Friday 071814

AM – 7.5 miles, easy to steady.  Joined KZ at practice and then peeled off to do some of my own miles.  Passed by the trail that is going to connect Broomfield Open Space and Boulder County Open Space through the Carolyn Holmberg / Ruth Roberts area.  They have been working to create this one mile of trail since at least April.  It is done, people are using it, but they leave these silly signs up.  Yeah BOCOS!

I am off to Ireland tomorrow.  Good news is that I will probably make it back for both Burro Days and Pikes.  Family thought I ought to get a haircut before going over for business.

Best HR video I have come across yet.  Be sure to let it queue up in HD though.

This one of some of the leaders going down US Grant-Swamp Pass is pretty good too though.

Evening – a steady 4 miles.

Sunday 121612

I was almost giddy with the news.

The next trend in minimalism.

10 miles.  A dog jog and a slog.  I felt pretty tapped from the start but got myself out there enough that it became a 10 miler by default.  The series of stomach issues in the midst did not help.  I was just cooked at the end, almost as if I had a hard bonk.  Maybe I did.

44 on the week.  Which was about what I did in pacing Footfeathers at Hardrock.  And of course today was the HR lottery.  Still eyeballing that list to get an idea as to what it means.  I see Homie, Joe Grant, JT in.  Troy Howard is 1 on the wait list in his pool so he ought to get in.

Some history …

This is a great read.

Wednesday 090512

Some video from a guy who kills HR.

Got over to Green in the evening, starting about just before 8PM.  I put up a last minute Bat signal and I got Dr. NMP to bite.  Pretty mellow all the way up.  Fun to catch up with Nick (our paths have crossed some this summer – HR, and Brandon’s night run, but not a lot), and additional fun to get on Greenie (21st on the year) in the dark (not my forte, but I am not practiced at it).  Beautiful night.

Tuesday 072412

Apparently Boulder local runner, TJ Doherty was critically injured in a car vs. bike accident recently.   TJ – while I did not know him well (I only ran with him a few times) was a pretty bright light of a guy.  I recall seeing him at the Superior Downhill mile a bunch of years ago.  He had broken a collar bone a bit before, but raced anyway.  With a sling.  And he came through the first quarter well under 60.  Got this pic from Justin, who was his roomie multiple times.

Truly sad on so many fronts.

While the timing of this death, the Aurora shootings, the death of the Boy Scouts in Wyoming in a car accident while back from summer camp, the death of a coworker to cancer, are a coincidental, it has certainly struck a chord with me.  Life is fragile, and short.  Make it count.
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Wanted to share this story from HR before I forgot it. 
The finish of HR is  torturous.  I’d say ridiculously torturous, but in comparison to the rest of the course, it is not.  It is really just a last little chuckle at you, poking a wound.  The end (this way) is not particularly hilly, or high, it just appears to be unexpectedly long.  You can see the town of Silverton, you are dancing on the edge of it, all the big climbs are done, and you are on this single track just a bit east of the town.  It just seems to go on forever.  It is sort of like waking up on Christmas morning like a kid.  You have been waiting for this, but then your parents tell you that you cannot open presents until 3 in the afternoon.

Tim wanted to be done so bad, but this trail was going on and on. A girl (not racing) came on the trail from the opposite direction, and he asked her how far it was into town.  “No more than a couple miles, I am sure of it.”  We keep going and Tim is working and READY to be done.  The news of this being only a couple of miles gets mixed reviews.  It seems about right, but damn – he’d sure like to be done.

