Turning a corner perhaps

JZ seems to have turned a corner a bit in his health and thus his running.  After slipping out of the varsity ranks and into the middle of the JV, he managed a race where he finished grinning, and made the crew to head to regionals next week. 

For about 2/3rd of the team the season is "officially” over.  Teams get pared down to nine that race at the regional meet.  The top four teams from the regional go to the State meet – with seven being represented from those teams.  Individuals can qualify if they are in the top 15 in the region.  It is going to be tough for either squad to make it this year.

We enjoyed a last bit of fall, at least for now as a storm is supposed to blow in tonight, with the squads this AM.




Earlier in the week I was in the “Silicon Valley” area.  It was super cool work, but I can’t say I found the area outside of that to be that great.  I guess it might of been that I only got to see it when it was dark, but I can tell you that the traffic made it a place I could not imagine living in.

Two more weeks of the crazy fall tour and then I get a bit of a reprieve.

Another benefit of Strava (or similar) that I had not really expected … often with XC races there is some debate if a course is long or short.  First, I sort of dismiss the whole thing.  It really doesn’t matter in XC.  I think that the whole movement towards all courses being PR at the 5K affairs is completely inappropriate.  Courses could be anywhere from 2.5 to 4 miles in my mind and ought to be something where the time is mostly an after thought – because XC is about place. 

But that said, there are times when a time can be a bit informative – like your performance on a course year over year.  And in the case where there are days when 90% of the team claims PRs, you sort of wonder if the course was accurate. 

What I have found is that since I am often using my watch while running around and then this data gets uploaded into Strava later, I can use the flyby feature for that run, locate kids that did the run (and have made their run publicly viewable) and then look over a handful to see where the course lines up.  Pretty neat. 

Segments and plane respect

I was in the Fairfax area this week and got in some running around the work day (Larry can you see these photos?)

Sometimes my Garmin loses its mind and won’t boot (so I have to wait until it battery is completely discharged before bringing it back to life) or I have forgotten to charge it.  In these cases, I can use my iPhone as a GPS tracker using the Strava app.  This choice is not my favorite to use because it chews battery on the phone a bit more quickly and it shows only a time run, the distance and the average pace (vs. a near real time pace).  It does the job in any case.   

One thing the phone Strava app does do however that the watch doesn’t is inform me when I am approaching some established Strava segment.  Almost without fail when I am traveling in some town for business, when this comes up … it becomes some sort of dare that I cannot ignore.  The phone will inform me that I am approaching the “hairy horocrux hill climb of Hallow Haven” and I feel obliged to at least give the segment a spurt of some pace.  If I already know the segment, then I may well ignore it, but when it is new to me, I feel obliged to bite.  The problem / neat thing about this is that I really have no idea if the segment is 100 yards or several miles (unless of course it is named something like “Sisters of the Holy Hand Grenade 5k” or “Marriott Parking Lot Quarter Mile”).  I can sort of see on the phone the general path and make a guess as to what the length might be but I really don’t know (although most segments in suburban settings are somewhere between 0.1 and 1.2 miles in length. 

There is also a clock gauge that appears when you are in the segment letting you know how much time you have taken on the segment.  You can sort of judge how much of the segment you have done as this meter fills the length of the gauge. 

Of course, when I complete the run, I am curious to see how well or poorly I have stacked up in the mix.  Usually in larger cities, I end up somewhere ranked in the couple hundreds (but then I note that the top performances are almost done at 3:28 per mile pace), and if I am in a bit more isolated area, I might crack the top ten, or even snare an FKT for my efforts between two ash trees. 

===================================================================Things to remember when you travel on a plane that you don’t own (an list in progress):

