Racing Through the Wilderness

2012: Week 4: The Year's First Race

2012-01-29T17:56:00.000-07:00

February, which this year has its full complement of 29 days, is fast approaching. Looking back on the first month of 2012, it is hard to complain. While I quickly decided that running every day was not a feasible option for me, I have been running consistently, and have noticed the improvement.

With that in mind, I opted to run the Fast and the Flurry-ous on Saturday this week. This is a 4 mile cross country race put on by the Boulder Running Company to support EXPAND Boulder. This particular race also boasts the largest cash purse of any cross country race in Colorado, which I believe was increased this year. The added competition this year saw the Boulder Track Club take on the Boulder Running Company team in a team competition. All this together meant that this year's running of The Fast and the Flurry-ous was the most competitive so far. It also made this a great chance to test my general fitness while contributing to a great cause.

Considering that I was going to race on Saturday, I took the latter half of the week pretty easy. I did not let myself get caught up in the speed games at the Wednesday night BRC run, choosing to hold back after the hill workout I did the previous day. I took Thursday completely off, and Friday consisted of an easy three or so miles with Matt and his dog.

Saturday started out cold. Cold for Boulder, any way. I woke up to a temperature of a balmy 15. This steadily climbed up until the race started, and I would guess the temperature was 30 or so, with a decent west wind, heading into the first lap.

I had tried something new in my approach to this race. I opted for the first time to pop a gu about 15 minutes before the race, to see if that would give me a little extra staying power. Perhaps it did, but it also definitely made my stomach more than a little unhappy.

I went out too fast. The classic mistake. I glanced down at my watch (a mistake, as it later turned out) and it claimed I was hitting 4:55 pace. I consciously slowed down, settling in to a pace that was just on the near edge of forcing me to lose my breakfast.

The first mile marker passed at about 5:50 according to my watch. Still probably too fast, but I was settling into my rhythm now, and felt good. This was the first race of mine that my girlfriend has attended when she hasn't also been in the race, and on the first time by the finish line I caught her eye and stuck out my tongue. Even if my stomach felt less than happy, it was great to have her there and seeing her face flash by every lap and have her waiting at the finish line.

My watch, as it turns out, seems to be a little off. At mile 1 it said 0.98 miles, and it dropped from there. It also showed me a slower pace than I was going. This made my somewhat low mental state lower, and I had to work harder as a result not to give in to the demons saying "Stop!" and keep pushing it through till the end.

Around the last bend to the finish line, I decided it was time to throw it in, and possibly throw it up. My old sprinter's legs came out of the dusty corner where they hide during my long runs and propelled me past three runners in the last 100m, proof enough that, had it not been for my stomach, I could definitely have thrown more into the earlier miles and lowered my time significantly. I have always been proud of my kick, but that day it was too easy.

I did lose at least my gu at the finish line (after the race volunteers screamed at me to "Slow Down" in the finishing chute, like I was going to careen into the person 10m in front of me). Fortunately my girlfriend had correctly taken my wave to mean "step back. "

As it turns out, the race did not go as badly as I had thought from glancing at my GPS the whole time and the feeling in my gut. I came in at 25:36, for a 6:15 pace. My watch gave the same time, but a total of 3.95 miles and 6:35 pace.

Not a time or a pace to wave around, perhaps, but I felt good with the result, given how poorly I had felt throughout the laps. It says much about my fitness that I can have a bad day and still run the fastest 4 miles I've run since getting to Colorado (unless my 10k a few years ago was better, I don't recall). And it was on grass. All in all, a valuable experience with a few lessons learned for the first time, and at least one learned once again.

That said, I hope to see significant improvement over that pace in the next several months.

I will write more about my run today at another time (with pictures included, of course). For now, I will leave you with the group I saw at the Boulder Theater on Thursday: Ladysmith Black Mambazo. You might know them from their work with Paul Simon starting in the 80s, or from their appearance singing the "African Alphabet" on Sesame Street. But I like their own music the best: it's there that their joy and energy in singing best shines through. I have never before seen a 70 year old kick his foot above his head.

What I love most is the obvious joy they put forward on stage, combined with the occasional goofiness that shines through. The most memorable quote might just be "no kissing on stage," after one member of the group repeatedly, and mischievously, kissed another on the cheek during a song.

2012: Week 3: An unexpected PR

2012-01-23T20:42:00.001-07:00

Week three of the year has come and gone.

I continue to build up my mileage total. So far, I have gone over the general 10% per week rule, but I do not seem to be suffering for it in any way beyond what I would expect. I have lately added more focused, concentrated workout to me repertoire, trying to inject some speed and turnover back into my legs. My training last year was adequate, it got me through the race, but it did not allow me to truly complete. I had the endurance to get through the race, but not the speed to get through it quickly.

Hopefully the work I am doing this year will change all that. I have a more defined workout schedule for the time being: Sunday is a long run, Monday or Tuesday I do hills or a fartlek depending on how I feel, Wednesday night, at the BRC, tends to get speedy, and Fridayis a tempo run up Flagstaff. This particular week I ended up with a long, up tempo run on Monday, 6 miles at 6:30 pace on Wednesday (except for the section where the wind literally stopped us in our tracks) and a run up Flagstaff on Friday that equaled my best time from my training in the summer.

This morning (Sunday, the beginning of a new week as I'm tracking it for the moment), I decided last-minute to do the entirety of the Mesa trail for my long run. I had no expectations of time, but figured the 14 or so miles would do me some good. The additional detail that I was trying my new screw shoes for the first time made me even less certain about my time.

I felt slow on the way out, and down, to Eldorado Springs. The shoes were working well, minus having to take one screw, which was poking into the ball of my foot, out of the bottom of my shoe. Halfway to Eldorado Springs, I ran into Chris, a guy I've run with a couple times, and have also run into up at Eldora cross country skiing. Had I thought about it earlier, I probably could have run with him instead of on my own.

Despite feeling somewhat sluggish, I hit the South Mesa Trailhead in just over an hour. The 5:30 down the hill to the trailhead probably didn't hurt. Without stopping for my usual break, except to tie my shoes, I turned around and headed back up the hill towards Boulder. At this point, my legs felt surprisingly good, but I consciously kept it pretty easy, this being a long, easy run not a tempo run of any sort.

Thus, I was very surprised to find that I reached my car at 1:58:45.

Now, since the last time I did not carry a watch, I am not sure whether this passes my PR for this trail. But, since I did not have a watch, I can mark this down as my fastest timed attempt (so far) at Mesa.

I think this is some fair evidence that my training schedule is doing its job so far. I have learned in the past year or so quite a bit about my own running. First, I can run a decent trail race without much focused, sharp training.


The aforementioned marathon.

Second, I cannot run every day without severe effects on my training. Even with as little as two miles on my low days, the fatigue and minor aches and pains quickly build up to the point where they affect my everyday running and make it significantly less pleasant.

Finally, with more focused training, it appears that I make much more progress than when I simply run the distance. With focus and intelligence, namely the sense to take it easy once in a while, I believe that this year I can make great progress in my running, and just maybe post some decent times.

Gear Review: Shoes

2012-01-16T14:58:00.001-07:00

I, like many other M101 enthusiasts, was eagerly awaiting the release of the M110 the first week of this year. I am fortunate enough to know several people at the Boulder Running Company, so as soon as the 110s arrived, they let me know and set aside a size 11.5 for me to pick up. Trusting that the shoe that fit me so well in its prior incarnation would fit me as well now, I bought them and brought them home, eager to test them out the next morning on a run up Flagstaff.

The M110s

Initially I was pleased with the shoe. New Balance added some more protection in the forefoot area. The 110s also have a Vibram outsole beneath the forefoot and heel, combined with much more significant lugs. The next morning, this gave me significant traction even on the snow and ice as I ran from work over to Eben G Fine park here in Boulder.

Unfortunately, I also noticed that the fit had changed quite a bit. As Anton Krupicka, who helped designed the shoe, had mentioned, they significantly altered the last of the shoe to be "more true" to the bare human foot. Sadly, my feet do not conform to the "normal" shape of a human foot, with my big toe being a good half inch longer than my second toe. Add to that my unfortunately flat feet, and I noticed a great deal of pressure on the outer portion of my midfoot.

Hoping maybe I would break them in and they would feel more like the 101s, I proceeded to run in them three times. I quickly noticed a pain in my ankles and calves caused, I assume, by the shape of the shoe forcing me to pronate even more than my natural stride.

As far as the actual shoe is concerned, notwithstanding the issues I have with its fit, it is excellent. The deep lugs give better grip, more rock protection, and even more cushioning than the 101s had. They are once again extremely light, and the synthetic uppers drain well and dry quickly. I love the little touches that New Balance included. The colors are flashy and more interesting than the average shoe (my pair would be proudly worn by any Macalester grad, being bright blue and orange). Also, in the heel it has a stamp "Approved by the Flatirons of Boulder" and on the bottom of the shoe are the words "Keep Up" written backwards.

As you have no doubt surmised, you will not see me wearing these shoes any time soon. If you happen to be in the market for what is technically an excellent shoe that just happens not to work for me, leave a comment and we can arrange something.

In the meantime, I headed back to the BRC yesterday to search for a replacement. I had heard good things about the Saucony Peregrines, but found those to be more shoe than I wanted. I moved on to a pair of Inov8 X-Talons that seemed to work quite well on the rocks, but I wanted something that could also handle stretches of road without feeling too unstable. I quickly found the Brooks Pure Grits to be the shoe I was looking for. Initially worried that they would feel too cushioned while not providing enough rock protection, I found them gratifyingly comfortable, light, and protective on my 11 mile trail jaunt this morning.

I will write more as I put a few more miles on them. I am curious to see how a biodegradable shoe holds up to the miles. But I have been happy with shoes Scott Jurek wears before (the Green Silence being a notable example), so I have high hopes. I am still not sold on the oddly-shaped lugs, but until I take a few more technical trail runs, I will hold off judgment. As far as feel and comfort go, however, these easily beat out the 110s for me. And I am much more comfortable taking a well-cushioned shoe on my more epic runs.

2012: Week 2

2012-01-15T13:58:00.000-07:00

After two weeks, I have realized that my body gets very unhappy with me very quickly if I do not take at least one day a week off from running. That's not to say that I have to take one day a week completely off, but I do need to lay off running once a week. So I moved to plan B: running 6 out of 7 days for 2012. Sometimes I might run every day for a week, sometimes I might take two days off running in a row. This will both give me more flexibility in my schedule, and allow my body to recover from the impact. I think on the whole this will let me run more than I would were I to try to run every day.

This week, my "day off" was my first day skate skiing in approximately 10 years. My friend Matt and I went up to Eldora on Saturday and skied there for about an hour and a half. I have been away from skiing so long that I had forgotten some basic facts. First: I love skate skiing. When you get into a good rhythm there's nothing else quite like it. Second: it's exhausting! There were a few muscles yesterday that haven't been used in a while, and are definitely complaining some today.

Sadly I cannot say I hopped on a pair of skis and it all came back to me. Rather, say that I hopped on a pair of skis, pushed off once, and promptly fell flat on my back. Not the most graceful return to skiing ever, but certainly amusing for me and those watching me.

Luckily, my body still remembers how to ski. As soon as I stopped thinking about it and just let myself ski, my muscle memory took over and I was soon back into the old V1 rhythm again. The V2 and Open Field rhythm will take a little bit longer to come back to me, but by the end of the outing on Saturday I could consistently V2 again without losing my balance and flailing around like a startled chicken for a few strides.

Running-wise, this was another good week. Despite a busy work week, and not feeling as good as I hoped, I still ran 35 miles, 5 more than last week. With my run today, I've gone 70 miles in 2012, and have yet to take a run over 9 miles or so. Once I start putting in a long run every weekend again, I fully expect that total to increase again. I feel for one as though I am right on track (knock on wood) and getting progressively more fit.

This week also saw the introduction of a little more focused running. One aspect of training that was notably lacking in the lead-up to the Leadville Marathon last year was focused speed and strength workouts. Instead, I did a lot of miles, with the occasional tempo section thrown in for good measure.

Noting this lack and deciding to fix it, I did a Fartlek on Tuesday, and a tempo run up Flagstaff on Friday this past week, and I foresee these becoming a regular part of my week. My normal speedy workout, the Wednesday night run from the Boulder Running Company, was rendered less speedy this week by a nice layer of ice on the bike paths. I can already feel the difference that getting a few sharper workouts makes in my general feeling of fitness. I think if I can hit a regular Saturday ski day as well, that will only help.

On the topic of skiing, and since this post has been much more wordy than i generally prefer, here's a picture I know I've posted before. One of my favorite places to ski in the winter and run in the summer is Hartley Nature Center in Duluth. In 2010, I skied there over Christmas a few times, and managed to capture this pic:

2012: Week 1

2012-01-08T14:03:00.001-07:00

So far, so good. I ran 2 or more miles every day this week, and my legs are cooperating well up to this point. I will grant you that this was not a high-mileage week by any means. I ran a grand total of 30 miles, most of it in the second half of the week.

For the first half of the week, I made what I now realize was a mistake. Rather than follow my normal running schedule and take to the trails most days, I started running the roads from home in order to get the 2 miles in more conveniently. My legs very quickly let me know that they were having none of this road junk, and my calves started seizing up. I started to wonder if my running streak would be over almost before it began.

Then, on the Wednesday night run, I got the news I had been waiting for: the new M110s from New Balance had come in. I set a pair aside that night, and came back on Thusday to pick them up. My friend Matt happened to get a new pair of Altras the same day, so we decided to head up Flagstaff the next day to give our new shoes a try.

That run was exactly what I needed. I expected to feel flat, which is how I had been feeling for the past several days, but what happened was quite the opposite. My legs took to the trail like they never seem to do to the roads. The run up ended up taking about as long as I averaged this summer, despite the icy nature of the trail and the fact that neither of us had brought traction.

So my tactics have changed a bit, and when possible I will run at least 2/3rds of my miles on the trails. And if this method does not help, I will drop back to giving myself a day to rest out of each week. Keeping a running streak going is not worth reducing the overall quality of my running.

With that in mind, yesterday I headed to North Foothills Trailhead, with somewhat tired legs, to get in a flat(ish) run. Five and a half miles and 45 minutes later, I had a nice easy run under my belt, and the first few snowflakes were floating on the almost non-existent breeze.

The snow tapered off around 8 at night, so being a Minnesotan, I naturally assumed that the canyon would be passable in the morning. With that in mind, I woke up this morning planning to head up to Eldora and try out my skate-skiing legs for the first time since high school. Unfortunately, half a mile up the canyon, the road was already simply a layer of snow covering a significant layer of ice, the county apparently having decided that a desultory layer of sand, without de-icer, was sufficient. After the second time sliding out at 25 mph (with my snow tires!) I decided to throw in the towel and head over to old faithful: Green Mountain.

As I expected, given the general state of my legs, the run did not start out at, nor did it ever get to, a good pace. It was overall frustrating, fantastic, and frustrating again. Frustrating because I felt slow. Fantastic because of the gorgeous day. And frustrating again because I had significant difficult on the downhill today, for some unknown reason.

The frustration happens. Every time, there is something to learn from it. Today I think that lesson is to loosen, or lighten, up. I was tight when I started out, and I was tense and tight again on the way down from the summit. Not only does that not make for a fun descent, it in fact makes it more dangerous and, possibly, more damaging to your legs. And I can feel that after my run today. My legs are unusually sore for the amount of running I have done lately. So the note to self is: lighten up.

On to the fantastic.

Today was absolutely gorgeous. We got about 2 inches of snow in Boulder last night, and I awoke this morning to bright sunlight and temperatures in the teens. I took my favorite route up Green: down Mesa to Bear Canyon, up Bear Canyon and Green Bear to the top.

Summer or winter, the Bear Canyon/Green Bear combo is one of my favorite routes. This morning it was even more so. The coat of fresh snow sparkled brilliantly wherever the sunlight hit it. The little creek that run downs the canyon was gurgling and laughing its way through the snow, now under the ice and now breaking free again, keeping me company as I kept a slow-but-steady pace up the canyon to my favorite spot in the Boulder Open Space.

About halfway up Bear Canyon, the trail, which until this point passes through evergreens and over rocks, opens up into a grove of young aspen, none more than 2 or 3 inches in diameter. And suddenly you could be 20 miles up the canyon in the high country, running in the mountains proper rather than their foothills. It is an almost magical transformation, and never fails to bring a smile to my face, no matter how long I have been out that day or how tired my legs are. This is one of the main reasons I choose this route so often.

Some day I will take a picture of the grove, but I fear I can't do it justice.

Through the grove, and on up the canyon, I came on the fork in the trail where you can choose to go up Bear Peak or Green Mountain. While Bear Peak had several sets of tracks on it already, I found that as of yet nobody had ventured up, or down, Green Bear. It is a rare day that, at 11AM, nobody has yet ventured on that trail, and I was glad. Something about making first tracks gives me an extra burst of energy, though I know it means that I will have to work harder for each meter I run.

The way up Green Bear is often a slog. The trail pitches up sharply here, with switchbacks and steps now interspersed with the gradual incline that had been the norm up until this point. I found myself often following in the footsteps of opportunistic deer and foxes, who had used the human-blazed trail to ease their own passage. Up to the intersection with Ranger, I felt good, and powered up the last sharp vertical to the summit of Green, where I found another runner just ready to head down.

The way down, as I already mentioned, was ugly. I would get into a good rhythm, only to foil myself by pulling up and trying to slow down. Several times I slipped on rocks where I normally would not even have planted my foot, and I came far too close to faceplanting more than ones.

After too many minutes of that, I arrived back in the meadow, and jogged the last half mile to the car, not bothering to up the pace as I usually do. Suffice to say I did not exactly PR today on this run. That said, I am also glad I ventured out for this route today, as the way up Bear Canyon was far from the normal experience today.

After all, you have to have the difficult days, or you will never now how to properly appreciate the good days where running is as natural as breathing.

Music

2012-01-07T14:23:00.002-07:00

This is a short prelude post. There will be a longer one later.

For some reason, I have had two different songs stuck in my head during my runs the past week, and they could seemingly not be more different. The first is by Dierks Bentley (a country singer), and is all about America.

The second, quite different, song is MIA's (a female British hip hop artist) version of "Paper Planes." Something about rapping with a British accent is amazing . . .

Reflection and Anticipation

2011-12-31T13:45:00.000-07:00

Another year is coming to an end, and another year is starting. Every year this time I tend to reflect on what has happened in the past year and what I plan for the next year. What have I done well? What can I do better? Where do I go from here?

The year never turns out quite how I expect it. Whatever goals I set for myself, whether I accomplish them or not, turn out differently than I expected. This past year I had three main goals. The first was to get a job. I did get one, but it was not in the area I expected. Maybe, though, that worked out better than I had expected. I am not using any of what I learned in grad school in my current job, but I am in an office that understands my running and my general lifestyle. And I can always feel good about the work I'm doing, which is more than many can say.

My second goal was to get back into running shape. I started the year running just a few miles a week, ten to twelve at the most. While this past week I have only run 20 or so, I am in generally running quite a bit more than that. I am in better base shape than I have ever been, by my estimation, and that is something.

My third goal was to run my first marathon. While I was not anticipating that taking place at 10,000+ feet, I cannot express anything but satisfaction with my Leadville Race. I finished. Not only did I finish, I finished in the top 20. I bonked, but I learned a lot from that bonk. Since then, I have been altering my training to better suit my racing goals, including things such as major nutrient intake before and during my run so that, when my next race comes along, I can take enough food in that I do not bonk again.

Those were successes, but none of them turned out like I expected.

Fully expecting the same thing to happen this year, I have set a few goals for myself for the coming year. Some are personal, but I will focus on those relating to running here. First of all, my overall goal for the year is to run my first Ultra. This will likely be a 50k, or possibly a 50 miler, depending on how my training goes.

My second purely running goal is to run at least one mile a day for the entire year. This is a goal I've tossed around before, but never come close to reaching. It may not be an entirely reasonable goal given my goal to run an ultra. I will have to play it as it comes. If I find out my body does not take well to running every day, I will ramp the goal back a bit to running 6 days each week. That would be roughly 312 days out of the year.

To go with that, I will be working on a daily routine, to keep my arms and core strong along with my legs. I have let my core work slide this year, and I think if I work on that a bit, it can only help the rest of my body.

Finally, my goal is to work on my photography. While this might not seem so related to running, I have found that I always take my favorite pictures while running. Add to this that on my runs I often get to places few people reach, I think it possible to form a business out of my running photography. That is my final goal for the year.

As I do with just about everything, including my music, I will have to play it by ear. If my body does not handle running every day well, as I said, I'll switch to a goal of running 6 days every week. If my body does not take well to the training required to run an ultra, I will tone that back as well. The photography? That I fully intend to stick to.

As ever, I welcome any comments, as long as they are constructive. Particularly, I would like to hear from others as to what their goals are for the year.

Winter Wonderland

2011-12-23T15:35:00.002-07:00

Winter once again blasted the Boulder area the last few days. It started snowing Thursday night and by the time it cleared up on Friday around noon, we had 14 to 20 inches of fresh powder on the ground.

Despite the snow, and Boulder's curious habit of not plowing enough and not salting at all, I braved the rather horrible road conditions and headed up to Chautauqua for some "running." Despite a near accident (Boulder, for those who have not experienced it, has a curious habit of plowing the snow to the middle of the street in the theory that it will melt, which it eventually will. However in the meantime you are left with giant piles of packed snow in the middle of the street, making impossible to turn left in most areas, and where it is possible to turn left, making it impossible to see whether a car is coming. The only thing left to do is gun it in the hopes that a) no other car is coming and b) you can gain enough speed to ram through the barrier of snow and not get stuck on top of it) I made it up to Chautauqua, strapped my Microspikes on, and headed off.

Immediately I knew this was going to be a run only in the loosest sense of the word. I was forced to break trail across the Chautauqua meadow, plowing my way though knee-deep powder and hoping that I was at least generally following the trail. It took over 10 minutes to travel the (level) half mile to the Amp-Greenman trailhead.

There the going got considerably better since somebody, I am assuming Anton Krupicka or Scott Jurek, had been kind enough to break trail earlier in the morning, and clearly at least two or three people had already been by. I decided then that, since my parents were on their way from the airport, I would turn around at noon regardless of whether I made it to the summit, giving me a bit over an hour.

The trail was generally good, though unconsolidated, up through Saddle Rock. As far as pace go, I would call it a powerful hike, though at best I gave myself a pace of 20 or so minutes per mile. After Saddle Rock, though, it was evident that several people had turned around, and the remaining trail up to the summit would be minimally broken.

But it was absolutely gorgeous. I never get over the feeling of joy being out in that sort of environment. The snow was still falling, muffling every noise until it felt like I was the only person for miles. The only other things I saw moving were a few overly-industrious squirrels and a 10-point buck picking his way up the mountainside.

As it turned out, I did not quite make it to the summit by noon. I turned around a bit over an hour into my run, with another half mile to go to the summit. As the picture suggests, I was not entirely pleased to be turning around, but sometimes, family has to be the priority.

That said, the way down itself was fantastic! Nearly every time my foot came down, it slid another foot or two down the slope, lending me more of a bounding stride than any sort of normal running stride. And while I took a tumble or two, the snow was so thick that I barely felt it before I was up and off again (much to the surprise of a poor border collie, who gave me a few startled barks as I came flying around a bend).

I'll leave you with a couple more pics, just to fuel the envy I believe you should feel.

The trail.

A snowy Boulder.

All in all, a wonderful, wintry day, reminding me again why I am so lucky to be living and running in Boulder.

Taking it Easy

2011-12-13T19:52:00.001-07:00

Taking it easy is something that most runners hate. You get into a good rhythm, progress in your fitness, feel good for a long time, then invariably something happens that requires you to take it easy for a bit.

This is not generally a big problem, fitness-wise. In the scheme of things, taking it easy for a few days or a week will not make that much of a difference, and may in fact significantly help your running health. But it never feels right. The runner starts to feel guilty, like they should be out there running even though rest is the best thing for them.

It just feels wrong to take it easy.

Naturally, given this post, I have opted to take it easy for the last week or so. I woke up on Monday and could not turn my head to the right, my neck was so sore. I got a massage that afternoon, which helped considerably. Still, I decided that maybe my long, snowy run up Green the day before had maybe tweaked something.

So I have been taking it easy. Granted, I still ran Green on Sunday after doing a bit of Tele skiing in the morning (my first of the season). A side note: I can never go Tele skiing without thinking back to my days as a high school XC skier, with Scott Jurek yelling "Practice your Tele turns" whenever we went down a larger, wide-open hill.

But I have been taking it easy outside of that. And I think I"m back. My plan is to do a quick run up, or partway up, Flagstaff tomorrow morning and see how I feel, and go from there. Hopefully I can get bak into the swing of things quickly.

I'll need to, if my plan for next year pans out. I have one race I definitely want to do now: the Moab Trail Marathon on November 3rd. It also happens to be the trail national championships for the year. And while I don't intend to become a member of the USATF and actually compete, it would be awesome to race head to head with, or at least briefly see the backsides of, the best in the country.

Aside from that, I have a Sanitarado run planned for the coming January. February and March are open so far. I think I'll run the Horsetooth Half in April, which should help prep me for either the Greenland Trail 50k or the Golden Gate Park 50k in May. June might see the Leadville Marathon again, or perhaps the Steamboat Marathon. July, there is a distinct possibility, should my training go well, of the Silver Rush 50 miler. August I think I will devote to getting into the high country for some classic runs. That leaves the Golden Leaf in Aspen in September, the Coal Creek Challenge (5 miles!) in October, and the Moabl in November.