She then comes back on us from behind and (after after briefly freaking out that she was someone rolling him up) was heading back into town to finish her run, some 20 minutes later.  We have probably covered a mile and a half in this time (before you condemn that pace, you need to go do 99 miles of the HR course).  Tim bluntly asks “How far did you say it is into town?”  Her reply:  “No more than 3 miles.” 
I thought she was going to eat one of those trekking poles. 
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Anyway … looks to be one of those weeks where I am a one legged man in a butt kicking contest.  We started yesterday at 0730 and didn’t finish until 2100.  Ugh.  Need to keep the composure.
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Anton is back and says he thinks he could break the HR record.  I dig the confidence.
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Evening – I was able to break out a bit earlier and eyeballed San Bruno hill, a bit to the north of me.  I jogged through a slightly annoying set of crosswalks, lights, and relatively pedestrian unfriendly set of sidewalks and diversions, before I found myself on the shoulder of the south side of this hill.  After several disappointing run into dead ends in various neighborhoods, I spotted a guy who was jogging up and seemed to know where he was going.  I slipped about 100 yards into his draft, but then saw he also hit another dead end.  As I came up on him I asked him if he knew where he was going.  Jamal was also an out of towner, in on business from Seattle.  We made our way around the west side of the hill, chatting about running, when he ran briefly at Oregon, various ultras, the scene in Ashland, etc.  Eventually we found a nice little connector up, and got up about 1100 feet above the ocean pretty quick.  And probably even more quick down (off the east side).

Cruddy camera phone pix that I would have loved in the 90s.
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Funny, I will probably never see Jamal again, but we just enjoyed the run and each other’s conversation without little consideration of that.  That is the way so many runners are out of the gate.

been waiting for this …

In this:  proof that JT’s dog bites other people, not just me.

Tuesday 071712

At this point, Morton seems poised to win Badwater.  Given his zippy 100 times this year (13 hours and change three times this year), a win here has to put him at the forefront of any conversation of UROY.  Who has a resume better than him in this year?  I think some races like Western will get a bit more play because they will be considered more competitive.

Lucho’s latest podcast.  My jerk question on the 40lb weight vested 4:35 mile translating into a sub 2 marathon gets some play.  I saw a bit of a theme in this podcast – that being where folks are doing thing or looking at things differently.  Hobie Call with his weight vest, Max King with his mastery over an incredible range of distances, and Noakes’ challenging of conventional wisdom on hydration and electrolytes.  Good listen.

I got the gpx files from the run with Tim.  Here is the profile for the first 60ish miles.

The Garmin puts those first 61 miles (where Tim had a slight off course diversion) at 19700 up, and 18210 down.  The next 41ish (where I picked him up at Grouse) at 13310 up and 18210 down.  So, despite my bitching about measurement, it adds up to about 33k up and down.

Justin’s wrap up from the weekend of racing.

Afternoon – 10 miles.  Legs did feel some fatigue today, but not bad.

More Hardrock thoughts and stories

In no particular order …

At the Pole Creek aid station (in the middle of no where … they brought provisions in on horses), I was cranking on Tim trying to get him to eat some real food.  He was sick of the gels (who wouldn’t be) and dealing with the expected lack of appetite that can come 80 miles into a run.  Loud and clear enough for all the aid station volunteers to here, he gave me a “Look, I have food, I am eating – OKAY?!”  We both saw the humor (and the necessity) and started squabbling like a married couple.  It culminated with Tim asking if anyone wanted to pace him in for the last 20 miles.  Pretty funny.

Really impressed with Scott Jaime’s run.  Dude cranked himself into shape and ran well.  Inspirational to me.

It was wild waiting for Tim to come into Grouse.  Dark, we’d see lights crest a point on the horizon, and wonder if it was him.  Is that him with Brandon?  No, that light is not what we are expecting.  Hmm, maybe … and on it went.  And then we’d watch the march of the lights up the steep hillside out of the aid station up Handies.  Little lights disappearing up into the sky.  Later in the night, I’d get to experience that more as Tim and I made our way up Handies, through American Basin.  I’d look back and see a march of the ants, little lights moving through the dark of the night.

Harry Harcrow came into Grouse just before 10PM, and took a break – for the next 8 something hours.   Guy got his crap back together and pulled in a 41 hour finish.

The Uncompahgre Wilderness area is on the list of places I want to spend a heck of a lot more time in.

Ted Mahon … check his splits … that guy ran an unbelievable race. 