- help someone who needs their bag put into / taken out of overhead storage
- give the person in the middle seat the right of way to the two arm rests
- don’t assume that you can sit in any seat other than the one you have purchased or reserved.  There are the increasingly rare occasions where there are indeed seats open if the flight is not fully booked, and you can switch seats, but don’t take the seats that are not your reserved seats until you know that seat won’t be occupied. 
- this is not the place to take off your shoes
- when standing up, do so under your own power and try not to use the seat in front of you as a gym bar to get up.   Only under extenuating circumstances should you use the body of an unknown person to prop yourself up into a standing position.
- if you elect to listen to something (like a movie), you should do so through headphones
- I too am a fan of many foods with strong odors but this not the place to enjoy such fare (also true of strong perfumes, colognes, body washes, etc).
- there are people who truly need a service animal.  We all know who they are.  Let’s not mix up a desire to travel with our pet as an expected service.
- don’t drink alcohol to excess
- stay in your seat when you sleep (meaning don’t move your sleeping self into the seat next to you)
- don’t read, view, etc the stuff on the computer or device of someone else.
- use the rest room as if you are an adult and not at frat party.  If you must fart, use the rest room.
- if you are creating an incident, expect that everyone on the plane will take video of every second of it
- when leaving the aircraft under normal circumstances, we unload it from front to back

I have some for the airlines as well, but that is probably of little use.

Tuesday 20FEB2018

Not snowing today, but cold and with the snow down, humid.  There was definitely a bite in the air.

10 easy miles.

I found myself slightly amused and annoyed on my reliance on Strava.  For decades I ran without knowing a true number of miles I ran.  I knew I ran some amount of time and I made a guess at how many miles that was.  I typically guessed it at 7:30 a mile pace and that was probably a fair guess.  There were days certainly slower than that, and there were days that quicker than that.

But then came the foot pods, and then the early GPS watches (that did altitude off of barometric pressure).  And then Garmin.  And Garmin Connect, and then Strava.  And with that I became a bit addicted to making sure I got some number of miles a day.  That is not the fault of Strava, it was a construct I made up in my head. 

I have enjoyed Strava in using it to find routes in locations, or even to create some effort workout based on someone’s FKT.  It has caused me self induced angst when I have seen a segment fall to someone’s bike ride, or a legit performance but that performance is in a geography that I won’t get to for a while.  And I have even had someone specifically look to “roll down” any and all local segments I “had.”  I’d love to say that didn’t bother me but when I saw four days of “GZ segment takedown” emails come in, it was a bit of a tweak to my ego.

I’d say Strava is a fine tool for simply tracking and occasionally motivating but it seems one in ten my runs are not accurately captured anyway (GPS error, my error, gremlins, whatever).  So I sit with mixed considerations for GPS watches, and sites like Strava.  Amused and annoyed.

Thursday 02NOV2017

Slow to awake (dang game 7s!) but got out with a slow start and then did a fartlek over a handful of local segments.  7.6 miles with some good work in there.  Enjoyed the post run frustration of knowing you did a segment but Strava calculated something else, seeing your idiocy in worrying about it as you got the work in anyway.   Amazing that I did this thing for years without really knowing how far I went but just guessed on how I felt and an easy day was 7:30 miles if I felt good.  I knew routes and times but I did not have the hundredth of a mile accuracy or this FKT thing to worry about.  That is not to say the FKT thing is bad … I enjoy being able to go somewhere and see the popular routes and take a crack at them (when Strava recognizes that).

Thursday 23JUN2016

AM – 40 minutes with BrHS with a handful of strides at the end.

Got in some 20-25 minutes of gym work post.  Again – screwing around:  planks, push ups, ab work, lunges, squats, etc

Link stuff:

• Here’s how you take a beer mile and suck the life out of it.
• No Ritz in Rio.
• Good HOR, covering the recent PED track news
• Quick listen on the brain and performance (sort of).

PM – little 40 minute run.  Used the phone for Strava, and it was completely wonky.  Here is a picture of the map of the run how it normally looks on the left.  On the right is today. 

 

So today’s route measured over a mile what the distance actually is, and in turn translated that into a pace that I was clearly not running.

Thursday 040915

I was kicking around with JV the amount of time it takes to get to the Green summit from Chautauqua via the Bear Canyon route.  On Monday that was 80 minutes for me and on Wednesday it was 75.  I certainly was not “crushing it” but my mind started to wander a bit on some numbers … certainly I could break 70 with some effort, right?  Heck someone had to have run this under 65.  This sort of seemed like a good emulation run for the Barr Trail race, 6.5 miles up and just under 3k of climbing with nearly all of it being runable.

Of course Strava told me that Sage had the fastest known time in 67 minutes but based on his HR, hardly working.

