having enough time once I heal to put in some good mountain miles before Western States. All I can say is that in 2010 when I was preparing for Leadville I suffered a nasty fall running down the side of a particularly gnarly section of the foothills and got myself a nice, painful bone bruise. This pretty much took me out of any serious training for a month and that injury happened in April. By the time May rolled around I was able to slog through the Jemez mountain 50K though I felt crazy unstable on the mountain trails, and by the first or second weekend in June I PRd at the Run the Caldera marathon by over 40 minutes. When Leadville rolled around, actually a good month before that, I was in the best mountain running shape of my life.

I do hold out hope. I keep telling myself it’s early in the season, very early. I have a huge base. I think I’ve put in 2500 running miles give or take a few per year for the past three years and when I am able to train I train hard and have actually gotten pretty good at squeezing the maximum out of myself without injury. What I have observed is that my injuries, except for a freak fall, always occur during the winter months of December, January or February, when for some reason I feel the need to ramp up my mileage and training intensity. This puts me in the cold and dark running mostly on roads or on snow and ice.

Maybe next season I will have finally learned my lesson.

Rough Beginnings to a New Year

2012-01-25T11:25:00.000-08:00

On January 1st I ran a local Fat Ass 50K and won in a time of 6:29. The race was run in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains and in the morning the ground was frozen but as the day wore on the course became muddy and slippery. I'm not saying it was a large field of runners or a deep field of runners it's just that I took it as a good omen for things to come and of course this year in particular I'm looking for all the omens I can find and hoping that they are all good. Why, well, I think I've crowed about it to just about everyone I can think of but this year is the single biggest year in my running "career." Not only did I qualify for Boston for the first time ever having slashed almost an hour and a half off my marathon time, but I was the only New Mexican to be selected in the lottery to run Western States and so of course that opened the gates for my bid to complete the Grand Slam of Ultra Running.

However, that first day of the year was to be my one and only good omen of things to come. I took the next week to recover with some low miles at an easy pace; I think I logged about 35 miles and my weekly mileage the week before the race had been at 60 so it really was a recovery week. When I started up my next week of high mileage training I made it to Wednesday and during my run into work I started to experience a tightness in my upper left buttock. I slowed the pace but the tightness began to grow worse so I slowed the pace even more and then the tightness turned to pain so I just stopped altogether and called Misty to come and get me. I was 7 miles into a 12 mile run and it was about 28 degrees out so I wasn't going to risk trying to finish or trying to walk it in.

In the minute I spent stopped and calling Misty the area of tightness stiffened considerably and I had a pronounced hobble as I walked to the street corner where Misty was to pick me up. It took her maybe five minutes to get to me and then about 10 minutes for us to get back home. The pain had become serious enough that I knew I should stay home from work and try to get an appointment with my primary care physician. When we got home and I got out of the care I almost collapsed because of the pain and complete lack of strength in my left leg. It was really quite stunning. I have fractured my hip before and not had this combination of a lack of strength and intense pain. I hobbled into the house using the car, fence, gate wall, door frame and Misty to keep me from falling over.

I was able to get in to see my doc the next morning so I just stayed home and rested flat on my back. After determining it wasn't something blatantly obvious like serious fracture and being advised that I could probably run a little if it didn't hurt I first attempted to ride my bike, which ended up making it hurt worse. I then tried going for a hike in the foothills behind my house, which made it hurt. I finally just tried going for a walk around my neighborhood. I was only able to hold a 21 minute per mile pace and, of course, it hurt. I have not attempted any form of exercise whatsoever for the past seven days and, you guessed it, it continues to hurt despite the fact that I have been taking unhealthy amounts of ibuprofen. As a matter of fact, I simply gave up on that after five days because it really didn't make any difference.

I went back in to see my doc yesterday hoping that now since I've tried rest I'd get a cortisone shot but that was a no-go because there is no pain to the touch so there isn't anywhere he can inject me. I now have a referral to a pain specialist because the most likely scenario at this point is a seriously inflamed sacroiliac joint and the most likely fast acting treatment for that is a cortisone shot deep into the joint, deep enough that it has to be done by a specialist and guided in by some type of imagining machine. He may also want me to go get an MRI since the X-rays were negative. I don't get that appointment until February 7th and my expectation is that is when any testing will be ordered and I won't necessarily get any treatment. However, I'm also going to see a chiropractor this Friday so with any luck something more positive and immediate will come of that. The Chiropractor I'm going to see is a sports injury specialist and works with the New Mexico Lobos. If he coached the Lobos or had anything to do with their general lack of success I'd avoid the guy but since he just treats some of their injured athletes I'll take it at worst as equivocal information.

In the mean time I guess today I'll try and hit the pool on base, which is always a hit or miss proposition. I've been there twice during their "hours of operation" and they weren't operating. My backup plan is to hit the gym and look into either the elliptical trainer or see if they have a rowing machine, anything that will allow me to at least maintain my cardiovascular fitness.

I'm becoming very self-conscious about complaining to health care people about my need to get this seen and resolved quickly because of my athletic pursuits because, after all, it's not like I'm a professional athlete or even an elite armature trying to make the Olympics. I've discovered that most non-runners don't even know what it actually means to get into Boston. Most say, "wow, isn't that the race where there are a lot of people?" or "Wow, isn't that one hard to get into because so many people sign up?" It always comes across as, "Man it's a bummer if you can't do the race but really it's just an inconvenience, right, you can do it any time." Forget about explaining qualification standards and what it took to transform my butt from 310 pounds of non-running fat to a 200 pound Boston qualifier and don't even get me started on Western States and the Grand Slam. I say I got into Western States and they think, "Well, shit, we live in a western state how hard can it be" and that the Grand Slam is something you can get at any neighborhood Denny's.

Normally this stuff doesn't bother me. I don't need for other people to fully grasp the things that are important to me because they are only important to me and I'm normally the only one who needs to understand or appreciate them. But now it's different, or it certainly feels different, I need to make them understand how important it is, how much work and money has brought me to where I am and therein lies the self-consciousness. I can't judge my plight as being any more important than anyone else's plight or even that getting someone else to the point where they can sit in their LazyBoy and watch the Boston marathon more comfortably is any less urgent than getting me healed so I can actually go run the Boston marathon.

But, it is, right? You can ask Misty, I a huge baby when it comes to being sick or injured.

My current thinking is that, worst case scenario, I have to skip my first race of the year, which is the Bataan Memorial Death March marathon, run Boston easy and just be happy with the experience of running Boston and then see if I am up for actually racing the Army National Guard's All Guar Marathon Team time trials. If I can't actually race there I may bow out and just focus on training for the Slam. At this point I'm not thinking that I'm out for the Slam. I sure as hell hope that's not wishful thinking.

2011 Year in Review: How Time Flies When You're Having Fun

2011-12-31T18:18:00.000-08:00

Two thousand eleven has been a pretty incredible year and it has included several PRs at several distances. I’ll like to specific race reports for pictures and details for anyone with that much time on their hands but otherwise here is a relatively quick recap. (ok, maybe no links, my laptop sucks! The race reports are in the blog though.)

My first PR of the year came at an odd distance, 38.5 miles, but I count it as a PR because it is a race that I’ve run four times before and the race had kind of become my season opener. Sadly though the Ghost Town 38.5 closed its doors this year so I’ll have to look for something else but what a way to go. I even broke into the top 10!
January 16th Ghost Town 38.5 – 6:48:16

My next PR of the year was a huge one for me because it was my first sub-24 100 miler at Rocky Raccoon. I knew I had it in me but until this year I had been unable to put it all together.
I actually think I could have run this one a bit faster but I had a couple pretty low points but that’s to be expected. This race also contained one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen, a crystalline pine forest surrounding a steam covered lake at daybreak. It was amazing!
February 5th Rocky Raccoon – 23:47

The huge surprise of the year was my 50K PR and Mt. Si in Washington. My run that day was simply unbelievable and I wouldn’t have dared to predict it. It was an amazing experience to run so fast for so long and it really started to hurt towards the end but I was just in such a zone that I was able to push all the way to the end.
April 10th Mt. Si 50K 4:18:47

My final PR of the year was an attempt to make the New Mexico Army National Guard team to represent at the Army 10-miler in Washington DC. I missed that qualification by a full minute but still went away happy with my new PR. I may be able to shave off a minute but it’s going to take some weight loss and speed work, which I am planning both during my 2012 season.
April 16th Albuquerque Half Marathon 10K – 44:28

So not only was 2011 a fast year, it was a good year for collecting states. I picked up the following:
Tennessee - April 30th Country Music Marathon – 3:46:11
Ohio - May 1st Flying Pig Marathon – 3:44:05
Wisconsin – May 7th Wisconsin Marathon – 3:41:25
Michigan - May 8th Kalamazoo Marathon – 3:42:00
Wyoming - June 17th Bighorn – 33:11:29
Washington - October 15th Defiance 50K – 4:57:06

Not only did I pick up six states but the GeekGrl and I also ran our first Double-Double, back-to-back marathons on back-to-back weekends! As can be seen above the Double Double consisted of the Country Music Marathon, Flying Pig Marathon, Wisconsin Marathon and the Kalamazoo Marathon. I have to say of all four the Flying Pig was my favorite but each and every one of them had its own special moments.

What I loved best about the Double Double is that it just felt like I was completely embraced by the experience of America. I’m not sure how clear that may be but I guess what I am trying to convey is that at some point in those four marathons the individual experience of each began to blend into a larger impression, a different kind of experience, an experience that was defined by generalities and concepts, generalities like the size and diversity of the American landscape
and concepts like American pride, striving and the egalitarian impulse. It was a hell of a thing, far greater than the sum of its parts.

Twenty Eleven was also a time to Go Big, to hit the mountains, the high and wild places where few people tread. The mountain tour began on the GeekGrl’s birthday with the Run through Time Marathon in Salida Colorado. Run through Time is scenic and very difficult. I joked after the race that it got its name because you felt like you had aged several years by the time
you got to the end.

Of course the mountain runs were all gorgeous and tough but the one that really knocked my socks off was the Taos Valley 10K up and over. It is a straight 3.1 mile climb followed by a 3.1 mile descent with the climb and descent taking place on different gravel roads. There were parts of the descent that were so steep and rocky I actually found them a bit scary and ask anyone who has run mountain trails with me, I run some pretty gnarly downhill trails pretty hard.

March 12th Run through Time Marathon – 4:32:24
May 21st Jemez Mountain Trail Run 50K – 7:35:52
June 17th Bighorn – 33:11:29
August 7th La Luz Trail Run – 2:08:08
August 13th Taos Ski Valley Up and Over 10K – 1:17:38
September 9th Wasatch – 33:32:52

Now for the heat races, yes, that is heat as in hot, as in OMG who runs in this crap? I guess the answer to that question is…I do and I have become a sick, sick man. Just a quick rundown, Cherry Garcia 98 degrees, Chunky Monkey 95 degrees, Bear Chase 90 degrees and San Antonio 88 degrees with a topping of 50 percent humidity. While these are not the hottest absolute temperatures I have run in they are the hottest temps I’ve tried to run hard at these distances.

June 26th Cherry Garcia 10K – 52:31
July 17th Chunky Monkey 10K – 50:47
September 25th Bear Chase 50K – 6:10:32
November 13th San Antonio Marathon – 3:42:20

Speaking of runs notable for their weather, I now have some data to suggest that running in no-wind 95 degree weather is roughly equivalent to running in perfect running temperatures with
about 30 mile per hour sustained winds. The Dam to Dam was accompanied by Albuquerque’s signature “change of the seasons” hellacious winds. Fortunately the race was short enough were the wind stayed in one direction for the duration so we got both head and tail winds. I promise you, had we been out on a long bike ride it would have mysteriously been headwinds all day long.

September 4th Dam to Dam 10K – 49:43

Finally comes the 2011 miscellaneous category of races. It includes a run where I actually did run wearing a green dress. It was a kind of 1968 green mini with a sleeveless top and a chest that was cut deep and held closed with a lace. The whole thing was made of jean material and was the only loaner they had that would fit my large frame.

The really off-beat race of the year was the Acoma Seed Run, which was hosted by the Seed Kiva of the Acoma Pueblo. It was cool because we got to run on a part of the reservation that is normally closed to non-natives and it followed an ancient secret path up to the top of Sky City that the Acoma people used to take to bring supplies up when they were under siege from below at the foot of the mesa. The other neat thing about this race was that the Kiva elders stood in a line handing out the prizes and everyone who received a prize would go down the line of elders shaking their hand beginning from the eldest member of the Kiva to, well, I guess the least eldest.

March 19th Green Dress Run – 4 miles about 34 minutes
May 30th Acoma Seed Run – about 8 miles - 1:10:58
October 30th The Great Pumpkin Chase 10K – 47:31 (in which I both win my age group AND get my ass handed to me by a guy pushing a baby stroller and wearing a Tigger suit, ouch!
November 25th San Antonio Road Runners Turkey Trot – 4 mile fun run – Hmmm, maybe 39 minutes, I didn’t really keep track and ran with a friend pretty much jawing the whole way. We also started the run about 20 minutes after the official start with all the rest of the slugabeds.
June 11th Billy the Kid Triathlon – 1:23:44 – yes, my only triathlon of the year; shame on me.

So, that’s it, as if there needed to be more, that’s my 2011 season of racing. Quite honestly when I set out to write up this year in review I had no idea I had done so many races. I mean 25
races in one season? Well, that just seems excessive. However, the GeekGrl reminded me that we were trying to collect states and make up for lost opportunities we will have in 2012 because her time will largely be sucked up by her Social Work internship.

Despite the fact that 2012 will be thin on racing I am looking forward to getting in plenty of unbroken early season training because I have a monster year ahead, an ultrarunner’s dream year, and I am going to do it right. My final week of 2011 has been a 65 mile week and I’ll start the New Year with a local Fat Ass 50K followed by a week of rest and the it’ll be time to hit it.

Happy New Year everyone!

Close to Normal

2011-12-21T19:38:00.000-08:00

I’ve been away from the blog for a while mostly because I’ve been busy, gone and busy. During the month of October I ran the Bear Chase 50K which was my last post and after that I was consumed with the task of getting ready to travel to San Antonio Texas for a month of Basic Officer’s Leadership Course. Of the various things I do in life one of those things is that I serve in the New Mexico Army National Guard as a Clinical Psychologist so I’m a Behavioral Health Officer and it’s one of those schools that everyone is required to attend.

Part of those preparations involved spending a hideous amount of time doing online training about all things Army. I’m certain it would have been very valuable training had it not been such a vast sea of knowledge crammed into a thimble of time but as it was I just struggled to retain enough to take the next test and move on. However, I have since discovered that I retained more than I thought but the knowledge is kind of insubstantial like the memories of someone with early dementia. Many things are recalled vaguely and some memories can be grasped while others float away just beyond my reach.

However, the BEST part of getting ready to go to Officer’s basic was the weeklong vacation the GeekGrl and I took to Seattle. I won’t try and recap it all here but suffice it to say I spent the week wired trying to visit all the finest coffee houses in the city. We tried many and much to
my surprise the best of the best coffee in Seattle was to be found at Top Pot Hand Forged Doughnuts where I went for doughnuts, not coffee. The doughnuts were the bomb too! While in the area we also traveled to Vancouver, BC for a day where I ran the Grouse Grind, which was a freakin’ grind, and I think I made it up in 57 minutes. A pretty average time I think but I wasn’t really trying to push it. I then rand back down a dirt access road until I hit the Baden-Powell trail, which I took back to the base of the Grind where I was parked.

While in Seattle I also ran the Defiance 50K which took place on Point defiance in Tacoma. It
was an awesome race and ended up being harder than I was expecting but I had a
great time none-the-less. I ended up placing 18th overall and second place in my age group. The GeekGrl ran too but unfortunately twisted her ankle so had to drop. Other running we did in Washington included Cougar Mountain and the Hoh rain forest in Olympic National Park. That too was an awesome experience.

So the month I was away for Officer’s basic was pretty weird. The actuall stuff I did there was
all field exercise type stuff, things I had been doing back in the day when I was in the Marine Corps as a young enlisted man, stuff like shooting rifles and pistols, marching, doing land navigation with maps and compass, doing hand-to-hand combat and I even went through a gas chamber again. The gas chamber is kind of a right of passage in the military and nobody but nobody escapes their tenure in the armed forces without at least one trip to the chamber.

While in San Antonio the GeekGrl flew out twice, once to run the Rock-n-Roll San Antonio marathon with me and once for the Thanksgiving holidays. The San Antonio marathon was uninspired at best. I’m not entirely certain that a really cool course could be developed but I think a better one would have been fairly easy. That race also got really hot, really hot, and pretty much everyone melted down. By the half-marathon point I was on pace to run something in the ball-park of a 3:25 but I ended up finishing with a 3:42. I think at the half-way mark I was already flagging pretty seriously and I just decelerated from there.

The weekend that the GeekGrl came for Thanksgiving was one of the best weekends of our marriage. We stayed at the Westin on the River walk and we did nothing but kick back and
relax. We had leisurely morning coffee at Sip’s coffee house, we visited a comedy club and we had a couple romantic dinners. It was well worth the expense. I rolled back into Albuquerque on December 6th having driven straight through from San Antonio into the mouth of a winter
storm that had blanketed Southern and Eastern New Mexico with snow and ice. It was a brutal drive but I got home at like 2 in the morning and slept like the dead. Since I’ve been back I’ve just been playing catch-up at home and at work. When I logged on to my computer at work I had 980 e-mails in my in-box, I had to immediately start interviews for a position I am hiring and I was given a major work assignment that is due “at the first of the year.” I’m hopeful that the first of the year refers to the first part of the year like the first couple weeks of January and not literally the first work day of the year.

Anyway, I’m now pretty much back and settled into my routine and am engaged in planning my 2012 season and what a season it will be, a dream season. More on that later. Suffice it to say I’m back on a diet, I’ve started some strength training and I’m starting to work on building my running base.

It feels good to be back!

Better Late Than Never: A Bear Chase 50K Race Report

2011-10-18T19:07:00.000-07:00

Three weeks ago the GeekGrl and I drove up to Colorado to run The Bear Chase 50K. Now that my race season is over in terms of actually having goal races it was time for the GeekGrl to choose races and she wanted to do “a bunch of 50Ks or 50-milers.” Well, there’s a dearth of 50-milers around here in the first place and even fewer this time of year so I started looking for 50Ks and marathons, which there are many more to choose from.

So, this was the GeekGrl’s race and I was just along for kicks. I was pretty sure that I was nowhere near well enough recovered from Wasatch to run well and my main goal was to run a new course and finish without injury. Fortunately I accomplished both. We headed up for the weekend and also was given an invitation to stay with Jennifer, a fellow ultrarunner we had met at Bighorn.

The Bear Chase is only in its second year this year but the race director has a lot of experience so it went off without a hitch. The course reminded me a lot of the Palo Duro Trail Runs in Palo Duro Texas. It reminded me of Palo Duro no so much because of the scenery, Palo Duro is in a red and gold walled canyon filled with scrub trees whereas The Bear Chase is in a large suburban green space complete with a stream, small lake grasslands and a small wooded area. No, it reminded me of Palo Duro because both races have a 50-miler, a 50K and a 10K going on at the same time and both 50-milers are made up of four loops while the 50K is 2 loops of the 50-mile course plus one loop of the 10K course. Both races are also hot and about equally difficult, or easy as the case may be. The Bear Chase also has a half-marathon that is one loop of the 50-mile course plus some more somewhere else, I’m not sure where.

I actually started out running pretty fast and was pretty much in the lead pack but that only lasted about 17 miles and then I felt the first twinge of pain in my groin, the same place that had been hurt most of my early to mid-season. That was it, my signal to take it easy so I shifted into a walk and just let people go. I walked almost the entire final 12.5 mile loop though I did get to break into a jog a few more times toward the end but every time I felt the slightest twinge I started walking. It wasn’t too bad, it was about what I had expected to do and I still got to finish mid pack and was able to run a few people down in the final mile. Best of all the GeekGrl set a new 50K PR and I got a few cool pics of me running through a stream so all in all it was a good time.

If you are considering this race at any distance I would recommend either the 10K or the 50K. The 10K loop, which you also run during the 50K, is the nicest part of the entire race and it is a fast loop as trail races go. The 50K gets the 10K loop and at least the long loop is only done twice. The first time it’s novel and the second time is the last lap. I can’t imagine doing that loop four times it would be unbelievably boring and there are plenty of faster 50-mile courses out there for a PR. The half-marathon would be ok if you happen to want that distance but again, it’s not a PR course and there are plenty more scenic half-marathons in Colorado.

Triple Comback: A Wasatch 100 Race Report

2011-09-14T18:45:00.000-07:00

First off, I didn't take pics during Wasatch so I scanned the internet looking for som pics of Wasatch and got some great ones off A Trail Runner's Blog, who also races Wasatch 2011. Give credit where credit is due.

Wasatch begins on broad single-track trail skirting the base of the mountain range between the wilderness area and residential neighborhoods. The trail rolls gently and in the darkness of the morning you can see sections of the city lights spread out below you. My plan, as usual, was to go out slow for the first 30 or so miles and then just see what I could do after that so I set out at between a 34 and 36 hour pace.

The first major climb of the race is called Chinscraper and it looks wicked on the elevation profile. Chinscraper basically starts at mile 3.6 and then climbs 3960 feet in the next six miles. While it is a six mule long steady climb it really isn't as bad as it looks or sounds. I'm sure some of that has to do with the fact that your legs are still fresh but the other thing is that there are several switchbacks. People do blow themselves up on Chinscraper, that is one of the big dangers of Wasatch, throwing yourself against Chinscraper when you are feeling fresh and thinking "Oh, this isn't nearly as bad as I thought." The final stretch of the climb does get steeper and maybe the final 20 yards pretty much requires that you climb using your hands. I suppose you could hike that final stretch but it wouldn't make much sense because it is very steep and the rocks are loose. If you hike it you are more likely to either slip and fall or kick rocks down on the heads of the runners below.

I think it took me about 3 hours and 6 minutes to get from the start line to Chinscraper Summit and once on top I felt great, the morning was cool and sunrise had come. The trail was flanked by an abundance of wildflowers and the views of the Salt Lake Basin were fantastic. On worry I did have between the starting line and Francis Peak was the lack of aid. It's 13.35 miles to the water only aid station Grobbens Corner, the first aid station on the course and 18.76 to Francis Peak, the first full aid station. However, the morning was cool so I didn't need much and there are two springs, Cool Springs at mile 8.93 and Landis Springs at mile 10.58. Both springs are immediately on the side of the trail, flowing and obvious. I refilled my handheld bottle at each of the springs and each time drank the full bottle so the water is good.

The next two sections are called Bountiful Peak and Skyline and they encompass the Bountiful B, Sessions, Swallow Rocks and Big Mountain aid stations. These sections contain a pretty equal measure of very runnable dirt roads and narrow single track that can be very overgrown and somewhat rocky. Actually, some of the trail through here is so overgrown that it is more like bushwhacking than trail running, however, it still isn't terribly hard to follow the trail and there was only one spot where a couple guys in front of me continued straight when they should have turned but I caught it and yelled at them to turn back.

Unless you are a front runner the Bountiful Peak and Skyline sections are when day one starts to heat up. The increasing heat coupled with the big stretches of very runnable terrain makes it another dangerous section for going out too fast. I continued to just take it easy and took the several short, steep climbs very slow. On one climb that came shortly before Swallow Rocks I was creeping up the hill and a few people blew past me breathing really hard. The footing was good but the grade was really steep and as one guy passed me he asked if I was ok and I told him, "Yeah, just taking it easy. This early stuff is all about mile 90 and once you spend the energy you can't get it back." A few runners nearby commented that that was a good reminder and they immediately slowed. Another couple, a man and woman who were actually planning on getting married right at the finish line, decided that it would just be a good idea to fall in behind me and pace off me on the uphill stretches. I didn't mind but it became a problem later.

By the time I came running on the long, downhill single track into Big Mountain I was still feeling great and was right on pace for a projected 34 hour finish, may be a little ahead. This year Big Mountain at mile 39.4 was the first time of the day when you were able to see your crew because of some heavy construction taking place near the Francis Peak aid station. Big Mountain is also the place where you are allowed to pick up pacers for the first time. I came into Big Mountain and met up with my crew, which included the GeekGrl, fellow New Mexican ultrarunner Ian and a younger guy named Eric who I met through the Wasatch website who was from the area and looking to pace a few miles. I changed out my shoes and socks at Big Mountain and also washed off my feet. Washing your feet at Wasatch is a good idea because the trail is really dusty in many areas and you are really going to need your feet to be in the best possible shape for the last 25 miles of the course because it is absolutely brutal.

I departed the Big Mountain aid station with Eric as my pacer and we ran a long for a little as he asked numerous questions about ultrarunning. Eric told me that this 13 miles to the next crew stop would be his longest run in years and he hoped his knee would be alright because it had been injured a few years back and that is why he had stopped running. I was thinking, "great, I have a non-runner as a pacer in one of the hardest ultramarathons in the country." But things worked out. Eric was good company and his knees never bothered him. I also got to teach him a lot about ultrarunning.

One thing I provided him was a great first hand education on how to do something stupid and how to recover from it. The first segment out of Big Mountain is the longest stretch between aid stations of the whole course, though not by much. It's an eight mile stretch from Big Mountain to Alexander Ridge. The section isn't difficult, it's mostly pretty mellow single track with some climbing thrown in but it is the one section where I really got sick. About a quarter mile out of Big Mountain the aforementioned couple that was going to get married at the finish line came up behind Eric and I and the woman immediately started going off about how I was her favorite pacer for up hills. She and her fiancé had a pacer but she was all, "This guy is awesome, he is the best uphill pacer ever, he is my favorite uphill pacer. We need to stay right behind him." I had just come from consuming a lot of fluids and food because I was worried about getting behind on my nutrition and hydration so I had a full stomach and was moving much slower than they were. I told them as much and said that they should really pass but the woman insisted that she and her group stay behind me because I am "awesome on the up-hills."

As I later discussed with Ian I should have insisted and if that didn't work just stopped and made them pass but that's not what I did. Instead I just kept going but I was feeling pushed from behind because they were clearly wanting to move faster than the pace I had chosen despite my apparent awesomeness. I guess that subconsciously I increased my pace and that combined with talking with Eric lead me to feel nauseous because with all the blood going to parts other than my stomach for digestion everything I had taken in at Big Mountain was just sitting in my gut like a rock. Once I got sick I really slowed and then of course the people who had been riding my tail no longer thought I was awesome so they quickly passed with a cheery "I'm sure we'll see you later!" I was now sick and grumpy with probably six miles to Alexander Ridge and poor Eric still had a thousand questions.

We went along slowly and I explained to him how I was feeling and the stupid mistake I had made. I explained to him what I needed to try and to and how I was going to try and regroup at Alexander Ridge and make a comeback. Of course this eventuated numerous questions from Eric and even speaking was making me sick but I trudged on keeping my attitude in check knowing that this would eventually end. By the time I finally got to Alexander Ridge I had gone for about two and a half hours with nothing to eat or drink and I was feeling like absolute crap. Eric was good in the aid station and he spent his time getting things for me and alerting the aid station workers to my condition. He also grabbed a couple blankets and wrapped them around my shoulders because I was getting chilled since evening was approaching and I was still sweaty from the day.

As bad as I felt at the Alexander Ridge Aid station I have to say that I am very glad I felt bad at that particular aid station because I learned something that is pure gold. One of the aid station workers is a nurse as is her sister apparently. When she heard I was struggling with nausea she said, "You need to sniff rubbing alcohol". I didn't have any idea what she was talking about and said, "I need to do what?" to which she repeated, "You need to sniff rubbing alcohol. It will stop your nausea. I can't take credit for it because my sister told me about it but that's what they do with cancer patients who are going through chemotherapy to help stop the nausea." Of course I was thinking that my nausea was bush league compared to the nausea experienced by people going through chemo so if it worked I should be as good as gold.

The nurse broke out one of those paper packets with the alcohol wipe in it and handed it to Eric who opened it up and brought it over. I began sniffing in the fumes and it really did seem to help almost immediately. I continued to feel some mild queasiness but I think that's because I immediately started to eat and drink as much as I could stomach. With the full-blown nausea gone I knew I had to pile on the nutrition because I was way behind. It was disappointing to see people pass through Alexander Ridge that I had passed miles before but sometimes you just have to suck it up and be very, very patient. Within about 20 minutes I had a full stomach and no nausea. Eric and I got back out on the trail and began the nearly six mile trek to Lambs Canyon where we would meet up with Ian and the GeekGrl.

By the time Eric and I arrived it was dark and my crew was worried but I was feeling good and was back on top of my nutrition. At Lambs Canyon I thanked Eric and we said our goodbyes, I put on a warmer shirt for night running, grabbed my mega-beam headlamp and hand-held flashlight and picked up Ian who was slated to pace me for the final 47 miles of the race.

You depart the Lambs Canyon aid station on paved road and the segment of the course between Lambs Canyon and Mill Creek, also know and Upper Big Water, has about five miles of road in total. It is very important that you know exactly how this road is split. When Ian and I left Lambs I had it in my mind that it was five miles of road and then some trail into Mill Creek. Ian was impressed by how few course markings he had seen on the road sections he had driven earlier while scoping out the course. It turns out this was a bad combination of impressions to have.

The road out of Lambs winds and there are a few cars on it who tend to come straight at you with their headlights on. We were power walking the road because it goes uphill and I was still in my making sure the aid station food settles a bit mode. We say no course markings but there was a person or two every once in a while. We thought we saw course markings indicating a turn off about twice and Ian went and checked it out but it turned out to be nothing. Eventually we stopped seeing people but this didn't immediately strike us as unusual because we weren't seeing many people anyway. Not seeing course markings on the road section was also completely unsurprising since earlier Ian had driven three miles of road on the course and only seen one marking the entire time. Eventually, though, it became too much. We were really getting worried that we had missed a turn but for the life of us we could not imagine where. I finally said, "Screw it, let's run back as far as we need to until we find someone who knows they are on course" and so we turned back and started running back downhill. In about a half mile we came across a truck driving up the road and Ian stopped it and asked if he knew the course. The driver confirmed we were off course and that the turn off was about a mile and a half back down the road.