It is looking to be a good year!

Carpenter v Jornet?

2011-12-08T19:15:00.001-07:00

I just read this article over at running times. Among other things, I am amazed that all of this came from a 23 year old. Granted, he's no normal 23 year old runner, but still . . .

I have been thinking for some time that it would be incredible to see Kilian race Matt Carpenter, and it sounds like that just might happen!

If it does, you had best believe I will be at Pikes Peak this year!

In the meantime, my running schedule for next year is coming along. From very few ideas, I now have far too many. Here are a few I'm looking at.

January
    The Five Peaks Challenge (not a race)

February

March
    Antelope Island Buffalo Run

April
    Collegiate Peaks Trail Run
    Horsetooth Half

May
    Greenland Trail Races
    Wyoming Marathons?
    Golden Gate Park race

June

Steamboat Marathon

Leadville

July

August

Pikes Peak?

Aspen Backcountry?

September
Golden Leaf

October
Coal Creek Challenge

November

December

Winter Has Arrived & a Classic Trail Running Story

2011-12-04T14:18:00.001-07:00

From the 60+ degree, sunny temperatures on Wednesday, we have plunged down to a balmy (for a Minnesotan such as yours truly) 10 degrees when I woke up this morning. Add to that anywhere from 10 inches, down by my apartment, to 2+ feet of snow in the course of two storms, and winter appears to have reared its snowy head here in Boulder.

And I could not be happier.

The 60 degree, sunny weather on Wednesday led me to take my friend Matt up on a last-minute request for a running partner in the afternoon. We headed over Viewpoint trail on the flanks of Flagstaff, through Chautauqua, and then split off for separate afternoons. That was my second time up Viewpoint that day, and all told made for 11+ miles of running on a day when I had planned for 5. Such is life in Boulder sometimes.

In the middle of that run, on our way up Viewpoint, we started discussing my sister's research on the relative stability of a running stride versus a walking stride. Not surprisingly, we both thought we felt more steady running on trails than we did walking, when we tend to hit our toes on the ever-present rocks on Boulder-area trails.

Not five minutes after discussing this, I had a classic trail runner moment: we were cruising along a smooth stretch of trail, one I take several times a week and so feel as though I know fairly well, and suddenly my toe catches on a miniscule irregularity on the trail and I'm flat on my chest in the middle of the trail.

After walking for a minute just to get re-centered, we quickly started talking about our various trail running scars. I normally get them shortly after I pass somebody, when I almost invariably trip over some very obvious feature in the trail just when I feel the best. Some of them have been worse than others.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure I've seen that hat since this run.

Fortunately, this encounter with the trail surface did not leave those sorts of marks.

As I alluded to above, I ran up Green with a couple friends this morning. I use the word "run" very loosely here. It took us over an hour to cover the first 4 miles, and an additional half an hour to hit the mile and a half after that. This was due in part to the steep(ish) nature of the trail up Green, but mostly because we were, at times, running in unconsolidated snow that came up to my thighs.

A view of Green Mountain from Sanitas, on Saturday.

Needless to say, the way down the mountain was much more fun. Whereas we had hit the first 5.5 miles in a little under an hour and forty minutes, we hit went downhill in under half an hour.

Chris on the final stretches of Green, Matt is just in front of him.

All in all, it was both a very difficult and a very fun run to cap off an excellent running week. I feel like I've been getting in better and better shape each and every week, and at the moment I'm not even training for anything specific. If I can keep this up (knock on wood) I might just be able to post some good results in 2012.

With that in mind, I need to start thinking of what races I want to do next week, and how I want to train for them, but that's a subject for another post.

A run up Green

2011-11-27T20:18:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned last time, I took the opportunity on Friday to do some filming of a typical run up Green Mountain. I chose Green because I know it well, and it has the possibility of some beautiful shots, but also because it has been made well-known by Anton Krupicka.

Without further ado, and after spending much of the day editing what turned into a two-and-a-half minute video, here it is:

I should acknowledge a certain Mizuno running commercial (long form) for both the music and the outhouse shot.

Louisville Turkey Trot

2011-11-26T16:59:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I randomly signed up for a Turkey Trot 5k in Louisville which took place on Thursday morning. Since I signed up so late, I was not sure whether I wanted to treat it as a race or just as a fun run. I had done a significant hill workout (8x400m hills in 80 seconds each) on Tuesday, and my legs were till a little less than recovered. Then I went out for a 6 mile run the night before.

All told, I got to the race on Thursday morning, tried a few striders to warm up, and realized that my legs felt pretty awful, all told. I decided then that, while I would not take it easy, nor would I put it all out there and race this one.

I picked a spot 10 or so rows back from the front of the pack, knowing that there would be a bottleneck when the course shifted from the road to the bike path, about a quarter mile into the race. I spent that first quarter mile passing a significant portion of the people who started out in front of me, running at what felt like a quick but easily sustainable pace (one stride in, one stride out). My (brand new) Soleus GPS watch said I was moving around a 6 minute mile pace.

From there on, I just concentrated on keeping my form loose and easy, and trying to keep the pace honest. I never felt that I was pushing particularly head, and never in the entire race did my breathing labor.

The course itself was out and back, and quite pretty. It started by the Blue Parrot in downtown Lousiville, took a sharp left after half a block, and entered Louisville's Central Park. After skirting the west edge of the park, it continued south on a dirt path through some open space and the Coal Creek golf course. It briefly entered a residential area before turning around to head back to the starting line.

At this point, it got a little bit tricky. Since I was, apparently in the top 30 or so by this point, I ran into crowds on my way back. This was the inaugural Louisville Turkey Trot, the race organizers were not sure how popular the race would be, and opted to cap it at 2000. I'm sure they reached that cap, and 2000 people on a narrow bike/walk path leads to some crowded conditions. That's what happens when you make a race free.

Their decision to allow both strollers and dogs, while keeping with the laid-back nature of the race, also added to the crowded conditions. So, coming back I occasionally had to dodge oncoming runners, and at one point had to leap a dog's leash when it ran across the path in front of me.

Par for the course on races like this, and not a bit deal since I was not taking it that seriously.

I did feel the first signs of fatigue at about mile 2.5, which is also when I decided to actually pick up the pace and drop the guy who had been gamely keeping up with me for the past two miles. I felt kind of bad, since it was seeming so easy for me and was obviously a difficult pace for him. But I realized that, with half a mile left, and with the clock ticking near 17 minutes, I had a good shot at my best 5k since my shoulder surgery.

Naturally, I forgot to stop my watch when I crossed the finish line. I had far too much left in me, and kind of ran through the finish line and off to the side (much to the annoyance of the volunteer who had to chase after me to clip my chip off my shoe), and stopped my watch a bit later when it read 18:42. By itself that would have been my best time since my surgery, though I guessed my time was closer to 18:30.

Since I was still feeling pretty good, I then decided to run back along the course for a while til I met my friend (G), who was also running. I ran in with her, and she herself posted a very good time for somebody who hasn't run since the Bolder Boulder in May with 36 minutes flat.

As it turns out, looking at the results on Friday, I had run an 18:25. That's my fastest 5k since my shoulder surgery by 30 seconds, and also puts me at 5:57 mile pace. Considering the only intensity I've done in my training recently came two days before this race, I would say I'm quite happy with that. It does, however, make me wonder what I might be able to do if I genuinely tried in a race.

The next day I spent a good three hours up on Green Mountain, filming myself. I will report more on that later, with clips, but for now I will say that it was quite fun, and I'm looking forward to seeing the results when I get done editing it.

Turkey Trot

2011-11-23T20:38:00.001-07:00

So, rather than the 2 hour trail run I planned for tomorrow, I will be doing a 5k Turkey Trot.

Race report tomorrow or Friday.

Mesa PR

2011-11-20T14:47:00.001-07:00

First things first: clearly, from the title of the post, I broke some sort of PR on the Mesa Trail recently.

Actually, it was this morning, and there are a few caveats to put in place before talking about it. First: I rarely run just the Mesa trail. I generally run part of the Mesa trail on the way to or from somewhere else (Green, Bear, South Boulder, etc . . .). Second, I have never really pushed myself on the Mesa trail, since I usually focus on the nearby peaks when I am trying to get into shape for a race. Third, I was not at my prime this morning, having had a hard week beforehand.

Next time I decide to keep up with Peter Bakwin on the way up Flagstaff, somebody please knock a little sense into my skull.

The final caveat is that I only decided to attempt a PR on Mesa early this morning, when I was having trouble (for the first time in some time) motivating myself to get out for a longish run on Sunday morning. There's nothing like a little competition to provide some extra motivation, even if it's only with yourself.

With that in mind, I drove up to Chautauqua, a rarity for me, only to find that, when I strapped my watch onto my wrist, it stopped functioning completely. This was not unexpected: this particular watch (a Timex Ironman, failure engineered) had been trying to give up the ghost for some time, I had just been too stubborn to spend the money on a newer watch. Since it was falling apart in any case, I tossed it in the trash reading 9:57AM (it was a little slow).

With that as the last time I saw, I figure I started the run at about 10AM after a short pit stop. I focused on the way out on keeping the pace honest, but not brutal. I pushed on the uphills, but kept thinking that this should feel like the first quarter of a marathon, and consciously kept myself from going to fast. Nevertheless, when I reached the South Mesa trail head, a friendly hiker let me know that the time was "five to eleven on the dot." Not bad: 55 minutes for the first half. Eight minutes off Dave Mackey's record, but that's a serious time to chase.

After another pit stop (I need to lay off the coffee a bit) I took off back up the two-mile climb out of South Mesa. On the way out, I had decided that this is where I'd push it, and see how I felt. The answer was not as good as I hoped, but I still managed what felt like a decent pace. Unfortunately on the way back I seemed to run afoul of more rocks than I usually do, including one that jammed my right big toe to the point that it's still hurting as I sit here a few hours later.

Such is the life of a trail runner. Gotta keep your eyes on the trail.

When I descended back into the Chautauqua trail head, I figured it was a little after noon, and I was right. It took me significantly longer to do the second half of the run, and I pulled in with a round trip time of almost exactly 2 hours. Not bad, but I think I can do better.

This week looks to be a good one as far as running is concerned. It doesn't hurt that it's a three day work week. For those of you who might be in Boulder and looking for a training group, I recommend Boldrunning. It's run by the husband and wife team of Ewen and Heather North. Ewen is an accomplished runner and excellent coach, former course record holder at the Canyonlands Half (or is it the Other Half, I can never remember). Heather is both an excellent runner and a PT. And both have excellent taste in beer.

I myself utilized Boldrunning, partially under its prior name, the Bolder Boulder Training Club, to get back into shape after a broken ankle left me with a right leg approximately the size of my left arm, and found them both fun and helpful.

The reason I mention this is that they will be having free "trial" training sessions over the next two weeks. Tuesdays ( the 22nd and 29th) will be hill workouts, meeting at Harlow Platts Park in South Boulder. Wednesdays (the 23rd and 30th) will be an easy run leaving from the Boulder Running Company, and followed by food and beer. Those all start at 6PM. There is a rumor about a longer run on the intervening Saturday, but there are no firm plans yet.

As I said, a fun group of people. I highly recommend them.

Thursday morning, the normal Boulder Trail Runners Happy Hour Run group will be heading out for a rare, pre-turkey, morning run for a couple hours, followed by mimosas at Chautauqua. I am thoroughly looking forward to that particular run. As for the rest of the week, who knows? With a few interesting runs on the calendar, I have to keep fit.

Gear Test

2011-11-14T19:56:00.001-07:00

I have felt very professional lately while writing this blog. I recently commissioned a desk for myself, made from reclaimed red oak to my own specifications, and I now feel both professional, and in some sense like I have to live up to the gorgeous desk on which I write these posts. Mostly, however, I just love having a giant, mostly empty desk where I can put my computer. It seems to ooze potential.

But all that and the more that I was thinking is beside the point at the moment. This is about running.

It was windy yesterday here in Boulder, enough so that I threw out any idea of a long, flat run, and headed, as I am wont to do, into the foothills and the Chautauqua area for a long, hilly run. In preparation for the Leadville Marathon this summer, I had several times run the three most prominent peaks of Boulder: South Boulder Peak, Bear Peak, and Green Mountain. I had also often run Flagstaff, since it was convenient to my office. I opted yesterday for the previously untried (by me) combo of Flagstaff and Green, with the possibility of adding the other two as a bonus.

This was both a test of me and a test of my new gear. I had visited the GoLite sale earlier that morning, an institution here in Boulder, and picked up a few necessaries for my running adventures. Among other things, I had left my old windshirt at Leadville, and needed a new one. I also took the opportunity to grab myself a new hydration pack, since the design has definitely improved in the years since I got my trusty Mule.

To my great surprise, heading up Crown Rock to the Flagstaff trail, my legs felt strong and the, reasonably severe, slope felt easy. I quickly topped off Flagstaff and headed down Ute to hit Green. Here again, my legs felt great and, aside from slipping a few times on icy sections of trail, I made it up Green no problem.

The view to the west from the top of Green. All the little peaks on the plaque should be there somewhere in the background. The view to the east was clear and sunny.

From there, I took off down Green-Bear for the next shot to the legs. I think this is my favorite downhill in the area. It is fairly gradual, and much less crowded than most of the trails in the area, so you can bomb down it without too much worry about knees or collisions.

Up till this point, I had entertained thoughts of hitting Bear and South Boulder, but decided that, since I had not run that far in a long time (read: other than the Leadville Marathon) I would do better to leave it at two peaks for the day.

I took off down Bear Canyon and promptly managed to almost brain myself on a tree that had fallen across the path. This was one of only two points on the run where there was significant snow on the trail. It didn't last long, and I quickly zig-zagged my way down the series of tight switchbacks and back to Mesa trail.

From there it was a quick couple miles back to where my car was (alas) waiting in the parking lot.

How long was the run? I have no real idea. I rarely run with a watch, since when I do I obsessively check it and compare myself to prior runs on the same route, and I forgot to check the time in my car before I left and after I got back. I'm guessing, though, it was a bit over two hours.

The good news: I felt great the whole time. Even when I was moving at a good clip, I never felt like I was straining. My new gear worked like a charm. The backpack, which I will admit was not really necessary for that short a run, fit like a glove and didn't bounce or bother me in the least. The windshirt did its job. And the shorts I picked up as an afterthought, well they will take some breaking in.

I had the chance on this run to muse on what races and runs might be in store for the next year, but I'll save those for another post.

Musings

2011-11-06T15:21:00.002-07:00

There are a few questions I am asked regularly when people find out both that I am a runner and how often and far I run. In the interest of clearing a few of these up, I thought I'd write about them over the next several posts. They might be short, and they might go far too long. I am not sure quite how it will work yet.

FAQ #1: What do you think about when you run?

This is probably the most common question I get asked. The answer depends entirely on the day.

The simple answer is: anything and everything. On my runs, my mind generally wanders a fair amount. I good portion of the time I am actually coming up with ideas. Running is far and away my most creative period.

The number one topic is this blog. I consider not only what I will write about in this blog, but how I will write it. I gather experiences that I want to share, and I take pictures that I subsequently post here. I also have come up with business ideas, song lyrics (yes, I occasionally write songs too), story ideas (much more common than song lyrics), and just about everything else you can think of.

I always, always have a song running through my head. Sometimes it is the same song for the entire run. More often I bounce from song to song via melodies. I tend to start with the last song I heard before heading out on the run, and from there progress to songs that either sound like it or have a similar theme. Like a game of "telephone," often the song I am singing, in my head or out loud, at the end of a particular run seems to have nothing to do with what was going though my head when I started out.

The other thing I often do on my runs is process whatever is going on in my life at the time. I use running as therapy, where I can really focus on a topic with few distractions (other than the occasional other runner or hiker) and really process where I am. If I have a problem in my life, I go out for a run, and usually by the time I come back, even if I don't have a solution, I have a new way to approach the issue.

The one thing I never am on my runs is bored. To be a successful distance runner, I think it's safe to say that you have to be fairly comfortable in your own head. If you were anything but, there is no possible way you could go out for a four hour run by yourself and come back sane.

When I race, though, everything else goes out the window, and the only thing on my mind is the race.

This only just scratches the surface of what I think of when I run, but it gives at least some idea. I have a whole philosophy around running, that I will touch on throughout my posts in this blog, but I think that is good enough for today.

Oh, and of course, the other thing I think about quite a bit is the run itself. With trails like these it's required.

And just for the fun of it, I'll leave you with a picture from a run I went on back in June, while I was training for the Leadville Marathon.

Tour de Lakes

2011-10-30T17:10:00.000-06:00

As usual, I am posting this several weeks after the actualrun in question. As much as I try to avoid working this way, it always seems tohappen. This time, I have not actually had much time between that day and thisin which to write a post. Between helping a friend move, getting shipped out toChicago for a week for company training, and, naturally, running quite a bit, Ihave not found the time.

On October 2, I took advantage of a little spare time and agorgeous day to head up to Rocky Mountain National Park for a run that I hadtaken with a friend some years earlier. I recalled it being a long, arduous runwith a hard initial climb, and an additional several mile-long, 3000 foot climbin the middle. The loop was listed at about 11 miles, but given the time ittook last time, we estimated it was closer to 13 or 14. Called the “Tour deLakes,” it skirts a path around and past four separate lakes.

This was the peak aspen season, so I anticipated largecrowds. I was not disappointed. There was a snarl of traffic through EstesPark, and a long line to get into the Park proper as well. Since I had to wait in line in anycase, I took the opportunity and renewed my National Parks pass for anotheryear.

By the time I finally made it to the Bierstadt Lake parkinglot, I was worried about finding a parking spot with all the traffic I had seenon the way in. Fortunately for me, though, this trailhead is far lesswell-known than Bear Lake, which is a few miles farther up the road, and I wasable to pull into the last spot in the lot.

I remembered the initial climb up to the first ridgelinebeing tortuous the last time, so I was surprised when I found myself cruisingup the switchbacks without much trouble. I stopped to snap a few pictures ofthe Longs Peak diamond rising behind me through the golden aspen, somethingquite a few other people were doing with much larger cameras, and cruised onover the ridge and around Bierstadt lake.

A classic autumn view of Longs Peak, from the first climb of the day.

This little guy was sitting in the middle of the trail. (S)he did not particularly like me getting this close, and curled up defensively.

After Bierstadt, the trail gets significantly less crowdedas it heads for Cub Lake. The last time I ranthis steep and rocky downhill section, my friend Mark had a GPS watch on, andclocked us in at a 4:30 mile for one stretch. I do not think I equaled thatthis time, but I’ve been wrong before.

After the descent, the trail crosses a small stream, andtakes you out into a small meadow. I looked up, and saw the picture of alifetime. I snapped a quick shot, knowing that I would probably not be able tocapture the sheer stunning beauty of the scene, but the picture itself turnedout pretty well.

I think this is one of the better pictures I have managed to capture. It's hard to beat the scene I had to work with, though.

As the picture shows, at this point the trail starts to headup again, for a long, long time.

A mile or two on from this picture, the trail crosses another, larger streambefore heading up a long valley. At this crossing I met a couple other runnersheading the opposite direction around the loop. They had just moved to Boulderfrom Texas and Tennessee, and three days after moving here went for this run.Hats off to them, that takes guts.

A little farther on, after passing a group of CU students out for a weekend backpackingtrip, the trail goes by Fern Falls. I took the opportunity to grab aprofile pic for my Facebook account, as well as a picture without me messing up the foreground.

Fern Falls

My legs were starting to feel the climb a bit here. As Icontinued on, and the climb just kept coming and coming, I began to suffer abit. There is no part of this climb that is particularly steep. It’s justrelentless. It only lets up briefly to skirt the edge of the third (and fourth)lake of the day: Fern (and Odessa)

Looking over Fern Lake, at Flattop Mountain and the Little Matterhorn.

At this point the trail is more accessible from the BearLake trailhead, and thus more crowded. Where I had gone miles without seeingpeople earlier in the day, now I saw groups every quarter mile or so. For themoment, this helped give me a little boost to get me up and over the last climbridge of the day, from which point it is all downhill.

While I was definitely feeling the run by this point, Istill was not as tired as I might have expected to be. I must have had someresidual fitness from a summer of runner that decided to poke its head outduring the end of the run.

That being the case, I started cruising the downhill,letting my legs go knowing that the hardest, longest portion of the run wasover and it was, nearly, all downhill from this point.

Unfortunately, this also meant that I had to dodge theubiquitous photographers on the way down. In general, they were courteous andstepped to the side of the trail, letting me burn by them, and often evencheering me on. However, as is always the case, there were exceptions to thisrule. I started to get exasperated by the fifth time I came around a bend tofind a tripod supporting a several thousand-dollar camera set up in the middleof the trail. I am all for getting a great shot, but it is still a trail, andpeople run.

This annoyance was not nearly enough to spoil my dayhowever. I was out on a gorgeous day, running through groves of evergreens andgolden aspen, with my legs still feeling good even after 12 or so miles.

I came back to Bierstadt Lake with enough left in my legs togive it a good push over the last, short uphill before cruising back down tothe parking lot with, again, stunning views of Longs Peak to the south.

I ended up coming in at three hours on the dot, about 35minutes faster than I took this loop the last time, even with all thephotography breaks. All in all, a fantastic way to close out a serious summerof running.

The First Snow

2011-10-08T15:05:00.000-06:00

It has been my tradition as long as I have been a runner, or even close to a runner, that I run during the first snow. Whenever it occurs (usually sometime in October out here in Colorado), whether it's in the middle of the day or the middle of the night, when those first flakes start falling, you can find me out on the roads, trails, or paths running my heart out.

And usually singing.

Today was the first snow in Boulder this year. My plan had been to head up to Indian Peaks today to get in a High Lonesome Loop before the snow closed that route down. Unfortunately I may have left that a bit late this year. The forecast for Nederland today was for 4 to 8 inches of snow to fall in 31 degree weather. While I don't really mind running in that much snow, and in fact regularly find it quite invigorating, I had zero desire to drive up the Canyon this morning with a cadre of other, less experienced snow drivers. The first snow of the year almost always causes a bit of a Charlie Fox up the Canyon, and I avoid it if I can.

Thus this morning found me heading up to Chautauqua to get in a run up Green Mountain. The parking lot was wet, but with rain, not snow. In a tiny bit of cosmic irony as I pulled into my parking spot, "Knee Deep" by the Zac Brown Band, with Jimmy Buffett, started playing on the radio. So I took off up the Amphitheater Trail with the words "only worry in the world 'is the tide going to reach my chair'" bouncing around in my head.

To my great surprise, the initial stair-climbing up Amphitheater felt rather easy today. Whatever shape I'm in, this section tends to hurt, but today I just felt smooth and easy, bounding up the rocks and stairs past the various groups of people coming down. And that sense of ease continued as I followed Saddle Rock trail up across the snow-line, where the soft susurrus of snow falling on the still-golden leaves provided a soothing background to a difficult climb. I had to pick my way across some of the rock-fields on the higher reaches of Greenman, when I got there, since I don't know the trail as well as some other runners. But much to my surprise I felt great even as I got to the summit. I have always remembered this last stretch being a bit of a haul, but today I was still cruising.

That's the magic of the first snow for me: I always feel invincible on my runs. My legs don't get as tired. My lungs don't gasp. On the way down, after stopping and talking to a ranger for a minute, the people I passed kept looking at me strangely. I wondered why, until I realized that, true to form, the words from "Knee Deep" that I thought were merely going through my head were in fact coming out my mouth. Thinking about it now, I must have made quite the picture, running down the mountain at a decent clip, signing "left a note said I'll be back in a minute, bought a boat and I sailed off in it. Don't think anybody's gonna miss me any way" while my feet came down in several inches of snow. The first snow: every year, it pushes me just to the other side of sanity. And I love it.

A few pics from a summer of running

2011-10-08T13:56:00.003-06:00

The first set is from a run I did up in Indian Peaks on June 26 this year. This was to be my last long(ish) run before running the Leadville Marathon the next week. I felt good, despite coming back from a week in Baltimore just the day before. Unfortunately, before I managed to get much of a run in, the snow on the trail got too deep and I ended up turning back. I did, though, get a up high and get some good altitude time in.

Very much out of order, this is a picture of the only lake I'd managed to get to that day. I had meant to go to king, but the snow was too much.

This was the first stretch of snow on the trail. It only got deeper from here. Since I was in shorts, post-holing through the icy crust of this quickly cut up my shins, and I soon decided to turn around.

The water was still really high for June. Down in Boulder around this time, the Creek was in full flood, and closed to tubing.

Again, the water was high. But as ever, high water makes for great pictures.

Skipping a bit, the next are from a run, again in Indian Peaks, up the Arapahoe Pass trail. i didn't get pics of it, but I got caught out a bit by a thunderstorm this day, and ended up having to hightail it back down the trail a ways.

From the Arapahoe Glacier trail.

Looking back down the trail. At about this time the clouds were building a bit behind me, but I wasn't too concerned as it was still pretty early. Oops . . .

My turnaround point. My legs were just not feeling good this day, so I opted not to continue on either to Caribou Pass or further along the Arapahoe Pass trail. Also, shortly after I took this picture, the sky opened up an the lightning started, so I decided to head back down, somewhat recklessly it must be said.

More pics to come.

Pics from the run below

2011-10-08T13:38:00.005-06:00

Again, it has been a while since I posted here. Not due to me not running, but more that I have not yet set up internet in my new(ish) apartment. Had I done so before now, I probably would have posted these earlier. However, since I didn't, here are a few.