I was surprised to see that Brandon had such a zippy time.  No offense to Brandon, but I figured if he popped a 69, then I was clearly slacking in my efforts.  So after some email exchange with JV, I took a look at the respective routes.  On the right is Sage’s and on the left is Brandon’s  You can clearly see that Brandon’s route is more direct than Sage’s – and that makes sense.  The trail had not been rerouted to the longer circuitous version it is now at that point.  The vert was obviously the same, but it is now a lot longer in terms of distance with all the switchbacks. 

So the question really is why does Strava even think this is the same run?  I mean, I guess there is a commonality to some extent:  same start, finish, and a good amount of overlap on the Mesa portion (but even that has been rerouted). The variation from the grey line trail is significant in multiple places … obviously some level of variation has to be applied because in a typical race there could be folks running different tangents and stuff … or someone might even go off the course a little bit for a pit stop.  Of course, runs might change up in the hills even without a trail reroute (consider the ladder towards Saddle Rock).

New ET sticker on the laptop.

AM – 5.6 with strides at the end.  Felt pretty good.  Off to get a broken crown removed.  All this gold.  I am gonna be rich.

I can’t make this year’s Kohl 5k (travel) but it is a good local 5k if you are in the area and looking for that sort of thing.

Evening  - 5.2 miles before a corporate affair.  Picked up the last mile and a half and felt pretty good.  Four buzzard over the neighborhood.

Sunday 011815

Not quite beaming technology from Star Trek but getting closer … how awesome is that?  The 3D print space is amazing … already a ton of chatter on in it in so many markets, including the medical device world.

12 miles in the afternoon.  Warm again, but windy and it sort beat me down a bit.  I thought I might go long, but after two five mile laps in the wind, I finished it off with some hard hill strides and felt fairly worked. 

On a few of the efforts I tied my PR from last year on the hill, which I guess is good after 10 … but it still does not match what Neeraj did here last summer.  This one bugs me, probably because it is the closest to my house, it is significantly faster than what I have done, and I make it a mission to crush Neeraj on any of the local courses on Strava ever since my wife said she thought he had a good looking stride.

A friend of mine recently called the Strava 2015 CR thing “participation awards.”  I am inclined to agree.

Mixed week – nothing really ultra or 8k specific other than basic consistency.  With work tagging me at the beginning, the ice in the middle and the wind at the end – I was beating on the excuses drum.  On the flip side, I did get some work in there, just nuthin’ great or something that makes me feel like I moved forward more than a couple of inches. 

Partly setting me back is I can feel the edge of the other work I am doing.  And the knee I banged on the fall a bit ago is still complaining a touch.  Nuthin’ critical but all niggles.

Generally I feel I have got to a place where I can move pretty steady most days, but then there are some days I feel like absolute crap (and usually first thing in the AM too).  I need to exploit this two ways if I want to advance – make those move well days be longer, or go harder in there for shorter periods. 

70.8 on the week, over six days, but 9 runs – bring some of the AM in the mix. 

Today’s listening.  Hard to run easy to this stuff.

Kudos to Tony (who just nailed his 1000th Green)  for this gem.

We are all shoveling something …

Thursday 121814

This is an incredible story by King Ches.  He dominates cross and the track distances.  But dude might kill the ultra distances. 

Today’s listening – the latest ET.

While grumbling over the USATF, I still eyeball their MUT national championships.

Really, I am not sure that MacAskill can do anything on a bike that amazes me anymore.  If he made it fly over the Grand Canyon I’d sort of expect that

This is sort of funny.  The XC course for Club Nats was short.  I get why folks get uptight about that stuff (and I certainly have had my moments where I get pissy with a race director who adverts his race course as measured and accurate and it is way off).  And I probably would still be a bit uptight for road races.  But cross? I sort of had an epiphany on my last trip to Ireland where I jumped into that cross race in Phoenix Park.  They listed the race as an 8k of four 2k loops.  It most certainly WAS NOT an 8k (I finished with it being closer to 8.6k).  But nobody was bitchin’ about it.  And in fact, there was not even a clock posted at the finish.  Why?  Because the spirit of the whole thing was not about some time or an exact difference.  That sort of thing is saved for the track or the road where such exact details matter.  It is the antithesis of cross to have such details matter because you are running over hill and dale, in the mud, in the rain, over heather and through trees and crap. 

