Thursday, June 18, 2015
Thursday 061815
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Saturday 061315
Friday, June 12, 2015
Friday 061215
Red eye to Orlando and then over to Nassau with the Troop.
5.1 miles. This place could rival Dubuque in terms of the heat humidity combo, but the breeze – at least today – helped it a bit. Tel Aviv comes in third, but it has been a long time since I have been there in June or July.
Off to Marsh Harbor tomorrow.
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Thursday 061115
I am setting up a bit of a survey on the right side of the blog, but you can comment here. Feel free to comment as to what you think I will put up for PPM and Leadville. I was asked by Skurka recently what my goal was for Leadville and I was sort of stuck in how to answer in a way other than “as fast as possible.” I have seriously entertained the idea of barely finishing all the way to a sub 20 effort. I expect it would be somewhere in between, but I don’t know if that is 29:45 or 23:45 or something else. Shad told me he thought I’d go 24:45. He qualified this by saying that he thought I could go faster but that I’d be jacked from Pikes. Bob keeps planting seeds in my head that I am not going to finish because I don’t know how to suffer for long periods of time at 12 minutes per mile pace. Vote away or comment away.
Hardrock predictions. Real bummer that Tony is not going to be in running shape (at least that is how I interpret it) to get after this. I think Stappy do better than he is picked here.
Afternoon – got over to Chautauqua and a call out to Bob for a lap on Green. Up the front and then down Long Canyon as Bob had never been that way (which is to say, down West Green, a short segment of Flagstaff, then Long Canyon and then Gregory Canyon). 7.5 miles. 
Today’s conversation including more Leadville prognosticating, Dave’s injury, how humid it was, and why you should never up hill behind a guy in a kilt. We even beat the weather before it blew in nasty.
JZ and I head out of town tonight to take to the high seas. This stretch between Ireland taking off with him did not quite play out how I was expecting – I thought I’d get more but I didn’t and I was not really up for it. I ended up in this 11 days with 3 Greens (could have been four but chased off by lightning on one), about 13k of climbing and 12 miles over about 19.5 hours. Not bad, but again, I have yet to put together the big run to stretch myself a bit. Frankly, I got to a place in the last couple of days where I am not sure I could have handled it well anyway.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Wednesday 061015
AM – I slept in. Actually TZ came in and woke me up from a pretty deep sleep at 7:30. Sleeping that hard probably reflects something about how I feel. I say that is pretty thrashed. While I have not done any “big training” as of late, I can feel an accumulative load of fatigue in my legs. The trip to the low waters this week might be coming at a good time to help enforce some sort of break.
JZ earned his Life Scout rank last night.
This is the last rank a Scout earns before Eagle. If JZ earns Eagle remains to be seen but he says he wants it.
10 miles with of climbing. I was worked the whole run, regardless of effort or grade or whatever. Which is in part why I did it. Thankfully it was a bit cooler.
Tony takes up biking and in a month he is doing multiple century rides in a week. Dude is a talent and has the head to get work done, and at times to the breaking point.
Culpepper waxes on Wetmore.
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Tuesday 060915
AM – 10 miles. A bit fatigued from the get go. I ran into Jake (a SR at BHS) and Regan (now graduated and heading to UWyo) and they let me jog with them for a bit. Good kids. Probably freaked by my fashionable glasses and shorty shorts with no shirt though.
Today’s listening:
I have not had any coffee this week. Yesterday was fine. Today I am dragging a bit.
Nice write up on what ultra runners do that you don’t.
Training tips from Kilian:
Afternoon – 4.1 miles. Tired.
Great write up by Brian Metzler regarding Dave Mackey’s latest state.
Really Farah and frankly any athlete with Alberto should leave his stable now. Even if you buy that Salazar has done nothing wrong and that the Gouchers and Magness are out to get him (not sure what to gain there), and that Alberto was playing within the rules to get whatever edge he could – it is just ugly and as Mo Farah you are not just judged based on your performances. You are a brand.
