Tuesday 30JUN2015

This guy blogging again gets me giddy. 

I am enjoying Beck’s stuff on NOP.  Particularly his last point in that post.

Jogged over to the kids summer practice this AM.  Greg does a great job in meeting with the kids over the summer and encouraging them to jog easy.  It just nudges the concepts of consistency, and it builds a great culture with the kids.  They hang out afterwards stretching, doing strides, but more importantly they are building a community.  I love that.And of yeah, JZ – the kid who refused to run with me for more than 12-15 minutes this summer has suddenly found it to be within his abilities to run 35 minutes a day with this crew.

It is good for me to run with this crew periodically.  It gets me out in the AM, gets me to chat with Greg and bumps me out of the 8 minute mile pace I would probably fall into.  Yup, there we are … one mile away from the high school on the way back and the kids fall into a sub six pace without a word.  I need a bit of that to remember it is running and not hiking that I like.

Afternoon –7.3 miles with a fair amount of climbing in a beautiful quiet set of pines off the beaten path but not far away.  The smell of pines, the quiet burn of the sun, and then a quiet mountain rain … bookend with some smiles with a friend… what a gift.June ends with 242.7 miles, 40+ hours and 34+k feet and 8 days off.  That means it has been my lowest miles in a month on the year but my highest in terms of vertical.  On the year I am at 1958.8 miles, 275+ hours and just shy of 124k feet of climbing.  It averages out to about 10.6+ hours a week and 75+ miles a week.

Bart actually likes to sit outside in the rain storms.

In long ultras it's vitally important to know why you want to finish and to have extremely good reasons why you'll push rather than fade, why you'll still care about the race when you feel like death. In general, a couple of good reasons for me to keep trying are that moving faster means the suffering ends sooner and that if I give less than my best I'll have to live with it for months or even years. It's a character test - are you as tough as you'd like to believe?

 Stories like this hit a bit too close to home and I find myself thinking of that family.  

Monday 29JUN2015

The weekly video recap

Nice little Leadville pace tool.  Or maybe it is nada for others.  All the pace tools are a little all over the place.  Like George Box said, “all models are wrong but some are useful.”

Afternoon – warm.  Tore up my legs in the seedy stuff over in Westminster Hills. 8.2 miles.

Later in the afternoon – feeling the heat but felt the need to do some running rather than just hill climbing.  4.2 miles.

If you have not caught the 800 meter race where Solomon takes it out in 49 and goes through 600 in 76 and where Symmonds is DFL after the first lap and comes back to win decisively … you should check that out. (PS – it still drives me crazy that those guys finish the 800 and are NOT EVEN FREAKING BREATHING HARD and whenever I have finished an 800 it looks like I have been hit by a truck).  Amazing how the two guys who were the cream of the crop of the field had such drastic different strategies and how different they played out.  Solomon ended up walking the last 50 meters tanked and finished in 3:08.

Sunday 28JUN2015

AM – Around 6 I headed over to Chaut with TZ.  She walked Bart the Black Pirate dog and I hit the front of Green. 

The first part of this trail (after Baseline) is so challenging for me.  I end up walking most of the Amphitheater  Trail until it breaks at the overlook.  Just above the Greenman junction, I ran into JV who was coming down.  He joined me to head back up.  We came back down the Ranger-Gregory route  Yesterday I felt I was buzzing that well, but today I could almost feel every pebble annoy my feet.  Weird how day to day varies like that.  5.9 miles.  Not a lot of miles today but another chunk of 2500 feet of vertical.  Ah, and none of it recorded on Strava even though the dang watch recorded it.  I ain’t gonna worry about it.  Seems to barf like that once every few hundred runs.   Whatever.

I thought about getting out again later in the day – specifically to get in another half dozen miles or so just to get 70 on the week, but I let that go (the way the day played out, that was okay).  It was a 11.75 hour week with 63+ miles and 13.2k feet.  June is at 215.9 miles, 36 hours and 32k feet, and 8 days off.  I think I have 8 Greens this month. 

I am hoping to get another 5 hour run in this week.  Ideally I’d be getting up to altitude but that is unlikely.  I feel about as confident as I think I could be off the training I have been doing but the two chinks I feel I have in the prep plan right now are just the overall experience north of 40-50 miles and … altitude acclimatization.  I will do what I can to address that when I get back from my next sea level trip in July, but it might be bit too little too late. 

I do feel that the blast of vertical in the past week is starting to create some sort of effect.  Well, actually I know it is.  At minimum it is dialing me in to some more technical trail running and tuning my head to deal with that.  I took some nasty diggers in the early part of the week, including one that has the front of my left hip hurting to the point where I jump if I touch it wrong (but no problem if I am running).