The Fuller clan was a HUGE boost to the Footfeathers croo.  I am really glad that Tim had Brandon to bring him over Engineer – as it was going into the dark, it was raining, and that was a big climb.  Brandon took good care of his feet along the way, and got us dialed in well at Grouse. 

Unexpectedly added to the mix of the croo was Justin M.  It was great to have him along.  As we were descending into Maggie Gulch, I looked up and saw a guy coming towards us and I thought … gee, that looks like Justin.  And it was him.  Huge boost having him out there.

The heart of the croo were Shaun and Kara.  Rock solid, even keeled, patient.  Highly recommended.

Brownie ran out of freaking shoes down the last descent, and almost caught Tim at the finish (almost being like over 15 minutes).  Impressive descent at that point, particularly since Tim had an hour over him at 9 miles to go at the last checkpoint (Cunningham).

I was pretty concerned about getting dropped by Tim going into this.  Thankfully I held up well.  I guess it helps to have your runner to have 60 miles and 20k of climbing in their legs to guarantee that you can keep up.  I had a bit of self doubt going in because … uhh, well as some folks pointed out (appropriately), this was like my third longest run ever, and I think the most vertical I had done in a day.  I held up well, and I felt pretty dang good.  The Achilles barked a bit on our last climb, but manageable.  I am encouraged by this little test, but am also glad that I did not sign up to go further or have to pace someone significantly quicker.

I need to do a bit of research on this, and it sort of doesn’t matter, except it mattered to me a bit out there … as we would leave an aid station, you’d get the data on the climb and drop to the next stop.  I think these numbers were just wrong.  For example, the climb out of Ouray to Engineer was listed as something like 5500.  Brandon’s GPS had it like 6500.  Now I know GPS ain’t perfect, but they are not off by that much.  A couple of times we were told the next climb was 1700 feet.   An hour later I was looking up at some crazy ass climb we still had to negotiate after we had been climbing the entire time on stuff that would make Green look flat.   Again, in reality, it does not matter.  You are in one place, you need to get to the next. 

There are a ton of kick butt endurance freaks out there that you have not heard of, that we don’t talk about because they are quietly – meaning without blogs, facebook or twitter – getting it done.

It was really noticeable to me how different folks take on aid stations.  You had folks like Dianna Finkel just blowing through them (her crew would swap her pack, all part of a designed plan).  You had some folks who blast in and out of the station but then be walking out of the station really slowly and for a long time.  You had some folks taking a long time in the station and then get moving hard out it.  Lot of variability here and clearly something that is a bit different for everyone.  I think for me, I’d defer to taking a few more minutes in a station to be assured I was dialing it in right – versus the alternative.

Sunday 071512

Last 2 days (Friday, Saturday) in the San Juans, running around HR100, with Footfeathers and croo … and yeah, wow.  Some quick thoughts (some light, some deeper) for the moment (more stuff, particularly a bit more detail from the race itself coming in future posts …):

1.)  This race Hardrock is obscene.  By that I mean it is is obscenely hard.  You can’t imagine how crazy hard this race is until you get out here and see what folks are doing.  I can’t express it in blog writing as to how hard it, and I actually only have a little insight into it via my pacing. 

Running 100 miles is not 60 more miles hard than running 40.  Running 100 miles is like 10x more hard than running 40.  Doing a 100 is not just hurting yourself, it is like hurting yourself, then pouring salt into the wound, then gasoline, then lighting it on fire, then … running a 100 miles in the San Juans is a whole order of magnitude harder.

If you are reading that, you might be thinking “okay it is hard.  Big deal.”  No.  This is really really hard.  And what Peter Bakwin did with that rock hard hard rock thing is just mind blowing.

But I also mean it is also obscenely beautiful.  There was a segment of the race where Tim and I ran for hours, looking at the enormity and the gorgeousness of the San Juans – completely free of view of civilization (other than us, and the trail).  I have not witnessed anything of that scale since the Grand Canyon.  There might be more beautiful mountains than the San Juans on planet Earth, but I have yet to see them. 

