Tuesday 021715

Minimalist, maximalist, whatever.  Find a shoe that works for you.

14.3 miles.  Did a few (5) runs up Simms Hill to get back into a bit of vert (4:01, 3:44r, 3:54, 3:43r, 3:54, 3:43r, 3:51, 3:45r,.3:42, 3:18r)  I did these steady, not looking to outright tag them yet, but building into them a bit.  I’ll be back.  I added on another 10k afterwards with Adam B.

This helicopter was around during the run.  Just cool to see one of those dual prop ones.  It looked a lot closer, but I couldn’t get the craptastic iphone camera out quick enough to get it while running.

Wednesday 072413

Well … as Craig notes, the competitive entries are not posted, but you can see some hints in the predicted times.

Tony has a couple runs on the mountain from a decade ago, but he has to be considered in the hunt now.  You can’t ignore Burrell either.  While he has not had his best results in the last few goes at the hill, the guy is a former champ.

But Tony’s entry really hurts my chances in the no shirt division.
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This guy’s streak is a good story.

Nuthin’ like chugging 8 beers and then swimming across the Detroit River from Canada.

Apparently headphones when you run mean you are not a real runner (thanks for the tip JT)

OSMP under pass work (Rte 93) for the Marshall Mesa-Community Ditch is about to start.

Developing a kick.

Keith Wood article from a couple of weeks ago.  Keith is the 80 year old plus guy who looks to Double at Pikes.

There are 10 wins at Pikes lining up at the SpeedGoat 50k on the women’s side of the race (across 4 finishers).  Pretty amazing.

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Caught up on a podcast last night on the jog.  Rich Roll interviews Tim Van Orden.  Interesting stuff in there on a lot of fronts, but Tim said something that caught my ear.  When discussing the Empire State Building run up, he mentioned one of his competitors said that in the race there will be “The Voice of Quit.”

“The Voice of Quit.”  The third lap of a 1500.  20 miles into a marathon. 70 miles into a 100.   It can be a pretty loud voice.

For me it gets really quite clear above Barr Camp (that switchback above the Bottomless Pit to A Frame seems to go forever) and then really screams above treeline and the A-Frame.  It comes again during the descent -- below Barr Camp and into No Name Creek as the heat turns up and your skeleton asks what in the name of Odin you are doing to it.

It comes in training too of course.   It is too hot.  Too windy.  Too cold.  Too humid.  Too whatever.  You don’t want to get up. There a lot of reasons to quit. 
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I am pretty sure one of the reasons I train and race is to facethe Voice and figure out how I am going to respond.  My track record with response it is mixed.  There are days it has broken me and there are days I have been able to ignore it.  There are the very rare days where it never seems to even show up – and I think we all look for those days to come again, but when they do it is a unexpected surprise.  In facing the Voice, we face ourselves and our limits.

Simms Hill today.  No HR monitor (I am supposed to get an Amazon delivery today!). 

Damn this is a hard workout for me.  Typically I do it in classic fashion of running the ups hard, and jogging the downs.  I first created this workout because it was an obvious hill:  I look out at it from my desk at work.  I was also looking for some alternative to Linden as that took me 45 minutes to get to even though it was in Boulder.  It is a half mile, has some grade but is also run-able enough that you can push some pace into it. 

Lucho switched it up a touch and gave me an inactive rest of a minute at the top but then I ran the down (usually just over six minute pace).  This meant my rest was about the same of what it typically was in terms of time, but it sure the heck felt different.    2.1 warm up (got some cloud cover this afternoon so not too hot), then to work. 
3:26 up, :57 rest, 3:03 down (to which I was wondering wtf on the down, or the up)
3:25 up, :59 rest, 2:56 down
3:23 up, :61 rest, 2:56 down
3:26 up, :62 rest, 2:57 down
3:25 up, 1 minute rest, 2:55 down
90 second bio break (stomach fell out the back)
3:23 up, :59 rest and 2:50 down.
… there were a few second between the down and the start of the up as I circled back around at the base of the hill.  It was pretty damn hard for me.  Average was around 3:25 or just under – which is not bad to where I have been historically.  Not great, but not bad.  2.2 for the warm down (6 miles on the work out) for 10.3 on the day.  Good work – left me buzzing.

Wednesday 111412

This is pretty damn cool on several fronts.

I was poking over at Athlinks.  I don’t think of myself as a guy who races a lot (although I do recall that I did race one year over 50 times, maybe in the early 2000s), but when you see all this stuff over there, it is quite a spread.  I am sure some have bigger lists.

 
 
 

Good read by Clay Evans in the local paper about the minimalist shoe trend.

This guy can “ski the stones.”  I’d say that he has a pair.  Of skis!  I mean he has to be destroying those sticks.

The part where the kid drops the bike into the water is the best.