I “watched” WS throughout the day like many (via Twitter).  Watching it sort of reminded me of watching the Pikes Ascent the day before the Marathon.  I have sat on those rocks up there watching some really good athletes come in and they are just busted.  You see the guys and gals who can leave you in the dust any day of the week and they are just crushed.  Watching a 100 miler, particularly one like WS in the heat, is similar.  It leaves me wondering how I can accomplish half of what they do when they end up like that.  I know of course that their outcome on that day is not the result they would get everyday, but it reminds you of the possibility of melt downs. 

The other thing that I wonder about in watching these 100s is … well, they are a freaking whole day.  It makes you realize the magnitude of the effort.  You wake up and those folks have already been running for a couple of hours.  You go do your run and it is your effort for the day, and they are running.  You come home and eat and do whatever for SEVERAL hours and they are still running.  You have lunch.  You have dinner.  You go to bed.  You wake up the next day and they are STILL RUNNING.  It is amazing. 

And then you have a guy like the guy who won WS a bunch of times who has been doing this FOR WEEKS.

KZ got her driver’s license this past week.  She has been “slow” in getting it as she is already 17.5.  As a family we sort of brought the issue to a “we need to get this done” point when we hit this summer vacation.  I felt she was about a coin flip to pass or fail the exam.  But she passed.  With that first drive off on her own I felt that feeling that millions of parents have felt:  I grinned because I realized she was  going to finally enjoy that freedom and latitude that a car gives a person.  I could see her realize that too as her eyes lit up with that knowledge.  But at the same time, I feel a touch of fear each time I see a pile up on the side of the road.

I am gonna get a picture up of her with the license once the official one comes in the mail.

JZ is back from a few weeks of Scout excursions.  And he wants at that computer for big periods of time for on line gaming with his friends.  We (TZ and I) have set up some “screen time” policies that restrict how much of this he can do a day.  And the kid hates it.  We have heard about how unfair we are, how no other parents do this, how much time we as parents spend on the computer, and how we are inappropriately micromanaging his life.  The computer and cell phone thing is a bit tricky because it can be a source of entertainment and education.  It will work out but it is taking a fair amount of energy.  It is pretty interesting because he is an amazing kid in so many ways, and he often seems mature beyond his 14 years to me.  But when we hit this topic, he becomes a little kid all over again.

We where doing some clothes shopping and he was a good sport when I asked him to try on the pink sports coat.

Lots of action over the weekend including the USTAF Masters race on the track in Eugene. 

Week wrap up video probably tomorrow.

Saturday 27JUN2015

Green, middle up and down.  Not a bad run, but I have a bit of work to do on the climbing.  The downs that I can run are as about as good as I have run them.  I have done the downs quicker but when I look at the dates of those they are in winter months, so I have to assume that snow was a factor to make the rock sections a bit more smooth.  7.8. miles

With today’s run, June became my most vertical month (over April) (29450 thru today).  In April I didn’t miss a day but I had Vancouver and Tel Aviv business trips to flat locations.  Here in June I have missed 8 days, but should manage some 30k feet.  That is very little by the measure of many a runner but it being the most I have measured in a while … it is significant for me.

Of course more than half of this (16.5k) has come in the last seven days.

Probably another four miles walking with TZ later in the AM.

Picked up JZ up at Tahosa.  The boy is darn tuckered out. 

Friday 27JUN2015

So Western is this weekend.  I watch as a fan, with particular interest on the folks from CO or folks that I have met.  I’d love to see Dylan Bowman with the men’s race but he is a Boulder kid in his past, and was just an incredibly nice person when I met him at CP50 a bunch of years ago (he also seemed to be putting self into the hurt box while running in a manner that was both a little scary and awe inspiring).  I am also interested to see what local Kerrie Wlad does in the women’s field.  I met Kerrie through Lucho a bunch of years ago and the lady has amazing grit when it comes to running – often mowing down a huge chunk of the field in the run portion of Kona.  It will be interesting see what she can do in her debut at this distance. 

Great pic from WS from 2012 from URP.  When I started to slip into mountain running in 2005-6, Dave and Galen were two very big local inspirations, information, and encouragement.  Two great guys with a big footprint in Boulder mountain running history.  It seemed for a time these two guys and Scott Elliott had every FKT on the Boulder peaks – and that is when we tracked it on stone tablets rather than Strava.
Bill Wright posted this pic on FB this AM of the boulder that landed on Dave’s leg.  It’s a big’un.