That said if I race Boulder XC I want to break 30.  The course better be right.

I am so stoked because I found my Rose Hill Drive Live at the Fox Theatre when I opened the case for The Violent Femmes.  This might be my all time favorite live album ever, even though it is pretty short. 

The eagles are back: 

10.2 miles in the afternoon, mixed paces, but easy.  TZ joined me on the bike.  It was good to jog with her and have a nice extended chat – and to check out the birds.

So I got a package labeled like this in the mail.
And no joke the damn thing was CRUSHED hard into the mailbox.  How about that?  In any case, I think I have my hat for the run this Sunday.
 

Looks like the locals are getting pretty serious about Saint Patrick’s Hill

Wednesday 121714

News – the USATF is ****ed.  It is messed up with its race dq’s, its elections of officers, its shady dealings with corporate sponsors, and its inequity in dealing with funding of female versus male athletes in the MUT space.  And that is just naming a few of the latest issues.  It leaves me wondering if I should even engage in anything the USATF touches, including XC next year.  I feel compelled to because there are a lot of good people trying to change it, and because that event is well – frankly fun.  But I also feel that by showing up, I am supporting an idiot organization.

Then there is the IAAF.

-John Treacy says screw it just train harder Ireland.

-More Friel on periodization.

- I think the stat on what % of boys champs versus girls champs at the HS XC Footlocker championships is interesting – as it tells a story of the arc of girls athletic development versus boys.  It will be interesting to see how NXN champs play out.  I’d think that Efraimson is a pretty good shot at making the Olympics in 2020.

- Not running related but a fascinating article on Yahoo’s ride as of late.

- Solid read from the comments yesterday.

Been getting feedback on my thoughts on Leadville.  Good feedback where folks are telling me what to focus on, what not to worry about.  My largest concern going in is the potential meltdown I’d have after the sunsets.  This is based on a case study of one but I got to a point with that case where I was taking  close to two and a half hours to cover seven miles.  That melt down was probably a combination of being woefully underprepared (very few runs over 15 miles that year), going out a bit fast (although never faster than 8 minute pace on a flat and fast course), but mostly just mailing it in and not digging in when it got dark.  I came buzzing into 50 miles at 8:22, but the smoke showing I was flaming out had started back at 20 miles.  I could smell it.  13 and half hours to cover the next 50.  Ouch.  Bob has been happy to remind me that this 50 mile split is slower than his 100 PR.  In any case, I actually held “okay” for the next two laps (or through 64ish miles).  That put me around 8PM, or shortly after the sun set.  From there, things went really south and miles started going to 20 minutes a mile.  It was obviously some fatigue and not just the dark, but I think I checked out at that point.  Bob was able to get me a little straight in the last lap as the sun was coming back up.  By the way, if you look at that graph, you can calculate how I was actually AHEAD of Bob for the first 50 miles (and he’d catch me some where on lap 8).  Yup.

I expect to listen to this tomorrow.

Afternoon – Bob came out to my area, and given it was cool, he schooled the daylights out of me – even though he is less two weeks out of a marathon.  Did six of the kilo repeats … I really had no fight for 8 today and sadly I knew that going in.  Same gig as a couple of weeks ago … odds are down, evens are up, done on a six minute round.  3:31, 3:48, 3:27, 3:51; 3:29 and 3:54.  That put me at 3:39 across the six (or supposedly an average of 29:12 pace for 8k even though it was only six).  An improvement in some regards over a couple of weeks ago, but a step back in others given the lesser reps.  I ran faster but I ran less reps … could be that I ran faster cuz I was with Bob.  I was put a fork in me done on the last climb on the last one.  But even that one was only as slow as my first return trip a couple of weeks ago.  I will take it as progress.   I want to get to a point where I can average sub six on the climbs and the average at 3:35 (over 8).  I think once I am there my confidence to hold that pace on the flats in the XC race will line up.  I will be back to this one. 11 miles.

Given I saw that nearly every FKT in Valley Forge Park was held by David R, I was surprised when caught one by accident last week.  Of course, I was not surprised when I saw this today:

David – go get this one.

