Saturday 02JAN2021

 I got out this AM for four miles along the Ridgeview Trail.  

There have been a few of the HS kids that have been pretty dedicated over the "off-season," and so I met up with three of them this AM at the start (and then they took off as I did my slow jog well behind them) and saw them in the parking lot at the end for a light stretch.

These three are probably the most committed to training.  It is understandably fairly challenging for most of the kids right now:  track is not expected to officially start until late April or May, it is a Saturday morning on the holiday break, it was 20 something degrees, and there is a good amount of discouraging to do any sort of collecting due to COVID.  

My Achilles was not happy but I was sort of surprised at how it didn't feel incredibly bad.  So I will take that.

Catching up I guess on things that happened since I blogged over the summer ... Lucy passed.  It was not surprising as she was 14 and 1/2.  She had been expected slowly physically declining with age, but in the last year, she had begun to lose a good amount of her vision, and was close to completely deaf.  Then she started to have seizures.  At first real minor ones, but they too grew and it was clear that it was time as so she didn't suffer.  

I had all the feelings one typically has when they lose a dog like this and one that has been a part of their life, well, for about a 1/3 of it.  She and I shared thousands of miles, and it is hard to not think of her catching a frisbee on the fly as I hucked it 80 yards down a soccer field.  

About the same time she passed, I came across the Chris Stapleton tune "Maggie's Song."  It struck of course, and I wanted to play it.  It must have been the first 100 tries before I could get through it without breaking up.  

Crashes and such

A few weeks ago KZ had a skid out on a mountain hill road and put some hurt on the Pumpkin.

The frame was not bent and so TZ’s brother was able to do some work in his home garage to get it a little prettier.

Guess, sadly, it is not unfortunately a “beater.”

On Sunday, I decided to engage in my own crash of sorts, and to line up at a Rocky Mountain Road Runners (RMRR) race.  It was 2 miles, and as is often the case with RMRR runs, your start was based on your performance in a recent race.  If you had raced previously with the RMRR they’d base it on that, or in my case it was based on my best estimate.   Given the recent 19 and change 5k for the Park Run I did, I figured holding 2 sub sixes would be a stretch, and guessed a bit more conservatively a 12:15 for 2 miles.

Given this, I was given then a handicap.  RMRR run their races so that the start is variable – meaning that the slowest folks take off first and the fastest take off last.  Hypothetically, this means everyone finishes at the same time.  It does not ever work out that way, but it does make for a very busy finish.  The last quarter mile of the run is more like the first quarter mile of a race – where you have to bob and weave through runners

It warmed up pretty quickly and it seemed a bit steamy (for Colorado).  I did a warm up with Greg and Jen.   With the shift in the race start there was some fun smack talk as to who would catch who.  I had about a 75 second lead given over Greg and I was not super confident I’d be able to hold him off – particularly if he caught sight of me in the last 400 meters.  I expecting to be typically stupid and get out too fast and to be struggling in the later stages – making a late kick down and caught more likely. 

My handicap had me start 8:29 after the first starters.  I got out quicker than I should but I managed to dial it back a bit so that I hit the mile in 5:55.  I had been regularly catching folks and not been caught by anyone.  As we rolled through the turn around triangle at the far end of the course, I spotted Greg about 125 yards behind me.  I got a bit soft in this part – trying to push but also not comfortable with the uncomfortable in this space – but that is why I was here.  I slowed in the second mile to 6:13 (to 12:08), but held off Greg (who ran 11:12). 

It was good work, but again – I am almost re-learning how to be in that space.  Avoiding races and workouts only makes it less familiar to the body and to the brain.  Racing is part of the training experience as well.

12:08 … it is not great for me.  In fact, my younger brain thinks how that would be a “gee this is not going well for me” sort of day if I split that for 2 miles in a 10k, but this is where I am now.  I need to own it – and just look to see what I can do to improve on it. 

I spent a fair amount of time over the weekend working with JZ in redoing the floor of the shed.  It had rotted out over the last 10 years from water damage, so we had to redo the some of the joists and put in a new bottom. 

We had helpers.

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)

Wednesday 30DEC2015

Joey G has an interesting post on PEDs and pledge sites

I would make a trip to the Springs for the FA this year but I will be in California instead jogging a half with KZ.

Wyatt hits on a variety of topics, including the self indulgence of blogs like this one.  I will just say – yes.  This is something I do for myself.  What of it? 

Catching up on this reading.  Trying my hand at this is something on the possible list for 16.