Crap! Oh well, at least now we were sure. We ran as hard as we could back down the road and eventually came across a group of people standing around a very obviously marked junction where we were supposed to turn off onto some single track trail. As far as we could tell there are three possible reasons, or some combination of all three, that cause us to miss the turn and add about three miles and 40 minutes to my Wasatch experience. Our strongest suspicion is that group of people at the trail head were either re-marking or marking for the first time the appropriate turn. Another possibility is that the trail was marked in such a way that it was more visible if you were approaching it slowly or from the opposite direction, in other words, from the direction you would be coming from had you missed the turn and then turned around and back tracked. The third possibility, and one I consider most likely, is that it just happened that when we were coming up on that turn a couple cars drove by us slowly with their headlights shining in our eyes so we put our heads down and shielded our vision as we walked on past the turn.

In any case, it sucked. In a race like Wasatch when you are already a back of the pack runner you do not need to add time, distance and climbing. Fortunately I was feeling really good at that time and Ian was fresh so despite the fact that the single track lead to an immediate, steep climb, we motored right up passing several people along the way. Once you crested the climb there is a big downhill on single track that leads to more road where you pick up the additional three miles of road in this section. So, to reiterate; between Lambs Canyon and Mill Creek…about two miles of road out of lambs then a 90 degree right turn onto dirt trail that goes up, up, up and then down, down, down and dumps you off on another paver road that you turn left onto and follow all the way to the Mill Creek aid station.

About a half mile before Ian and I arrived at the Mill Creek aid station I started getting really cold and kept asking Ian how much farther it was to the aid station. He was doing his best to let me know but of course he couldn't make it get there any faster. I was getting colder and colder and really starting to worry about how far away this aid station might be. We finally arrived and I dropped myself into a chair immediately in from of a portable heater and my crew and aid station worked threw a blanket over my shoulder. Despite this I started shaking uncontrollably within seconds of stopping. For the first time in a race I was hypothermic.

An aid station worker asked my crew if I wanted to use their warming tent and of course we all said yes in unison. They all walked me over to the warming tent and laid me out on a cot and piled me with blankets and placed a portable heater right next to me. They also put my running pants on me along with my jacket and a wool cap. I continued shaking almost like I was having seizures and the medical personnel manning the tent told me that I needed to try and relax as much as I could because the tensing of my muscles while shaking would constrict blood flow and make it harder for my body to warm. I laid there alternately shaking and trying to relax. I eventually warmed up, bundled up and headed back out to finish the race. At the end of the race I was talking to the GeekGrl about time I had lost on the course and mentioned that I had lost about 20 minutes in the warming tent. It turns out I was wrong, I was there for an hour! The GeekGrl told me I kept fading in and out and she kept rustling around near me trying to keep me awake.

So, now that I warmed up Ian and I headed back out heading for Desolation Lake and then on to Brighton Lodge. This section of the course had some of the most runnable trail of the entire course. The first part was a steady uphill so we didn’t run that but then there were several downhill and flat sections where I was able to make up considerable time. I’m not sure what it is about this race but when it was possible I was running through the night better than any other race I’ve done. I know part of it had to do with the fact that I have a super bright headlamp and hand-held flashlight combo but it also happened that a lot of the best trail took place during my night hours. This section between Mill Creek and Brighton Lodge went by pretty fast but towards the end I started to feel sick again. I was complaining about this to Ian when I suddenly realized that I wasn’t getting sick but I was just extremely hungry and was experiencing hunger pains. I realized that I had been fueling mostly with gels, chomps and fluids and I seriously needed some solid food.

When Ian and I got to Brighton lodge it was like heaven. The Brighton Lodge aid station is inside a ski lodge building so it is nice and warm and there is plenty of seating with tables where you can set your stuff. They also had a grill fired up and were cooking eggs, hash browns and sausage. It was also nice and warm and I was starting to get a little cold again. I sat down while Ian got me something to eat and drink. I had two fried egg sandwiches with cheese, and sausage and hash browns. I also had two large glasses of orange juice, it was awesome!

When I was in Brighton Lodge I felt pretty good and new I had some time and knew I had a hard final 25 miles ahead of me so I just took my time and fueled up. The alternative name for the Brighton aid station is the morgue and there were a lot of people who looked pretty bad. Brighton is definitely not a place you should leave feeling bad in any way because the last 25 miles of Wasatch are the hardest miles of the course containing sure trail segments as “The Plunge”, “The Dive”, and “The Grunt”.

I left Brighton fully fueled and feeling good. Right out of the aid station you climb to the highest point of the course Point Supreme at 10,450 feet. The climb up was actually pretty mellow with good trails and beautiful scenery. The beginning of the climb for me was dark and the sun rose steadily as Ian and I climbed. As we neared the top I was closing in on more people and by the time I reached the top I had passed maybe five and more were visible on the downslope.

The downslope drops 1450 feet in about one and three quarter miles on a narrow rocky trail. Much to my amazement I had plenty of quads left to go screaming down into the Ant Knoll aid station below and that’s exactly what I did. The slope was so steep and rocky I had to hold my arms out like I was an airplane and I had to yell ahead of me to get the attention of the people gingerly walking down the trail below. It was a complete blast! From behind me I heard someone yell out “Way to drop your pacer!” another thing I have some experience with. Below me people were stepping off the trail and encouraging me on. When I finally rolled into Ant Knolls I felt awesome and just focused on riding the high and getting out as quickly as possible. While there one of the aid station workers said they were watching me fly down the mountainside and he said “That was pretty cool, everyone walks down that stretch.” Ant knolls was another aid station where I saw a lot of people sitting in chairs and looking pretty beat up. I have to imagine that they had been the ones to leave Brighton Lodge without resting and fueling.

Immediately out of Ant Knoll is a short but steep climb called the Grunt. It contains maybe three switchbacks but it really is a slow slog to the top but once there you are treated to fairly mellow trails and sweeping vistas of mountain meadows. This section between the top of the grunt and the Pole Line Pass aid station is about the last descent running of the race. Once you leave Pole Line Pass it is pretty much hell from there on out. I wasn’t feeling particularly bad but the day was heating back up and a lot of the trail was extremely rocky, dusty and steep. The combination of high heat and bad trail kept my pace way down and of course the longer I was out there the hotter it got.

The final couple miles of the course finally relented and became runnable but the heat did not relent so I continued to walk. There was no need to punish myself in order to cut a few minutes off my time because that couple minutes would not get me the sub-30 hour finish necessary to get a special buckle. With about a mile and a half to go some clouds rolled in and the temperature dropped by at least 10 degrees and since the sun wasn’t beating down on me I decided I could go ahead and run the rest of the way in. I checked out my Garmin data and was able to pull off an 8 minute mile for the last mile and I crossed the finish line extremely happy to be done.

My total time, 33 hours 32 minutes and 52 seconds. My fantasy goal was sub-30 hours and that is something I think I could do with a bit better training and a bit better day. However, I came into the race predicting a finish time of 34+ hours so all in all it was definitely a good race for me. There were 270 runners who started, 183 who finished and I was number 131. Just in terms of overall placement Wasatch ended up being my best 100-miler to date.

Quad Crusher: A Taos Ski Valley Up and Over 10K Race Report

2011-08-27T21:18:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks back the GeekGrl and I traveled to Taos, NM to run the Taos Ski Valley Up and Over 10K, a race I have wanted to do for a few years now but just never got around to it. The 10K starts at the base of the main ski lift and is a loop course taking a service road up to the top of the lift and then back down. I don’t have the foggiest idea what kind of vehicle could make it up and down those service roads but I do know the trip would be terrifying.

The trip up the mountain is a 3 mile power hike with a little running if you happen to be a strong enough runner. However, there were plenty of people who tried to run as much as possible regardless and this resulted in many slowing dramatically within the first two miles. I kept up a steady hike with a very little bit of running on the slightly less steep parts.

Upon reaching the top the service road plunges abruptly back down the mountain. The road is covered in rocks and the footing isn’t very good. I ran as hard as I could but had to be a bit conservative because I didn’t want to crash and burn. I was able to pass a couple people and was passed by one guy who was in a barely controlled fall.

By the time I crossed the finish like I was hardly had any strength left. The aftermath of the race set in before the day was out and it took a good four days before I could run again. My quads were completely trashed and I had a huge bruise on the ball of my left foot where I had landed hard on a rock. With a time of 1:17:38 I ended up 21st out of 59 men and 22nd out of 80 overall. I seriously doubt I could have run any faster under any circumstance. The Taos Ski Valley Up and Over 10K is incomparably difficult but definitely something worth running if you are in the area.

A New Experience with an Old Friend: A La Luz Trail Run Race Report (sort of)

2011-08-12T11:25:00.001-07:00

I first moved to Albuquerque as a teenager in 1984. I didn't know anyone and the only reason I was in Albuquerque was because the experiment with me living on my own to finish off high school in Wichita Falls, TX wasn't working out so well. I called my dad and asked him to come get me and so he did. Those were pretty lonely times in my life with my senior year in high school being a complete mess smeared across two different states and three different schools: Wichita Falls High School – Texas, Del Norte High School – New Mexico and Southwest High School – back to Texas but this time San Antonio.

This is one fact of my life that I truly hate. I have no real options for a high school reunion. The place I graduate from, Southwest H.S., I have no connection to, I went there the last semester of my senior year and while I made some friends I have no connection to them or that place. The place where I actually have connections is Wichita Falls but even there my connections are spread between my time at Rider High School and Wichita Falls High School and I didn't graduate from either. It just seems sad for a non-graduate to go to a reunion but I do long for that sense of continuity in my life. In my 12 years of schooling from 1st grade to 12th I went to 13 different schools spanning an area of about 200,000 square miles.
That is a lot of space for a young man to become lost.

When I arrived in Albuquerque back in 1984 I was depressed and alone and even then I knew what I had lost in departing Wichita Falls before graduation. Given my young life as a transient Wichita Falls was my last, best hope at having an enduring link to my past but I could not pull it off by myself and I felt like I was risking my future just for the possibility of having something that I had long craved but never had – stability, continuity, a history grounded in place. It was a hard decision for a young man to make but it was inventible that I chose to leave because at that point the unknown future always looked far more real to me than either the present or past. The future was my comfort zone; I knew it would always be there for me.

To be able to literally wander in the wilderness while I was figuratively already there was a great comfort. It didn't take long for me to discover the La Luz trail though I can't for the life of me figure out how I got from where I was living to the trail head. I suspect that first time my dad took me. I wasn't in Albuquerque very long though, maybe a month and a half or two months before winter break and then it was off to San Antonio to finish off high school living with my mom. I remained largely in the wilderness there too. She lived out in a rural area on 15 acres of land at that time and I spent hours with a double bladed axe clearing the land of scrub trees. I probably did my work pretty haphazardly and don't know that I actually accomplished a lot of value because it was mostly me trying to pound out my anger.

Not long after graduation I was back in Albuquerque and back to the La Luz trail. There is a place on the trail where you can descend into a kind of hidden grotto where a small waterfall splashes down from above and lands at the feet of a mighty pine tree. It is cool and secluded. I loved that place so much that I never bother going further up the trail. I would often just go to my place and sit and think.

In the years between high school and college while I was away in the Marine Corps I would often go back to visit the La Luz trail while on leave still never ascending beyond my quiet grotto. Despite my relatively limited acquaintance with the trail it had somehow become the center of my universe. Enduring, wild and quiet it stands apart from mortality as humans know it. Simultaneously indifferent and welcoming it is always there and wherever my travels took me I knew it was there simply existing until I returned again.

My post-Marine Corp years as an undergraduate at the University of New Mexico saw me once again up on the trail hiking like a mad man both on the trail and around some of the small side trails in the area. In my mind I was trying to become human again. My time in the Marine Corps has gotten much better with time and distance but when I first left I felt quite damaged and I needed to reclaim myself. I called these outings my "In through the Outdoors" outings; a not so subtle play on Led Zeppelin's album "In though the Out Door", which, incidentally, was also named because, in a sense, they were trying to get back to who they had been as well.

For whatever reason, probably because I had found so much richness at the bottom of the trail, it never even occurred to me to try and get to the top. I had seen people running up the trail and had known people who had climbed to the top but the upper reaches of the trail, even the entire rest of the mountain, held no interest for me, that is until I got into ultra-running.

However, once I began ultra-running I was spending all my time running pretty much everywhere else on the mountain except La Luz. Maybe somewhere in my subconscious I viewed La Luz as my emotional salve and that isn't something I feel I need these days. I have actually been a bit resistant to running La Luz, again, maybe because I didn't want to go back to that place I had long ago left behind.

But back to the trail I went to run the 46th annual La Luz Trail Run. The race begins at 6100 feet elevation and nine miles later finishes at an elevation of 10,678 feet. Other than the first mile and a half when everyone is on open road and jockeying for position I was passed only once during the entire climb though I passed maybe 50 people on the way to the top.

It felt good, I felt strong. My relationship with the trail has changed completely. We are long-term friends and I no longer need it for my own purposes. I am free to simply be with it and not just on it and in my head. Maybe this is the story of the Giving Tree from the boy's perspective. If it is I can assure you the boy feels enormous gratitude. The tree, the trail, was a solid center when I needed it most and I like to think I am better for it.

Chunky Monkey Race Report and Other Non-Monkey Related News

2011-08-06T15:43:00.000-07:00

I didn’t plan on actually writing up a race report for a 10K but I figured I had some interim new to post before my next race, which is tomorrow, so what the heck.

Back on July 17th I ran the Chunky Monkey 10K for the second time. It’s a cool little local race and if run in conjunction with the Cherry Garcia, which I also ran, you get a little medal for completing the Chunky Monkey Challenge. The Cherry Garcia was June 26th and it was 98 degrees at the start. Both these races start at 7:00 in the evening and both take place on the same flat, two loop course near Albuquerque’s Valley High School. I ran the Cherry Garcia in 52:31, which I thought was surprisingly fast considering I was only 10 days out of running the Bighorn Trail 100 and it was 98 degrees. My time earned me fourth place in my age group. When I ran the Chunky Monkey I was better rested and it was a whopping 3 degrees cooler, so only 95 degrees. I ran the Chunky Monkey in 50:47 and ended up winning my age group. I probably shouldn’t mention that for whatever reason my age group was almost the slowest age group among the men with the exception of the two age groups above 60 but that’s the way it was.

So, in non-monkey related news, sadly I did not make New Mexico’s Army 10-miler team. I did make first alternate though so that’s not too bad. I gave it my best shot but this was something that was kind of sprung on me and the only real chance I had to run a fast 10K qualifying time was two weeks after I set my 50K PR and at a time when the weather was already heating up. Next year I’ll know it’s coming so I’ll try and get in my qualifying time when it’s cooler and I am better rested. I will need to knock about 90 seconds off my current 10K PR to be in the running for a spot on the team.

In better non-monkey related news, I DID make the New Mexico Army National Guard’s marathon team! I am very pleased about making the team and now will get to go to Lincoln Nebraska in May of 2012 to compete in the Army National Guard’s marathon, which means I’ll have a shot at making the All Guard marathon team. Now, realistically, I am unlikely to make the All Guard team because that would mean dropping my marathon time by about 15 minutes. But…I guess you never know. I am seriously considering trying even harder to lose more weight and implementing an actual marathon training program rather than just logging ultra-miles and using the marathons as training races. The things that make me think that a marathon in the 3:15 – 3:12 range might be possible is that my marathon PR, currently 3:28, was run the weekend after I ran two other fast marathons and I wasn’t doing any marathon specific training and I wasn’t doing any speed-work. So, maybe it is in the cards.

I also need to drop my marathon PR to 3:25 to have any hope of making it to Boston. But that’s only a bare minimum. The way Boston is doing qualification now is by taking the fastest first in order of speed. My qualifying time for 2012 is 3:30 so I’ll get to apply for Boston 2012 but they take the fastest first until the race is full so I’m guessing I won’t make it. For Boston 2013 and beyond my new qualifying time is 3:25 and the fastest first thing still applies so, yeah, I have a lot of work to do.

Tomorrow I have the La Luz Trail Run, which is a 9-mile race up the side of the Sandia Mountain. This year will be its 46th running but the first time I’ve ever run the race. You get in by lottery only but I think that most people do end up getting in. I’m hoping for a time of about two and a half hours, we’ll see.

Finally, I’m a bit skeptical about my training for Wasatch. I have been putting in the miles religiously but the problem has been that the mountains in pretty much all of New Mexico have been closed due to fire so I’ve done very little in the way of actual mountain running. I suspect that Wasatch will end up being a lot like my experience at Bighorn this year; I’ll have the endurance to finish but not the climbing strength to do well. Bighorn had a 35 hour cutoff and I ran a 33:11. Wasatch has a 36 hour cutoff so I’m predicting something in the 34 hour range.

Of Mountains and Mole Hills: A Bighorn 100 Race Report

2011-06-28T19:11:00.000-07:00

Bighorn was my second mountain 100 of the several I want to complete. My first was Leadville and now having done Bighorn I think Leadville was a good introduction to mountain 100s because, and I hate to say this, it is comparatively easy. Don’t get me wrong, Leadville is a hard race and for some it may be completely out of reach. At Leadville you must be able to cope with the elevation, which through no fault of their own, some people can’t. You also have to deal with the cutoff times, which most people agree are a bit tight for the level of difficulty of the course.

However, there are large sections of Leadville that are very runnable, most of the climbing and descending is pretty manageable and the hardest climbs, up and down Hope Pass, contain a fair number of switchbacks. While this may sound obvious, the switchbacks really help take the edge off the steepness of a climb and, at a minimum, they change things up a bit giving you a stronger sense of forward progress.

I have to premise any comparisons of the two courses by saying that I did not run the “real” bighorn course but rather an alternate snow route, which incidentally was comprised of at least 85% of the normal course. I also ran Leadville in a perfect year. A friend of mine, Kurt, said I was almost cheating by running Leadville under such excellent conditions and of course the conditions on the day of the race can make all the difference.

In any case, the Bighorn course has few of the nice features of the Leadville course. Where Leadville has many runnable sections Bighorn has an equal measure of sections that few people are really able to run. The cruelest of which comes toward the end of the race between the climb called “The Wall” and the TR TH aid station. This section of trail is one you cover at the start of the race and you know it is steep but you are fresh so it’s a really good warm-up and you are slowed down enough that you can just enjoy the wildflowers and the gentle warmth of the Wyoming sun. However, on your return trip you quickly discover “Wow, this is freakishly steep!” and much of it is hard to run down. A fellow runner told me after the race “I felt like my knees were going to explode” and this was from a guy who was in the very respectable 26 hour finishing time frame.

Of course the corollary to the “unrunnably” steep downhills in some areas is the unrunnably steep uphill. I read once that the main difference between trails on the east coast and the west coast is that the trails on the east coast were mostly made by people and so they tended to go straight up the sides of hills whereas the trails in the west often originated with animal trails so they tend to have switchbacks and meander up and down the sides of mountains. Apparently the humans and animals in the Bighorn Mountains didn’t get this memo because there wasn’t a single switchback on the trail. The only deviations from straight up the mountain that any trail took were out of necessities such as avoiding a boulder, going to a narrower point in a stream or simply changing direction. The unbridled enthusiasm for going both straight and vertical that is exhibited by the people of the Bighorn Mountains made for a lot of very slow climbs.

On a more positive note, the exceedingly steep climbs and descents made it considerably easier for me to calculate the amount of time it would likely take me to get to the next aid station. I knew, based on the terrain I could currently see, that any given mile would take me either 20 minutes or 30 minutes to cover. If what I was looking at was flat or gently downhill at the moment I knew I was very near something unpleasant but I could take advantage of the current respite and probably accomplish a 20 minute mile while covering what I could see and the bit of unpleasantness that was invariably right around the next bend. Alternatively, if I was looking at some steep, rocky climb with water pouring down it and mud bogs flanking either side I knew that it would go on considerably longer than you would expect thus resulting in a 30 minute mile. This resulted in most aid stations being anywhere from an hour to two hours away. Leadville also has aid stations that take a good while to get to but that’s mostly because they are on average about 10 miles apart.

The final comparison between Leadville and Bighorn are aid stations. Leadville is a far larger race so that needs to be considered. The aid stations at Leadville more closely resemble mini-marts or sidewalk cafes than they do their distant cousin, the typical marathon aid station with cups of water and Gatorade. The one “limited” aid station at Leadville is packed up onto Hope Pass on the backs of llamas and even it contains soda and hot soup among other things though by comparison to the rest of the Leadville buffet it is limited.

Bighorn, on the other hand, has raised to limited aid station to a fine art form. Don’t get me wrong, Bighorn has a lot of good aid stations with attentive and dedicated volunteers. At least three of the aid stations required that aid be either brought in by horseback or backed packed in under human power while several others required lengthy and undoubtedly nerve-wracking drives using powerful ATVs. What impressed me most was their unmanned “aid stations” at Fence Spring, Creek Spring and Stock Tank.

I have been in three races with unmanned aid stations, the Black Warrior 50K in Moulton Alabama, the Turtle Marathon in Roswell New Mexico and the Rio Del Lago 100 in Granite Bay California. The unmanned aid station at Black Warrior was a collection of 5 gallon water coolers filled with water sitting in the middle of the woods near a stream, the ones at the Turtle Marathon were flats of bottled water sitting on the side of the road and the one at Rio Del Lago consisted of several boxes on one gallon water jugs sitting on a hydroelectric generator of some kind. When I saw there were three unmanned aid stations at Bighorn this is what I had in mind, no big deal.

I was incorrect. The unmanned aid stations at Bighorn are actually natural springs that have had pipes fitted to them. The first one at Fence Spring, however, was buried under a snow bank so the pipe couldn’t be set up for it. It was just a stream pouring down the side of the mountain out from under a snow drift and it was unmarked so it was indistinguishable from any other stream of water out on the course pouring down from somewhere higher. In fact, I didn’t even notice it on the way out because I had no idea that I should be looking for something like that as an aid station. In fairness to the race, they did specifically tell us about that aid station during the pre-race meeting, however, having absolutely no context for an aid station being an unmarked tube sticking out of the side of a mountain the warning about the tubeless Fence Spring just came across as a novel alert that much of the water you saw flowing down the streams in the Bighorns was both quite drinkable and tasty.

I never saw Creek Spring. I did come across a long garden hose coming out from under a snow drift and it was lying in a rush of snowmelt but this was no more than 30 yards from an actual aid station so I doubt that was it though I did suggest to the volunteers at the aid station that if someone would just go over there and shut off the hose the course might not be so muddy. The final unmanned aid station was Stock Tank. That one I both saw and used. It was described in the pre-race brief as an obvious wooden tank that was “almost completely disintegrated but the pipe is in and the water is flowing.” Stock Tank also had those little orange construction flags around it making the presence of human intention all the more obvious. The Stock Tank aid station does come after another plastic stock tank but that one is unmarked and is pretty close to the previous aid station, Cow Camp, so there was some room for confusion but not much, just enough that by the time you see Stock Tank you somewhat incredulously say to yourself, “Oh, THIS is a Bighorn unmanned aid station” and despite your disbelief you feel comfortably correct in your assumption.

Comparisons aside, the Bighorn course itself is not only difficult but it is beautiful. As you can tell I took a ton of pictures and have had a hard time deciding what to discard so I just posted most of them. Apparently this year the wildflowers weren’t as prevalent as they usually are but they were still there in abundance. There are several parts of the course where you are traversing wide open green spaces filled with blue, yellow, purple and white flowering wildflowers. I remember thinking “How very Sound of Music” during the initial big climb out of the Tounge River Valley where the race ascends into the Bighorn Mountains.

During the run from the start in Scott Park I was feeling good and snapping a lot of pictures. The climb is very gradual until you get to the Tounge River Trail Head aid station, listed as the TR TH aid station. From there the course turns sharply upward and I found myself getting stuck behind a few people that were climbing way too slow. In retrospect I’m still not sure if this means I was going out too fast. It didn’t feel like it and I was able to pass even at what felt like an easy pace so I think I was good. It was also during this segment that I missed the unmanned tube, or tubeless, hole in the ground that was the Fence Spring aid station, which resulted in a 7.4 mile uphill trek from the TR TH aid station to the Upper Sheep aid station rather than the 5 mile and 2.4 mile splits I was expecting. Fortunately I had two bottles and it was still relatively cool out so I didn’t run out of water.

The Upper Sheep aid station was at about mile 12.5 and already I had been skirting mud and water in the hopes of saving my feet as long as possible. While the mud and water didn’t slow me down as much as I had feared, it did slow me down because I wasn’t just running willy-nilly through every mud bog and stream crossing. I’m quite sure that would have done me in because there was just so much of it over the length of the course. I picked my way through and jumped streams and mud holes where I could but my feet and lower legs were damp and muddy from maybe mile five to mile 76 when I cleaned off my feet, put duct tape on them and changed into my last dry pair of shoes. The worst of the mud and water occurred between the Cow Camp aid station, about 30 miles into my race, and the Footbridge aid station. Apparently this is the way it always is regardless of what route is taken.

Apart from my adventures with mud I had the usual adventures with trying to keep myself going as did everyone else. The interesting thing for me during this race is that I never really had a low point. I had points when I was annoyed by the next steep climb or descent but beyond that I never hit a point where I was telling myself things like “I only have to make it through until morning.” I’m hoping that this is a new evolution in ultrarunning for me where the races aren’t as psychologically draining. The one point where I briefly considered dropping was mile 76 but at that point I still had eight hours to finish 24 miles. At that point I was weighed at 10 pounds over my pre-race weight and I had been going for 26 hours, my hands were swollen like balloons and the balls of my feet were feeling raw. I was a bit worried but the medical personnel deemed me ok to go. The final kick was sitting next to a women while I was taping my feet who was talking about dropping. She had a friend there who was trying to motivate her to keep going. She said that if she kept going “I might end up being DFL” and the guys trying to keep her going said “So” she said “Well, I don’t want to be a looser.” That did it for me. I have finished second to last in a hundred and as a triathlon referee I have seen many back of the packers and I have gained a great deal of respect for those whom persevere.

The aftermath of the race has been almost more intense than the race itself. It is a bit over a week post-race and my head is just starting to feel clear, my feet are still a little tender and it took about 6 days for the swelling in my legs to go down noticeably. I’m sure it didn’t help my recovery that I had to turn around the day after my return to Albuquerque and immediately fly out to San Diego for training in a new therapy intervention. It took about eight shots of espresso per day to keep me alert and focused during that training and I was still pretty “mellow.”

My next big race is Wasatch, which is supposed to be harder than Bighorn. I won’t lie, I’m a bit nervous about that but my confidence is very high. I have two months of unbroken time to train back up for Wasatch and hit a taper. I’m not going to push it because the chances are I already have the strength and fitness to finish I would just like to sharpen a bit and maybe do better than a finish.

Back in the Saddle Again: A Billy the Kid Tombstone Triathlon Race Report

2011-06-25T13:00:00.000-07:00

, triathlonThe weekend of June 11th was the second running of the Billy the Kid Tombstone Triathlon. I was scheduled to run a 10K up in Colorado to try and hedge my bets in qualifying for the New Mexico Army National Guard running team to go run the Army 10-miler but I decided against it because I have the Bighorn 100 next weekend and I’m just too paranoid that trying to sprint a 10K downhill might get me injured so I took the prudent route. Besides I already submitted one qualifying time about a month ago that may put me on the team and there is still one more race left that provides me with a good chance at getting one more fast time.

In any case, rather than run the 10K the GeekGrl and I opted to run the BTK Sprint Tri out in Ft. Sumner, NM. One interesting thing about this race is about three years ago I was starting to look around the state for a good venue to start a triathlon of my own and I had settled on Ft. Sumner. I thought it would be a good choice because there is a lake, good roads and it lies between two major areas where triathletes from our region come from. The only problem was that I didn’t know anyone in Ft. Sumner nor had I ever even met someone from Ft. Sumner and it is usually a good idea to have someone locally who is supportive of hosting a race. As triathlon season wraped up I decided to shelf the idea for later and it was about then that someone from Ft. Sumner joined the team and she had already started a triathlon out at lake Sumner it’s just that it was so small nobody I knew had ever heard of it and it had only happened once.

Going into this race I hadn’t been swimming since August and that was in another sprint tri. I also haven’t been on a bike much at all. This year I have logged a total of 64 miles on the bike and that even includes the BTK tri. However, I know that my running can carry me through a sprint.

The water was about 72 degrees so I opted to wear my sleeveless wetsuit though I probably could have gone without it. When the starting gun fired I took off and was swimming very well. It happened that in my wave a high school swim team comprised about half the people and despite my good swim I was quickly left behind. Little did I know that I was actually leading the “regular” swimmers so all I could see were the swim team leaving me behind. I was worried about swimming straight but that didn’t become a problem. What did become a problem was shoulder fatigue. I was pretty surprised to find myself hoping for the end of a 400 meter swim well down from my Ironman swim fitness of being able to go 2.4 miles at a slightly faster pace than I was achieving at the moment.

I came out of the water and got through transition pretty quickly. The bike at BTK is an out and back on rolling country roads. It is also 16 miles long, which was a bit unusual for a sprint. However, it became apparently why it was 16 miles half way through the race. At the bike turn around there is a large tree, the only tree along the road, so it is easy to say, “Just ride out to the tree and turn around. The bike wasn’t hard but I still struggled with it. While my leg strength is fine my tolerance for riding hard and feeling that level of discomfort on the bike is pretty much gone but I was still able to knock out a 20+ mph average speed on the bike, which put me at about 7th fastest overall.