Monday 111714

I made a pretty big deal of chasing a hill FKT last spring in Cork.  It is only fair that I note that was taken from me tonight, and quite handily.  Not sure I can quite get that the next time I make it to Cork but I sure as hell will try.

 
Admittedly I love Strava for this “mine is bigger than yours” ego fest.    I wish it could be further tweaked though.  Now that I am number 2, I won’t get notice anymore if I get bumped down further.  They have a lot places where they could take that product.  I sent Willie a note, giving him kudos and letting him know I was glad a Cork local got it. 

I think I will be back there this summer.

News stuff – how to make screw shoes is pretty obvious, but this is a great recap, I have only bumped into him at one race but his story is compelling to many and he made Justin’s list, smart choices picking Meb and Jenny as US AOY, apparently there is a study that being at altitude and suicide may be related, and the 100k WC is coming up.

Day got away from me with work, and then prep in the evening for the upcoming excursion to KS for some birding.

Friday 102414

Ah, so good to be home.  I got out of the car back from the airport and was treated to this. 

AM – in the dark on the home trails, 7.9 miles.  I feel like a swollen slug.  Just a combination of the travel, drinking water to keep ahead of that and then some retention … running helps for sure.  And so does coffee.

News: 
-Excellent interview with Reavis on HOR.  “We need more champions and less record holders.”  Great stuff.
-Really? … a non compete to work at Jimmy Johns? 
-The State XC course … (there is a bit of historical contraversy on it).  For what it is worth, when I did the XC race in Ireland … not a sign of a clock anywhere.  Not a word of bitching that the course was not the length advertised.  It was a start, a finish, now go.
-Regarding the ebola case in NY, it was hard to miss all the folks on the flights wiping down their plane seats with sterilizing wipes.  I figure if someone started sneezing or coughing or exhibiting some sort of illness symptoms, they would have been probably been thrown from the back of the bird in flight. 
-Anyway, Delta airlines has looked to make their safety videos a bit more interesting by throwing in weird stuff (like a guy putting a pizza in the overhead bin) in an attempt to get folks to pay attention.  New Zealand Air jumps on this concept and goes all Shire with it.
- Q or Q?  It is up to you.
-Nice Wetmore interview before the ramp up to NCAAs.
-And then there is this horrible-I-absolutely-did-not-laugh-at-this thing …

Yeah, I am FF lover.  I am digging the release of a song each week.

Afternoon – 80 plus degrees.  Wow.  Slight change from Ireland and England.  6.2 miles, some fartleky stuff in.

I was giving some thought this AM to what I would do with Strava if I were its product manager.  I have generally heard that the upgrade to premium is really not worth it.  Maybe some of these features exist in premium … I dunno, and I am probably cheap enough that I wouldn’t subscribe even if they did.  Some ideas …
1.)  how about just being smart enough to know that when someone posts a mile time on a run that is sub 3:40, that ain’t a run?
2.)  right now Strava notifies you if you lose a CR on a course.  How about expanding that notification?  For example on such and such course, maybe I am number 9.  Toss me the heads up when I get bumped to 10.
3.)  rivals … give me the heads up on when my “rivals” (friends that I subscribe to) are getting an FKT, bumping me on a course (this sort of happens with daily mail, but not nearly to the degree it could).
4.)  subscribe to a course activity … maybe you want to see what happens on your favorite route everytime that happens (a bit neurotic but it is a simple feed).
5.) I’d love to see Strava just take the times from races outright and load those (sort of like Athlinks) but that is not their niche (as there is no GPS data with that really).  The reason for this is it seems a bit odd ball to get the FKT on a course when you were 30th and the only nut job to upload it to Strava.

Yeah, it really doesn’t matter.  So forget all that.

Sunday 092814

JZ got sealed his Order of the Arrow membership in Scouts, and he enjoyed watching me go through my Ordeal. 

Yeah, I know I am another proud parent.  The kid is a helluva lot more than I was at that age.  Or this age.  I still blame the mother.

Probably one of my best nights ever truly under the stars (no tent) down there at PV.  The conditions were just awesome – cool but not cold, incredible stars and the Milky Way just popping out.  Coyotes screaming in the distance as Orion rose and the rich sage of smell filling my nose.