Risk assessment of the 10 most common folks when the angry jogger gets out – awesome. 

Afternoon – got out and felt pretty good, so decided to mix it up with some hill work.  It would probably drive some nuts to do the same hill like this over and over again, but I sort of enjoyed it.

Didn’t “tag” this workout too hard.  Just wanted to do something with a little different challenge today.  In the middle did some strides on the steep end (bottom part) of Simms.  10 miles, 1200 feet of climbing in 81 minutes.

Looking forward to getting back to the longer repeats on Simms in the spring.

Tuesday 080911

Loving the energy right now in the blogosphere I visit: big alpine trips, conversations about summer winding down, predictions and sandbagging about the next big race in Europe, Leadville or Manitou. Great stuff. 

 

Sandbags … have you got yours up yet?

 

Apparently such chatter is impacting my broader mental state. I had a dream last night that I showed up for the Pikes Ascent to watch and several of the racers had pinned their number to their chest. As in not their race jerseys but their chest. Pin through skin.

Probably not a strategy I am going to pull on race day.  Picture motivated by Derrick’s comment below.

 

AM - easy three with the dog, tossing the disc for her to catch.

Excellent article on 10000 hours of practice over at SOS.

The week in MUT.

Thinking of putting up a prediction contest for me for PPM, ala Lucho. I'd put up a six of my EPO-IPA, but I am a bit hesitant because of possible shipping nightmares (if a winner was out of state).

I think this statement on potential is well said.

Mid day - pretty warm out. I was debating if I felt up for it, but decided I wanted to do the Simms Hill workout anyway. My mental debate was whether I wanted to face the results the hill would produce. I knew the splits would be slower than I probably wished for, and I felt less than eager to see that. It is sort of like going to the dentist when you have not been flossing. You know you are going to hear about it. You just don't want to. But there is nothing I can do about where I am fitness wise - except deal with it.

PPM is as much a mental test as anything: when things start to go wrong, it can be compounded with bad thoughts that only make the problems worse ... a negative feedback loop for sure. Alternatively, when things are going well - that can leap frog to even better performance as you build confidence off of that.

My today was that even though I may not want to face where I was at - I was going to make this workout happen. The times would be whatever they would be, but I was going to get a workout of it, rather than succumb to thinking I ought not do the workout because I could do it as I had last year. I am not in the physical shape I was last year. That does not need to drive my mental state. And so it won't.

3:38, 3:58R, 3:35, 3:55R (and then a 2:25 bio break in the ditch), 3:35. 4:24R, 3:39, 4:24R, 3:35, 4:32R, 3:33. 8 miles total.

Tuesday 032911

Odd view today. Snow on Broomfield, but nothing new on the Foothills.

JV continues to be my source of interesting news: an illegal trail on Flagstaff.

GlobalDRO is apparently one of the online drug references as to what is prohibited, not prohibited for competition, out of competition.

Shaved my head on Saturday of last week. Sat in the sun on Wednesday in Arizona. Got sun burned on the scalp. Nasty peeling of the head today. I look like some sort of snake lizard flake guy. Ack.

I need to figure out what shoes I will race trails in this summer. I have been a Brook Racer ST guy, but those seem (since the half marathon on Denver last October) to aggravate my right plantar a bit. I like some of the PI stuff I have been running in, but that seems to bug my left heel (Haglund deformity). So ... I need to figure that out.

PM - Simms. Mentally tough for me, meaning that I had to go through the drill of focusing on these individually. "Just get through this one." 3:28, 3:26, 3:25, 3:25, 3:25, 3:21. This was better than last time (averaging 3:25 over 3:27) but it was a harder in the head. Just one of those days. 2 mile warm up, almost 3 mile warm down, 10 on the day. Oh, was totally working the old guy groove as I had a plain white undershirt T on, short running shorts, black socks going on these hill repeats. Like I really care what I am looking like on hill repeats with spit on my face anyway - right?

Evening - 2 miles around the soccer fields.

Noticed that my mileage is going to be around 300ish for the month. Not bad, particularly since I had five days off, but a bit less than what I pulled last year (338 on the month, and 993 on the year at that point, versus just shy 900 right now). I am okay with that though because I have getting in some decent training, with some good basic turnover, and some runs a bit longer than I have in the past. Additionally, I don't think I need to keep building on the mileage year over year. I can call on it.

Tuesday 031511

Listening today included Shalene Flanagan.  Also enjoyed this musical podcast with Mike Errico.

Good primer on central governor.

