Back at work

Love that this kid is living it up in Germany. 

I am off to the DC area for a few days of work.  It is my first “fly to” gig since leaving a large corporation and starting my own company.   Even though I am out of the downtown DC area, I decided to head down to the Mall to get a jog in.  It was about 25 minutes of travel to get to it (via the Metro) but the Mall is always a bit inspirational to me, particularly the memorials.

For what it is worth, it is a mark of success and thus a milestone to get back to travel to do work.  Nice to be making it under my own company …  at the same time, the thrill of travel (planes, trains and automobiles) is not the greatest of fun.



JZ has been making progress on some aspects of his Eagle project (a dodge ball pit for a local church).  We spent a good amount of Sunday working some of the metal bits.

Recent stuff

Some articles/ posts that have caught my eye recently, although I have been more likely to be trolling milesplit these days.

• Nick P’s report on coming up short on the FKT on Nolans because of a route mishap.
• Good stuff in this post from Alex on the heels of his recent 100 (a DNF).
• Another DNF story, and I always appreciate the honesty from this guy.
• Catching up on this read from Joe Gray winning the WMRC: I heard about how the Uganda that won (and was later DQ’d so Joe got the win) was paced but this gives you the story from Joe’s perspective. 
• Latest ATC.
• Nutcase minions are at it again.
• Transgendered fell runner stabs an official for fear of being outed as male.  I remember seeing this competitor at Pikes a few years back.  The whole thing got me wondering again about “categories” in sport.  We have gender categories, categories for age, and categories for disabilities in the Paralympics.  The purpose is to create a “fair” field of play so that similar “categoried” athletes have the opportunity to compete against each other.  Why wouldn’t this also be done for transgender athletes or athletes with a gender “ambiguity?”
• I had no idea that Jamil C was doing this stuff.  Well done.
  

Still plugging away with attempts at something resembling structured training.  At least enough to put the rattle in the lungs a couple of times in a week. 

KZ appears to be enjoying German pretzels.

JZ at a recent Honor Roll ceremony at school.  Quick shot so it ended up blurry.

JZ at the BrHS Invite meet:

Enjoy this:

A few shots from NT

Been digging through some of the shots from the Boundary Waters trip that were taken by fellow adult attendee Glenn Abel.

Back at it?

In terms of running, last week was a bit of this, and a bit of that.  I was down on mileage a bit because of the work engagements, but I had a couple of good workouts.  On Thursday I did 8 x 600 on the grass with the BrHS kids.  These were coming in on at about 2:05, so sub 5k pace.  I felt horrible as I was working through a cold and fever. 

I thought I’d do the local Broomfield Days 5k on Saturday but I was so worked over from Friday’s events I took a pass on that.  Later in the day, I got out for 5 x 4 minutes at 5k effort.  The pace was not great, but it was over the Lake Link Trail, so there were some hills in there.  I figured that I needed about getting out for an effort more than worrying about a specific pace.

Bob kept me honest for a 10 miler on Sunday.  This used to be the every day effort but now it comes close to being what I call the long run for the week. 

Yesterday I went over to one of my more favorite / dreaded short hills.  It is a short stretch – maybe 250 meters, but it has four switchbacks in it, and pitches between 2-10%.  So it is runable, but it requires a bit of gear shifting.  I did this hill a lot in 2013 when I was prepping for Pikes.  It is probably too short for that sort of thing as the efforts are from 45 to 60 seconds, but I like it because it gives the lungs a good sting.  There is a Strava segment on it that is ripe for the taking at 37 seconds once someone who can actually sprint a bit takes at it.  I am not sure how that thing comes out as such because from the true bottom of it to the true top (what I run), I don’t think I have ever been better than 44 (and that was in 2013).  I managed a few 48s, but mostly 49s and 50s (Strava put these as anywhere from 42 to 44).  I did 8 of these and it left me a bit worked.  Not sore, but worked.

I can’t really seem to get sore unless I do something stupid long or with a lot of vertical that pounds that in.  I can get worked and tired and unable to go much faster, and even broken … but not so much with the sore.  I am probably not working hard enough, but it seems that my capacity, or perhaps my willingness to squeeze the sponge that dry, is not what it was.

And so with that, I can sort of go after things a bit day after day.  So today the kids were doing 12 x 400 in the grass.  8 of these were at 5k pace on 200 rest and then 4 at 3k pace on 400 rest.  I ended up getting out a bit hotter than 5k pace, but I managed okay – probably averaging 82, with some as slow as 84 and some as quick as 80.  This was a really fun workout.  Buzzing fairly quick on the grass, not digging into any huge pain for more than a few handfuls of seconds.

In any case, I am getting a bit back at it.  I clearly need some longer intervals to build up those gears, but this shorter stuff has been fun so far.  Given the last race was over 19, I’d like to hop into something to get sub 19 quick.  I think I am pretty close to sub 18 but I’d like to be there by Thanksgiving.  If that goes well, I might be looking to target a spring sea level 5k to see if I could do a sub 17 dance again.  Basic goals, fairly simple but won’t be easy.