Getting off the bike I was able to get through transition pretty quickly again and I headed out for the run, which began with about ¾ of a mile uphill. The run felt pretty good but I was far enough out front that the few people ahead of me were too far ahead and there wasn’t many people close enough behind me to be passed assuming I could hold the pace to the finish line. The day was starting to heat up toward the end of the run and fellow Outlaw Carl Armstrong was starting to gain on me. Of course he had started in the wave behind me so by the time I saw him he was probably already ahead of me but I still wanted to cross the finish line first because I’m compulsively competitive that way.

I came across the finish line of my first triathlon since August 2010 feeling pretty good and of course, once again, I had a really good time. Triathlon is so much fun I just wish the training for it didn’t suck so much. For the life of me I don’t know how I trained up for seven Ironman races but it’s pretty difficult to imagine stomaching that much time on the bike and in the swim again. Maybe someday.

Next up is the Bighorn 100 mile trail run!

Did I just say it’s hardtop imagine swimming and biking enough to do another Ironman and then immediately follow it up with “next up is the Bighorn 100 mile trail run”? I can at least still appreciate the irony.

Once Again Into the Breach: A Jemez Mountain Trail 50K Race Report

2011-06-14T13:48:00.000-07:00

This was my third year at the Jemez Mountain Trail Runs. My first year I ran the half-marathon and then the next day rode the Santa Fe Century. Back then I had done some ultras but I still really considered myself a triathlete. My next showing at Jemez was last year when I intended on running the 50K with the GeekGrl. She decided to drop at mile 6.5 and just finish her day with the half so I took off on my own and ran too hard to try and “catch up”, with what or who I don’t know. I had a good run for a while but ended up slogging through a hot wind in the exposed and rocky burn area. I was a pretty miserable for about the last 8 miles and ended up with a finish time of about 9:45.

This year I came to Jemez determined to have a good race, my own race, and see what I could do on what is widely considered to be the hardest 50K in the United States. I drove up to Los Alamos the morning of the race, which works out fine because I can start pushing food and fluids during the drive up. The GeekGrl was coming to get her revenge on the 50K and a brand new trail runner named Uneeka was also along to run her first mountain half-marathon. One thing worth mentioning about the Jemez runs is that, at least the 50K and the half-marathon are both long. The 50K is about 33 miles and the half is actually 14.

My good friend JT from Las Vegas, NV came out to challenge the 50K course as did several Outlaws including Jane, Mark, Ken, Margaret, and Nicki. I had only had two weeks rest since the completion of my four marathons in two weeks but I felt surprisingly good. At the start I rolled out easy and by the time the road gave way to single track I was at a place where I felt comfortable just running in line and I didn’t expend the least amount of energy trying to shoot past anyone. There were a couple spots before the climb up to Gage Ridge where we crossed a dirt road and I did take the opportunity to pass then but otherwise I just cruised along.

When we hit the first big climb up Gage I kicked in the climbing gear and started passing people right and left. I was very happy to see that, despite the fact I have been struggling with a hip injury ever since the Rocky Raccoon 100 and have been running a lot more flat than usual I still retained some good climbing ability. Once atop Gage I started the steep descent down to Caballo base. This was the first serious downhill running I have done in a few months, again, because of the injury, and I immediately noticed that I felt much less sure footed and less stable. Most of the actual single track at Jemez is very narrow, often rocky, often with a slope and sometimes with a crumbling edge that gives way to a steep drop off. These conditions make for tenuous footing even when I'm feeling trained up but in this case it was downright scary at times.

Last year when my mountain running skills were peaking I was screaming down these descents. This year, not so much. Once again I just fell in line and chugged on down the mountain putting way too much stress on my quads and grabbing trees so I could either swing myself around corners to make a turn or to stop myself from overshooting corners and ending up in the ravine below. The run to Caballo base was nice as always with lots of tree cover and a cool stream running alongside the trail. Once at Caballo base the major climb of the race began. I kicked in the climbing gear again and it responded nicely. As I chugged up the mountain I reflected on how much it sucked learning how to climb well in my training for Leadville. I was so slow and people who were smaller than I would just fly by. I learned to just be patient and keep moving and it would all be fine.

The trip back down Caballo was another story. I am used to being able to fly downhill but not this year, not with the lack of mountain running. So, once again, I chugged down the mountain and once again I was just hammering my quads by breaking too much with every step. By the time I got to the bottom of Caballo my shoes were full of dirt and rocks so I spent a goodly amount of time emptying them and wiping off my socks. I also fueled up and then headed back out on the trail.

After departing Caballo base heading toward Pipeline I came across a youg guy who was looking pretty good but every once in a while he would suddenly drop to the side of the trail and say something like “I’m exhausted” or “Holy cow this is hard.” I didn’t give it a lot of thought until we somehow ended up in a conversation when he told me “I thought this was a marathon, I didn’t know there were mountains. This is my first marathon.” All I could think was “What the hell?! Have you ever heard of the internet?” I generously though he must be from some distant place where they have no knowledge of New Mexico and think it’s just a big, flat desert but no, it turns out that he was from a small town not 30 miles away.

I asked Marathon Guy if he had been eating and drinking. He told me he had eaten one Powerbar. I looked at my watch and we were 3 hours and 17 minutes into the race. I stifled the impulse to say, “Dude, you are screwed. You should have eaten like three of those by now.” Instead I just said, “Ok, when you get to the next aid station (which I knew was at least a hard 3 miles away) you need to get a lot of food and water in you even if it becomes a bit uncomfortable. You need to get some salt too. You should leave the aid station feeling kind of full but you can just walk briskly until that feeling goes away and then you can start running again. By the time you get to the next aid station after that you should be ok and can just eat and drink normally.” I then left him to his own devices and wished him well. In the end he actually did pretty well finishing maybe a half hour behind me.

After leaving Marathon Guy behind I continued the long climb up to Pipeline. Most people are unprepared for this climb because they are so focused on Caballo and when you look at an elevation profile it doesn't really stand out because your eyes are drawn to Gauge and Caballo. However, if you focus on the elevation changes listed in the course description you will see that the climb to Pipeline is not insubstantial and it can really suck once you have spent you climbing legs. As I was heading up this climb there was a small train of us moving about the same pace though I did pass a few people. One guy stopped and leaned against a large boulder and said, "I'm just going to hold this boulder here for a bit so it doesn't roll down on people." It was a pretty funny excuse for a rest.

For some reason I have never liked the entire section between Pipeline out to the turnaround at the Ski Lodge and then back to Pipeline. It's not that it is bad running, it is actually some of the best footing and most runnable area of the entire course, it's just, I think, that it occurs during the middle low points of my race. This is a section that you run not only in the Jemez 50K and 50 mile but you also run it during the 15-miler at the Pajarito Trail fest. I like both of these races but this one section takes place when I am at a low point and so I think I have permanently associated the section with "bleh." I mostly focused on just putting this section behind me but it was during my return from the Ski Lodge to Pipeline when the eventual 50-mile winner, Nick Clark, passed me.

Being passed by Nick was a pretty impressive sight. It's not because Nick is an imposing figure, it's because he was obviously struggling as his pacer verbally flogged him onward and he was able to respond. When he passed me he was at about mile 41 after having completed all the major climbs of the course. He was running uphill and his pacer was ahead of him saying, "Come on, were running slow 8s, let's go!" and there was Nick with sweat drenched hair and his beard to his chest just powering along.

After inbound Pipeline there were a couple of short but very steep climbs that I had forgotten about and that were definitely unwelcome. It was here that I got passed by who I suspect were two of the top women's 50K finishers. They were both exceedingly small and moving up the steep hill quite briskly. Though they were only walking I would not have been able to match their pace had I been running. I finished off the two climbs and then began a long, gradual descent back to the Gauge Ridge aid station. This section of the course is very runable trail and is mostly in dappled sunlight so the growing heat wasn't too bad. Unlike last year when I was already pretty much finished by this time I was still running comfortably if not speedily.
Back at Gauge Ridge aid station I grabbed a quick bite to eat and refilled my water bottles in preparation for the part of the course that makes me question why I do this race. The burn area is rocky, dusty, completely exposed and hot, always hot. The other problem with it is that it is long, one of the longest stretches between aid stations in the race. I'm sure the section is only made longer by my constant complaining about how hot and dusty it is and the continuous question, "Why am I doing this race again!" but this year I fared much better than in previous years and only got passed once and was never reduced to a true slog.

Once off the ridge and back into the canyon I actually passed a couple people that had obviously been scorched by the burn area and while I felt for them I was very glad not to actually be one of them. The final aid station of the race was called Last Chance this year, last year it was called Pinky's. From the last aid station to the finish line it is only about 2.5 miles but about ¾ of a mile of it is a pretty good uphill climb so I took some extra time at the aid station refueling, filling a water bottle with ice cold water and drinking some soda. I know that a little extra time here makes the journey to the finish line far more pleasant.

I was able to pass about three more people between the last aid station and the finish and was closing in on a fourth person but he looked back and saw me and still had enough of a gap on me to finish first. I finished my own race in 7:35:42, which is a pretty good time for Jemez. To provide some perspective on just how hard Jemez is, this year I set a new 50K PR at Mt. Si with a time of 4:18:47 and that course had just over 1000 feet of climbing. I think the Jemez 50K has something like 8,000 feet of climbing and considerably harder trails.

Will I do this race again next year? Who knows, probably but I really don't want to. Don't get me wrong, it's a great race but it's one of those deals where it is practically in my backyard and I run very similar terrain throughout my training season. I like to travel around and mix it up. However, it's convenient and perfectly positioned as a final hard training run for some of the mountain 100s that I have my eye on. This year that 100 is Bighorn where we will be running on an alternate snow route and will get to experience snow, mud, flooding and possible thunder showers….yea!

On The Road to See America: Wisconsin & Kalamazoo Marathon Double Header

2011-05-27T17:45:00.000-07:00

Wisconsin Marathon

The GeekGrl and I flew to Chicago just one week after flying to Nashville so we could knock out two more marathons and see if we could complete the “Double Double.” I have done three marthons in two consecutive weekends but never four so this would be a new experience for both of us. After landing in Chicago we drove to Kenosha Wisconsin and got checked in to the hotel before heading to packet pickup. Talk about a different vibe, the Wisconsin marathon packet pickup took place in two separate rooms of a Best Western hotel and you had to follow hand-made signs to get from one room to another.

Unlike the prior weekend of gargantuan expos and packet pickups that requires hundreds of volunteers to staff, the Wisconsin marathon expo was a couple tables, one of cheese of course, and about five people handing out bib numbers. This kind of scene is really more my speed and I really appreciated the lower key atmosphere.

The next morning it took us longer to drive from the hotel to the race start and I ended up having to park maybe a mile away. As soon as we got to the start we met up with Mike and Jenny Wimmer but I had to get in line for the restroom immediately so Misty was the only one who got to hang around and talk with them before the race started. As I was standing in line the clock was ticking much faster than the line was moving and when I was in the restroom I heard the starting gun go off. I finished up and when I came out the door I saw that I would get to start the race and the very back of the pack but at least I would be starting with the main pack and not running across the start after everyone was gone, not that it really matters because it is chip timed after all.

The people I was running with at the back of the pack were crowded in pretty tightly on the narrow streets and I found myself running up on sidewalks just to pass but I was able to break free in fairly short order. The course is the flattest I have ever run. There was a bit of a roll in it near a park on what I think was the northern end of the course but it couldn’t have gained more than 10 feet. We ran a little through the town of Kenosha, through some nice residential streets, a little bit of farmland and along Lake Michigan.

Where the people of Cincinnati at the Flying Pig were enthusiastic and boisterous the people of Kenosha were polite and reserved. This was a race where you could just get lost in your thoughts and run and that is exactly what I did. I saw the GeekGrl out on the course once and gave her a kiss. I saw Mike and yelled hi and I stopped briefly to give a cramping runner some Endurolytes but other than that I just zoned out and ran. I felt pretty good too and still felt good at the end. Unlike the Country Music Marathon the prior weekend when I got caught up in a sprint to the finish, I just moseyed on across the finish line in a time of 3:41:25 and immediately collected my Cheese Medal, which is really cool.

After getting my medal I walked over to get my free bratwurst. Sadly I decided to skip my free beer because I had about a 5 hour drive to Kalamazoo, MI ahead of me followed by another marathon in the morning. I hung out briefly in the post-race party area and listened to the rock polka band, which was awesome, and then headed out to see if I could locate our rental car and move it closer to the finish line so the GeekGrl didn’t have to walk so far after the finish. I finally found the car after walking for quite a while, drove back over near the start line and then wandered around a bit more and then I saw the GeekGrl wandering around wrapped in a mylar blanket. It turns out that she had finished with a huge PR about 20 minutes before I would have even thought to start hanging around the finish line.

We went and grabbed a bite to eat at Popeye’s and then started the long drive through Chicago to Kalamazoo, MI.

Kalamazoo Marathon
The drive was ok, not as bad as it could have been. I don’t have any idea how anyone could live in a town like Chicago. I need my wide open spaces and relative lack of traffic. It rained almost the whole way to Kalamazoo but it was nice. When we drove through Gary, IN both the GeekGrl and I were dumbstruck as how hideous the city was. I have a Social Worker who works for me that I like a great deal and she is from Gary. I also apologize to anyone who may stumble on this post who is from Gary but I’ve got to tell you, from the road we were on it looked like a post-apocalyptic toxic waste dump and it smelled like sulfur. There were mountains of coal, power lines galore, coal burning power plants and there was even a sign “Gary Indiana Welcomes You” painted on a structure that was obviously integral to their sewage treatment facility. We just kept telling ourselves that there must be a better side of town.

Once out of Gary the landscape turned to farmland and then to the rolling hills and pine forests of Michigan. We arrived in Kalmazoo and headed straight to packet pickup so we could just spend the rest of the night relaxing. Packet pickup was just like a small-scale expo that you might see at any large marathon, there was a fair amount to do and see but the highlight was taking the GeekGrl over to get her free pair of New Balance running shoes and entry fee refund for being the first person from New Mexico to register for the race. After packet pickup we went and ate at a local pizzeria, which was really good, and then to the hotel to sack out.
Morning came quickly and we headed out to the race. They had parking near the race and more remote parking with shuttle busses and we opted for the remote parking and shuttle busses because that turned out to involve a lot less walking. It was all very well organized so the morning went smoothly.

My goal for this marathon was a 3:41. While my original goal for the Marathon Double Double was simply four under four I changed that after having run the Flying Pig faster than the prior days Country Music Marathon. I decided that I wanted to try and run each consecutive marathon at least one minute faster than the previous marathon.

In all honesty I was feeling the effects of the cumulative mileage and travel within the first mile of Kalamazoo. I kept checking my watch for pace and really needed to stay focused to keep on track. I was expecting Kalamazoo to be a flat marathon but that’s not how it turned out, or at least that’s not how it felt. In reality there was only about 1100 feet of climbing compared to Wisconsin’s 900 feet, which I had perceived as pancake flat the day before. In any case, I really had to focus and for the most part my race was pretty grim. I was aware that it was a nice course through mostly residential neighborhoods and I was aware that there was plenty of support and the event was well supported by enthusiastic locals but beyond that my attention to detail was pretty poor.

Oh, I did notice one thing that gave me a chuckle. There is a brief section of the course that is run through a kind of high-tech business park and there was a company that was names Inotech, I think, which reminded me of the “Initech” office from the movie Office Space. It was a laugh I sorely needed at the time because it came after the first of three substantial climbs on the course.

By the end of the race I was pretty much praying for it to be over. It was starting to warm up and I was just really beat. There were a lot of people cheering at the finish line and it was a really good setup with people packed along both sides of the finishing chute for maybe 100 yards. When I finished I just grabbed something cold to drink and a bagel with peanut butter and a banana and went and sat in the shade under a tree. It was really nice to finally be done. My final time was 3:42 and a few seconds. I had missed my goal time but I had still gotten it under four so I was not disappointed in the least.

Four marathons in four states in two weeks are tough. I could probably do more at a slower pace but I’m not sure why I would want to because the logistics and travel get pretty involved. I would probably do it again especially if I were to do something like take a long vacation somewhere on the East Coast where I could pick up several states with less travel but it’s not something that I have in the works again right now.

I will say this though, running these four marathons in different parts of the Country so close in time gave me a very nice perspective on my fellow Americans and quite honestly I like what I saw. It is my belief, quite frankly, that the ways in which we as Americans tend to learn about each other, through biased news, biased politicians and each other’s biased opinions based on lopsided information is just plain poison. If you really want to get a sense of the average person in our country you really need to go and see them, observe them and have a good conversation about running, where to get a good slice of pizza or which kind of cheese is best.

It’s Like Falling in Love Again: Country Music & Flying Pig Marathon Double Header

2011-05-09T20:36:00.000-07:00

I have been on a steady diet of trail running over the past couple years almost to the complete exclusion of the roads. My most recent road marathons were Las Vegas and Tucson back in December 2010. Las Vegas, apart from the excellent vow renewal at the run through wedding chapel, was a real drag. It was just miles of pointless running through ankle deep refuse amid an ocean of people. Tucson, not nearly so bad, is a relatively uninspired marathon as well. While Tucson will always have a special place in my heart because it was my first marathon and my first Boston qualifying race, I certainly wouldn’t go out of my way to run it for the scenery.

Yes, the roads hold no pull for me, that is, until this last weekend when the GeekGrl saddled up and headed out to collect some states. Honestly I wasn’t expecting anything from the Country Music Marathon except 26.2 miles in the great state of Tennessee. I mean, it’s a Rock-n-Roll race series event after all, the circus or the marathon world, the events that every “true” runner loves to hate. However, I was pleasantly surprised. Not even the Rock-n-Roll brand was able to cover the spirit of Nashville in the wet blanket of homogenized commercialism that is its trademark.

Flying Pig, now that is a different story. I had high expectations for that one because it has a growing national reputation as a must do marathon, one that has the enthusiastic support of the good citizens of Cincinnati. I was not disappointed. In fact, by mile four I knew I was in road marathon nirvana. The only annoyance was the fact that some of the local citizenry had set up some aid stations of their own between the aid stations that had been set up by the race. Actually, that wasn’t really an annoyance so much as something you had to snap to before drowning yourself. When I run a marathon I carry one hand held water bottle to sip on between aid stations. It’s really more to wet my whistle than to actually stay hydrated. When I roll up on an aid station I grab a cup or two of whatever I think I need. At the Flying Pig I was rolling up on aid stations fast and just mechanically following my plan but it soon started to dawn on me, “Hey, wait a minute, I just drank a cup of water back around that last corner and here is another aid station just a hundred yards ahead.” Anyway, it was an awesome weekend so, onto the events.

Saturday, April 30th Country Music Marathon, Nashville Tennessee
Race morning was a bit chilly just standing around but once you got running it was perfect. I lined up in corral number 8 with the four hour group and looked back up the street where about 28000 other runners stood behind me waiting for the start. Despite the gargantuan number of participants things spread out pretty nicely pretty quickly. Probably within the first mile I had my own little three by five box of space in which to run. The race begins at a local park that has a full size replica of the Parthenon. I found that funny because I had been to Nashville before on a business trip and had run to that very park and did a lap around the Parthenon. Just the day before I was trying to get my bearings so I could find it and show it to the GeekGrl but no luck so I just headed to the hotel.

So, the race began heading toward downtown and Nashville has an interesting mix of some modern architecture alongside plenty that comes from an earlier era. As we headed into downtown we passed several large, old stone churches. In the morning light their appearance was both powerful and serene and I was moved by their presence. The other thing that got to me was the experience of running in a sea of people. Sometimes this can be pretty annoying but in this case the streets were wide and the numbers were just so vast. No matter how far ahead you could see or how far back it was just wall to wall people, a mob on the move but a mob filled with individual goals and aspirations all directed into a singular activity. Instead of obnoxious it was both liberating and humbling.

Heading into downtown was short lived and we did a quick U-turn and headed back out into a nice residential neighborhood interspersed with funky little businesses. The course is laid out in what amounts to three looping out-and-backs with the first taking up about the first 12 miles of the run. This first section was the nicest section and the one we shared with the thousands of half-marathoners. Section two was a combination of industrial and commercial but the return route had us running right toward a huge green space with walkways lined with Greek style columns and a large, ornate building at the center.

The final loop was only memorable for the large park we ran through, which had a small lake that we ran around. It was nice and shaded with a slightly cool breeze blowing off the water, which was really nice because by this time the temperature was pushing 85.

Because this was my first marathon in a series of four over two weeks I decided to run it smooth and easy. I felt good all day and the heat, while definitely making its presence known, wasn’t effecting me as much as usual. I think this was mostly due to the nice breeze that blew most of the day. I kept a steady pace and just bided my time until the people ahead of me began to falter. I have gotten really good at either running an even split or a slight negative split on marathons and have discovered this means that virtually nobody passes me after mile 18 and few, if any, pass me after 15. However, I was passed at mile 22.5 by a woman in a pink shirt. She was going way too fast for me to try and hang on all the way to the end. I just kept plugging away and finished in 3:46:11. I’m always real happy with a sub-4 marathon. Somehow even though I know I can consistently run sub-4 it is still a thrill.

After the race the GeekGrl and I immediately began our drive to Cincinnati and once we were well outside Nashville we stopped for a bite to eat and toweled off with some baby wipes and then it was back on the road for Flying Pig the next day.

Sunday, May 1st Flying Pig Marathon, Cincinnati Ohio
We were making good time and enjoying the drive from Nashville to Cincinnati until we got about 10 miles from Cincinnati. The three lane highway we were on narrowed to one lane right at the bridge over the Ohio river so rather than arriving for packet pickup an hour and a half early with time to spare so that we could grab a bit to eat and relax we arrived 32 minutes after packet pickup had closed down. Fortunately the people in charge of the Flying Pig realized that there was some terrible traffic and people would likely be delayed so as the rest of the Expo was being broken down a small group of volunteers stayed behind ready to give out race packets and swag to all latecomers. It was pretty cool of them and evidence of things to come.

The GeekGrl and I ended up shoveling down our pre-race pasta meal that was hosted by the Millennium Hotel where we stayed. Despite coming in at the tail end of the pasta feed the cook staff continued to put out fresh pastas, garlic bread, sauces, meatballs and broiled chicken breast. Other than the relative lack of people you wouldn’t have known we were the last people around. After a rushed dinner we headed straight back up to our room, put together our race outfits for the morning and zonked out.

The morning of Flying Pig was cool and overcast as we walked the half-mile from the hotel to the start area. It was pretty much like any marathon/half-marathon event with about 20 to 30 thousand participants, just loads of people milling about trying to say warm and engaging in idle talk while waiting for the event to start. At some point before the beginning of the race a steady drizzle started to fall but there wasn’t much else to do but stand in it and just get wet. Apparently the GeekGrl’s starting coral, or Pig Pen as they are called at the Flying Pig, was under a bridge so she was able to stay relatively dry. I was not dry at the beginning of the race but at least it wasn’t a shoe soaking pouring rain.

The very beginning of the race was unremarkable. There was the usual countdown, the bang of the starter’s gun and the rush of adrenaline as the mass of runners let out a roar and lurched into motion. During the initial jockeying for position I was really feeling the marathon from the day before. My angry left hip was complaining again and my stiff—legged hobble didn’t allow for much lateral mobility. After a couple hundred yards my herky-jerky forward motion gave way to and awkward gait that resembled human locomotion and then finally into an effective, if not smooth, run.

It was hard to tell where exactly we were at the very beginning of the race because the gray of dawn was darkened by a cold drizzle. Soon enough though we emerged onto the downtown streets of Cincinnati and much to my amazement they were lined with umbrella wielding, rain coat wearing yelling and cheering Cincinnatians. It was so cool! The mass of runners flowed through the urban canyons created by the high-rises crowding the streets like a flash flood suddenly appearing after a torrential downpour upstream. In spite of being one of thousands I had no sense of being caught up in a sea of humanity like I had at the Country Music Marathon the day before. Somehow I was much more cognizant of my individuality and the individuality of those around me. The soggy spectators were cheering specifically for that guy ahead of me and the woman next to me and then me and then the couple running next to each other behind me. Much later in the race I saw a couple women holding up a sign that exemplified the odd relationship between the runners and the spectators. It said, “Hey complete stranger, we’re proud of you!” and they were very enthusiastic and it did feel very personal.

After leaving the downtown area we were soon in a kind of back behind the scenes industrial area next to some railroad tracks and it was devoid of people. We were then running across a bridge that crossed some small tree lined river and I was settling in for a morning of running largely devoid of people but as soon as we were across the bridge we emerged into an urban neighborhood that was pretty run down. It was lined with small local grocers and bars with cheap neon lights hanging in the windows advertising such beers as Pabst, Miller and Budweiser…no microbrewery honey wheat ales here.

However, these streets too were packed with the denizens of this neighborhood and they were equally soggy and equally enthusiastic. I even saw a small punk band, one snare drum, one electric guitar and one guy screaming, standing in the entrance to some bar trying to keep the electronics from getting fried as they belted out one tune after another. We then left that neighborhood behind and entered another unpopulated industrial area and then back again to a different neighborhood and a different flavor of the citizenry of Cincinnati.

This is how the day went, urban areas, residential neighborhoods, industrial backwaters, wealthy areas, modest areas and areas that were clearly impoverished and crumbling. I ran from the gritty inner city punk scene to a barbershop quartet crooning on the well-manicured lawn of a huge public green space to a six year old girl standing outside a modest bungalow, water pitcher in hand and a TV tray filled with 3 ounce Dixie cups.

I don’t know anything about Cincinnati except that it was, at least on the script, the setting of the short-lived 1970’s sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati”, however, I left with the distinct impression that Cincinnati is a city that is proud of itself, all aspects of itself, and if you want to be presented with some one-dimensional façade, some “image” of the City then you can go run some other damn race. I May be way off base and I’m not saying that as a city it doesn’t care or want to clean up it’s more dilapidated areas, I’m just saying that I was consumed with the feeling that all of Cincinnati really owned the race and to the greatest extent possible in 26.2 miles we covered it all and

no matter where we were the citizens proudly proclaimed “We are here, We are Cincinnati!”

Early in the race, quite out of nowhere, I had the thought, and was convinced, “I am in road running Nirvana.”

Baboo in the Mist: A Mt. Si Race Report

2011-04-18T20:32:00.000-07:00

My week in Bellevue Washington began auspiciously enough. I arrived and it was partly cloudy and dry. The sun was shining and the air was cool. I went for a run through a local nature center and the trails were barely damp except for the odd mud puddle, which was easily avoided. I was hopeful that maybe the weather forecast I had seen earlier might have changed for the Mt. Si 50K race day.

Fast forward to this morning, race day, I looked out my window and the sky was filled with clouds, the sun had beaten a full retreat and a light rain was pelting my hotel window. Great.

Well, this is my Washington race so it is appropriate that it should be run in the rain. The temperature was also a bracing 40 degrees and the wind was blowing at about 18 miles per hour. I dressed in shorts, my favorite racing top (my El Scorcho racing singlet), my Yakuza tattoo arm warmers and a faded purple bandanna. I was ready to rock and roll!

I got a lot of odd looks from the track suit and jacket clad locals. Everyone was decked out in rain jackets, many, many pairs of running pants, gloves, wool beanies and even trash bags. I was starting to wonder what they knew that I didn’t. It was certainly nippy but I knew once I got running I would probably be fine but then again we were going to be climbing all the way out to the turn around. Is the temperature going to drop that much?

I stuck to my guns and just hung out in the elementary school where the race started until 4 minutes before the gun when the race director chased everyone out. We all headed to the start which was “Even with that fire hydrant right there on the corner.” You have got to love ultras, no pretense whatsoever, hell, more often than not there isn’t even any starting line.

The race director yelled “GO!” and we were off. I intentionally lined up in the second row center because I was going for a PR on this baby. I was going to race. I have only tried to “race” one 50K before and that was really just me running like a mad man to see how long it would take for me to blow up. For that particular race it was about 21 miles. This race I had no intention of blowing up. I wanted to run hard but also run smart. With all the running I have been doing I have gotten very good at running by PE (perceived exertion). I have dispensed with the HR monitor because they seem to keep crapping out and it’s just one more thing to chafe anyway.
The front pack bolted from the start like it was a 10K. I was immediately left behind and a couple people passed me. However, I stuck to my guns and just ran comfortably. After about a half mile I looked down at my Garmin and was running at an 8:04 pace…holly crap! I thought, “this doesn’t seem right but I feel really good.” I had done two runs the day before the race, 13.3 miles in the morning in Albuquerque before my flight and another 6.2 in Washington after my flight. Both of those runs were in the mid 8:40s. You’ve got to love that extra adrenaline that comes in a race.

I just backed off a little and kept on truckin as the lead pack started to stretch out and continued to pull away. The race began on paved roads and continued that way for about the first 8tenths of a mile when we took a sharp right turn and climbed a flight of stairs about 20 feet up onto a bridge. From that point on the race took place on a gravel covered rail bed that had been converted for recreational use. The gravel was nice and small so it wasn’t hard to run on and was easy on the feet.

Within the first five miles two guys fell off the back of the lead pack and I caught and passed them. Ahead of me I could see a group of maybe six guys all running together. I was really wishing I was up with them because I was running by myself into a headwind. However, I rarely benefit much from trying to draft off other people. More often than not my head and shoulders are higher than theirs and so I still catch a lot of wind. When I’m running about the same pace as a group what usually happens is they see me on their heels and then duck in behind me to get out of the wind leaving me to plow ahead.

At mile five we came to the first aid station and all but one member of the group stopped. I blew right through because I was carrying two hand held bottles and my spibelt with six gels. I was set.

It was also mile five when the trail began its upward climb. I had looked at the profile and knew I was in for a 10 mile climb but I wasn’t sure how much it climbed. The answer is 1000 feet. Back in Albuquerque we have a six mile climb that goes up 1000 feet but it is not as smooth as this one. The Albuquerque climb starts off with two steepish ramps in the first couple miles, goes shallow for maybe 3 miles then steepens back up for the finale. The climb at Mt. Si, being on an old railway bed, is almost perfectly consistent all the way to the top except in the very last half mile when, quite cruely, it turns steeply downward for a half mile so that after 10 miles of climbing you get one last chance to climb again.

