Token Running Blog

Special Valentine's Day "Who Wants to Get Cat-Pantsed?" Edition

2012-02-14T08:23:00.000-08:00

EDIT, AND APOLOGY: In the original version of this post, out of frustration with this situation, and by no means due to inherent malicious intent, I revealed information about the girl in question which she considers private, and not appropriate for this forum. My frustration is no excuse for this, and I have since removed the private information. I apologize for any damage that revealing this information may have caused, or may cause in the future, and I hope that those who read this information, if they were to meet her, would be sympathetic to this matter, which she is in no way responsible for, and is in no way her fault, since she is, as this post has always held, a special, beautiful girl, and deserves to be treated as such.

I'm taking time out on this very special holiday to write an entire post on this blog that, rather than using the "r" word over and over again, until you wish it were something that humans weren't capable of doing, talks about some *gasp* feelings . . .

I was working on this pair of pajama pants as a thoughtful, hand-made gift for a girl that I thought (and still think, honestly) was a particuarly special, beautiful member of the species.

However, over the past couple of weeks, to make a really long story really short, it seems as if she is no longer interested in this sort of romantic gesture. So I didn't actually finish the pants, since as much as I would enjoy finishing the job from a practical standpoint, my heart is no longer fully in it. (Sad face.)

But that's where you come in! Because I am sure that lots of girls would appreciate this sort of Valentine's Day present, but are unlikely to get it, one lucky girl reading this blog could be the recipient of this quasi-failed show of affection!

So of course, you want to see the goods:

Front View:

Back View:

Drawstring Detail:

Applique Detail:

These pajama pants, modeled after the pajama pants that I got after finishing second in the 2011 6-Hour Pajama Run this past July in New York (link: http://tokenrunningblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/week-in-review-24-30-july-2011-and-6.html), are, as described by the previously-intended recipient who at one point wore them, "so comfortable," and, to paraphrase, "steal-able." They are a thin, yet warm, flannel-textured acrylic with all-over blue-and-yellow plaid pattern, and contrasting "atom red" stitching.

The waist is both elastic and contrasting red drawstring (unique, limited-edition yarn), and fits my 28-inch waist fairly comfortably. If your waist size is in the 26-28 inch range, they should fit just fine. If by some miracle of nature your waist is smaller than that, I can take the elastic in. (Sorry, no fat chicks.)

The butt features the letters "TKBI," cut from a cartoon-cat patterned cotton broadcloth, appliqued with contrasting "atom red" thread - or they will be, when they're finished.

"TKBI" stands for "Tiny Kitten Brand Industries," the clothing company which, for legal purposes, my cat Ash (aka "Tiny Kitten") owns. Here is a picture of Ash:

Ash Ninja Racecar, Professional Business Cat

As it turns out, that sort of applique work is labor-intensive, even on a sewing machine (which may partially justify the ridiculous cost of the "real" NFL jerseys), and in my emotionally weak state, I got tired and frustrated and quit. But for you, I'll finish the "KBI," which is well over 75% of the applique work - the "K" alone has 11 distinct stitch lines! And besides, who wants "Tiny" on Valentine's Day, anyway?

Also, the pants that these were modeled on had pockets, while these do not, but I am willing to sew pockets into these for you, maybe even made out of some sort of cat-themed fabric, if I have enough left.

So start the bidding with whatever you have - every manner of favor will be considered on an obscure, arbitrary, and highly subjective scale. Good luck!

(Okay, to be very real for a moment, and brief about this, the relevant point here is that the r-word - notice that I didn't say it - is cathartic, in a way that is comfortable and familiar to me, since I've done it so many times, under so many conditions. But range of expression relative to the r-word, and, for that matter, any creative pursuit, is inherently limited. Making clothes is another means of creative expression that, for reasons to be left unexplored right now, appeals to me. But being unfamiliar with the emotional aspects of this, and having it currently tied up in difficult emotions to begin with, makes this sort of creative expression difficult for me, but appealing nonetheless. So once I can finish these pants, I can move on to other things, but for the moment, they're just going to be a fuzzy little roadblock on the couch in my basement, the same way my cats are all the time when I try to do anything.)

And speaking of cats, happy birthday to Maddie Maverick Airplane and the late Relay Ricky Racecar. We still miss you, Relay. (Maddie, keep up the good work.)

The Maddie Cat, aka Madden (2012 Video Game), for different

Relay, aka "The Rao"

Alright, now I promise I'll stop seeming this sort of crazy, and go back to being the normal running kind of crazy. Enjoy the rest of your Valentine's Day!

Week in Review: 5 February - 11 February, and Mid-Maryland 50K Race Report

2012-02-11T14:32:00.000-08:00

Cold, hard numbers:

5 February: 2.5 miles (17.5 minutes) to Our Daily Bread for a service project, during which I saw a guy punch another guy square in the jaw, causing him to drop like a rag doll. Then, 2.5 miles (17.5 minutes) back home, wearing "nice clothes" (jeans, button-down shirt, and a Ben Sherman jacket) on Monument Street, narrowly avoiding getting jumped by four high-school-sophomore age boys (race redacted) - clearly a case when you're "asking for it" by dressing a certain way. Finally, 10 miles in normal running clothes in normal places (70 minutes) - what Super Bowl?

6 February: 10-ish-mile lunch run with Luke (70 minutes)

7 February: 10-ish-mile lunch run with Luke (70 minutes), then my return to Tuesday Night Track - 2+ mile warmup, fast "minutes" (1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1), with 1 minute running "rest" between - intervals at high-5-minute-mile pace, "rest" at low-7-minute-mile pace, 2+ mile warmdown, for about 10 miles (70 minutes) total

8 February: 10-ish-mile lunch run with Luke (70 minutes), then 10 more miles in the evening (70 minutes) with the Wednesday night Canton run crew.

9 February: 5 miles at the end of the workday (35 minutes), waking me up for a night with Me Talk Pretty, Hawthorne Heights, The Young Electric, and some other bands at the Legendary Dobbs in Philadelphia (a pretty legendary night . . .)

10 February: Doubled, on a theory - 6 miles (40 minutes) at around noon, then another 6 miles (40 minutes) at around 7 p.m.

11 February: Mid-Maryland 50K in 4:29, follwed up with 7 miles (49 minutes) in light snow and whipping wind around the Inner Harbor

Total Time: 888 minutes
Total Distance: 120 miles

Warm, gently massaged memories:

I didn't want to run the Mid-Maryland 50K.

But this year, I set a goal to run a race of at least 50 miles in length every month. Unfortunately, when it comes to ultrarunning, February is the cruelest month (except for the Rocky Raccon 100, but it would have been 2 weeks after the Beast of Burden 100, and the race director didn't seem keen on late entries, although with the number of people that asked me about it, I'm regretting now that I didn't at least try, but anyway . . .), and so it seems unlikely that I'll be able to meet that goal this month. But I can maybe at least run an ultra every month this year, and 50K is pretty much the legal minimum for an ultra. Plus, this race was close (shortest drive ever to an ultra for me - just under half an hour) and cheap ($50, registering online 3 days before the race). And, theoretically, the course, 5 10K trail loops, was flat and fast, so maybe a chance for a PR.

So whatever, I entered.

The night before was total routine - less than 10 minutes to lay out cold weather running outfit A, and post-race warm-jeans-and-button-down-flannel ensemble B, and put together my bottles and pills. (Perhaps it's a little disturbing how dialed-in all of this is now.) I went to bed early, got plenty of sleep, left the house on time, arrived an hour before the race, and had plenty of time to do everything I needed to do, including take this picture:

Which is how it looked before the race, and why I was, even more than when I woke up and forced myself out of the relative warmth of my bed, dreading this race. All that snow, and still coming down - over the course of 4 or 5 hours, that would make clothing wet, heavy, and useless at best (burdensome at worst). But again, whatever, I was here, and so were Serge Arbona, Christian David Creutzer, Henry Peck, and Mike McGonagle, ultrarunning buddies. Time to run a race.

The race director gave us about two minutes of instruction, joking that he marked the entire snow-covered course with a white line yesterday (as it turned out, he really wasn't joking, which meant the course markings were nearly impossible to see - good thing there were a lot of signs). Then, with little fanfare, except for all of us shouting the word "Uno!" in a nod to the pizza sponsor, not the card game, we were off.

(Oops, wrong race. The other side of the sign was supposed to be directing vehicular traffic to the start of the race. Apparently, the race director thought nobody would be foolish enough to drive the wrong way to the start. *raises hand*)

The race director kindly ran the first loop with us, to blaze the path and help prevent people from getting lost. So I stuck with him and a small pack of front-runners for our loop around the fields before we entered the woods. But within the first couple of minutes, I could tell that something was horribly wrong. My quads felt like they were bleeding out, badly, for the first time in a run since the Fire on the Mountain 50K debacle (see this: . . . I am just now realizing the funny coincidence that was my relentlessly burning quads). Maybe it was that I wasn't warmed up, maybe that I haven't been on trails much in the past month, maybe something silly to do with uneven surfaces and muscle activation and whatever, but the point is, it was awful. I was struggling to picture the rest of the race continuing at this level of pain.

So I started falling back, and, predictably, within the first half of the first loop, Arbona, Creutzer, and McMonagle passed me, in that order. When Mike passed me, he asked how I was doing, and since I don't pull punches with that sort of thing, I didn't hesitate to tell him that I felt awful and this was going to be a long day. He was kind and reasonably encouraging as he passed me.

But really, it was going to be a long day at the rate that I was going. The second loop came, and this was the worst. All of the parts of the course that were muddy the first time were even muddier, and some parts that were only sort of muddy had gotten worse, all from a bunch of people trampling through the mostly narrow single-track for some reason. (By the last loop, conservatively, 70 percent of the course would be slippery-to-ankle-deep mud - not exactly a fast surface.) The second loop was the worst, since I knew we were still in half-marathon/training run territory, and there was no chance of anybody falling off pace at this point, so I would continue to struggle along.

Fortunately, the course was scenic, and offered a good amount of variety - it was seemingly in short, distinctive, mentally-manageable sections that made each loop feel a lot shorter than it actually was. Also, I could console myself with thoughts of A FRIEND who was also running a 50K today, under far hillier conditions, and solidarity with MY FRIEND'S pain was some consolation, since other feelings that I had kicking around at that point for various reasons were anything but.

Eventually, I reached the end of the second lap, and I saw Mike coming out, which was surprising, considering how poorly I thought I was doing. Maybe I had a chance to catch some people after all. Mike asked again how I was, and I shouted "TERRIBLE," and, just like that, whatever demon was afflicting my quads had been exorcised, and suddenly, I felt "normal" again.

I felt my pace quicken on the third lap, and the amount of grunting increase (it seemed to help release the pain, so I really wasn't worried about who was hearing me at that point). But darned if the race hadn't somehow gotten faster - the first woman was not far behind me, and at this point, I was resigned to defining success as not letting the first woman pass me and not letting the overall winner lap me. So I pushed harder, and, at one point, fell with first woman not far behind me, and I've never gotten up and mumbled "I'm fine" to the nearest runner (who asked if I was okay) more quickly. Mud and roots came and went - the third lap.

I started my fourth lap optimistically, especially since one runner who was ahead of me was dawdling at the start/finish aid station (the lone aid station in the race). But somehow, he, like everybody else that day, was super-fast, and caught up to me and passed me within the first mile after the aid station. So much for that. I kept pushing, and feeling a little more human (albeit sore from slipping and sliding so much on the mud), but other than lapping lots of other runners, I wasn't passing anybody. I couldn't even see anybody close enough to pass. The lap ended, and I ended up right where I was.

Fifth and final lap - surely somebody will slow here. Nope, everybody is super-fast all the time. I had finished the fourth lap in about 55 minutes, and was hoping to go a little faster on the last lap, especially since I had finally shed my soaking wet outer layer (which, it turned out, probably weighed upwards of 5 pounds, and probably had not been helping my cause earlier in the race). But in spite of my pushing, and my lighter load, I still came through in just about 55 minutes for my last lap, and I still didn't pass anybody who was ahead of me. I came through the finish line, 7th overall, 4 hours, 29 minutes, and some-odd seconds, ripped off my teal Baltimore Marathon Under Armour recycled-fabric long-sleeve shirt (still best shirt ever) in discomfort and frustration, my brief shirtlessness causing small-scale stare-age and swoon-age by the females in the vicinity of the finish line (yeah, I just said that), before putting on the very dry, somewhat warm, long-sleeved finisher's shirt.

Mike apparently finished 7 minutes ahead of me, from the look of his watch, and we chatted a bit, during which time his lady friend Jackie (1) asked about Rocky Raccoon (okay, seriously, as soon as they open registration for that race next year, I'm signing up . . . and hoping the word really does end before then . . . kidding :P), and (2) informed me, after a significant amount of mental math, that 3:20 marathon pace was probably good enough to run sub-4-hours in a 50K (her goal, and mine, and everybody's, apparently - but this is the mystery of the 50K dance, one perpetrated in part by the fact that most "50K" races are probably closer to 35 miles than 31 miles - I'm curious to see a GPS on this one). Both completely valid topics. :)

I congratulated the people that finished ahead of me and had stuck around (Arbona and Creutzer, and that guy that I almost passed but eventually didn't), and congratulated Henry Peck when he finished about ten minutes after I did. Then I put on my warm clothes, ate pizza from Uno's, drank Dr. Pepper, and listened to 50 Cent on the radio ("In Da Club"), for some reason. And, after hanging around the finish line for a little while, I left, at 113 miles on the week - 7 more to go (on 2/11 - a great day for numbers).

