Wednesday 081413

Kim Dobson’s hill climbing and altitude tips … given her success, a bit hard to argue with her.
========
It looks that due to the flooding that has occurred in Manitou, the Pikes Peak race expo won’t be held and their will be some changes to packet pick up.  The weather to me this year feels a bit different – certainly not as dry as the last couple of Augusts.  We are not quite to the chill that took the weekend in 2008, but I would not be surprised if weather played a bit more a part in this year’s race.

Work has been busy, so I have not been trolling the start lists, etc.  Scout activities have also been on the up tick this week (committee meeting Monday night, where we reviewed two Eagle project proposals and then a regular Troop meeting Tuesday night).  I probably won’t get down to Manitou until Saturday night, evening as the Troop has annual planning that day (an all day Saturday event).  I might not even get my number until Sunday AM. 

The race website has added a “Pikes TV” link that provides videos from past races and is expected to provide up to date information as well as some of the typical background stuff.
=======
AM – 6 miles.  Headed over to “Death Hill” as the kids call it.  I did a few effort based climbs on that.  I was tempted to do 8, simply because that is what I do when I do this hill, but I kept it to five – to follow the Luchinator’s prescription, and not to overdo it. 
=======
On Sunday, we cleaned the van post the Yellowstone trip.  Typical stuff, heavy vacuuming, getting all the crap out of the seats that the kids embed in there, etc.  Afterwards we took it over to the car wash – one of those car washes that is just a bay with a change machine.  You drive in and work the high pressure hose and the foaming brush yourself.  TZ got me to bring the Element as well as it was in need of a cleaning.  On the fly there, we just opened it up and blasted out the INTERIOR with the high pressure wash. 

On Monday, the car started to smell pretty bad.  TZ went out there and went to the spare tire well and she said it may has well been filled with vomit.  All the crap we washed out of the interior washed down into there and did not drain and was just … ick.

So yes, you can wash out the interior of an Element with a hose.  But be sure to drain that spare tire well.
========
KZ has started XC again.  And like last summer she did not announce this decision until about a day before actual practice started.  Meaning that she skipped the 8 weeks of pre-season.  Part of me says, “hey her gig, she can do what she wants and it is good that she is doing XC.  It is healthy, it is social and she can have a different take on it.”  But I’d be a liar if I did not admit that part of me says, “damn kid you could certainly make this season start a helluva lot easier had you not delayed that decision and started doing some of this work a couple of months ago.”   I think this might reflect some of the challenges I will face as my children transition into adulthood.
========
Good 800 meter race yesterday and awesome running by beer miler Simmons.
=======
Looks like my expected trip to Durham next week is postponed.  Can’t say I am heart broken.  Climbing into an aircraft the day post PPM did not sound particularly appealing.
=======
This morning’s listening …

=======
I have been using the Forerunner 310XT for about a month now.  I like the watch as it is a bit more streamlined than the 305 and it has some additional features.  Some of the features are useful (in time HR graph), some are okay (calculated descent and ascent on the fly, only okay because they are pretty error prone but they give you a general idea) and some are just useless (not a big fan of the virtual partner thing but I can see how some folks dig that). 

The biggest pain in the ass is the ANT agent though.  This is the tool you use to get the watch to upload your GPS data.  It works … sort of.  And intermittently.  Last week it was fine – I could grab data up into Strava, and Sportstracks no issue.  This week – despite uninstalling the agent, and reinstalling it, killing the device driver for it, reset pairing on the watch and with the agent, etc, etc … it suddenly does not want to send data.  W.T.F.  Such a first world problem I realize.

In any case, I got it finally to work by blowing out some Garmin XML files, hard resetting the watch, etc. 
=======

Good video.

Tuesday 020513

Big Choice is going to start canning!  Hooray!

Tony interview.

I ain’t a reality TV guy (or even a TV guy) but I can see me and the kid no.2 watching this for fun.  Really though it ought to be called “can old guys keep up with young guys?” (the answer is pretty obvious to me).

Miniturn burro race is off the calendar now, so I have updated that race list.  I am already hearing all sorts of stuff how various folks are gunning for my title.  Just saying my style is impetuous. 

I have been sleeping in a bit in the AM.  I mean for me, pretty late – like 7.  So no morning runs but I have been feeling like I need to, want to tag the sleep a bit.

Pressed for time today, work, life obligations so really only had an hour.  Hit the local hill (aka Death Hill as the kids call it for sledding) for 8 repeats.  Looking up and the looking down in the shots below.  Dang pictures never look as impressive as it is in real life.
 
Stomach went south after the 5th repeat and I required and extended pit stop so the total time tanked (22:47).  Ah, no sweat.  I have not been on this thing in quite a bit so it is a baseline and one I will start ratcheting down on over the spring.  6.8 miles.  Definitely feeling a bit heavy in the legs, but I have not been on a scale to verify how true that is.   

Wednesday 081711

AM - 5 miles including the local hill in 19:30. Not bad, not great, not gonna worry about it.

Poll on men's predicted winning marathon time will be up shortly.

Got to spend a bit of time soon getting all the logistics together (shoes, etc). I have not done any of that.

The headphone jack for my ipod is messed up. But it is sort of cool. This morning I could only hear one guitar track of the Foo Fighters Wasting Light album. The drums, vocals and typically second guitar track were stripped. I sort of enjoyed that. It is definitely the jack connection and not the headphone male end.

Apparently it snowed on the peak last night. Does not look that way today. May want to keep an eye on the weather because you can feel how things are a bit cooler.

Friday 062411

We can all sleep easier now. In case you needed a visual.