When I was approaching the turnaround I was 3 miles back from the first place runner and about 8 tenths of a mile back from the 4th place runner. I could see the turnaround and there was nary a soul between it and me. I was in freakin 5th place overall! I knew I had been running well all morning despite the rain. In fact, I was running unbelievably well. At the top of the climb away from the turnaround, which I power hiked, my average pace was an 8:19 and I was getting ready to head into a 10 mile downhill.

I briefly had fantasies of matching my marathon PR pace, which is 7:57 I think…I ran a 3:28 and change. However, despite the fact that I did speed up, as the miles clicked off my pace dropped but too slowly. At one point I may have saw an 8:11 average pace, maybe 8:12, but that was all.

By mile 20 the pain was starting to set in but it was still tolerable. By mile 25 the pain had increased considerably but I told myself, “OK, only a 10K to go. I can hang on for a freakin 10K.” However, I knew I was staring down the barrel of five flat miles to the finish.

When I finally hit the flats I took a look around because there is fairly major road to run across and when I did I caught a glimpse of someone behind me. I recognized they guy from the original pack of runners that I had wished to draft with and he was maybe a quarter mile behind me. I knew he was gaining on me but I couldn’t accelerate any longer, I couldn’t even think in terms of 5 or 6 miles to the finish. In my mind I broke the race down to more manageable chunks, the distance to mile 28 and then the final 5K.

The flat sections are very straight so I could see quite a way and nothing ever seemed to get closer. As a final strategy to try and keep myself moving forward I switched between either looking down and the ground or just staring straight ahead into the middle distance with my eyes kind of unfocused. I also just tried to shut off my thinking altogether because the level of effort it took to continue to move forward was sickening and every thought I had brought me back to that fact.

With about 7 tenths of a mile left the guy behind me finally passed and there was no catching him. I didn’t have any idea if there was anyone else close behind me but a glance back suggested that nobody was there. I was able to hang on to the finish where I was told I placed 6th overall and was the 3rd male in the 40-49 age group in a time of 4:18:47. I was completely stunned. I have never placed so well in any race greater than a little local 10K.

I learned two major lessons from this race; one, actually racing is very uncomfortable and that discomfort starts relatively far from the end and two, I am capable of racing even over longer distances. I have been edging towards these realizations over a few of my recent races but now I have the actual experience instead of just the hunch.

Next up, four marathons in two weeks where I’m going for four under four hours. The four are:
April 30th Country Music Marathon
May 1st Flying Pig Marathon
May 7th Wisconsin Marathon
May 8th Kalamazoo Marathon

Run Through Time Marathon Reace Report

2011-04-14T18:37:00.000-07:00

For some reason I’ve kind of been enjoying not posting in my blog. It’s not that I have a giant readership or anything but sometimes it starts feeling more like an obligation than a fun thing to do. However, I do enjoy going back and reading my race reports. I’ve never kept a diary and now that I’ve been keeping the blog I wish I had. Anyway, a couple weeks ago the GeekGrl and I went north to Salida, CO to run the Run Through Time trail marathon. We went up there in celebration of the GeekGrl’s B-day.

Neither of us knew why the race was called the run through time and I don’t recall ever seeing anything that would give an indication of why it was called that except maybe the fact that the packet pickup was in a modern building, the race start was on a gravel road in what appeared to be an abandoned industrial mining area and it then proceeded though the wilderness thereby giving you a taste of various points in time. Ok, that’s a pretty big stretch. Actually what I came to believe is that the race name was just a cryptic way of letting you know that by the time you finish you will feel like several years of your life has passed because you will definitely be the worse for wear after this bad boy.

It occurs to me that I don’t sound all that flattering but I should back up and say that Salida is a perfectly wonderful little community and the race was both well run and worth the trek up from Albuquerque. However, I would stop short in suggesting that you should come do it as your Colorado marathon if you are a 50-stater, that is unless you like an ass beating then by all means…

The run starts with about 8 miles of steady climbing followed by about a mile of extremely steep and rocky climbing. You then proceed along a series of long rollers that you can’t really discern as such, it just mostly feels like more climbing. Somewhere around mile 20 your climbing legs are pretty much toast and then you hit another seriously steep climb that extends for maybe a half mile and looks quite a lot like a wall. Beyond that there is some winding single track that empties out onto some exceedingly rocky ATV trail, which finally, thankfully, ends at about 3 miles of nice easy single track that descends all the way to the abandonded mining area looking place and then on to the finish.

At one point I rolled my ankle pretty badly and spent the next minute or so yelling out enough that a couple people in front of me turned around and asked if I was ok. During the last 5 miles of the race I also seemed to get caught up in the fight that was occurring between the top four women. This kind of sucked because I was REALLY looking forward just cursing into the finish but with the air of competition surrounding me I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t get in their way or anything it’s just that I didn’t give myself the break that I was longing for.
Just to give you some perspective on how hard this race is I ran it is 4:32:24. I ran the Mt. Si 50K a month later in 4:18:47 and it had 1000 feet of climbing. I don’t know how much climbing Run Through Time had but it was substantial. Oh, and this race also seems to draw the best ultrarunners in Colorado out of their winter hibernation. It was crazy.

Bye Bye Boston

2011-02-16T19:07:00.000-08:00

Well, I WAS qualified for Boston but not so much any more. Because the race sold out in 8 hours for 2011 the BAA has changed registration from now on. The first people who get to register are those who beat their qualifying time by 20 minutes or more then those who beat their qualifying time by 10 minutes then by 5 minutes. If the race still isn't full then people who just made their qualifying time get to enter. Starting in 2013 qualifying times will also drop by 5 minutes. So, unless by some miracle Boston does not fill well before the lowly "just qualifieds" have a chance to register then I'll have to wait until 2013 when my effective qualifying time is likely to be 3:05.
I wonder if I could get a minute per mile faster than I am already. I think I still have about 22 pounds that I could lose and I could be faster if I cane into a race better rested; my BQ time was run the week after I had run two marathons at hard effort back to back.

I thought it was supposed to be easy come, easy go. I worked really hard to BQ but it was still easy go.

Revenge at Rocky: A Rocky Raccoon 100 Race Report

2011-02-09T20:56:00.000-08:00

,This weekend the GeekGrl and I both went back to Huntsville, TX to run Rocky Raccoon, she the 50-mile and me the 100. We did this back in 2009 and I DNF’d at mile 80 with a time of 23:45. The GeekGrl finished the 50 but went into the race with IT band problems and ended up walking the entire distance in over 16 hours. Needless to say we were both ready for revenge. Not only were we ready for revenge but we actually did something about it, we were better trained, lighter and much more experienced as trail runners.

Loop 1 – 3:39:38
The first loop was great because my only mishap was a quick slip on a footbridge that was slick with frost. I went into the race worried about the roots because they had destroyed my race last time but I assumed that I would not have trouble with them because I am a much more experienced trail runner and it turns out that I was right. The other great thing about the first loop is that it presented the most beautiful scene of the day. The loop takes a very convoluted circuit around a lake that sits in the middle of Huntsville State Park. The morning was about 20 degrees so the air was much colder than the water. Steam was rising off the water and as the sun rose you could see that the steam had frozen onto the pines that ringed the water’s edge. As I ran across the earthen dam I could see the lake with steam rising off it and the crystalline trees glistening on the distant shore. It was one of those scenes that most people only get to see in photographs but that ultrarunners get to see at least once during every race.

Loop 2 – 3:46:20
The second loop was one that I decided to run with my ipod so I had a pretty good time. I’ve come to enjoy running with music but can only seem to tolerate it for a few hours and one loop was enough. I have added some new songs by the Beastie Boys and Fatboy Slim to my playlist and I’m lovin’ it. I still had yet to trip on a root but now that the sun was up moisture was starting to drip from the trees and was then freezing on the roots so now it wasn’t only an issue of trying not to trip on the tree roots but you couldn’t even step on them otherwise you would slip and fall. Despite this extra challenge I was still running well and I was easily on track to break my 50-mile PR by the time loop two ended.

Loop 3 – 4:34:20
Loop three I tripped and fell twice but they were both minor and I recovered easily. One thing I have found, and I don’t know why this is the case, but if I trip and fall later in a race it takes much less a toll on me if I just stay still for a second and then get up slow and easy rather than try to bounce right back up and take off. So the big news of loop three is that I hit mile 50 in 9:35:02! I broke my old 50-mile record by almost an hour and it was done during a 100-mile race so I am confident that I could go under 9 on the right 50 mile course, probably on the Rocky 50-mile course or something similar. If my race at Rocky were a movie then loop 3 would have also foreshadowed things to come later. I had two headlamps out on the course, one at the kind of half-way point of the loop at the DamNation aid station and the other at the start/finish area at Dogwood. During loop three twilight was approaching and while I figured I could make it to Dogwood while it was still light I knew that a lot can happen in 8 miles when you have already run 52 so I took my headlamp and didn’t need it.

Loop 4 – 5:41:20
I spent about 20 minutes at the Dogwood aid station changing out of my damp day running clothes and putting on some warmer night running clothes. I also grabbed my super-bright headlamp and a handheld flashlight. Despite the time spent at Dogwood within the first two miles of the loop I easily broke my 100K record. All but about two miles of loop four was run in the dark and I ended up struggling a bit mostly because I was getting bored. It also occurred to me that unless I missed my sub-24 goal I would be running the rest of the race in the dark. Normally I can look forward to the light of a new day when I always get a huge lift but it wasn’t gonna happen today and I started wondering how I would cope with lap 5.

Loop 5 – 6:15:20
Lap five was the make or break loop for my sub-24 goal. I had been running well all day but toward the end of lap four it really started cooling down and I was having difficulty maintaining my body temperature and I knew that could really spell trouble. I was also unable to figure out how long it would take me to get from one point to another because I couldn’t do the necessary math. Despite all that I headed out on loop five. I don’t remember the first 6 miles at all but it must have been kind of miserable because by the time I hit DamNation the first time I was freezing cold and miserable. When I got to the aid station I immediately went into the tent and sat near the heater. This is truly where my experience paid off.

When I came into the aid station I saw others sitting around outside the tent. I knew they were trying to remain in the cold so they wouldn’t be seduced by the warmth of the tent. Others were standing around in the cold and I figured they were afraid that if they sat down they wouldn’t get back up. However, I have done those things and I have also taken time out to get warm and comfortable and getting warm and comfortable always works better for me because somehow I am always able to get back up. Still, when I plopped down in that chair I seriously wanted to drop. At that point I couldn’t bear to head back out for the next six mile loop before my return to DamNation. Instead on perseverating on how badly things sucked at that moment I just sat near the heater and asked for some noodle soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. I sat there and ate slowly and just tried to relax. I watched people come and go and watched the aid station captain talk a woman into heading back out and she was still on loop four. I remained there for a half hour before I finally felt better and thought I could move well enough to keep myself warm.

I departed the aid station feeling a bit better but moving slowly and I started to get cold almost immediately. I was slogging along but at least I had my determination back. Probably less than a mile out of the aid station a fellow New Mexican ultrarunner Bobby Kehoe came up on me and asked how I was doing. I told him I didn’t feel like I could do much running and he said, “Come on, let’s go” and so I fell in behind him and tried to keep up. We chatted a bit and before I knew it I was feeling better and moving faster. Before I knew it I was pulling away and actually running a bit. I made it back to the DamNation aid station feeling pretty good but I was noticing my lights were starting to dim.

The last time I ran Rocky the final nail in my coffin was a dim headlamp that had me hunched over squinting at the ground for hours. My light was still bright enough for me to see and stand up straight so I left the station quickly. About a mile out of DamNation Bobby passed me along with a small group of other people and they were all running while I was back to walking. I still had no idea if I was going to make my goal but I knew it would be close.

The last aid station before the finish is called Nature Center and when I arrived I was feeling better but my headlamp was extremely dim. I got in and out of the aid station very quickly and didn’t realize that I had departed with Bobby still sitting there. It was only 4.4 miles to the finish line and I knew I had the energy to run it but I did not have enough light to run. I just kept moving forward as quickly as possible. A couple people passed me with bright headlamps but they were moving too quickly for me to keep up. Many others were heading back out on their last lap with headlamps shining in my eyes making it even more difficult for me to see.

About a mile and a half from the finish line two guys came up behind me both wearing super bright headlights. They were running and I had plenty of energy to keep up partly because I had been forced to rest for the last 3 miles and partly because I figured I was right on the cusp of 24 hours but I didn’t know which side I land on. I started running just ahead of their lights and we were maintaining a good pace. I was starting to pull ahead so had to slow a bit to stay in their light. I started getting impatient so started yelling over my shoulder, “Come on, let’s go. We’re almost there. Dig deep!” One of the guy was starting to grunt and moan but the guy immediately behind me was keeping up. Me and the guy behind me pulled away and picked up the pace a bit.
I heard him say “Where’s that road?” (There is a little road crossing about 200 yards from the finish and shortly after that there is a sharp left turn and a straight away to the finish) so I said,” Come on, let’s go. We are really close to the road.“ I was praying that he wasn’t going to die on me. I needed him to last just a couple more minutes and then I knew I would have an easy sprint to the finish.

Almost as soon as I told him we were almost at the road we hit the road and I just started sprinting because I knew there was smooth sailing all the way to the finish. As soon as I rounded that final corner I could see the glow of the aid station but could not see the clock. My headlamp was completely useless but I ran hard anyway and just lifted my feet high and hoped for the best.

I soon saw the red glow of the clock and it began with 23! I knew I had done it; I had finally broken 24 hours! My final time was 23:47:46.

The cold weather was a blessing and a curse. This year Rocky Raccoon had more people drop than any previous year and more people were sent to the hospital than at any previous year including one woman who slid off an icy bridge and broke her leg. On the other hand the course record, and I think the world record for a 100 mile trail run, was smashed by someone who is obviously talented but not one of the recognizable giants of the sport.

I have a feeling I’ll be heading back to Rocky because Misty likes the course and she may want to try the 100 miler but if I do go back I’m not so sure I’ll run the 100 again but I would run the 50 for sure.

Big Things A-Coming

2011-02-02T19:53:00.000-08:00

This weekend I’ll be sporting bib #222 at the Rocky Raccoon 100-mile trail run. I attempted this race back in 2008 with far less experience and far less preparation. I DNFd that race at mile 80 but this time around I am a completely different runner. The 2008 me is not even in the same league as the 2011 me and I am hopeful for a sub-24 hour finish.

I don’t mean to sound overly cocky I just feel very confident. I recognize that the 100-mile run is nothing to take for granted and even great runners are brought down by the distance from time to time but I can just feel the finish in me. I can feel my willingness to be flexible and take the day as it rolls but I am also armed with the hard earned knowledge that I can really be hurting at mile 40 and still find the reserves to finish strong if I am patient and if I just persevere.

I will run this race harder, I will not be afraid to crash and burn, I will have a good time when the race is over but during the race I will race.

This weekend I also find out whether or not I get into Wasatch. JT is going to be keeping tabs on the lottery process since he is another one of the hopefuls. He said he’ll text the GeekGrl to let me know if I got in or not. I think I’ll get in because there is about an 80% chance of getting selected. However, someone has to be in that 20% that doesn’t get selected and if I happen to be in that group then I’ll just roll over into something else. Right now I’m looking at Cascade Crest, The Bear and Superior Sawtooth as possible options.

Finally, as winter has worn on I have been dreaming of warmer times and missing my mountain running. I was daydreaming about my long runs up around Santa Fe and cleaning out my closet when I came across a t-shirt I bought years ago. It lists the “Great Peaks of New Mexico” and it gave me an idea. This year I’m going to start a quest to run up the 50 highest peaks listed for New Mexico. I’ve run some of them but I think all of them are accessible. I’m really looking forward to seeing them all.

The End of the Beginning: A Ghost Town 38.5 Race Report

2011-01-23T21:26:00.000-08:00

I’ve been slow to get blogging this year I think because I’ve been debating whether or not to continue. The last post of 2010 was my first Boston qualifying run and that seemed like a good place to end my chronicling of a journey that took me from an inactive, severely over weight man to one who could complete Ironman triathlons in a respectable time, run 100-miles through the Colorado Rockies in a single stretch and run a marathon in a time that places me among the top 15% or so of amateur runners.

However, I know my adventures are not yet done. I suspect that I may get a bit faster but that isn’t really something that concerns me much. I still have experiences to savor and share with anyone who cares to read. I have yet to run Western States, Wasatch, Hardrock and many of the other 100-mile trail runs of the Western mountains. I have yet to run a marathon in each of the 50 states and I have yet to run Boston. There are also some races in foreign countries that I’d love to run; the Comrades marathon in South Africa, the Athens marathon in Greece and the Reggae marathon in Jamaica are the only ones by name that I have my eye on but I’d like to run an ultra in Japan, New Zealand, Australia and Germany. I’d also love to go Fell Running in England, Ireland and Scotland.

So, with that prelude my 2011 season begins and it actually began with a bang. On January 1st I had a local run called the Egg Nog Jog scheduled and I also had a 31 mile run to do. The Egg Nog Jog began at noon so I got up early and headed out for a preliminary 27 miles. I ended up arriving at the Jog about 30 seconds after it started so the main pack of runners was still barely across the start line when I joined them. That day I ended up running a 50K in just over 5 hours, which beat my only 50k PR by about 40 minutes though I didn’t count it in my official record of PRs because it wasn’t an official race though it was a good omen for things to come.

January 17th was the sixth and final, at least for now, running of the Ghost Town 38.5. I have a fond affiliation with the Ghost Town because it was my first ultra and I ran it during its inaugural year along with 41 other runners. That first Ghost Town in 2006 was all road from Nutt, NM to Kingston, NM and it began at 4 in the morning. In subsequent years the race began at 6 in the morning and shifted to being about 1/3 road with the remaining miles on dirt roads, jeep trails and a little bit of single track in the Black Range wilderness.

So, at 6 a.m. on the morning of January 17th about 68 runners lined up at the starting line ready to enjoy a day of running in the Gila. I was determined to bet a good time and knew there were some southern gents there from Georgia and Arkansas who were duking it out for bragging rights. I thought I may try and hang with them but I really didn’t know what kind of runners they were. When the start was sounded we all surged out of the race director’s yard and onto the road to Kingston. I stayed with the lead pack of about 15 runners for maybe the first half-mile, just long enough to see what kind of pace they settled into and get a good read on whether or not it was reasonable for me to keep that pace. It was not, these folks were running an 8:30 pace.

Normally an 8:30 pace is easy for me to hold and it felt good that morning as well but I suspected I knew more about the course and less about the lead pack of runners to make it a prudent start. The thing about running in a place that is both mountainous and wide open is that you have these have vistas of land reaching for the sky and so lesser grades, though still going up, can look flat or even downhill. I knew that pretty much every foot of the first six miles of road heading for Kingston was uphill but it frequently looked flat or downhill and the only way you knew this was either by running down and seeing the road fall away below you or by paying close attention to your legs as you are ascending and not mistakenly thinking that maybe you are still trying to shake the morning lead out.

So, knowing the course and not knowing my competition I fell back to about a 9:15 to 9:45 pace and just cruised up the road all by myself. The lead pack continued to pull away and the main following pack of runners was still well behind me. The morning was silent and all I could hear was my own breath and the rhythmic padding of my shoes on the asphalt. The sun rose slowly over the Gila Mountains streaking the increasingly blue sky with shades of violet, red and pink. Mornings are always best in the mountains. The world around you warms with color and light but the silence of the night lingers on, sacred.

Turning north off the paved road and onto the forest road heading into the wilderness I was passed by one guy who had been slowly gaining for a while. I kept my pace, caught him and left him behind for the remainder of the race by the time we hit the Stone Hut aid station. At this point there was no sign of the lead group of runners that I had let go earlier but in the 4 plus miles between the Stone Hut aid station and the turn off leading up the steep trail spur out and back I caught sight of two runners. They were the two leading female runners and they had slowed their pace considerably. I passed them and probably within a half mile I saw yet another runner and I passed him as well just before turning off onto the forest spur trail.

Much of the forest spur trail never sees direct sunlight so the stream was mostly frozen and there was plenty of snow. The guy who I had just passed quickly passed me back. He was wearing Vibram Five Fingers and had much better traction in the snow than I. I decided to walk much of the snow because it was taking more energy than I was willing to expend trying to run. However, each time I hit a dry patch I closed the gap on five finger guy never letting him get too far ahead.

Because the forest spur is an out and back it is at this point in the race that you get your first look at who is ahead of you and you also get a sense of how far ahead they may be. I wasn’t sure if I actually got to see the very first runner or two because they can be there and gone depending on how fast they are going and how far back you are. I wasn’t wondering about the very front runners though, I was wanting to know about how far back I was and more specifically, how far back I was from my Southern friends. I got my answers in pretty short order; I was in about 17th place and I was about 45 minutes behind the Southern men, damn they were moving.

The final outbound section of the forest spur trail is a steep climb about 100 yards long and fortunately it does get full sun so was almost entirely snow free. I was easily able to pass five finger guy and then left him well behind because unlike him in his super thin soles I was able to hammer down the slope and charge over the rocky sections back out onto the forest road where I was able to see the GeekGrl for the first time. She was just entering the forest spur right as I was exiting. I noted that she was running very well and she said her Achilles wasn’t bothering her at all. I grabbed a quick kiss and was on my way.

I very short order I passed two more people who had been taken down a notch or two by the forest spur, one of them a Southern gent but not the two I was looking for. On the spur I had also seen a big guy who must have been my same size. That really bothered me because I don’t like guys my size to beat me in a race. It happens of course and I am certainly not the fastest Clydesdale out there by any means but if I can do anything about it I won’t let it happen. So, I was now on the hunt for the big guy.

At this point I was running alone again having passed all the initial front runners who had clearly gone out too fast. The rest of the people in front of me may have gone out too fast but they were all strong runners. However, I knew that what is commonly referred to as the back end of the course, the area leading to the turn around, is pretty brutal. The back end of the course has lots of steep climbs and curving descents and very rocky, slippery trail. With this in mind I eased up on my pace just a bit and settled in for some strong hiking.

When I arrived at the Vista aid station, the one just before the turn around, I saw my long-time Ghost Town friend Marcus. He was volunteering this year because he has apparently gotten hooked on triathlon. When we first ran Ghost Town in 2006 I was the “primarily triathlon guy” and he was the “primarily ultra guy” and now we have traded places. In any case it was good to see him again. I spent too much time at the Vista aid station just kind of futzing around. By the time I left the leaders had already gone by and as I was departing one more person was on his way back. I started counting people as I headed for the turn around and from what I could tell I was in 13th position. I saw the Southerners that I was trying to catch and I knew I was gaining position on them but I couldn’t recall how far it was to the Cave Creek aid station at the turn around so I didn’t know if I was actually gaining any time on them and they didn’t show any signs of relenting.

On the bright side though, I quickly caught sight of the one big guy I knew to be ahead of me. I passed him moving at a pretty good clip and then left him behind. On my return after the Cave Creek aid station I could see that I had put about a half mile into him already and it didn’t look like he was speeding up any. At this point it seemed to me that I was well behind the leading group and putting distance on everyone behind me. I was satisfied with the knowledge that I probably wouldn’t catch anyone else but I was still trying to turn in a good performance and I certainly didn’t want to get caught from behind by surprise.

The reason I didn’t think I’d catch anyone is because I knew at least three of the people ahead of me, all New Mexico ultrarunners and all with much stronger histories of finishing than my own. Much to my amazement about 12 miles from the finish I saw one of these guys and I was pretty certain that if I had close the gap on him I would definitely pass him if I was just careful and bided my time. No sooner did I think that than he took off at a pretty brisk pace and I wondered if he had just taken it really easy in the back half of the course and was now ready to sprit to the finish. He was soon up a hill, around a corner and out of sight. I just kept up the pursuit. Within about 11 miles of the finish I saw him again and he was walking. I knew that he was done racing and was just trying to hang on to a good finish. I caught him and by the time I was departing the Stone Hut aid station with 10 miles left I had already put about ¾ of a mile into him.

However, the most amazing part of my race was just about to begin. I saw another of the strong New Mexicans ahead of me. He was well ahead of me but still, I could see him. I had about nine miles left, he was in sight and that means I had been gaining ground. I figured if I didn’t get overly excited and just kept up a solid pace I just might be able to catch him especially since my specialty was only three miles away; a six mile stretch of downhill road all the way to the finish line.

The entire final three mile stretch of dirt road I kept seeing the last New Mexican I thought I had a chance to pass and he kept getting closer but it was a very slow process. The final aid station comes at the intersection of the paved road back to Hillsboro and the dirt forest road. Right then I passed another guy who was waking and looking pretty bad and maybe 100 yards ahead of him was another person, also walking, also looking bad. I put them behind me quickly and started to pick up speed. I was determined to run the entire six miles to the finish as fast as I could manage no matter how uncomfortable it got.

The road down to Hillsboro is pretty exciting because it windes through a fairly narrow canyon almost the entire six miles and there are times you can see a couple miles ahead and behind you but can’t really see much inbetween. This means that if you are chasing you may see someone off in the distance but not know how many people, if any, lie between you and that person. Similarly, if you are being chased you can look back to a similar view and are forced to wonder “how many people are bearing down on me between where I am now and that guy way back there?

At just one of these junctures I saw who I knew to be one of the Southern men I had been chasing all day. I knew he was at least a couple miles ahead of me because of how small he appeared but if he was really hurting, forced to walk, I knew I had time to catch him but I had more immediate work at hand, the last New Mexican. I could see him maybe ¾ of a mile ahead and low and behold, he was walking. I knew I had him now, it was only a matter of time.

I picked up my pace just a little allowing the adrenaline of the chase to take hold of me for the first time all day. The extra speed was a little painful but I knew it would all be over in about 30 minutes so I pressed on. With maybe two miles left I passed the last New Mexican and couldn’t believe I had pulled it off. This is a guy, though older than me, is still very strong, very experienced and is someone who has actually won this race outright one year. I passed him but didn’t let up my pace. I knew full well that if he got another wind he still had time to catch and pass me. I also knew that the last of the Southerners was not far ahead and I hadn’t seen him in a while and had no idea what kind of shape he was in.

The final mile or so is a straight away and by the time I hit it I saw the last Southerner cross the road and hit the finish line. I obviously wasn’t going to catch him and at this point the cumulative fatigue of the day was wearing one me. I only had one goal left, to break 7 hours, something I would have never even considered setting as a goal for myself in this race. On the one hand given the time I had left and the distance I had to cover it seemed like it was in the bag. On the other hand I was really hurting at this point and it was a real struggle to hold my 8:30 pace. In my mind I could explode at any second and be forced to slog in the few hundred yards at a snail’s pace.

It was not to be, however, the grand explosion never came and I crossed the road and charged across the finish line as strongly as I had started the day albeit with far less energy. I finished the final Ghost Town 38.5 in six hours, forty eight minutes and sixteen seconds. I was a little less than two minutes behind the last Southern man and I was tenth place over all. I was also the first XL athlete to cross the finish line by quite a stretch. It was an unbelievable day. The GeekGrl also came in on record pace beating her old course PR by about 40 minutes. We grabbed a bite to eat and drove home to Albuquerque both exhausted and happy.

Our next challenge will be Rocky Raccoon where I will try and break 24 hours for the full 100-mile run and I’m thinking the GeekGrl will hit 12 hours or faster for the 50-mile course.

It’s going to be an interesting year!

Top 25 Reasons that Trail Running is Better than Sex

2011-01-14T13:07:00.000-08:00

A recent thread on the ultralist brought these to my attention. I modified some of the list and added some of my own. Not my usual thing but it's one way to start off the new year.

25. Trails don't get jealous of other trails.
24. You can stop to eat during trail runs.
23. Your trail running partners won't mock your awkward form behind your back.
22. You can discuss the details of when you lost your trail running virginity with anyone.21. You can plan for trail runs months in advance.
20. Vigorous trail running lasting more than four hours is still a lot of fun.19. You can meet a variety of new people and develop meaningful relationships during a trail run.
18. You don't have to hide your copies of Trail Runner and UltraRunning magazine.
17. You can share your latest trail running experience with your family.
16. Trail running is good even if you're partner is unskilled.
15. You can take lots of pictures and show them to anyone.
14. Your dog to join you on a trail run.
13. Even a bad trail runner can run a beautiful trail.
12. In trail running owning dirty girls isn't illegal or immoral.
11. Trail running injuries are easier to explain.
10. You can still maintain your circle of friends if you admit to an obsession with trail running.
9. If you need to pee or vomit you can just go off to the side of the trail and then get right back at it.
8. In trail running the statement "Hey, let's add do a fat ass" is perfectly acceptable.
7. In trail running you can watch live results on the internet without feeling creepy.
6. In trail running you can use a pacer.
5. Anyone can expect to get in several good trail runs in a year.
4. You can run with someone different every night of the week and not get a bad reputation.
3. It isn't embarrassing when people find out you train a lot on your own.
2. You will not be ostracized if you ask your friends to join you on a group trail run.

And the number one reason that trail running is better than sex:

Your partners are impressed if you finish your trail run much faster than anyone else they have ever been with.

I Did it My Way: A Tucson Marathon Race Report

2010-12-12T21:18:00.000-08:00

December 2005 I ran my very first marathon right here in Tucson. At the time I weighed in at 225 pounds down from a high of 310 pounds. My time for that first marathon effort; 4:50:55. That earned me 90th in my age group, 612th out of the men and 912th overall. I trained hard for that marathon, or at least from my perspective back then I trained hard. I also tapered and came in rested and ready to go. After the race my legs were beaten to death. I hobbled over to our car with the GeekGrl helping me each step of the way. We then drove to a Circle K and the GeekGrl bought two 10-pound bags of ice and we went directly to the friend’s house where we were staying and I took an ice bath. We drove home that very night. It was a painful drive.

