Friday 051509

• Tomorrow I am doing the Sunshine Canyon Hill Climb.  This race starts in Boulder at the base of Sanitas (or the Mapleton Medical Center) and climbs 1682 feet to where the road goes to dirt over 5.8 miles (average grade of 5.5% with max of 12%).  A good training run is to continue on past where tomorrow’s race ends and run up to Gold Hill.   I have done this once but it makes for a nice 20 miler with a ton of up and down.  Apparently the bicyclists will do the climb all the way up.  I don’t have high expectations for this race for a variety of reasons – it is early in the season for me, I have had a spring interrupted with various niggles (aches and pains) and I have not raced in a bit (typically it takes me a few races into a reason to break the rust and pop a fair one).  Nonetheless, I will toe the line and dig into the grind, easily find some good hurting, and hopefully compete well with those around me.  It ought to be decent prep effort for Mount Washington next month (well, sort of). 
• To assure some level of preparedness for tomorrow, I have staged a mini-taper of sorts … I will confess … the taper is the part of I feel the least confident and knowledgeable about in training.  There are folks who seem to benefit from a significant drop in volume (while maintaining quality) but there are a subset of folks who seem to totally mess up their metabolism with such drops in volume (as has been discussed via Hudson).  I am doing a slight drop in mileage on the days leading up to this event, but not overly so.  I am trying to maintain a larger view focus towards other races this summer – and so like to keep my weekly mileage near the same even with this dip in the middle of this week.
• Mid day, very easy 5 miles +, 39 minutes through the Westminster Hills.
• I have been thinking that I have been just “riding my training.”  What does that mean?  It means that, sure – I am working and moving forward … but cautiously and conservatively.  In other words, I am not playing in “edge city” or “burying myself in training.”  Burying myself in training would be (for me) the hundred mile weeks (as an example).  We like to think of guys like Sell and Jenkins as folks who have taken it to that edge, and overcome so called talent limitations by living in edge city of 140 mile weeks.  For me, a 100 a week is a bit more over than what I know I can accomplish effectively.   When I reflect on this, I have a few observations ….
  • Some of this is by design.  Going risky with higher volume, greater intensity, whatever mix might help drive results (reward) but there is greater risk of injury.  So by design I take a more careful approach to (hopefully) better insure improvement (I see a risk, reward curve graph in my head here) without getting hurt.
  • Some of this is “not” by design.  Actually what I mean by this is life style.  Which is to say it is actually by design but less consciously so.  I work a job.  I have a family.  I make choices to support and engage effectively (hopefully) in those life styles that effect training – typically meaning less training.
• So I am “riding the training.”  Not going too far over the edge I guess.  And that is okay.  It is actually part of the journey I seem to re-realize all the time … the farther you get out there, the farther you realize you have to go (sort of like when you get smarter, you realize how little you know …)  and not just in terms of chasing a PR … but more with what you can do to prepare … AND that endurance sport makes you begin to realize and reconcile with what your goals are and what can be realistically done in light of your choices and what tools you have.
• Altitude does not seem to work for everyone (Nate Jenkins video)
• Cool video …

UltraRunning from Matt Hart on Vimeo.