A look at the trail ahead for the day. Belford is on the left, Missouri looms to the right of the picture. Missouri was intimidating to me that day, despite being a relatively easy mountain, as it is where a friend of mine's girlfriend had died in a mountaineering accident earlier in the year.

At the top of Belford.

I am no longer sure where this picture was taken from. I believe, though, that it is looking south from Oxford.

Summit of Oxford.

On the saddle between Belford and Missouri. It was about here that I decided not to go for the summit of Missouri as well, but leave it for another trip.

More pics from the summer and fall of running to come in the next several posts.

The High Country

2011-08-21T15:38:00.003-06:00

It has been quite a long time since I have written here, which is fair, because it took me quite a bit longer than I ever would have expected to recover from Leadville.

It was most likely a combination of physical and mental recovery, combined. I was running again two days after the marathon itself, but for a long time I could not physically run much more than three miles a day. And when my legs started to finally recover, I found myself with much less motivation to run than I had felt in a long time. This, or so I hear, is fairly common after your first significantly long and difficult race.

However, in due time, I got my fire back, and started running longer and more often. This weekend, I headed southwest to Leadville and the Sawatch range to get some serious mountain running in. I had a grand plan to do Belford, Oxford, and Missouri mountains. The fact that the Leadville 100 was this weekend did not influence my plans at all, it's safe to say, since I had completely forgotten that the race was this weekend, if indeed I had ever really known.

I took advantage of the runner's edge on timing, and didn't hit the trailhead until between 8:30 and 9AM. As I often do, I ran without a watch. I can always estimate noon from the position of the sun, and if I can't, because of cloud cover, I know I probably shouldn't be on the mountain any more in any case. Besides, as with most Fourteeners on summer weekends, there were hordes of people out to knock a couple out.

I equipped myself for three mountains' worth of running, and headed up the trail. The guidebook had mentioned a "memorable series of switchbacks" as the trail headed up into Missouri Gulch, and I immediately realized why they can be described as such. The trail itself is nice, soft dirt, but it climbs. Steeply.

I found myself power-hiking much sooner than I thought I would, thinking to myself that if I had three mountains on the schedule for the day, I should probably take it easier rather than push myself at all. Still, before I was beyond the initial pitch, I started picking off hikers.

As the trail emerged into the treeline area, it leveled off to the point where I could start running more without worrying too much about fatiguing my legs too early. And the hikers started coming thick and fast.

When I pass people on 14ers, there are several reactions I get over and over. Most often, people are simply impressed and wish me good luck, or say "Nice work." Others seem somewhat resigned and a little discouraged that I can pass them with seeming ease. The third reaction is the one I don't understand: some people get angry at me. There's a reaction like "Oh, here comes a fast one," in a very sarcastic tone of voice. Or they refuse to move aside.

Fortunately, this day I only encountered the first two types, and it sped me up the mountain yet faster. My legs didn't feel great, but they were plenty strong enough to run the flatter bits and hike the steep pitches quickly, and soon enough I was at the top of Belford, feeling good as I looked down at the traverse over to Oxford.

And so I started to run again, across the ridge of Belford and down the steep pitch to the saddle between Belford and Oxford. I met a guy from Kansas here, who was also running down the steeper pitch. We chatted for a while until he ran out of gas and had to stop, while I ran on. I began to realize at this point that my plan to hit Missouri as well might be more than a little ambitious. My legs began to tire as I ran the trail up the last stretch of Oxford and hit the summit.

Here I finally encountered the third type of hiker: those who seem annoyed at you and consider you a showoff for running on a 14er. To you, I apologize that, because of the endless hours of hard work and training that I put in, I am in better shape than you and therefore can run faster. I assure you, it is not to make you feel out of shape or slow that I run. It is merely so that I can challenge myself and see what I can do. You normally do not even blip on my radar when considering these runs.

That said, I tanked on the way back up the side of Belford. Anybody who has been on these mountains will tell you how much harder the run back up to Belford is than either the original climb up Belford or the climb up Oxford.

I couldn't even think of running here. My legs were protesting every step of the way. When I ran into a couple I had seen on the way up, and they asked whether I was planning on Missouri as well, since I clearly had time, I could only grimace and say "Not today."

I hit the ridge of Belford again, and paused to rest and gnaw on a couple strips of dried mango (a favorite of mine on longer runs and hikes). Looking at my options, I headed north for the the easier, longer descent via Elkhead (I think?) Pass, rather than heading down the steeper route I came up.

As I came down from the pass, I passed in turn the trail up Missouri, and briefly, very briefly, considered running that as well. But again, I realized that it was not in the cards this particular day, and I continued to run down Missouri Gulch to the trailhead.

I think, over all, that this was my favorite day above 14000 feet. I met more nice, engaging people on this run than on any two prior runs or hikes, which meant as well that I stopped running more often. I can only say thanks to the people who were so nice, and (almost) unfailingly encouraging.

You remind me why I love this state.

Race Report

2011-07-09T09:37:00.000-06:00

I may have mentioned this here before, but in case I did not, several months ago I decided to train for my first marathon. I had some options on which race I wanted to run, Grandma’s Marathon in my hometown of Duluth, Minnesota being one of the major candidates. However, after some thought, I decided, possibly optimistically, to sign up for the Leadville Trail Marathon.

I knew I was being ambitions picking one of the tougher marathons in the country for my first try, but I figured because a) much of my training is done on trails and b) I was interested to see how I could do in a long race at altitude that I would try for Leadville, which ranges from 10,000 on up to just over 13,000 feet. Training went well, including several 3+ hour runs on the Boulder OSMP trails, and when race day came, despite the rather hectic weeks I’d had leading up to it, I felt as ready as I could have been.

Having stayed in a friend’s condo in Copper the night before, I woke at about 5:15, ate my traditional pre-race breakfast (two packets of Quaker Maple and Brown Sugar instant oatmeal) and headed up to Leadville at 6. After a few detours around town (coffee!!) I finally discovered that the packet pickup had been moved to the more traditional Sixth Street Gym location. I duly picked up my gear, and was heading back to my car to find a suitable parking spot (where I wouldn’t get towed) when I saw Marshall Ulrich heading towards the gym.

I’d met him several weeks before, when he had been a part of the Naked Tour. I asked him if he was running, and sure enough he was planning to run the marathon. Great: now I was running against a running legend. He may be 60, but he’s definitely still a formidable runner. Mostly, though, I was just glad he remembered who I was.

After parking my car I suddenly found myself with more than an hour until the race started and very little to do. I had decided that it was relatively pointless to do any sort of warm up as a) I would not be running all that fast at any point during the day, b) I would have ample time to warm up during the first section of the race and c) I knew I would need every ounce of energy I could muster for the actual race. I would never think of neglecting a warm up for a shorter race, but this was a whole different animal.

Soon enough, though, they called us to the starting line. The guy next to me, apparently from Austrailia, asked how many of these I had done. When I said, calmly “this is my first one,” he seemed a bit disbelieving that anybody would pick this race for their first marathon. After a few minutes of jittery anticipation, the shotgun (yes they had a 12-guage) went off, and we took off up the road. It’s a mark of how focused I was on finishing the race and running at my own comfortable pace that it was about two minutes before I realized I had not started my watch.

At this point, all of my mental effort was pointed towards one idea: take it easy. I had never run a race this distance before, but I knew that I had to start out at a stumbling pace in order to have enough energy over the course of the day to finish the race. At this point, I was already up at the front of the pack within a lead group of 30 or so racers. About 12 minutes into the race, the Heavy Half course split off from the Marathon, and about 10 runners from the lead group took off up the shorter course, leaving 20 or so marathoners to take a right.

Until this point, I had held in my mind the desire to keep a running cadence over the entire course. However, when the guy next to me, a 3 time Leadville Marathon runner, start walking up some of the steeper sections, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and dropped the running cadence. At the time, the pace I set felt very comfortable and easy, but I would later decide that this was the section where I went too fast, too soon.

The first aid station came at about mile 4, and I ran through in 41 minutes. Up to this point, nearly the whole race had been uphill, so I felt good with that time. From there, after another significant uphill, the race course plunges into a loop around Ball Mountain. The short, sharp downhill was followed by a long, relatively gradual uphill, punctuated by the first snow we would see on course. The official course took a jog left and back right to traverse this snowfield, but already runners were cutting off the switchback and heading straight across, as I would on the way back.

The route then hit the only single track we would see the whole day. As a general rule, I feel far more comfortable on the muddy singletrack that we encountered than the rugged dirt roads we had been traversing so far. On those sorts of roads I always picture myself hitting a loose rock at a bad angle and twisting or breaking my ankle, so I slow down. On the single track section, though, I fairly flew along.

I cruised back into the first aid station, which was also the second aid station, as well as the second to last and last aid station, at about 1:10 (?). The course then took a turn down a long, gradual “improved road,” where I concentrated on keeping a fast turnover and minimizing the pounding on my legs. I was now 7+ miles into the race, and running still felt free, easy, and most importantly, slow.

After a few more miles, punctuated by the first water crossing of the day followed by a short uphill, we cruised down into the Res aid station. I start saying “we” here because by this point, the race had settled into the form it would take for much of the day, and I was trading pacing duties with another runner (whose name I never managed to get) with whom I would run for most of the rest of the day. Three was a rather raucous crowd at this station, which was the only one on the course accessible by car.

Until this point, we had been running through the Leadville mining district. Our scenery, save for the Ball Mountain loop, had consisted of mine tailings, old buildings, and pools of water stained by mine runoff. Despite its industrial nature, the area had its own sort of beauty, and it was a fun area to run through.

Now, however, the race turned from the mining district and took on a true alpine feel. At the Res aid station, the race sets its sights upwards and begins the long, steep climb up to Mosquito pass, the high point of the race at 13,184 feet.

When I think about that elevation, I generally think about gasping for air at such an altitude. Up until this point in the race, I had not even noticed that we were at 10,000+ feet the entire time. I did not seem to even be affected by the altitude. Of course, my body was working harder, and I was getting dehydrated and generally depleted more quickly than I realized, and that would come back to haunt me later on. However, at no point in the day did I feel like the altitude was affecting my breathing.

The climb up Mosquito Pass is a monster by just about anybody’s definition (the only possible exception being Matt Carpenter). The pass itself is a rough 4WD road, punctuated by stream crossings and culverts. At points, the grade is as much as 20%. It is long and unrelenting, but the views are spectacular.

I ended up walking much of the climb up to Mosquito Pass. Except for a few spots, it seemed more efficient and a much better idea for the long term than trying, for pride’s sake, to keep up a running cadence. At this point, my plan was still to relax as long as possible, keep my form efficient, and not attempt to really race until I came back to the “improved” dirt road section, which would be uphill on the way back. So I settled in to power hike mode, and ran wherever the trail flattened out for a little while, focusing on keeping the runner in front of me in my sights.

During the climb up the pass, I started passing the slower participants of the Heavy Half race. Each person I passed, most of who made some encouraging comment, gave me a little mental boost that helped keep me moving at a fair pace. One memorable participant, wearing a hot pink and blue outfit, asked “Are you planning on running the (Leadville) 100 this year? Because you look like you know what you’re doing on the uphill.”

Little things like that seem to make all the difference in the world.

Remarkably, after more than 10 miles of racing, this climb felt fairly easy to me. I was not taking a particularly slow pace, but I did not seem to be breathing hard or forcing too much at this point. So when the aid station that would normally be at the top came a mile and a half early due to the snow on the road, I almost went right by it without stopping. Four switchbacks later, I topped out Mosquito pass, was recorded by the race volunteers there, and took off for the pounding descent.

I do not like long descents. I do not like descents with lots of large, loose rocks. I do not particularly like crowded descents. This was all three. There was a lot of pounding, and I felt like I was crawling down the slope. I must have looked better than I felt, though, because everybody climbing up kept saying how fantastic I looked. And I was clearly not going as slowly as I thought, because I caught two runners on the downhill who had taken the turnaround a minute or so ahead of me.

I cruised back into the Res aid station, and heard a brief “Minnesota” from somebody in the crowd. I felt good, shouted out “I’m from DULUTH!” and asked if she would hold my wind jacket. Still feeling pretty good, I ate a piece of watermelon, refilled my water bottle, and took off down the road, having passed one more runner at the station.

I still felt good on the improved road section. In fact, I generally felt better running than walking, and so kept up a running cadence, albeit a slow one, up all but the steepest sections of the road. But I started getting the feeling that my stomach was none to happy with me. Maybe it was the watermelon, maybe it was the gels, maybe it was the change in drinks (why did they have multiple types of electrolyte drinks on the course any way?). Whatever it was, I knew my legs needed fuel, but my stomach didn’t want to take anything in, so I let it slide.

I ran into the “Loop” aid station feeling pretty good, though I had already drained most of my water bottle, and had to refill it again. On the climb out of the station, though, my legs started to quit on me. I had realized that I would be walking a lot of this climb, but even on the flats, I now had difficulty breaking into a run again. On the singletrack portion of the Ball mountain loop, I started being passed by runners who had been behind me until this point. The guy I had been pacing with all day left me behind, then two more runners passed me.

It was definitely the low point of the race.

After the snow crossing, where I slipped, fell, and slid several feet before I could right myself, I slowed to a walk, on a flat, and even downhill portion of the course. Another runner came up from behind, and asked if I needed anything. I still had gels and chews, and so I waved him on, but thought, not for the first time that day, on how nice runners are as a group.

If there was a make or break point to the day, this was it. It was the point where I could decide to give up on my time goal, or even give up on the race entirely. I was in a bad state, with legs that didn’t want to move and a mind that got the first little thought of “what did I get myself in to?”

So I took out a gel, kept walking, and forced myself to get it down. Quitting never really entered my head. Giving up the sub-5 hour goal was a possibility, but I didn’t take it. I hit a smooth, downhill portion, and got my legs moving in something resembling a run again. I still was not feeling great, but the gel helped, and I downed my entire water bottle on the uphill to the aid station.

Mile 22. Save for one or two small sections, it was all downhill from there. I didn’t take the downhill that fast, thinking, as much as I could think at that point, that the last thing I wanted to do was roll or break an ankle in the last 4 miles. At one point, I got confused and was not sure which way to go until two runners coming up from behind pointed me in the right direction.

I kept going. When I hit the point where the two races converged again, I knew that I would achieve both my goals: finishing the race and coming in under five hours. Another racer, one who had run twice before, came up and we cruised back down towards the finish together. He offered to race to the line, but having secured my time goal, I opted not to.

Had I known we were racing for a place in the top 20, I might have felt differently. As it was, I came in 3 seconds behind him, for a 21^st place finish, 3^rd place in my age group, in a time of 4:46:23.1.

Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. I had forgotten to look up at the clock as I passed under the finishing arch, and my own watch was off. I only knew that my watch said 12:46PM, and that meant I was in under 5 hours.

Then came the release. Physically, mentally, and emotionally I was spent. This race was easily the hardest thing I had ever done physically and mentally, and emotionally, it had been a tough week, and with the finish line, everything kind of let loose. I wandered around for an hour or so, going to my car, and back to the finish area, and back to my car. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to stay for the awards ceremony or not. I was in a bit of a daze. Then I realized that I didn’t have to decide. I went back to the condo where I’d stayed the night before to take a shower before deciding.

Ultimately, I left before the dinner and awards ceremony. I learned just today that, for getting third in my division, I would be getting some sort of award (what it is I don’t know). So perhaps I should have stayed.

Over all, I would say the race went reasonably well. For a first marathon effort, I could have done a lot worse.

Things I did well: I took enough fluids, did my best to take enough carbs. I paced myself reasonably well. I did not allow myself to quit when the task ahead seemed overwhelming. I chose to walk the uphills rather than hold to my normal conviction that I should run every step.

Things to improve: preparation-wise, I did not eat enough or take in enough nutrition during my training runs. This left my stomach unprepared for mile 19, when I had been taking in fluids and gels all day, but my stomach didn’t want to take in what my legs needed.

I think I caught the marathon bug. There is something about pushing that hard for that long that is appealing to my personality. I am already looking ahead to my next race: perhaps the inaugural Aspen Marathon on August 27^th should I recover enough. I will consider my options, but I have no desire to run a road marathon.

Why I trail run.

2011-06-12T18:42:00.001-06:00

Some time ago, Anton Krupicka, fellow Boulder resident and Ultra runner extraordinaire, wrote a piece for running times about why he runs trails (you can read it here). It has quickly become another one of his classic pieces, standing alongside the piece he wrote on why he is a minimalist runner. In this particular piece, as is he is wont to do, he gets more existential and philosophical. In my writing, I prefer using stories and examples to get my idea across, and there is a day last week that exemplifies why I love running trails.

It began as a fairly typical morning run for me. Having run for two and a half hours on Saturday, with the Bolder Boulder on Monday, I had felt somewhat sluggish on my run Tuesday morning. By Wednesday, however, I was feeling back to form enough to give Flagstaff a shot. Running up the trail, just a 10-minute run from my office, I again thought how lucky I was to have such great trails within easy reach.

My legs felt strong on the uphill, bounding easily over rocks and roots and hitting a steady, fast cadence up the steep section. But I had not planned to do the whole trail that day, so about two-thirds of the way up I called it good, turned around, and headed back down the mountain.

How I take the downhill depends far more on how my legs are feeling and how much rest they’ve gotten than my approach to the uphill sections normally does. Some days, when I feel particularly good, I fairly fly down the trail, dancing and skipping over rocks and around trees, with my feet touching down for the briefest moments before rising again. In those times, I feel more like I’m dancing than running. I don’t look for a spot to plant my foot, I let my feet glide lightly over the ground, each footfall being used merely as a reference and means of control.

Other days, such as this one, when my quada are a little sore, I opt for a slower, more relaxed approach. Rather than the dancing steps, the downhill becomes slow and inexorable. And last Wednesday I was particularly glad I took that approach.

Coming around a corner at a sedate pace, I found myself face to face with a deer. He was standing smack in the middle of the trail, looking straight across at me with an expression that said, very clearly, “What the hell are you doing here? This is my trail.”

I slowed, stopped, and we looked at each other for a few breaths. H was a young buck, probably a yearling, two years at the most, and his velvet-covered antlers were going to make him a four-pointer at best. With all the brazen confidence of youth, h stood right in my path, not moving as I walked closer. Finally, when I got to within five feet of him, he gave me one last look, and slowly walked up the side of the hill, joining a group of two more young males.

I continued on for the last mile of the downhill, thinking just how rare that moment had been, and how much I love trail running. When you run, you are necessarily a part of the environment, whether that’s a street, a trail, or a track. There is a connection there, one that you lose with the speed of bikes and the enclosure of a car. You move along through a space, smoothly and efficiently, but there is no denying that you are at the same time a part of that space. That connection, and that feeling of efficient motion, is the essence of my love for trail running.

And as if that run were not surreal enough, a mile and a half later, back on the Boulder Creek Path, I saw two runners coming towards me, on the space to the side of the path where I normally run. And sure enough, there was Scott Jurek, in the trail in front of me, just like that brazen buck.

Only fitting, since his nickname to the Tarahumara translates as “deer.”

A surreal experience, and one that I am not likely to forget any time soon.

The Naked Tour

2011-05-10T21:20:00.003-06:00

It has now been four days since The Naked Tour came through Boulder, so I think I had better get this down and posted before I forget about it altogether. As you’ll soon seen, though, that is probably not possible for me.

Context! For those of you who do not know, The Naked Tour is the book signing tour that Christopher McDougall tied to coincide with the paperback release of “Born to Run.” Rather than a normal tour, though, he decided to do something a little different: throughout the tour, he would be joined at different points by other minimalist-type, form-minded runners, usually mentioned in his book. Together they would do the book signing, lead a run, and then do a “cabaret” about running form and technique. The Boulder stop included notables such as Scott Jurek, Eric (check the last name), and Marshall Ulrich in addition to McDougall himself.

I got a message about this from the Boulder Bookstore, and realized that there was no way in hell I could pass up this opportunity. So I duly showed up at the 11AM start, got my copy of “Running on Empty” signed by the author (Ulrich) and waited around for an hour or so before Chris and Scott arrived.

As far as I can remember, I have not mentioned here yet that Scott Jurek was the assistant coach for my high school cross country ski team for a while, when I was just learning. As I read about him more and more in the intervening years, I found it hard to believe that “Coach Jerk” had accomplished all off his various exploits, and that he was by all accounts a very nice guy. I remembered him primarily for yelling at us to do our “tele turns” on the way down hills, which would have made a whole lot more sense had I known then what Telemark Skiing was.

Thank you, Scott. Turns out, here in Colorado I took up Telemark skiing, and your lessons served me well.

So when Scott showed up at the bookstore, I caught him on the way in, looking a little confused as he was unsure of where to go, and held up my old Marshall School XC ski jersey. A bit cheesey, I know, but that’s part of who I am. I directed him upstairs to where the signing was taking place, and went next door to grab a bite and a coffee.

To diverge significantly, Sunday also marked the last day the Bookends Café was in business. This Boulder icon was where I spent many long hours looking for a job and then, once I found one, working on my research for the NWTC at NREL. It was also the place where I wrote the entirety of my Masters thesis. They never gave their reasons for closing, but they will be sorely missed.

After fueling up a bit, we gathered upstairs to plan the run. This was more complicated than expected. Boulder OSMP has a rule that, for groups of more than 25 people, you are required to apply for a permit to use the trails. Well, they informed the Naked Tour of this fact at 5 on Friday, negating even the possibility of getting the proper permits. And, this being Boulder, there were of course more than 25 of us, so we had to split up.

Here we ran into a problem: the route we were taking up Flagstaff was a relatively less-known one. Scott knew where we were going, but Chris did not, so they could not both lead groups up the mountain. So they asked if anybody else knew the route. One person raised their hand, and I’ll give you one guess who it was.

And so, I briefly joined the Naked Tour as a trail guide. As a reward, I got a (very) limited edition Naked Tour running shirt (pics follow), and I also got a tiny bit of notoriety among those who attended.

So we took off. As long as we were on the creek path, there was no problem being in a big group, and we made our way to Eben G. Fine park together, strung out in a long line of runners that reminded me of the days when I used to train with the Bolder Boulder Training Club, now Boldrunning. Once we reached the park, though, we had to split up.

On most trails in Boulder, this would not be a problem, but for whatever reason, few people know the route up Flagstaff from the Creek Path. The route takes Viewpoint trail up the north side of Flagstaff, to Panorama, which traverses the west face, at which point you get on the actual Flagstaff Trail to the summit and the Sunrise Amphitheater, where the Naked Cabaret, as it is called, would hold court.

Chris and Scott decided, naturally enough, to split the group into a fast group and a slower, more strung out group. But Scott and I were the only two who knew where we were going. And, much to my surprise, I was appointed to lead the fast ones to the top.

At the moment, I don’t consider myself to be particularly fast, and the idea of Scott Jurek, THE Scott Jurek, suggesting that I take the fast group to the summit was more than a little intimidating. But, I wasn’t about to say no so, with some quip with the words “assuming I can keep up with them” I took up off up the trail, leading those who considered themselves particularly quick.

For those of you who have not taken the Viewpoint route up Flagstaff, it starts off at a fairly easy slope. We took off at a good clip, talking, laughing, and generally feeling pretty good. After a couple switchbacks, though, the trail takes a definite turn upwards (straight up the side of Flagstaff for a while, in fact). At that point, much of the group started walking.

This honestly surprised me, as I avoid walking on most trails unless I’m out for 15 miles or more. But I slowed my pace a bit and stuck with them, as the gasps started becoming more frequent and more audible. The amount of effort people were putting out was clearly rising rapidly, and we weren’t even a third of the way up the climb yet.

Through most of the climb, I ran with a runner who works at the “Mind, Body, Sole” store in Denver. He had just run the Cheery Creek Sneak 5-miler that morning, and then raced up to Boulder to catch the “once in a lifetime” Naked Tour. We talked generally about minimalist footwear, running in general, and the Colfax Marathon (which he was running in two-weeks’ time).

At each fork in the trail, or road crossing, I stopped and waited to make sure the entire group got headed the right direction. This is particularly critical after the first crossing of Flagstaff road, when there are several forks that are inevitably confusing for the first time runner. I fully expected to get annoyed by the constant waiting, then racing to catch up to the front of the group. But I actually found it rather tun, and somewhat satisfying too.

At the third road crossing, we joined up with a couple local runners who I had seen at the bookstore earlier, but had to head home to change clothes before joining the run. They had just run up the Gregory Canyon route. Remarkably, one of them was running up the trail barefoot, which if you have ever seen the type of trails we have in Boulder is very impressive. They promptly took up station at the front of the group.

The rest of the run went smoothly. The group would string out on the sections where you couldn’t lose the trail, and compress again any time there was a possibility of confusion. On the long last stretch up to the summit area, most people were clearly feeling the climbing we had already done, and many started walking up the log stairs. I still felt remarkably fresh, and so took off to the top with the two runners we met on the way.

And then (once the trailing group had caught up) it was time for the Naket Cabaret at the summit.

The "fast group" at the summit. Scott's girlfriend was nice enough to drive up with the snacks and drinks.

Chris kicked things off, talking mostly about how unexpected the popularity of his book was.

Eric, (I hope I spelled that correctly) was up next. He talked mainly about how he had not planned on training Chris, but Chris was so obviously downtrodden about his running problems that plans changed more than a little.

Marshall Ulrich was up next. He described his new book. I'll post a review of it when I get the chance.

Scott took the last slot. He kept it short and sweet, as it was getting cold up at the summit of Flagstaff. His message basically consisted of "you can do it."