I began running in March of 2005 only because I wanted to do a local sprint triathlon, the Jay Benson. I hated running, HATED it. In all the sports I had ever participated in growing up running was the punishment. When I was in the Marine Corps we ran in formation and it was a duty; lock-step: “low-righty-leauft we love to double time!” I never learned to just run, to love running. It’s too bad because running is such a beautiful thing, such a natural human activity. It’s what children do freely, laughing and smiling all the while. However, since those first meager, painful, dreadful little two mile runs back in the spring of 2005 I have learned some things and put in a few thousand miles.

What have I learned? Well, as I recently told a group of ultrarunners, I learned how to run like an idiot.

It wasn’t until December 2007 when I finally learned to “put the fun back in my run” at the Las Vegas Marathon when I did my first marathon dressed as Elvis and coincidentally, or not, I ran my first sub-4 hour marathon. During that run as Elvis I wasn’t doing anything special but having a good time, saying, “Thank you, Thank you very much” to all the aid stations, slapping hands with the cheerleaders and giving cheering spectators the famous Elvis point. It was at Las Vegas where I learned that I really didn’t need to be TOTALLY serious about my running. In fact, I learned quite the opposite, that I probably ran best when I wasn’t very serious; at least during a race.

My next step forward was ultrarunning. Not only did it introduce me to trail running but it introduced me to what it REALLY means to hurt during a run. Ultrarunning taught me what it is to persevere, to dig deep, to exhaust every resource that I THINK I have and still keep moving. In short, ultrarunning helped me excoriate my ego and get the hell out of my own way.

These days I’m running pretty much however the mood takes me. Sometimes I run too slow, too long, too fast and every once in a while, too short. I do some races just to run with the GeekGrl and some races I go out too fast just to see how long it takes me to blow apart. In August this year I finished the Leadville Trail 100 then in September I ran the Turtle Marathon, the Do-Wacka-Do 50K and the Rio Del Lago 100. October I ran the Duke City Marathon, the Javelina 100K and set a new 10K PR at the Great Pumpkin Chase. Just last weekend I set a new marathon PR at Death Valley and the next day I renewed my marriage vows with the GeekGrl during the Las Vegas Marathon; once again dressed as Elvis.

Any serious runner would advise this is just too much running too close together to do well. Like I said, I’ve learned to run like an idiot which, I suppose, explicitly make me not a serious runner.

On December 12th 2010 weighing in at 203 pounds I ran the Tucson Marathon in time of 3:28:13, 5th place Clydesdale, 14th in my age group, 93rd out of men and 112th overall.
I qualified for the big game, I qualified for Boston. The record shows I took the blows and did it my way!

I Do, Twice! A Death Valley and Las Vegas Marathons Race Report

2010-12-07T20:41:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was an incredible experience. I renewed my vows with the GeekGrl AND set a new marathon PR AND completed my first back-to-back marathons! Not necessarily in that order.

The weekend began with a flight to Las Vegas where the GeekGrl and I met up with Form and JT for a quick breakfast before packet pickup at the Las Vegas marathon. We gathered up our luggage and rental car and called Form for a breakfast recommendation and shortly thereafter we all met up at Hash House A Go-Go. Oh my god that place is a giant feed trough of comfort food. I had the Ft. Wayne Hash and it was delish and clearly provided me with what I needed because the very next day I ran a new marathon PR.

Yes, it is true; unbelievably the Death Valley Trail Marathon stands as my new marathon PR! This was just one of those rare days when everything felt perfect and everything went perfect. With a time of 3:40:34 I beat my Ogden marathon time by 6 minutes 3 seconds. Ogden is a road marathon and is mostly downhill and my Ogden PR has stood for two years. Death Valley has a massive downhill beginning about mile 12.8 and lasting to the end of the race but before you get to the downhill there is 2394 feet of climbing in an almost continuous climb. The descent is unbroken and will utterly destroy your quads if you are not prepared.

At the starting gun lots of people took off ahead of me and after about a mile I could see a pretty good crowd stretched out in front because the trail was a continuous uphill. I’m not sure just how many people were ahead of me at the beginning of the race but it was a good third of the runners. Within two miles, however, I began passing people and didn’t stop until I crossed the finish line.

I’d have to say my favorite part of the race was shooting down through the narrows of Titus Canyon. There was this one guy who looked to be a particularly strong runner. I had been going back and forth with him all morning mostly because he seemed to be running with one particular woman for at least the first six or eight miles and then he took off. I caught him again near the top of the climb just before entering Titus Canyon because he was taking a few pictures. At the top of the canyon he put away his camera and started running. I went ahead and took chase and within a mile or two I had caught up and was running just a couple yards behind. He must have heard me behind him because he sped up. I thought I’d just try and hand on as long as I could. We ran stride for stride through the narrow, winding canyon for about four miles and then he started to slow just a bit. I pulled alongside him and he accelerated a bit but then slowed again as soon as I fell in behind him. I pulled alongside him again and pushed the pace. I looked at my Garmin and said “Only 5K to go” and he said “Good, I thought we had more like 4 to 6 miles left. He then faded back and I did not see him again until after the race. It sure was a blast though racing through a narrow canyon right on the heels of another competitor.

Death Valley is definitely an interesting race. I would say this is a must do marathon. It’s kind of costly for an “old school” marathon but old school it is, small, friendly and based more on scenery than seeking flat and fast or some venue where you can cram the greatest number of people.

The next day the GeekGrl and I were in Las Vegas to renew our vows at the Rock-n-Roll Las Vegas marathon. The R-n-R Las Vegas stood in stark contrast to the Death Valley marathon. At Death Valley there were about 240 participants whereas Las Vegas had about 30,000. Death Valley had aid stations about every five miles and there was no trash to be seen whereas Las Vegas had aid stations every mile and you practically waded through a sea of discarded cups and gel packets at each aid station. Death Valley was on trail with plenty of room to either open up and run or just enjoy the scenery whereas Las Vegas was in the middle of the city and despite being on the strip for half its distance there wasn’t much to see and you had to keep your eyes fixated on the massive crowd you were “running” in.

It really was a good time going through the Run Through Wedding Chapel and both the GeekGrl and I were surprised at how poignant the ceremony ended up being for us but as marathons go I would have to say that we are both well past the ability to garner much real enjoyment from a massive marathon with tens of thousands of people. I mean, I had a good time but that was created by my experience of the wedding and what it symbolized about my marriage, about my reflections concerning my marriage and the adventures the GeekGrl and I have had and just the sheer joy of running. If anything the marathon itself was a distraction to my good time.

Anyway, I won’t dwell on the negatives; ultimately I had a fantastic time and am exceedingly glad I planned it all out. The experience of vow renewal during a marathon is unparalleled. The experience of running two marathons in one weekend is painful but very satisfying.

Now I have to complete the Tucson marathon this coming weekend to get my three marathons in three states in nine days. That will be interesting. I went on an easy four mile run today with a friend and it was slow but went ok. I don't think I'll be setting any records at Tucson but then again, you never know. Tuscon is, after all, the National Clydesdale marathon championship and a downhill course so I have plenty of motivation to try and do well and it is on a course that suits my specialty.

New Adventures Both this Year and Next

2010-11-26T20:04:00.000-08:00

My 2010 season hasn’t been the model of well thought out plans and or logistical wizardry that are usually the mark of my racing seasons but it has been interesting and still contains more in the next three weeks. Leadville pretty much consumed my focus and planning so the remainder of my season has been governed by impulsivity. While this has led to a lot of great experiences such as the Devil Mountain 50K, Rio Del Lago 100 and the Do-Wacka-Do 50K to name but a few, it has also led to a real loss of focus on one important goal that the GeekGrl and I had set before ourselves some 4 years ago, running at least one marathon or longer in all 50 states.

During the 2010 season I only picked up one state, Colorado, and the GeekGrl picked up two, California and Oklahoma. It was better that nothing but we need to get busy if we are going to accomplish this goal before we are 70. After Leadville, as I was reflecting on the lack of my focus on this important marathon goal and so started casting about to see if I could pick up another state or two. During my research I started thinking about how it would be necessary to pick up races further east by running back-to-back marathons on a single weekend unless I wanted to double my airfare and the number of days I needed to take away from work so I started to look for doubles but the only one that showed up that seemed reasonable for us to accomplish this year was the Death Valley Trail Marathon and Las Vegas Marathon double, both in states the GeekGrl already have.

However, the Death Valley – Las Vegas double does allow the GeekGrl and I to raise out status in the Marathon Maniacs from 4-star Iridium to 5-star Ruthenium all we needed was a third marathon in a different state either on the preceding or following weekend. I found the Tucson Marathon, my very first, on the weekend following the Death Valley – Las Vegas double so it is game on!

Next weekend will be our first attempt at a double. All reservations are made and all contingencies are planned. The one wrench in the plans is that the Las Vegas marathon dropped its marathon cutoff to 5:30, something that I just can’t seem to let go. Not only did they do that but they make the run through wedding chapel ceremony take place three miles in at a 15 minute per mile pace. A 5:30 marathon is a 12:40 pace. Is the run through wedding chapel so prohibitively expensive to operate that they cannot afford to conduct two ceremonies? One for half-marathoners at a 15-minute pace to be, as they say, inclusive, and one set to go so people can remain on a 12:40 pace if they want to run the marathon.

ANYWAY, because the GeekGrl and I already have Nevada, California and Arizona it really doesn’t do much in terms of the whole 50-state goal…or does it? Next weekend will be our first double. Next season, with better planning, we will get at least 4 more states in TWO consecutive weekends. That’s right, a Double Double!

April 30th we will be running the Country Music Marathon in Nashville. I have heard this is a good marathon so I’m looking forward to it but I know there are some beautiful trail marathons in Tennessee so I’m sure I’ll be back.

May 1st we will be running the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati. There are also a couple ultras I want to do in Ohio but the Flying Pig is supposed to be one of those must do marathons for those of us who travel the country collecting marathons in different states. I am REALLY looking forward to this one.

May 7th we will be running the W isconsin Marathon. Apparently the Wisconsin Marathon is the cheesiest and who wouldn’t want to do the cheesiest marathon. Like so many other states Wisconsin also has at least two ultras that I’d like to do one day but marathons first. We ran a half-mary there last summer and got to meet up with Mike and Jenny Wimmer so we’ll see if that is in the cards once again.

May 8th we will be running the Kalamazoo Marathon. This one has a special deal where the first person registered from each state gets their entry fee comped, a free pair of New Balance running shoes and gets to stay in a special tent at the finish line. I registered the GeekGrl first so if we were the first New Mexicans to register she will get the special treatment.

The Double Double is going to be a wild ride and will represent our biggest adventure yet, 4 marathons, 4 states, two weeks. It is going to be a blast! If anyone is interested I have the logistics worked out. We could make it a party.

However, before that little shindig there is one major task to complete. I will be going back to Rocky Raccoon to finish what I started in 2009. I’m a much more experienced trail runner and I have been training hard since my recovery from Rio Del Lago. I’m feeling confident and will be going for a sub-24 hour finish. I know I can do it I just have to keep my feet and have a good race. The GeekGrl will be running the 50-mile at Rocky and is looking to smash her 50-mile PR.
It should be an exciting season!

My Kingdom for a 50K: A Veterans Day 11K Race Report

2010-11-14T18:13:00.000-08:00

Today I ran the Veterans Day 11K because someone I know told me they were going to sign up. They didn’t sign up. Still, it resulted in a good workout that I wouldn’t have otherwise attempted. I have fallen back on my weekly mileage this week because it has been pretty cold and my mom was visiting so I needed to do some extra miles today to try and make it up.

The 11K began at Kit Carson park where all REALLY flat and fast Albuquerque races begin and there was a really small group present, maybe 50 or 60 people. However, it turns out there were a few really fast people there including a disproportionate number of fast Masters runners. My plan was to take if relatively easy since I had a long run to complete after the race but as Misty had predicted my competitive side got the better of me.

I started out at a good pace but not top speed for the distance but as the race progressed I kept seeing people I wanted to try and pass. My splits were Mile 1 – 7:59, Mile 2 – 7:56, Mile 3 – 7:53, Mile 4 - 7:39 (yeah, this is the mile in which I said “what the hell” and really started trying to pick people off) Mile 5 – 7:25, Mile 6 – 7:17. The last few tenths of a mile got rolled into my long run so I don’t know what it was but I was pretty much sprinting because I began my final kick WAY too early.

There was one last guy that I thought I had enough distance left to pass and I could see the people standing around the finish line approaching. I knew if I was going to pass this guy I was going to have to kick it. I increased my speed and pulled ahead. I kept increasing the pace in case he was able to fight back and then I realized that the people I thought were standing next to the finish line were actually cyclists way down the path. Once they pulled off the path I could see the people next to the finish line and it was, relatively speaking, a LONG way away. I took the chance of easing up just a little because I knew I could not sprint all the way to the finish. Within maybe 50 yards of the finish line I could hear heavy breathing behind me and figuring it was the guy I just passed I turned the kick back on and sprinted as best I could to the finish. I crossed the line and indeed they guy I had passed crossed maybe 15 seconds behind me. I had run much harder than I planned and now I had a long run to complete.

I diced that I would try and get in around 28 total miles for the day and I used Running Map to measure it out but since I was going to stick to trails most of the time as opposed to the dirt roads along the Bosque I wasn’t exactly sure how far my run would end up being. In the end I got in 30 miles in a total time of 4:47:31. I was on pace to crush my 50K PR, which is 5:41:22 on an easier course at about 800 feet above sea level as opposed to 5000 feet above sea level. I was really tempted to go for it but I knew the GeekGrl was waiting for me and it would have been meaningless so I turned off the trail and headed to the coffee shop and finished off the run.

I never would have begun a 30-mile long run by doing the first 11K at about a 7:30 pace but I think it has taught me that I can probably run a 50K much faster than I have previously tried and that is a pretty awesome bit of information to have.

That was NOT Easy: A Great Pumpkin Chase 10K Race Report

2010-10-31T16:54:00.000-07:00

Today the GeekGrl and I went out and ran a local 10K called the Great Pumpkin Chase. Maybe a month or so before Javelina the GeekGrl announced that she wanted to make sure we ran this race because it was her first 10K and she wanted to see if she could PR. This was my first 10K as well and I thought I’d give getting a PR a try as well. However, based on my run yesterday I didn’t really think a PR was in me.

Yesterday was the second time I ran since the Javelina 100K. My first run was an easy 4.2 mile loop in the foothills behind my house at an 11:50 minute per mile pace. Yesterday I headed out for a 10.3 mile run and ended up with an 8:58 minute per mile pace, pretty good but a far cry from what I needed and I just didn’t think my legs had a 10K PR in them.

This morning it was nice and cool and having run the course before I knew it was a pancake flat double loop lollypop-shaped course. The GeekGrl and I showed up about 40 minutes early so I headed out for a couple easy miles to warm up, as I told the GeekGrl, “Just in case I decided to go for it.”

The race started promptly at 9:00 a.m. and I took off at what felt like a pretty comfortable pace. After a couple blocks I looked at my Garmin and I was running a 6:40 pace. I knew I needed to slow down immediately but I was really glad that I could actually move my legs fast enough to hit that pace. After I slowed a bit the small lead group continued to pull ahead then there was a small group of three and then there was me running alone ahead of a small string of people followed by the main pack.

I was running hard but smooth and when the first mile passed and I was at a 7:03 pace I knew I was going to try and hold on for a PR. I knew that a 7:03 pace would crush my 10K PR so I slowed a little bit more thinking that it was more likely that I would blow apart at that pace than actually crush my PR. I ran mile two in 7:15 and was starting to breathe a little too hard for that early in the race so I backed off just a little bit more and ran mile three in 7:24.

I thought that I had found a pace that I could hold that I would beat my PR but when I hit mile four I had dropped to a 7:30 pace and was starting to hurt. Mile five was a real struggle and by the end I had dropped to a 7:38 pace. Now overall I was still under my PR pace but I was starting to worry that I would miss it by a few seconds, something I did not want to do. I could not tell if I had sped up or not but I do know that I increased the pain I was feeling trying to speed up or at least hang on.

By the end of mile six I was rewarded with a 7:30 pace. Just .2 miles left and I was really struggling to avoid slowing down. There were a couple people finishing up the 5K that was going on at the same time and they were sprinting to the finish so I tried to pass them. Finally I was across the finish line in 45:25, a new 10K PR! My old 10K PR was 47:14 and has stood since November 2007. I also ended up winning second place in my age group. Love those local races!

In the News and New News

2010-10-28T19:12:00.000-07:00

In the news: Thanks to both Joja Jogger and Johnny Tri I found out that I’m featured in Runners World! Ok, so by “I” I really mean me disguised as Elvis…without my actual name associated with Elvis and by featured I mean the article starts “There was Elvis.” and there was a picture of me running a Elvis and by Runners World I mean the Trail Heads blog section of the Runners World website. So, I don’t have the star power of Ryan Hall or Meb Keflezighi…yet, but it’s a start. The next step would be to get my picture in Ultrarunner Magazine. If I can do that I’ll as cool as Form. Notice too that the GeekGrl is included in the Runners World picture too. We were heading in from our first lap and I was running ahead to alert the crew.

New News: Back in September I ran the Rio Del Lago 100-mile Endurance Run and when I arrived at the Cool aid station I met up with Johnny Tri and some other crew people that he was hanging with. The folks in that crew did not want to yell out the nickname the GeekGrl has given me, Sweet Baboo. Instead they decided to call me Big B. Ever since then JT has been calling me Big B. I have really taken to that moniker so I did something about it, I got myself a new license plate. I have to give credit to Nancy Toby because that is where I first saw this plate but it is at least unique in New Mexico and I LOVE the new colors. Oh, and one other thing about the plate. For the first time since high school I have been able to keep my weight just below 200. It hass been about three months now and the only time I pop over is the week prior to and after an ultra and then just barely. I attribute that to running so I sort of felt the desire to kind of memorialize running in my life.

Even in a Hero’s Heart the Better Part is Discretion: A Javelina Jundred Race Report

2010-10-25T21:13:00.000-07:00

Early in the year the GeekGrl and I talked about doing the Javelina Jundred 100K together and so we registered and then went about our season training and racing pretty much as planned. However, as Javelina drew near and the GeekGrl’s training remained steady she started talking about doing the 100-mile and not the 100K. This changed things quite a bit and so we talked about me crewing and not running then we talked about me just running a couple loops or maybe the 100K while she went on to finish the 100-mile and then I pretty much decided that I’d go ahead and run the 100-mile as well. I’m not usually so flakey about an event but once plans start to change mid-stream then everything seems to get knocked loose and who knows how things will turn out in the end.

Anyway, race morning the GeekGrl and I were on tap to run 100 miles at Javelina and we took off at the starting gun with that intent. I took on the responsibility of straying on top of our hydration and nutrition but that wasn’t really necessary so I mostly started talking to other runners. The other thing about this race was, since I didn’t really consider it MY race but the GeekGrl’s race, I decided to run it as Elvis because ultimately I didn’t care if I finished and being that it is a Halloween party race it was a good excuse to try to run an ultra as Elvis.

I think the Elvis suit was a huge hit out on the course. It was fun getting all the attention and seeing people smile when I ran by but I was getting pretty annoyed with people asking me to sing them a tune. I know it’s kind of stupid not to expect that request but honestly I have never had anyone ask me to sing before so it was unexpected and unwelcome though I did eventually have something to say about it at an aid station. I told the workers at the aid station that there was a strict division of labor among Elvi and that some of us run while others sing and I could get in trouble with the union if I were caught doing both. Whatever, it was enough of a distraction that they stopped asking and it got a chuckle so I didn’t seem like a jerk.

I was also starting to feel bad for the GeekGrl because I was running the first three laps with her and this race was supposed to be about her as far as I was concerned but it really seemed to be more about me. Another thing that I should have considered.

After three laps the GeekGrl and I went our separate ways, she to her crew and me back out on lap four. I was running lap four very well and had plenty of energy until I was 10 miles into the lap at the Coyote Camp aid station. At Coyote Camp I was refueling and among the things I was considering for calories I chose some pumpkin pie. I had some earlier in the day and it tasted good and sat well so I decided to have some more and was almost immediately sorry for my choice. I can’t say with 100% certainty that the pie was bad but what I can say is that within about two minutes I was on the side of the trail throwing up and it was not like the cumulative fatigue, long hard day “I’m finally sick” kind of thing that I often experience in super long events, I was just feeling great and then I had the pie and then my stomach started grinding into knots and that was that. I experienced a dramatic cascade of nausea, pain, fatigue and, well, a bit of good sense.

I knew earlier in the day that the GeekGrl was not going to make 100 miles though I never let her know I knew because she still believed in the goal and I was going to let her enjoy that ride and reach her own conclusions. Knowing that she would be finishing at 100K I felt that it would be a really bad idea for me to push through and go the full 100 miles on her day so I decided that I too would drop at 100K. Believe me, I’m not saying that I was all gallant and self-sacrificing; I had a whole raft of reasons not to push through to 100 miles and I would have happily used each and every one of them but it at least makes me feel like I’m not 100% self-centered to know that not wanting to upstage my wife on her first attempt at 100K was at least one of those reasons.

So, I had a good time, I got to get some running in with JT who ran this as a training run for HURT, I got to get some running in with Form who (what the hell was he doing there anyway?! The man hasn't been training but there he was ready to go), I got to meet and get some running in with Joja Jogger (who finished the full 100 miles!), I earned a 100K JJ buckle to go with my 100-mile JJ buckle, I set a 100K PR for myself and I ran a 100K ultra dressed as Elvis. All pretty awesome.

However, the real story of the day is the GeekGrl’s monumental accomplishment, her first 100K finish. That solidifies her status as an ultrarunner in any country in the world. She continues to amaze me. I love her and am very proud of her and I still know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she CAN finish a 100-mile ultra.

Running with the GeekGrl is Back

2010-10-21T06:45:00.000-07:00

Early this year the GeekGrl and I registered to run the Javelina Jundred together with the intention that she was just going for the 100K and I’d run along and get my 100K buckle at Javelina as well, having already earned the 100 mile buckle last year.

As the year progressed the GeekGrl’s goal became to run the 100-mile so then the plan was for me to run a while and then crew and then the plans evolved further and I was going to crew from the very beginning. However, The GeekGrl already has a crew of three friends who are really reliable and one is already an experienced crew member.

As the time for Javelina drew near though I started itching to be out on the course so that’s where I’ll be. The GeekGrl and I are registered in the team competition. In the team competition at Javelina both runners are really independent runners you don’t have to run the whole thing together but each runner does have to run the whole thing. The award goes to the team with the lowest combined time. I’ll go out easy and hang with the GeekGrl for the first 3 or 4 laps depending on when her pacers take over and then I’ll see what I have left and do as much running as I can. I’d like to bring it in under 27:28, which would be a 100-mile PR for me.

Oh, and two more things. I am 100% certain that the GeekGrl can complete the 100-miles at Javelina. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever...PERIOD.

Secondly...I just may run this thing as Elvis. I submitted my name in the constume contest today. I have feared the heat but if the high does only go into the upper 70's as predicted it should be tolerable. Besides, the suit is white and wicking.

You can track me, or Elvis, from the Javelina website. I'm number 702.

JT Wants Me Dead: A Duke City Marathon Race Report

2010-10-17T20:09:00.000-07:00

It is true, JT wants me dead but that will have to come a little later. Today I ran the Duke City Marathon, a race I said I’d never do. I said I’d never do it not because it is a bad race but because it just isn’t all that interesting a race for someone who lives in Albuquerque. However, earlier this year the GeekGrl and I ran the Turtle Marathon in Roswell, another marathon I said I’d never run, and we had a really good time. Then and there the GeekGrl and I decided that since New Mexico is our home state and there are relatively few marathons, six total I believe, we really should run them all.

So since I am back to training mode and running longer and the GeekGrl is in full taper for Javelina I signed us up, her for the 5K and me the marathon. She was mighty disappointed to be running the 5K. She complained to me “I REALLY want to do the half” but I wouldn’t relent. Speaking to her as a coach I told her there was no way she was going to run a half marathon the weekend before her first attempt at a 100-miler but I told her she could run the 5K as fast as she wanted, which she did.

I headed out for the marathon not having much of an idea what to expect. I know my strength and endurance is really good but I am not trained for marathon running right now. Pretty much since Leadville all I’ve done is race and recover with some 4 to 10 mile runs in-between. I figured I might run in the ballpark of four hours, maybe a bit longer. I also decided to continue my experiment of pushing harder from the beginning of the race to try and narrow down just how hard is hard enough.

At the Do-Wacka-Do 50K I discovered that an average heart rate of 160 from the beginning of the race is too much and I exploded around mile 21. Today I thought I’d try a starting average heart rate of 150 and hold that until the half-way mark and then if I had it in me I’d push harder on the way back.

Right from the starting gun people took off like we were running a 10K. I started to get caught up in it but thought better. I looked and my heart rate had already spiked to 157 so I backed off and let all manner of people surge past me. I hung back and made predictions as to when I would pass this person or that. Some folks looked like I’d probably catch them by mile 15 if at all, some I figured I’d catch within six miles but what amazed me were all the people blowing past me that looked like I’d catch by the end of the block.

So I was cruising along not paying attention to my pace until my heart rate was a solid 15. When I hit 150 I stole a look at my pace and noted it was an 8:47. That seemed too fast. I thought I should be running more like a 9:15 or so but my HR was where I wanted it to be and this was an experiment so I just thought, “Well, let’s see how long I can ride this out” and I just kept going. The miles kept ticking by and I still felt comfortable and my average pace was still dropping. I was really tempted to just slow down even though my HR was rock steady at 150. It took a lot for me to convince myself to just let come what may.

By mile six I was already starting to feel a little tightness in my legs and immediately thought that this was way too soon to feel anything. Six miles into a marathon you should still feel like you just started but I stared again at my HR and convinced myself to just keep going. By the time I hit the turn-around I was hitting mile splits that were in the low 8:30s to high 8:20s and I was actually feeling a little better than I was at mile six.

Now was the point in my plan where I decided that, depending on how I felt I would try and speed up. I was feeling good but I was also running pretty fast. I decided to just hold my current pace and maybe try and speed up a bit at mile 20. I figured that even if I wasn’t able to speed up at that point and were somehow able to maintain my current pace I’d still break four hours, which was my secret goal but not something I really thought I could pull off.

I had been passing people without being passed myself since about mile five but as I closed in on mile 15 the people I was passing were getting smaller and smaller and they were fewer and farther between. By mile 20 I was starting to pass people who looked like they were actually running pretty well but by mile 23 the people I was passing were either doing the marathon shuffle of were in a full blown death march. Despite the fact that at this point we were all mixed in with the back of the pack half-marathon runners and a random assortment of half-marathon walkers the marathoners were easy to spot.

As I entered the final three miles I was struggling to hold my pace but managed to keep it below 9:00. When I hit the final mile I began to pick up the pace again and was able to squeeze out just a little more and I crossed the finish line in 3:47:04. I was pretty stunned because that is only 25 seconds off my marathon PR and that was run at the Ogden marathon, which takes place at fairly similar elevation but which has some really long downhill sections. The Duke City marathon takes place at an average elevation of 5,000 feet but is pretty much flat except the rollers that start about 2.5 miles from the turn around.

So when I finally got home to check my Garmin data I see that the course was measured by my Garmin as 26.35 miles not 26.2. I am used to my garmin being slightly inaccurate but it always registers shorter not longer. The GeekGrls Garmin measure her course at 3.15 instead of 3.1. If I go with my data for average pace and distance than that would put me at 26.2 in 3:45:55, a PR by 44 seconds. I’d love to claim that but I’m sure that would raise more than a few eyebrows. However, I can still claim to have run the fastest average pace for a race that was advertised as a marathon so I guess I’ll go with that.

The best thing, however, is the fact that I ran a negative split by about two minutes. Even better, my negative split was so small that I take it to mean I ran almost a perfect marathon because, I guess in theory, if you started out as fast as you possibly could without dying at the end you would run a perfectly even split, which I damn near did.

Hooray small negative split! Hooray Beer! (my nod to Red Stripe, I can’t get their adds out of my head recently.)

So, I claim that JT wants me dead because he put the evil thought into my head that we should run the Zane Grey 50-miler next season. Zane Grey is most certainly one of the top three hardest 50s in the country if not the hardest. I have a few friends who have run it and they say it is super rocky and you are basically getting lashed the whole way by cactus and dry branches. It’s apparently a lot like getting flogged by a cat-o-nine tails for several hours. Hell, it took Anton Krupeca just over eight hours to finish Zane Grey and he can run Leadville in 16 hours.

Why JT, why?

The Most Disappointing PR Ever: A Pajarito Trail Run Race Report

2010-10-10T15:01:00.001-07:00

Today was the second time I’ve done the 15-mile Pajarito trail run and it wasn’t any easier this time. Last year my time was 3:04:14 and I was 25th of 45. This year I finished in 2:38:35 and was 18th out of 45. I recognize that an improvement of nearly 26 minutes on a 15 mile mountainous run is a pretty tremendous accomplishment so I probably sound like an ingrate saying that it was a disappointing finish but it was just one of those situations where the end of the race was so much worse than what I was hoping for that it kind of wiped out the luster of the beginning of the race.

I remember last year starting too far back and getting stuck in a long line of runners that were much slower than I wanted to be running so I spent a lot of time waiting to pass and then expending a bit too much energy on the pass. This year I started pretty far forward though it is always difficult to judge where to start on this race because you take off with 10K and 15-mile runners mixed together and you don’t know who is who. It turns out that I chose my spot just about perfectly. The run starts with almost a mile of short, gentle rollers and then a good downhill before beginning a two mile climb from 9200 feet to 10,500 feet at the top of Pajarito Mountain. During these first three miles I may have passed two or three people and was probably passed by two or three. Near the time I reached the peak I could tell that I was at the head of the runners who needed to use a run/walk strategy to make it to the top and the group of runners ahead were all ones who were able to run most, if not all, of the climbs.

Upon reaching the peak there is a spectacular view of the Valles Caldera and then you duck back into the forest for some nice flat trail and the beginning of a huge, steep downhill beginning with a run straight down the middle of a ski slope. As I went bombing downhill I hit a 6-minute mile, which is pretty scary on technical, twisting trail. I was dodging rocks, ducking under branches, leaping small boulders and vaulting fallen trees, it was a total blast. However, on one of the sharp turns I started to lose control and I rolled my right ankle and went down hard. I scraped up my left knee a bit and my right ankle was sore but I was able to get up and continue running pretty well.