(As visual evidence, a sample of the mud - if there hadn't been a few dryer gravel sections, this would have looked a lot worse.)

Back home, after shaking out my muddy clothes in the park across the street from my house, while the late 20-something neighbor guy carried flowers into his house for his girl (different lives, indeed), I sat on my front steps, lacing my house key into my black-on-black Asics 2150s, as the wind callously whipped tiny snowflakes in my face, just like this time last week. I pressed "play" on my iPod shuffle, to be shot down by a female voice that said "LOW BATTERY." This would be a run alone with my thoughts, apparently, to piece together this post to the sound of the earphone cable pounding against my chest, like a heartbeat in my ear. I cruised through the streets, totally comfortable, showing no sign of the 30+ miles that I had already put on my legs today. And as I came home, just like last week, the snow had stopped, although the wind had not totally abated, and the sky in front of my house was crazy, in the way that only the sky in front of my house can get crazy:

So if music had been playing, I'd go with Sunny Day Real Estate's "In Circles." It was not the same day as last Saturday (over twice as many running miles, and not nearly as many mall miles), but in a lot of ways, especially emotionally, it felt like it.

And, to go one further, it wasn't the same race as the Holiday Lake 50K this weekend last year (see this: . . . ), but, again, emotionally, it felt like it (although intellectually, it is nice to know that I'm in shape enough to turn out a race like I did today, even on a "bad" day). Maybe this weekend is just a bad weekend for an ultra, although the Mid-Maryland 50K is a top-notch race, on a beautiful, varied, challenging course, incredibly hitch-free for its first time, and poses stout competition to the race that Horton himself claims is his least favorite to put on. In any event, in all cases, it was a little high, a little low, a little bit of everything.

But in the end, whatever, a lot of it is just running, and the stuff that isn't is easily (if sometimes temporarily) obscured by running, even (and sometimes especially) by a bad day of running.

And as much of a mixed bag as these experiences are, they're uniquely so, and I'm thankful for everybody, "good" or "bad," who help to make them. And that's the best I've got right now. :)

Week in Review: 29 January - 4 February, and "Training Beautiful"

2012-02-04T16:36:00.000-08:00

Here's how this past week went down:

29 January: 21+ miles (140 minutes), all over Baltimore, feeling strangely fine

30 January: 10 miles (70 minutes) at APG at lunch, then another 13 miles (90 minutes) to, with, and from the Fed Hill run

31 January: 10 miles (70 minutes) at APG at lunch

1 February: 10 miles (70 minutes) at APG at lunch, then a total of 10 miles (70 minutes) in the evening with the Wednesday Night run from O'Donnell Square

2 February: 1 mile (10 minutes) easy, because there wasn't time for more

3 February: 5+ miles (37 minutes) at APG at lunch, then 21+ miles (185 minutes) easy-ish in the Patapsco area in the late afternoon

4 February: 11 miles (77 minutes) in the morning, under ominous skies, then 7 more miles in the evening (49 minutes) after the heavens opened up, in rain/sleet/snow

Total Time: 868 minutes
Total Distance: 120 miles

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(This picture is about to have a point)

As I sit here after a cold, dark, slightly snowy, slightly spiteful seven-mile run to close out a debatably dismal day of mindless meandering, against false reassurance from "a friend" that "it should be a nice day out at least" (which I knew to be untrue, since red skies in the morning make sailors take warning, and probably piles of cat puke on the rug, too), it seems more than a little strange that the first and foremost thoughts in my mind are about "training beautiful." Maybe that's because earlier in the week, at the prompting of scenes like the above, and the unseasonably warm weather, I couldn't help drifting back to the days of my first marathon, Baltimore, in 2004, and pondering the path that led me there.

I had always wanted to run a marathon, and when the time seemed right, Baltimore seemed like the place, and I trained dutifully for 4 months for marathon day. And, as luck would have it, marathon day was magical. After the race, I hastily scribbled notes in my running log (now strangely missing from the bookcase under the stairs upstairs, but that's a mystery for another day), trying to capture all of the beauty of the race, and all of the people who made it so beautiful: my sister Rachel, who let me crash at her apartment at the Hopkins Homewood campus the night before the race, another runner named Mark who I met during the race, who I ran with for most of the race, who called me "crazy sock guy" because I was wearing socks for gloves, Liz Krimmel, who was out for a run around Lake Montebello right when I got to that part of the course, and who made it into one of the race photographs with me, John Onofrey, who cheered me on as he walked through Mount Vernon, then came out to hang out with me at the end of the race, when nobody else was there for me, because nobody else seriously thought I could do it, or do it as well as I did it - 3:00:51, easily qualifying for the Boston Marathon (my goal), painfully short of a sub-3 hour race. At the risk of sounding ridiculous, there were so many times during that race when I felt myself moving effortlessly down the streets of Baltimore (particularly in the first half, when I was on 2:50 pace), and my heart was overflowing with joy.

But all of that isn't even half of the story. This is where the training comes in. Because for four months prior to that race, I came back to my parents' house after long, seemingly pointless days of work at APG, to suffer through training runs of upwards of 12 miles on weekdays, and upwards of 70 miles per week (at the time, nearly unthinkable numbers). My training for the 2004 Baltimore Marathon was some of the most disciplined, directed training of my life. I followed the "advanced" training schedule that I had photocopied from an issue of Runner's World exactly. Hill work on Tuesdays, speed work on Thursdays, Sunday long runs. And over the course of the training program, amazing things happened, things that may seem inconsequential in words, but are burned into my mind as beautiful experiences. I remember the long runs - going to Cracker Barrel with my family after my first 18-mile run, and the transcendent taste of the chicken and dumplings, a 20-miler the morning after my 5-year high school reunion, even now amazed that I could run that long after such a long night, having gone that distance so few times before. I remember the intervals in the warm, humid dusk at the now-nonexistent Harford Community College track, 800 meters on a minute rest, quads and lungs burning, but getting no reprieve until the 20-minute tempo run home against the backdrop of the setting sun was complete. And I remember the misery of the easy days after the brutality of the workouts. I remember 4-mile runs on Wednesdays after hard hill workouts that may as well have been 400 miles, and 50-minute runs on Saturdays when I would stagger through the last 10 minutes, shower, and flop on a beanbag chair in my room in front of the Playstation and Silent Hill.

In fact, if I were given a calendar and some time to meditate, I could probably remember something from just about every training run that I did leading up to the 2004 Baltimore Marathon. Like the contrails in the sky over APG, they still pass through my mind every so often, eventually spreading, dissipating, and being absorbed into the backdrop, to reappear again some other day. Every day of training tattooed a new, obscure memory into my mind, and so I was not just building my body, but my mind and my heart, accumulating willpower and emotion, ready to be released on race day, to coalesce into a coherent scene of brilliance (see picture above), regardless of the quality of each individual memory. Good, bad, indifferent, it all came together for a few hours to create something meaningful and beautiful.

And so, today, on my "nice day out at least," I spitefully stepped out the front door, and laced my key into my shoes as fat wet snowflakes, punctuated with frozen raindrops, fell on my face. I switched on my iPod shuffle, and sure enough, first song - "Bombs Over Baghdad" - "weatherman sayin' it ain't gonna rain." I pressed on through Patterson Park, smiling as I passed the few brave souls out walking dogs that wouldn't take "miserable" for an answer. My stride was quick, strong, and even, my breathing was smooth. I headed for the waterfront, to the promenade, as the darkness grew, to "Amen Fashion (Jesus is the New Black)," passing two other runners plodding through this unfortunate night. My turnaround point was the Fells Point pier, and as the brilliance of the neon signs across the water flashed across my field of view as I made a sharp turn inland, I felt re-invigorated. I felt no pain. Speeding down Aliceanna, then Eastern, the snow had stopped. The rain had slowed to just a few drops. "Edge of Glory" came on as I knew I had only about 5 minutes of this left. Part of me didn't want it to end. But most of me was glad that I closed out the run at 6:45/mile pace, arriving at my doorstep to dying horns in my earbuds as I unlaced my shoes - a warm shower couldn't come quickly enough. In spite of spite, I felt joy for outlasting Mother Nature, at least for tonight, and for feeling so strong under apparently adverse conditions.

Another contrail across my mind, to be revisited in a race someday. Someday, this will be nothing but beautiful.

Week in Review: 22-28 January, and Fixing Things

2012-01-29T13:44:00.000-08:00

Here we go with this again:

22 January: 15 miles (200 minutes), the bitter end of the Winter Beast of Burden 100-Mile Run.

23 January: 6 miles (50 minutes) in Tel Aviv, struggling on a tender right Achilles tendon.

24 January: 1 mile (10 minutes), plus about an hour of walking around Tel Aviv, still struggling with that Achilles.

25 January: 1 mile (10 minutes), plus about half an hour of walking around Tel Aviv.

26 January: 1 mile (10 minutes), and then an all-afternoon walking tour of Tel Aviv.

27 January: Back in the US and A, 12 miles (85 minutes), on a very weird weather day, somewhere between sunny and rainy and cold and warm, all at once. Achilles still not entirely happy, but I managed a "normal" 7-minute-mile pace by the end.

28 January: Up early for no real reason, to run 10 miles (70 minutes), which felt markedly better than yesterday, finishing up at around 6:40/mile pace.

Total Time: 435 minutes
Total Distance: 46 miles

And, one more thing: Last night, when I was resting, I finally fixed my jeans, which got torn during this escapade: For having very little experience with any of this, being partially distracted by the Nine Inch Nails "Lights in the Sky" DVD, and doing this totally by hand, I'm pretty happy with the result:

And I did this, and I wrote about this, because when you read the rest of this post, you'll see that I take pride not only in my craftsmanship, but also in my ability to be a living, breathing metaphor . . .

The most notable omission from my race report (which was written just hours after the race ended, on no sleep, and contained a few spelling errors) was that I ran most of the race on an injured right Achilles tendon. I injured it somewhere in the first 12 miles of the race or so, as I recall first feeling the pain on my first run out, then having a brief debate about whether or not to stop running. Of course, to stop running at that point would have felt really foolish, considering how logistically difficult it was to even get to the race, not to mention the fact that I hadn't even run 10 miles yet. So I tried my best to ignore it, and persisted. Perhaps this injury was the greatest factor in my mysterious slowdown. I think one of the reasons that I've been so sturdy over so many miles is that my body has a pretty good sense of when to sound the alarm and force me to slow down when I'm at risk of injury. Over the course of the race, the alarms were probably going off somewhere, but they were hard to feel, considering that the cold temperatures had a tendency to numb everything.

That said, the Achilles aside (I'll spare you pictures of my foot and ankle being swollen to about twice its usual size), nothing really hurt the day after the race. The 6 miles I ran in Tel Aviv were cut short solely by the Achilles trouble. In a way, that's frustrating, because again, it means I didn't go as hard as I could have. But in that case, had I gone as hard as I could have, I might have seriously injured myself, so considering how well I've recovered, I think everything turned out the best it could.

Which brings me to the philosophical point of this post, which is about fixing things. At some point or another, assuming we're pushing our limits, we are all subject to some sort of illness or injury (physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, spiritually, or otherwise). What we aren't necessarily subject to is being crippled or limited by it. There's always a way over, around, or through, provided that we're both appropriately patient and active in our recovery. Continuing to push, not harder, but smarter, just below the pain threshold, below that "edge," heals us faster and ultimately makes us stronger.

So in this case, I backed off on the injury, but I didn't stop completely. Short runs certainly hurt, and long walks, although not as acutely painful, were colored with persistent, low-grade pain. But none of the pain was beyond the point of injury, and all of the effort was purposeful, focused on playing with the pain point, finding a way to move past it.

And within a week, I did - today, I ran 20+ miles, finishing the last couple of miles at low-6-minute-mile pace, feeling totally comfortable. In fact, I feel better this weekend than I did last weekend before I ran Beast of Burden. In a way, the injury not only made me stronger through the recovery process, but also because the little bit of forced rest helped my body catch up on its response to the stress of hundreds upon hundreds of miles in the last couple of months.

Not only that, but, as I type this, in 20-mile run afterglow, it's about 50 degrees in the middle of January, and the afternoon sunlight and the sun-warmed air made it feel like early spring on the Baltimore city streets. Just one more thing that's a little "wrong." It always makes me a little nervous when a season seems to be coming before its time. At the same time, in the spirit of welcoming uncertainty and disappointment as opportunities to grow and push limits, it's exciting to have the feeling that this is "fixing" to be one fast year. (I am just barely south of the Mason-Dixon line, so I am allowed to use that word that way.)

Week in Review: 15-21 January, and Winter Beast of Burden 100-Mile Race Report

2012-01-22T07:42:00.000-08:00

Okay, getting the "boring" stuff out of the way . . .

15 January: 12 miles (90 minutes), partly as a "victory lap" to, from, and around M&T Bank Stadium, to celebrate a Ravens victory, and partly to and from yoga.