On the way down, I once again took point, and proceeded to fly down the mountain. Nominally responsible for keeping people on the right track again, I mistakenly thought people would probably be able to find their way back down the trail they had just come up. I regularly sprinted ahead to grab some pictures of the stream of runners pouring down Flagstaff.

Runners streaming down Flagstaff. When else are you going to see this? Apparently never, since Chris got a ticket for having too many people on the trails. There was an article about it in the Boulder Daily Camera last week.

This guy is hoping to finish his first 100 miler this year. He got to mile 60 this past year.

It was on one of these sprints that I seem to have lost some people. I took off ahead, to a point I knew would make for some amazing photographs, and camped out for a few seconds before I realized that nobody was coming. I had not stopped at a fork, and people were, understandably, heading down Flagstaff Trail instead of the Panorama trail, whichi is the way we had come up.

After waiting for Marshall Ulrich, of the surgically removed toenails, to catch up so he could direct following runners, I raced down the trail many had mistakenly taken to try and lead any who were confused back to the bookstore. I found one runner who seemed confused, and, trusting that the people who knew Boulder in the lead group could no doubt get them back to the bookstore, I ran with him down 6^th street and back to the bookstore.

Back at the bookstore, the Naked Cabaret continued. Scott answered questions for a while, while Chris signed a bunch of his books for the bookstore to sell later. Unfortunately, as I had other plans for the evening, I had to duck out early and didn’t get the chance to see the rest of the question/answer period, but even so, I had thoroughly enjoyed the day out with the big names, and hope very much to see Scott out on the trails this summer as I extend my distances.

Boulder Distance Classic: Race Report

2011-04-25T18:51:00.001-06:00

The promised race report:

Before pulling out of my apartment complex, I double-checked the weather, and saw that it was 35 at 7:15, and was forecast to be around 40 and dry at the start time of 8:30. Duly prepared for the weather (or so I thought) I drove up to Boulder only to find, as I turned into the Reservoir, that it was snowing.

I parked my car at 7:45, thinking that I might be pushing it just a little, but still probably had plenty of time to get my number and chip, change into my shoes and long-sleeve shirt, stop by the Porta-Potty, and make it to the start line in time for the 15k start time of 8:30. 35 minutes later, at 8:20, I finally got my timing chip, and sprinted a “warmup” over to my car to put on my shoes, sprinting from their to the line for the toilets. At about the same time the gun went off, I made it to the front of the line, knowing that if I did not take care of business now, there was no possibility of running the race I had intended.

A minute later, feeling significantly lighter, I tore straight out of the toilet, up the bank to the starting line, crossed the timing mat, and started my race a minute-thirty after the official start. I realized then that, having no warm up, starting late, and with 200 or so people to pass to get to my pace group in the race, I had every excuse to lay back and either not race the way I planned to or drop out entirely.

I didn’t take the excuse. Late or no, I opted to run exactly the way I planned: even splits, sub-7 minute pace. And I duly started picking off the runners who started in front of me. For the first 3 miles or so of the race, I picked off hordes of runners, sometimes stretched 6 or 7 abreast on the narrow race course (running off into the ditch on the side at times to slip by without disrupting their races: after all, they didn’t miss the start, so why should they have to get out of my way?).

For these few miles, I concentrated on picking my own pace, and not getting over-enthusiastic passing others. After the three-mile mark, I started overheating, not realizing that, in my rush to the starting line, I had completely forgotten to take off my hat (a heavy-duty stocking cap with the Colorado Avalanche “A” on the front: a gift from my girlfriend). I dropped the hat off at the next aid station, and took off down Monarch road.

I took my first split at the 5-mile marker: 34:58, just under 7-minute pace. My legs still felt fairly fresh, but I decided not to press too hard. This was, after all, my first race in over two years.

I was fortunate in this race in that I knew nearly every inch of the course. Back when I was running regularly with the Bolder Boulder Training Club, now Boldrunning, our weekly long runs were regularly held at the reservoir, so I came to be very familiar with the area. In this race, that familiarity allowed me to perfectly parcel out my effort, so that I could run at a 7-min pace with the minimal effort.

The next three miles passed in 6:50, 6:55, and 7:03, respectively. Coming into the last 1.3 miles, I started to (finally) feel the pace, and the fact that this was the longest and fastest I had run in well over two years. My right hamstring started to twinge a bit, and I decided that, rather than make a significant surge, I would coast into the finish in a relatively leisurely 8:53.

Place wise, even starting a minute-thirty back, I came in 4^th in my age group and around 44^th overall. The winner and second-place finisher both came in under 50 minutes (I know where I stand in the relative rankings). The most important takeaways from this race are that my pacing at this time is excellent, my fitness is better than I could have hoped and, given the complete lack of speedwork or any sort of taper for this race, I ran a respectable race.

Race

2011-04-23T19:22:00.001-06:00

I ran my first race in over two years (since the Summit for Life, December 2008, I believe) today: the 15k at the Boulder Distance Classic. It went well. More to come later.

Up Shadow, Down Fern

2011-04-03T13:37:00.002-06:00

Looking out the window of my apartment, towards where Longs Peak would rise if it could be seen, and seeing the inch or so of snow on the ground, I find it hard to believe that I ran my long run this morning in shorts and a t-shirt. Not only that, the run topped out at 8549'.

I was inspired by reading Anton Krupicka's blog to run up Shadow Canyon, starting at the South Mesa Trailhead again, top out South Boulder, and then hop over to Bear Peak and from there down Fern Canyon. Why I was inspired to run a route that even that paragon of fitness described as both "gnarly" and, paraphrasing somewhat, a hellacious climb I would rather not think about. However, I made the plan, and duly left the house, somewhat late, at 8:30 this morning to do just that.

I got out of the car to a near-perfect running day: cloudy, with a bit of rain in the forecast, and temperatures running around 55-60 degrees. Counting on it being at least somewhat colder 3000 feet further up the mountains, I wore my somewhat thicker t-shirt thinking that would probably suffice for the short time I would be at the summit. Properly equipped, or so I thought, I took off up the road-like Mesa Trail to Shadow Canyon Trail.

To my surprise, given their lackluster performance yesterday and despite the long week I put in, my legs felt quite good on the first stretch, and I made it up to the Shadow Canyon cutoff two full minutes faster than I finished the same stretch last week. As I took the cutoff up the canyon, I was thinking that the trail seemed quite wide and easy, much to my surprise. A second surprise came when I saw a shape dart across the trail in front of me, and I realized that it was a squirrel without a tail. Something about that just seemed rather sad to me. The trail changed a little over half a mile farther on, where the trail passes an old hut and immediately switches to a rocky, steep singletrack reminiscent of Royal Arch.

The trail continues in this way another 1.2 miles up to the saddle between South Boulder and Bear. Through this section I surprised myself again by being able to keep up a running cadence far more than I had expected. From the descriptions I had read, I expected to have to power hike the majority of this section, but ended up running about 75% of the time, urged on by the sometimes disbelieving, but always encouraging shouts of the hikers I passed.

This climb seemed to last far longer than the time it actually took (I won't tell you how long, it was almost embarrassing to me), but eventually, with a husky running by my side for the last stretch, I made it up to the saddle. I took a moment to rest, and wait for the husky's human companion to make it up to the saddle, then took off up the trail to South Boulder.

It was here that I encountered the first patches of trampled snow still lingering from the mild winter we had this year. In my road flats, I opted to pick my way carefully up these, and soon came to the boulder pile that marks the top of South Boulder. Here I was rewarded with a fantastic view of the continental divide, and found myself wishing I had not gone minimalist today and had brought my camera. The wind was pushing the mist up through the saddle between South Boulder and a smaller neighbor, and it reminded me of Muir Woods in California, with much smaller trees.

As I stood at the top of my first "summit" for the day, the first flakes of snow began to drift down from the clouds, seemingly only a hundred feet above me. I decided to hightail it over to Bear, top it out, and head down before it got any worse. Unfortunately it got worse as I was heading over to Bear, and by the time I got near the summit, it was windy and snowy enough that I decided to skip scrambling up the boulders to the actual summit, and head down Fern Canyon.

I had forgotten how steep and rocky the first section down the north side of Bear Peak was. There were a few times I almost lost it, but I managed to keep my feet down to Fern Canyon, where the trail heads down towards Mesa through a pine forest. I have always loved this section, particularly heading down it, since the prevalence of pine covering the trail means it is both sheltered from the elements and soft and springy: easy on the legs going down relative to other trails.

Soon enough, I took Shanahan down to the Mesa trail and turned towards the car. I surprised myself again on this section by having far more left than I expected, and practically flying the flats and the slight uphills, although the downhills seemed harder than usual. When I broke through the trees and out to the last, long, curving stretch of the wind and rain, now mixed with snow even at the lower elevations, hit me full in the face, soaking and chilling me instantly.

At this point I decided to book it. I took off, far faster than I thought I'd be able to even on the downhill. I apologize to anybody who may have gotten some gravel kicked towards them, but I fairly flew down the last mile+ of trail to the car, where I promptly turned the heat up full blast, stripped off my wet shoes and shirt, and drove home to fill the rest of my day with spring cleaning, a little laundry, and possibly more than a little Mario Kart Wii.

As I glanced at my watch when I got to the car I realized several things: first, I had run a full hour longer than my long run last week, yet felt almost the same as far as fatigue goes despite the fact that I put in more mileage this week. Second, that meant I am in much better shape than I had previously thought. Third, I had run the section from North Shanahan back to the car a full 6 minutes faster than last week. And fourth, I am going to be very sore tomorrow.

Group Running

2011-03-29T19:50:00.003-06:00

I, like most runners I know, generally run on my own. There was a time a few years ago when I regularly ran with a training club, and over the years there have been a few people I would regularly go out for runs with. But for the most part, my day-to-day runs are done alone. Normally, I enjoy company on my runs, but my experience today reminded me just why I normally run solo.

I got into work a bit later than usual this morning, since my girlfriend was heading to San Francisco for a grad school interview and I wanted just a little extra time with her. The second I got to my workspace, my coworker poked his head over the divider and asked if I would like to go for a run at lunch.

Naturally, I said yes.

As I said, I often relish company on a run, but there are times when I do not enjoy it as much.

We stepped out of the door into a beautiful, crisp, sunny spring day and my first warning. The two guys (and the fact that they're guys is important) started talking about where we should run today, and we settled on the Sanitas Valley Trail. I was not planning on doing any sort of elevation that day, and the run itself would be longer than I had planned for the day, but I decided to hang with them any way.

Both set out at a surprising clip on the Creek path. Not to sound cocky, but I rarely feel at all slow in comparison to other runners. When out on the trails, I am almost never passed by anybody else, and I run in Boulder. So when I say they took off at a good clip, they were booking it. I was still feeling the week before, which was my longest in over a year, and the pace felt uncomfortably fast. And for my second mistake, I opted to stay with them.

When we cut off up through Red Rocks on our way to Sanitas, I quickly fell behind the lead runner, though I stayed ahead of the third guy. Over the ridge and down to the start of the Valley Trail, we ran together, but as soon as we headed up Dakota ridge, my two coworkers pushed the pace.

My legs just weren't having it, and I was getting annoyed with the pace pushing. As I mentioned in my last post, last week was my longest in a very long time (ended up being 27 miles, still not impressive, but much better than I've been doing), and my legs were definitely feeling it yesterday and today. So, in my first good move of the day, I let them take off, and proceeded up the trail at my own pace.

As it turns out, my running partners faded a bit towards the top, and while I did not end up catching up, I closed the gap a bit at the top. And I did it without pushing my own pace.

On the downhill back to work, I easily caught up with them at an easy pace.

I should have realized this might be an issue when I agreed to the run. First, the guys I ran with today are sporadic runners, but they are in very good shape nonetheless. So while they are not as steady runners as I am, they can hit a good tempo, and their legs are generally fresher than mine will be unless I am tapering. Second, they are guys. I have generally found myself happier running with girls (for some reason I can never call people my own age men or women, it's always guys or girls). Guys have a tendency to make things into a competition. Girls, as a general rule, seem to more easily relax and hit an easy pace when necessary. That is why, in the past several years, I have run far more with girls. The only guy I have run with is a trail running friend of mine who is, like me, comfortable taking it easy.

Will I run with these guys again? Probably. Will I take the lessons I learned today with me? Hopefully, although I cannot make any promises on that count.

Back to the Trails

2011-03-26T11:46:00.002-06:00

This morning, despite the drama of the night before (I'll get to it later), I decided to head up to the South Mesa Trailhead for a good, longish trail run. My original plan was to head up Shadow Canyon and hit South Boulder Peak and, if I was feeling alright, Bear Peak afterwards.

After a good 15 minutes of very slow running up the first long, slow haul on South Mesa Trail, I got to the cutoff to Shadow Canyon to find that the whole area was closed on account of breeding raptors. Discouraged and a bit annoyed by this at first, it may have ended up being a blessing in disguise: even without the climb up South Boulder, I probably put more climbing in today than I have in the past month of running around Westminster and on the Creek path.

I ended up going much farther than I anticipated, hitting one of my normal turnaround points when coming from the other direction and heading back for a good eight mile loop. That puts me a bit over 22 for the week. With a decent run tomorrow, I should easily hit my 26 mile goal, assuming I don't suffer any ill effects from the run today.

Suffice to say it was wonderful to get back on some honest trails today. For those who haven't been there, the south Mesa trail starts on a long, gradual uphill smooth enough to drive a Honda Civic up if you wanted to and it weren't several forms of illegal. Around two miles (maybe?) in, the trail evolves into double track, and then some rather gnarly track-and-a-half. If I had taken my camera along today, I'd show a picture to demonstrate. I soon found myself wishing for actual trail running shoes, as my Brooks Green Silence racing flats just don't cut it on the Boulder trails.

All told, and as usual, my legs felt far better on the trails than they do on the roads, or what passes for trails, around here. This is despite the undoubtably more difficult nature of the running. I think it has more to do with the varied nature of the terrain, which involves a larger array of muscles than you use on the road (stabilizers especially). All in all, it was a great way to top out what was already an excellent week of running. My mileage is increasing steadily, but not too quickly, and I have hopes of getting some excellent runs in this summer.

What surprised me on my run today, tying in with my last post, was the number of people running on the trails with headphones. I find this unfathomable: why would you disconnect yourself from your run that way? You're running on some of the most beautiful trails around, and listening to them is at least as important as seeing and feeling them. I even saw two people obviously running together, each with their headphones in.

I cannot understand that, and it will never be me.

As for the aforementioned drama, we brought home a new cat last night. So far, the introduction to our, admittedly bad, cat has gone reasonably well. Far better than I expected, actually, as our cat has not yet physically attacked the new adoption. However, the combination of cats did not make for the best night's sleep, and had me a bit worried about how the run would go today.

And the introduction continues. It seems to have actually taken a downhill turn this morning. Last night Jacques, our aforementioned bad cat, has hissed and growled at Gabby (assuming that's the name we switch to, rather than Butters). This morning, he proceeded to hiss at me as well.

This is not ok, clearly, and we shall have to find a way to stop it.

The Headphone Question

2011-03-21T17:19:00.003-06:00

When people meet me in a running context, or learn about my running in an outside contest, the question that almost inevitably comes up (besides the "Why do you run?" question) is: "Do you wear headphones/listen to music when you run?" Following that up is the also inevitable "Why not?" or "How do you not go crazy without music?"

There are two primary reasons I don't listen to external sources of music while I run. Note the careful phrasing there, since it is critical to the second reason.

The first reason is put in perspective by an occurrence on my run today. I was, as is my routine, running along the creek on my lunch break. I had spotted a girl running in front of me several minutes prior, and had been steadily catching up. When I did, we were on a relatively narrow (track and a half?) stretch of trail.

Just before I went to pass her, she moved aside for two people running in the other direction. I dutifully said "coming by on your left!" and to my surprise, she failed to move and continued running down the center of the path. This seemed to me very odd, and forced me to run up off of the trail, something I try to avoid doing, and pass her on the right, also something I try to avoid doing.

As I passed, I noted that she had headphones in, and was therefore blissfully unaware, and (most likely unintentionally) discourteous to me.

That is the first reason I do not wear headphones while I run, or do anything else other than sitting on the bus or at work. Headphones removes you from your situation. It isolates you in a way that most people are generally unaware of. When I run, I often am forced to run in cities, and therefore have to deal with traffic. Being able to hear the traffic is critical to my safety and to others'. Even on trails, as demonstrated today, headphones isolate you from outside feedback, such as other runners (or bikers!) coming up behind you.

Added to this, and part of the same reason, is that when I run, I love to get the whole experience. I do not like to be removed from the environment in which I am running. Hearing the birdsong, the wind, the traffic, other people, is a critical part of my run. And combining it with the sights, smells, and even the tastes completes the experience.

The second reason simply negates the last question. The assumption people make is that, without an external source, I am without music on my runs. The simple fact of the matter is that I cannot remember the last time I ran when I did not have a song of some sort running through my head. I always have music, it just doesn't always come from outside.

In a simple form, I do not wear headphones when I run because I do not need them, and I find they detract from the run. I run because I love running, and I do not need, or want, anything to distract me from it.

Fitting it all in.

2011-03-12T12:16:00.002-07:00

I realized yesterday that it had been far too long since I had written here. In all fairness, I have not been able to get as much writing, or running, as I would like in lately. I started a new job three weeks ago, and have been sorting out my schedule ever since. I realize that I have joined the majority of American writers and runners who have to make time in their lives for their passions as well as their work. There are the lucky few for whom those two match up perfectly, but for most it is a constant challenge.

For now, I will focus on the challenge of running, and otherwise keeping fit, while working and, if you are like most of the country, commuting. My new job is reasonably close to my apartment, but still far enough away that the commute is significant: half an hour or more in a car and around an hour by bus. I have chosen to take the bus for a variety of reasons, the most pertinent being expense, the lack of stress, and my general philosophy.

The simple math is this: I spend two hours a day on the bus, or waiting for a bus, and approximately eight hours or more at work. This schedule leaves much less time for running than I am used to having. I am not willing to sacrifice my running time for work, so when do I fit it in?

For the first week and a bit, I tried running first thing in the morning, right after I wake up. This failed for a variety of reasons. The first reason is that I am almost always stiff and sore immediately after I wake up, which does not make for a great run. Second, I usually wake up to a grumbling stomach, which leaves me with little fuel for a run longer than about three miles. Running in the morning also tends to make the whole morning that much more hectic.

So I thought I would try running after I get home from work. I found more problems with this method. Again, by the time I get home from work, I generally am ready to make and eat dinner as soon as possible. A half-hour run and subsequent shower push dinner to seven at the earliest. By the time I would be ready to run after dinner, it could be as late as nine at night, leaving me to run right before bed.

Fortunately, I work in Boulder, Colorado, a rather unique place in several respects. There seem to be more runners per capita in Boulder than anywhere else I have experienced. This means several things. There are far more trails in Boulder than most cities, whether you prefer bike paths or, as I do, more technical trails. Wherever you happen to be in Boulder, there is a trail within easy running distance.

The number of runners in Boulder, and athletes in general, also means that people expect you to be an athlete. My office is equipped with a changing room and a shower for those of us who choose to exercise from work. And that is just what I have begun to do.

Most days, I run around lunch time. This allows me to get much of my work done in the morning, when I am at my best mentally. Similarly, it allows me to get outdoors at lunch, refreshing myself in the middle of the day. I also seem to think and work better after I run, which in turn allows me to get more done in the afternoon than I might otherwise.

This system is working so well for me that, far from not getting enough running in, I am now at risk of running too much too soon and injuring myself. I have had to cut down on the length of my runs in the past few days so I do not overdo it.

That is my solution to the question of when to fit my running in. As for my writing, which is also very important to me, I have not found a good solution yet. I find myself wishing that I had actually gotten the smaller version of the MacBook Air, so that I might get writing in on the bus and during downtime at work. As it is, I always bring two books with me to help pass the time.

New Website

2011-02-21T13:52:00.003-07:00

For anybody looking for one of my longer, introspective posts: prepare to be disappointed. Some point in the near future I will tell the story of trying out snowboarding for the first time last weekend, but right now I am limiting myself.

I found a new website this morning that anybody interested in the general nature of this blog might find interesting. It's called VentureThere.com and it features articles and blogs on all the various adventure sports out there.

The first blog post I read was about 10 Rules for running with your dog. As I hope to get a dog in the near future, and hope to run with my hypothetical dog, it presented a few good tips for me. As I find more of interest on the site, I'll try to link to a few more good posts here.

Fate or Choice?

2011-02-14T13:10:00.003-07:00

A thought struck me on my run today: was I destined to be a distance runner, or was it by choice?

The answer is that I am not sure. For a long time I thought it was a choice. For most of high school, I was actually a sprinter. I have always had natural speed in the short distances. I was the fastest player on my soccer teams from as long ago as I can remember. When I joined the track team in eight grade, I naturally gravitated towards the sprinting team and, dislocated hip notwithstanding, I did fairly well.

I continued sprinting for the next three years, and by 10th and 11th grade I was regularly performing quite well, particularly in the long jump and some of the longer sprints. It was not until my senior year of high school that I opted into longer distances. I was unsuccessful at first, for a variety of reasons including the orthotics problems I mentioned in a prior post.

Looking back now, however, I wonder if it was fate, in the form of genetics, that led me ultimately to longer and longer distances.

The first time I recall competing in any sort of running events was when I was in England for my Kindergarten year. I only have vague recollections, but there are pictures of me performing rather well in my school's athletics day. I am not certain this is true, but I get the distinct impression that I probably did well during the latter half of those races, which was a pattern that would repeat itself throughout my life.

Over the next several years, I did not race very often, but I was always on a soccer team. I did not necessarily like running, but I was always quick. When I next competed in an honest race I believe I was in fourth grade. Every year one of the local high school tracks hosted a junior track meet. I did not race the "long" races (200 and 400m) but I did well in the 100. And unless I am much mistaken, I did very well in the second half of the race.

The pattern continued throughout the next several years. I noticed time and again that I could keep running throughout a soccer game without as much trouble as the rest of my teammates. This was a distinct advantage for me playing stopper (a central defender who generally ranges over the entire field). It also allowed my coaches to make full use of my primary ability: my extraordinarily long throw-in. By the time I was a senior in high school, I was able to hit the far goalpost from the half-line of the field, making teams reluctant to ever play the ball out of bounds. My speed and endurance allowed me to use this ability and still get back to defend if necessary.

The first time I ran a mile, I should have realized that I was destined for distance. We ran the dreaded "mile run" for gym class: 11 laps of the basketball court inside. Without realize at the time what it might mean, despite never having run more than 400 meters at a stretch before, and despite the less-than-ideal "track," I ran the mile in 7 minutes flat, leaving my classmates far behind.

That accomplishment notwithstanding, I proceeded the next year to join the sprinting team in track, primarily because that's what most of my friends were doing. I did well enough, placing in some events, and anchoring my relay teams. My spring season in 8th grade was cut short when I dislocated my hip anchoring the 4x200m relay.

I distinctly remember parents in the stands telling me to "walk it off."

Being young, I recovered fairly quickly, with at least one relapse. By the next spring, I was again running with the sprint team. When once again it was time for the "Presidential Fitness Tests," I ran the mile with my friend from the sprinting team. We finished with a time of 6 minutes this time, 30 seconds back from one of the distance runners in our grade. Again, I should have realized that I would be a good distance runner.

Naturally, I did not. I continued sprinting and in 10th grade had a breakout year. I started placing regularly in major meets in the long jump. I started anchoring both the 4x100 and 4x200 teams, when my coach discovered that I didn't want to relinquish a place once I had it. Had I been paying attention, I might have noticed that I was also quite good at the 400, and in fact the longer the race was, the better I did.

I did not notice this fact, and was named captain of the sprint team in what turned out to be a disappointing Junior track season. It was not until the next fall, when I started having knee problems, that two pivotal events happened. First, my doctor prescribed running to strengthen my knees, and second, possibly more importantly, I started dating a distance runner.

I got demoted that spring. I joined the distance runners, and so was no longer a captain. That was all to the good, as I was again plagued by injuries that season. But something had changed. I was now a distance runner to the core.

The pattern still continues: the longer the distance I run, the better I do. I did well in the 1000 meters in college. When I recovered from my broken ankle several years ago, I started running 5ks and 10ks, and did very well. Then I ran my first half marathon, which started with a 1.5 mile, 1500 foot climb up the side of a ski hill, and finished in the top 10% of a stacked field.

I have found that there is more to the pattern even than I thought. It is not simply that I perform better with increasing distance, I get better with increasing difficulty in general. Who knows what might be next? I am thinking of trying yet longer trail races, or possibly the Pikes Peak Ascent. But I can only conclude that, for me, it was fate and genetics that led me to distance running. Looking back at my own running history, I can't come to any other conclusion.

Winter Running Tips

2011-02-01T10:47:00.002-07:00

I said yesterday that winter had returned with a vengeance. Well, they say revenge is a dish best served cold, and I think Mother Nature agrees. The high today is -1 with a significant. Nevertheless, I duly ran outside this morning.

It occurred to me after finishing my post yesterday that, if I encourage people to run outside on the coldest days in the winter, I should probably give some tips on how to do so safely. This morning gave me the opportunity to demonstrate this. So without further ado, here are some things I keep in mind. They are not necessarily scientific, but they work for me.

The major idea is preparation: you have to be ready for it. This includes clothing, of course. But it also includes preparing your body, and lest I forget, your mind.