During the first six miles when you have the big climb and descent there was already some snow on the trails at the higher elevations but it wasn’t enough to make a significant difference in footing. This year, however, the trails seemed rockier, like there was more loose rock on the trails, rocks that would bounce up and hit your ankles or would roll out from under your feet. Other parts of the trail just seemed more worn like there had been heavy rain erosion and this made footing more difficult as well.

Despite the issues with footing and the fall I continued to run well through the big climb and descent. The next section of the course is a long out and back with a relatively gentle 4.5 mile climb out and then a descent back. The entire way out I was looking forward to my run back to the finish line because I knew it would be a mostly gentle downhill all the way in and I was positive that I would be able to pick up a few more places before I crossed the finish line. However, at about mile 10 I started to experience the faint beginnings of pain in my stomach. I backed off my pace a little and things seemed to settle but at about mile 11.5 I was experiencing serious pain in my gut and I could not run downhill because the pain was just too intense so I was reduced to a combination of slow jogging and walking.

In short order people started to pass me but there wasn’t anything I could do because any time I tried to pick up my pace the stabbing pain in my stomach would return. Before long my right ankle started to ache as well and the ankle began to feel really unstable on uneven surfaces, which was just about every footstep of the course. I tried just being patient and hoped the bad patch would pass but then I started alternately getting cramps in my chest wall on the left side of my body and side stitches low on the right side of my torso. All the while more people were passing me cheerfully saying “Good job!” and my body seemed to be in full revolt. My mood started to darken significantly but at least the distance to the finish was still diminishing.

It was strange to have done so well at a race and end up not feeling very good about it but I guess that’s just the way it is sometimes. Still, a 26 minute improvement, I’ll take that! I just need to focus on being grateful I can run races like this.

Do-Wacka-D’oh!: A Do-Wacka-Do Race Report

2010-09-26T09:35:00.000-07:00

Leading with the biggest news from this event; The GreekGrl won first overall female! I am a very proud husband and coach. She is really looking good for Javelina.

The Do-Wacka-Do 50K takes place at Sandy Sanders Wildlife Management Area just outside Erick Oklahoma. Erick is to be found in the south west part of the state and is where Roger Miller grew up. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t have a clue who Roger Miller was prior to this race, which benefits his museum, but you should check him out as he has written a few songs that are instantly recognizable American classics that I suspect 99% of people would not attribute to him.

So, the wildlife that appears to be managed at Sandy Sanders includes tarantulas, millipedes, black snakes of some sort, numerous of large black beetles, grasshoppers as thick as rice at a wedding and three white tail deer. I’m sure there is more, for example the GeekGrl said she saw a variety of giant black beetle with huge orange wings that they were apparently flying around one particular part of the course.

I’ve lived all over Texas, even parts very close to the Oklahoma boarder and generally in the west and southwest most of my life and this is rough country. The wildlife tends not to be fuzzy and snuggly and there is little about the land that is gentle or forgiving.

I was expecting this race to be somewhat difficult if only because of the anticipated heat and humidity. I always do poorly in the heat and I really haven’t ever run anywhere that was humid, at least nothing longer than a 5K. The high temperature for the day was 87 degrees and when the race began it was 90% humidity. For most of the race it remained humid, 82% by 11:00, 74% at noon and still 56% when I finished. For me this was like breathing water. I was soaked within the first couple miles and by the end of the first of two loops my shoes were as wet as if I had been doing stream crossings. The humidity pretty much prevented me from cooling off because, of course, the sweat didn’t evaporate. The only thing that kept me somewhat cool were the lower temperatures that mercifully extended fairly late into the morning because of some early cloud cover.

This was an interesting race for me because I was really only doing it for three reasons, the GeekGrl needed one last tune-up race before Javelina, she also happened to still need an Oklahoma marathon and I really liked the name of the race.

Any name, race information or quirky sounding organization causes me to really want to do the race because I imagine the race director has a laid-back personality and good sense of humor, two qualities that I really love in a race director. This race had it all, the name, a "primitive shower" that ended up being a garden hose and a tarp, and a load of super friendly volinteers all in a small town with home-made food and good conversation after the race. This will end up being one of my more memorible events.

However, beyond these non-reasons for actually doing "a race" I didn’t have any personal goals so I just made two up, one that I could control and one that I couldn’t but was at least related to the first. I decided that I would (1) start by running this race hard (for an ultra) to see how far I could get and (2) try and earn a 50K PR.

The 50K PR was going to be a ridiculous goal to begin with because my 50K PR is on a perfectly flat, non-technical course, that is run at night when it was relatively cool and I was in pretty good shape when I ran it. I’m in better shape now but that course, El Scorcho in Fort Worth Texas, is the easiest course in existence.

The going out hard goal was silly but completely in the spirit of experimentation. I remember one year I hired a triathlon coach just to see if it was worth it and he set up some workouts for me that had me going harder than I had previously thought I could. I was pretty amazed because every time I felt like backing off a bit I could almost feel him standing behind me pushing me to speed up rather than slow down so speed up is what I did and I survived.

I got to wondering, “how hard is too hard for me and how would I know without personal experimentation?” Normally in these things I would go out at a heart rate of 140 and keep it in the low to mid 140s for the entire first half of the race. The next quarter I would let it get into the low to mid 150s and the final quarter I would run in the low to mid 160s with occasional spikes into the low 170s if I’m doing something short lived like a steep climb. This race, I decided to start at a HR in the low to mid 160s and just run that until I finished of blew apart.

The strategy worked for about 21 miles and then…KA-BOOM! It was a glorious explosion the likes of which I have never experienced in a race as short as a 50K. As a matter of fact the only similar experience I have had with such exhaustion was through the heat of the day when I ran the Javelina Jundred though my "run" at Rio Del Lago was a close second. It took me about 2:42 to finish the first loop and then about 4 hours to finish the second. Through about mile 21 I was the first place male and then in a matter of seconds I was in fourth place; there were three guys running side by side the whole race. I passed them in the first mile and as I did I heard one tell the others, "We are going to run just like this for about the next five hours. I thought, "Smart" and then forged ahead into the great unknown.

Anyway, it was fairly miserable for the last 12 miles because I had become badly dehydrated, behind on my nutrition and my stomach wasn’t emptying. The sun came out, the temperature soared but the humidity kept hanging around. Somehow I was able to hold on to 4th overall and won my age group, pretty impressive considering there were 15 people in the 50K and me and one other guy in my age group don’t you think?

So what did I learn? In a 50K or marathon I can probably go out harder than I had previously given myself credit for and if I approach a race fresh and tapered this may result in much faster times. I continue to seem to do disproportionately poorly in the heat. I used to mostly blame that on my size and while I am still, and probably always be a “big” runner, my size has been decreasing more than I think my hot weather running ability has increased. I also learned that, probably also because of the heat, I don’t do well in really humid weather. I know I can do cool and humid I just stay really wet. Hot and dry is bad but hot and humid is the worst.

So, what’s up next? I will be crewing for the GeekGrl and probably JT for the Javelina Jundred and I might try to pick up the state of Louisiana during November in my 50-states quest but other than that the only thing I have planned for this season is three marathons in ten days, December 4th – Death Valley, December 5th – Las Vegas, December 12th – Tucson. Three Marathons, ten days, three states earns me the “Ruthenium” level in the Marathon Maniacs, five stars!

Short and Sweet A Chips & Salsa Half-Marathon Race (Pace) Report

2010-09-19T16:11:00.000-07:00

Today was the seventh running of the Chips & Salsa Half-Marathon, a local event that I have never done. In previous years I have always let other things get in the way of showing up at the local running events, other “bigger” races or training for longer races and today it struck me what a shame that is. Local races are fun not to mention convenient and inexpensive. What’s more, they aren’t local races to some people at all. Today when the GeekGrl and I were standing at the start line I overheard two people who are apparently going for their 50 States Half-Marathon tour. I didn’t know people did such things I thought all the 50-staters were marathoners. Just this morning the GeekGrl were wondering if people really did travel to distant cities just to do races that were shorter than a marathon they do.

The other thing that is fun about the shorter distances is all the people who are new to running. You don’t get that in ultras, “Hi, yeah, my name is Candy and this is my very first race! Why did I choose Leadville for my first race? Because it’s so pretty!” Nope, that only occurs at the much shorter distances. I still vividly remember my first half-marathon and it was an amazing experience. I remember getting home and feeling that really good kind of tired. I showered off and lay in bed just saying to myself over and over “I just ran a whole half of a marathon!” It was pretty awesome.

This morning the GeekGrl and I met a woman who was out for her first half-marathon and boy was she excited. She was chattering away trying to calm her nerves. She asked us if we had run many of “these” before to which we replied, “We’ve run a few” and smiled. I didn’t say, “Sure, as a matter of fact I ran 7.65 of them back-to-back last weekend.” I never volunteer my running habits like that so it always makes me wonder who else may be lurking in the crowd, someone I’m sure.
Anyway, this race was part of the GeekGrl’s training plan, kind of an ultrarunning-speedwork day. I went along to see if I could get my legs stretched out and get back into the groove. A week of no running whatsoever is not an easy thing so it felt good to be back out there. I ran alongside the GeekGrl to see if I could help pace her to a half-marathon PR. At the 10K split she broke her 10K PR and by the end of the race she had broken her half-marathon PR by at least a couple minutes. We finished in 2:24:59 according to my Garmin but I think our official time will register a tad faster.

And then, well, then we collected our cool ceramic salsa dish for our finishing prize, went and got my car washed, went home and I mowed the lawn and had plenty of time left over to just lounge around. If I’m not careful I may just discover that you can run AND have a life.
Next up is the inaugural Do-Wacka-Do 50K in Erick Oklahoma…I bet you ALL know exactly where that is without even consulting a map.

Superman Finds His Cape: An Rio Del Lago Finale

2010-09-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

I was stunned into bewilderment and my tenuous momentum dissipated like match smoke in a hurricane. Trying to resurface, my mind began a series of silent questions in the hope that it could find some footing. “I have missed the extended cutoff by 15 minutes, 15 minutes, what is the cutoff? What are they telling me? Why are they just staring at me? Fifteen minutes PAST the cutoff?” No foothold was found and I stood there stupidly with my bottles in hand, arms hanging limply by my side. I slowly looked up the trail toward what had so recently been my direction of travel and then dubiously back the way I had come. My mind again retreated to a blissful state of emptiness, a chill shook my body and my feet silently lodged a complaint. Suddenly a large grey beard with broad shoulders sprung from a chair behind the aid table and thrust its face in mine and hissed, “Get out of here, you can’t stop, don’t stop, you cannot stop…EVER.”

In my blunted emotional state my mind achieved a reasonable facsimile of panic and I spun on my heals and bolted from the aid station with the phrase reverberating in my head “you cannot stop…EVER.” As I turned the GeekGrl and RBR were walking toward me and I shouted out “I can’t stop, I need caffeine.” The GeekGrl ran to the car and met me just before I descended the hill atop which Hazel Bluff sits. She thrust two gels at me, both of which contained caffeine and neither of which I had ever tasted before.

Quite frankly I had in mind something more like a quad shot mochaccino with an orange twist, a double tall caramel dulce de leche or, for god’s sake, even a cold cup of burnt Folgers hobo blend but not another F @#%*ing gel! Alas, everyone was doing everything within their powers to keep my ass on the trail and moving forward so I took what I could get and plunged down Hazel Bluff toward the bridge over the American River.

Now I was running on a sidewalk spanning the American River and cars were driving by at irregular intervals. Street lamps lit my way and I moved through the suddenly urban night. My earlier sense of panic had cycled down to a vague anxiety and was now being reborn as determination and focus. “I can’t stop, I can’t stop, I can’t stop” became less the refrain of a frightened animal and more the mantra of a boxer beaten and bruised reentering the ring for one final round.

As you turn off the Bridge over the American River you soon enter a very large, riverside green space complete with shade-covered picnic tables, smooth double-wide “single track” trail and a leisurely looping bike path. It was one of those spaces created by landscape architects that is designed to offer the illusion of being in the wilds but falls well within the survival parameters of our more fleshy and clawless brethren. I found it ironic that I entered such a civilized space at civil twilight and was given a bit of a boost from my newfound affiliation with modernity.

I had about 22 and a half miles to go and with a new day dawning I was finally beginning to return to life. I started to accelerate my walking and to extend my running. I looked at my Garmin and my overall average pace though mile 78 as a whopping 18:58 minute mile. If maintained that would result in a finish time of 31 hours, 41 minutes and 59 seconds. The race had a 30 hour cutoff and I still didn’t know by what amount that time had been extended due to the earlier vandalism on the course. What I did know is that I was firmly within the realm of the walking dead and that I needed to escape.

I was beginning to see people on their return route from the turnaround at Mountain Lion Knoll, very, very few people. The vast majority of those who had at one point been behind me had dropped, all but one. The first person I saw was a man with a heavy Irish brogue that I had met briefly years ago when I was running the Olmstead Loop in Cool California. At that point he was chipper, motoring his way through his first 100 with a smile on his face and a bottle filled with ice. Now he was hobbling painfully and holding onto his pacer’s shoulder in order to keeping himself upright and moving forward. I mustered all my cheer and said, “You’re doing it!” and he just shook his head and hobbled on. I never say the Irishman again.

Next up was Roger. He continued his mincing jog at a dead steady 15 minute pace just like he had the previous 85 miles. He said nary a word as we crossed paths but broke into a broad smile and began to applaud me. I was reminded of what Roger had told me way back at mile 65. “As the night wears on people will get sick, they will continue to drop and our position in the race will get better and better.” I knew this to be a fact having myself dropped at mile 80 in Rocky Raccoon. I have also heard of people dropping as late as mile 90, even mile 93 of a 100 mile race. Now that I was into the new day I knew this would not be my fate. I would have to be pulled or someone would have to shoot me in the face. It was time to turn back the clock.

I picked up my pace further and jogged almost the entire four miles that were left to Mountain Lion Knoll. When I reached the turnaround the GeekGrl and RBR were standing there waiting for me and cheering. The aid station captain looked at his list of runners, looked at my bib number, did a double-take and said, “Well, it looks like Superman finally found his cape.”

The GeekGrl told me she had some caffeine for me that even had some herbal crap in it and I said, “Great, I love me some herbal crap” and with that she handed me a 20 oz Amp Energy drink and I slammed it down like it was a six ounce cup of water. I informed everyone that it was time for me to run and the aid station captain suggested that I drop my hydration pack and one bottle since it was only about three miles between aid station between here and then end of the race. I shed my gear and grabbed my iPod and headed out.

I have put a lot of time and effort into organizing my running playlist since the GeekGrl introduced me to running with music. Even though I rarely race with music I have taken to always carrying my iPod for just the perfect moment. As I left Mountain Knoll for the finish line 17 miles distant Collective Soul’s “Run” slowly began and I could feel myself entering a nice, relaxed running zone. Later the mood shifted to a more determined “Going the Distance” by Cake and I found myself nudging the pace upward. By the time I returned to Hazel Bluff I was ready for blood having just been hit with a dose of “Thunderstruck” and “Hard as a Rock” by AC/DC.

As I reached the top of the bluff there stood the GeekGrl, RBR and Johnny Tri. The aid station volunteer who had earlier told me that I was 15 minutes past the extended cutoff stood staring at me holding his list of runners limply at his side. As if he were

addressing a formerly dead messiah whom he had publically dismissed as a goner he said, “You’ve made up all the time…and gained. Nobody that we let through has done that.” I reminded him of our earlier discourse saying, “Well, you all told me not to stop…ever.”

The GeekGrl came up to me and said, “Are you ready to have JT pace you for a while?” and I said, “Hell yeah!” JT stood there with a huge smile and was ready to rock. The GeekGrl gave me a second Amp, I drank it down then told JT, “Let’s go to work”, we gave each other a high five, pointed ourselves in the direction of the finish line and bolted for the cliff face that was the trail dropping off Hazel Bluff.

At that moment the song “Low Rider” by War came thumping through my headphones. For reasons unknown to me the song Low Rider resonates deeply with me. In my high school year book I was third runner up for “Whitest White Boy of the Senior Class of 1985.” My best friend at the time, Hector Ledesma, used to call me the Campbell’s Soup Kid. Ok, I’m lying, I wasn’t third runner up but I did have a best friend named Hector who, for some reason, could not get enough of the word nalgas.

Anyway, fueled by Amp, by the new day, by the motivation of having JT pacing me and by Low Rider I started to run. I asked JT if there were any runners ahead and how far might they be and he said there were runners ahead but they were quite a way off. I didn’t say anything but my one thought was “Time to go hunting.” My run became faster and faster and I was somehow freed from the shackles of fatigue that had bound me for so long. I ran with abandon, I attacked the hills and went skidding around the turns. I was simultaneously trying to chase down as many people as I could find and trying to outrun JT.

Believe me when I say that I do not know where this strength comes from so late in a race. It comes no matter how badly I have suffered but it is not something I have planned for, it is not a strategy and I don’t secretly hold back until mile 90 and then take off. I do not know from whence it comes but come it does and when it is there I just go like crazy until it is gone.

My morning burst had me flying the entire 4.5 miles from Hazel Bluff to Negro Bar. When I hit Negro Bar the GeekGrl and RBR were still sitting in the car and didn’t have time to do anything but sit there and cheer me on. I filled my bottles and tore off down the trail whooping like an animal. There were several runners strung out through the Negro Bar aid station and beyond and I started picking them off one after another. My running lasted just a little while longer and then I hit yet another hill and ran out of steam. The day had begun to heat up again and I had to conserve what was left to finish the race.

As I walked along I attempted to reflect on my race but I couldn’t put together much in the way of coherent thought. At this point I was also becoming emotionally fried. I just needed someone to be with, someone to walk with me and keep me company because I was not in any shape to be alone. I was swinging from high to low and wanted only to make it to the next aid station, the last aid station. When I arrived the GeekGrl and RBR were there waiting and were aware I had slowed again. I called out to the GeekGrl and asked her to pace me the rest of the way to the finish just like she had at Leadville. She stood by my side and accompanied me to the end.

They say pain is just weakness leaving the body. I’m really not that big on who is “strong” and who is “weak” because we are all both. I enjoy having my weakness. I grapple with it and by knowing it in all its many faces I am able to witness my strength in opposition to it.

One final word. Thank you for reading. I’ve been dying to finish this report specifically because I wanted to thank you. Yes, part of my strength is because, at least in my mind, I know I have weird bloggy peeps who have an interest in me just as I know I have an interest in you.

A Deeper Darkness Falls: A Rio Del Lago Race Report Part 2

2010-09-15T21:18:00.000-07:00

Gordy was running along at a shuffling gait bare chested with his thick mane of hair and grizzled grey beard looking very much like a lost left-over miner from the California gold strike of 1849. He was wearing some flimsy running shorts that probably came from K-mart, he carried an old-style flashlight that had a regular bulb and probably operated off C or D cell batteries. His flashlight illuminated the trail about as well as an unenthusiastic firefly but there he was putting one foot in front of the other no pretention, no fanfare just Gordy and the darkness; it was amazing.

As he passed us I said “Hey Gordy” and he said “Hi” and just kept on shuffling. I felt humiliated. At that particular moment though I was definitely tired and very sore I was actually feeling ok and all I was doing was taking a brief break to empty my shoes but in all those hours that is when I first saw Gordy. He hadn’t been at the start. Apparently he started about 40 minutes late. He probably woke up and realized that he needed an extra layer of cardboard on the bottom of his Chuck Taylors so was delayed a bit. I put my shoes on as quickly as I could and took off after him with the GeekGrl in my wake. For the first time in hours I was doing something that was a reasonable approximation of running. Within a few minutes I was running stride for stride right behind the Man. He heard me behind him and quietly stepped off the side of the trail to let me pass. I thanked him and he said “no problem” and that was that, I ran with and passed Gordy and it was everything I hoped it would be, he was just a regular guy out there still trying his best, still moving forward after all these years. The heroism of a life well lived has no equal in my book.
Shortly after passing Gordy a headlamp came running up the trail towards us. The runner was yelling “Twin Rocks aid station closes in 15 minutes hurry up!” He blew past us yelling out his warning and suddenly the night was alive with Zombie runners lurching through the dark forest, beams of light swinging wildly as we all did our best to survive yet another aid station closing.

The GeekGrl and I made it in time for me to grab a bit more nutrition and get out. I wasn’t about to stick around to see who all made it and who didn’t and since I was feeling better and I knew the GeekGrl had had a long day I decided to proceed to Cavitt School aid station and the 100K mark on my own.

The next four miles to Cavitt School were completely unremarkable and before I knew it I was running into the school gym and was herded over to the medical check. At weigh-in I was only down by about three pounds so on the whole I was doing good with my nutrition. I was still feeling ok and mostly wanted to just get out of that aid station and get back on the trail. Though nobody was saying anything about cutoff times I knew I was still dangerously close but I didn’t have any idea how close.

I got up out of the medical chair, grabbed my refilled bottles and some food and headed out the door. As soon as I stepped outside I asked the two people standing there which way I was supposed to go. One guy said “I don’t know” and the woman said, “I think you go over the way you came in and then just head out past the fence to the dike.” What the hell? I had just run 62 miles, it was the dead of night and I already knew I had to go back out the way I had come in. What I didn’t know was how to prevent myself from going all the way back EXACTLY the way I had come thus repeating the past 20+ hours of hell. I went back inside the gym and just shouted out to no one in particular, “How do I get out to the lower half of the run?” Just then another runner stood up and said, “Come on, I’ll show you the way.”

I later found out that the runner, Roger, was at that moment planning to drop from the race. He decided he had enough and was going to pack it in when I walked back into the gym lost as a goose. Roger had run Rio Del Lago several times in the past and knew the course like the back of his hand. He decided that he had renewed purpose, to aid a fellow runner in the completion of this monumental task. So Roger and I ambled forth into the night and he embarked on an exhaustive description of the Rio Del Lago 100-mile Endurance Run. As Roger and I departed Cavitt School we again confronted Gordy on the trail. He gave us a wry smile and said “Have a good run.”

Apparently Gordy dropped from the race five minutes later at Cavitt School. I’m sure Gordy will be back but I’m equally sure that he takes immense pleasure in seeing what he has wrought, seeing hundreds of people around the country plumbing the depths of the human spirit all engaged in something he was probably called an idiot for trying in the first place. It was one of the proudest times of my life to have run with Gordy who is not only a kindred spirit but is also the man who first gave full expression to that spirit.

The second half of the course, which really isn’t half the course, was supposed to be flat and mostly on a wide dirt road nest to a bike path. Well, just like the second half isn’t really half it isn’t really flat, or smooth or bike pathy for most of its length. Now, there certainly are wide, smooth sections, flat sections and sections of bike path and these are all wonderful places to run but these sections probably make up no more than 70% of the remaining 38 miles.

You may be thinking “What a big baby complaining about a measly 30%” and maybe you are right, maybe I was just being a big baby but that 30% was comprised of big rolling hills on narrow, rocky, winding, dusty, weed covered single track trail. To make matters worse while on that scraggly trail you could see the nice smooth bike path never more than 30 feet in the distance. The race developer had scrupulously avoided every stretch of easy running at all costs. My legs felt horrible, I was getting very tired and it was exquisitely difficult to stay on the single track and not just hop over and take an easy stroll along the neatly paved bike path.

I kept eyeing the bike path and thinking “Nobody is around and nobody would know if I just hopped on over there and used the bike path instead of this crappy trail. It would be so much easier and anyway, I was promised a flat, easy second half. I have been dreaming about bike path running for about the last 10 hours and that’s exactly what I should get!” But I knew someone who would know, who would never forget, who would confront me daily for the rest of my life for having taken the easy way out; I would know.

As I reluctantly reached this conclusion rather than being self-congratulatory and feeling pious I simply got angry at myself for being such a damn Boy Scout and dejectedly skulked through the night on my crappy trail with my dusty shoes and my beaten legs.

My anger didn’t last long though because I soon began to get really cold and started to shiver. In preparing for RDL I had set up three drop bags with the various things I would need at various points in the race and because the GeekGrl and I were flying in to Sacramento the only extra gear I packed was all in my drop bags. The plan was that if, by chance the GeekGrl and RBR missed me at an aid station I could still access the gear I needed, which I was able to do at the Auburn Dam Overlook. If I was met as planned then my gear would simply be there waiting. The thing I didn’t count on was being more than two hours behind schedule so that my gear ended up being stored at the wrong places at the wrong times. I not only needed a headlamp in a bag at Maidu to avert the walk in the darkness that I experienced between Power Plant and Rattlesnake Bar but I also needed to have my cold weather running gear ready for me at Negro Bar and not Hazel Bluff, which was another 4.5 miles down the trail.

The GeekGrl and RBR met me at Negro Bar and I announced that I was freezing cold and asked of there were any extra clothes lying around. Somehow there was an extra short-sleeve shirt and bandanna so I put those on but was of course still shivering. I was feeling pretty desperate because unlike hypothermia in the heat of the day I could not just slow down. If hypothermia was going to hit me at night then I needed to speed up, something that I was in no position to do at the moment. After considering a few options the GeekGrl offered me the sleeves to her windbreaker. She took off the jacket, unzipped the sleeves and helped wrestle me into them. Getting that thing onto my arms was like stuffing sausages into a straw but somehow we managed and I waddled off into the night with my shoulders and arms straining at the bright yellow fabric of my newly acquired garment.

Much to my amazement I started to warm up and then started to sweat. I began to sweat so much that I stripped off the jacket sleeves for fear that the sweat would once again cause me to cool down. I’m not sure what it is but there is something about covering my arms that heats me up no matter how cold I get.

Now that warmth had returned I was able to focus on new and different challenges and the one that reared its head was sleep deprivation. Because the aid stations were relatively close together and because I had been struggling so much the GeekGrl and RBR had been unable to get to some coffee to mix into my night running drink so I was severely caffeine deficit. Between Negro Bar and Hazel Bluff I was moving at nearly a 30 minute per mile pace. It took me just over two hours to travel four and a half miles. This was the first experience that I had with such feelings of exhaustion. At one point I just sat down on a rock to try and regroup and I ended up falling asleep and I snapped awake as I began to fall off the rock. The only way I was able to keep moving forward was simply because there was nowhere else to go. The GeekGrl and RBR were farther on down the trail and going back wouldn’t gain me anything or get me closer to finishing but at this point I wasn’t thinking about quitting, finishing, pain, trail conditions, nothing; I was completely and utterly consumed with a desire to sleep.

My preoccupation with sleep and emotional flatness all change a couple hundred yards outside of the Hazel Bluff Aid station. The runner I mentioned earlier who had two pacers and a scout suddenly passed me once again, her and her entourage. This brought me to life; this made me angry as hell. I wasn’t angry at her exactly or angry at her crew I was just angry as getting passed by someone who was technically cheating. You are only allowed one pacer at a time and any other crew can only crew you at the aid stations. I resented the fact that I had struggled so hard under so many trying conditions and this was about the third time this runner passed me with her huge array of support. I used my emotional energy to break into a run and I passed her and her gang. I then charged up the steep rocky hill top the Hazel Bluff aid station where I was greeted by the aid station volunteers with a special message.

Their message, you have missed the extended cutoff by 15 minutes. My heart sunk as I stood there in the cold dark and said, “So what are you telling me?”

Locomotion Explosion: A Rio Del Lago Race Report Part One

2010-09-14T13:42:00.000-07:00

I’ve never actually started a race report before having started the race but that’s exactly what I am doing now. At this moment I am about 36,000 feet above Southern California on my way to Sacramento and The GeekGrl is napping quietly next to me. This report begins before the beginning because the race began before the beginning. Three weeks ago I ran Leadville in a time of 27:35 and now I will make an attempt on Rio Del Lago tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m. Why am I doing this? Well, the answer is pretty simple. If I can ever get into Western States I think I want to make an attempt on the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning. In order to complete that undertaking you must complete the four oldest 100s in one year and the pretty much fall within 4 months of each other. I have to figure out how to run a 100, recover somewhat and run again.

There is an article in the September 2010 Ultrarunning that is apropos to my task. The article is “Freedom Run” by Eric Grossman. To quote; “By running long we free ourselves in three ways: we defy the constraint of expectation, we flout the oppression of good reasoning, and we set a course from which we cannot be swayed.” Within those three main ideas there was one quote that resonated with me more than the others but I’ll have to get to it later because the pilot just announced we are 20 minutes from Sacramento and have started our initial descent. Here I sit heading toward an uncertain destiny beginning my own descent into the psychological and physical reserves that I hope will carry me to the finish line of another 100-mile run. The GeekGrl and I will land, pick up Johnny Tri at the airport and hook up with RBR a bit later and then it is go time.

So this quote I was so enamored with fell under the heading “Embracing the Unreasonable” and states “What we are striving for isn’t necessarily tangible, however, and it certainly isn’t reasonable. In fact, by eschewing reason we liberate ourselves from an insidious tyrant.”

By eschewing reason we liberate ourselves from an insidious tyrant; probably one of my all-time favorite quotes. Doing what is reasonable, what is rational is, well, perfectly reasonable and no rational person could argue otherwise but it sort of removes the LIFE from your life. I’m all for reasonable decisions but by the time you have made 20 or 30 reasonable decisions in a row your life starts to become a bit sterile and claustrophobic. You become the person who always makes the reasonable decision and then of course you become weighed down by the expectation that you will again do the reasonable thing in the future. I’ve lived in that trap and on the surface everything was copacetic and everyone was happy but inside was a constant scream covered over by the mask of banality.

In any case, on Saturday morning I set out to eschew reason by running the Rio Del Lago 100-mile Endurance Run after having run a road marathon five days earlier and the Leadville Trail 100 three weeks earlier. I was excited about the race but at the same time I felt pretty ambivalent because, well, because it just seemed like such a bad idea.