Post BrHS XC thoughts

On Friday, Broomfield HS hosted it XC invitational.   It had been a great day all day – one of those days I love about XC:  kids, competition, blue bird skies, cheering team mates …  but it ended tragically when when one of the competitors, Brandon Reis, from Peak to Peak High School passed away shortly after the competition. 

There are no words that can effectively capture how awful this sort of thing is.  A family has lost a son and a brother, a team has lost a team mate, a fellow student and their team captain, and our community lost a young man that was clearly going to be a positive and loving contributor to this world.   It really feels terribly unfair … and I know that is just a gross understatement. 

I have been asked, “what happened?”  I really don’t know.  But I understand how people want need an explanation for this so we can more easily come to terms with it.  It does not add up for us easily when a kid who has been running throughout high school and was a competitive varsity athlete has this happen to him.

Being this close to this and being a parent also has driven me to consider what if this was one of my children.  I can’t even fathom how difficult that would be for me or my family.  But I think it also naturally drives you as a parent to ask if you are willing to have your kid do events like this.

As a lifetime runner, competitor and fan of the sport, I am aware that there have been deaths in competition or shortly afterwards.   There are statistics on this sort of thing that indicate it is rare, but those appear to be focused on marathon distance events rather than XC 5ks.  I’d expect that those sort of events are likely to draw older participants than 17 year old kids.  There are much easier to find statistics on teen fatalities related to driving, especially distracted driving. 

One of the more publically known cases of a running fatality where a fit young runner passed away in competition was the death of Olympics Trials qualifier, NCAA 10k champion and Notre Dame grad Ryan Shay in 2008 at the 2008 OT Marathon Trials in New York.  He died at the fifth mile of the race. 

I recognize at some point, statistics don’t matter in matters like this  The passing of a loved one like this is not something that you can put a number value on.  My views on this, which are ones that TZ and I reviewed over the weekend, are that we can’t live in a world where you avoid all risk.   Of course we don’t want this sort of thing to happen, and we can probably conclude that to some degree because we don’t think it would happen.  But it could. 

And to a lesser degree, we encourage risk beyond running.  Learn to ride a bike, you might skin your knee.  Take the hard class, you might fail.  Travel the world, you might get lost.   Fall in love, your heart might get broken.   Have children, and like my and many parents, you may end up burying them before you pass away. 

But the reward along the way is likely to be greater.  Even if it is that you tried, shared time with someone, and invested in a process to be something greater than yourself. 

My thoughts and prayers go to this young man’s family, team, friends and school mates.  His passing is truly a sad affair.  I don’t want to imagine your grief.  But I do take a sliver of learning from this moment that we toe a line every day to be something greater than what we were, and with that could come a price.

Back to work

This week is my first on site work since transitioning from working for big company and then going to my own company.  I could “see” how I was “out of work shape” in my head.  It was nothing I could not work through, but I could clearly see how I was a bit rusty in doing the dance of the long days where you “on.”



It is a bit different than the summer days where I was hanging with burros

Get out of your comfort zone

It was hot today so I had a lot of excuses.  I slept in so I missed the early morning cool temps, and then I was over at the church that charters my son’s Scout troop painting the shed that holds all our equipment.  It was hot.

I was fairly …. umm … “pooped” … or “tuckered out” after an affair of painting a shed in the sun for most of the mid day.  So the excuses for getting out for a run were piling up.  I took a short nap on the couch.  I am a bit of a belly sleeper and so I feel that any time I can fall asleep on my back easily, I must be pretty tired.

It dropped to eighty something around the dinner hour.  I knew that I not only wanted to get out for a run, but I wanted to get out for a workout.  But the excuses were piling up.  Frankly, doing a workout sounded a bit scary because I had not really done one in a while. 

Doing a race like I did last week was not as scary because … well, there were really no expectations.  And you get a certain amount of a bump of motivation because folks are around you also racing.  It is the magic little nudge you get by pinning on the number.  Doing a workout however … well, you are on your own.  And you have some expectations of what you at least want or hope to do. 

I have avoided workouts, at least structured ones or ones where I expect myself to hit certain paces for some bunch of months.  There are probably some stories in that, but none really worth telling because we all know what it is really and that is an avoidance of getting out of my comfort zone. 

I have been doing some work with the BrHS XC team this fall, and the staff there has been discussing the concept of “getting out of your comfort zone.”  Racing cross is not a comfort sport.  And so the training for it is often not either.  You need to teach your body and your brain about discomfort, so that it becomes the next level of comfort.  Ancillary to this is that if you never embrace discomfort, you will continue to lower a bar of comfort … always seeking lower and lower ground.  I have reached a pretty comfortable level and am a bit of a fraidy cat for discomfort.

But I am old enough that I know that.  I can talk about embracing discomfort and making your teeth sweat and digging deep, but I know I am just talking it.  I ain’t doing it.  I am exercising, but I ain’t training.  And there is a lot of me that does not want to.  But there is a voice in there that argues back.

The excuses were piling up in the 2 mile warmup over to the track.  I felt flat.  It was hot.  I was tired.  I got to the track and it was locked up like Fort Knox.  Easy to make excuses then but that little voice told me that it made no difference if I did repeats on the track or the roads. 