Clothing: I heard a suggestion the other day to "dress like a bank robber." It sounds silly, but it's true. On days where it gets below zero Fahrenheit, exposed skin can freeze in a matter of minutes, particularly with any sort of wind. My rule of thumb for dressing is that I would like, for any run, to be about as warm as I am in shorts and a shirt in 55 degree, cloudy weather. But always remember it's easier to take off a layer that you end up not needing than going without it. More specifically, here is what I like to wear:

Head: I wear a hat when it gets below freezing. Anything down to 10 degrees and it's a thin Smartwool number. Below that, and I wear a fleece hat. For days below -10 or -20, I might wear both. I always wear sunglasses of some sort, which serve to provide a barrier between my eyes and the wind. Were I to live in a colder place, I might consider goggles that would not fog up and freeze. And on my neck, I wear a Buff, which is a thin neck-muff type protector that is thin enough to breathe through if necessary. On particularly cold days, I put it up over my nose to cover my face. This serves the dual purpose of capturing moisture and reintroducing it into your lungs. Otherwise the dry, cold air can be quite the shock.

Torso: Today I wore a thick Asics underlayer beneath a thin GoLite wind shell. I rarely wear more than two layers, as I overheat easily. The wind shell has pit-zips, which allow you to cool off somewhat without removing the wind protection provided by the shell.

Hands: Down to 25, I wear thin gloves designed for bicycling or just liner gloves. Below that, I prefer Lobster glove, which bridge the gap between mittens and gloves by splitting a mitten down the middle. Pearl Izumi and Swix make good versions. Today I wore liner gloves inside the Lobster gloves, which worked well.

Legs: Above freezing I almost always wear shorts. Below I have two pairs of running tights: a thin pair by GoLite and a thick pair by XC. If it's particularly windy I will wear windpants of some sort over tights or long underwear. If particularly cold, moreso than today, I will wear long underwear under the XC tights.

Feet: Feet are key to any runner. Don't neglect them. I wear Smartwool PhD socks in my shoes and have not had trouble with cold feet, though my toes are not as sensitive to the cold as some people's may be. And, for traction, I have a pair of "Get-a-Grips." They are rubber outsoles that strap onto your shoe, and have six tiny carbide spikes for grip. Some prefer YakTrax, but I find they put odd pressure points on the sole of my foot. For snowy trail runs, I have a pair of Kahtoola Microspikes, which are close to being crampons of the sort mountaineers might use.

Body: The first point in preparing your body is hydration. Most runners pay better attention to hydration in the summer than the winter. This is a common mistake. The dry air in the winter sucks water out of your lungs and actually can dehydrate you more quickly than the summer sun. It is equally important to hydrate before and after your run in the winter.

The second point in preparing your body is getting a good warm up in. Do not stay indoors too long once you have your cold weather gear on: you risk overheating and then leave yourself at risk to get chilled outside. Rather, as soon as you are ready, step out the door. The cold will always be a shock, expect this. Once you get over the initial shock, or even beforehand, start running slowly. As you warm up, you can increase your pace to whatever workout you are planning that day.

Mind: This ties in with body. The cold is always a shock. There is no getting around the fact that, when you step out the door in below-zero weather, your body is not happy. Acknowledge this fact, accept it, and expect it. Once you get outside and warmed up, it is much easier to keep going.

The second point in the mind category is pay attention. Running in the cold is all well and good as long as you pay attention to what your body is telling you and act accordingly. If your toes are getting numb, go home. If you start shivering and can't warm up, go home and take a warm, not hot, shower. Don't ignore what your body and mind are telling you.

I have no better place to put the next tip, but it seems to tie in with the previous point so I will place it here: take care to plan your route. In cold weather, whatever length of run you might be planning, stay a short run from home. That way if you get in any sort of trouble, you can quickly retreat with minimal consequences.

In some other post, probably in the next several days, I will tell a story about a run where I ignored the above advice. Suffice to say it was not pretty, and the consequences were lasting.

Winter

2011-01-31T11:16:00.002-07:00

Winter returned to the Front Range with a vengeance this morning. I awoke at 6:30 to a misty, icy scene with a temperature of 25 degrees. This ice fog left 1/8" of ice on every surface outside, which took almost 10 minutes to clear from my girlfriend's car. By the time I started out on my run at 10Am, the temperature had dropped to 14 degrees Fahrenheit, and it had started snowing, disguising the layer of ice on the roads and sidewalks.

Nevertheless, I bundled up, strapped my carbide spikes on my shoes, and headed out the door to pound a little pavement. It struck me as I started out into a brisk east wind that many, if not most, runners have difficulty finding the motivation to run, inside or out, on the worst days of the winter. If you run outside, you're cold. Treadmill runs, on the other hand, are rarely fun or exciting. It seems a catch-22.

I have never had a problem with winter running. Part of the reason for this is no doubt that I am a Minnesotan native, and have experienced a lifetime of cold weather. But there are more reasons that I believe translate more readily to the average runner. With the proper mindset, winter can help motivate runners, rather than take away their motivation.

I have distilled my thoughts to three points.

First, think of the other less-than motivated runners. Chances are good that, if you are hesitant to step out the door into the cold, nearly everybody else is thinking the same thought. Many of them will no doubt opt out of running, and in the doing lose fitness. Every mile you run on such a day is money in the bank, and translates on race day into those crucial extra second you need to pull out the win, or PR, or whatever your race goal.

Second, winter provides an adversary. The very things that make winter running so daunting, the cold, the snow, the gray skies, make great motivators in themselves. They give you something to strive against, an enemy to beat. And a good enemy is the best motivation you can hope for.

Third, and my favorite, is that it can be really fun to be seen as a little nuts. If you go out running in 15-degree weather with 5 inches of snow on the ground and more falling, people will think you're crazy (and they might be right). But those are my favorite runs. I recall one particular incident, two years ago now, when a snowstorm hit in Boulder and I headed out for a short run. Halfway through, a car full of what I can only believe were college students pulled along side me and, rolling down the window, yelled at me to "go home!" Taking this as a challenge, I picked up my pace and raced them to the next stop sign, half a mile distant, and beat their car by over a block. It remains one of my favorite runs.

There are more reasons that winter is a great motivation to run. Running in the cold burns more calories. Running in the snow strengthens your stabilizer muscles. Running in the winter is starkly beautiful. The three reasons I listed above, however, are the ones that tend to get me out the door on cold, snowy mornings.

And I am going to need the motivation tomorrow and Wednesday, when the temperature is not forecast to break 0 Fahrenheit.

Frustration.

2011-01-26T14:44:00.003-07:00

Whether it is due to illness or injury, or simply not progressing as quickly as you would like, frustration is a state that every athlete has to deal with eventually. Having had my fair share of frustration, one might think I can deal with it, no problems. I only wish that were the case.

There are times I deal with it well, and times I do not do so well. Several years ago now, I had a very difficult year. I dislocated my shoulder at the end of September that year, and after going to the ER and the seeing a surgeon, was informed that I needed surgery ASAP. This was not new information for me: my dad had both shoulders operated when he was roughly the age I was at the time. I had lived much of my life assuming that, at some point, I would have to surgically fix my shoulders.

So on November 8th of that year, I had the required surgery. It was more invasive than most, but then my shoulder, as my doctor so elegantly put it, reminded him of "an old, stretched out gym sock."

Pure poetry.

Fortunately for me, my dad was on sabbatical from the University where he teaches that year, and so was on hand for the surgery and first several days the aftermath. It helped more than I can say to have somebody with me who had been through the same thing.

Of course during this period I could not run, but that does not mean I could not exercise. And that is the central idea behind this post. Even if you cannot engage in your favorite activity, be it running, basketball, skiing or any other sport, there is almost always an option.

I used two tactics to stay in relatively good shape after my surgery. First, I had recently acquired an exercise bike, in anticipation of the surgery (in fact I almost dislocated my shoulder again bringing it into my apartment). With that, I was able to get in a biking workout every day. Second, I walked to work every day as soon as I was able. It about two miles each way. Between these two, I was able to keep quite fit during the first two months after surgery.

Then a second injury came out of the blue. On a Friday night, mid-January, the same week my brother broke his back in a ski accident, I slipped on a patch of ice walking home from the grocery store and felt something "snap" in my ankle. Stupidly, both thinking and hoping that it was just a sprain, I walked home, a route which just happened to take me past the ER.

On painfully reaching my house, I downed a couple IBPF, elevated my foot, and commenced icing. The pain did not subside as it would have with a sprain, and I realized that I had probably broken something. The ER confirmed that I had snapped the lowest piece of my fibula off. The broken piece was now floating fully separated from the rest of the fibula, raising concern that I would have to undergo more surgery to reattach the pieces.

When I called in on Monday to my PT, who I now knew quite well, and told her that I would have to miss my scheduled appointment because I'd broken my leg, it was, according to the rest of her office, the first time she had sworn at work.

Here I have to thank my doctor, the same surgeon who performed so admirably in my shoulder surgery. He took a look at the X-Ray from the ER, took a couple more of his own, and decided not to operate. In his words he "didn't really want to have to cut [me] open again." There was over a millimeter separating the two pieces, placing it on the border between operating and leaving it be. My doctor, a surgeon who would have made quite a bit off the resulting surgeries, recommended against it.

As I said above, I cannot thank him enough. That surgery would have added months to my recovery, and might not have allowed me to run distance any more. As it happened, it healed perfectly. And in the meantime, I changed from being annoyed about my shoulder surgery to thankful for it. The therapy required for the shoulder required me to keep my whole upper body in shape, and helped me get through the next months.

That is not intended to discount the part my friends played in my recovery. Each and every friend I had in the area stepped up beyond anything I could have hoped for, offering rides whenever I needed one, company or solitude when I wanted it, and even home-cooked dinners.

The point I am trying to get across is this: injury and illness happen. They are (almost) inevitable. At the moment, I have a bothersome tendon in my left foot, on the outside of the bottom. It has been bugging me for the past several days, but I have been able to run on it up to today, and came back frustrated and wincing from my half-mile run. But you cannot let the frustration win. My response was to declare this my day off from running, and work my upper body and do a little yoga instead. My foot is already feeling much better with a little icing and a good dose of rest.

And as a result of the frustration of four years ago, I have something to compare every other minor frustration to and tell myself "it's not that bad."

If I could get through that and come back stronger than ever, I can get through just about anything.

The Orthotics Question

2011-01-18T14:12:00.002-07:00

My favorite column in the New York Times posted a new article yesterday. The Personal Best column is updated inconsistently at best, rarely at worst, but never fails to interest me and pique my curiosity. This post is no different. You can read it here.

I myself have worn orthotics for most of my life. It started when I came back from England at the age of 6 with horrible heel pain. My doctor took one look at me and said "You've got flat feet!"

So started the regimen. For the next six years or so I had to get special shoes, regularly making the trip down to the "Stride Rite" store where a very helpful and friendly old man would patiently fit us in the "correct" shoes to support our admittedly awful feet. Years later, the same man would help me pick out my first suit, a task for which he was eminently, if you'll pardon the pun, suited. Then, when we were old enough that we would not go through shoe sizes quite so quickly, we were fitted with custom orthotics, made possible by my mother's discretionary health fund.

I started with soft orthotics, as it was deemed that hard orthotics would injure my feet and inhibit development. When the time was right, I went to see our family orthopaedist (if that's the right term) Sharie. She took one look at my leg alignment and said "that's the worst case I've ever seen."

Sharie was never much for bedside manner.

Soon enough, my plaster casts were made, and my orthotics duly ordered.

I might point out that this was also the first year I started distance running. It arose, unlikely though it may seem, out of a knee problem. My orthopedic surgeon looked at me and decided I had a condition called tendonopathy, in which the achilles tendon is gradually replaced by scar tissue. Along with a regimen of strengthening exercises, he suggested I run. As my girlfriend at the time was an avid and quite talented distance runner, I took to this quite quickly. That is still the only instance I have heard of in which a doctor suggested running to help fix a knee problem.

In due course, my orthotics arrived, and I joined the distance group on the track team. From the position of captain of the sprinting team the year before, I now took a demotion to a low rung on the distance totem pole. I mentioned my orthotics to my coach, and in the first statement I had heard disparaging orthotics he said "I don't believe in them. We'll get to the why of that later." This would not last long, as my orthotics initially resulted in significant arch pain, and then hip problems took me out for the rest of my senior season.

Nonetheless, I continued to run, with my orthotics, and for many years this worked. I ran and walked in those same orthotics for almost eight years. I set every single PR wearing those orthotics, from the 800 (1:58) up to the 10k(36 flat). Inevitably, they reached the point where there was more duct tape than insole remaining, and I decided to have new ones made at the University of Colorado.

As I might have expected given prior experience, the arrival of my new orthotics was accompanied by a host of new leg problems. I figured these were temporary and just tried to trudge through them. I tried for a year, and never got back into the kind of shape I had been in prior to the new inserts.

Then the FiveFingers started becoming popular, and after many nudges, with great trepidation, I bought a pair and started training myself to run, for all intents and purposes, barefoot. To my great surprise, my alignment-related joint pain disappeared immediately! It was replaced by a far more familiar and friendly pain: muscle-building pain.

Now, after six months of the FiveFingers, I have returned to using shoes for most of my training. I switched back not for the support shoes provide, as I am now a big proponent of strengthening feet and ankles rather than further weakening them with overly-supportive shoes, but for the cushioning. Running barefoot is all well and good on softer surfaces: tracks, trails, and grass fields are all excellent places for that. But for bike paths and roads, the cushioning shoes provide is well worth it.

So thank you, NYT, for confirming, or at least supporting, my suspicion that orthotics are not science after all, but still, so many years on, speculation. I, for one, will keep working on my foot and ankle strength, and keep running minimally all the time, and barefoot whenever possible.

A Quiet Christmas Morning in the Minnesota Snow

2011-01-13T12:38:00.006-07:00

There is a song, well known here in Colorado, called "A Colorado Christmas." It goes something like:

The closest thing to heaven on this planet that I know

Is a quiet Christmas Morning in the Colorado snow.

I had not heard it before I moved out to Colorado myself, but having headed back home for Christmas this year, I think if you replace "Colorado" with "Minnesota," it is much closer to heaven in my book. Sure, it might be bitterly cold, but there is nothing in my book to compare to Minnesota in the winter.

This particular post is almost a month overdue, as Christmas was almost three weeks ago. But bear with me, and I promise pretty pictures.

As I mentioned above, I headed home to northern Minnesota this year for Christmas. Before I left, my parents mentioned the possibility of me renting skis while I was home. This was one of those moments that hits you upside the head with a "well, why didn't I think of that (for the past 9 years)?" It was a perfect idea. Skiing is a fantastic workout in itself, it would get me outside in different areas where I could not run, and, since my foot had been hurting, it would allow me to incorporate a low-impact workout into my training while I was home. It also solved the problem of running in the snow, which is difficult and sometimes dangerous.

So the day after I got home, we stopped by our local ski shop on the way home from some Christmas errand or other, and picked up some fish-scale classic skies.

For those who don't know, most classic skis use what is called "kick wax" to grip on the snow, which then lifts off of the snow surface for the glide phase of your stride. This requires paying close attention to the temperature, as each individual variety of kick wax only works in about a four to six degree range. Fish-scales, as the name implies, replace kick wax with little shark-scale like protrusions in the area normally covered by kick wax, facing backwards so that they grip when you push back, but glide (ideally) when you are moving forward. The disadvantage is they do not glide very well at all. As I was primarily aiming for a workout, this fact did not bother me unduly.

It was not until Christmas Eve, shortly before the traditional family gathering, that my dad and I got out to ski. We went to Hartley Nature Center, which has about 6k of classic ski trails, with no skating area. After a short time getting used to the motions of skiing again, I took off down the trail.

I had completely forgotten how much I love cross-country skiing. The motions are so much smoother than running that it sometimes feels effortless. That feeling does not last very long, as skiing is actually one of the most difficult full-body workouts around. And yet, since it is such a smooth, gliding motion, I can push myself far harder skiing than I ever can running.

And it was beautiful! The two days before I got back to Minnesota had seen around a foot of new snow, leaving the trees, a mix of evergreen and bare deciduous, covered in a fresh white blanket. There was one particular point in the loop where the light shone just right through the trees.

As I mentioned, pretty pictures.

All told, I think I skied around 30k while I was home, over the course of three different days. I had only rented the skis for four days, and one of those I decided to take off.

Now, to the source of the post title. One of my family's traditions on Christmas is to go out for a walk. In Minnesota, this almost always means a walk in the snow, and it was no different this year. We opted for a rather traditional route: up the Congdon (Tischer) Creek trail from 4th street.

As ever, it was a beautiful walk. My brother forged ahead for a while, stopping occasionally to try and catch me off guard and knock snow off a tree branch on my head. He failed. After walking for a few blocks, and attempting to drop snow on my several times, he stopped out of range of any snowy branch. Cautiously moving forward, I discovered why he had stopped.

This little guy was just off the path. Clearly, woodpeckers do not take Christmas off. If you can see well enough, the dark areas are the remaining outer layer of bark. The red area is where he (and it was a male, as we found out later, though I forget the species) had already been and searched for bugs.

He was an industrious little guy, and all four of us stopped for several minutes and simply watched him do his thing.

This walk is our Christmas tradition. A friend of my brother's, along with his brothers, have a different Christmas tradition: ice bashing. Simply put, they wander around Congdon Creek bashing ice, not worrying too much about falling through. This is a northern Minnesotan activity if there ever was one.

This year, our two traditions happened to overlap, and we ran into the brothers at the apex of our walk. There were the brothers, two of whom where accompanied by their significant others. And we learned, happily, that my brother's friend had proposed to his girlfriend at the Glensheen Mansion three days earlier. A happy coincidence it was that we ran into them that day.

The remainder of the trip was spent alternately resting, reading, relaxing, and reconnecting. With the difficulties I am currently facing searching for a job in a notably poor economic climate, a trip home was precisely what I needed to regroup my faculties.

Breakthrough Week

2010-12-12T12:27:00.003-07:00

It was another breakthrough week for me this past week. Without taking, or even feeling the need to take, a day off, I ran about 17 miles this week. That is about 2 miles further than I have run in a single week for several months, and at the end of it I feel less tired than I did at the beginning. I am beginning to think that the time I was sick and unable to run did not put me as far back as I originally thought.

At this time, I am attributing this minor breakthrough to a change in tactics. Due mostly to increasingly cold weather, I went out to the local Road Runner Sports store and bought a pair of more normal running shoes. After trying a few different "minimal" pairs, I opted to go with the Brooks Green Silence. Brooks has been my go-to brand for some time. They tend to fit my feet better than most other brands, being relatively long and narrow.

The Green Silence model is a very minimal shoe. It actually does not feel much heavier than my Vibrams. In addition, as the name implies, they are about as eco-friendly as you can get in a running shoe these days. They are made with recycled materials and non-toxic dyes. Even better, they have bright green soles, which I like. I always love to be just a little bit flashy when I run.

The primary reason, I believe, that running in shoes is going better than running in the Vibram Fivefingers ever has is the cushioning effect of the soles. With the surfaces I am usually forced to run on around Westminster, the 5F's leave my feet and the rest of me very exposed to pounding, which forces my calves and other supporting muscles to work much harder in order to protect the rest of my body. The cushioning in the shoes removes much of that requirement: I still run primarily on my forefoot to midfoot, but my calves, and the rest of me, does not have to work as hard.

Does this mean that my experiment with the almost-barefoot running was not a success? Not entirely. I still like the feel of running in the 5F's, but I do not think that I can build up the type of mileage I would like in them. It seems that they have definitely increased my foot, calf, and stabilizing strength, which will always be advantageous. To continue this strengthening process, I still plan to run in the 5F's two or three times a week. I plan to run my "serious" workouts in shoes from now on, and leave the 5F's for the shorter, easier runs.

As a bit of a follow-up to my own experiences with barefoot, or near barefoot, running, I will shortly be participating in a barefoot running study at CU. The goal is to study the metabolic effects of the cushioning and weight factors introduced by wearing shoes. I am very curious about what their results might be.

A Windy Day in RMNP

2010-11-17T09:02:00.005-07:00

I am fortunate enough to live within an hour or so of Rocky Mountain National Park. I will readily admit that, though one of my favorite runs ever was a 15-mile monster in the park, I have not taken full advantage of this proximity. Recently, however, my girlfriend and I discovered that heading up to Estes Park, at the RMNP gateway, is a good way to relax on a Sunday afternoon. Last time we did so, we went into the park proper, and I took the opportunity to buy a year-long pass (which happens to be exactly twice the cost of a single day pass). We did not do much of a hike that day, and I actually completely forgot to take pictures.

Two weeks later, though, I got the opportunity to go up again with a friend and take a decent little hike. It had been snowing and windy much of the week, and the weather kept forcing us to postpone our trip. Even when we did finally make it up there, it was windy enough to be somewhat concerning. Nevertheless, we got a hike in, and some beautiful scenery in the bargain.

We didn't even get up to the trailhead until about 3PM, much later than I would usually choose. The advantage of arriving that late was the light.

My friend M, with whom I was hiking, thought the rock formations in this picture looked like giant "Rock Organ." Whatever it looks like, it was quite pretty.

We never got quite up to the lake we wanted to hit, off the Bear Lake trailhead, since it was snowy and icy the whole way up, but we did hit a nice lake on the way up. One of my favorite images of the trail, however, was a giant, striated boulder that seemed almost too big to be believed.

I particularly liked the icicles hanging off it. I realized at this point that there was good reason so many people come up to boulder around this area in the summer. For a size comparison, at 6 feet, I might make it up to the first snow-covered ledge.

The light just got better and better as it got later. I got my best pictures on the way down.

On the final stretch of the trail on the way back down to the car, we had a bit of a shock. During the hike up, I had mentioned how at least once last year I read a news story about a hiker in the park getting killed by a falling tree during a particularly windy day. In addition, there were signs mentioning that, with the beetle killed trees in the park, this was a growing concern. Sure enough, on the way down, we came up on a tree partially fallen across the trail, looked at each other, and M asked "Was that there when we came up?"

It was not.

Push through it.

2010-10-18T15:33:00.002-06:00

Yet another interesting article from the New York Times column Personal Best. This particular one is how to Push through the pain.

I have not been racing for some time, but I do intend to get back into it this spring. Hopefully I can learn a thing or two . . .

Summits

2010-09-30T08:45:00.007-06:00

I felt a little bit off this summer. My schedule never seemed to settle. I was consistent looking for a new apartment on the weekends, and climbing and working on the weekdays. I had planned to do a wide array of 14ers over the course of the summer, but never got to them.

I did, however, get a few in this September. Quandary, Bierstadt, and Evans fell in quick succession. Quite a shift given that previously I had not done any peaks in September, but it was quite fun. I have found, and I don't know whether this is a normal situation or not, that the weather was much more cooperative in September than in July or August. I didn't encounter any major storms on the three peaks I bagged.

In any case, here are a few pics from the hikes.

Quandary: Looking West from the summit.

And looking east, back where we came from

Beirstadt was my first solo fourteener. I only saw 8 other people on this hike, which is a record low for a 14er. The first pic is me on the summit. I tried to get Grays and Torreys in the background.

The notorious sawtooth between Bierstadt and Evans.

Evans was by far the easiest 14er I've ever done. It helps when you can drive up to 12800 feet. But, we saw six mountain goats on the mountain, all told. That's six more than I've seen before.

The required summit pic.

On the way down, we got a fantastic view of Colorado's fall colors.

There was talk of doing Sherman the weekend after Evans, but those plans never panned out.

Overall, though, I would call September a very successful month for 14ers.

Breakthroughs

2010-09-28T10:20:00.002-06:00

I believe that one of the main reasons so many people enjoy running is the potential for breakthroughs. I believe I've written a post on this sometime in the past, but I cannot quite remember, so at the risk of repeating myself, I am writing one now.

In my experience, there are very few sports other than running that contain the possibility for such massive breakthroughs. Normally in my case it has to do more with overcoming some mental hurdle than a physical breakthrough. You are running along one day, out for a mid-distance, easy workout, and rather than turning around, or taking the left fork, you keep going, or take the right one.

Before you know it, you're much farther out from your house than you ever intended. In fact, you're pretty sure that this is turning into the longest run you've done so far this training cycle, or even in your life. And yet, somehow, your body feels fine. Better than fine. Your body starts telling you "I can go like this for as long as you want me to." And best of all, you believe it.

These are by far my favorite runs. And naturally, I had one this morning. Having changed from "real" running shoes over to the fivefingers, I have necessarily reduced my training by quite a bit. Quite simply, my feet and calves were not any where near strong or conditioned enough to train seriously in the minimal coverings yet. This was expected, and I knew to deal with it. And my training was not going particularly well in any case, so I made the leap.

Today, I ran twice as far in my Sprints as I ever have before. I just kept going at what I thought was the end of my favorite trail around here, and it felt fantastic. And then, at the end of my run, I found a detour: there was a construction crew out laying tar on the asphalt outside my apartment building, so I was force to run an extra half mile on top of the run I'd already completed.

It felt fantastic!

This ties in with the theories expounded upon in the latest running book I am reading. The book is called simply "Run," by Matt Fitzgerald. The subtitle calls it "The mind-body method of running by feel," and that says it all. Rather than rigidly following a particular training plan, you listen to what your body is telling you, via your brain, and tailor your workouts accordingly. That's not to say that you don't have a plan, but rather you leave yourself open to adapting it according to what works best for your body.

A particular theme in this book is listening to your feelings of confidence. Use whatever training techniques and workouts that make you the most confident in your ability to race well. There's a reason that certain workouts make you feel more confident, and that is because they are in fact doing the most for your body.

But confidence in itself is important as well. Up until today, I was not feeling very confident in my fivefinger shoes. But I ran both longer and on a much rougher trail today than I have up until this point, and suddenly I feel as though these foot gloves might just work for me, and more than that, might just be fantastic!