I knew the weather was supposed to get hot and I had been tracking the weather all week. The high was supposed to be between 87 and 90 but my one bit of solace was the reports that indicated the day should heat up slowly with temps gradually rising to a peak around 5:00. That seemed a little weird to me being used to temperatures racing upward beginning around 10:00 a.m. and then frying through the day but whatever, I’m not familiar with the Granite Bay area of California so I just planned on a long, cool morning to get in some good distance.

By the time the race started at 6:00 a.m. it was already 70 degrees. Pleasant enough but I was running slowly in shorts and a singlet and could tell it was going to be a hot day. The race starts at Cavitt School (using the RBR convention of naming the start location) and heads for Cool, CA; a poorly named place if ever there was one. It then heads back from Cool past the start and out through various random California towns to a huge lakeside park then back again to the start. The race is run on a mix of dirt road, single track and what appeared to be neatly maintained “single track” that was wide enough for the morning latte crowed to jog along in the pleasant morning cool with their perfume wafting through the air.

The first two miles of the race were nice and easy on wide dirt paths with only gently undulating changes in elevation and then it changed to a very deep single track that funneled runners down the trail. In some places the trail was as much as two feet below the surface of the surrounding ground and through this section it was pretty much impossible to pass. The trail also changed from being gentle and undulating to short, sharp climbs and descents with choppy steps formed of rock and roots. The effect was like running on a flight of stairs designed by a masochistic carpenter with no depth perception.

By the time I was maybe five minutes into this crap my quads gave me a good poke and said, “Hey buddy, we just hauled your ass through a marathon and Leadville before that, what gives?” I looked at my Garmin so I could note the moment when my legs started to complain; I was just into mile three. I was momentarily hit with a sense of panic and then despair started to creep in but I told myself that I was fine, that what was really happening was that my legs were just trying to warm up and that all I needed to do was get past this long line of people I found myself stuck behind for a chance to give my legs a good stretch. I made that pass and got that stretch but my legs didn’t feel any better so I told myself that if they didn’t feel worse by mile 30 or 35 then at least my legs would be appropriately sore just like everyone else. That bit of rationalization worked wonders and I was again free to just zone out and enjoy the morning.

The beginning of the run skirts Folsom Lake at sunrise and you are treated to some beautiful views. You don’t get the breathtaking grandeur of the mountain ultras but instead get comforting pastoral views of gnarled oaks on grassy knolls, spring fed grottos partially hidden under a blanket of wild raspberries and brief glimpses of a placid lake encircled by rolling hills. To add to the beauty was a scent that I loved from my days in the Marine Corps stationed at Camp Pendleton. When I was in the field, usually standing watch in the early morning hours, a coastal fog would roll in and the air would smell a lot like black licorice. That was the experience I was presented with throughout the early morning and it was pretty heavenly.

However, despite the fact that the pastoral scenery remained the magical quality did not. I would say that no later than 9:30 a.m. the temperature was already breaking 80 and the gentle morning sun became a hot eye staring fixedly at me from its perch in an empty blue sky. To make matters worse the trail was extremely dusty. Rock and sand had been pounded into fine talc that floated in the air with the passing of each runner. At one point I was looking down and noticed a dark discoloration between my thighs and though “What the hell is that?!” I am not a hairy man and the hair I do have is relatively fine and light but what I was staring at were masses of thick, black curls akin to the most freakishly coated male I have ever had the misfortune to view in a locker room. The discoloration was, of course, my own hair completely coated in a mixture of sweat and dirt and we hadn’t even come close to the heat of the day nor had we reached the first real climb.

The first climb of the day is called Cardiac Hill. It really isn’t too bad but it will get your attention. According to Garmin it climbs a little over 900 feet in a little more than two miles. Cardiac hill is also dusty and made by the afore mentioned deranged carpenter. However, having just come off Leadville training I was able to scoot up the trail without a problem while I watched other runners straining and gasping.

The climb up Cardiac takes you to a truly wonderful place on the course. The section of trail is called the flume. The flume is called such because it is a trail that runs alongside a, well, a flume. It is completely shaded by an overhanging canopy of oak trees, the path alongside is pretty much perfectly flat and the flume itself carries cool water that creates an almost air-conditioned feeling and a gentle gurgling sound. It only lasts for maybe a mile and a half at most but it is a rejuvenating experience.

The day continued to heat up but I still felt decent and was looking forward to join part of the historic Western States Trail and get to run across No Hands Bridge. On your outbound trip across No Hands Bridge you are high above the American River and look down at beautiful river canyon scenery. On your inbound trip you are baked to a crisp and stare forlornly as the cool blue river mocks you impossibly out of reach.

After crossing outbound No Hands Bridge you have to climb K2. If you look at the profile K2 is the middle, higher and steeper climb between the two climbs of Cardiac Hill. Because of this feature I took to calling K2 “the middle finger” and that’s about what it was. The climb up K2 was reminiscent of the climb up inbound Sugarloaf at Leadville except it had to pack the same amount of elevation gain into about a mile and a quarter so whereas Sugarloaf starts steep and after each false summit is less steep K2 starts steep and after every false summit gets steeper. You are never quite climbing hand over hand but near the top you are doing some serious leaning into the hill. Along the climb there are helpful signs with the posted warning “Caution – Steep Hill” All I could think was “Oh, thank god, that’s why blood is spraying out my eyes from all the internal pressure I’m on a steep hill.”

Fortunately after cresting K2 you are treated to a stroll through the furnace like heat of the optimistically named Cool California. It was at this point that I determined I had run far enough and done enough climbing that I could admit to myself that my legs were actually hurting and not just continuing to warm up. However, it was also here that I noticed something that was truly troubling; I was cold. It was so hot outside that even the dirt on the trail was trying to inch over to grab some shade and I was cold and starting to shiver a bit. All I could think of was Anton Krupicka going super nova the last two years in a row at Leadville with hypothermia during the heat of the day. What was more worrisome was that I really didn’t know how to save myself from this situation. I knew I needed to warm up but I didn’t have any extra clothing and it was already hot outside so I just fell back on an old bit of ultrarunning wisdom, almost anything can be remedied by just going slower.

I slowed my pace, kept drinking water and stopped trying to do anything to keep myself cool. I have taken to wearing a bandanna on my head because I find it keeps the sweat out of my eyes better than a hat and it cools better when I soak it with water. I took that off and left my head bare. I just kept moving forward paying close attention to any fluctuations in my body temperature. After about 20 minutes I noticed a bit of warmth returning and then a few trickles of sweat. I realized that one of my problems was likely that my sunscreen was wearing off and I was starting to burn so I determined to ask for more sunscreen at the next aid station. I was incredibly thankful that this dilemma seemed to be turning around and kept my pace easy to the Cool Fire Station aid station.

When I got to the Cool aid station I refueled and joked around a bit with the aid station volunteers but completely forgot to ask them about sunscreen. I headed out for the seven mile section called the Olmstead Loop. This section of trail is very gentle and mostly on dirt roads. It is a wide open plain of rolling grasslands dotted with groves of oak. There is only one gentle climb during the loop at Knickerbocker Hill everything else would be incredibly fast were it not for the heat and exposed nature of this section. As I was moving through this section I was thinking about all the things the body is trying to do during an ultra. You have to balance your level of exertion to effectively accomplish at least four separate tasks. You have to make sure that you have sufficient blood flow to the skin to keep you cool, sufficient blood flow to the stomach for digestion, sufficient blood flow to your muscles to keep them supplied with nutrients and oxygen and sufficient blood flow to your brain to ensure sufficient oxygen for that critical skill, thinking.

That, I thought, is a lot of considerations to manage. In our everyday life we rarely think how our bodies function in such utilitarian detail but in endurance running you push so close to the limits of what a body can withstand you need to be able to think this way or you simply won’t make it. If you don’t understand the way a body works too many things can go wrong, there become too many questions to answer; why am I so hot? Why am I so cold? Why do my legs feel like lead? Why is my stomach feeling sloshy and bloated? and the list goes on and your mind is often not sharp enough to answer these questions unless the answers have become automatic. By the time I finished the Olmstead Loop I had outlasted repeated fluctuations between feeling cold and then impossibly hot, sweating and being dry and chilled. I returned to the Cool Fire Station to the cheers of Johnny Tri and friends. I was never so relieved to see a familiar face. I remembered to ask the aid station volunteers for sunscreen and they had none but then JT said he thought he has some in his car and he ran to get it. When he returned he sprayed me down with sunscreen and I almost immediately felt better. One bad patch down. On to the next task.

The run down K2 to the No Hands Bridge Aid station was not the uber-steep climb with warning signs but it was a lazy loop around the slide of the hill. I was able to depart the Cool aid station at an easy jog and maybe a mile from the aid station I came across a runner who was really suffering. During our exchange I found out his name was Steve. Steve was probably moving more slowly than anyone I had ever seen and there seemed to be something wrong with his legs or an ankle or something. I jogged up to him and asked if he had rolled an ankle or something and he said, “No, I just can’t get any water from my hydration pack so I can’t take any electrolyte tablets.” Of course he wasn’t so articulate but I got the gist. He really looked like shit and even uselessly proffered his empty hydration pack to add weight to his mutterings. I still had water in my hydration pack and had just filled two bottles with cold water so I offered him my coldest bottle and stood there to make sure he was able to drink it down. I use Ultimate Direction bottles and if you aren’t used to their rubber nipple style tops it can be a bit of a problem.

When Steve first started to try and drink he just shot himself full in the face with a powerful jet of cold water. I’m sure it felt pretty good but was otherwise completely useless for a man with two salt tablets sitting on his dry and swollen tongue. Steve looked startled but resigned to his misery as if he were thinking “What new hell is this, a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing come top mock my suffering.” Apologetically I took my bottle, removed the cap and told him to drink straight from the bottle. Steve drank it down and finally got those electrolytes he so obviously needed. I told him the Cool aid station was only about a mile away and he could fuel up and cool off there and would feel like a new man. He just grunted and said, “I don’t think I’m gonna make it. I think I’m gonna drop.” I told him to just keep moving and try to keep his head up but I knew it would take him as much as 40 minutes to cover that short distance and they were going to be a brutal 40 minutes. Only one “Stephen” finished Rio Del Lago this year and he was 55 years old; not my Steve.

Shortly after leaving Steve to his own devices I came upon Cynthia who was making her first attempt at a 100-mile run. She jumped into this race as a kind of last minute deal basically using the same rational I used when I entered Leadville, “If not now, when?” However, it isn’t like she was untrained because she had already run four 50Ks this summer, good practice races and probably sufficient training mileage for a 100 like RDL. However, she looked really hot and tired and was moving pretty slowly but her head seemed like it was in the right place. She was just moving along at the best pace she could manage. Later I spoke with her husband, David, who was crewing for her and he said that the heat was particularly hard on her but that she was a very good night runner and so he expected that once things cooled off she would speed up and be right back in the game.

Despite all I had been through with the heat and the chills and the legs hurting I was still feeling reasonably good but ahead of me was the climb back up Cardiac Hill to the Auburn Dam Overlook aid station where I finally hoped to see The GeekGrl and RBR. I arrived to Auburn Dam feeling whipped but JT and the same enthusiastic crew of friends was there and yelling and cheering “Go Big B!” With the exception of JT the rest of the crew felt self-conscious yelling out Baboo much less Sweet Baboo so I became Big B for the day. The GeekGrl and RBR were nowhere in sight but JT was right there with me. He ferried me over to the medical check and then took my bottles and hydration pack and made sure they were refilled. He also got me to a chair and then went and grabbed my drop bag. I used cold water and my old bandana and washed the trail dust off my feet, legs, arms and face. The “bath” felt awesome! I then put on fresh socks, shoes, shirt and a hat. I also took a fresh bandana soaked in cold water and tied it around my neck. This was a long but necessary stop. I finally left for the next aid station, Maidu, feeling better. I don’t know exactly what happened but within a couple hundred yards of departing the Auburn Dam aid station I was doubled over on the side of the trail alternately throwing up and dry heaving.

I came stumbling into Maidu again hoping to see The GeekGrl and RBR but nobody was there. JT had other crewing duties and needed to move on with his runner, he had just been helping me out because I was ahead of his runner. In fact, at the outbound Cool Fire Station I was about an hour or more ahead of his runner but by the time I reached Maidu I was maybe 20 minutes behind and falling. I was still eating and drinking well and was looking forward to the pleasant stroll along the flume so I just grabbed what I needed and headed out at a walk. As I moved along the cool and shade of the flume I started feeling better and better and was finally able to start jogging.

The stretch between Maidu and the next aid station is 7.1 miles and it includes the descent off of Cardiac Hill. However, the next aid station is just an unmanned water drop called Power Plant. There really is a little hydroelectric generator right there next to a rushing stream and so nobody is allowed to be there. The only thing that race management is able to work out is to get permission for runners to use the connecting gravel road to pass by and the power plant people take in a few cases of water and drop them on the ground next to the hydroelectric generator. After leaving Maidu you get about a mile and a half along the flume and then within a mile you get the 900 foot descent off Cardiac; it beat me to death. My quads were utterly fried and I could barely remain stable going downhill. I lurched downwards as the pain in my legs increased and my stomach once again began to tighten like a drum.

By the time I reached the Power Plant aid station I was so desperate to stop that I wanted to cry. I went and sat down on the concrete footing of the hydroelectric generator, put my head between my knees and started throwing up. I opened my bottles and dumped the water out over my head and just sat there contemplating simply laying down and stopping. I figured that someone would come in and get me as some point but then again the sun was starting to go down and I still had 2.3 miles to go to the next aid station at Rattlesnake Bar where there were actual people. I knew that if I didn’t get moving soon the decision to drop or continue would be made for me so I got up, refilled my water bottles and drug my sorry butt down the trail toward civilization.

As I moved down the trail I was at least grateful that I was on a gentle section of the trail. A few people were passing me but at this point I was so far back that pretty much anyone behind me was being eaten up by the cutoffs or was dropping. The sun was going down quickly and I was moving slowly. The sun set and I resigned myself to the darkness as I saw the last flicker of light dance off Folsom Lake. I felt completely and utterly alone; it was just me and my few baubles to remind me that I was connected to anything outside the growing darkness.

After a long while a runner and pacer with headlamps and flashlights blazing came up behind me and asked if I could see anything. I said “no” and they passed me and continued down the trail disappearing into the darkness. Too late I thought that I should have told them to ask for Misty or Stacy at the next aid station and ask one of them to run back along the trail with a headlamp for me. Damnit! I trudged along in the darkness. About a half-hour later a female runner came up behind me and also asked if I could see. I said “no” and she passed me and headed down the trail. As I watched her and her bubble of light begin to disappear I yelled out, “Hey, at the next aid station would you please ask for Misty or Stacy and ask one of them to run back along the trail with my headlamp?” She said “Sure” and disappeared into the night.

I short order I saw a headlamp coming towards me at a pretty good clip and I thought “Thank god!” but then it turned out to be some random guy who said, “Good job, keep it up, you are almost to the next aid station.” And then he ran past me heading toward Power Plant. Moments later he passed me followed by a female runner with two pacers. This runner had two pacers and one guy who would drive to the next aid station and run the trail back to meet up with the group and then turn around and lead them onward. I’m sure they were doing this because the course had been heavily vandalized by random people on the trails who had busied themselves by taking down the course markings and hiding them or throwing them away.

The runner, her two pacers and her Scout soon passed me with their lavish array of lights and once again I was left stumbling through the dark. As they disappeared around a corner I heard the crew constantly reassuring the runner how great she looked and that she was “doing it” and was beating all the cutoffs. A good crew is an indispensible thing. With all this going on my emotions were getting pretty frayed and then another blow. Somewhere out of the darkness I thought I heard “Rattlesnake Bar is now closed, all participants must vacate the park” and then there was silence. I kept moving towards Rattlesnake Bar and then it came again “Rattlesnake Bar is now closed; all participants must vacate the park.” “Well, I guess my day is finally over” I said to myself. “I tried but I guess I’m just not the guy who can run two 100-mile races within a month. At least I didn’t drop; I kept going until I got pulled. That’s all I can ask of myself.”

I looked around to try and figure out how the hell I was supposed to “vacate the park” and as I was looking around I saw a headlamp coming up the trail toward me; it was the GeekGrl emerging from the darkness like an angel, a female Prometheus bringing light to humanity.

I told her that I had heard Rattlesnake Bar was closed and she told me there had been some mistake with the park rangers and the permitting and that the race director had decided to extend the cutoffs because so many of the course markings had been pulled down by vandals so I still had enough time to make it. My only thought was “Jesus Christ, this shit just never ends!” I told her, “That’s it, I’m dropping, I just don’t have anything left. My legs literally have nothing left, I haven’t eaten in about two hours and any water that I have been able to drink has been thrown up.” She told me that I wasn’t going to drop and that I just needed to eat and drink a bit and then I’d feel better and would continue. I assured her that was not the case that I was most definitely going to drop at Rattlesnake Bar. The GeekGrl simply said, “Well, ok but first you need to just sit down and eat your sandwich. We got you a sandwich at Subway.”

We got to Rattlesnake Bar and I sat in a chair for a long while, ate my sandwich and drank down several cups of Ginger ale. The GeekGrl propped up my feet on a cooler and gave my legs a rubdown. RBR went and grabbed a sleeping bag because I was complaining of being cold and she wrapped it around my shoulders. I just sat there eating and drinking trying my best to joke around with people because I was glad to finally be done.

After maybe 15 minutes I finally said, “Ok, well, I need to get out of here and head down the trail.” I asked the GeekGrl to come pace me to the next aid station and she went to get some appropriate running gear and I got up and started walking. I told her that I needed to get going or I may never leave and asked that she just get ready and catch up. As I was leaving I latched on to another guy who also had his wife crewing for him. He had wanted to drop too but his wife talked him out of it and he started to hobble down the trail. I told him he looked like shit and asked if he minded if I tagged along and we could look like shit together. He said “sure” and off we went.

We walked and talked the entire way to the next aid station, which was only about two miles away. The GeekGrl finally caught us as we entered the next aid station so I guess we managed to walk at a pretty good clip. It is amazing the difference it makes when you have someone along to talk to or simply to walk in silence with. The aid station, Horseshoe Bar, was the last time I would see that guy. As the GeekGrl and I left he was sitting in a chair, his wife rubbing his legs trying to convince him to continue but he was completely determined to drop right there.

In an ultramarathon you must have enough fight in you to keep going no matter what but at some point you can become so exhausted, so in pain, so sick, so tired that the goal of your “fight” becomes lost and all you are left with is fight without a target. This is when your crew really needs to know what they are doing and needs to “roll with the resistance.” If the crew starts trying to convince the runner to keep going and tries to “motivate” the runner they run the risk of having that blind fight turned against them and the goal of finishing. A runner can just ding in their heels and fight against continuing because they finally have one thing they can control; stopping the forward motion, stopping the pain.

The guy who dropped at Rattlesnake Bar knew exactly what I knew and feared; the almost six mile section of trail ahead of us was brutal. It was that section filled with short, steep, choppy climbs and descents and a multitude of big steps created by rocks, roots and erosion. During the cool of the morning between miles 4 through 10 this section is simply annoying but in the dark of night on trashed legs it is like subjecting yourself to an hour and a half of being beaten with a heavy wooden cudgel. The GeekGrl continued on with me but my mood was rapidly deteriorating and I was pretty unpleasant company. It was somewhere halfway through this section of trail that I found myself sitting on the side of the trail emptying dirt and rocks from my shoes when all of a sudden like a legend emerging from the mists of time Gordy Ansleigh appeared.

Running with Gordy

2010-09-09T20:58:00.000-07:00

This weekend I’m running the Rio Del Largo 100-mile endurance run. About a week ago I looked at the website to see that race numbers were assigned so I clicked on the link and I couldn’t believe who was number one. Gordy Ansleigh.

The name Gordy Ansleigh probably doesn’t mean much to 99% of people in this world but it is a huge name in ultrarunning and it is a big deal to me. This is a bit embarrassing for me because I am the anti-hero worship guy. I go so far as to take an instant disliking to pretty much anyone in the public eye that gets too much press or who I hear too many people talking about with awe in their voice. The reason, I suppose, is really just that I strongly feel that too many people spend too much time living vicariously through people who actually do things with their life. My thought; get off your freakin’ ass and go grab life by the throat and never let go.

However, when it comes to Gordy I have to admit being star struck. I surprised myself with my own reaction as seeing his name as one of the registered athletes. I practically started giggling like a school girl. I guess I feel able to admit this because my admiration for Gordy is not based on me sitting on my duff basking in his feats. No, my admiration for Gordy is based on the fact that he blazed the trail that I am on. He led the way but I am hot on his heels.

Gordy Ansleigh briefly held the American record for the fastest marathon run by a Clydesdale athlete back in the early 1970’s and when his horse came up lame just prior to the Tevis Cup and he decided to RUN the 100 miles of trail alongside all the riders on their horses he invented the modern sport of ultra-distance trail running. I’ve bitched before that I’m too big to be an ultrarunner but I forget myself, forget my heritage as a big man…ultra-distance trail running was invented by a Clydesdale.

This weekend I run with a heroic figure in my world; this weekend I run with Gordy Ansleigh.

Running Relaxed: A Turtle Marathon Race Report

2010-09-07T17:36:00.000-07:00

This last weekend I decided to run the Turtle Marathon in Roswell, NM. The Turtle marathon is a very a-typical race compared to any other marathon I’ve done. It is really a race that harkens back to the early days of modern marathon running where a few locals in a small running club decided to put on an event mostly for the club and whoever else wanted to show up. The race is very small, very informal and support is limited. Most of the “aid stations” were cases of bottled water sitting on the side of the road, highway 70. These were about every two miles and when you came to one you could just grab a bottle or two. At the turn around point for the half-marathon and then again at the turn around for the full marathon there were aid stations that had Gatorade, water and bananas so you hit one of those three times during the race. I carried two hand-held water bottles, four gels and some packets of salt during the race and never wanted for anything. The GeekGrl carried a hydration pack and some gels and felt the same way. Maybe it sounds kind of scary but it really was a pretty cool little race. I guess it really felt like a marathon as opposed to a circus; a race as opposed to entertainment. If you need to be pampered, need bells and whistles and want a lot of fanfare then this is not the race for you. If you just want to get out and run a New Mexico marathon on the cheap then this is exactly what you are looking for. Roswell is an inexpensive place to stay and the entry fee is $15.

I don’t know if this will end up being detrimental to my Rio Del Largo attempt but I’ll soon find out. I decided to treat this as a training run and tried to maintain a balance of running easy and smooth but tried not to spend an excessive amount of time out on the road. I think I struck a pretty decent balance and still felt good after the race. I ran a total time of 4:01:58 and was able to negative split the run, which was due in part to the fact that it generally climbs on the way out and generally descends on the way back but my pacing was good too.

Not much of a race report but I am pretty focused on Rio Del Largo…where I will be toeing the line with Gordy Ansleigh! I’m sorry but I am totally star struck, to race with the man who literally founded the modern sport of ultra-distance trail running. Too cool!

I Signed the Napkin

2010-09-04T17:59:00.000-07:00

There is a tradition among a certain group of ultrarunners in Albuquerque called signing the napkin. My understanding is that a couple long-time ultrarunners, Kurt and Fred, were having a few drinks and each challenged the other to run Leadville back in the 1980’s. This challenge lead to each of them putting their John Hancock on a bar napkin as a promise they were committing to running Leadville. For years now each new season planning has ended in the signing of the napkin.
So, which napkin did I sign? I signed the Hardrock, a.k.a. “Hardly Walk” napkin. I still need to wait until the lottery opens and then would, by some miracle, need to be selected, but I signed it none-the-less. Actually to be more specific I think Ken signed it on my behalf as I was driving to El Paso to ref a triathlon this weekend during the napkin signing festivities.

The course alternates each year and in 2011 the course will be a 100 mile COUNTER-CLOCKWISE loop through the back country of the San Juan Mountains in beautiful southwestern Colorado. The Hardrock 100 connects or passes near the old mining towns of Silverton, Lake City, Ouray, Telluride and Ophir. With a total elevation gain of approximately 33,000' and an average elevation at near tree line of 11,186', the Hardrock 100 peaks out at over 14,000’ on Handies Peak, one of Colorado’s 14’ers.

I'll leave you with a beloved ultra profile comparison showing Harkrock towering above them all as well as some Hardrock pics. Note the Boston Marathon profile waaay down in the corner with its famed "Heartbreak Hill."

Leadville: The Gear Edition…and yes, The Buckle!

2010-08-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

Very shortly before heading out to Leadville I came across something on the Ultralist that interested me greatly. Someone posted the question “Does anyone out there have a way of extending the battery life of your Garmin and iPod?” The first obvious answer was “I have multiple of each” and the GeekGrl and I have an AC adapter that can be plugged into the car and you can then plug in a laptop. That would be one way to do it but it’s bulky and you have to give up your device while it is recharging.

My main interest was in recording Garmin data as long as possible. One person on the Ultralist threw out an answer that immediately got my attention. He said he had used a pocket-sized USB charging device made by Duracell when he ran Hardrock last month and was able to keep his Garmin recording the whole time. Bingo, exactly what I was looking for! I am not a tech guy so I had never heard of such a thing…sorry if they have been on the market for 40 years, but I was excited. I ordered mine from Amazon and it arrived in plenty of time for me to give it a try. I used it at Leadville and it worked like a champ! Coupled with my Garmin 310XT I had plenty of battery life to get me through 27 and a half hours.

During the race I ran all the way from the start to Winfield and then back to Twin Lakes, so about 60 miles, on the battery life of my 310XT. When I got to Twin Lakes the Garmin was at 3% battery life left. I had planned on getting my Duracell USB charger at that time since night would be falling and I knew I would be doing a lot of hiking. I hooked the Duracell to my Garmin and it started re-charging and continued recording my data. Everything is plenty light enough and small enough that I just carried it in one hand while I held my Gerber flashlight in the other and I was wearing my Black Diamond Ion headlamp so I had plenty of light. By the time I reached Pipeline, about 12.5 miles down the road, my Garmin was fully recharged and I relinquished my Duracell to the GeekGrl for the remainder of the race.

As far as my lighting goes the Gerber Omnivore Flashlight is awesome. It throws out a ton of light, is lightweight, tough and miserly with battery life. The Black Diamond Ion is similarly awesome. I largely blame my DNF at Rocky Raccoon for having a poor headlamp. It may have been the batteries not delivering enough juice but for whatever reason the beam could barely penetrate the deep and sometimes foggy darkness of the East Texas pine forest at night and I was left to crouch and squint for hours on end until I could barely move. The Ion slices through the night like nobody’s business. Sometimes I wonder if I will ignite the trees with the beam.

Another important item of gear in any ultrarunners arsenal is the drop bag. I used to own a Kayak so the first time I did an ultra that required drop bags I had some transparent NRS Dry-stow Dry Bags laying around the house. They are awesome as drop bags because they are very durable, weather tight and easy to spot in the pile of other drop bags. I think if I were to do an ultra that was likely to have a lot of rain and humidity I might try and find some kind of drying agent to toss into the bottom of the bag and would be careful not to let rain fall into the bag but this bag would definitely be my choice.

For the crew vehicle of course I selected the perfect vehicle for the ultrarunning multisport enthusiast, the Honda Element. In the back of that bad boy I left one back seat to create seating for three and I laid out a 10-inch thick futon mattress complete with flannel sheets and a heavy down comforter. Behind the back seat I strapped in a clear plastic 4-drawer organizer. One drawer had my medical supplies, one had my extra nutrition, one had my day running clothes and one had my night running clothes. Of course I had to have some extra bags for extra cold weather gear and just lots of spare shirts and shoes just to be safe. I also had a mummy-style sleeping bag in case I needed rescue from hypothermia but it was only ever pressed into service as the GeekGrls ultrawarm hoodie.

Last but not least were the gear closest to me. The bottom half is the hardest to manage so that’s all I’ll cover. For underwear I use the Asics Transitive Seamless Brief. I have worn this on several shorter runs and two 100-mile runs and they work awesome. For shorts I wear Zoot 8-inch seam tri shorts. I like the compression and honestly a compression short is the only short I can wear that doesn’t chafe after maybe 6 to 8 miles. I have tried several compression options and the Zoot is the only one I have found so far that is also durable. I have big thighs so there is a lot of friction. Other shorts are ground to shreds in short order but my Zoots have withstood every 100-mile finish and attempt I have made as well as numerous other shorter runs and races. I bought two pair in a sale a few years back and I am still on pair number one.

The feet, of course, are the beginning and end of ultrarunning. I wear Injinji socks because they help keep my toes from blistering better than anything else. I tape most of my toes to protect the tips but even with toe tale and regular socks I still get blisters between my toes. My one complaint about the Injinjis is that they are not particularly durable for the cost. They always wear out right at the ball of the foot sometimes in as few as 10 wears. Sometimes they last much longer you just have to be ready for variable quality. I also used compression socks. These are difficult to deal with in an ultra because they are hard to get on and off and so you are far less likely to check your feet because you may be too weak or your legs may be too crampy to get the things back on. Even with help they take a lot of time and effort to put on. However, you can cut the feet off them and turn them into compression sleeves. These work great for less money though Zensah has put some lower cost product on the market since I first shopped for this item so I am likely to give them a try. I coupled my Injinjis with my compression “sleeves” and it was a perfect combination. My left calf muscle was threatening to go out on me by mile 42 and this combo held it strong all the way to the finish. Injinji has a pair of compression socks but I’m not a fan of burning money and that’s what I would be doing buying them. While I love Injinji I don’t trust their quality enough to part with $38 - $44 for a single pair that may last a couple years or just a month.

Finally, the shoes. I have worn and loved New Balance shoes for the past five years but New Balance doesn’t love me. All my favorites have been redesigned to the point that I just can’t wear them anymore. I have been hunting desperately for a new pair of trail shoes and finally settled on the Mizuno Wave Ascend 5. This shoe rules! The Ascend is relatively light weight, has a very aggressive tread, water drains from it like a sieve, it has a reasonably low profile and a nice roomy toe box. The closest I’ve come to a comparable shoe is the Asics trail shoe but the logo they sew to the side of the shoe always causes me blisters on the side of my feet so I can’t wear them.