A higher VO2 could be an indicator that you are better off if facing heart disease or cancer.

More train wreck stuff.  Lots of stuff on that over on LRC, but also great coverage on the first day of Nats.

Afternoon – 10.2 miles.  Hot.

Thursday 25JUN2015

Kevin B has a nice follow up to the back and forth on the NOP story.  Essentially Alberto is stating that his stable of athletes are less likely to have hypothtroidism than when compared to other athlete groups.  However, as Beck points out the NOP group is 40x more likely to have it.  Ummm …

And then Kevin has a follow up to his follow up.  Also good.

As I was running with Bob yesterday, we were kicking the topic around.  If you have ever run around Bob … well, you know you are running with Bob.  Not just because he is a tough SOB who will jeer you with taunts and wisecrack humor but because he sounds like he is about to have his lungs come out of his throat.  He seems to always be breathing a lot harder than the rest of us, particularly at easy paces.  It has actually led me to thinking I have him on the ropes in workouts early; only to be crushed a bit later on (Lucho used to call him the energy vampire). 

So we wondered – maybe Bob is a asthmatic?  It is very unlikely that Bob will do anything to actually figure out if he is and subsequently get treated for it.  And when I look at the symptoms for Hashimoto’s … well, I know a lot of male middle age runners who are dealing with weight gain, sore muscles and joints, a slowed heart rate, dry and thinning hair, etc.  In other words, it is probably not a stretch to get a doc to look at you and say, “yup, you need these meds.”  And then you have your TUE.

I have said it before, and it sort of is worth repeating here:  sometimes it is a blessing that I am mediocre in running and I did not have to face some of these choices.

AM – started with KZ over at the HS.  The summer XC preseason jogging started for these kids last week.  I hung a bit to embarrass KZ (but did not play the trump card of running shirtless) and then jogged on my own.  I am still feeling like I have been through a football practice more than running given my recent spills, but it is working out.  6.2 miles.

Today’s listening:

Bellamy is just mind boggling to me as to what he does with the guitar and his voice at the same time.  And Wolstenholme is a true hard core rock bassist.

Afternoon – Green.  Progress.  I did not fall. 
GPS went wonky on the way up saying I did the first two miles at like a six thirty pace.

So we have all seen how cellphone cameras have changed the landscape of police-public interaction. How about in healthcare? A patient hits record on his phone and it picks up everything his care team says when he is under ... and it ain't pretty.

Good preview of USA nats this weekend by the guys over on HOR.

Wednesday 24JUN2015

Yeah, I can’t stop watching the train wreck:  Alberto’s response is out.  Even better might be that the USATF hired Dennis Mitchell.  Yeah, a guy who was a known doper.

Afternoon  - hooked up with Bob for an easy effort on the Mesa (mostly).  10 miles.  it was good to go easy just to work out some of the beating I have given myself (from falls) over the last couple of days. 

I noticed that I have already had 8 days off this month, surpassing the number of days I have had off in all the prior months collectively.  But despite that I am getting a fair amount of vertical.  I am at 23k feet on the month, which is not a far sneeze from my highest month total (April, nearly 30k).  

After the run I swung by and saw Dave Mackey.  Kendrick was also visiting.  Yes, he is out of the of the hospital and home.  And each time I have seen him, he is doing markedly better.  You can just see it. 

He still has the X-fix in his leg, and unlike when he was in the hospital and it was all dressed up – you can see it.  And the bolts going into his leg.  It is quite a sight  But Dave says that he is pain free at this time and only taking antibiotics to help combat the possibility of any infection.  His upper legs show where he has given skin grafts and where there is skin growing back from where they harvested some thigh muscle to bring to the shin area.   He says his sleep is poor (I can imagine it is challenging to sleep with that x-fix thing on) but he is in great spirits.

We took him out on his front lawn a bit, drank some lemonade that Ellen brought us, and shot the breeze on Kendrick’s trip to South America, a line of 14ers in the Elk Mountains, his recovery, and whatever else.  He did some exercises with a stretch band on his good leg.  It was good to see him continuing to mend and continue to progress forward down this long road.  He still has a significant surgery ahead of him to remove the x-fix, and to harvest bone and marrow from his good right leg (by going through his hip) to create a bone matrix that can be used to rebuild the tibia.

I have to hand it to Dave – he seems to be in good spirits and truly thankful for his fortune in light of what it could have been.  I can’t help but contemplate if I could have such an attitude if I were in his place.  I think I’d be certainly thankful to be alive, to have such amazing medical care, and even more incredible family to help me – but I think there would be an element of me that was truly pretty pissed.  I recognize that probably would not be the healthiest of mindsets, but I can see how it could be easy to be dark about it.  If Dave has that, I am not seeing it, hearing it or feeling it.  The guy is truly strong. 