16 January: 15 miles (105 minutes), to, from, and with the Fed Hill run.

17 January: 10 miles (70 minutes), APG lunch run.

18 January: 8 miles (56 minutes), APG lunch run, then 8 miles (56 minutes), to, from, and with the Wednesday night run from O'Donnell Square

19 January: 9 miles (60 minutes), APG lunch run

20 January: 2 miles (20 minutes), run from Maryland Transit Center to Greyhound Station to make the bus to Harrisburg, PA, to meet up with my ride to Lockport, NY for the Winter Beast of Burden 100-Miler

21 January: 85 miles (840 minutes), Winter Beast of Burden 100 (yes, I'm counting the 15 miles that I technically ran on Sunday towards Sunday . . .)

Total time: 1,192 minutes

Total distance: 149 miles

And now, the race:

Why the Winter Beast of Burden 100? Well, forgive me father, it's been three months since my last 100-mile race, and with a busy year of 100s ahead, I didn't want to go too long and forget what it feels like to run that distance. Plus, the race director was bugging me to come back for a rematch with Valmir Nunes, and this year, there will be a "Double-Beast" buckle awarded to runners who complete both the Winter and the Summer edition. So once I figured out the work travel logistics to make the race possible, it was a go . . .

I won't dwell on the convoluted method by which I arrived in Lockport, NY (hinted at in my mileage summary for this past Friday), or the random stop at the "Victorian" McDonald's in Pennsylvania, or the part where I got to the Lockport Inn and pretty much went straight to sleep (except for an unexpected visit, which I also won't go into detail about here). Let's leave all of those things mysteries, and just skip to race morning . . .

Mark Rodriguez and I got to the starting area around quarter to 9, which was way early for a race which started at 10 a.m. We wandered around, used the bathroom repeatedly, checked and double-checked gear, and made small talk with the other runners until it was time to line up at the starting line, and, with absolutely no fanfare (I wasn't even sure that we had started, except that the clock had started, so I guess it was time to go), we were off.

The weather was "good" for a Winter Beast of Burden - the past couple of years, high winds and blizzard conditions were the norm. This year, it was cold (in the teens), with snow flurries, but only an inch or two of accumulation, and very little wind. So naturally, everybody started off too fast. I started out fast-ish, but I felt under control: a little over 3:30 for the first lap (25 miles - 12.5 miles out, 12.5 miles back, along the pancake-flat Erie Canal Towpath). At that pace, a time in the 14-hour range was within reach. So I decided to hang on the best I could.

But for whatever reason, I just wasn't feeling that fast. Maybe it was the shoeprints in the snow making the surface uneven, maybe it was fatigue from being out in the cold for an extended period of time, or maybe it was just not enough taper before the race. (EDIT: I also strained my right Achilles tendon somewhere in the first 10 miles, and while the cold numbed the pain away before I could seriously consider quitting that early in the race - although the thought crossed my mind - the weakness in that ankle as a result of the injury was probably also a factor.) Whatever the reason, I gradually slowed down on the second lap, coming through in around 7:40 - a 4:10 lap. I didn't feel bad exactly - I just felt slow.

The highlight of my second lap was when I was walking briefly, as it was the most efficient way to fiddle with my pants and jacket pockets to take out gels, Endurolytes, and Sports Legs, and Mark Ott, who apparently has some speed, caught up to me and asked me "Is this your first 100?" I was feeling particularly insulted - maybe the clearly false encouragement from people who were behind me, going the other way on the towpath, asking "how are you feeling" in that way that was fishing for me to say that I felt terrible, thereby validating their miserable experience (which I wouldn't say, because, as a general rule, I am brutally honest about how I am feeling, and, in this case, it wasn't bad at all), was getting to me, or maybe for an instant I just felt tired of the disrespect, so I responded, "Sure, why not?" Since this was clearly a sarcastic remark, he followed it up with "Well, we're back here trying to figure out who the hell you are . . ." which was even more insulting, considering that the first time that I passed him, he introduced himself and we shook hands. I later found out that he claimed that he was going to beat Valmir and win the race, so I guess somebody who would make such a brash claim shouldn't be expected to be above such remarks, but, knowing only the little that I knew at the time, I responded "Let's just keep it at 'who the hell am I?' for now . . ." and ran off, to which he responded, in fifth-grader fashion "aww, c'mon!"

Meanwhile, back in the race, Valmir was about four miles ahead of me, and looking strong. As I was gradually fading, I realized that, barring some kind of horrible mishap, Valmir was going to, quite literally, run away with this one, and the race would be for second place, where I currently was. So I devoted the last 50 miles of the race to hanging on to second place. In a way, it was gratifying to finally get in that "grind" gear and sit there - except that that gear has no place in a theoretically flat, fast race like this, except in times of desperation.

I wish I could say that the race was more eventful, but for the most part, it wasn't. And actually, this turned out to be a good thing. I ran the first 50 miles in the daylight, through light flurries, and the last 50 miles in the dark, under the glow of my headlamp. Aside from the continued disbelieving, disgusted looks from the people I was passing (although, towards the end of the race, these turned congratulatory, as some of them were finally willing to concede), it was a calm, quiet, peaceful run in the snow next to a mostly-frozen canal. During moments when I wasn't distracting myself from my gradual slowing by playing a 5-second clip from Nine Inch Nails' "Discipline" literally thousands of times in my mind, or saying decades of the rosary, when I was simply accepting that I was out on a cold, clear, beautiful night, with the sky bright red on the horizon and flurries gently settling on my face, sticking in my patchy beard, I felt truly in harmony and at peace with life, the universe, and everything.

But that said, the second half of the race wasn't totally without its drama. Mark Ott had drastically fallen off, and was walking much of the course, but Ryan O'Dell, after a tentative start, was making a strong comeback. At the 75-mile turnaround, when I passed him, I had about a 2-mile lead on him - not bad, but not totally comfortable. 12.5-ish miles later, at the far end turnaround, the lead had shrunk to a mile. It didn't take a math genius to figure out that if I kept doing what I was doing, and if he kept doing what he was doing, he would pass me in the final mile, and I would be mortified, Sweet Valley High-style. So I very gradually starting picking up my pace in the last 12.5-mile stretch, to the extent that one can do so in the course of a lap that wound up being just a shade under 5 hours. I resolved not to walk, and to dutifully force down the "Tropical" Hammer Gels (by far, the worst flavor, but the only ones left at this point, as other runners apparently already knew this and had picked through them to take the "good" flavors) on the run, instead of walking and fumbling with them as a means of delaying the misery of ingesting them.

I crossed the Exchange Street Bridge, about a mile from the finish, and finally the people I was passing were unquestioningly congratulatory, but I wasn't sure where Ryan was, and for the last 12.5 miles of the race, I had been assuming that he was gradually gaining on me, even though I had no visual confirmation of this fact. So as I came off the bridge, completely assuming that he was right behind me (I thought I had heard a snot rocket about a half-mile ago that sounded like him), I broke into the fullest-tilt run I could manage at that point, which was probably somewhere in the slightly-sub-7-minute-mile neighborhood. My stomach immediately began to protest, but this was neither the time nor the place. I backed off only enough to quell the feeling of imminent vomit, and then I saw him on the other side of the canal, under the "Niagara Fiberboard" sign, looking fairly strong and charging hard. I was not giving up second to Mark Ott's apparent colluder in refusing to know who I was, especially at the end of this race, when I knew Ryan had family and girlfriend waiting for him. Call me a jerk if you must, but this was about burying him and making a statement. Maybe he saw me hauling on the other side of the canal, got scared, and conceded, or maybe he just didn't have that kind of charge in him, but in any case, I hauled through the finish line in 17:20, sort of surprised that the last lap took me nearly 5 hours, but whatever, I was done, on the verge of vomiting right then and there, but satisfied with my final push (which perhaps suggested that I had more in me than I thought, and I could have pushed harder earlier, but again, not the time or place to second-guess). I managed to compose myself for this finish-line picture:

And then I stumbled into the heated tent at the finish line, where I sat and pretty much didn't move for the next three hours or so. Eventually, I showered, changed, and packed my things - off to Buffalo, for a noon flight to Newark, on the way to Tel Aviv, Israel for work. The fun never stops with me, apparently.

Valmir finished in 14:56, a new Winter course record, and the fastest time on the course. But I now hold two of the three fastest times on that course (17:20, Winter, and 16:19 Summer), in part thanks to the ghost of Ryan O'Dell, who ended up finishing 9 minutes behind me (so maybe he did concede), but didn't bother to congratulate me (and neither did Mark Ott, who stumbled across the finish line in the mid-21-hour range or something, but I guess if they don't know who you are, it's asking a lot for them to congratulate an apparent stranger who beat them). Had I not been immobilized, I would have gone up to them, but, oh well.

Overall, it was a pretty good day. Not bad, not great. I spent perhaps too much time in the bathroom (20-30 minutes, maybe enough to have put me in under 17 hours), and fumbling with my pills and gels, I didn't have the speed I wanted today, and, in some sense, I didn't push myself hard enough, maybe. But I felt pretty beaten up after the race (although as I type this, I think that my estimation of how much the race took out of me may have been a little excessive), and, for what I believed that I had, I feel like I gave it all.

And I had Papa Leo's Pizza, and a Corona, and an Egg McMuffin after the race, and those are the things that really count. :)

EPILOGUE: I've since extended the proverbial olive branch to both Mark and Ryan. Because for as rotten as I (or anybody else) might seem in the heat of competition, at the end of the day, it's your competitors that push you to run faster and to be better than you thought you could be, and win or lose, if they weren't there, you wouldn't be where you are, either. So I'm completely thankful for, and I wholeheartedly welcome, the mind-games, the posturing, the trash-talking - it makes a real sport out of what might otherwise be branded a pointless pissing contest.

100 Miles Per Week, the Hard Way

2012-01-15T11:27:00.000-08:00

Okay, first some stuff you don't really care about:

1 January: 15 miles (105 minutes), Patterson Park and wherever

2 January: 12 miles (85 minutes), out to the Fed Hill Monday Night Run and back

3 January: 10 miles (70 minutes), lunch run with Luke at APG

4 January: 10 miles (70 minutes), another APG lunch run, then another 4 miles (30 minutes) out and back to yoga

5 January: 8 miles (55 minutes), abbreviated APG lunch run, yoga later

6 January: 1 mile (10 minutes), in the Detroit International Airport, in cowboy boots, in a vain attempt to catch my flight to San Antonio, which had already left

7 January: 62 miles (617 minutes), Bandera 100K, 11th place overall

Total Time: 1,012 minutes
Total Distance: 128 miles

8 January: 1 mile (10 minutes), real lazy

9 January: 15 miles (105 minutes), out to the Fed Hill run and back, chasing the pack because I was about two minutes late (caught up in a couple miles)

10 January: 10 miles (70 minutes), APG lunch run, yoga later

11 January: 15 bitter miles (105 minutes), in dark, cold, windy rain (yes, that is a type of rain), in part with the Wednesday Night Canton Run crew

12 January: 1 mile (10 minutes), because life was too busy to allow for more . . . on the best-weather day of the week, no less . . .

13 January: 21 miles (127 minutes), Druid-Hill-ward, in moderate cold (35-ish degrees), but ridiculous wind (35-ish mph, probably) . . . almost intolerable

14 January: 27 miles (183 minutes), all over the industrial east side of the city (and a little bit of Fells Point in there, in a nod to civilization), less cold and windy than yesterday, but still no picnic

15 January (early, still within the 7-day window): 12 misguided miles (85 minutes), 25-degree weather, 15-mph winds, in a flimsy pair of boxers because I didn't have access to running shorts - that hurt in the wrong way, but felt great otherwise . . .

Total Time: 695 minutes
Total Distance: 102 miles

Two weeks into 2012, and I'm 2-for-2 on 100+ mile weeks. Yes, I know that the mileage mark is sort of arbitrary, and maybe in some cases counter-productive (and maybe, by some accounts, 30 or 40 miles too low as goals go), but for the most part, I think that being able to get out there and make 100 miles happen in the span of 7 days, even with a couple of days that were pretty close to a total loss (like Sunday and Thursday of last week) says something about the type of shape you're in, and the type of results you can expect to see when you jump into a race without any particular planning or strategy . . .

Which brings me to Bandera, and my next adventure, the Winter Beast of Burden 100-Mile Run, next weekend in Lockport, New York. While my result at Bandera was good, and I was more or less happy with it at the time, I can't help looking back at it and feeling more and more disappointed. Sure, I finished in a time that, many years, would have won that race, and, by all accounts, is some of the fastest running I've ever done on such nasty trails, but I finished the race feeling basically okay. I wasn't hobbling away from the finish line, I didn't need help up and down stairs, I didn't pass out in my car. I drove to San Antonio and back that night, took pictures at Riverwalk and fielded jeers from drunk, boisterous Texans (maybe because of my black puffy coat and dark blue skinny jeans?) . . . I came back to camp at 4 a.m., and was out of it for the rest of the day for lack of sleep, but not for effort in the race. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that that's the best I've felt and the quickest I've recovered from an ultra.

And, in a way, that's a good thing. I want to be able to run like this for a long time, and I want to feel fit and ready to compete in a lot of different races and have a lot of fun experiences and all that jazz.