I almost forgot, the best piece of equipment that made it all possible, something special my parents gave me, the feet that carried me through.

So here it is by popular demand, the Leadville buckle. This baby is so shiny you can see my reflection in it as I snap the picture.

Good god, enough Leadville already, I have other things to do!

Next up, Rio Del Largo…what was I thinking?!

From Fish Hatchery to a New Day: Leadville Race Report Part Three

2010-08-25T20:20:00.000-07:00

When Tim and I arrived at Fish Hatchery he immediacy peeled off to get the GeekGrl and make sure she cut the feet off my compression socks. I had used one pair of compression socks to hold my calf together from Winfield in and by the time I had been wearing the socks for 27 miles they had pressed my toes together and blisters had developed, popped and torn away. During the foot taping break at Pipeline I changed back to Injinjis but in our trip from Pipeline to Fish Hatchery it was clear that my calf would not last up Sugarloaf so I knew I still needed the compression and cutting the feet off is a little trick I had learned from the GeekGrl. Coupled with the Injinjis it worked great.

So apart from the sock maneuver when I came rolling in to Fish Hatchery my next pacer Mark was ready to take over for the next nine miles. Earlier in the day Mark had already taken another friend from Winfield up and over Hope Pass and in to Twin Lakes. During that journey he had a runner with all her faculties; by the time Mark got me my faculty had left for summer break and he was left to push a hyperactive golem up and over the dreaded Sugarloaf. We departed at a hobble and then a walk and then a jog. Amazingly enough I actually felt like I had been getting stronger since Pipeline when I was handed the magic elixir.

The climb over Sugarloaf is one of the most dreaded events in the Leadville Trail 100 not because it is as formidable as Hope Pass but because it occurs at about mile 79 and by most runners it is hit somewhere around 2 or 3 in the morning. Not only is there the time and distance factor but Sugarloaf is a psychological killer. In the dark you can’t see the top and there are about five false summits. The climb hits you up front with a steep, rocky slog up a jeep road and when you reach the top you feel very grateful and then there is a little downhill run that immediately turns upward into the second climb. This goes a bit less steep, flattens and then climbs again then takes a turn that looks like it will flatten and then it turns back into a climb and it goes on thusly until you reach the top.

Mark kept talking to me throughout the climb and I was telling him what exactly to expect from the climb since I had done it in the night during training. The combination of his talking and me describing made going up Sugarloaf almost like as easy as ride up an escalator. During the course of our climb while we were taking I mentioned to Mark that it looked like we were heading into the last ascent of the five false summits of Sugarloaf and he said “So this is the last ascent?” and just at that moment we were passing a zombie and his pacer and the zombie said “What, there is one more ascent?!” to which I said, “yeah” and he replied “SON OF A BITCH!” and slogged on. I assured him that he would know the top when there are no power lines in sight or hearing because just below the top of the last climb the power lines take a sharp turn off to the left, I think that is the south, so when you are at the crest they are no longer present.

After climbing sugarloaf Mark and I broke into a run on the downhill slope for as long as we could. The road down the inbound side of Sugarloaf is not steep but it is rocky and that late in the game when running at night you really don’t want to take any chances. We walked and talked and were eventually at the bottom turning on to Hagerman Pass road, the dirt road that connects up to the section of the Colorado trail that represents the final 2.5 mile leg to May Queen, the first and last aid station of the race, 13.5 short miles to the finish line. When we hit Hagerman Pass road I was ready to run. I told Mark this may be one of the last sections I was able to run so I wanted to take advantage of it and we really pounded it out. My legs hurt with every footfall but I just kept in mind that every step I ran was cutting huge time off what would otherwise be achieved through walking.

After we turned onto the Colorado Trail it became rocky single track again and there wasn’t much running to be done. I told Mark that there were four bridges along the trail with the fourth being immediately before the parking lot that was maybe 1200 yards from the May Queen aid station. As we were walking along the trail at a pretty good clip I stepped on a large rock on a downhill step and my right foot slid forcefully to the front of my shoe and my toenails seemed to catch fabric and were jammed backwards. The pain was excruciating and I let out a yell. Mark asked what had happened and I told him and said that I would probably end up losing those toenails. Mark came back with the perfect response…”Well, you have five more on the other foot, don’t you? How many toe nails do you need?” It just cracked me up. I agreed, how dare I be a greedy toe mail miser me and my fancy ten toe nails. The moment of humor almost completely dissipated the pain and we forged on into the night.

For the record I only have two or three toe nails that are serious candidates for falling off, four at most and they are not all on one foot so it looks like there is a good chance that I will keep all my fancy nails.

When we arrived at May Queen I really was out of it. I don’t remember Mark leaving my side I just remember the GeekGrl arriving and ready to run. I know Tim was there as well and I think I saw another friend named Steve but I don’t know what, if any, role they played. I grabbed some food and a couple cokes and was just completely focused on getting the hell out of May Queen and to the finish line. May Queen, surprisingly, is an aid station where a lot of people finally drop from the race. The problem that you face at May Queen is that you are pretty exhausted and your body is really trying to shut down so you don’t have much ability to generate your own heat. Combine that with the fact that it gets much colder there because it is both deep in the night and next to a large body of water, Turquoise Lake, and you have a recipe for hypothermia.

So, I was focused on getting out of May Queen and the GeekGrl was to pace me at least 5 miles down the trail to the Tabor boat ramp. From somewhere I got the news that a friend Margaret had only left the aid station 10 minutes ahead of me and then another friend Jean had left about 5 minutes before her. I’m not sure why but I had a strong desire to catch them so I took off running as hard as I could. I could tell that the GeekGrl was straining to keep up with me but she was hanging on so I kept pushing. At one point a runner called out to her and said “Hey, the pacer isn’t supposed to be that far behind their runner” but we just kept on trucking. First I caught and passed Margaret and then I went looking for Jean. I soon found and passed her as well and we hurried on down to the Tabor boat ramp where we were to meet back up with Mark and Tim. The GeekGrl’s plan was to drop me off at Tabor and let Tim pace me to the finish but when we arrived they weren’t there. We called their names but no answer so we forged ahead; the GeekGrl was going to take me to the finish line.

I was pretty winded from the recent burst of running so we started walking at a descent pace and just kept each other company. In fairly short order Margaret caught back up with us and had a fresh pacer. She passed us and continued running and I immediately took chase running just a couple steps behind. However, the GeekGrl was starting to fade and I knew she would be unable to hold the pace for the next seven miles so I broke off chase and eased into a walk. She admonished me like any good pacer and told me that I should leave my pacer behind and I put my arm around her shoulder and said, “Sure, but I’m not leaving my wife behind” and then we strolled through the Colorado morning together, watched the sun rise over Turquoise Lake and talked about our life together, the adventures we have had and the adventures yet to come. It was a magical experience. The veil of Leadville had been lifted from my eyes and like fog on a lake being burned away by the morning sun my life, and my wife were revealed again to fresh eyes.

The finish was glorious! I had lived within the confines of Leadville for six months and completed my Race Across the Sky in 27 hours, 35 minutes, and 31.2 seconds. I was surrounded by friends who hugged me and congratulated my effort. My cousin Chris and his wife drove up from the Denver area and spent time with us and went to the awards ceremony. I could simply not grasp the magnitude of my accomplishment, it is really something that is so much bigger than I. It felt like toughing the sun but I was more than happy to retreat from the moment into a good cup of coffee and joyous conversation with friends.

Ultramarathon is life. We forge ahead with our brazen egos, pound our chests and howl at the moon but it takes its toll, it beats us down, it makes us cry and in the end, if we are lucky, we enjoy fellowship with friends, we experience the kindness of strangers, the love of family and the peace of mind that we have not only come to the end but come to a good end.

From Windield to Fish Hatchery: Leadville Race Report Part Two

2010-08-24T20:23:00.000-07:00

I arrived at Winfield and like everyone else was immediately shuttled over to a scale where I was found to be five pounds down from my starting weight or 199. I was feeling hot and tired and was worried because I had gotten hints that my left calf was starting to give out. I headed into the aid tent where several runners were sitting and looking beleaguered but I was immediately intercepted and the GeekGrl, Tim and Jane took me over to a special place they had set up for me out in the open air. The GeekGrl explained to me that it was stifling hot in that aid tent and I needed the breeze. Meanwhile Tim appeared by my side holding a giant umbrella over my head to shade me from the mid-day sun and then the GeekGrl appeared again with a cool, damp cloth and wiped down my legs, arms and face. I swear wouldn’t have been surprised had a group of guys with large feather fans arrived on the scene and while that never happened Jane appeared with some spray on sunscreen since she noticed I was getting a little red.

So, as I said, they sat me down and immediately went to work. Aside from what has already been mentioned my time at Winfield was fairly mysterious. I may have changed shirts, I felt some ice at one point and I know I drank some Coke or possibly Sprite. What was left of my focus was on the clock. I did have the presence of mind to ask for my compression socks in the hope that they would help hold my calf together for the rest of the race and they were immediate produced and pressed into service. I wanted to get out of the Winfield aid station no later than 12 hours and 30 minutes into the race and as I departed with my first pacer Tim it was 11 hours and 58 minutes into the race.

The remaining 50 miles of Leadville was a demonstration in just how valuable a good crew and pacers can be. Tim and I walked and jogged back down the Winfield road toward Hope Pass and we chatted about various things, none of which I remember, but I do remember that he was immediately taking stock of my nutrition and hydration. Having just fueled up a bit in Winfield I was doing ok but he knew I was five pounds down. We began the steep climb up the inbound side of Hope Pass and at first I was passing a couple people here and there but as the incline steepened and the heat started getting to me again my progress slowly ground to a halting creep. As with my earlier climb on the outbound direction I knew this would happen and so having trains of people going by was not surprising nor demoralizing.

This, by the way, is a huge change for me. I often get on the pity-pot and lament how so many “small” people have so much less weight to carry than I. I tell myself if I were to weigh 30, 40, 70 or 100 pounds less I could cruise on uphill too but instead here I am engaged in the Sisyphean task of dragging my big butt up a mountainside. Physics aside this line of thought is really a load of crap. It changes nothing and it does not get me where I need to go one microsecond earlier. I told myself a million times “I need to race MY Leadville 100 not anyone else’s.” I am pretty sure I told Tim this numerous times as well and am amazed he didn’t ditch me in the woods somewhere or just slap me silly on some dark and lonely trail.

In any case, it was on this inbound climb that I could begin to see some of the human wreckage of the day. There were pacers cajoling and consoling their runners along the trail. There was even one pair about a third of the way up the pass where the runner had curled up in a ball on a large flat rock and his pacer was sitting on the other side of the trail staring at him. Tim and I asked if the guy was ok and the pacer just said, yeah, he is just taking a nap. While it isn’t unheard of for a runner to grab a few winks during a 100 mile run it is not a good idea and it is even more unusual to be doing it at such a difficult point in the race, a point that you want to put behind you with all possible speed. Tim and I also continued to see a stream of people still descending Hope. I was wondering how many of these folks would make the cutoffs as they rolled through the night and then I was interrupted by a wave of nausea. I pulled off to the side of the trail and started throwing up. Tim was pretty indifferent and simply waited for me to stop being such a big, pukeing baby and then said, “You should be eating more, here, have a pop tart.” In disbelief I simply replied, “I need to at least wash my mouth out first” to which he said “Ok”, waited a minute and then thrust a piece of pop tart in my face and said without emotion, “here, eat this.”

Tim was very serious about my nutrition; he was possessed by someone’s grandmother and was constantly suggesting that I should eat this or that, drink this or that. At a much later point in the race deep in the night when I tried to scarf down some top ramen and immediately began throwing up again he simply said, “That didn’t work very well. Here, have a pop tart.” I felt I was playing the role of Hansel but since Tim is not blind he could tell whether or not I was fattening up and fatten up I did for when I entered Fish Hatchery I weighed three pounds above my starting weight!

Shortly before Tim finished up his pacing duties at Fish Hatchery he and I stopped at Pipeline where the GeekGrl was waiting and I had my feet re-taped since much had come off and I was developing hot spots on the balls of my feet. However, that was the least of the magic she worked for the GeekGrl had prepared an elixir so potent that even I am not privy to the full recipe. As Tim and I left Pipeline with my secret weapon in hand I regaled him with stories from my time in the Marine Corps and offered up my best effort at a couple Brian Regan bits and he regaled me with, well, with pop tarts and Gatorade.

Ok, I know this is becoming (has been from the second paragraph of the first post) self-indulgent and overly long but I’m having almost as much fun writing the repot as I did doing the race. You can go ahead and throw your virtual tomatoes at me now and I will suffer them with dignity. I will try and wrap this story up tomorrow.

From Start to Windield: Leadville Race Report Part 1

2010-08-24T06:20:00.000-07:00

I was consumed by Leadville like no other race and preparing for it revealed to me the dark side of ultra-endurance events. Since March 7th, the day after the GeekGrl and I ran Old Pueblo together, I have lived within the confines of the Leadville Trail 100. What began as an exciting adventure became an insistent demand. In my world there was simply Leadville and non-Leadville thoughts, people and activities. The former were welcome and the later were unhelpful distractions. In the end, however, I was finally able to see more clearly and to attend to my priorities as they should be attended to.

For obvious reasons I was careful to cut almost all fiber from my diet in the week prior to Leadville but for some mysterious reason at 1:30 in the morning just two and a half hours prior to the start of the race, quite inexplicably, I decided to have a large breakfast that was high in fiber and topped off with coffee. I didn’t specifically choose a high fiber breakfast, I was on the hunt for carbs; I just didn’t pay attention to the fiber hiding therein. I coupled my misstep with solids by earnestly following the third commandment of endurance racing “Thou shall start every event well hydrated.” For the first 35 miles of the race I was like a mad prospector searching the high Colorado mountains for a bathroom bonanza and my innards felt like the Hindenburg forever expanding and exploding, oh the humanity!

I had several friends running Leadville and of one it has been said “She never makes a mistake.” I always make mistakes. I have said it before and I’ll say it again; I am the Homer Simpson of the endurance world. I wish I could claim some Steinbeckian “The best laid plans of mice and Men…” situation where the world uncaringly and unconsciously conspires to bring me down but alas my dramas are mostly of the “temporarily distracted by the pink frosted, candy sprinkle coated doughnut” type. Still, my gaff ended up working well with my actual race plan.

I intended to run Leadville nice and conservative for the first 30 to 35 miles in order to negate any possibility that I would go out too fast and die too early. My plan was to run the first 13.5 miles to May Queen at an 11 minute pace but when I finally arrived my average pace was an 11:43. I obviously knew I had missed my goal but I really didn’t know what to think. I looked around to see who all was running near me and suddenly I saw a very experienced ultrarunner I had recently met and asked him, “What do you think of our pace so far?” to which he replied “too fast.” Armed with that new bit of data I departed the May Queen aid station at an easy canter and headed for the first climb of the day, Sugarloaf.

Climbing up the “outbound” side of Sugarloaf is easy. There is a little more than 1,200 feet of elevation gain but you get about 5 miles to do it in and add to that the fact that you are still fresh and the temperatures are still very mild. When you get to the top of Sugarloaf you are rewarded with a huge view of Turquoise Lake. The descent off Sugarloaf is a different story it’s about a 1,400 foot drop in maybe 3 miles, much of which takes place on a deeply rutted jeep road. One of my strengths in trail running is my ability to attack ugly looking descents at unreasonable speeds. I’m confident enough in this strength that I am confident that anyone near me in a race should not stand a chance in keeping up. As I was descending Sugarloaf two guys flew past me. I could see that they were pouring sweat and I could hear their breath shudder with every footfall. It looked like a blast but seriously, at mile 19 of a 100 mile foot race that features a double crossing of a 12,600 foot mountain pass? Not smart. I continued my mellow cruise into the next aid station, Fish Hatchery.

I really don’t remember a great deal from the first 35 miles of the race, the GeekGrl and various friends and acquaintances would appear and disappear as I moved easily through one landmark after the next, Tabor boat ramp, May Queen, Fish Hatchery, Pipeline, Half Moon 2, all the while sticking to an overall 30-hour pace like clockwork. However, once I reach mile 35 two important things changed. First I was freed from the self-imposed 35 miles of holding back and running easy and second I was suddenly aware that I was missing my constant companion from mile one to now, gastric distress. Because mile 35 occurs at the beginning of a descent along the Colorado Trail down to the Twin Lakes aid station and because I was free of constraint I picked up the pace and enjoyed rolling and winding run through the woods passing one person after another.

I was prepared to run triumphal into Twin Lakes swinging like a boxer but when I arrived no one was there. The GeekGrl was at Twin Lakes and was waiting for me but at the moment I came running in she was taking care of her own needs. I looked around, jogged through the aid station and finally left without seeing her. It was a weird feeling not having her there ready and waiting but I understood that with so many people out there and so many different possible things that could prevent her from meeting me I knew it was a real possibility. I headed out to face the climb over Hope Pass figured I’d see her and Tim, my first pacer, once I was on the other side in Winfield.

The climb up Hope pass is something I have done twice before in both directions and I couldn’t be happier that I had included that experience in my training. As a relatively large guy I expend a lot of energy climbing and even though I have gotten pretty good at hiking the steep stuff the cost is not worth the miniscule amount of time that can be won. I climbed slow and steady, painfully slow, as numerous people past me. Each time people approached me from behind I would simply step to the side of the trail, lean on a tree or my knee and take a breather. In addition to the climbing the day was also starting to heat up and heat is another thing that I do not do well.

I made it to the top of Hope Pass feeling much less exuberant than when I had come running into Twin Lakes so I sat down at the Hopeless aid station and drank down about six cups of soda and rested a bit. The Hopeless aid station is run by a bunch of folks who hike up to the Pass a couple days before the race and pack all their supplies in on llamas. It is a unique experience in the world of running to be tended to by caring people in the midst of indifferent llamas.

Despite having given myself permission to run harder after the 35 mile mark I still took it relatively gently down hope pass though I did catch a number of people. Once I hit the bottom I looked at my watch and saw that during the course of the race I had banked enough time to allow myself the luxury of walking the two and a half miles to the Winfield aid station, which was a good thing because the Winfield road is hot and dusty.

Before the Hammer Falls

2010-08-18T09:05:00.000-07:00

There are times when you head out for a race knowing that you really didn’t train quite like you probably should have. There are times when you head out for a race feeling over trained and nagged by some minor injury. Then there are times when you know for a fact that you have trained exactly as hard as you could have done while avoiding injury and getting in a solid taper. For me heading into Leadville is of that last sort; I feel like I pushed it to the razors edge and hit my taper moments before some overuse injury kicked in. As to whether or not I am “peaking”, who knows. I wish I had one of those meat thermometers they used to put in turkeys where the little red indicator popped out when the turkey was done but alas, I am a lower tech turkey so I’ll just have to hope all the innards are trained to perfection.

This sense that I have done everything possible to the maximum extent that is reasonable in preparing for Leadville has left me with an amazing sense of calm, equanimity, dare I say serenity. Daily I visualize myself running along the trails of Leadville, summiting Sugar Loaf, summiting Hope Pass, running the shores of Turquoise Lake and it is all so vivid and, somewhat surprisingly, not at all anxiety provoking.

I’ve questioned myself several times “Are you taking this seriously enough? Are you giving the course its due?” and the answer is a definitive yes. I have had to quell many fears by training in the cold, at high altitude, over mountain passes on uncertain footing, through the rain and miles of water and mud, into the darkness and back out again. I have had to face down insecurities about what people may think as I am on this fool’s errand, what if I fail, what other runners will think to see someone like me standing at the starting line dressed to race. I have spent countless hours in training and in pouring over past race reports, working our pace charts, gear lists, nutrition needs, back-up clothing, equipment and plan. I have performed the entire rituals attendant to the cult of ultrarunning.

I fully inhabit the calm before the storm; I am the bullet in the moment before the hammer strike.

It is time to go to work. I will see you at the finish line.

Leadville is staring me in the face and I am staring back

2010-08-14T12:58:00.000-07:00

Leadville participants recently got a “the race is approaching” e-mail and in it we were informed that “Hollywood” would be there filming. The e-mail further invited us to send Hollywood our running story. Unlike the NBC stories filmed at Ironman Kona, I have not been shot in the face with a cannon while rescuing a bag of kittens and group of Catholic nuns from a burning building while I was being betrayed by my leprosy riddled body but I do have a story of sorts.

Though I may be, may have been, the fat guy with brittle bones I do belong at Leadville, as a runner. I have people who believe in me, who are giving freely of their time to support me, crew me, pace me and short of being carted off in an ambulance or beaten off the course with a stick I will finish Leadville.

This is my running story. Enjoy Hollywood.

Running was always the punishment in the sports I played growing up. I was primarily a football player, tackle and occasionally on the defensive line, then after completing high school and joining the Marine Corps I played rugby for six years as a tight-head prop.

Though I had always been active as a kid I was also always heavy. By the time I was finishing up my bachelor’s degree I weighed in at 310 pounds and am 6 feet tall. I made a concerted effort to lose weight and by the time I finished grad school I was down to about 270.

For some reason I got it in my mind that I wanted to do a triathlon, just a sprint distance event. The idea of me doing anything else was laughable. I told a co-worker and she laughed and said she couldn't imagine me sprinting after anything. She wasn't trying to be mean but the idea was just so absurd that I think she just blurted it out before thinking.

My major concern in doing a triathlon is that I would have to run and I despised running. However, I wanted to do one badly enough that I was willing to put up with enough training to get me through a 5k.

Soon enough I got caught up in the challenge of seeing how far I could push myself. I knew about Ironman triathlons so that became my first big goal. However, when I started looking at that distance and meeting people who did them I heard about ultra-marathons and found out about one that was in my area and was taking place for the first time; the Ghost Town 38.5.

The thought of running 38.5 miles just seemed crazy but I felt like I had to give it a try. Of course once I started lifting the veil on the world of ultra-running I quickly discovered Western States and Leadville.

Between the two I was far more attracted to Leadville, "The Race Across the Sky", who could resist a challenge like that?

After running my first ultra I was pretty intimidated by the prospect of ever running another though I don't think I let anyone know but after another year of triathlon I found myself drawn back to ultra-running. I began to increase my run mileage and suffered a fractured foot. Once that healed I began again and my hip fractured in two places. My doctor sent me to a specialist who found that I had osteopenia.

I was told it would take a good couple years on medications, extra calcium and vitamin D for my bones to reach normal density so that's what I did; I kept running lower miles and took my meds. I have been doing that for three years now and have increased the difficulty and distance of my running. In the last two years I have also run two other "easy" 100 mile trail runs and failed to finish two others but I have shied away from registering for Leadville because it was just too intimidating. I felt like I wasn't ready, didn't have enough experience, and hadn’t earned the right to be there.

Earlier this year I was talking to a friend about a difficult race he was contemplating. I told him, "You are never truly going to feel ready, you are only going to get older year after year with a lower chance of finishing and it will just be that much more time to expose yourself to an injury that may prevent you from ever doing it. If you want it you just have to put yourself out there and go for it." Then I said, "Oh crap, I just talked myself into Leadville" and I registered that day.

I have run 1,465 miles so far this year with many of those miles having been run in the Sandia, Jemez and Sangre de Cristo mountains of New Mexico. My weight is down to 195 and I haven't broken a bone in two years.

When I attended the Leadville training camp this year Ken Chlouber said something that has changed my perspective on running in general and on running Leadville in particular. In essence what he said was that regardless of how well we may do on race day we should really consider just how fortunate we are to be able to run this kind of race at all.

This idea has turned my thinking around from "I'm the fat guy with weak bones who will try and conquer Leadville" to, "I'm lucky as hell and I'm not one to squander a gift. I'm actually going to finish Leadville!"

Absolutely Blistering: A Socorro Chili Harvest Triathlon Race Report

2010-08-07T15:45:00.000-07:00

Today was the New Mexico Club State Championship Triathlon in Socorro, NM. It is one of my favorite local races mostly because there are always a lot of people that I know there and it is only about 70 miles from home so I get to sleep in my own bed the night before the race and just drive down in the morning. I really didn’t know what to expect from the day because I haven’t been riding or swimming in, like, months. I did a sprint tri about two months ago and even that was my first swim and bike in a couple months. However, my run training has been incredible so I had that going for me at least.

The Chili Harvest Triathlon starts with a pool swim and people are seeded according to the swim time they estimated when they registered for the race. I don’t have the foggiest notion what I put down for my swim time but whatever it was I was fairly certain it was way too optimistic considering the complete lack of training. I lined up #118 out of about 350 people and was looking around as if that may give me some clue as to whether or not I was going to get swam over by a couple hundred people or not. Not seeing Michael Phelps behind me was a relief but no other useful information was forthcoming. When it was my turn I slipped into the pool and headed out for the 400 meter swim.

Within a couple strokes I found myself thinking “Jeeze, I don’t remember water being so THICK” I felt like my arms were pulling through molasses but my breathing felt fine and my stroke actually felt pretty smooth so I just kept plugging away waiting for people to start passing. It never happened. In fact, I even caught and passed someone with about 100 meters to go. My total time for the swim was 7:39, which is just a little slower than what I would do had I been training diligently. I might have been able to knock as much as 20 seconds off that swim fully trained.

Next up was the bike. The course isn’t exactly difficult but…well, its relative lack of difficulty makes it difficult. It consists of miles of undulating roads and is shaped somewhat like a three toed chicken foot. The roads are generally pretty crappy as well. The thing about the undulating roads is that there is nothing that could be called a climb but there as these frequently reoccurring, energy sucking upward grades followed by a brief downturn and then it’s back up. I probably rode as hard as I could, didn’t have any issues and wound up with a time of 34:30, a 21.5 mph ride. I was looking back at past race results and this is my fastest bike split at this race to date.

Now on to the run, the thing I was really waiting for. I knew I would run well because I have already started tapering for Leadville but I still had a 50 mile week behind me with no rest. Blowing up wasn’t going to be the issue, I was more curious about leg turnover. I knew I could go far but what about fast? I pulled on my racing flats and headed out at an easy jog and just started to accelerate nice and even. I didn’t want to push too hard for fear of doing something stupid like pulling a hamstring 13 days from Leadville so I held some in reserve but within a hundred yards or so I was sailing past people. There was a line of people running on the right and I just stayed to the left and cruised on by.

My total time for the run was 21:27 for an average pace of 6:55 minute miles! That is hands down the fastest triathlon split I have ever run regardless of whether the run came at the beginning of the race or the end. It is also only 44 seconds off my 5K PR, which was run at sea level in Boston on a flatter course in the cool of the morning. Needless to say I am happy with the run. So happy in fact that I headed out for two more laps so I got in 9.3 miles. It was pretty funny because while I was running my second and third laps people were still yelling out “Good Job, you can do it!” and I was still running sub-8 minute miles and feeling really relaxed. The down side, which didn't cross my mind untill it was too late, was the seven blisters I developed on my toes due to running 9.3 miles in sock-like racing flats without socks. Oops.

Probably about a mile and a quarter into my third lap I finally caught up with the GeekGrl and ran the last bit with her, which is always a treat. Even as early as she is in her Javelina training she is already running better and commented to me on the way home that there was something about her running now that felt different, smoother. That, my dear, is efficiency.

So, all in all it was a good day. Unbelievably I PR’d the course by over 2 minutes. That does not bode well for my triathlon training. Hell, if I can just log big miles running and still come out and race well, why burn money with extra wear and tear on my bike? Why pay the gym membership for a swimming pool? Ok, well, I can’t really imagine not having a gym membership and probably should be swimming on my recovery days, but still, I could get by.

Oh, I almost forgot, The Outlaws won the Club State Championship! again...I think this is our 5th year in a row...does that make us a Tri-team Dynasty yet?

Next up…Leadville!

Wet and Wild in the San Pedro Parks Wilderness

2010-07-31T19:32:00.000-07:00

This weekend the GeekGrl and I went for a run through the San Pedro Parks Wilderness. It is one of our favorite places to run together because there isn’t any significant climbing but it all takes place at pretty good elevation, between about 9250 feet and 10,450 feet. It is also an incredibly beautiful area of mixed conifer forests interspersed with groves of aspen, open grasslands and highland marshes.

However, because the trails we run start about 10 miles north of the small town of Cuba, NM, which is about a two hour drove from our home, we don’t get out there much. Because there are the highland marshes there is always some water to contend with even apart from the numerous little streams that run through the area but for the most part the trails are dry. That was definitely not the case today. There was water, water, water and even on the segments of trail that didn’t have standing water there was mud, some of which had been churned up by the several cows that roam the area.

As we were starting our little run I thought a nice big loop would be a nice change from the out and back that we have done in the past. The main trail we take is the Vacas trail so we took that for a couple miles until we hit the Damian trail…that should have been an omen.

Shortly after heading out on the Damian trail we discovered that the trail quickly became a thin trace of bent grass which became a trackless wilderness. I never run wilderness trails without a topo map. Coupled with my Garmin from which I can get elevation I always feel confident in finding my way around. If I really feel like I’m going to somewhere remote I’ll also bring along a compass. My experience with the San Pedro Parks is that the trails are clear and very well marked. I was not familiar with the miles of space that were generously called trails so there I was without a compass.

In order to make sure the GeekGrl and I remained living members of the civilized world I had to reach back 20 years to my Marine Corps days when I didn’t just drink and cuss and play Rugby but I was also an expert in Land Navigation. My skills were rusty at first and I led us off track once for about 100 yards or so but then things started to click. Before I knew it I was running along map in hand making note of the way the land rose and fell around me and keeping alert for any of the tell-tale signs of prior human presence in the wilds. Our progress was slower but I was having a great time.

Of course it wasn’t all a trackless wilderness. There was plenty of premier New Mexican trail, two foot bridges built strictly to instill a sense of irony in the soggy sojourner and even a bit of forest porn for those lonely nights on the trail.