And let’s say for a moment that Farrah did nothing wrong but there was some inappropriate use of a TUE by Galen that was guided by Alberto. That means your #1 competition (the guy who took silver to your gold) is competing in an enhanced state against you … as guided by your coach. Because he is the same coach. Run away Farah. Staying, regardless if you are guilty or innocent, does you no good.
Dave Mackey update 060915
Post script: this evening there was a very well written write up by Brian Metzler regarding Dave Mackey’s latest state.
I am heading out of town for a bit shortly, and so I hoped to get a visit in with Dave before then. He had a window today and so I bolted down around lunch time between conference calls. Some highlights:
- Dave is still in the SICU, but he thought he could be getting out of there today. This would be good because his kids are too young to visit him in the SICU.
- Again, Dave looked better to me than in my prior two visits. He thinks this is because of the blood transfusions he received.
- The heat in the room has been brought to normal levels but they have his left lower leg wrapped up with a device that will keep it warm.
- We took a look at his leg where there was a tiny view. Dave noted that what we thought we were looking at, his shin, was actually from his thigh. It was where they had transferred the muscle and the skin to the wound on the shin from the thigh.
- There is supposed to be another surgery tomorrow to evaluate the situation and to break down some of the X-fix (this is the frame external to his leg that keeps it stabilized, sort of like a big hard wire external cast).
- We did a little “PT” with his right (healthy) leg. He wanted a bit of pressure against various tiny motions there so he could “get some exercise.” Understandable: he has been in bed for nearly the entire time since May 23.
- We chatted on various things outside of his current state. He got a bit animated when I mentioned that I was doing Pikes and Leadville. I explained my thoughts about if I have a chance to go for a PR at Pikes. “How many chances will I get to PR at Pikes again?” His response, “yeah but there are a million chances to DNF at Leadville.” My ass give yourself the whammie comment, “I ain’t DNFing Leadville unless one of those things is around my leg.” He found this funny and decided to write that down on a napkins so he could use it against me in the future. And I can say with confidence that he definitely has the idea of getting out the hospital, getting home and getting out to spectate at events as soon as he can. Including Leadville.
- Apparently there is new information (at east to me) on how they will create the bone matrix to rebuild his tibia. Essentially they will go through his hip (in a surgery in about 8 weeks) and then into his femur to extract bone marrow. This will be used to create that bone matrix that will be used in the lower leg.
- He made the joke that “this is all advanced carpentry.” And clearly there is an analogy to be made there: drilling, screws, nuts, bolts, retaining structures … the medical technology is something to marvel at.
- I mentioned how the post the other day became the highest hit post I ever had over night. He said he appreciated that I put it up there because he has no energy to do that sort of thing right now. He stated that he tries to read books but then just dozes off.
- I asked about the infection in the leg and he thinks it is being managed with aggressive antibiotics.
Again – good to see him, and I can say across the three visits I see progress. There is obviously a very long journey ahead but clearly steps in that journey have occurred since I last saw him. He is plugging away.
Monday, June 8, 2015
Monday 060815
Mid day – got out with Bob and Shad. 11.4 miles. Pretty warm but I think I am starting to get use to it. Either that or having company is just cooler.
Delayed week in review video.
Good podcast from ATC. I was sort of bummed that Lucho was going to every other week, but it seems that he is a bit more true Lucho in this one.
Brandon has a good report of how the snow looks up on Mosquito Pass.
As usual good weekly coverage from Justin on the week in ultrarunning. As that article and the one from Ultrarunner podcast mention the report I did from my visit to Dave the other day, along with a cross post from Jeff on FB that post has got about 20x what a normal post gets. I never check numbers (as I really don’t care) but I was curious. Yeah Dave, people want to know how you are doing and care about you.
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Sunday 060715
Afternoon – 10.1 miles. Hot. First couple miles were with JZ. He is trying to get 20-25 minutes in a day to prep up for the start of the summer training program for XC. I seemed to be fine with the heat for about another 4 or so miles after this but then I could smell the slow roast occurring.
Not the training week I was expecting. I thought I’d attack the week with miles but that didn’t play out. I found myself tired on several fronts, and the big training run that I thought I would get never really played out. 80.8 miles, 6.6k feet on the week at 11.8 hours. There was actually a day off in there too, so I guess on whole not a bad week – just lacking the bigger workout that I hoped to get in.