But in another way, it's a disappointment. To see some of the top-5 finishers hobbling away from the finish line, barely able to walk . . . sure, that sucks for them, temporarily, but, at the same time, I can't help feeling that if I had been truly willing to submit to that level of pain, I could have been hobbling back to the car from the finish line, just ahead of those guys . . .

Which brings me to Beast of Burden, a race where I won the summer edition in 2010, and where I set my 100-mile PR (16:19 and change). I was in good shape then, yes, but probably not better shape then than I am now. I'm not convinced that back then, I could have woken up in a place that's not my home, put on a pair of worn boxers (backwards, so the fly didn't come open, at least not in the more-indecent front), and braved 25-degree temperatures and relentless winds to drop mile after mile sub-7-minutes as if it were no big deal.

So it seems that I am in great shape physically, but perhaps mentally, I'm not ready to make that leap. I'm not ready to submit to the kind of pain that, in the past, allowed me to do more with less. So this week will be focused on mental preparation (although running will happen, undoubtedly . . . I'll be throwing down another, hopefully Ravens-victory, 10 miles or so after the game, to officially kick off the week). I'll spend some time thinking about how it feels to RACE 100 miles, to run out there fearlessly and not look back, and, perhaps most importantly, realize that now that I have even more, I need to do even more with it.

Because experiences are all well and good, and for as much as I run, in the colorful places where I run, I have no shortage of them. But the thrill of going all-out and duking it out with top-notch competition doesn't come along every day, and not being able to sieze that moment when it comes . . . well, that's REALLY 100 miles the hard way.

Race Report: Bandera 100K

2012-01-07T21:08:00.000-08:00

Okay, I don't normally do this, but since I don't have pictures from the race to post (save the buckle picture that's already on Facebook), and it's taking me forever to eat this Whataburger and fries, here's my quick turn-around Bandera 100K race report, straight from the iPhone.

I decided to run Bandera about a week before the race. Since my post-Hellgate training had been so strong (consistent 100-mile weeks, and yoga classes at Charm City Yoga that have been beyond helpful), and Bandera is the USATF Trail 100K National Championships, I figured this was a good opportunity to capitalize on my training, compete with the "big boys," and experience a new place.

My flight to the race was a bit harrowing, as I missed my connection from Detroit to San Antonio, due to general laziness on Delta's part, so I arrived in San Antonio about five hours later than planned. So most of my pre-race tourism consisted of $3.99 all-you-can-eat pancakes at a restaurant in the airport (which Delta paid for), and the requisite 10 minutes of entertainment that the light show in the tunnel between the terminals provided. Once I finally made it to San Antonio, it was off to pick up my red Chevy Aveo, hit up Bike World for Endurolytes (except all they had was Sports Legs, but whatever, placebo effect, at least), and the Dollar Tree for cheap knock-off sports drinks, A&D Ointment, candy of various types, and plastic bags. Then, the one-hour drive to Bandera, mostly in the dark, in heavy traffic, so it took more like an hour and a half. I met with some friends, including Jack Pilla, who had been on my team at Bull Run, and we spent excessive time waiting for overpriced, underwhelming spaghetti (in my case, spicy spaghetti that was hot all the way through, if you catch my drift). Also, I cut my finger on their bathroom lock, which was the most I would bleed during this entire expedition. We eventually finished yakking about running over our cheesecake dessert, and then we were off to car-camp near the start-finish of the race, which seems to be the order of the day at this race. (For the record, the backseat of the Aveo was very comfortable - for a short person like me, anyway, and since I brought my bright-red Hellgate blood blanket, I had matching bedding.)

The alarm went off at 6:16 (because I like to wake up at times that are palindromes), and I put on my clothes, put together my Dollar Tree drop bags, and tidied the car. I picked up my chip and number, used the woods one last time, and lined up at the start five minutes before go-time. Perfect.

For those who didn't do a lot of research about this race (I confess to doing only a little), last year, the front of the pack went out stupid-fast, half of them blew up, and even the winner, Dave Mackey, ran his second loop almost an hour slower than his first. So of course, smart, well-intentioned runners at the front decided not to do that this year - for about five minutes. Then the lead pack started breaking away from me, while I stuck to my plan, which was to run comfortably and consistently, come through the first lap in around 4:30, and then just see how the second lap goes (a plan that I recounted to my lone fellow Maryland competitor, Mike McMonagle, as he passed me). This approach is especially stupid since the first section of the race is rocky and nasty, with some steep climbs, so you have plenty of opportunity to burn yourself out early.

I just kept plugging along, and it wasn't until Crossroads, around 17 miles into the race, that I started passing anybody in my race. At least nobody was passing me. The highlight in the meantime was a volunteer at Aid Station 2, who commented on my Auburn football 2010 National Champions hat. He asked me who I was pulling for on Monday night, and I flatly told him that I had no idea who was playing; I just liked the hat. He responded that he was going to say "WAR EAGLE," because his wife went to Auburn, and I told him that he could still say it, because it's awesome. That hat = best $10 that I ever spent.

Anyway, towards the end of my first loop, my strategy started to really pay off, and I started passing people who had gone out too fast like it was going out of style (yeah, I just dredged that expression up). As I was flying down a steep, rocky downhill, passing a few of the faster women (who were really not enjoying being passed like that), a spectator commented on how awesome I looked, and I told her that it was because I didn't go out crazy-fast like the lead pack did.

I cruised through the start/finish in 4:37ish - pretty spot-on, especially considering that in spite of the frequent markings, the trail was not always obvious, so I slowed a few times to make sure that I wasn't running off-course. I felt pretty good about my chances of throwing down another lap that was just as fast or faster.

Unfortunately, I made my first (and arguably, only) tactical blunder of the race. Rather than refill my pack with water at the start/finish, I decided to wait until the next aid station. Halfway there, I ran out of water. I had to chew an Endurolyte. (They taste terrible.) In an effort not to blow up, I slowed a little, and ended up running this 6-ish mile segment about 6 minutes slower than I had the first time around. Not too bad.

Water refilled, I soldiered on, but the hydration boost hadn't taken full effect yet, so I was outrunning my water. I kept moving forward, but slower than I would have liked, for no apparent reason. Finally, on my way to Crossroads, a blessing in disguise - I was about to pass another runner on a hill, and I put my head down and pushed up the hill. As I came closer, I realized that (1.) the runner was none other than Jack Pilla, and (2) he was flat on his back on the ground - severe cramping had caused him to seize up and fall over. Coincidentally enough, we had been talking the night before the race about how we had both just ended long-term, marriage-bound relationships that had gone bad, and I felt as though, by sharing my experience and thoughts, I was figuratively picking him up. Now I was literally picking him up off the ground, which was difficult, because he was not moving and bodies get heavy when they're like that. I walked with him for a bit, and then, when he started running, I started running again, and before long, I was way ahead of him.

Still, in spite of the break, I was dragging myself into Crossroads, and my stomach was now starting to turn. As they had no Tums, this was going to be a water-and-Endurolyte slog until I could pull myself back together. It got bad enough that one person passed me as I did what felt like sauntering over the rocky, winding trail. Fortunately, due to patience, and a number of super-secret yoga tricks that I am paying far too much to learn to discuss here (except to say that in a lot of ways, yoga and ultrarunning are very similar disciplines), I pulled myself back together, and started running again. I even passed that guy back.

And now that I was through the last truly difficult section of the race, it was a cruise to the end, especially now that it was cooler, and as the temperature dropped, my stomach improved further. I had plenty of legs left, so I gave the last two sections whatever I had left. About an hour and a half later, I had covered them, and reached the finish line, probably feeling too good considering the distance. 10 hours, 17 minutes - 11th overall, according to the race director, who handed me my sweet solid-silver belt buckle. And, although I don't like to talk about being "chicked," since three women had finished ahead of me, that made me the 8th male - "shit, that's impressive against the big boys,"
according to the race director. I celebrated by driving back into Bandera and taking way too long to change clothes at the Dairy Queen, then eating there, then driving to San Antonio to take pictures of crazy stuff along the way, and eat at the Whataburger, and apparently post this.

So I'm pleased with my performance. Could I have gone faster? Probably. Had I been more aggressive with the water and Endurolytes in the heat of the afternoon, an even or negative split on the second loop was a possibility, especially if I had gone harder than I ended up going. But I still had an awesome time at the race. The varying terrain, from flat, clean, and fast, to rocky, winding, and technical was a joy to run - after finishing a race that throws all of this at you, you really feel a sense of accomplishment, especially when you run it well.

So to what do I owe this success? A steady diet of 10-15 miles per day, yoga several times a week, one Sports Legs tablet per hour, a Hammer Gel every half an hour, the Brooks Pure Grit trail shoes (finally, a shoe for the fat-and-flat-footed like me), a patient strategy, sensing a potential blow-up and containing it before it got out of hand, and pretty much starving myself all week, then eating like a little pig the day before the race (typically, I net around 1500 calories per day - the day before the race, I ate close to 5000, and ran only a mile, in cowboy boots, carrying my bags, in the Detroit airport, in vain to try to catch my flight, and then just to finish out the mile). But really, the most important thing was that, this weekend, my heart was in Bandera. After much consideration, I decided that I wanted this race, and I went after it. All that other stuff? Just consequences of wanting it. And as nice as buckles and t-shirts and names in top-10 lists are, the real prize here was sitting on the dirt near the finish line after the race, pleasantly exhausted from running all day, watching the sinking sun light up the sky. Times like that make you acutely aware of how good it is to be alive.

But enough waxing poetic, I've got a cold hamburger to finish . . . :)

Running Recap: December 2011 (and the rest of 2011)

2011-12-29T06:24:00.000-08:00

As the month is almost over, time for one of those really boring "list all your miles" posts . . .

27 November: 1 mile (10 minutes)

28 November: 8 miles at lunch (56 minutes), 14 miles to the Fed Hill run and back (100 minutes)

29 November: 10 miles at lunch (70 minutes), including some faster stuff (5x1 minute at 5-ish-minute-mile pace), 8 miles in the evening (56 minutes)

30 November: 10 miles at lunch (70 minutes), 10 miles in the evening (70 minutes, Canton Square run)

1 December: 10 miles at lunch (70 minutes)

2 December: 1 mile (10 minutes)

3 December: 14 miles, hiking, prepping the Balled Eagle 100 course (315 minutes), then 6 miles easy back in Baltimore (45 surreal urban minutes)

Minutes: 772
Miles: 92

4 December: 13 miles in the morning (90 minutes), 15 miles in the evening (105 minutes), all around the city

5 December: 10 miles at lunch (70 minutes)

6 December: 2 miles easy (20 minutes)

7 December: 9 miles (60 minutes)

8 December: 9 miles (60 minutes)

9 December: 2 miles easy (20 minutes)

10 December: Hellgate "100K" - 66.6 miles, 790 minutes

Minutes: 1215
Miles: 126.6

11 December: 2 miles easy (20 minutes)

12 December: 1 mile easy (10 minutes)

13 December: 5 miles (35 minutes)

14 December: 9 miles, at APG (60 minutes)

15 December: 17 miles (120 minutes), at Susquehanna State Park (wish the intermittent rain hadn't prevented photography of this - it was beautiful)

16 December: 6 miles (40 minutes), around Baltimore - ouch, for some reason. Yoga after.

17 December: 52 miles (1000 minutes), Balled Eagle 100-Mile attempt

Minutes: 1285
Miles: 92

18 December: 14 miles (100 minutes), all over parts of the Balled Eagle course that I didn't get to run during the actual race.

19 December: 1 mile easy (10 minutes)

20 December: 10 miles at APG (65 minutes), yoga later

21 December: 10 miles at APG (70 minutes), 12 miles with the Wednesday Night Run crew (85 minutes)

22 December: 10 miles at APG (70 minutes), 11 miles in Baltimore (80 minutes)

23 December: 10 miles at APG (70 minutes), yoga later

24 December: 15 miles in Baltimore (105 minutes), partially around Ravens Stadium during marching band practice

Minutes: 655
Miles: 93

And, finally, this week:

25 December: 13 miles (90 minutes) around Baltimore

26 December: 15 miles (105 minutes) around the old haunts in Churchville (Campus Hills Shopping Center to the house in 4:25 . . .)

27 December: A rainy 15 miles (105 minutes) at APG; hot yoga later

28 December: A windy 10 miles (70 minutes) at APG; a cold 5 miles (35 minutes) around Baltimore

29 December: A relatively pleasant 14 miles at APG (100 minutes)

30 December: 15 miles around Baltimore (105 minutes), then another 4 miles (30 minutes) to yoga and back

31 December: 15 miles around Baltimore, in the morning, with a sunrise so beautiful over the Hopkins Bayview campus that I almost turned around to get the camera (almost - 105 minutes)

Minutes: 745
Miles: 106

So, if you've been keeping track (and I hadn't, so I had to go back through my blog and count), that makes, by my count, 4,045 miles that I ran this past year, a figure which may be a little low, since, as I went back, I found some weeks that I hadn't recorded, so I put in a "low" mileage estimate for those weeks. (Yes, I really can remember what I probably ran during certain weeks, given enough prompting about the dates and races that happened during those weeks.) That's an average of a little over 11 miles per day, which is kind of a neat (and totally an unintentional) number, since this was 2011 - maybe I can bump the average up to 12 this year, in honor of 2012 (if the world doesn't end on December 21st and screw that up . . .)