That is not to say that I won't be taking tomorrow easy.

Now, on to the important business of the day. I have not had much luck with my computer ever since our cat spilled water all over it one night. At the moment, it seems to be working two out of three days, but I'm worried that ratio might be falling. So I am off now to try it again and see whether I can get it to work today. If not, I may be forced to buy a new one.

The Altar of Consistency

2010-09-17T10:55:00.003-06:00

The Altar of Consistency is a phrase used in the book Once a Runner, one of the quintessential running books (recently republished). It's used there in the context of a runner who, whatever the day, whatever the weather, and however he's feeling, runs twice a day.

Recently, I read another, nominally, running book, What I talk about when I talk about running by Haruki Murakami. This book is more of a memoir of Murakami-san's life since he started running around the age of thirty. He also mentions something along the same lines, saying that you have to let your legs know what is expected of them. In his case, this means running six days a week, regardless of his schedule.

At the moment, I am engaged in a similar activity. Several months ago, in my last post in fact, I reported buying a pair of Fivefingers to see how they might work for me. I am still getting used to them, since this summer has not been the best for my running consistency. I am in the process of fixing that. And while I'm on the topic, the Fivefingers seem to be doing their job. I'm getting much more used to them, which is in fact a part of this post. But I've noticed that, since I can only forefoot strike in them, and never heel strike, I have fewer problems relating to my overpronation when I'm running.

Back to the previous topic, I've started running every day. Absolutely every day, in fact. I did a 14er yesterday (my first solo attempt, pics to come later), running a significant portion of Mt Bierstadt. And today, I got up, admittedly late, and went for a short run.

And my legs responded by saying, after the run, "now what? Bring it on."

So that seems to be working well for me.

As an addition to that consistency training, I put in a second requirement: that I write every day I run. I don't need to write in this blog, but I do need to write something each day I run.

I decided to do this because one of my goals, one of the items on my bucket list for life, is to write a full book. I am not clear on what type I want to write, or what would be the best way to go about it. My mother seems set on the idea that I should write a "popular science" book, or something similar (popular control systems?) since in her opinion I am extremely good at explaining complicated ideas in a simple and understandable manner. I'l admit I always thought about writing a novel (Sci-Fi or Fantasy seems the most likely). But, who knows, with this daily running/writing thing, maybe I'll end up writing some sort of memoir day-by-day.

The reason for this is that, in every book on writing I've ever read (not many), and on every author's web page, the biggest advice they have for budding authors is to write.

Thus, I only write on the days I run which, currently, is every day.

Foot Gloves!

2010-06-08T17:24:00.002-06:00

While reading the book "Born to Run," by Christopher MacDougall, I decided to head to my local shoe store to try on a pair of Vibram Fivefingers. For those of you who don't know, they are, as the title of this post suggests, basically gloves for your feet. They have separated toes, with a sole of Vibram rubber. The basic idea is to give you a barefoot feel for the ground while still giving a good grip and mild protection.

Upon first donning these "shoes," I liked the feel. I was tempted to give them a shot. But I wasn't sold just yet.

I went home and proceeded to research barefoot running, using Google Scholar searches and my access to the CU library to see what was out there. I found peer-reviewed journal articles about the increase in running injuries with the advent of more supportive, and restrictive, and cushioning, running shoes (which began with Nike). I read articles about the benefits of minimalist and barefoot running. I read Alan Webb's story about his barefoot training.

In the face of mounting evidence, and my own experience in my reduced injury rate having switched to a forefoot strike, I decided to go back and buy a pair.

I was surprised to find that everywhere I looked was out of most models. I ended up buying three different pairs, and ending up with the Sprint model. And so begins my barefoot experiment.

At the moment, I'm fairly limited in my use of them. I run short distances in them each day, starting with a quarter mile and increasing to the point where I'm now running half a mile in them. So far I have noticed a few different sore muscles, which is only to be expected when changing running form. Other than that, I notice less of a difference than I may have expected.

I do, however, like the feel of them. They give me more of a sense of what my foot is actually doing then my other shoes.

As I said, we shall see how these work.

Hail

2010-05-11T17:31:00.002-06:00

A very short post to get back into this:

In case you were wondering, getting hailed on when you are running hurts.

I've been biking in the hail before, and figured that was pretty bad. You are, after all, hunched over, baring your back to the brunt of the hailstones. However, if you have an ounce of sense, you're wearing a helmet, so it is much more difficult for the hail to actually strike you full on the head.

However, when running, I know very few people who wear helmets. This frees up your head for the full brunt of nature's vindictiveness. Even relatively small hailstones feel like a pincushion's worth of needles striking your head point-downwards.

So let me reiterate: getting hailed on when you are running hurts.

A lot

2009-07-26T14:36:00.002-06:00

Backpacking, Part 2

2009-07-08T13:50:00.009-06:00

After all the excitement of our attempts to leave for the trip, we did actually make it to the trailhead sometime around 2PM. In actuality, that was much earlier than we had gotten to the trailhead our last backpacking trip. I think we got there about 6PM that time, and I made it to the campsite just as dusk was falling.

When Kris and I got to the trailhead, the rest of the group had already taken off, leaving one behind to let us know to catch up. That we did in about a mile or two. Then, as a group, we took off for Bob and Betty Lakes, where we'd be spending the night. It was about a 6 1/2 mile hike or so, with around 3000 feet of elevation gain. Not so simple with all your gear on your back.

After stopping a couple times to let squalls pass, we actually did make it to the campsite. Predictably, that close to the divide, it was cold and windy. We set up camp quickly, and tried to settle in. And, after some difficulty with making numb fingers tie knots in monofilament, I braved the wind and threw a few casts into the water.

Quite to my surprise, my second cast landed me a little brook trout, which I promptly released.

It would prove to be the only fish caught that trip.

The wind proved a bit much, and I ended after that minor feat with an impressive line snarl for my trouble. I opted to call it quits, make dinner (mmm ramen . . .) and head for bed with the sun.

Sleep was hard to come by. Throughout that night, the wind was gusting at, I'm guessing, between 40 and 60 mph. My little Halfdome tent handled it well, but I did not get much (read any) sleep. And me being me, I woke up earlier than everybody else.

It was a gray, cold day.

Our plan was to scout up the Continental Divide (or High Lonesome) trail, which we were hoping to follow the next day to hop over to Devil's Thumb Lake. But after looking at the divide, or at least in the general direction as seen above, we opted out of that plan, and decided to head down valley instead, following the view below.

Much more inviting. There were, however, a number of rather pretty, if small, wildflowers near our first campsite.

Actually, there were quite a few more than this, but I liked these.

This little guy was our camp mascot. Fortunately, he never found his way into our food supplies. That would have made it all the more annoying up there. This was something like my 8th attempt to take a picture of him. Every other time, just as I was focusing in on him, he disappeared. I think he was just waiting till he could pose properly . . .

A pic of the rest of the gang. Left to right: Kris, Luke, Lelah, Rachel, Phil. (Click the picture to enlarge).

Shortly after that pic, and another mile or so onwards and downwards, I realized I had left my little tackle box up at the first campsite. So, naturally, I told the rest to go on, and ran back up the mile and a half and 800 feet of elevation to go get it. And, right in the middle, I got nailed by a hailstorm, fully vindicating our decision to leave and head down.

Not much more to report after that. We made it down to our campsite for night two, off the trail and by a creek under some large evergreens. It proved much more comfortable, if much buggier, than the previous site. And, following a failed fishing expedition to Lost Lake, we opted to sleep (for 11 hours) and head out in the morning.

It's a cheesy shot, I know, but they all lined up on the bridge so nicely, that I couldn't resist taking a shot. This is the last 20 feet or so of hiking, right by the trailhead. Left to Right: Lelah (rather hidden behind Rachel), Rachel, Kris, Phil, and Luke.

Not the most successful of backpacking trips ever. But as Calvin says, in an impersonation of his dad, "being miserable builds character." It wasn't all miserable, but we certainly had some character building on this trip . . .

The Start of an interesting trip.

2009-07-07T12:52:00.003-06:00

Last Thursday, I headed up to Indian Peaks with five friends, and high hopes, to do what was planned as a four day backpacking trip. The trip did not start well.

Before we even got out of Boulder, my friend Luke's dad called, saying his bike broke and he needed a couple tools. So we promptly delivered those, and were on our way only a half hour late.

And we opted to stop for lunch at Chipotle for burritos, a bit of a tradition on these trips. As Kris and I were walking back to my car after lunch, we heard the unmistakable "screeeeeech THUNK!!!" of a car crash. And, sure enough, two seconds later, we got a call saying "we've been in an accident." Fortunately, nobody was hurt, which is even more fortunate given that the woman who hit Luke was pregnant (8 months or so?).

Any way, we headed off up the canyon, but right as we turned onto Canyon, we got passed by three emergency vehicles, which we proceeded to follow up the canyon to Nederland.

But we didn't reach Ned right away. One of the emergency vehicles was a dive team, which stopped at the reservoir at the top of the canyon. The number of police, fire, and rescue cars at the reservoir was astounding. We ended up stopped for about half an hour as what we hoped would be a rescue was under way.

We finally did get to the trailhead, despite the delays, but Kris and I were wondering if the trip should even continue, or whether there would even be a trailhead, given the array of mishaps that had already happened.

Turns out, the trip went ok. The tableau at the reservoir was a search and rescue operation for a fisherman at Barker who had jumped in after his pole. His friend had jumped in after him, but had to let him go after the fisherman started pulling his would-be rescuer under. Regrettably, the search and rescue did not involve a rescue in time: the fisherman had succumbed to the cold and drowned soon after jumping in.

Moral of the story: if your rod falls into water that cold, don't go in after it. It's not worth your life. Hypothermia can strike within minutes in water of that temperature, and the muscles will seize up long before then.

More on the rest of the trip in the next post.

Diamond Lake Trail

2009-06-28T10:53:00.010-06:00

In a fit of nostalgia, I revisited the first real trail I hiked when I moved to Colorado yesterday: Diamond Lake. Last time I went up there, the second day I was in CO, I hiked up to the lake in early July with my dad. This time, I ran the trail, and it seemed remarkably easy for most of its length.

I was glad to have my little Subaru on the way up. Most of thee Fourth of July Road is easily passable by most passenger cars, but there are a few tricky bits where I was glad for the extra clearance. I'm not sure how my dad ever managed it with a fully-loaded minivans (my worldly possessions were still in the van last time). And I had completely forgotten how long the road seems in a car. But, with only mild abuse (and no bottoming out) I made it to the trailhead.

Diamond Lake is somewhere over this direction. The trail heads off to the northwest, and then crosses the North Fork Middle Boulder Creek, and heads back southeast to the lake. Much of the trail is basically a traverse.

Right where the trail crosses the creek, there's a rather pretty cascade. This is the best pic I got.

Despite it being almost July, there was still a lot of snow on the trail. So much snow, in fact, that I kept losing the trail. There were a wide variety of footprints heading off different directions, and I kept taking wrong turns and having to backtrack. It was so snowy, in fact, that I never actually found the lake. I wandered around the alpine meadows for a while (on the snowfields, really) and then decided to take a waterfall pic and head back.

I'm assuming this is a cascade that feeds into Diamond Lake . . .

The Diamond Lake trail is known for the streams that cross the trail along the traverse leading up the valley. Most, I could run across, but this one was a little precarious for that. It's always a little nerve wracking. I'm just glad my new trail shoes grip so well on even wet rocks.

And looking up at the same creek crossing.

This was a rare run for me, in that it took longer to drive to and from the trailhead than to actually run the trail. But, the driving is fun too, so it works out.

Right, it's kickoff time for the final of the Confederations Cup. Gotta go . . .

14ers done the right way

2009-06-22T20:12:00.011-06:00

Last Saturday, I roused a few of my friends out of bed at an ungodly hour of the morning, and we took off in my little Subaru to Fairplay, there to tackle Mt Sherman. Granted, it's a relatively easy 14er as they go, but it was fun nonetheless.

There was a 12 mile dirt road on the approach to the mountain. The only bit that was at all tricky was in the last mile. But my little car handled it like a pro, without a dint. Gotta love her.

The first stretch of the trail was really a road up to the old mine. Not so tough. And the altitude (around 11,800' or so) wasn't affecting me at all. But I figured that couldn't last.

Looking up at the mine.

A little after that pic, the trail split up two different ways. My friend Jonathan and I opted to take the route that went straight up the gully. It was a little steep.

It was very steep. We ended up having to go on all fours much of the way up, and even then, we slid back half a step for every step we went forward. And it was more than a little muddy.

And the summit was a little bit snowy. The amazing part was, the altitude didn't seem to affect me at all. I was running along the summit ridge, singing, and not getting out of breath. It was fantastic, and it bodes well for the possibility of running the Leadville Heavy Half in July.

And then came the fun part: going down, via the snowfields. This time, we got video:

And yes, that odd sound is me trying not to laugh.

Like I said, 14ers done the right way: straight up the side, and straight down the snowfields. 2 hrs up, 30 minutes down.

A New Perspective on the Flatirons

2009-05-29T11:13:00.006-06:00

Last Thursday, before I got my new trail shoes but after I got my new orthotics, I had to take a day off running. I had intended to take the day off entirely, but it was a misty, rainy day. Those are my favorite for trail running: everything just seems fresher, somehow. That, and it's never as horribly warm.

So, rather than trail running, I went for one of my favorite hikes: Saddle Rock in Chautauqua here in Boulder. It's a rather steep, fairly short hike, and the views from the top are generally spectacular. You get a view across at Flagstaff, and down into Boulder as well.

And since I wasn't running, it was easy to take my camera along and get a few good pics.

The Rock for which the trail is named. I didn't get a great pic of the actual "saddle" part, but you can see, it's up there a bit.

From the top, as I mentioned, you get some great views. Being spring, the Chautauqua Meadow is actually green, instead of the dead brown it turns later in the summer. It was somehow prettier when I took the picture.

At this point, I looked up farther, at the back of one of the Flatirons, and opted to hike to it. After a significant climb, I scrambled around on the rocks for a while, and found a niche that provided a bit of a different perspective on the Flatirons.

I thought it was pretty cool how close the angle of the Flatiron I was on was to the next one over.

The best part of the hike? I got a call in the middle of it saying that my new shoes had come in. When I got to Fleet Feet to pick them up, the person who sold them to me turned out to be a fellow Colby grad.

Small world.

Today, I'm going for a short Dakota Ridge/Sanitas Valley Run. Tomorrow, hopefully Betasso Preserve with Jessica.

Nemesis: Spring

2009-05-20T13:29:00.002-06:00

Two days ago I picked up a book I'd been intending to read for some time: "No Shortcuts to the Top," by Ed Viesturs. For those who may not know, Viesturs is one of the world's pre-eminent Himalayan climbers, having summited all 14 of the world's 8000 meter peaks without the use of suplemental oxygen. He is also known for his rather conservative approach to climbing, emphasized by his motto "Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory." In my, completely uneducated, relatively uninformed opinion, that shows far more integrity and daring than the gung ho style adopted by many mountaineers.

All that aside, one of the chapters in the book is entitled "Nemesis: Annapurna." Annapurna is the deadliest of the 8000 meter peaks by some measures, and the last one Viesturs knocked off his list, and became, quite literally, a nemesis for him.

I've decided that my nemesis, at least as far as running goes, is spring. I don't know what it is about this season, but I have trouble running through it. I generally manage pretty well through January and February, which by all rights should be the most difficult months, being the coldest on the whole. Once March comes around, however, things start to go wrong. I start to accrue little injuries that, while not seeming significant in and of themselves, add up and lead to something larger.

Last year, it was a quad/hamstring issue that kept me from training. This year, it was an IT band problem, which stemmed, I believe, from the breakdown of my orthotics. Whatever it happens to be, I end up not training much in April, and rarely in May. And then, seemingly magically, though probably due to the rest I'm forced to take, sometime in May I get back into it in time for the summer/fall/winter seasons.

My nemesis is spring.

Just last Friday, I got a new pair of orthotics. This is just in time for me to be very tempted to run the Bolder Boulder on Memorial day. But, as I well know, that would be a poor choice at this point. So once again, I will be watching from Folsom Stadium.

Part of me is very disappointed about this, but part of me accepts it as almost inevitable. And, the fact of the matter is that this blog is very appropriately titled "Racing Through the Wilderness." At heart, I am a trail runner. While I would not say I despise running on roads, I definitely do not love it as I do trail running. Road running almost bores me, while, even when running the same trails day after day, trail running nevertheless offers variety. I also believe that it is primarily because I tend to run on the roads so much more in the winter months that, by the spring, my legs are so beat up that they give in.

Simply put: every trail is different. Beyond relatively superficial differences, roads are generally similar to each other.

I, for one, am glad that summer is coming.

The scary thing is it just might happen

2009-04-10T12:03:00.004-06:00

But it won't be for a while yet. Last year, towards the end of the summer, my friend Sonya and her boy rode their mountain bikes from Boulder over Rollins Pass to Winter Park. It's a long way, but they seemed to manage ok.

Well, that got me to thinking, I want to run longer races this summer (the Leadville Heavy Half, Pikes Peak, and the Golden Leaf among them), so why not throw an epic run in there somewhere?

That's right, I want to run from Boulder to Winter Park. This would start at my house in Boulder, at an elevation of approximately 5400 feet above sea level. On the way, I would head up through Nederland (8500 feet) and up into Indian Peaks Wilderness over the continental divide (12,250 feet, more or less). And down the other side to end up in Winter Park (9500 feet).

I'm not sure of the exact route yet. I would prefer not to take the same route the bikers did, as there was a lot of road involved. I'd prefer to stay on the trails whenever possible, which might make the route even longer than the 45 miles I'm estimating right now. We shall see.

I have friends who are willing to, in their words, "sit at the brewery and wait for" me to get there, and drive me back (after what I'm certain would be a large dinner). I also have a friend who, since she's planning to run an Ultra later in the month, would run this with me.

The scary part is it might just happen, and it's up to me to 1) train enough so that it's possible and 2) organized so we don't die . . .

A few Pics

2009-04-03T11:26:00.006-06:00

Here are a few pics from the recent crazy weather. Wednesday, I went running in another, albeit brief, snow squall. I had to take off my sunglasses for that one. The snow was so wet and sticky that by the time I got home there was a good 1/2" of snow stuck to the lenses. Later that night, full of a bit too much restless energy, due in part to an annoying takehome exam, I opted to go for another run. At that point, it was icy but, aside from a close call with a snowplow, slightly worrisome, I managed ok. 3 miles in 18 minutes. I'm in better shape than I thought.

This one was from last Thursday. I had already shoveled the deck once. This was 12PM.

By later the afternoon, as you can see, the snow was a bit deeper.

The next day, the flatirons looked quite impressive in the sunlight.

And today, weather's in the fifties, and there's a chance of thunderstorms this afternoon. Sounds like the perfect day for a run, followed by a relaxing Friday Happy Hour.

Snow Running

2009-03-27T09:20:00.002-06:00

So it's been over a month since I last posted. Actually, it's been closer to two. As this suggests, I've been busier than usual, and I have not been running as much as I usually would.

I'm in the process of finishing off my masters degree in Control Systems Engineering here in Colorado. Part of that requires that I take more credits than I usually would, and the credits I am taking are harder than they usually would be. All in all, that would be enough to eat up my free time and spit it out in tiny pieces. On top of that, I'm writing a masters thesis. On top of that there's a girl Ive been seeing for a bit over three months now.

That said, this last week as been my spring break. Rather than go anywhere warm, I opted to stay in Boulder and a) save money and b) get some work done. I could add a c) run a bunch in there and it would work perfectly. I believe I have the primary theorem for my Masters proven at this point, so my break has already been a success.

On the running front. Saturday afternoon I took off for a Mesa run with my friend Jessica. Neither of us has been running as much as we usually do, so it was a slow run, as evidenced by how quickly the CU mens track team overtook us on the way up. It was slightly depressing. But then, that's not unexpected.

Tuesday, I got my first real intensity workout in: 8x90s hills up Sanitas valley. They went pretty well, though I think I could have pushed myself a fair amount harder had I wanted to. This is the first workout of any intensity I've gotten in since I quit the training club almost a year ago, and it really drove home how much easier it is to push yourself with a team around you. But, I finished the workout, and my legs felt better than I expected them to.

Yesterday I had planned an easy run, in anticipation of a tempo workout today. However, I woke up to 6 inches of snow. That's fine, not that much. But by the time I ran at about 1:30, that had increased to 13 inches. So I decided, what the hell, let's go for a trail run in the powder.

I strapped on my Kahtoola Microspikes and headed out. As ever, the microspikes gave me a near-perfect grip on both the packed snow/ice of the roads and the 12 inches of powder on the trail. I once again ran up Sanitas Valley, as I didn't want to risk the footing on other trails (where you cannot see any rocks or other obstacles under the snow), and a run that normally takes me 25 minutes took closer to 50. The only other people I saw were on snowshoes, out walking their dogs, one of whom quipped "Hey! That's not allowed!" as I 'stormed' past them up the hill.

Easy run it was not, but it was a ton of fun, and a great bit of strength training.

I'll post some pics as soon as I get them off my camera . . .

Crazy Weather

2009-01-27T10:30:00.004-07:00

As expected in a mountain climate this time of year, the weather has been a little bit interesting lately. Last week it was in the upper 50's and 60's. I even went out for the first shirtless run of the year at one point. Normally, that does not happen in mid-January, but then, northern Minnesota has a bit of a different climate than Colorado.

In any case, yesterday, far from a shirtless run, it was a bit under 10 degrees and I ran for half my run into a brisk headwind, which made things yet more interesting. And this morning, on my walk to the bus stop, the temperature registered at a rather brisk -5. But that's ok, since where I'm from, the temp was a good ten degrees lower than that.

I have felt rather lazy lately. I've only been running 4-5 days a week. The semester has come on full force, and I'm taking 12 grad credits (which is a %133 course load), and TA'ing at the same time (for a rather less-than-impressive professor). Add to that skiing every Saturday, and trying to fit in a little bit of a social life in there somewhere, and it makes it difficult to find any sort of time to run at all.

So I've been lucky to get in 25 miles per week lately. If I really feel energetic, I get a few miles in after skiing on Saturday. But, as I telemark, I consider skiing a pretty good strength workout (imagine doing lunges down a hill, and you start to get the picture of the kind of workout it is). That said, no matter how tired my legs feel after skiing, my next run always feels amazing, as though I could go forever and not use any energy whatsoever.

I'm going to try to work up my mileage a bunch over the next two months. My next big race is not till April, when I have the Horsetooth Half. After that, it's a 5k to qualify for a decent Bolder Boulder wave, the BB itself, the Leadville Heavy Half in July, and Pikes Peak in August. Somewhere in there, I'll be pacing my friend SH in her attempt at the Leadville 100.

The year begins to take shape. Now the only question is where I might end up after I finish my degree and try to find a job.

Pics to come soon.

Surfing Lake Superior

2009-01-18T10:44:00.002-07:00

In the not-too-far-gone days of my childhood in northern Minnesota, I remember my favorite days being the windy summer days on Park Point, when the breakers would come in and we would bodysurf in the biggest freshwater lake in the world. Normally, the water never gets much above 50 degrees just a few inches below the surface, but if there was an East or Northeast Wind, it blew all the surface water towards the point, and if you were tough you could spend upwards of 10 minutes at a time in the water.

In the past decade or so, there has been an increasing population of Freshwater Surfers on the lake, and far from sticking to the warm, windy days in the summer, they surf year round. Now, I've swum in Lake Superior every month of the year, and while it's true that the water is much warmer than the air in the middle of the winter, it's still a risky proposition, and for me usually a "jump in, jump out, warm up" maneuver.

These guys, while fully equipped, are still tough. Here's, yet another, NYT article profiling them.

The Freshwater Surfers.

Cold Running

2009-01-09T10:13:00.001-07:00

I've always been a proponent of this myself, but it's good to see that there is at least some evidence behind it. As usual, the NYT has a great article related to running. The "Personal Best" Column continues to be one of my favorites.

So, don't stop running just because you have a cold.

The Bike Path Fartlek

2009-01-07T10:36:00.002-07:00

Anybody who has run for a while probably knows what a fartlek is. If not, see my previous post on the subject. Fartleks are some of my favorite workouts, precisely because they require you to be in tune with your running, and at the same time can improve your fitness tremendously. Without a watch, they require even more awareness of your body.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've started running without a watch most times. This requires me to adjust some of my typical workouts (intervals, fartleks, etc) and pay more attention to what I'm physically feeling, rather than what the numbers on my watch are telling me to do. So far I think I like this method.

One of the new workouts I've come up with for watchless training happened almost entirely by accident one night when I had not started running until late in the afternoon, and so had relegated my workout to the Boulder Creek Path, a place I normally avoid for several reasons. First, it's concrete, and I don't like running on roads period. Second, it's dark, and there are sometimes issues with people not paying attention. And third, it's populated by an extraordinary number of bikers, which might be expected on a bike path. However, this third negative allows for a rather interesting workout.

This particular night I was feeling quite randomly enerjectic. At one point, when a biker on a singlespeed passed me up, I decided to tag along behind him to see how long I could keep up. It turned out that it was quite a bit longer than I expected. I started doing this with every bike that passed me. It led to an interesting workout, and one that I now do on a more regular basis: what I call the "Bike Path Fartlek."