10 miles, with 8 repeats on the local hill. Have not been here in a bit (actually at all this calendar year) and I felt it, as well as the load of vert from the recent days. 19:53 (was not sure if I’d break 20!) This ends a “phase” where I saw myself going after some vertical in the month of June. I have about 40k on the month – which I know is not a lot for some, but is about twice what I pulled in May.

A good Tweetmyer podcast interview … he thinks a 100 is harder than Ironman.

Irunfar interviews popping up for WS.

Thursday 122310

More post the Hellybuck doping confession, added fellow FF team mate John T’s blog to the feed collector (by the way, if your blog ain’t over there – or one you think I ought to check out, let me know), eyeballing DD’s goals, and part two of a very interesting Brett Sutton interview.

GOALS 2011:  Tentative race schedule 2011 (highly subject to change)

January:  Lafayette Oatmeal Festival 5k (1/8/2011)
Maybe a snowshoe race in here alternatively?
Pikes Peak Ponderous Posterior 50k (1/15/2011)

February:  USATF XC Nationals (San Diego) (2/5/2011)
Xterra Mission Gorge Trail Run  (San Diego) (2/6/2011)

March – probably will do a door to Bear Peak and back run

April: 

May: Collegiate Peaks 50 mile (5/7/2011)

June:  Golden Gate Dirty Thirty (6/4/2011) (?)
Mount Washington Road Race (?) (6/18/2011)

July:  Vail Hill Climb (7/2/2011) or LT Marathon (7/2/2011) (or half)
Barr Trail Mountain Race (7/17/2011)
World Championships of Burro Racing (7/31/2011)

August:  Pikes Peak Marathon (8/21/2011)

September:  Breck Crest (?)

October:  Boulder 100 (?) (10/15/2011)

November:  Anthem Thanksgiving Day 5k (11/24/2011)

December:  Chubby Cheeks 50k (12/17/2011)

I might fill in a thing here or there, but am much more likely to drop a couple, few of these races.  Mount Washington is dependent on the lottery, but if it does not happen I may take another crack at the Mount Evans Hill Climb.  July looks a little heavy but that is just some of the best racing times.  The 100 in October is a total WAG, but the thought is in my head so I will lightly pencil that in there.  All of course, depends on how I hold up physically, and in the more important aspects of life.  September will probably be a little recovery, and I expect Feb, March, April to be some building block months.  Love to get to the Grand Canyon in there but I am not sure I will be able to swing that.  Spring Break in March will be a recovery week as I will be bouncing between Phoenix for Spring Training with the family and a conference I need to present at for work in Portland.  River trip or some other in there too (early July)?  Remains to be seen.

AM – 11 miles.  Yeah, so this puts me at 4000 miles for the year. 

HIGHLIGHTS 2010:  most miles in a year ever, with it coming in at 4000 on December 23.  A bit of a silly number.  I think Anton may have gotten this number in July?  Maybe August?  But a representation to me that I have put down a bunch of good base.  In some regards I guess it is a fair representation of the 10% rule.  I generally got about 10% more miles than I did last year.  I am pretty certain I won’t look to specifically surpass this number in 2011. 

This AM’s workout included the visit to my local hill for the typical 8 up and 8 down session.  I did this last time a bit faster (18:59), and I could feel it a bit today (19:22).  Yet again, while my performance was slower today, my HR was higher!  All good.  It is December.  I have visions of doing up to 20 of these at some point.

Saturday 121110

Little tough to navigate through the results for club nats because of the age sorting they do (masters men), but it looks like Magill took the win, leading his team to that title as well. More on locals competing there here. If you really want to be humbled, check the open results. 196 guys under 32. You will probably never hear of all but 2 or 3 of them.

Free local neat thing to check out with the young ones – a pretty expansive Christmas village over at Arapahoe and 95th.

AM – early. Recorded a podcast while running, but it was mostly me talking in circles about doping in ultras. Scratched it. 6.5 miles easy.

Mid day – got back out, and the winds had picked up. Did a short warm up and got back to the local hill, 8 repeats again, this time in 18:59. WTF? The other day 8 of these shelled me, with the HR reaching 185 over the 8 and it taking me more than 21 minutes. Today was a max of 176 and over two minutes faster. Case for the central governor or what? Still nicely worked after these and rounded it out another 6.5 with the warm down. Not going to sweat the difference here but I will look to continue to do these periodically as they are a nice short challenge, are less than a half mile from my door. I bet if I did them with someone else tomorrow I could make them really hurt and take an other two minutes off the whole set.

Oh yeah, wore my newly arrived Crosslites. The grip on these are sick. They squeal when I walk in our kitchen.

Off to PA next week. Lots of predictions for precip there.

GOALS 2011: I keep at least one full complete honest month of a food log and post it here.

Enjoyed this post.

I need to study up for this test next week.

Tuesday 120710

11 miles.  Did my local hill here in the middle of it.  Total time on this hill segment for 8 of these was 21:27.  These kicked my arse pretty good.  I think I am going to try a weekly or so go of these, and record TOTAL time of the workout versus just what I do on the ups.   The hill is a little over an eighth of a mile, but the grade gets increasingly steep – I think around 15 percent towards the end.

This video that Justin clued me into from CIM is pretty amusing about 2-3 minutes into it.  I was kicking around some emails with the FF group today where people were talking about their goals.  I am considering Pikes of course, another burro race, maybe a snowshoe race, an ultra, maybe another shot at Mount Washington, Barr Trail again … and I was thinking about another go at R2R2R.  Justin recommended a Havasu trip instead.

Hmmm … whole thing got me thinking, as folks tend to do this year, as to what went well in 2010, what needs to get better in 2011, and some things I am wondering about for next year in the broader MUT sense.  More on that stuff later …

Some great comments from some great runners in yesterday’s post. 

Geoff has put up his NF report.  So has Michael Owen.