Quite a list of things read.  I need to see this guy soon. 

We spent the day in Fairplay.  I got out in the afternoon with Lucy and Hans.  It was like negative four without the windchill.  For whatever reason this sort of cold … I am welcoming it this season.  In past years, I have found that I have long for the days of summer when we get this sort of cold snap … but this year, I am sort of enjoying it.  I am not gonna stand around in it for hours on end or anything, but I am digging getting out in the quiet beauty of the crisp days.

Hans and Lucy almost seem to never care what the temp is.  They never complain.  Cold, hot, wet, dry, windy, whatever – it is always, “let’s effing go man!” with great joy and excitment.  Dogs teach us how to be better living beings.

This shot is looking up the Breckenridge Estates climb.  Even though it is not even in the same county as Breckenridge, that is what is called.  It is a helluva climb at 10000 feet.  You are looking at what is pretty much a straight shot up for a mile.  I love it.  It was a slog in the snow today once we got past the part that was plowed.  But it was fun nonetheless. 

5.5 miles.  Obviously I am looking to emulate JT in this post as there are pix of dogs, not kids.

Friday 031315

AM – slow and easy dog jog with Lucy for 5.1 miles.  Actually she did 3.2 and then I added on.  At 9 and with the reconstructed front leg, she is good for about a half an hour before I can start to detect a slight gimp on her part.

PM – 10.1 miles.  TZ joined me for some on the bike.  Tired a bit.  It is the brown season.

Saturday 011715

AM – 3.3 with the Lucy dog.  She is coming back great from the surgery she had (she torn a tendon on some metal edging while chasing a squirrel).  I am not sure she will have the flying frisbee catch career she once had (although she has done well with that with some limited testing) but she is good on the jog.

Eyeballing some of the local results to figure where folks are likely to line up in a few weeks.    Worth thinking about in terms of last years results.   And it seems that nearly everyone went out way too fast for XC last year.

Afternoon – 10 miles.  Wind just beat the crap out me and I think I am a bit down on my hydration.

I have been throwing in some light stretching (it is hardly worth calling yoga) and leg work this week (like go down to the office gym, and do some squats with some weights for like 3 minutes and then go back to work).  While it may be light, I am feeling its effects in terms of being a stress on the edges.

Crappy light, but JZ picked out this horned owl on a roof line.  It was so close I thought it was a fake decoy to ward off other birds, but it was clearly moving around and looking at us. 

… not a bad wild life day as a fox crossed my path on the afternoon run too.  He was too quick for me and escaped before I got the camera out.

Sunday 042714

Finishing up the week of Meb tribute – a nice post interview with him over on the Outside magazine site.

Went easy today – jogging the dogs.  Lucy (1.5 miles, although I toss the frisbee for her while we run so she gets in more than that, with sprints for her), Hans (4.5 miles), Stella (1 mil), Bart (1 mile).  All very easy running.  Nearly all of this is just jogging around the fields at the middle school.

Well sort of.  We have Hans at the moment as TZ’s parents are out of town.  He is great in the mountains when I can run him off leash.  He has gone double digit miles with me up there and just could keep going.  He is a great hunting dog in the fields of Kansas.

He is ridiculously hard for me to run with down here though, in suburbia, on leash.  My runs with him end up being part run, part core workout, an exercise in patience and dog discipline.  Within the first 200 yards, he had knocked me down.  He sees squirrels and goes ape shit bananas to kill them.  He sees other dogs and when Rover the little terrier barks at him, he so wants that. He is just not a leash dog.  Dude needs to run free.

Week ends with 76 miles, but about an hour more than last week (probably because I doubled typical climbing to 5700 feet, most of that coming off the year’s first ascent of Green, but also getting some on the Tuesday hill work).  The workout with Steve on Thursday was solid and gave me a bit of a reminder of what I need to do if I want to break 5 in the mile.  That sort of work does leave the right arse cheek a bit sore – meaning the intensity flares it up a bit more than just plain old volume.  Did get 3 lunge matrix warm ups in and will look to continue or better that.  Currently at 1025.5 miles on the year.

Off to Cork today so I expect next week may be a bit less volume.  As I am at sea level I will try to take advantage of that condition and get some faster work in.  I have not found any races I can jump easily into.  I am thinking I will do a mile TT and take a crack Patrick’s Hill again.  Looks like the FKT on that has improved a bit since I was there last year.

Sunday 122913

You worry about all sort of stuff, and then you read something like this and realize it is really not that important.