No running on Saturday as I was on a service project for the day.  Mostly moving various rocks at Peaceful Valley.  Got a nice finger crush between two pieces of concrete.  The gash on the other side was what I initially thought was the issue.  After a couple of hours it had swollen pretty black purple.  Fairly sure the tip bone is not happy in there, but nothing you can really do about that,

As I came out of the woods, I learned a WR was set at the Berlin Marathon.  I realize the terms in which people look at this tend to get overplayed, but … I got an email from a friend who made it clear that it was 104 x 400 meters in 69 seconds.  With no rest.  Uh, yeah, maybe I could stick for 200 meters?  Maybe?  Here’s Canova’s take.  But the big news of the day in the running world might be the train that blocked the marathon… sort of.

I also got some sad news about a friend unexpectedly and tragically losing a couple of burros.  Heartbreaking.

Off to Austin for a couple of days. 

Latest ATUC, and I have tons of podcasts to “catch up on” but I am not sure I ever will.  Probably will as the latest iOS is jacking the sync of my music to my phone. 

I was fairly determined to get 80 on the week, even with the day off, and so I did the requisite miles today to make that happen (16.8 today for 80.1 on the week).  5 weeks at 80 plus and I feel I can handle that for flats now.  I’d say I am ready for a bump up, the issue will be more about time than physically adapting to it. 

Apparently the Strava stuff in Austin is real shit.

Monday 092214

AM – early.  Connected up with Tim for hard jogging (hard to believe my mancrush started some almost seven years ago now).  Great to see him as it has been too long.  Man is inspiring on many levels, athlete, father, man.  Gorgeous sunrise while a light rain blew in.  Coyotes, strong smell of sage and deer and stuff.  Conversations on calculus and ego.  Can’t beat it.  12.5 miles. 

No harder stuff for me today – a slight break over the last couple of Mondays but I feel it was baked in yesterday’s run to some extent. 

News stuff:  a post on FKTs on various long stuff.  Nice read on Laura Thweatt.   A coffee focused interview (?!) with Tony.  The Denver Post takes on the Nolans runs.  Some recently posted cool photos from the Fairplay race.  Strava has an interesting view of stuff if you look at your training log. 

Various folks have asked me how KZ is doing at XC.  Usually somewhere in the conversation, a question like this comes up:  “is she running varsity?” or “do you think she will run competitively in college?”

No, she is not running varsity and she is probably not going to run competitively in college.  KZ was a kid who would say to me (before HS) “why do people run?  It seems that is something you do when you are being chased or chasing something – like a ball.” 

And then she came to me the day before the actual season started of her freshman year and said she was going to run XC. 

Not the summer program where you prep for the season.  No, she came the day before the season actually started.

I didn’t really need to say anything.  I figured the lessons of running themselves would be strong enough.

And they were.  Sore legs.  Deep fatigued.  Not being able to discern between an easy pace and a hard pace because it is ALL hard.  She went through it all.  It was not easy for her.  Her first race 5k, which required some walking on her part, was 45 minutes.

And that is where the lessons came back to me.

See – I took to running because it was something I enjoyed, and from the get go had some modicum of success with.  It was EASY for me to run.  Sure, it hurt like anyone else when I was running hard, but I could pin on a result of some time, or even ego of beating those kids who all played soccer or football.  Those were sports I quit because I sucked at them.  I stuck with running because it clicked with me.  I dropped other sports because they kicked me in the teeth.

KZ got that shot to the mouth with running and stuck with it.  That is pretty ballsy to me.  She carved her 5k down to under 40 minutes and then under 35.  She was hugely upset when she failed to crack 30 in her last race of the year last year. 

Now, of course, she is a kid.  No Rocky story here.  She did not get up at 4AM every morning after XC to put in 3 miles and come back to win state.  No, she went back to the other aspects of her life and let running go.  She even skipped the summer training program again before her sophomore year.  But she still ran XC.  She struggled, she learned.  I felt that odd juxtaposition of pride when your kid does something like that, concern when you see them in pain, frustration when you see what you can do to help them and helplessness because you know they need to find their own way. 

I chose never to push her into running.  I’d encourage her, but I was not going to drive her. 