I think part of the week was that I was spending a bit more energy on some basic life things: a bit more work than I expected, a loss of a pet, seeing Dave’s state with his injury up close, a car accident, teenagers who are suddenly on summer vacation and believe it is their divine right to sleep to noon, packing for upcoming trips (which is not a problem for me but is akin to pushing yarn uphill with my son) and crazy rains that have various part of the house barely holding together.
I’ll catch up on the video report in a post soon.
Science of the Sport is just railing on the entire Farrah not racing Birmingham thing and calling BS on him suddenly being surprised by the accusations against Alberto.
Bryon Powell put this one up on Facebook … “Saw you up on Arastra Gulch this AM.”
Saturday, June 6, 2015
Saturday 060615
AM – 8.1 miles down in Lakewood while JZ was at DAC. Explored some new stuff down there.
PM – 8.1 miles. An hour from the house before dinner. Started sunny, got rained on a bit and then it was hot again. My legs felt pretty cooked but they were moving okay. I think the rain sun conditions and the closing rainbow just set me up to move along.
Dave Mackey update 060615
Dave encouraged me to blog about his current state and to share that with people who are interested. I have been not doing that because I feel that while this story is in the public domain to some degree, this could be a matter that he would want to maintain some privacy on. But he encouraged me multiple times to share. So here is a mix of what I understand from Dave, Ellen, Jeff, with some of my own opinions mixed in from my visit today.
JZ was down at the DAC HQ to participate in the NYLT camp orientation (a Scout thing). As he was finishing up, I got a call from JV that he was going to visit Dave. I was not expecting Dave to take visitors as he was just in a lengthy surgery yesterday but when I got the word Jeff was over there, and given we were so close, I bolted over.
Dave went a 7 hour surgery yesterday. He is now in the SICU to best assure good recovery. This is I think his fifth, maybe sixth surgery he has had since the accident on May 23. On Wednesday he had a surgery (that is the surgery before this one yesterday) that had replaced all the hardware they had put in his leg. They did this as he was getting feverish and the concern was for infection in/around the hardware, in the leg. So they went in, took out all the hardware that was in there and replaced it. They found that some of the bone that they had tried to pin together was not going to make it, and so they took that out. This left a space in a tibia and so they have put in an interim spacer in there. Down the road, this will need to be replaced. That replacement will need to come from bone they harvest from elsewhere in his body – probably his right femur.
Yes – that is right – they are going to take bone from him healthy right upper leg to heal his lower left leg. Basically, they are leveraging good parts of him to heal the broken part of him. When I think about it, that is just an incredible feat of medicine and healing.
This started with the “gastroc flip” surgery that they did some time ago. As there is so little musculature / vasculature on the front of the shin there is little blood flow to this area. In a healthy leg, this not a problem but when trying to heal a traumatic injury like this – you need that blood flowing to that area. By bringing the muscle to this area, it brings blood flow to help healing.
When I saw him on Thursday, the plan was to take additional muscle from his back to add to the vasculature in this area to further aid this process. It was decided after that rather than taking muscle from his back would take some from his left quad. I think they did this because a graft of skin had already been taking from this area and that meant they were taking muscle from an area that had already been acted on rather than creating a new area to manage on the back. They also took some skin from his right quad to graft onto the wound on the right leg.
Yeah, it is a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. As you’d expect, there is a lot of pain that comes with these sort of procedures. And so with that, pain killers. I can’t even imagine that. Between the mix of the sea swirl of opiates and the throbbing of pain and heck, just being bed ridden for this long.
So I saw him today after that long day yesterday. He is in a heated room (88 degrees) as that promotes circulation. It was good to see him with Jeff because we gave each other some good natured crap, got in some laughs, etc. While the dressing on his leg was bigger, he had new bandages on his upper thighs from this latest surgery, he looked better to me in the face. On Thursday, he looked a bit withered to me, and today he looked stronger. When I shared this with him, he attributed it to that he is now getting a blood transfusion. His hemoglobin levels were around 7.5 when I saw him on Thursday, and so the transfusion seems to be helping that.