Tuesday 23JUN2015

Woke up and the right Achilles was hot.  What is that about?   I went to bed with it fine and I wake up with it gimpy.  I was actually walking funny most of the AM at work because of it.  I switched to my Hokas (someone at work called them Hukas so I had to go with that and say I don’t smoke through them blah blah blah) and it felt a bit better. 

Got out for a hike jog in the afternoon.  It was pretty hot and so that combo’d with an unsteady piece of grizzle made for slow going.  I bit it twice.  Once on that root on the way down on upper Greenman, and then again just in the lower part of Gregory.  In both cases I pretty much threw my phone against a rock hard but the Otterbox kept that bugger intact.  My skin however is getting shredded on my legs and arms.  If beating up my quads to prep for Pikes and Leadville includes beating them down by falling onto rocks with them, I am preparing well. 

I listened to the URP Mackey interview podcast for most of the run.  After the first good digger I thought I ought to turn things off and focus.  Apparently it didn’t work. 

In addition to biking, Tony is climbing.  But that is not what I like about this post.  What I like about it is that it describes one of the local super heroes in this area:  Bill Wright.  Bill Wright is a part of the Boulder OSMP hills in a way that only a small handful are (and basically that handful are the Minions). 

Colorado pretty much ruled the podium at Mount Washington.

Monday 22JUN2015

I ended up feeling a bit stiff yesterday – probably because I sat in the car with KZ for a few hours as she racked up some driving time.  But I woke up this AM feeling really well.  The AM test of that is how well I move up and down the stairs.  There are days where I am sore enough that I have to take one step one foot at a time as I head down.  It is usually less a muscular issue but more a general fatigue and deep seeded general soreness.  But today, after the largest day of vertical I have had on the year, I feel great. 

Well, mostly.  My right thigh was a bit hot where I banged it yesterday.  And that side’s Achilles is a bit pissed too, but that is probably from when I rolled it yesterday.  Other than that … great.

My head has been checked out on vacation and so I am behind on a lot of the news related to running that I regularly have on my fingertips.  Folks coming out with stories about Salazar and NOP seem to be growing.  Beck has a post up today about the intimidation tactics that Salazar uses. 

There is a part of me that thinks I should not spend a minute even worrying about the entire matter of PEDs. What is a PED and what is not is an arbitrary line – meaning it is a line that we as humans determine.  And as long as that exists, people will look to see how far they can push that line or find new boundaries around that line – even if that means risking their own health, compromising their ethics and their reputation.  There is the even harder area to sort out:  when you have someone who has a physical ailment (low iron, asthma, low T) and they should take something to get to “normal” levels.  At what point does using that “illness” become leveraging it for advantage?  Money drives this sort of thing, but so does ego.   If I completely embraced that viewpoint I’d look to embrace a viewpoint that we may as well allow people to use what they want, when they want.  In other words, eliminate the concerns about an non-level playing field by allowing access to all things to keep the field level.  But I can’t embrace that given that sends a message to our society and particularly our youth that to be not the best but just somewhat good in this very simple sport you need to compromise what you are by ingesting, injecting and inhaling stuff that could have longer term negative effects.  It is a conundrum that I have yet really to come up with a solution for.  And I sort of can’t help but watch the train wreck of NOP the same way I watched it with Lance and Ben Johnson and on and on and on.

Justin covers the week in MUT well as he always does.

Interesting post from Simon Gute on estimating your ascent time at PPA.

Local to NH and solid in his own right runner Jim Johnson has great video up from the MW race (at 4 miles into the race).   

Broomfield has a 100 miler now (Neeraj makes an appearance in this vid). Well sort of. 

Tony and the bike, not surprised when I think about it but damn.

Timmy L has reposted his entertaining “how to run Leadville posts.”

Afternoon, mellow 6.3 in the heat.  In the evening JZ and I headed up to LVR for a couple of miles of burro love.

Sunday 062215

AM – did an early start with Jeff out of Chaut to beat the heat.  Five minutes (ish) in I took a digger coming down into the creek crossing at the Gregory lot.  The hands which usually take the brunt of the beat got missed entirely but I hit the right thigh pretty hard.  I guess that is a way to pound up the quads.