Little DOMS left over from my weight workout on Sunday, but I decided that I needed to get after things anyway.  Interestingly, running does not seem to be any harder or challenged with sore legs from lifting.  Nor does it make them feel any better or worse as far as I can tell.  Got back to some of Simms Hill (full length).  Averaged 3:27ish, with the first being the slowest (3:33, 3;31, 3:29, 3:25, 3:25, 3:22).  While these were not easy, I can say they were not super hard either (no knee grabbing seeing stars wanting to sit by the side of the road when I was done).  Not bad for this early in the season, and better than where I was 2 weeks ago at 3:35 (albeit with stomach issues).  In any case, a case study of one does not make for a good case!

5 mile cool down, sub 8s and feeling good.  12 miles, 1000 feet.

Pikes registration opens tomorrow, so here is what the entry lists look like today before it opens up.

Ascent: 

Stoked to see Simon back in the mix, and Rickey returning.  Kimmel is predicting a smoking fast time.Keith Wood is a monster

Varsity race:

No surprises as to who is on this list, but again Kimmel is predicting a record setting double.  Glad to see one Spainards returning.  Probably more interesting in terms as to what to speculate at this point are the names that are NOT on these lists.  That and Wood is a freak. 

Thursday 031011

My head was in a funk yesterday on a variety of levels, so I figured a good way to clean that up a bit was to bust out some heart beats.  Pressed for time, I got out on a beautiful day (shirtless), and got in six miles.  Mixed in the bottom half of Simms (10x).  Rather than the full near half mile stretch I typically do, I went with these – as it is a little more intense in its own way.  Almost a minute exactly in length (from the bottom crack in the road to the 40 mph speed limit sign – a touch shy of 300 meters) at just over 7 percent grade – these were good work and left me worked.  I was definitely slowing towards the end in a wash of hurt, and fighting to keep good form.

Conclusion – my mental state or its health is probably tied to much to a decent run.  There.  That only took 41 something years to figure out.  Maybe I can correct that in the next 41.

4 miles after work and before Pack meeting.  Felt good.

Today's insanity is brought to you ala a tip from Brett

Tuesday 030111

Registered for Pikes today.

Beautiful day, and decided to get after Simms a bit.  Well, I thought I would at 7AM.  It seemed like a fabulous idea then.  By mid day I had turned into a fraidy-cat and did not want to run it.  I felt, well, a bit tired (was yesterday’s run of easy that felt great too zippy?).  Whatever, the weather was too good to waste. 

IronMazza joined me but told me that he was only going to do 3 (he ended up doing 4).  After a two mile warm up, we got to work. 

I could tell that I was not really going to kill these today and decided I’d run steady (which is some sort of subjective distance below hard).  Very different than how things went when I last did these a few weeks before Pikes in August.  After the second one, I knew I was really in trouble … TZ’s home made coffee cake required a couple of pit stops (post 2 and 3).  It was good going down this AM but note to self on eating that on the day of mid day workouts.

I was tempted to bag it post 4 of these given how my stomach was doing, but decided that six was necessary – more for mental fortitude than physical (did not want to establish a bad habit of doing less than 6).  11 miles with 1150 climbing.  I averaged 3:35, which is a far cry from the 3:20 average I managed in August, but I ain’t worried about that at this point (given what I have been doing, the gut issues today and the approach I took).

All that said, Scouts at the house in the evening was probably more exhausting.

Tuesday 081010

Mid day: decided to get after some of Simms Hill as a workout.

Short warm up (mile) and then got after it. It was warm and given the first, I was thinking that I might need to just do the workout and ignore the watch. Then after the second, I thought maybe I had over compensated a bit too much. As it turned out, it was a great workout. HR compares very much like when I did this in May, but this was much faster! 3:30, 3:44R, 3:20, 3:48R, 3:18, 3:47R, 3:15, 4:02R, 3:12, 4:10R. 3:06. This puts the average at 3:20 (with shorter rests than last time). Average last time was 3:25, and it was 3:33 in January. So - good stuff. 7.5 miles.

PM - 5.5 miles around Highland Park during KZ soccer practice.

Ward is chasing something fun - doing that 15 minute 10 percent drill they did at the show in Utah.

Galen Burrell appears in the results at Squaw Mountain. Have not seen his name in the results in a bit. He is one of a very small handful that could declare in the PPA, PPM game very late - and be a factor.

Been kicking around some threads with a few folks re: Pikes. That conversation is getting me cautiously excited. From that conversation ... ouple things to note from the web site ... first, while the WMRA LDR race is the Ascent, the PPM is on the Skyrunner circuit and so there is 500 more bucks up for first place. Also, there is clearly a push for folks not to skip the awards assembly. From the site: Awards No Shows: Top 10 Overall and top 5 Masters must be present at the awards presentation to get their awards. Age-group award winners can get theirs mailed or pic kthem up at the office for $20.