Since this blog is pretty thorough about every race I ran this year (other than the Kentucky Derby Marathon post that I still need to put up here at some point - maybe before the 2012 edition of the race), I won't belabor the recap. The short summary is that I started 2011 with a stress fracture, but still running at least 1 mile a day and keeping the faith that things would improve, and, lo and behold, after an awful 50K Holiday Lake return-from-injury race, I went on to set PRs in the marathon, the 50K (twice), 50 miles, 100K, 6-hour, and Badwater, not to mention getting a few giant, nasty monkeys off my back (namely, Grindstone and Hellgate). I ran a lot, met a lot of cool people, climbed some trash piles, had some bad days, had some worse days, and had some absolutely spectacular days.

But I think what I'll remember the most about this "year of the rabbit" is that in spite of some rough patches, both in individual races and in life in general, on every day, in every race, I pushed through, got it done, and left very little (but not nothing) to regret. And I think that's ideal - enough success to feel as though the effort was worth it, but not so successful that I'm tempted to rest on any laurels in 2012.

So, in that spirit, I'll be taking on the Bandera 100K this coming Saturday. I feel fit, strong, and excited about this opportunity. But, more importantly, I feel excited about another year of running . . . which is a good thing, because I have many miles to run, and promises to keep . . .

"Balled Eagle" "100-Mile" "Race Report"

2011-12-20T11:32:00.000-08:00

Never before have I used so many quotation marks in the title of one of these things. That's because while this past weekend's little adventure could be called many things, none of the "official" names for it really do it justice. The closest I can come are the following pictures, videos, and words . . .

First, the background. The "Balled Eagle 100" (also known simply as the "Eagle 100," prior to race morning) was Dave Snipes's (aka "Sniper's") brainchild, as a way to give his friend Mark one more chance to run a 100-mile race before his wife had a baby and sidelined his ultramarathon expeditions for a while. Mark had done some races in the Massanutten Mountains, and Sniper is no stranger to the Massanuttens, having completed numerous ultras there, so this was an opportunity for Sniper to design a diabolical course, integrating the toughest parts of other mountain ultras in the area into one monster race.

As this was a "trial run," we would be sticking together for the entire race - we would either all finish, or all quit. At this point, I'd post the course map, but since it probably won't mean much to most people reading this, and, as it turned out, we didn't run the entire course anyway, it's perhaps a moot point. But if you'd like to see the map, feel free to e-harass me, and I'll be more than willing to share. So, on with the story of the race . . .

Mark, Jim, and Mike (aka "The New York Boys"), and Sniper and me, all had a "last meal" the night before this ordeal, at a little place in Front Royal called "The Royal Oak Tavern." Normally, I wouldn't talk about this, except for three amusing things that happened during dinner:

1. Sniper threatens to administer "a drug test" (as he purchased only one, to detect marijuana usage only, from the Dollar Tree)

2. Sniper gives us our "ultrarunner survival kits," mostly courtesy of the Dollar Tree

3. This guy plays solo acoustic covers of everything the whole time

At this point, we were down to just five people starting the race, as opposed to nine expected - four had backed out before we even met in the Signal Knob parking lot. So, with a minimum number of participants, we bravely met at a little before 5:30 a.m. on December 17th, and after a speech in which Sniper revealed the "real" name of the race (the "Balled Eagle," for reasons beyond a "PG" rating that shall not be discussed here) and encouraged us not to drop out when we reached the parking lot again at around 70 miles, we were off . . .

And onto our first horrible obstacle, Sherman's Gap. In the Old Dominion 100, this climb, a rocky, nasty, steep, awful thing that happens a little after 75 miles into the race, has ruined many a race. Some have even been known to call 911 from the top of the climb, but that's a funny story for another day . . .

Oh brother, here we go . . .

This trail is legendary enough to have this monument associated with it.

Although it was in the mid-20s, and still dark, by the time we power-hiked to the top, we were sweating profusely. Mike, who had been deathly ill the night before, and didn't look any better on race morning, was the palest, sweatiest, dead-eye-est of us all. He almost gave us a legitimate reason to call 911. But since there was no way for anybody to get up there, except on foot, we had no choice but to continue down the trail, and on to the first aid station. As the sun came up, and the temperatures climbed, running became a bit more comfortable, but because it remained cloudy, we never saw anything warmer than the mid-30s.

Other than Adam (a friend who would be running the first 27 miles with us) having a run-in with a sawbriar branch that got him both coming into the first aid station, and leaving the first aid station, as he cut himself on it again trying to throw it off to the side of the trail, and me getting my right foot and makeshift sock-gloves wet in a flooded section of trail, the trek to the first aid station, at Veach West, from the top of Sherman's Gap, was pretty uneventful. The aid station, on the other hand . . .

. . . was downright awesome.

Sniper had clearly spared no expense (and since these were all volunteers, "no expense" was definitely the operative phrase) in setting up top-notch aid stations, with awesome volunteers, plenty of sandwiches, and even a very official-looking table. Perhaps this was detrimental to our overall progress, as we spent 15-20 minutes at each aid station . . .

But eventually, we were off on our relatively short trek to the second aid station at Milford Gap. Mike was looking a lot better, for unknown reasons, especially since the trail had gotten no easier . . .

Grunting up the trail from Veach West

Without particular incident, we made it to the second aid station, at Milford Gap, and spent some time tanking up, since the next section would be around 13 miles, including a climb up to Kennedy Peak. Some highlights from this section:

Sniper finds a coin on a carin; or "Sniper, no swiping!"

God blesses our otherwise cursed run.

We climb some more, while Mike (in the rear) gamely hangs on.

A powerline cut that we don't have to run magically appears just before we reach Camp Roosevelt (Aid Station 3); note that the colorful "ants" on the ridge are the other runners . . .

We reached Aid Station 3 without sign of our allegedly beloved Seth, one of the friends of the "New York Boys" who was supposed to have been at Aid Station 2. In between watching YouTube videos on my iPhone of old commercials (in particular, the commercial for "Pizza Party"), and almost accidentally stabbing Mike in the face with a tree I ripped out of the ground, after Snipes goaded me into illustrating my "Gerta" strength (see: Halloweeny 50K, where I dressed up as a decidedly manly-looking girl), and, because I had been distracted by said YouTube video, was paying absolutely no attention to where anybody else was standing (prompting jokes about the East German nearly stabbing the Jew), I had been sending distressed emails to Seth, at the behest of the other runners, asking him where he was, telling him to bring money in unmarked, non-sequential bills, and so on. He had responded once, so he was probably still alive, but that didn't stop me from carrying on with a round of "Sethy Boy" as we trudged up the Duncan Hollow Trail.

It was also in this section of the course that:

We found this dog (he eventually ran down the trail to his owner)

http://vimeo.com/33885694
Skunk incident occurred (Mark's video, so I'm linking this.)

After the above trials and tribulations, we made it to Aid Station 4, Gap Creek, and found Seth, who, with his girlfriend, had allegedly driven some 70 miles in the wrong direction, causing him to miss us at Aid Station 3. It later turned out that he thought that he was supposed to show up for Crew Shift 2, not Aid Station 2, hence the late arrival. At any rate, Seth took a bunch of probably embarassing pictures of us, since we were all a little beaten up at this point, and then we continued onward to Aid Station 5, as nightfall drew near.

This is mainly just a cool picture of Jim, thanks to the lighting, and also proves that the trail isn't always completely ragged and unrunnable.

On our way to our next Aid Station, at Crisman Hollow Road, the sky got darker, the temperatures dropped, and things generally got a lot creepier.

First this . . .

Then this.

I bombed down the comfortable, runnable trail to Waterfall Mountain, then grunted with everybody else as we climbed about 900 feet in 0.6 miles. About 20 minutes later, we were at the top, it was almost totally dark, and we still had about 0.4 miles to go to reach the aid station. At this point, the cold and the stoppage time at the aid stations were beginning to take their toll on me. While we were running, I was feeling okay. When we stopped, I quickly started to get cold, and the darkness was making this more uncomfortable. Mark hadn't been eating much, Jim was having trouble with his knees on the steep, rocky downhills, and Mike was hanging on by a thread.

And then came Kerns Mountain.

The trail along the Kerns Mountain ridge, on paper, does not seem too awful. What the paper doesn't show is that the trail actually crosses over the ridge a number of times, meaning that you are subjected to a number of steep, rocky climbs and descents . . . so many that apparently, it took us 2.5 hours to "run" the next 5.5 mile section along Kerns Mountain. Our conversation got goofier at this point, mainly as a means of masking the sheer torture. As we were moving as a group, we could only move as fast as the slowest person, which meant that one person's stumble was everybody's stumble. But we eventually pushed through, and, now at about 15.5 hours into this ordeal, we had "run" about 45.5 miles, which was not at all putting us on pace to finish within Sniper's conservative estimate of 36 (LONG) hours.

So we made a slight course correction from Aid Station 6, Moreland Gap. Rather than take the orange trail up to Short Mountain, along the ridge, and back down, we simply ran down the gravel road (Edinburg Road) to the next aid station, as we would have during the Old Dominion 100. This route was about 2.5 miles shorter, and probably at least an hour faster, than the original route, given our current pace. The run-walking in this section, which was much more vigorous than the stumble-hiking in the previous section, was keeping me awake . . . but so was an unexpected wetness in my rear end, which turned out to be the bladder in my pack leaking water. The hose had frozen hours ago, so not only was the bladder useless, it was making me wet and cold. For practical reasons, and out of frustration, I opened the pack, unscrewed the cap, and dumped the entire bladder. That didn't make my pants any dryer, but it sure made things a lot lighter and easier all the way to the aid station.

We reached Aid Station 7, Edinburg Gap, at about 16 hours, 45 minutes into the race, a little longer than my fastest 100-mile race time, and here was where things really fell apart. Mark, who hadn't been eating much, was shivering uncontrollably at this point - in temperatures this cold, most of what you eat goes to warming your body, and if you're not eating, you're not going to be able to warm yourself. Mark got into a heated van to try to warm up, but he wasn't getting any warmer. Since we were just standing around the aid station doing nothing, and that's how you freeze in this sort of weather, I got in the van too, and then Mike got in. So now a majority of runners were in the heated van, and Mark, who Sniper was doing the race for, was in no condition to continue. Eventually, Sniper got in the van and talked to Mark, and when it became clear that it was not safe for Mark to continue, we decided to stop the run, at about 52 miles. In Sniper's opinion, only he and I would have made it the rest of the way (assuming I could have gotten over my wet butt, which, if we had kept moving at a brisk pace, probably would have happened), and it was silly to keep all of those volunteers out all night for just two runners, while the other three runners went back to the hotel and then back home without saying a proper goodbye. So we all went back to the Signal Knob parking lot, then spent another night at the Hampton Inn, in its blissfully soft beds, and then said our proper goodbyes at a decent hour on Sunday morning, after a hearty breakfast.

EPILOGUE:

Since my legs were in decent shape, and I had some time, and I had driven almost three hours to get to the race, I thought it might be "fun" to go out and run up the last devilish climb that Sniper had thrown into the race, a powerline cut less than a mile from the finish, in Woodstock Tower. The powerline cut looks like this:

After a 5-minute warmup jog, I ran/power-hiked the climb, pausing briefly to take pictures of parts of it. The "worst" part (in my opinion) looked something like this:

It took me almost exactly 10 minutes to reach the top. As I took in this view:

. . . my cell phone re-connected to the network, and I received a text message with a link to this video:

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/a1b7018f17/drunk-santa-caught-on-tape

And as I sat at the top, quads burning, heart pounding, gasping for breath, I laughed hysterically, especally at the part where "Santa" falls and bangs his head on the rear bumper of a parked car.

And I wouldn't include this detail, except that it reminds me of something that Dakota Jones posted after finishing second in the North Face 50-Mile Championship Run in San Francisco a few weeks ago. He said that, at the end of the day, we're not superhumans - we're just guys that like to run. But we like other things, too. And while we all could have hung our heads in shame because we failed to finish the "Balled Eagle" course, we also had a lot of awesome experiences in the process, none of which would have been possible if we weren't out there exploring and pushing ourselves to our limits.

Plus, 52 miles rounds up to 100, which was good enough for all of us to receive ridiculous "finisher" buckles:

In its original wrapping, shown pretty close to actual size (except sideways, because stupid blogger wanted it that way . . .)

So as I close out the write-up for the last of my running-related adventures for 2011, mostly what comes to mind is how thankful I am for the many people I've met, run with, influenced, inspired, or otherwise impacted with my running this past year. I don't primarily do this for my health (although good health is a positive byproduct of this endeavor), and I definitely wouldn't do it at this level if I didn't feel like it was somehow making a difference in other people's lives. So thanks for being there, thanks for reading, and I'm looking forward to raising the bar in 2012. :)

The Eagle Has Landed: Eagle 100-Mile Endurance Run Preview

2011-12-15T15:33:00.001-08:00

For what will probably be my last major "adventure" of 2011, this Saturday (December 17th), starting at 5 a.m., I'll be running an all-new 100-mile race, mapped, organized, and directed by Dave Snipes, with a modest amount of input from me. This course takes parts of The Ring, the Old Dominion 100-Mile Endurance Run, the Massanutten Mountain Trails 100-Mile Run, and some fun new surprises (some of which I am forbidden from posting pictures of here), and remixes them all at the very end of the year, far away from all of those races, to present what will hopefully be an exciting new challenge for runners and the foolhardy alike.