Great conversation (as always) on the mellow trip up Green with Jeff.  We went up the back route.  At the top, Jeff and I split paths.  I headed down Bear Canyon to the Mesa, then back up Shadow (I re-watered up at the creek there).  The upper parts of Shadow that were plagued by the wild fire a few years ago are now blessed with wild flowers.  It is gorgeous.
I then headed over to Bear, back down the Bear Green connector, back to Bear Canyon (rewatering up at the top), and back on the Mesa.  18.5 miles with about 6k of vertical.
 
I love this view on the Mesa.
I felt good on whole.  The banged up thigh barked a bit no biggie. 

Endurance Planet stuff:  I have listened to ATC from the first episode.  And I find the initial banter back and forth between Tawnee and Lucho to be the best part.  Almost all the questions seem to have been asked before (although this week there was some new wrinkles) and I find hearing what is going on in their life to be the best stuff.  I also listened to the recent cast that included Hal Walter, Phil Maffetone, and Chris McDougall.  I enjoy this stuff, particularly since it includes stuff on burro racing, but I will openly declare I have trouble with some of the messages delivered with it.  McDougall in particular seems to me to make absolute comments that have threads of truth – but are not absolutely true.  That sort of stuff rankles me but I have come realize that might simply be part of his marketing (a concept he also makes absolute comments on).

Last week was 48.1 miles, 6230 feet and about 7.5 hours.  This past week was 23.8, 5815 feet (yes all but 25 of it came from the run today, as I ran twice this past week and 5 hours. 

Saturday 062015

I am getting back into town and here are a few of the links I picked at on the flight back from Fort Lauderdale (which, as a side note was perhaps one of the happiest flights I have ever been on.  People who had never met each other were suddenly just gladly yapping with each other and laughing.  It was like some sort of party bus.

Yes, this was wonderful).

- First, I am catching up on Dave Mackey.  I got a bit of wind of it when he was in the hospital but it appears to be public now - he’s facing significant medical bills from his accident.  If you are interested in helping him out, you can do that on line.
- Good read on Overtraining …
-Thinking about getting a coach?  Check out these things to consider.
- Ron Clarke passed away recently.  Consider it runner homework if you do not know who he is.
- This is a good race report of an out of towner about the Bolder Boulder.  I love his beards in TN reference.
- Touching post by Lauren F about her Dad.  She is also talking about Alberto.   And more and more are coming out alleging of rule breaking practices.
- I read more of what Kemibe would write if he wrote it.

Loads of race stuff – Leadville Marathon and half, Mount Washington (with Joe Gray running sub 59 and breaking Carpenter’s AR on the course), Bighorn … I will settle through those over the next couple of days.

Nearly all of the day was catching up:  we got in around midnight last night.  Unpacking this AM, packing up JZ for Bighorn (he is staffing a Scout camp up at Tahosa outside of Ward) and then getting him up there, picking up TZ at the airport, and catching everyone up in the family (we were all out somewhere last week). 

Vids from Seabase 2015

Friday 061915

We started the long trip back to Colorado today.  Marsh Harbor to Nassau to Fort Lauderdale to Denver.   It is certainly fun times to roll a couple of dozen teen age boys through airport security and CBP … multiple times.

It is hard for me to describe how wonderful this trip was.  There were times where I would look at the water, the sky, the boat, and mostly the people around me and I could feel a well of tears building of the joy I had from this experience.  I said multiple times, “my cup overfloweth.”  I felt that so deeply.

I ran very little.  In fact, only once.  I did a five mile jog on one beach.  It was insanely hot and humid.  Well, probably not so but it felt like it to me.  It was probably 90 with 70 percent humidity and in the clear sun.  I ran past two women doing a nude photo shoot.  It fell into the category of things that would have been a lot more interesting when I was 25 than when I am 45.  But I ran no other times during the week, instead looking to squeeze the sponge of the experience I was living so that not a drop was left. 

The adults and young men on our boat learned, laughed, poked fun at each other, drove each other to make this 48000 pound vessel go by way of the wind in the water, and just smiled all week with how amazing it was.  We snorkeled for conch, caught snapper on fishing lines, cooked steaks from Colorado that we brought on the grill, ran out the jib and jigger, explored on kayaks, slept under the stars on the deck of the boat, held the helm, did overnight anchor watches, and walked the old Loyalist towns of Abaco.  My son said it was the best thing he has ever done in Scouting.

And while the environment sets a foundation for such an experience that is hard to beat – again, it was the people that made it so.  Our captain, a man named Ben, found the right balance of educator, leader, and comrade that made our experience fun but focused.  He led our week with the statement, “The difference between an ordeal and an adventure is your attitude.”  Wise words indeed.

I expect to post more shots in the days to come as I get back to the grind of the wifi and into the routine.