The biggest risk at this point in my non medical opinion (as is all of this) is that it has been identified there is some infection in the lower left leg. They are looking to aggressively treat this with antibiotics, etc.
And so yes, there has been the question as to whether he will keep the leg. My take is this: they are going to do what they can to make that happen. And my take also this: they should. Dave recognizes that it may come to a point where keeping the leg is not feasible, and if that happens, he has a perspective on that … as in he is alive and loved. ALIVE AND LOVED. He is going to fight to get to be as whole as he was but there are uncountable number of challenges and steps to get to that. And regardless of what turns this journey throws up at him, he is alive and loved. And so there is an odd juxtaposition of attacking this thing to heal with everything he has got but somewhere also recognizing the realities of the situations and the gifts you have.
Similarly seeing Dave creates a swirl of emotions: sadness for what he is going through, relief that he is alive, hope for what he can do, gratitude for the fact that he lives in a place with such amazing care and technology, concern for those around him, inspiration to see him make a smile for those who visit him, love for the community …
More to come. Post script – pic from Jeff at the awards of Pikes in 2012.
Friday, June 5, 2015
Friday 060515
I had no idea that use of poles, or wizard sticks, was so controversial. Consider this (thanks to Kevin T for that … consider him as a guy that few of us here in the west have heard of but is going to kick ass at Pb).
So the seventh high school boy to break four for the mile happened last night and that is the second in this season (side note – weird to call them a boy as they have done something more manly than all but about 300 something US men have done). I am pretty sure multiple HS sub 4 in a season thing has never happened before. This seems to be another measure of how the depth of US distance running is just growing. Andrew S and I were kicking this around yesterday on our run on Green and we attribute some of it to the internetwebs. Growing up we knew that historically kids broke four in the mile, but you had no idea about results outside of what your local newspaper put up. Monthly you grab a copy of your coaches T&FN and see that some kid had run 4:11 or something. But that was usually six or eight weeks after the fact. Everyone knows every result instantly now and that has an impact on the culture of the sport and what people then go out and try to do. But at the same time, given the allegations of Salazar med’ing up Rupp when he was in HS, I’d be a liar if I did not share that the cynic in me wonders about how many HS kids out there are engaging in such activities. I realize as well that probably more are engaging in activities that are performance degrading than enhancing.
The day got away from me. It seems to be a bit of a theme lately but I got wrapped up in a work project and it took longer than I expected. I got home and was going to run but then I facing this.
I got a call from a neighbor out for a run who had taken shelter a few miles from home. It was crazy rain and hail so I went and got him. Later that night, I found this on my doorstep. I am hoping it rains every day and he needs a ride EVERY DAY. Thank you SK!
This was not just your regular heavy rain. This is around the corner from my house about the time I went to get my neighbor.
Then 20 minutes later the skies were like this.
We had planned on going up to Laughing Valley Ranch but with the craziness of the roads, we decided not to. But then after 40 minutes we getting a bit stir crazy and decided to do a family jaunt over to Chautauqua. KZ is still recovering from wisdom teeth removal so she did not run, but JZ jogged some. 
After the family was done, I thought I’d get a middle lap on Green in. It was lightly overcast (really what you see in the pix above). By the time I got towards the top of Ranger there was a flash of lightning and it was spitting rain. I decided to call it as it seemed the lightning was getting closer. I cut over to Flagstaff Road for an easy exit down. Within minutes it was pouring hard and I was cursing as the count between a flash and boom was essentially zero. Seriously – I was yelling “F*CK THIS SH*T!!!” out loud to no one. I thought I would take shelter at that hut I have seen near the 1 mile mark some hundred times but have never approached. But it is just a locked building (probably because it would otherwise be overrun with “tenants”). In my head I was trying to tell myself that maybe that one crash was a little longer between the flash and boom or that I am completely not like a lightning rod if I am running. Then I wondered about stupid crap like a HR monitor I am wearing or glasses on my face and how maybe that would cause me to completely blow up. I made it back to the car as a soaked rat. 8 miles and I drank that Chimay.
8 miles.
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