This year she decided to do the summer training program.  And for the first time, at the Saint Vrain meet, she broke 30. By. one. second.  And then at Liberty Bell she crushed that by running 27:27.   The glee on her face was palatable.  It is no varsity time but I could not give a crap about that in the slightest.  She was happy.  She is learning about some basic life principles in this sport.  Maybe she will forget them, maybe they will cement something in her head for life.  I dunno. 

But I am still amazed by her sticking with it when it was not easy. 

She won’t read this.  She does not read my blog.  But maybe she will.  Love you and proud of you crunch and munch.

When I was in the USAF in ME the kids would miss school this time of the year to go harvest potatoes. I was telling my crumb grabbers about this (after the were grousing about how hard school was, and how early they had to wake up)  I even sung the "Tater Raisin' Man" song to them and they thought I was making it up. Had to show them ...

Every morning the ONE radio station would play that song and then they’d go into telling everyone where they needed kids to head to harvest.  And Dick Curless, the Baron of Country … a one eyed cowboy.  Wow.

Saturday 091314

10.1 miles, easy to steady with some pickups and one chasing of a segment (small measure of success here as I got it 19 seconds faster than I have before).

Ate dinner at the place where the kid is working and then went over to the secret pub to do some England trip planning (just to get into the spirit).

Wednesday 091014

We have all seen a lot of the ice bucket challenges this summer.  This is one from a guy I work with (he is actually one of the team I was working with when up in Vancouver this summer and then did the Grouse Grind with).  Pretty cool.  You enginerd types will dig.

Team mate and friend Todd Straka gets some pub in this article on the mile race (versus the marathon).

Apparently there might be a new 14er in Colorado.

Mid day, 13.1 miles, with longer hill repeats with Bob.  I am only hanging with Bob these days because he is still damaged goods from his Leadville outing.  But I will take it while I can.  And anything that we can to put a dent into Pete’s group come next year (if they have the guts to come to altitude).  I learned from this run that I am ready to go sub 2:30 at NY this year.

Love running with Bob.  He is just stupid tough and won’t give you an inch until you break him.  As we went into the last hill I told him where I was going to look to start the really hard push to finish.  He took that in, and of course since I have run with him enough, I knew he was already formulating a strategy to go before that and look to break me earlier.  So the game was afoot and he did.  But I knew it was coming and he knew I knew it was coming so the two ugly hairy old guys were giving it to each other out there, and then we laughed about it afterwards.  Love. it.

Stap’s Nolan’s report.  I am not sure I would ever want to drive that line for the 60 hour finish, but I do feel an itch under there to do this 100 mile trek over a few days at some point. 

A little bit more of Rose Hill Drive, giving insight as to how it ain’t so easy to make it as a rock n roller.  I have wondered how many folks are traveling the country like this right now.  Hundreds?  Thousands?

Sort of like runners, lots of folks think they have what it takes for that lifestyle but it ain’t all that great.  Probably a bit harder in music to figure that out though because in running it is you, a distance and a watch.  It is pretty clear if you can cover a kilometer in less 2:30 or not.  You can be a great musician and never make it.  Or you can actually suck and make it big.

Tuesday 090914

Check out Goucher on Strava (who is campaigning up to the NYC Marathon).  Or Gavin M on his blog.

This kid is going to be something else … if he stops growing.  My gut tells me he will actually outgrow what he could do if he was on a smaller frame.  Related, he has a pretty solid coach.

More coaches – Art and Chris Siemers … brothers coaching at two of the significant universities in Colorado. 

The top ten list thing is pretty well overdone on the net, but this one by Beck on how to undermine your running is pretty good.

All you nihilist pessimists will probably enjoy this podcast.  Wait, probably not.  Supporting material (NSFW):

Pretty solid read on recovery.  Interesting though that it was a day for every 10 miles raced. I used to hear it as a day for every single mile raced.

I had to pull the #GOM move on Strava and flag someone’s run.  I got notified of it when I was told that the dude took my CR.  His CR on that section looked pretty legit too – as my pace on it was fairly modest and I could see someone easily breaking that.  But then I saw he had dropped back to back miles elsewhere on the run of 3:19 and 3:39.  Ah, no.  Sorry.   Probably just a mistag on their activity type and I flagged it as such. I still sort of felt like a dick because why should really care about some mile section of crush cinder? 