As is the time, there are a good number of end of year awards being announced.  Flotrack named Mark Wetmore Coach of the Year, and has a good article describing why (hint it is not just the NCAA win).

Good article on why the TSA needs to be looked at in a different light.  I have not checked the author’s credentials but if they are as advertised, I’d say it is solid (although because it goes a bit sideways at times it seems to detract from the article).

Someone shared this Ted talk video with me today (does money make you mean), clearly to challenge me.  Interesting.  I do find I am compelled to debate some of its points, but I guess that only further illustrates that I am mean, self entitled, and not cognizant of the randomness of how successful I have been.  Ugh.

A motivational video for training.  I realize these can come across as a bit over the top but there is a time and place for them.

Bart was going nuts at one of the wood piles at the ABC yesterday.  Actually he did that the day before as well, and drug out the decomposed (dried) body of a packrat.  On this occasion, he ripped the wood pile apart until he found the dried skull of another pack rat.

 

This guy (a Swainson hawk I think) camped in our backyard for a few hours today. 
I was really hopeful that he’d get this guy but that never played out.
The whole affair was driving the Norfolk terrorists nuts.  Clearly I am one step closer to being a retiree since I have come to actually bird watching.  I would really enjoy it if that squirrel was taken out by the hawk though.

9.3 miles in the afternoon, over to check on the burros.  Pace was easy both ways, and coming in around 7:45 on the flats.   57.1 on the week – a bit lower but expected with the holiday fanfare, altitude, etc.  Looks like I will come up a tad short of 3500 miles on the year.  I am not compelled to get 25 miles in the next two days just to force it. 

Tuesday 112613

I am catching this after they won (obviously) but Wetmore’s sarcasm is something many of us have enjoyed for years.  Good recap on the XC Nat meet, particularly how CU was 19 points down from NAU at 8k but pulled out the win.

In a more professional regard, I have been watching the thread on the FDA serving the 23andme company a warning letter on its product.

To wrap on the hunting trip, plucked and prepped the chicken.  A thing that I guess is commonplace for a lot of folks, but definitely something this raised in the burbs of southern New England punk had never done.  WARNING  - some folks find these shots less than their liking, and not what they would expect on a blog about running.  You have been warned to veer off if not interested.  But it is really just a chicken.  This will be a compliment to the Thanksgiving bird – and thankfully not the only thing we have to eat.

Guess I am older than I thought as I decided to swing the carving in the PJs.  Awesome.  For what is worth, some back yard chain saw work was done in those too.  Sheesh.

Not sure if I will race Thursday.  The desire is sort of there, but sort of is not.  I might be just as content to do a lap on Green (I have 48 this year and getting 52 on the year would be a nice number and as far as I have recorded, an annual high).  I can see the reasons for getting out and jumping at it, but there are probably as many not to.  Odd feelings I guess, given I was pretty sure that the focus this season was going to be to perform as well as I could that day. 

That has sort of slipped away over November, which has unexpectedly become a month of low miles, days off and little motivation to fight otherwise.  The slight aches and pains, the time off more forced by work and other choices, and the less than personal par performance last week have dimmed the fire a bit.  And I am unexpectedly at some ease with that.  It is almost as if a break needed to be forced on me to realize that I probably needed a bit of a break anyway.  Or maybe that I am welcoming one warmly.

Afternoon – 10.1 miles super easy. Back is still tight.  It is one of those deep muscle things that you feel when you breathe deeply.  Some folks call an intercostal muscle thing.   I have had this maybe four or five times in my life.  Takes a few weeks to pass.  No idea what causes it but sneezing is about like getting kicked in the back.

First mile was with Lucy dog to get her out.  In the field, these three kids had a Rotty on a leash.  They lost control of the leash.  It bowled me over to the concrete (where I made the elegant old man “agh!” sound) and the started on Lucy.  I jumped in, grabbed the Rotty by the ears and brought it down, and it started to whimper.  Could have been a real stupid move on my part but I got away with no teeth marks in my skin.  I did have a skinned elbow from the fall though.  Too pissed to really talk to the kids, I gave them their dog, looked mine over and after assessing she was fine I pushed off. 

Wednesday 10913

It is pretty heavily slanted to the northeast because of its location, but the USATF Masters National Championships for 5k was over the weekend.   Lot of guys under 17 there and a good number under 16.  Then again, when you have 60 year olds running 32 and change for 10k, I guess this is not that fast.