The rules are exactly what I just described: every time a bike passes you on the bike path, keep up with it for as long as you can. Granted this only works in select places (Boulder being one of them). It also leads to an incredibly varied workout. Certain bikers will go very slowly, allowing you to tag onto their wheel for a very long time. Others (especially in Boulder and like-minded areas) will blow by you and let you tag on at a full sprint for maybe 5-10 seconds. The most interesting are those that fall in between, where you might hit anything from an 800 pace to a 10k pace.

Let me tell you, it's a phenomenal workout. Uphill bike paths make it yet more interesting (the Canyon in Boulder is a good route for uphill enthusiasts). I do not recommend trying this downhill (it's rather dangerous, really, and hard on your knees).

At this point, I don't actually have a race planned until April sometime, at which point we will see how my methods are working (Horsetooth Half, anybody?).

It's that day

2008-12-25T20:39:00.001-07:00

Merry Christmas!

Did I run today? Yes.

It was a short one, though. It still hasn't gotten above 15 degrees since I got home.

Training Shift

2008-12-23T11:51:00.002-07:00

The last two races I've done (the Golden Leaf and the Summit for Life, both in Aspen) have had several things in common. They both occurred in Aspen, on a Saturday. They both began, and in the case of the Summit for Life, occurred in its entirety, straight up a ski hill. Both went far better than I ever would have expected. And I didn't wear a watch for either of them.

For a long time, I was a bit of a slave to my watch. I used it to time my slow runs, my tempo runs, my intervals, even my fartleks. I paid more attention to what the numbers on my watch were saying than I did to my legs and the rest of my body. I would time each mile of a race, trying to make them consistent. And more often than not, I would start faster than I thought I would be able to run, and ended up slowing down quickly, psyching myself out that I couldn't run as fast as I was.

I didn't intend to run without my watch in either of the above races, I simply forgot to bring it along with me when I went to Aspen. And it worried me for the Golden Leaf. As it turns out, despite only a month or so of solid training, I only ran three minutes slower this fall than the year before that. I think that, had I looked at my watch on points up that first hill, I would have psyched myself out again, and slowed down thinking there was no way I could pull off a decent time. I didn't have a watch, so I couldn't look, and I ran a good time.

So now I'm trying a bit of an experiment. I'm no longer wearing my watch even to train. Rather I'm listening to what my legs are telling me, and trying to gauge my effort rather than my time. And in fact as I sit here in DIA, waiting to go home to the Great White North (northern Minnesota) for Christmas, I just realized that I once again did not even bring my watch with me.

So far, what this change of tactics has done is made me come up with different ways of getting the same results. I have a couple new styles of workouts at my disposal, and several modified versions of older workouts that will work without a watch. Hopefully, as I train and relax (yes, they go hand in hand for me) I will have the chance to describe some of them here.

Until then

Almost Like Home

2008-12-14T11:41:00.005-07:00

I woke up this morning to four inches of snow on my deck, and the snow still coming down pretty well. Took a look at the temperature: 1 degree F. While the pic above was not from this morning (I believe that was Tuesday last week), it captures some of the essence of what it looked like outside this morning.

My friend Jessica and I had planned on doing a Flagstaff run this morning, but with the snow and cold, that didn't seem likely, so we took to the creek path, along with seemingly every other runner out this morning.

It ended up being an absolutely fantastic run. We took it pretty slow, chatting and, yes, gossiping as runners inevitably will. Maybe I'll write a post about that some time. It seems to be a universal truth about runners. In any case, since the creek path is always the first area plowed in Boulder, seemingly every runner in Boulder was out on the path this morning.

And nobody else.

All the guys who had any sort of facial hair had a frosting of white around their mouths. My eyebrows kept freezing to my sunglasses (ouch). And everybody seemed to be having a fantastic time, shouting out hellos to anybody they did, or didn't, know. I love it when runners are happy, and they certainly were this morning.

That's a self-portrait following the run today. I haven't actually had the time to shave lately, since I've been so swamped with finish up my semester at CU. I'm kind of glad of it today, though. What would this post be without that picture?

Now, unfortunately, it's back to work. 1.5 exams down (I had a 3.5 hour monster yesterday) 0.5 exams and 1 final project to go . . . Wednesday can't come soon enough.

Results are up!

2008-12-10T11:41:00.002-07:00

Results for the Summit for Life are up at their website.

For some reason, they still have me listed as having started 45 minutes earlier than I actually did (quite impressive, really). But, if you subtract 45 minutes from the time they give me, I end up in precisely 10th place, with a time of 59:50.

Obviously, they got it right for the team competition, otherwise there's no way we would have won . . .

The Winning Team

2008-12-09T16:56:00.003-07:00

As promised, here's the winning team of the 2008 Summit for Life in Aspen. I'm still not sure what actual place I got, as there was some confusion with my time. Apparently they had me in the non-competitive wave at first, which added 45 minutes to my time. But they obviously got the time right in their results, as the overall team time was 2hr 57min. I do know, though, that Shanna placed second in the women's division and Lucas placed second overall, behind Rickey Gates and ahead of Bernie Boettcher.

I'll post some pics of my run this morning later today. We got another 8" of snow last night.

A Successful Summit

2008-12-08T10:12:00.003-07:00

I got into Aspen with no real trouble on the roads. There was a little ski traffic going up to the tunnels on I-70, but there was no real weather to speak of so it moved pretty well most of the time. I got to Aspen a bit past noon, and sat around at Shanna's doing homework (glad I got some of that in) until she got off work at four, when we headed off to check in and get our "shwag bags." Apparently this race is well sponsored, as you'll see later. The non-competitive race took off at 5:15, and we followed 45 minutes later. For those who might know some names, I had some heavy competition from names like Bernie Boettcher (who runs 50 races a year and wins many of them), Rickey Gates (US mountain running champion, 12th in the world), and Lucas Franz (all around athlete and fortunately my teammate).

I ended up wearing Kahtoola Microspikes, which are pretty much a heavy duty version of YakTrax (with chains and steel spikes on the bottoms instead of metal rings). It worked perfectly. The race goes straight up a groomed ski run, so I took poles and mostly did a type of ski walk, reminiscent of XC ski training back in the day, most of the way up. Where it was "flat", I picked up the poles and started running, but for the most part that wasn't even possible, let alone efficient.

The entire race, I had no idea where I was on the course, how far I had come or how far I had to go, or how long I"d been going (I forgot my watch again). But I got in my rhythm and just went, apparently rather quickly. A bit before halfway up, I started passing the non-competitive wave, and that worked out well, since I didn't know where I was going, either. I started just having fun with the race, clacking my poles and cheering people on as I passed them. Any way, because of the severe slope of the hill, I didn't know I was right at the top until I was about 50 meters from the finish, when I picked up my poles and sprinted in.

At that point, while I was collapsed, leaning on my poles, gasping for air and trying not to throw up, one of the race volunteers told me to take of my timing chip, which was strapped to my ankle. There was no way that was going to happen, and I think I scared the poor girl with the look I gave her until she just decided to take it off herself. I don't think she'd volunteered at a race like that before. And yet somehow, after about two minutes, I was skipping around and waiting to cheer Shanna in. I think I still have some remnant of my XC training from high school, or at the very least my body remembers it.

Turns out I made my goal of under an hour, by about a minute or so. I ended in the top ten racers, which supposedly won me a pair of boots, but there was some confusion there, and I may have to get those later. The big news is that Lucas (mendioned above), and Shanna (the friend I stayed with) got 2nd overall and for women, respectively. I came in about 10 minutes behind Lucas and 5 ahead of Shanna, which is pretty good for coming in from Boulder. And, since I was on a team with both of them, our team won that competition with a total time of 2hrs 57 minutes. As Lucas said "We totally stacked it!" Any way, for that, we won a dinner party for 6, and we each won a pair of (really friggin nice) sunglasses, along with a few smaller prizes. They do well passing stuff out.

So the race ended at the top of the Gondola on Aspen mountain, and it was followed by a dinner and party at the Sundeck up there. They put on a good party, along with everything else. They had a great Funk band, which turned out to be the same one that plays for Shanna's church. So we hung out there for three hours, and then headed down into Aspen and hung out for a few more hours.

Next morning, we went skiing, despite somewhat sore legs from the night before. Unfortunately, as soon as I got to the top on the Gondola, my binding broke as I was strapping my skis on. So I had to ride the Gondola down again, go to the mountaineering store, and get those fixed But within an hour or so I was back up, and skiing with 5 other Telemarkers. This marks four times that I've Tele skied, and one thing I've noticed is that Tele skiers are always excited by a convert, and are willing to a) wait around for you while you're learning and b) give you lessons. In fact, it's hard to avoid the latter. I was kinda getting the hang of it by the end. We skied for about 3 hours, by which point we were all exhausted and decided to head down.

My original plan was to stay another night, and head back Monday morning to avoid ski traffic, but there was a storm coming in that night, so I opted to leave last night, and got back to Boulder around 7:30, time enough to do four more hours of work and head to bed.

Now, on Monday morning, I am having some significant trouble moving at all. I think an ice bath may be in order later today.

As soon as I upload it, I post a pic of the winning team (Cross Roads).

All in all, it was the perfect way to end a racing year.

And I'm off

2008-12-05T21:06:00.001-07:00

I'm off to Aspen tomorrow morning (early?). Summit for Life is at 6PM. Thank you so much to all who donated!

Snow Run

2008-12-04T08:50:00.002-07:00

I think I wrote about this phenomenon last year at a similar time, but running in the snow is mentally fundamentally different than running any other time. Granted, it is also physically different, seeing as there's suddenly that whole "slipping and falling" issue that usually doesn't come up quite so dramatically (I recall one run in undergrad where there were 6 of us trail running in the snow, and we came in 45 minutes having 13 falls total. No injuries thankfully.) But it's mentally where I notice the most change.

After I was done with my various meetings yesterday, I took the bus home (maybe the last time I do that this year. I am not patient) and went up Sanitas for a short run. The snow had just really started coming down, so there wasn't much on the ground by that point, but there was plenty flying in your face.

I think that's really what does it. The flakes look like they're coming at you so fast. It felt like I didn't have to put any effort into running at all, like my legs could carry me as far and as fast as I could possibly want.

And that's what it always feels like in the snow. It's the closest thing I know to flying.

On another note, we awoke to 4 inches on our deck this morning with 15 degree temperatures. Of course, after my annoyance with the bus yesterday, I was not about to do that again. My roommate opted to drive (seems pretty silly to me, and probably takes longer). I, true to form, got out the bike and got to school before him. That may seem surprising, but it's really not that weird. You see, this is Boulder, where they are extremely good about plowing and sweeping the bike paths, but seem to ignore the roads.

And I am not complaining.

Powder Day

2008-11-30T11:51:00.002-07:00

I went skiing for the first time in almost three years yesterday. A daunting prospect, for a variety of reasons. Not having skied for several years is bad enough, but it was only the third time I'd tele skied period. And there's the small fact of one shoulder surgery and a broken ankle between those first two times skiing and this time, and I was a little nervous.

Turned out ok though. Granted, I'm still not very good at Tele skiing, but I'm getting better, and it didn't go as badly as it could have.

The main story of the day, however, was the trip to and from A-Basin. It was snowing the entire day. On the way up, traffic was about as expected: moving slowly as we got closer to the pass and the Eisenhower tunnels. But near the top, people were sliding all over the place. In our little Subaru (more than capable in most conditions) a tap of the accelerator had the back swinging out. That's hard to do with an AWD car with snow tires.

But we got to the hill no problem. After 3 or so hours of skiing and standing in lift lines (most people stuck to the bottom, with good reason. It was about 10-15 degrees at the top with a 20-40 mph wind to make things yet more interesting.) we decided to head back to Boulder.

Good luck.

Past Keystone, it was bumper to bumper traffic all the way up I-70 to the tunnels. We left the mountain at 2:30, or a little before. It was after 7:00 by the time we got through the tunnels. And once we did, we got to deal with whiteout conditions. If we were wondering why traffic was moving so slowly, we quickly figured it out.

All in all, we spent 10 hours driving, and about 3 on the mountain. Not a great ratio, but it was still fun, and I'm looking forward to Aspen next weekend.

Thanksgiving Break so far

2008-11-28T10:05:00.003-07:00

True to expectations, this has been a surprisingly busy Thanksgiving Break. There have been several nights so far this break when my roommate and I have glanced up from our respective schoolwork at 10:30PM, looked at each other, and said "Wait, aren't we supposed to be on break??"

That said, I haven't actually gotten all that much done. I've been doing a lot of reading for my research, which has helped things make a good deal more sense, but I haven't yet been able to code up a specific algorithm for my research. I'm getting to the point where I'm coming close to despair on this point, but I'm not there yet.

Certainly, though, I have not simply been holed up doing work this break. I have been out and about doing some epic runs as well. Between Tuesday and Thursday, I propelled my body a total of 53 miles. Which leads me to believe I might be able to take a day off today (and in fact I will).

So, Tuesday, after a morning coffee with my sister while discussing our research (we work for the same professor on some of our stuff now, which has proved to be nice, rather than competitive). I went out for a longer run than I've done in probably a year. I took off from my house, through Sanitas, past Red Rocks park, down through Eben G Fine, up Viewpoint, down Flagstaff, up Bluebell-Baird, and off onto Mesa Trail. 2:45 and a bit over 18 miles later, I got back to my house. The run itself went surprisingly well, and I even managed to pull a little sprint there at the end.

Wednesday dawned bright and beautiful. By 1PM it was over 60, sunny, and calm. So true to form, I took out my road bike and took off on the highways. I rode up to Jamestown and back (28 miles or so). Not too bad a ride all told. There's a 7-mile hill up to Jamestown itself, but on the whole it's a pretty shallow grade, so I didn't have to push all that hard. And, also a tradition, when I got back, I laced up my running shoes to go for a quick "shakedown" run.

And yesterday, prior to a Thanksgiving feast, I took off up through Sanitas again for a quick 4 miler in the morning. Nothing too hard, but I could feel that my legs were getting a bit worn down, which leaves me taking today off, probably taking an ice bath, and holed up in my favorite coffee shop for some studying, some reading, and a little bit of blogging.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgving, filled with the three F's (family, friends, and food), and are duly taking a day off from worry today.

And as I said yesterday, this year I'm thankful (as ever) for my family and friends, and my open prospects for the future, in running and everything else.

Summit For Life, part 2

2008-11-24T15:32:00.001-07:00

In two weeks, on December 6th, around 6PM, I will be lacing up my running shoes, strapping on crampons, turning on my headlamp, gripping my ski poles, and racing 3267' and 2.5 miles up Aspen Mountain in the snow. At night.

Why am I doing this? Well, besides just sounding like a unique, fun, challenging race, it raises money for education on organ and tissue donation. This cause gets far less publicity than cancer or MS or any of the other myriad health issues that face millions of people every day, but requires no research to solve. It requires choices made by individuals to become a donor. So the most effective "treatment" is education.

I know many of my friends have as little money as I do, but I would appreciate any help you are willing and able to give. By registering for the race, I pledged to raise at least $60, but I'd really love to beat that.

If you want to know more about it, or are willing to give a bit, follow the link below for info. Click "Sponsor a Runner" if you're interested in donating.

Thank you!

www.summitforlife.org

Seems to be working

2008-11-20T10:44:00.002-07:00

Most of yesterday, I did not think I'd be able to get a run in. With a problem set due today (Thursday) and several meetings that day, I figured I wouldn't have time. Fortunately, I decided that, even though I didn't have much time, I'd make time for a short run.

So, as sometimes happens, I chose to get as much of a workout in during that time as possible, so I did a relatively short tempo run. I burned through my "classic" 3-mile loop near my house in 19 minutes, and at the end I wasn't even breathing hard and hadn't felt like I'd worked all that hard.

This is the first tempo run of any sort I've done in some time, so I had no idea what to expect. While it wasn't quite as shocking as the 9:58 two-mile I pulled out of nowhere in the spring, I was pretty happy with it over all.

I also ran into (almost literally) one of my friends from my old running group on my cooldown. Turns out she broke up with her boyfriend (my old coach) a few months ago. I'm not sure what's with the rash of breakups recently , but it seems to be a pattern among the runners I know (really, just the runners, it's uncanny). Must be something in the air we breathe out here.

After the run, I came back up to school, and worked solidly until about 1AM to finish my problem set. I haven't been able to make myself do anything like that since I got back to school last year, and I don't plan on making it a habit. I think mostly I was able to do so last night because I knew that Thanksgiving break starts this afternoon!

I don't plan to go anywhere for break, but I have some epic runs in the works, so look out for related posts sometime soon.

The Weekend

2008-11-18T08:56:00.002-07:00

My friend Shanna from Aspen came down to Boulder for this last weekend, an infrequent occurrence for the most part. I think the last time she was down this year was for the Bolder Boulder at the end of May (which, despite being out here for three years at this point, I still have never been healthy for). In any case, we went for a run along Mesa Saturday morning/afternoon.

Saturday morning dawned bright. And cold. When I got up at 8AM it was around 20. Fortunately, by the time we met up around 11:00, it had warmed considerably, and ended at just about the perfect running temperature. Naturally, we ended up a little bit overdressed, but not terribly so.

The run itself was phenomenal. It's just fun to run with somebody as (supposedly) crazy as I am. We were alternately bounding and flying downhill, and pushing a bit uphill, passing other people and all the time keeping up a constant stream of conversation. This particular run just felt a lot freer than some I've done lately. It felt almost effortless, though given how my legs felt the next couple days, that obviously was not the case.

Being a sunny Saturday, naturally the trails were crowded. This led to a few interesting encounters with dogs that did not seem to realize that getting in the way of a runner on the trail was just not a good idea. One particularly small dog forced me to do a bit of acrobatics as it decided that right where my foot was going to come down was a good place to run to. Shanna had an encounter where the dog did not seem to realize that, if you put yourself in the way of a runners foot, you're going to get hit. But the dogs, and the runners, were none the worse for wear for the incidents, thankfully.

We ended up adding on the Flatiron loop to the end of the run. When Shanna said "Can we take my favorite way down?" I knew precisely what was coming. And, sure enough, after bombing down two more trails, startling a few more people, we ended up back at the trailhead, and within minutes were calmly sitting on a fence chatting again...

Once again, I brought my camera on the run only to completely forget to take any pictures. I was really not interested in stopping on this run.

More to come on the weekend topics later.

Road (Runner/Biker) Rage

2008-11-11T11:23:00.002-07:00

I tend to skim the New York Times, at least the Fitness and Nutrition section, pretty much every day, because the often cover running issues. Today is no exception.

This is something I'm guilty of fairly often. I rarely drive, most often choosing to bike where I need to go. And, as is fairly obvious, I run a lot. While I rarely run much on the roads, and almost never on busy roads, I run into this problem a lot. Simply put, a driver doesn't see me, or does not react well to seeing me. Usually nothing happens: I slow down or stop, or swerve out of the way, the driver apologizes somehow and I wave it off. It happens.

But there are times when it just gets too much. 99.9% of the time the driver is on their cell phone, and thus not paying enough attention to the road around them (this is my primary issue with drivers). I'm sorry to say it, but 90% of those times, it's a woman, often with a child in the back seat (why are you on your cell phone if your kid's in the car, parents?). I have no patience in that case. You try to wave it off and I will get pissed off. I have not yet actually followed up with an actual physical altercation, and I don't anticipate it happening, but it's sometimes very tempting to do so.

But here's the reality: I run, and ride, defensively. Let's face it, in any altercation between a car and a runner or biker, the car will win. But that does not excuse drivers from responsibility. If you're driving, make it your only priority. Your conversation on the phone does not matter as much as my life.

That said, I'm blessed. I live in Boulder, where people are overall quite aware that there are runners and bikers everywhere, and generally quite respectful of the fact. Granted there are a few exceptions (I had one acquaintance who used to talk about attempting to run bikers off the road), but generally people are nice, and they try to be aware and alert. When they aren't, they feel bad and apologize however they can. It's those exceptions, however, that sour the deal.

And that's just one more reason I love trail running . . .

Just one more point to runners (and bikers): DO NOT WEAR HEADPHONES! I don't care what you say, it masks sounds, makes you less aware of your surroundings, and makes running or biking far more dangerous. And in that case, I see no reason that it's not your fault if something happens that you could have avoided if you were more alert. There are tiny speakers out there now for just about every music player around. Use those.

Running Dreams

2008-11-10T09:29:00.003-07:00

When I'm running as much as I am right now, I tend to dream about it often. Usually, these are not good dreams. Most often, I'm in some sort of race, and my legs feel like I'm trying to run through molasses. As it turns out, running through molasses is not easy, and I find that everybody starts to pass me, and I can't do anything about it. Suffice to say, those dreams are not pleasant.

Last night (or rather, this morning) was significantly different. I was running a 5k against a bunch of my college and high school teammates, and just felt good. We started out at a decent pace, one I'd never been able to keep before, and kept it about there for the first two miles as people began to drop off the back. At the beginning of mile three, I decided the pace was too slow, as there was still a group of 6 or 8 people in the lead group, and I took off. I put in a sprint for about 400 meters, and by the time I eased off (not by much) there was only one other person who still was with me.

After all that, I ended up losing by half a stride at the finish line. But still, it was a good dream. I distinctly remember running a 14:55, which is far better than I've done lately.

On a side note, it's November 10th today. I always like to mark this day, because 33 years ago today, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank with all hands on Lake Superior. As a northern Minnesota boy myself, I had a small obsession with this particular sinking as a kid. It was, and is, the largest boat ever to go down on the Great Lakes, and still a bit of a mystery. It's also the inspiration for the song "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot, and the Symphony "Ten November."

So here's to the Fitz, reminding us of the cruel nature of the Witch of November on Gitchee Gummi.

Summit For Life

2008-11-09T20:17:00.002-07:00

Well, my next (big) race is now under a month away. This one is a little different from my typical races. The Summit for Life, formerly the Storm the Stars, is a rather unique race, period. It takes place in December, in Aspen, CO, at 5 and 6PM (so yes, in the dark), and takes you 2.5 miles and 3500 feet up Aspen mountain. Which means, of course, that it's entirely on snow. Skis, snowshoes, and running shoes are all permitted (essentially, any non-motorized conveyance you can think of to propel yourself up the mountain is allowed). This year, they are introducing a competitive wave, for those who anticipate finishing in under two hours. The winner seems to finish in around 55 minutes.

Yes, that's for 2.5 miles. And for those of you who follow running in Colorado, Bernie Boettcher won it in around 54 minutes last year. Something tells me if he's running, I won't win.

In any case, I recently realized that this is the perfect race for me to be doing right now. My sights are set on a few races next summer (length TBD, mostly half-marathon type distances, I think), with a few possibilities beforehand in the spring. Naturally, for a race up a ski hill, I've been doing some serious strength training. Friday was 4 repeats up a section of the Royal Arch Trail here, coming in at about 8 minutes each, which gave me some serious strength training, and a tiny bit of endurance.

This is money in the bank for any runner, and especially for somebody who classifies himself as a trail runner. The first step in any training regime, save a base mileage program, is strength training, usually through hill repeats. This conditions your body to learn to accept the punishment you'll be laying down later in your training, and gives you a better base from which to work.

So here's to long hill workouts. If you don't feel a tiny bit sick to your stomach afterwards, you're just not doing it correctly.

Stretching

2008-11-06T12:02:00.002-07:00

Anybody who's read this blog much (I don't know how many of those there are) knows that I love the New York Times health section. They've delivered once again with a rather interesting article on stretching before your workout.

I don't stretch before my workouts very often, unless there's a specific muscle that's been bothering me, or just feels too tight. I always warm up before getting into the core portion of my workout, but I usually save stretching for after the workout is done.

The article suggests that dynamic stretching might be helpful before a workout. From my own sprinting days (yes, I used to run the 100m, 200m, 400m, and do the long jump) I have my routine that I go through (butt kicks, striders, etc . . .) which sometimes gets me some strange looks on the starting line. If nothing else, the routine both calms me and psychs me up mentally. It may sound contradictory, but it's all about getting into the proper race zone.

So while stretching beforehand is not something I usually do, I highly recommend a set pre-race routine. Do it before your hard workouts too, and you might just find you get more out of them.

Election Day!

2008-11-04T08:51:00.002-07:00

I know it's not specifically on the subject of this blog, but get out and vote today if you're a US Citizen.

Blacks got the right to vote in 1870. Women in 1920. Native Americans in 1924. There are no excuses. Exercise your right.

I'm a shameless runner and I approve this message.

My Feet Hurt

2008-11-03T09:29:00.002-07:00

Go figure. They got a bit beat up over the past few days.

After my rather longer-than-usual run on Friday, as might be expected, I had a few blisters. Mostly, that was because of the snow I kept having to force my way through. By the time I reached Devils Thumb Pass, my feet were wet, and there was far more snow on the divide trail and going down King Lake Trail than there was on the way up. And, as most runners soon find, wet feet lead to blisters.

Saturday, I decided to take it a bit easy on my legs and feet, and went for a ride up Four Mile Canyon instead. It felt good to be on the bike again, something I haven't done since school started again this fall. The sad fact of the matter is that it takes a while longer, on average, to get a decent bike ride in than it does to run.

But once I got off the bike, my legs felt a little off, and I could tell if I didn't get at least a bit of running in, they'd feel worse the next morning. So after an hour or so, I went for another, very short, run.

Sunday, I opted to run up in Chautauqua again. Probably didn't help my feet any, but my legs needed a good shakedown run.

You can tell it was a good weekend when you have trouble moving on Monday morning.

A High Lonesome Halloween

2008-10-31T16:11:00.015-06:00

Last Sunday, I had planned to run the High Lonesome Loop. If you're from Boulder, you probably know what I'm talking about. Basically, it's a loop that, starting from 9000', goes up to the continental divide, traverses the divide for 2.5 miles, and then drops back down via another trail. I chose to go up Devil's Thumb, and down King Lake Trail. All told, it's somewhere around 15 miles, with 4000 feet or so of total elevation gain (it actually travels between about 9000' and about 12500'). It took me a total of 3 hours and 45 minutes today.