I used to live near this place.  Sort of.  Castle worth 45 million.  I lived on a lake in a summer bungalow though.  All year round.  Heat was a little tough.  I didn’t have to worry about my electric while there so I would crank up the range stove burners as high as they could go and have a fan blow over them for heat.  Ah, yes, college days.

Easy jogging in the afternoon.  Started with the dog, and it was a little tough to get going but it opened up.

Guarding the door.

Friday 050214 (or Stravapidity)

Last day in Cork before heading back west.

Stravapidity.  Stupidity meets Strava.  Or I meet Strava.

Last year Lucho guided me to do repeats on the steepest hill I could find in the area.  As that turned out, it was Saint Patrick’s Hill, a hill averaging 15% but with grades up to 19+%.  As it turned out, it was a hill often used in bike races, and I was informed by some locals much to their delight of that there was a bike race on it one year where that ‘merkin Lance Armstrong refused to ride it.  And as it turns out, it is only a quarter mile from the hotel.

In doing the repeats, I got Strava notified that I had taken a pretty soft FKT on it.   A few weeks after I left, I got the email notice that I had lost the CR on this segment.  Seems that a ‘merkin from NC had taken a shot at it and ran it 10 seconds faster than me.  I “gave him kudos,”sent him a note congratulating him, and told him I’d give it a go around next time I was in Cork. 

When I get a note that someone has taken a CR that Strava thinks I ‘own’ I will often think:
a.) I am not going to get it back because the guy or gal is really just a better athlete than me.  For example, I am not going to run sub 30 up Green. Or the corollary to this that I don’t really own any of these because some faster guy / gal will come along and basically cut 50% off any time I post (or maybe they did in the past before there were these fangled Dick Tracy watches).
b.)  the route the guy or gal just took the CR from me on was not really worthy of CR’ing.  The fact that they jogged 7:58 on a flat mile stretch near my house which beat my jogging of a 7:59 is sort of bogus as we both jogging. 
c.)  Okay that is legit and something that will be fun to chase.  I have this going on a bit with a few segments with some friends / colleagues.  I will get the itch to go have a crack at that course.  There is a back and forth on a few of these with me and guys like Shad and Neeraj.

I was not bugged that some guy had taken the FKT for Saint Patrick’s Hill.  I was bugged that I thought I could get at that but I didn’t have a shot to do it for another year.  I mean, I couldn’t just go out and try it on any given day.  So when I found out about Cork being on my work schedule this year, I’d figured to have a go at it. 

First I hit it on a run early in the week.  As it turned out, I stopped the watch a bit too soon at what I thought was the segment top.  While the hill crests, the segment actually continues on for another dozen yards or so past where I had run.  I had also started the hill about 30 or 40 yards early.  I was actually running a section longer than the Strava segment as part of those repeats, stretching the hill out a bit.  I had to sort out what the hill actually was.

I hit the hill again last night while out wandering around and in non running gear, but came up a touch short. 

I figured I was obliged to give another shot this AM – heck, why live with this for another year?

I know this is stupidity.  Or what I am terming, Stravapidity.  I know personally personally dozens of guys that would take at least 15 seconds off this on their first shot.  I know that this probably didn’t do anything good for my angry priformis.  I know that there is no medal or winning of anything here.  I know this is all some stupid ego based pursuit.  But I wanted to try anyway.

I sort of hope it gets beat by 1 second by Steve in 2 weeks.  But he will probably kill it by 10 or something.  I got a “kudos” from his this AM.

4.3 miles on the day.  Travel back to the US starts tonight with a trip to LHR.  It has been a good week here.  Great group of folks to work with.

Some recent shots.

This morning’s HR.
A stone wall.  They are everywhere.
 
There are no Starbucks here.  This is the little quirky coffee shop that is next to the hotel that opens at 7.  They make their own scones.  I call it “Buff Dudes” coffee shop because the guys are these young good looking guys, slinging coffee and making raspberry scones.  Always good R&B music playing in this place.  I guess the building they are in used to be the Cork City Library.
 

Evening – overnighting at LHR.  Got in six and change near the hotel.