When you take those two things:  the difficulty of this event, and the raw beauty, it brings out a passion that the Hardrockers, and all the associated with them (volunteers, croo, race committee, etc) that is deeply moving.  I get how this race can get into people’s blood.

1a.)  In the spirit of stating how obscenely hard this event is, going forward the Boulder 100 I did cannot really be consider a 100 mile race of any significance.  I seriously look at that and now scoff at how ridiculously simple is in comparison to this monster of Hardrock.  Going forward, my Boulder 100 finish will be referred to as the “junior varsity kindergarten field day stunt I once did.”

2.)  If any race was ever made for Jeff Valliere, this is it.

3.)  Apparently my headlamp with fresh batteries will only produce the desired laser beam level of light for three hours.  It still works after that but the light then starts to get a bit fuzzy.

4.)  Apparently I can eat quite a good amount in these events at this level of exertion (low).  That does not mean I should eat two hard boiled eggs and fig newtons together.  The after effects are possibly of a WMD classification.

5.)  People were worried about me not sleeping going into this event, and how I would handle that.  I picked up Tim just after midnight on Saturday and we were together through about 6PM that day.  I had also been up since about 4:30AM on Friday.  While I crashed pretty hard on Saturday night around 9ish (after being up essentially for 36 hours), I was fine through the whole event.  While I very much a big baby about getting my sleep when I want it, these events seem to provide enough of a distraction (at least in the first night), that I do okay.

6.)  I am not sure if I will ever do this event.  There is a part of me that knows I could do it.  There is also a part of me that knows that I am not sure I want to do it – because of the training and sacrifices (not just by me) that it would require.   I can say I did not walk away from this event saying, “OH YEAH, I got to do it!” because I recognize and respect the enormity of this undertaking.

7.)  Getting out of a car and actually running with your runner is way more fun than sitting around in a car and going from place to place waiting for them.  By the time we got to Grouse where I was going to start with Tim (60 miles in for him), I was so ready to get out of that damn car (a wonderful jeep driven by Sean) that I was nearly going to scream.

8.)  Ran in the Hokas Stinsons … they did awesome.  No issues whatsoever.  Nothing to really report other than my feet were a non issue.  That is about as glowing an endorsement of a shoe as one can get.  Wait – one issue.  My feet stink to high heaven after running in the Hokas.  I discussed the Hokas with several folks this weekend, and unsolicited, several people had the same insight.

9.)  The HR course is very well marked.  I was a bit paranoid that we were going to get lost, so I was super attuned to looking for the markers.  There were a few sections where the course was not marked but that was only because the trail or the road was so obvious that there would be no place else to logically go.  I can gladly say that for the 40 plush miles I ran with Tim, we did not get lost AT ALL. 

10.)  I am increasingly becoming more and more of an old man sap as I age.  I watched the last finisher come in this AM, finishing just about 10 minutes before the final cutoff (48 hours), and I felt tears starting well up.  Why?  I didn’t know the person.  They didn’t crawl to the finish in some sort of traumatic way.  I just felt a sliver of their effort, and it hit me for a bit.  That sort of stuff never got to me as a kid.  It hits me more as I get older now.

More to come.

Friday HR, Ouray

             

Friday AM, HR Start

Thursday 071212

Thursday AM shakeout run (3 miles)
 

Most of the day was spent screwing around Silverton.  Definitely a different sort of town.  You can smell the slow speed of it all, but then there is this weird crust of a layer of all these super endurance freaks who show up for a weekend.

Anyway, I got out for a little run with Tim, JT and Bfish.  We hit the mandatory race briefing.  I did some planning of things with Tim and Shaun.  Saw alot of the folks you’d expect:  Buzz, Tony, Nick P, Mike H, Scott J, Bryon P, Karl, Dakota, Rob, and a bunch of other mountain ultra dudes and chicks.  Nutty.  I might have been the fattest ass in all of the town, even though I was eating the least amongst the lot. 

More stuff on the day from Buzz.

Great read by Hal Walter on burro racing.