This will be a limited-entry pilot test of this course, and if it turns out awesome, who knows how high this eagle will fly next year. But for now, here are a few preview pictures from the course-marking expedition that I participated in a couple of weeks ago . . . Enjoy!

The first image in this blog entry because it's arguably the coolest, but in the race, it's the last thing you'll see . . .

Rocks coming down . . .

Rocks going up.

If you can't see the course markings, you probably shouldn't run this race.

Look familiar?

2011 Hellgate 100K Race Report

2011-12-11T02:39:00.000-08:00

It has been said that the Hellgate 100K is a "special" race, for a number of reasons. It was certainly a "special" race for me this year. And here's why . . .

As you may know, I've dedicated this past fall to "redemption" in races that I've failed in falls past. First The Ring, where I still didn't finish, but made it further than my previous attempt. Then, North Coast, where the story was the same, except that I did it in spite of a dry respiratory system as a result of pacing at the Wasatch 100 the week prior. Then the Grindstone 100, which I finished in 27-and-a-half hours, in spite of pretty much coming straight off a plane from Israel to go to the race. But the crown jewel this fall was Hellgate. Reference my 2009 race rehash on this blog () and you'll see that "things didn't go well" was an understatement. So, out of all the "redemption races" that I had planned for this fall, Hellgate was the one where I wanted to put in my best effort and my strongest finish.

To that end, all of my crazy running-related adventures this fall (Richmond Marathon finish-to-start, then start-to-finish, Stone Mill 50+ miler and Philadelphia Marathon on back-to-back days, etc.) had been geared towards preparing for Hellgate. Cold weather, late nights, lots of running in the dark, lots of consecutive miles on little rest. To top it all off, from the Sunday prior to Hellgate to the previous Monday, I put in a 130-mile running week, one of my highest-mileage weeks this year. I felt strong after that week, and with some strategic tapering before the race, I knew I had a good shot at achieving my goal: primarily, to finish, but ideally, to finish in the 12-13 hour range (going one better than Sniper's prediction of a 14-hour race for me, and spiting my unseeded #70 bib), and hopefully, with a time in that range, finish in the top 10 men. Regardless, I came into the race confident that, although some may be faster, nobody was going to be tougher than I was. I was fully prepared and unafraid to risk life and limb to finish this silly race.

This time, I wasn't going to go it alone. A Baltimore local, Henry, contacted me before the race, and we worked out a plan to travel down together, and to use his white crew-cab Ford F150 as the crew vehicle for my two crew members/pacers, Hope and Mark, both relatively new to the ultrarunning world, but sufficiently excited about this race from all the talking-up I had given it in the prior months, on this blog and otherwise. So after going to my little sister's chemistry thesis presentation at Goucher (aww, she's growing up!), congratulating her, and getting the requisite good luck wishes from her and from my parents, we loaded up the truck, and at a little after 2 p.m., we were on our way down to Camp Bethel.

We arrived just after 6 p.m., a drive that was thankfully without incident, in plenty of time to eat the pre-race dinner of pasta and lasagna (meat and vegetarian, and, I hate to say it, but the vegetarian lasagna was better), chat with the other runners, and make ourselves at home in the cabins. At around 8 p.m., the pre-race meeting started, and after a little over half an hour of Horton's usual horsing around, and the typical questions about how much snow/ice/water was on the course (none, a little, and a lot, respectively), we went back to lounging around in the cabin, laughing, joking, and pretty much acting like we weren't about to start running in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night in a few hours.

At 10:50 p.m., the caravan left the camp, and we began the half-hour drive to the starting line, all still in good spirits. The amount of "dead time" before Hellgate is a blessing and a curse. It's nice to have all that time to relax and do what you need to do . . . but only if you can really relax. And, for me, the nerves had somewhat set in the whole time, but became really apparent on the drive out there. It's hard to see those same sights by the side of the road that I saw in 2009, and not think about how badly that went. I kept telling myself that this time, although it looked the same, would be different. Between that, Hope and Mark's threat to abandon me for the "Monster Maze" that we saw advertised on billboards along the way, and our riotous laughter over Henry's bottle of Boost and a Starbucks coffee drink mixed together, which looked like, well, liquid poop, I started the race with those negative thoughts at least relegated to the back of my mind. (For me, Natural Vitality's Energy 28 and their liquid multivitamin would be my stay-alert boost of choice.)

(The above begs the questions of how much caffiene is required to make one's heart explode, and what would such an explosion look like - topics discussed at length prior to our little run.)

At midnight, we were off, and the first section, arguably one of the fastest sections of the course, went by without incident. In stark contrast to 2009, when I went out a little bit hard, and felt exhausted immediately, I stayed within myself, and found that I was still up near the front of the pack, without killing myself. I decided not to push to run with the lead pack, as they were clearly racing hard from the beginning, and considering that I didn't want another DNF, it was an unecessarily risky strategy. The famed creek crossing came and went without incident (after several shallower impostors, which would be the order of the entire race), although being nearly up to my knees, I nearly took a cold, wet spill. Before I knew it, I was at the first aid station, Forest Service Road 35, and already feeling better about this year.

We began the first climb up the gravel road, and I found that, again, in contrast to 2009, I felt strong, and this felt doable. I passed a few more people going up the climb on my way to the second aid station, Petite's Gap, where I saw my crew for the first time, and was proud to come in looking strong (and, as I would find out later, in 15th place). Although I didn't want to jinx things, I began to think that this would be a very special race . . .

(Apparently ready to attack the Petite's Gap aid station . . .)

(. . . and then guzzing something gross)

But of course, we all have to have our low points, and about a mile out of the Petite's Gap aid station, I suddenly started feeling weak and exhausted. Maybe this was because it was around 3 a.m., or because I hadn't eaten enough, or that I realized that it would be a relatively long time before I saw my crew again (no crew access again until the fourth aid station, at this point, 13-15 miles away). Whatever the cause, I struggled in the next gravel road section, and on the trail downhill, where the leaf-covered jagged rocks were making rapid progress very difficult for me. A lot of people passed me. I started having flashbacks to 2009, as I was feeling very much at this point the way I did in 2009. I kept telling myself that this was different. I ate a banana, drank some water, downed a gel, and kept pushing forward, and by the time I reached the third aid station, Camping Gap, I was starting to feel in control again. Unfortuately, I had dropped plenty of places, and perhaps at the rate I was going, my aspirational goals were out of reach.

But still, I had an obligation to myself, and to my crew, to give it everything I had, and to run a respectable race, regardless of how long it took me to finish. So as soon as I started feeling better, I started pushing a little, a la Badwater this past summer after Panamint Springs. I turned on the "grind" gear and began cranking out 8-9 minute miles over the thankfully wide and runnable (but rolling) grassy trail. And slowly and steadily, I was passing people. I reached the rocky downhill trail, and here it occurred to me that I should turn on the headlamp that I had around my waist, to supplement the one on my head. This was the first time I had ever used this light setup, and, as it turns out, this is the correct light setup. The waist light covered the near-field, and the headlamp covered the far-field, so I had a full 3 feet of visibility in front of me. It may as well have been daylight. So now I ran down the rocky trail with far less incident, and passed a few other runners. After what seemed like a long time (and probably was, considering that this was possibly the longest section of the race between aid stations), I reached the fourth aid station, Headforemost Mountain, and my crew - a huge mental boost. I was now in 20th place (again, as I would later learn), but making a comeback, in stark contrast to 2009 - in 2009, I nearly dropped at this aid station, and only continued because Sniper came through and urged me to come along with him. Far better circumstances this time . . .

And so it went into the fifth aid station, Jennings Creek. The next section was about six miles, half of which was wide, runnable downhill, and I was really able to pick up the pace on that section, especially with my new headlamp setup. I passed some more people, reaching the Jennings Creek aid station in about a hour - encouraging. As I crossed over the bridge to the aid station, running strong, I remembered in 2009, when Sniper had dragged me to this one, and I was really messed up, and a woman at the aid station was giving me some sort of pressure-point massage to try to improve my situation. Strange, the things you remember . . .

I began the big long climb up a gravel road towards the sixth aid station, the moon full and bright, but still no eclipse (it was apparently not visible where we were). I distinctly recalled the suffering in this section in 2009 - my legs hurt terribly, and every step was more difficult than the last. This time, though, I kept putting one foot in front of the other on the gravel road climb, then down the trail, then back up the gravel road to the sixth aid station, Little Cove Mountain, where I had given up the ghost in 2009. As I neared the aid station, besides noticing that the climb did not seem nearly as steep and awful as it had in 2009, I saw two of my friends, Jeremy and Patrick, walking to the aid station. As I realized when I was leaving the aid station, Patrick was about to drop - I definitely felt for him, since he looked much like I must have at that point in the race in 2009. Jeremy jogged up the hill with me for a bit, and told me that I looked strong, and was on pace for a mid-13-hour finish - also encouraging, considering that earlier in the race, I thought that all hope of that was gone.

I continued down the trail to the seventh aid station, Bearwallow Gap, now in early daylight, feeling confident about the progress I was making and the finish that I was shooting for. This section took some of the wind out of my sails, with some really rocky, ragged single-track that slowed me significantly. But I persisted forward, and made it to the Bearwallow Gap aid station to find David Horton sitting there, waiting to check me in, and Mark ready to pace me through the next section. Mark told me that somebody had just come through a couple of minutes ago, looking to be in bad shape. More encouragement . . .

Mark and I braved some steep uphill, as he regaled me with tales of skinned bear carcasses in the vicinity of the perhaps aptly-named previous aid station, and how Horton had made Hope sing an "Oh Holy Night" (his second favorite hymn, next to "Amazing Grace") duet with one of his Liberty students. Eventually we neared the ridge, where the trail flattened a bit, and we started picking up the pace. The last part of this section, a gradually-rising gravel road into the eighth aid station, Bobblet's Gap, was frustrating - I felt with the grade as shallow as it was, I should try running, but at the same time, there was still too much race left to risk blowing up now. When I reached the Bobblet's Gap aid station, Hope was ready to take her turn as pacer, and the aid station volunteer told me, surprisingly, that tenth place was just ahead of me. With a fresh pacer and a place to chase, we set off down the gravel road.

We rolled easily down the road, at a little better than 7-minute mile pace, passing not one, but two runners ahead of me. Unfortunately, in the one part of the course where the markings were tricky, we ran right past the turn-off onto the "forever" trail. Fortunately, another person who was out running the course on his own had made the same mistake, and was just up ahead to tell us that he hadn't seen a course marking. We figured out our mistake and got back on track, but in the meantime, about ten minutes and the two people that I had passed had passed me back. Oh well, time to pass them again . . . but it wasn't going to be easy. The trail in this part of the course was the rockiest, raggedest trail yet, and being as tired as I was at this point, footing was becoming a more significant issue. I could hear Horton's voice drawling in my mind, taunting me: "Come on, boy! You're weak! You're soft!" as I picked my way through the rocks as quickly as I could. Hope tripped, but didn't fall, and about thirty seconds after that, I tripped and hit my right knee - hard. Good thing I had been wearing tights - otherwise, that knee would have been really bloodied. I walked for a couple of minutes to make sure that I hadn't done any serious damage, and once I was satisfied that things were okay, I resumed running again, having passed Aaron, who was in tenth place, and rolled into the ninth aid station, Day Creek, with a little over 6 miles to go, and Mark ready to pace me through the last section of the course. Shaun, who had been up near the front of the pack, but gotten lost a couple of times, was also at this aid station, ready to drop (a situation that I could sympathize with), so Hope got the job of driving him back to the finish line.

The last section of the race was an uphill grunt, much akin to the climb up Mount Whitney at the end of Badwater (except only about half an hour of fast-walking to the top), followed by a very fast downhill on a wide trail/road back to camp. Walking briskly (but not easily), I passed the other runner that I had passed on the downhill in the previous section before getting lost, and, once we reached the top, all I had to do was hold on for dear life down the hill, and I would finish in ninth. I told Mark that we would jog and ease into it, but within a minute, we were running sub-7-minute miles downhill, 63+ miles into this race, and I could feel the emotional floodgates opening. I thought about all of the disappointment and hurt and anger that surrounded my attempt at this race in 2009, and how I had turned it all around to run the way I had today. I thought about how awesome my crew had been, and how thankful I was for them, and I also dredged up a memory that I hadn't thought about, or talked about, until then . . .

After my DNF in 2009, and hours sleeping in cars at Little Cove Mountain and then at Day Creek, when I returned to Camp Bethel, I threw what could be most kindly described as a temper tantrum (which involved some literal throwing of things). I was frustrated and angry, not just about the race, but about a lot of other things in my life, and it caused something of a scene, enough that David Horton took me aside and gave me a stern lecture about my behavior, at which point I started crying, unable to keep it inside. Horton said a prayer over me, that the Lord would help me find peace with whatever was troubling me. As the finish line came into sight, tears welled up, and I realized that I had found that peace in the race. Nothing can change what happened in 2009, but having crossed the line in 13 hours, 11 minutes, to be welcomed back with a congratulatory hug and kiss on the top of the head from Horton as tears streamed down my face, 9th male finisher, achieving my top-10 goal, I felt that things were back on the right path again.

(This is what finishing Hellgate looks like.)