I skipped the award assembly after the marathon last year. Part of it was because my family showed up in town at the finish, unexpectedly and I did not want them to drag around. But admittedly, I was eager to move past the race ... a bit of a weak move on my part. I will let this year's result determine if I go to the assembly or not. Even if not in the awards, I think I'd like to be there to give props to the top runners (and hear the smack talk between JM and NC)

Anyway, as there is already a good list of predictions for the PPA for men, I will not post a bunch on that here. This weekend I will try to get up some more solid predictions for the PPM and some of the stuff going on over on the women's side. And I will look to post some race goals for myself.

The big question that is out there is if Carpenter shows up for the Ascent. I am guessing no but I have NO inside knowledge at all on that.

Brandon has a nice break down of bloggers at Leadville. Tony still not on the start list! Anyone got a prediction for this race?

Some good stuff re: some of the plans regarding OSMP lands in here. Sounds like there are some significant proposals to reroute a lot of the trails on upper Green, down to a single route! ACK!

Crazy story re: St. Louis (1904) Olympic Marathon.

Some vid from last week's RCPM show.

Monday 051710

Jornet wins a marathon in 3:56.  If I am reading this correctly, it included nearly 18k of vertical climbing.  Am I reading that right?  If so, daaaaaam.

Mr. Parr seems to be getting back to the game post a tough Boston and NF50 in NY.

Good read from Gordo.  I like his stuff on unplanned zeros the most in this read.

Simms Hill … I have not been to Simms Hill in a few months (as in a couple of sessions in January …exhibit a, and b).  I am thinking it may become a regular standby this summer on occasions where I need a hill workout, and I am unable to make the break to the mountains.  

I was a bit disappointed with how I felt in yesterday’s long run.  I had aspirations going into that run to get after it a bit, but I never got there.  The motivation spilled over today and I was a bit more ready to jump at things.  3 mile warm up (7:50 pace, AHR = 136).  Six repeats on the hill (3:28, 4:10R, 3:28, 4:10R, 3:23, 4:15R, 3:25, 4:07R, 3:22, 4:20R, 3:19).  All the repeats were faster (average 3:25) than the past, but (unknowingly) the rest was longer by about 10-20 seconds.

2.7 warm down for 11 miles in this run.  Good workout for me.  It was a nice little mental test as much as a physical one.  Once I got through number 3, I could hear the weeds of doubt in my head … and just had to work through them.  No playlist on the IPOD to hide in either today.

Wednesday 012710

Got this from DD.  Apparently the highest measured wind speed on Earth is no longer from Mount Washington.  Apparently this came down in 1996.

More fun from Masters racing in PHX.

AM –dark, cold, easy. 6.5 miles. AHR = 145. Very easy jogging and a frosty beard.

PM – 8.5 miles. Tight on time, short warm up (a little longer than a half mile) and then six times Simms Hill (similar to two weeks ago) 3:29. 3:44R, 3:30, 3:40R, 3:27, 3:42R, 3:26, 3:45R, 3:28, 3:49R, 3:23. Got wrapped up in the fifth in chasing a bike up the hill (he had 40 yards, I got him and put 25 on him), and then nudged a bit on the last. Felt good and never like I was “killing it.” About a 2.5 mile warm down. Average was about 3:28 with a 3:42R. The averages are faster but I started the first significantly slower last time. I will compare HR data from this session to the one two weeks ago when I get a bit more time tonight. I feel pretty good about the consistency in the effort of these intervals though.

Wednesday 011310

Seen it before … still love it.

10 miles, 78 minutes, 1100 plus feet of elevation gain. 3 mile warm up, then 6 x the Simms Hill, and then a 1.75 mile warm down. Approached this workout with a few thoughts … first, no need to “kill” this workout. I wanted to get a good stimulus, and so while I was running hard, I was also not looking to dig deep and “tag” it. Plenty of time for that, and I figured this set the initial baseline nice and low. Yeah, chicken shit in some ways, but I was not ready to race the workout. Goal today was to elevate the HR into the 170s for some reps, and move on. Second – get the work in locally. For whatever reason right now, I feel compelled to get workouts and runs in where I can, and with what is presented to me. Simms is a good 0.46 mile hill at an average 6.5% grade that is a half mile from the front door of my office. Easy to get to, easy to get some work out. Third – set up for consistency in workouts. Given its proximity, I want to get to this every couple of weeks, and either speed up a touch or increase the volume.


3:45, 3:38R; 3:31, 3:41R; 3:32, 3:52R; 3:33, 4:02R, 3:31, 3:51R, 3:25. So average was about 3:33 with a 3:53R. So these are good length hills, where the pace is averaging just around seven minute pace for me right now. The first two feel easy. The middle two begin to work, and the last minute and a half on the last two are a prelude of what is to come.

Today’s play list.


DNFs revisted by AJW.

This video on ChuckieV’s blog is hilarious. Love the stuff on the Newtons.