When I started out, it was a perfect day (and it remained so): 40 degrees, sunny, with little wind. I took off from the Hessie Trailhead just past Eldora, and, attempting to pace myself, went to town.

This image came about 20 minutes into the run. Probably not more than 9500'. Two weeks ago, this stream was snowy, but clear. Last week it was just clear. Apparently in the past week or so it has cooled down a lot.

At about an hour (1:05, actually) I hit Jasper Lake. Normally, in the summer, this lake is full up almost to where I was standing while taking this picture. In fact, it's a reservoir for a ranch a few miles east of here. It doesn't look quite so pretty when drained of most of it's water (elevation 10800). This is really where I got my first look at where I was headed (below).

I was a little daunted. I was aiming just to the right of the peak in this picture. But, to make things yet more interesting, a lot of the trail looked like this.

It made things interesting, but not worrisome yet. Within another twenty minutes, I was up at Devil's Thumb Lake. 11140'

As you can see, pretty well frozen over. Any thoughts as to why it's called Devil's Thumb?

At this point, though, I started getting a little nervous as to whether or not I'd even be able to finish the run. The trail was getting more and more choked with snow, and I knew what was coming. Most times, at the top of Devil's Thumb Pass, there's a snowfield that has to be climbed somehow in order to get up to the divide itself. I was not expecting to be able to do that, considering I chose not to bring my crampons or trekking poles (figuring they'd mostly weigh me down).

You can see where I'm heading in this one. There's a white snake of sorts climbing up the mountain. That's the trail. I follow that up, and around the mini peak in the foreground to the rockfield and the divide. I was thinking of turning around at this point.

I'm glad I decided to keep going. Otherwise I wouldn't have seen these three guys. Three Ptarmigans wearing their winter feathers, all nicely lined up as if they were waiting for some fool runner to come by and take their picture.

The trail I'm heading up. The Ptarmigan is still in the picture. At this point in my run, I was seriously considering turning around. But I still knew at this point that I could turn around and head down with no problems. The snow was windblown and had a good crust, so it gave good traction and was firmly in place.

I did finally make it up to the Pass. Lucky for me, the snowfield that usually is at the top was not there this time, so I could just climb up a rock field. Much more comforting when you're up there by yourself.

I finally made it up to the divide! From here it was a hop down to the High Lonesome Trail. It took a bit under two hours to get from the trailhead up to the divide. Half an hour along the divide, and a bit over an hour down (down snowfields this time, a little hairy sometimes, and I fell on my ass a couple times, but mostly ok).

They don't call it the "High Lonesome Trail" for nothing. I was running for almost four hours, and I saw six other people. Five of those were within a mile of the trailhead. The other was doing the same loop I was, only equipped with trekking poles and crampons, decidedly not running.

Now, it's eight o'clock on Halloween Night. And, as I planned, I am utterly wiped out (Between midterms this week and the run today) and ready to go to bed. I'll probably lose one of my toenails in the next few days. My feet hurt. My legs are tired. And I"m eating constantly.

In short: good run.

Tallies:
Mileage: 15-16
Elevation: 4000+ (total)
Time: 3 hr 45 min

Not Your Typical Run

2008-10-13T19:53:00.002-06:00

I had a much more interesting run than I'd anticipated today. I intended to go for 1:15 to 1:25 or so, on the trails up Flagstaff and Chautauqua.

We got our first snow here in Boulder last night, and I woke up this morning to one of my favorite sights out here: the Snow-Frosted Flatirons. The Flatirons are impressive at any time, but there's something particularly amazing when the get either just a dusting of snow, as we got last night, or it gets so cold here that they literally frost. It's particularly forbidding, and beautiful.

In any case, by the time I got out for my run this afternoon, most, but not all, of the inch or so of snow had melted. The trace that remained was just enough to have made the trails muddy and treacherous.

Regardless, I made it through the first hour or so of my run without any trouble or excitement. Then, as I climbed the limb of Flagstaff again, retracing my previous route, a couple of hikers who I had passed before said "There are four bears on the trail back there. Two adults and two cubs."

Naturally, I chose to bypass that route. Anybody who knows much of anything about bears knows that, when cubs are involved, you'd best steer clear. So I took the road instead of the trail. And sure enough, to my right, downhill, near the path, were three bears. The other had, according to three people who had been driving up, taken off down Flagstaff towards the Hill area.

It's not every day, even around here, you see that much wildlife with that many teeth and claws on a run from your house. The rest of the run consisted of warning runners coming up Flagstaff about the bear activity.

All in all, a satisfying, and unexpectedly interesting, run. I just wish I'd had my camera with me today.

Breakthrough?

2008-10-05T10:09:00.002-06:00

This past week has been rather interesting, to say the least. Aside from things in my everyday life outside of running (yes, I do have one), I've reached a new level with my running. I'm not sure yet whether I'm faster than I was this spring when I ran a 9:58 two mile, but I'm definitely faster than I've been since that run.

I pushed myself to a whole new level last weekend at the Golden Leaf, and after it. I put in some 27 miles or so over that weekend, which is more than I can ever remember running before in one weekend. And the fact of the matter is that I should not have been able to do so. At the end of the race, I was literally collapsing. The last two miles I had nothing left in the tank, and the one person I really did not want to pass me did . . .

And then three hours later we went for a 7-8 mile run/hike, just to keep loose. And we added an hour run the next day.

All told, I put in 45 miles last week, which is more weekly mileage than I've done in about 7 months. And I was sick from Monday on . . .

My legs are tired, but I still want to go out and run today. It's good to be back at it again.

Independence Pass

2008-10-04T08:17:00.004-06:00

As I mentioned before, on the way home from Aspen and the Golden Leaf, I took the route over Independence Pass rather than the easier (driving wise) but significantly less scenic and less fun four-lane route. Suffice to say, it was breathtaking this time of year. So, without further ado, here are some of the pics of the pass.

The pic above is looking back at the road up from Aspen, which I believe is somewhere over that embankment on the right side. Any ideas on why the race is called the Golden Leaf?
Looking up the pass where I still have to go. I was surprised by how many rather large trucks were on the pass, especially since vehicles over 35' are prohibited (for some strange reason).
Looking down from the top of the pass to where I'm about to drive. Turns out Lance lives around Aspen now. I can see why. Not many better places to train for a triumphant return to the Tour.
Looking at the ridges from the top of the pass, 12,500' elevation.

On a side note, it looks like I will likely be returning to Aspen in early December for another race. Again, it starts up the side of a ski hill. But there are some added challenges. First, the whole thing is 2.5 miles up the ski hill. Second, obviously the hill will be covered with snow. Third, it's at night.

Should be fun!

Aspen and the Golden Leaf!

2008-09-29T14:30:00.002-06:00

Despite a departure postponed by a good 6 hours, I managed to make good time getting to Aspen by 7PM on Friday despite taking the long route (the pass I planned to take was getting snow, so I opted to go around instead). My runner friend I stayed with all weekend was busy making us a steak, salad, and pasta dinner. Perfect pre-race food, in other words. She'd had opted not to run the race this year, so I had my own support crew/car and cheering section (at the finish line).

The race itself went far better than I could have ever hoped. The course itself is 13.3 miles. It starts out for 1.5 miles and 1000 vertical feet up a ski hill access road. From there, it traverses the ski hills from Snowmass Villiage to Aspen. Despite the first few miles, the race ends up 400 feet lower than it starts, so there is a great deal of downhill. While I wasn't as strong on the uphill this year as I had been last year when I ran the same race, I had practiced running downhill this summer, and so ended up doing much better on that section. The aptly-named "Golden Leaf Half" mostly winds through aspen groves, which at this time of year at 9000 feet are a bright gold. I came in at 1:53:20, 2.5 minutes slower than last year, for 47th place and 7th place in my age group (19-29).

And I can't tell you how nice it was to have somebody waiting at the finish. My friend had dropped me off at the start, gone for her own run, and was waiting right at the finish chute. I had absolutely nothing left by the end, and one person I had wanted to beat passed me in the last mile, ending one place ahead of me. Oddly enough, a friend of mine from Boulder came in 8 seconds and 1 place behind me. Suffice to say, I basically collapsed through the finish chute. But it was an excellent race for me.

The rest of the weekend was alternately fun, relaxing, and stressful. Since I was in Aspen, and I didn't want my legs to tighten up after the race, my friend and I went for an easy hike a few hours after the race. I realized after we were a ways in that, though I had been careful to charge my camera's battery before I left, I forgot to put it back in the camera. The only pics I have are from the drive back, where I used my somewhat nicer, larger camera. After the hike, we chilled out for about 4 hours (of Discovery Channel) before heading out for a prime rib dinner and a relaxing night at a pub.

On Sunday I set myself up in a coffee shop and worked on my research for my Masters Thesis.

At about 4, we took a short run from the house where I was staying, up to an aspen-filled valley. I again regretted the missing battery for my camera. It would have made some excellent pictures. But it was the perfect "shakeout" run for the day after a race.

This morning I drove back to Boulder via Independence Pass. This was the route I'd planned to take Friday when the weather did not cooperate. It shaves about 40 miles off the overall trip, bud doesn't save all that much time, since it's a twisting, switchback-filled road up to the continental divide and back down again. I do have some pictures (that help show why Lance Armstrong has been training in Aspen while prepping for his return to the Tour next July. No, I didn't see him) and I'll post those as soon as I get them onto my computer.

Any way, I'm back in Boulder, sore after some significant mileage this weekend, but feeling a lot better about pretty much everything than I was when I left. A good race will do that.

And I've caught an entirely different kind of running bug from any I've had before. There may be evidence of that later in this blog.

2008-09-17T13:54:00.000-06:00

For those who are interested, the Sombrero results are up.

Sombrero

2008-09-14T12:46:00.002-06:00

I ran the Sombrero Trail Run for the first time yesterday. On Friday I was optimistic about my chances of doing well. I went out for my normal 3-mile pre-race loop, and had to hold myself back from going too fast or too far. Meeting some friends that afternoon, I was very optimistic about the next morning.

Yesterday morning, I woke up, felt ok, and took off for Estes Park. I think one of my problems might have been the coffee I got on the way there (it was supposed to be an hour and fifteen minute drive, but it took slightly over 45 minutes total). In any case, I got to the course, picked up my number, and went out for a short warm up.

Let's just say I did not feel good. My legs felt more like deadweight than anything. By the time I got to the starting line and did some striders in order to warm up my fast twitch muscles, I felt like crap.

So I made a decision: rather than blow my legs out and try to make a race of it at the Sombrero, I decided to treat it as a training run, and hope my legs felt significantly better for the Golden Leaf half in two weeks.

For those who don't know, the Sombrero is a very odd distance (4.5 miles). It has a total of 900+ feet of elevation gain in that distance with a net gain of 200 or so feet. It's rocky, it's hard, and most people walk a significant portion of the hills. Were I to try and make a race out of it, I would blow out my quads entirely, with no guarantee of complete recovery by the time the Golden Leaf rolled around. I think I made the right decision given the situation.

In any case, I made a passable run of it, coming in at around 43 minutes or so. I didn't compete in my age group, and one woman beat me, but I did what I wanted to (hit between 42 and 43 minutes).

While not successful as a race, it was successful as a run. And, more importantly, it helped me catch the racing bug again.

Mesa Plus

2008-09-14T12:34:00.002-06:00

I did end up doing the Mesa Trail last Saturday. My brother is town, so I took off a little earlier than usual and headed out on the full trail.

I've done pieces of this one before, but never the whole thing at once. In particular, I had never done the approach into Eldorado Springs before. So when I crested the ridge and looked at the broad, dirt road of a trail heading down, down, down into the canyon, awe at the view vied with despair at the downhill to come.

I was maybe 6 miles into the run at this point, not yet an hour of running, and most people might wonder at feeling despair at a downhill. However, it was a mile and a half of downhill which I would have to come back up on the way back to Chautauqua. Out and back runs make you dread the downhills as much as you do the uphill.

In any case, at 1:07, I reached the car park at the Eldorado Springs trailhead, and after a brief pause at the outhouse, I tapped the lap button on my watch and headed back towards Boulder and my car.

By the 11 or 12 mile mark, I was somewhat the worse for ware, no longer as adept at avoiding obstacles on the trail in front of my feet. Despite all that, I managed to pick up my heels and sprint down to my car at Chautauqua. The final time on my watch: 2:12. I took two minutes off my time on the way out, on the way back. That deduction despite the fact that the way back is in fact a net uphill.

I had hoped for a time of 2 hours or so for about 13 miles. While I didn't quite make that time, looking later I found that the full trail is in fact more than a half marathon. It is in fact a bit over 14 miles round trip. So I didn't quite make my goal pace, but it was a decent effort.

It took me a while to recover from that one.

As a side note, these are the records for Boulder Trails.

Upcoming Races

2008-09-04T10:52:00.002-06:00

Looks like I'll be running in at least two races this month. Yesterday I signed up for the Sombrero Ranch Roundup. While it's only a 4.5 mile race, the time you get there is used directly as a qualifier for the Bolder Boulder. That should give you some idea of the difficulty of the race. According to my friend Jessica, who won her age group there last year, it's a good idea to get out quickly, because it quickly becomes single track where it's difficult to pass. In that sense, it sounds a little like the Golden Leaf (the second race I'm running this month).

It seems that recently my legs, and my mind, have gone through a bit of a re-emergence. I've finally been able to run consistently again for the past week or so. Given how much trouble I'd had with running over the summer, it's a welcome relief. Granted, I don't exactly expect to do all that well in my races this month, but it does bode well for being able to a half in, say, early November this year. At least, that's what I hope to do.

My goal for this week is to run the whole Mesa trail, as a bit of a sounding out of my legs for the Golden Leaf. Mesa is between 12 and 13 miles, and consistently either going uphill or down, so I think it should be a good indication of how my legs might be feeling during my half in Aspen. Here's hoping it goes well.

And I finally bought a water belt, which also carries my camera, so pictures will soon be on their way.

Tight

2008-08-19T08:52:00.002-06:00

Gotta say, at the moment, training is not going so well. The motivation is there, but the legs are not showing up.

Granted, for a very long time this summer, the motivation was not there for me, so I did not train as much. Add to that three long trips without much training, and there's not much of a mystery as to why I'm not at my peak.

Mostly, my hamstrings and calves are quite tight. Feels like I've got a golf ball in each calf now. I didn't make much more than a mile on the run this morning.

What does that mean for my race schedule? Well, I still want to try them all, I'm just going to have to go into them with little to no expectation of performance. Unfortunate, for somebody who usually expects a ton out of himself, but that's reality for the moment. I'll just keep plugging away, and train when I can.

Hopefully an ice bath and a break today will help. Meanwhile, I"m off to finish my summer research.

Waay too hot

2008-07-28T14:12:00.002-06:00

That's about the extent of it these days. The average high for this month in this part of CO has probably been between 85 and 95.

The result of this? It's been difficult for me to run lately. I end up getting up early (which is difficult for me, since my girlfriend both goes to bed and gets up a great deal later than I tend to) to try to run while it's still "cool." At this point, "cool" means anything below about 75 or so.

This Saturday, that meant getting up at 6:15, meeting my friend Jessica at 7:00, and then driving up up up into the mountains to do our run. Actually, I think this run only requires one or two ups. We ran at Betasso Preserve up the canyon a few miles. Instead of driving the whole way, we opted to take the Canyon Link Trail, which adds about 1.25 miles each way and maybe 500 feet of climbing. With two loops of the Betasso trail, that makes around 9-9.5 miles. And it took us somewhere around an hour and a half to do it. Not our best pace (we did about 10.5 in 1:20 last Saturday) but in our defense, it's not an easy trail.

Training over all? Not going quite as well as I'd hope this time of year, but there are signs that I'm getting better again. At the moment, I have two goal races: the Sombrero Trail Run, and the Golden Leaf Half in Aspen again. I'm leaving for a cross country road trip on Thursday, but we've scheduled time to run into that time, so hopefully that shouldn't be too much of a problem. We shall see.

The other goal for this year: Longs Peak. Late August.

Again, we shall see.

Back at it

2008-06-16T19:36:00.002-06:00

Not sure what lead to it, exactly, but I seem to be back in form, if not shape entirely.

On Saturday, I went for a trail run with my friend Mark, who unfortunately will be leaving for Boston at the end of June. So in honor of his last couple weeks here, we went up to Walker Ranch Loop for a run. It's about a 8 mile trail, rife with mountain bikers, and with two considerable climbs. Not sure what the total elevation gain was, but it was reasonably significant. (according to one source, around 1200' over the course of 7.8 miles).

I don't know what it was about that run, but when I got back, even though my legs were exhausted, my will to run, and desire, was back.

Today, as an aftershot to the run above, I opted for Mt Sanitas. As usual, I went up Dakota ridge to East Ridge, and then down the main Mt Sanitas Trail. If I remember that one correctly, it's 1300' of vertical and the loop (from my house) is around 5 miles or so. Both the ascent up East Ridge and the descent down Mt Sanitas are technical and difficult (not sure I've ever managed to keep running the whole way up East Ridge).

After those two runs, my legs are a bit tired, a bit sore, but ready.

I'll have to figure out a way to take my camera on more runs. The views on most of them are quite incredible.

2 months on

2008-06-11T11:42:00.002-06:00

It has now been precisely 2 months since my last post. Unacceptable, I know, but posts about the daily drudge of training are not all that interesting, to write or to read.

That, and grad school really got in the way this spring. In early May, during finals, I think I got overly stressed, and my right leg completely tensed up. It was bad enough that I did not run for three+ weeks, and have only been running at this point for a week and a half (about four times a week). But I seem to be doing a fair bit better, so there's hope for this summer yet.

That said, this summer I am not doing my normal training group. I've decided to focus more on trail running and racing, and not do many road races any more. The only road race I have on my schedule at this point is the Pearl Street Mile at the beginning of September. One of my coaches has thrown down a challenge to race him, and hopefully that will be interesting.

Outside of that, my racing plans are: July 5, the Leadville Heavy Half Marathon, August 1-3, the Wild West Relay, September, Golden Leaf Half. We shall see what else comes up this summer. At this point, I'm not even sure I'll be able to do all of those, but we'll see what happens. The key for me right now is just to not run too much. I wore myself out once, and it's not worth it to me to do so again.

Again from the NYT

2008-04-11T14:20:00.001-06:00

The New York Times has an excellent periodic column called "Personal Best." More often that not, this column produces an interesting article, often quite applicable to running. The most recent one is quite interesting.

Yes, Running Can Make You High.

Check it out.

Spring Break

2008-03-25T15:52:00.003-06:00

As the subject suggests, it is spring break at CU. It's much needed, on my end. Between some family issues, overall stress from work, and the acute stress from the frustration with my department, which I won't go into here, I need the break.

And so far it's been reasonably productive. I've managed to spend most of the time with friends thus far, and yet be productive at the same time. My apartment is looking (and feeling and smelling) fresher and cleaner than it has all winter. Part of that is due to the 60 degree weather and consequent opening of the windows, but much of it is due to two solid days of spring cleaning on the part of yours truly.

As far as running goes, as this is a running blog, it's been up and down. I was a little burnt out a couple weeks ago. I had been running between 42 and 50 miles a week for about 4 or 5 weeks (5, actually) and took one week at 25 miles, and then a week almost entirely off. The 25 mile week I also added a game of Ultimate Frisbee with some friends from the EE department, which reminded me that, with all the running I've been doing, I've neglected some other leg, not to mention upper body, muscles. I don't know that my legs have every been that sore.

It reminded me that, as much as I love running, I really love so many other sports that it's a shame for me to neglect them as much as I have. And I let myself get burnt out running, which is a danger we all face.

In any case, it caused me to rethink a few plans. I still plan to run the Gary Bjorklund half marathon in June (back to the hometown!), but after that, I plan to start mixing things up a little bit. I still plan to run fairly heavily, moving more to trail running in anticipating the Golden Leaf this year, but I want to branch out and do some other activities as well: climbing, frisbee, etcetera . . .

This is, of course, all dependent on what I find to do this summer. Hopefully that'll be a job at NREL, but we'll have to see about that.

In Mourning

2008-02-25T13:11:00.002-07:00

So I lost a dear friend of many years this morning.

My blue Yoko hat, which I have had for 8 years, was taken this morning while I was on my run. As I do pretty much every morning, I wore my hat for the first ten minutes of my run, then left it on a fence post to collect on my way back. On the way back, the hat was gone.

Now, as most runners do, I have quite an array of hats in my possession, collected from various races, training clubs, teams, and sponsors. However, this was a very special hat. I received it my senior year from my XC ski coach, who gave them to each captain. Since then, this hat has traveled with me everywhere I go, including several countries in Europe and most US states. I wore this hat on every run that merited a hat for the past 8 years, and running will not be the same without it.

Whoever took it, you'd best hope I never see you wearing it, because I take no responsibility for my actions should I see you.

Oh yes, and the hat can be seen in the picture here.

Mt Sanitas

2008-02-18T08:51:00.004-07:00

I went on one of my favorite runs yesterday: up Dakota Ridge and down the Sanitas Valley Trail. While I'd prefer to tackle Mt Sanitas itself, I didn't have the legs for it yesterday. In fact, my legs are rather sore after my 50 mile week last week, so I've opted to take today off. While it's not my preferred option, I think it's smarter.

In any case, I took my camera for once. I've discovered that my camera is light and small enough that I can just carry it in one hand and it doesn't affect my running. So here are a few pics from yesterday.

Any way, the first pic above is looking down from the highest point on the run. This is where I had my epiphany on why I run (there's a post on it well down there somewhere.

Above is looking south from the same spot, down towards the valley itself with the flatirons in the background.
Looking down the valley again, from a little lower. I love this part, because the trail is so nice that I can just cruise down the valley. I've pulled 4:30 miles down this thing before (doesn't count as a PR when it's all downhill). I got a few strange looks when I did that.

I'll try to add pictures of my other normal runs now that I have at least a decent way of taking my camera along. Hope you liked it.

It Seems to be Working

2008-02-11T12:29:00.000-07:00

So about a month ago, I started a program to significantly increase my mileage while not overtraining. This basically involves a series of 4-week segments (increase, drop a bit, increase more, go really easy) of easy distance running. I've done a hill workout or two in there as well, as a little extra strength training, but I have not purposefully done any speed work.

So far, it seems to be working. My legs, after last week, feel pretty good after the first cycle. This week kicks off the first week of my second four week cycle, and so is a very long week in which I intend to run 50 or so miles.

So, the results. So far, I haven't raced since I started the program. I had the chance to yesterday, but opted not to due to the long workout the day before. Saturday, the long workout, I ran about 12 miles. The first 8 were at 8 minute mile pace (in a the craziest wind I've ever run in). The last four I decided to pick up the tempo "a bit." I completely surprised myself by pulling the last four in 23:40, which works out to 5:55 miles.

I've never run a 5k that fast. And here, at the end of my longest run of the week, I pull off 4 miles at that pace. It seems as though my training might just be working.

It's never too cold

2008-01-19T17:53:00.000-07:00

It's been a little cool here in Boulder lately, with highs generally not topping freezing, and several 0 degree mornings. This has, naturally enough, led to a certain amount of complaining that "it's too cold to train."

I have never subscribed to that philosophy, being Northern-Minnesota born and bred. Our XC skiing races were never canceled until it was -29 degrees or below. Thus it bugs me a little bit when people try to say that it's too cold to train. It's never too cold to train.

On another, related note, I very much like this column in the NYT. It's called "Personal Best," and it often has very interesting topics. I will continue to post whenever I find something interesting on the site.

Destinations v. Journies

2008-01-15T12:55:00.000-07:00

The age old comparison of the journey versus the destination: which is more important? Now that I'm working towards a specific goal race (assuming I get into the race in the first place) it's become a more interesting and important question to me.

On one hand, if I'm going to run the race I want to run, at the pace I want to, I have to focus very closely on that goal, the destination. If I don't keep that in mind, and convince myself that I can do it, then there is no chance I'll succeed. Every day, week, and month has to be planned with the ultimate goal in mind. If I lose sight of that, I won't run the race I plan to .

On the other hand, by doing that, I risk losing sight of why I run in the first place. That was detailed in an earlier post, probably some time in mid-November. And if I lose sight of why I run, I won't enjoy it any more. I run simply to run, because I love it. But the constant straining towards a goal risks upsetting that.

I'm sure every runner has methods of mixing up so as to not lose sight of running for racing. I have a few methods I like to use. At least two, sometimes three days a week, I leave the watch behind, don't really plan a distance, and just go out for a run at whatever pace feels good to me that day. When I can, I'll take trips in order to run in to places (last summer I did a run in Rocky Mountain National Park, as well as several in the Indian Peaks Wilderness). I like to keep it fresh. Most of my runs take place in familiar locations along often-repeated routes, but changing it every so often keeps me interested in the scenery, and not just the act of putting one foot in front of the other for what might be as long as four hours.

I think I take the position of many when I decide that the journey, not the destination, is often the most important part of any process, whether it's a trip or a training program. If we focus too much on the destination and not enough on the journey itself, we risk missing the destination entirely. If I don't run my time for the half this summer, but enjoy the training process and still love to run at the end of it, I'll consider that a success.

This was put more succinctly on my favorite TV show of all time, Firefly (curse you fox for cancelling it!)

"Why don't you care where the ships are going?"

"Because the journey is the worthier part."