After getting all of the tears out, I took my shoes off, to find that my toes were bloodied, from being wet and going sockless, and wearing shoes that were just a little bit too big for my feet. My crew called Horton over, and he agreed that, so far, it was the best blood he had seen today (although he threatened to deduct points for my orange toenail polish, despite my argument that it matched the color of the course markings). Considering that the blood went through my shoe, and was foaming out of the side, I'd say I deserved plenty of points for creativity - certainly more interesting than the run-of-the-mill skinned knee. My lead in the best blood category would stand, so not only did I walk away with a sweet top-10 Patagonia hooded shirt (the only men's small that he had in the bunch, as if it were planned . . .), but also a red fleece Hellgate blanket and a very fitting "Best Blood" award (especially considering the figurative blood, sweat, and tears, that had gone into making this race what it turned out to be).

(Bloody foot, left)

(Bloody foot, right . . . regrettably, I don't have a picture of the blood froth through the shoe, but trust me, it was gross . . .)

As redemption goes, this one was particularly sweet. Following the progression from The Ring to Hellgate, I steadily improved and grew stronger this fall, and each race built to the next - especially Grindstone, since my finish at Grindstone was what gave me the right to enter Hellgate. I feel good about having turned things around, over the course of this past fall, and during this race. This was perhaps the first fall in a long time during which I actually got stronger, as opposed to burning out. Looking ahead, I can't say for sure which races will be on my schedule for 2012. But in the meantime, I will be out there, training harder than ever, because making any race as awesome and memorable as this Hellgate will be a lofty goal for years to come.

(Top-10 men in the top-10 finisher award, doing our clumsy best speed-skater impression - also, in the bottom right, my shoes - if you zoom in really far, you can sort of see the blood on the left one near the pinkie toe area)

(. . . and me and my crew/pacers, mid-race, proving that sometimes, the someday when this, too, will seem pleasant, is the same day.)

Happy Thanksgiving: Gobble Cobble 7K Race Report

2011-11-24T07:09:00.000-08:00

Welcome to a special mid-week update, courtesy of my foolish decision to run the Gobble Cobble 7K this morning in Fells Point. Because I've never actually run a "turkey trot" on Thanksgiving Day, now seemed like the best time to start. That, and the race was only a couple of miles from my house, so it made for an easy warmup/warmdown en route.

I almost didn't go out to the race, and I got partway down the block in front of my house, feeling terrible, and thought about not running it. But since it was cold outside, and I had gone through the trouble to put clothes and shoes on, it seemed stupid to turn back. So I ran the rest of the way out to the race, stood in line at the MAC to register, and then walked down to the start line.

As I stood near the front, I looked around to see that apparently, nobody that could clearly beat me was standing there. I briefly contemplated that this would be a chance to win a race, NBP-style, but before I had too much time to think about that, Jim was mumbling some stuff into the bullhorn that we could barely hear, and then we were off.

For about the first half-mile, I was within 10 meters of the leader, and not feeling so bad, and it seemed as though I might actually be able to do this. Then things turned south very quickly. As we hit the cobbles, I suddenly had this overwhelming "dead" feeling in my legs, and, as Meg D would later tell me, a look on my face that was something to the effect of "what on earth am I doing here?" It wasn't long before people started passing me, and as okay as I felt in the lungs, I had nothing in my legs.

We passed the Polish war memorial and headed out to the Inner Harbor promenade, and I gradually started to make a comeback. That, or people in front of me were fading. At least this was something I knew how to do - hang tough when a race goes bad. I started picking up ground on the pack of four or five runners in front of me, and eventually passed them all. Then it was just hang on for dear life to the finish, down the chute to the right that came up all too quickly, which meant I hadn't really had time to kick in the finishing sprint.

This ordeal took a little over 25 minutes, which, considering how I felt, suggests that the course was probably a little bit short. Who knows what my exact place or time was, but I do know that I accomplished one thing, which was to find out what I had today. Not to wax overly poetic about a silly little Thanksgiving morning run, where nearly every winner left before the awards were handed out, but with all of the long races that I do, sometimes I wonder how fast I might be at a shorter distance. Today, I found out. And I also suspect that, on a better day, I could go substantially faster, and, with some more specific training behind me, I could go even faster than that. I'd like to do that.

But for now, I'm going to be thankful for everywhere I've been, everything I've done, and all the good people in my life over this past year.

That, and this sweet youth extra-large t-shirt from the race:

(EDIT: Reportedly, the race was 3.8 miles long, which, at about 25 minutes, means that I was running about 2:52 marathon pace, which is probably about as fast as I can run for any distance longer than 100 meters now. So, from that perspective, maybe I should feel a little less disappointed.)

Week In Review: 13-19 November, and Stone Mill "50 Mile"/Philadelphia Marathon Race Report

2011-11-21T05:12:00.000-08:00

Day by day:

13 November: 7 miles (50 minutes), Canton/Fells

14 November: 2 miles (20 minutes), Huntsville, AL

15 November: 2 miles (20 minutes), Huntsville, AL

16 November: 2 miles (15 minutes), back in Baltimore

17 November: 2 miles (15 minutes), Patterson-Park-style

18 November: 2 miles (15 minutes), again around Patterson Park

19 November: 55 miles (538 minutes), Stone Mill "50-Mile" race, 8th overall (I think)

Total Time: 673 minutes

Total Distance: 72 miles

*Yawn* Now, on to the good stuff . . .

In preparation for the "big dance" that is the Hellgate 100K on December 10th, my past few weeks have been focused on long, logistically complicated, mentally (if not physically) draining events. For a race that starts at midnight, and is a good 4-5 miles longer than 100K, there's a lot to be said about being mentally prepared.

This weekend's festivities kicked off at 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, when I woke up, got dressed, and hopped in the freezing cold car for the hour-long drive to Watkins Mill High School, the start/finish of the Stone Mill "50-Mile" race. I got there a few minutes after 5 a.m., only to see a long line for the OUTSIDE packet pickup. I knew better than to assume that packet pickup would be inside the school, but I was sort of hoping that it would be. Just more cold weather training, I suppose. After 20 minutes in line, I had my bib, a cup of coffee, and about half an hour before the start of the race - enough time to sit in my relatively warm car, drink the coffee, eat a couple of Hammer gels, and make one last trip to the restroom.

Why does every Saturday morning look like this lately?

The race started promptly at 6 a.m., ready or not (and there were quite a few "nots" in there), with a loop around the high school before we hit the single-track Seneca Greenway/Muddy Branch trail that comprised the majority of the course. Thanks to the dark and my dimming headlamp (should have put new batteries in it - oh well), I chugged along conservatively for the first half-hour or so, until the sun came up. Some people passed me, but I wasn't worried, especially since this was more about putting in a solid effort than placing high. I concentrated on keeping my uncovered hands warm, the valve on my hydration pack from freezing (which it did fairly quickly), and generally not doing anything terribly stupid.

In maybe an effort to be more like the JFK 50, aka the greatest ultramarathon ever, which is probably worth a $1000 entry fee, and a bargain at the current $200 (considering that Stone Mill cost $35, there might be a hint of sarcasm in that statement), the organizers added some additional road sections to the course, one of which passed by the entrance to The Kentlands. That, of course, raised the moral question of whether or not this:

belongs in a trail race.

In any case, there were plenty of friendly, familiar faces at the aid stations, and because I was keeping the pace comfortable, the experience was generally pleasant, even on the long, straight, flat, bland towpath section of the course near the water. As we neared the 30-mile mark, I passed a few people, the temperature had become much more bearable, and aside from some lingering soreness/fatigue, I was feeling pretty positive about the next 3 or 4 hours of this. Over the past couple of weeks, I've developed a pretty good "grind" gear, which allows me to churn out 8-9 minute miles, almost regardless of the terrain or how terrible I might be feeling - an invaluable resource in the ever-present uncertainty in an ultramarathon . . .

Especially because gradually, things seemed to be a bit "off." Distances between aid stations seemed longer than claimed, considering my effort level, and while nothing catastrophic had happened, I began to suspect that perhaps the race was longer than the already-too-long advertised distance of 51.5 miles. This was confirmed when I reached the last aid station, and was told that I had to run an "out-and-back" that would cover the distance from Mile 42.5 to Mile 48.5. Half an hour later, when I hadn't reached the turn-around point, I realized that this section was clearly longer than I had been told. All because they wanted us to run this:

which was pictured on the front page of the website. (You would have felt so misled if you saw that on the website and then never got to run it during the race, right?)

In any event, it was a good thing that I saved a little bit, because with the "turn-around" section being over 8 miles, this put the race at close to 55 miles total, which is enough longer than the claimed distance that the last few miles could have been a bitter struggle. As it was, when I reached the final aid station, I was glad to be close to the finish, and ran strong all the way in, to finish in just under 9 hours (8:59:17, say the official results), feeling relatively okay.

Pushing up the last hill on principle; Keith Knipling was about a minute behind me. (Also, clearly, I dressed myself in the dark.)

In retrospect, considering that the winner finished in just over 8 hours, part of me wishes that this had been a race unto itself, rather than a training exercise, because, with a PR of a little under 7:30 on a "real" 50-mile course, over comparable terrain, a winning time seems within reach. But, water under the bridge now . . .

End Act I.

Sunset over Watkins Mill High School - the first day.

For my next trick, it was back home to shower and put together a clean set of running clothes, and then head up to Philadelphia for the marathon. I hadn't actually entered the race, but I was able to purchase a bib for $50 from one "Brandon," so that I could run the race at least somewhat legally:

Brandon, the apparent road-running rockstar, has a Philly Marathon bib.

And, because I owed her at least one for her heroic crew/pacer effort at the Grindstone 100, I would be running the race with my friend - her first marathon. She was looking to run around 4 hours, which was about what I could feel comfortable committing to the day after a 50+ mile race, so this would work out well for both of us.

The start was predictably chilly, but things warmed up as soon as we started running. Although my bib gave me the right to start near the front, in the "black" corral (they really ought to re-think the corral colors), I started in the "purple" (GO RAVENS) corral with my friend, and we spent the first hour of the race weaving through a sea of people. It gave me a new appreciation for what people in the middle and near the end of large races go through - there was very little room to pass until almost 10 miles in. The water stops were dangerously crowded, the ground was covered with cups and discarded gel packets (and, in some places, was so gel-covered that you could feel your shoes sticking to the ground, as if it were a low-rent movie theatre). And, worst of all, there were lines at the port-a-johns along the course, which became a real issue when my friend's stomach started affecting her pace. We went from cruising comfortably at sub-9-minute miles to walking parts of the race, particularly from Mile 20 on.

Including four restroom stops, and some walking, we finished in 4:23, in spite of having lost 25 minutes to the aforementioned obstacles. I felt relatively comfortable the whole time, and almost a little bad crossing the finish line as fresh as I was (especially since one person in the crowd actually recognized me and cheered for me by my real name, unlike the dozens of other spectators, including one particularly loud and frenzied fan near the finish, who were cheering wildly for "Brandon.") But that said, this effort was about helping my friend finish her first marathon, and from that standpoint, it was completely successful. Even setting that aside, the constant weaving and pace-shifting and eating on the go, all on less sleep than I would like, was all good Hellgate training.

In summary, over the span of 30 hours on the clock, I ran about 81 miles in about 800 minutes total, for about a 9:52/mile average pace, driving a little over 200 miles and consuming about 3500 calories in the process. (No wonder I'm hungry today.) I'm satisfied with this effort, and really looking forward to the next couple of weeks of biting off the mileage in more "normal" 5, 10 and 15-mile chunks at a time, each day, not to mention turkey trots, turkey day, and sleeping in on a couple of Saturdays. Mentally, the "down time" will be nice. But I don't intend to get too comfortable - as David Horton said in his last e-mail to Hellgate participants: "I hope your training is going well. It better."

Week in Review: 6 November - 12 November, and Double-Richmond Marathon Run Report

2011-11-13T14:01:00.000-08:00

Okay, let's do the darn thing:

6 November - 34-ish miles (370 minutes), counting being lost at Fire on the Mountain; we went over this

7 November - 2 miles, in my button-down shirt, khakis, and Steve Madden dress shoes; 1 to lunch in 6:17, 1 back in 5:53

8 November - 3 miles easy at lunch (30 minutes), 7 miles at TNT, including 2x800m (3:04, 2:51), 2x400m (79, 79), and 4x200m (37, 35, 34, 34), 2 miles warmup, 3 miles warmdown (45 minutes)

9 November - 3 miles easy at lunch (30 minutes)

10 November - 10 miles fast-ish at lunch (65 minutes)

11 November - 2 miles easy, around Patterson Park (20 minutes)

12 November - Starting at 2:15 a.m., Reverse Richmond Marathon in 4:40, followed by Regular Richmond Marathon in 3:46; 52.4 miles

Total Time: 1075 minutes
Total Distance: 113 miles

And now, somewhat belatedly, but before this coming weekend's adventures push last weekend's too far into the back of my mind to write this, the Double-Richmond (what does this mean?) Marathon Report . . .

To say that I was a little bit nervous about attempting this would be an understatement. Richmond just sort of "happened" for me, in that I was contacted to pace the 3:10 marathon group, as a result of my prior pacing exploits, and Dave Snipes has a tradition of running the Richmond Marathon from finish to start, starting at around 2 a.m. on marathon day, then changing clothes and running the official marathon. Glue those two together, and you get a challenging, vaguely risky endeavor . . . right up my alley.