Spoke to my daughter’s XC coach the other day and he works at a local running store.  This will be the flag that I look to get a squad of masters guys to run under for XC Nats.  The good news is that there seem to be a LOT of guys who are interested in this.  I imagine about half of us will bail with other commitments, injuries, etc by the time the gun goes off – so it is good to have potentially 3 dozen guys fighting for spots right now.

Apparently I am not high carb or low carb.  But I am an impressive training logger.
If you are interested in this study that is going on at UCONN, let me know and I can forward you the information.

More trails are opening.

The other brewery in Broomfield making progress.

Scott’s CT record run reports are still eeking out.  Good stuff.

Got some rope work in today.  The left legged single legged jumps are getting better but are still not as strong as the right.  Will keep working at that.  I did some squats, but unweighted and not as deep as last week.  And some lunges, and planks.  As I am looking to make the teeth sweat with Bob tomorrow, I kept the run capped at no more than an easy hour today.  7.2 miles, 56 minutes easy.

The Dog V. Squirrel showdown continues.

Wednesday 050113

You’re a gluttonous pig with an Oreo dependency.

Damn it.  Morton’s site does not have an RSS feed.  That dude is so old school.

I was talking with someone over the weekend who is looking to do the 50 marathons in 50 states thing.  We started going through which states he had left and what races he would do to get those done.  On one of them I proposed one of the Rock N Roll marathons and he scoffed disgust with that organization.  When I asked why, this very accomplished marathoner found it ridiculous that Rock N Roll actually allows participants to fall behind cut offs in the marathon, get picked up by a sag wagon for a ride, start the course later on down the road, complete the marathon and get a finishers time and medal for that.  Curious, I went and checked if this practice was actually the case by poking around on the RnR website.  In several locations on their website (for the various races) they state this approach for cut offs (blod and yellow emphasis is mine).

If a participant’s pace falls below the course time limit, they have a few options:

• Increase their pace to stay within the event minimum pace;
• Board a “sag wagon” shuttle to move forward on the course, where they may continue to participate in the event, maintaining the minimum pace required; or
• If the participant cannot continue, they may board a sag wagon to be dropped off at the next shuttle location, at a nearby medical station. The participant will be seen by a Medical Team captain to be cleared for the medical shuttle to transport the participant to the finish line.

Admittedly, part of me does not care.  It is not like that person is taking someone’s podium place or prize money, and I see some benefit in their participation.   And really, I have no direct skin in the game if they get a medal and certificate stating they did the marathon in 6 and half hours.  But … THEY DID NOT DO THE MARATHON.  Why is that even considered acceptable? 

I got an email for results from this past weekend’s race that had a link to a video of the finish.  Interesting thing is that the link was customized to bring the video to just about where I finish by adding a “#t=4m11s” to the end of the youtube tag.  That is pretty cool.  So if I want to bring you to the incredibly cool Matt Bellamey guitar solo from “Invincible” in their Wembley concert, I don’t have to give you the whole video but I can just tag that like this. Maybe that was generally known but I just picked that nugget up.

The bad news is I get to watch that finish and pretty much relive how I was running with nearly all the folks that finish from about 3 minutes on in the video up until about halfway into that race. 

Pretty unmotivated to fight the snow and wet today.  Easy easy with the dogs.  7.2 miles.  Got my ass kicked by Hans and after he dragged me through a slush puddle I was REALLY unmotivated.  Dinner, a couple of glasses of boxed wine later, I got out for another 3 in the slush with Lucy. 

Tuesday 072611

AM - six miles super easy. A bit tired in the legs.

PM - five miles.

Dog ate my homework:

Wednesday 062211

AM – 5 miles wake up run

Good stuff in this podcast re: recovery, etc from the Purple Patch Fitness guy.

According to Sean, this blog has some dulcet tones.

PM – South Boulder Peak.  Felt good to start but was certainly slogging by the middle of Shadow.  I got up in 54:44, but definitely knew the super computer was not running well on the way down.  Rather than risk a wipe out, I shut it down and “ran” down easy.  RT was 1:32.

But the bummer was this view as I came into the South Mesa Trailhead lot.

Other signs there indicated this “Coming Soon!” was actually June 27.  Not sure if this will be 5 bucks for a year or 100 bucks.  I am also going to check out if Broomfield is exempt from this given it was once part of Boulder County, and paid for a good lot of this open space.  In any case, I am sure it is going to make this and the Dowdy Draw lot much less visited by me (forcing me to the Flatirons Vista or the trail head over on 93 a bit more up north).

Elsewhere …