And so I got to it.

It was not so bad.  Not great.  Looking back at it a few hours later I know I was pretty much training my head more than my legs or lungs.  Training it that doing this sort of thing was a little uncomfortable, but necessary and unlikely to kill me.

So I am going to try to make getting out of the comfort zone a bit more of a habit.  This past week was sort of some of that.  In addition to the workout tonight (5 x 800 at 15-30 seconds faster than current 5k race pace on 3 minutes active rest), I got in a fair fartlek earlier this week, and some hill reps with the kids.  70+ on the week, but the slow stuff was super slow.

The boy in a zone of discomfort.

BrHS XC girls  … well, supposedly by some rankings they are a national power.  They are pretty amazing, regardless if the polls are right.  7 girls sub 20 on 5k at altitude.  They won the Liberty Bell meet (for the division they were in). 

The boys are a story in the making.  Figuring out the process, and learning a lot about running, commitment, and … discomfort.  A great set of young men.  They took second in their race at this meet. 

I am pretty dang lucky to be able to be a small part of their journey. 

Wakeup 5K

Did the Waneka Lake 5k.  Not a pretty result or one worth writing a long race report about.  My fake until you make it strategy worked for about a mile and a half but the wheels came off in the third mile.  Legs were fine in this effort, but I had no lungs or aerobic capacity in the latter stages of the race.  But I got what I came for:  a kick in the butt showing where I was at and a clear message that I got some work to do if I want to get to a standard that I consider self respecting.  I think I can back under 18 by Thanksgiving with some focused work. 

I was asked this past week if my helping of the XC team was a way for me to “relive my glory days.”  I immediately laughed and said no, because I don’t look at my HS years as so called “glory days” and I really don’t look at my involvement as a way to do that even if they had been.  But I do recognize I get a buzz off of being a part of this.  The excitement of a XC invite on a Saturday, watching kids test themselves, find their limits, enjoy what they accomplish but also have an eye on the future in how they will improve the next time they tow the line … pretty hard to beat that.  Those are things I certainly enjoyed in high school, and perhaps by being involved as much as I am this year with BrHS XC I am happy to seek that out again.

We had a call with KZ today.

Bart v. the Sprinkler

Some shots of KZ in France (she travelled there from Germany as a friend from here passed through)

Silver sucks, bronze is better.

Gold medals are awesome but apparently bronze makes you happier than silver.

Aish always puts up an interesting interview.   I’ll take the bet and say that Aish is not really retired (even though he alludes to not being sure to what retirement means).

Latest ATC.  They talk weight training.  The itty bitty amount of gym work I am doing is bearing some fruit.  I got my pullups back up to 13 and the bench to my body weight.  I can’t squat for crap though.  I hold a dumbbell or a plate and do goblet squats.  That is all well and good but then I see a guy doing 350…

Apparently the pools at Rio had a current.

Reminder on how I feel about this.

News flash – the US is better than Kenya in the 5k.

Really, this is what news is now?

Some recent shots.  New track is going in at the middle school. 

The donkey love to lay in the dust.


Sunsets in Colorado … don’t get boring.  Ever.

I need to run with a better camera to get these guys

The coach at work

Friday night entertainment

The 750 Club

I go through a little check at the end of every August.  That check is did I run 750 miles over the months of June, July and August.  My high school had a 750 mile club.  There was a little board on the window of the coach’s office that listed the dozen or so guys that had done it.  There were no lesser distance clubs.  It was 750 or nada.   

The concept of averaging 8.1 miles a day for those 93 days seemed impossible to me.  I made a start at it with a couple of ten milers the summer after my sophomore year.  Or maybe it was freshman, I can’t recall.  I do recall needing to quit on it pretty early because the cotton shorts I had chaffed my thighs raw.  That did not go well with New England heat and humidity in the summer. 

I knew a few of the guys who had done it.  One was a classmate and a pretty good friend of mine.  In our senior year he’d be our number 1 runner in cross.  Basically, it was clear that putting in miles of base helped you as a runner.  We did not have a regular meet up program like it seems kids have now, and so getting that sort of volume on your own was a rare thing. 

While I never did 750 in a summer while in high school, it was a big enough deal to me that when the end of August rolls around, I can’t help but check.  I don’t set out with designs to make that sort of mileage for the summer, but because it was impactful enough to me … like say a 5 minute mile … I check.  While this summer has been my lowest mileage in quite a few, in part because of 17 non running days, I did make “the club.” I am pretty sure I have done this since at least the mid 90s.

There is probably a price though for being able to manage this “what was once difficult but is now easy” task:  speed.  I certainly could not have been able to manage a 29 mile race with a burro in the Colorado mountains when I was 17.  And if I had I would probably be unable to walk for a week.  But for any race less than 10k, my 17 year old self would be waiting a while at the finish line for my current bag of bones.

Recognizing that I am not going to just “train myself up” and then magically show up and run a respectable time … I am going to have to get into a few races where I get punched in the mouth a bit.  To that end I registered for a 5k XC race this weekend.  It is the open “citizen” or “coaches” race over at Waneka Lake before the Centaurus Warrior XC invite.