Friday 052512

First, general apologies to anyone who has commented and that I have not responded to.  I am a bit behind on the blogosphere with travel.   Started to catch up a bit with listening of podcasts here on the flight, including starting a pretty interesting post Transvulcania episode from the guys at TalkUltra. 

I am somewhere over Newfoundland.  Out the window it looks like this.  That looks pretty damn harsh.

The flight I am on is full of what appears to be a high school aged rugby team.  They are apparently playing in some tournament in Vail shortly.  They asked me what to do there.  I told them they’d probably be better off asking the young ladies in the row ahead of me as to what to do when they are not playing rugby.  That said, I had a brief chat on the benefits of hydration and sunscreen when people come from sea level to 8000 feet.  Have to keep up the old man image I guess.

I have not been training so to speak, but I am remaining fairly active, and getting a fair amount of exercise.  Tim L has reason to believe that Geoff Roes’ withdrawal  from Hardrock, officially opened the door for him to get in.  And hence, I am in as his pacer.  I am hugely excited about this – for many reasons.  The limited pacing I have done has been incredibly inspiring.  Being there in the moment with someone pursuing something this deeply physical and spiritual is rather amazing.   Doing this with Tim will make that countlessly more so.  Additionally, I imagine I won’t ever toe the line at Hardrock.  Frankly, there is not a huge draw to that for me to do that event in that venue with where I am with things in these chapters of my life.  Maybe someday.  But being part of it, with a friend, in the San Juans, while some of the best ultrarunners in the world go at it … yeah, I am very much wanting to be a part of that. 

So I need to assure that I am in at least some form of fitness to support that.  I feel pretty good about the level of work I have been getting in over the last weeks since getting back on the horse in San Francisco.  Actually those first couple of days after getting started absolutely sucked, but I have had a few decent runs since then, and even some while on the road here in Europe.  Clearly however to be ready for Tim at Hardrock I need to do both physical and mental homework.  Physical in terms of getting some climbing in, some time at altitude, and practicing something Tim is uncannily good at:  walking fast.  On the mental side, I need to figure out logistics, get the course dialed in to some degree in my head, solicit feedback from other pacers that have worked with Tim and talk to Tim to find out what he wants.

So yes, bigger picture of the summer, I am registered for Pikes and am expecting to line up for the marathon.  I’d say I am not thinking about it but it would be more appropriate to say I am more or less past worrying about it.   I considered dropping from the race actually.  I was really just not sure if I’d put together a period of training that would set me up for meeting some self imposed expectations.  But when I chew on that, such thoughts seem sort of … I dunno, selfish and short sighted?

So, my training is not ideal.  So what?  It is not ideal.  When will it ever really be?  To only engage in things when they are ideal would seriously limit what I (you) engage in.  And that does not seem right.  Today I believe I have the abilities to get up and down that mountain.  In the grand scheme of things of what I expect I will do, my performance will hardly be grand, but it is engaging in something pretty amazing nonetheless.  If we wait for everything to be ideal, nearly all things will be a “no deal.”

Besides, training or exercise for an endurance event really does not need to be more than this.

A few more shots from London this AM.  Weird thing on this trip is that I noticed that I was consciously thinking about the photos I was taking and the framing, and that I was looking for interesting angles and the like.  So then I started thinking I was thinking too hard, which hard to do when you don’t have much to think with.


Next week, I am off and heading to the high country to get in some running, cutting some wood, and sleeping in the forest.  If you are in the area and are interested in such, let me know.