Theoretically, it seemed doable - Sniper was planning on running around 4:30 for the "reverse" marathon, so it would be a total of 7:40 for 52.4 miles, which is more or less in the ballpark of my 50-mile PR set this past spring at Bull Run. But there was also the drastic difference in pace (non-stop 10-ish minute miles down to non-stop 7-ish minute miles), the early start time (and associated minimal sleep), the weather (a little below freezing overnight), and the general unfamiliarity of all of this to consider.

All of that aside, I set out for this ridiculousness at around 3 p.m. on Friday afternoon, and by the time the traffic (which made the drive closer to 4 hours, as opposed to the 3 hours it was supposed to be), the expo (pleasantly low-key), dinner (pizza at a local place with Sniper), and parking near the finish (on a street fittingly "just south of Grace (Street)") were behind me, it was nearly 11 p.m., leaving me with less than 3 hours to sleep. Sniper woke me with a phone call at 1:30 a.m., and not long after, I found myself stumbling onto the streets, dressed in multiple layers, top and bottom, clutching my water bottle for dear life.

I met Sniper and another friend and we walked to the finish line, chattering away pleasantly, as if it were totally normal to be out like this on the nearly-deserted, starkly-lit city streets. As we unceremoniously began our run, we passed a crowd of sloppy drunks, who, it briefly occurred to me, might have more sense in them than we did at this point.

But my reluctance gradually faded as we settled into a comfortable pace, and Sniper settled into "tour mode," telling us all about details of the course that, in the dark, were sometimes barely visible. The most amusing of these was the Dollar Tree, which Sniper pointed out as we got closer, only to have our other friend point out that somebody had apparently crashed a car into it, breaking down the center panel in front of the store, and, judging from the debris on the ground, had made off with a ton of iPhone cases.

Aside from the cold and the dark, both of which became more managable following a port-a-pot break around 4 miles in (thankfully, these were all over the course), trotting along through the streets at an odd hour of the night was peaceful, even pleasant. Thanks to the cold, I didn't have to drink as much as I usually would, and I was perfectly comfortable subsisting on Gu Chomps which I kept in my pants pocket in a reasonably successful attempt to keep them warm and edible.

At around 10 miles in, another friend jumped in to run the last 16 miles with us, and at this point, the course (which I hadn't seen up to this point) got significantly more scenic. About a mile later, we crossed a bridge with a view like this:

Richmond apparently has a skyline; see above.

Eventually, this gave way to neighborhoods, and then a dark, rolling section near the water, before we headed back into downtown again. As we came closer to the start, and past 6 a.m., nearing 7 a.m., the sky became lighter and somehow, it seemed as if we hadn't spend the past 4+ hours running at all. We passed the Dollar Tree again, and, now camera-equipped, we got a shot of it in its now half-repaired state:

The Dollar Tree, in some sort of glory.

We jogged towards the finish, talking about nothing and playing chicken with the faster runners striding out before the start of the 8K. With as little ceremony as we had when we started, we crossed the start line (our finish line), and weaved our way into the crowd.

Now, at almost 7 a.m., I had about 15 minutes to use the port-a-pot, change clothes (and put on my multi-bibbed pacer shirt), and get to the hotel where the pacers were meeting. Wearing different shoes (Asics 2150s - the blue and white ones - for the reverse, my trusty blue-and-yellow Nike Run Avants for the official) and less clothing (long-sleeved undershirt layer, and gloves, but just shorts without pants on top, and a baseball cap in place of my skull cap), I jogged to the hotel, where, fortunately, I was on-time enough to spend some time making small talk with a friend of mine, who was pacing the 3:05 group. A little small talk actually made me feel a lot better about what I was going to do.

I picked up my 3:10 sign, used the port-a-pot one more time, and headed for the starting line. Of course, now that the Boston qualifier is 3:05, 3:10 isn't what it used to be, so a lot of people were asking me where the 3:00 and 3:05 groups were. But my loyal core of 3:10 runners and I headed out together, and, despite my worries, and the temporary panic that we had gone well under pace until somebody noted that the 1-mile sign that we saw was for the 8K, we passed the first mile in 7:09 - remarkably close to pace, and with little feeling of fatigue.

And so it went, splitting a little under 7:15, and not feeling the worse for wear, for the first 10 or 11 miles. I think the pace group coordinator, who saw me at around mile 7, was surprised that I looked so comfortable, considering that I had been up most of the night running in the cold. And the weather was getting warmer (almost a bad thing, given all of my layers - in retrospect, I could have worn less and been okay), and for a while, I thought I was going to pull it off.

Then, around the halfway point, things started getting more difficult. Maybe it was the rolling hills, or maybe just being up for so long, but for whatever reason, I was struggling to hold on to pace. I gave back nearly a minute of cushion between miles 11 and 13.1, splitting the half at right around 1:35. I bravely held on for as long as I could, but at around mile 16, when the 3:15 group passed me, I stepped off the course (and into a much-needed port-a-pot) at 1:56 and change into the race. Still technically on pace, but not feeling like I could continue.

And then my body decided to subject me to every version of difficulty that I've ever had in a race. About five minutes later, I was back on the course, walking through the aid station, feeling spent. I tried to run, but the pain in my legs was reminiscent of what I had felt at Fire on the Mountain the prior weekend (oh right, speaking of reasons to be nervous about this whole thing . . . ), and I did my best to slow down to make it manageable, but eventually, only a walk was manageable.

In about fifteen minutes, my body started to come around, but then I started feeling weak - the same feeling I had at the end of Holiday Lake, when I out-ran my nutrition and staggered through the last two miles. Knowing how bad this could have gotten, I made sure to eat plenty at the next aid station, and, gradually easing back into running, I managed to avert this crisis.

Now all that was left was the pain, and to struggle through this, I kept recalling scenes from "Surviving the Cut," when the drill sergeant is yelling at the recruits, telling them that they are weak, and to "stop feeling sorry for yourself!" and sometimes, "what are you doing? if this was for real, you would have gotten somebody killed!" Strangely, this seemed to work, and, as I approached the last 5K, I started picking it up again, running the last 3.2 miles in about 25 minutes - not blazing-fast, but much improved from walking not so long ago. I hauled down the last hills into the finish, and, 3 hours, 46 minutes, and 17 seconds later, I could breathe a sigh of relief. It was finished.

So, overall, about 36 minutes slower than I would have liked, which was disappointing, and a large part of why it took me this long to write about this. But, on the other hand, I was closer to the goal than it appears. In retrospect, my nutrition during the reverse run was good enough for that run, but not the run to come. I essentially ran out of gas for the pace that I was trying to run, and it might have helped to eat more at the aid stations during the official marathon, in spite of the water slosh in the stomach (gels maybe, and less water, because it wasn't particularly hot).

Still, I'd consider it progress, and a solid training run for Hellgate (which, if you haven't guessed, is the next big race for me), thanks to the timing, temperature, and distance involved. One more big weekend like this, and then it'll be back to focusing on the daily run until midnight on December 10th . . .

Week in Review: 30 October - 5 November, and Fire on the Mountain 50K Race Report

2011-11-06T16:19:00.000-08:00

Okay, first the mediocre news:

30 October - 17 miles (120 minutes), sort of fast, around the usual Baltimore Inner Harbor haunts

31 October - 1 mile (10 minutes), feeling lethargic

1 November - 1 mile (10 minutes), still feeling lethargic

2 November - 1 mile (10 minutes), feeling like this lethargy needs to end

3 November - 6 miles (45 minutes) - that's more like it. Patterson Park, and such.

4 November - 10 miles (75 minutes), Loch Raven, where somebody called me "Nadal" . . . it's everywhere

5 November - 7 miles (50 minutes), Inner Harbor and whatever, cold morning warm-up for the next day's race

Total Time: 320 minutes
Total Distance: 43 miles

Clearly, sort of a crummy week. In retrospect, the 17-mile run on Sunday was a depleted run, run to exhaustion, and took me perhaps too long to recover from, as we will see . . .

And now, the race report:

The Fire on the Mountain battle began long before the horn went off. It began at exactly 2:47 a.m., when I woke up, without the aid of my cell phone alarm, and immediately began to dread the day ahead. Not that this is necessarily uncommon when I race; I can't even count the number of races (good ones, even) where I felt like dropping out in the first mile. But this kind of trepidation, this early in the game, was particularly nerve-wracking. In general, this was an all-sorts-of-out-of-sorts day, with this not even supposed to be Fire on the Mountain day (it was postponed from last Sunday, due to snow), daylight savings time meaning that 2:47 a.m. was really 3:47 a.m. (although, thanks to a very early bedtime, sleep-wise, this felt like 6:47 a.m.), and the fact that there were several other races this weekend that were of interest to me, all of which I had to forego to run this race. At least a dozen times on the dark, desolate drive out to Flintstone, I thought about turning around and going home, right then and there. (The problem, of course, was that every time I thought of it and didn't do it, I was a little further from home, making that decision just a bit more impractical.) My Vans Warped Tour 2011 CD kept me awake and company until I finally stopped to use the restroom at the Sideling Hill rest stop, and, having gotten out of the car and walked around a bit, now felt a little more human. Still not great, but slightly more invested in the race.

The check-in at the finish, in a random field somewhere, and the bus ride to the start, were pretty uneventful. The view from Lookout Mountain is worth noting:

As close to heaven as this is going to get . . .

The race director told us that the course was marked "as good as it was going to be" and that if we had a question, we should "find somebody who ran it last year." And, with those words of encouragement, we were off on our ridiculous adventure . . .

And it was apparent from the start that this was going to be a roller-coaster day. Not just the course, which, in the span of the first two miles, consisted of a very steep uphill on a road, an even steeper downhill on a road, and then a quick turn-off onto a narrow, rocky, leaf-covered single-track trail that dove further down the hill. But as I navigated this nonsense, somewhere in the top 10, every bit of my body was protesting. First my left quad hurt. I managed to shift the pain away, and then it was my right shin. And then above my left knee. And then above my right knee. The uneven terrain and nearly non-existent trail (thanks to the leaf cover, downed trees, and excess water) was not helping at all. I maintained position until around 3.5 miles, when I managed to run off course about half a mile, taking five other people with me. Turned out that there was a turn-off that we had missed, because although it was marked with a surveyor flag, the trail straight ahead was wide, while the left turn up the hill was narrow and unappealing.

Back on course, we all slogged up the hill, but now there was no way to tell what position we were in, since, this early in the race, a 10-minute detour is enough to put you all the way in the back of the pack. The random pains continued, and while I thought vaguely of dropping out, I also felt committed enough to this, particularly since this was what I was doing in lieu of several other things, that I wasn't going to do it.

As it turned out, I was soon cursing the fact that I had not given dropping more serious consideration, as the next segment of red trail, following a brief reprive on a logging road, was even more leaf-covered, less defined, and on the side of a steep hill, to boot. One missed step would send you tumbling to, well, let's not get that morbid right here. It was at this point that the pain from the laces on my Hokas (yes, I had hoped the heel slippage would resolve itself, but in spite of multiple efforts to lace them differently) started becoming a significant nuisance. The digging into the front of my foot was making navigation on the uneven terrain a more painful challenge than it should have been, and just when I thought I had made peace with that, here came the stream crossings . . .

I am not exaggerating when I say that there were at least a dozen stream crossings. Maybe a dozen is too conservative. But for whatever reason, the trail wound snake-like across the stream bed, over and over again. It later turned out that because of all of the snow, this was a particularly wet year, and, last year, this section of the course was bone-dry. As it was still around 30 degrees, being forced to get wet, in some cases, up to your knees, was unpleasant. I foolishly tried to tiptoe around, and minimize the drenching, but on the third or fourth stream crossing, I slipped on a rock and fell in. Completely soaked, including through two layers of gloves, I spent the remainder of this trail section hoping that the sun would come out and dry my gloves. Somewhere along here, the numbness in my feet caused me to roll my right ankle at least three times. Perfect. And we weren't even 10 miles in . . .

Red turned to green, but the scene remained the same. Rocks, roots, water, stream crossings, fallen trees, over, and over, and over again. At least the sun was starting to come out, but the random pain all over, and the specific lace pain in my shoes, was wearing on me. Somehow, I managed to hold it together enough not to trip, and, as we approached the halfway point, navigating through the "green region" (which the "trails" shall henceforth be known as), got easier, and I passed the three people who were hanging with me through the wet, nasty, technical bits. I reached the "midpoint" (who really knows where it is) at around 3 hours and 20 minutes, obviously really slow, but at the same time, I didn't feel all that bad about this (which maybe, in and of itself, was bad).

Now for the "easy" logging road section. And although people complained about this last year, I have to admit, it was fairly easy. There were a few rolling hills, but overall, this was where things started to turn around for me. The sun was out, my clothes were drying, and, in spite of all of the pain, I was starting to find a rhythm (albeit an uncomfortable one), and I passed four more people on this section. This was in spite of having to re-tie my shoes twice, finally reaching a still uneasy compromise with the painful Hoka lacing system.

But eventually, easy gave way to the purple woods region, where we went back to leafy, rocky, vaguely marked trail. In spite of sore feet from my lace issue and rolling my ankle early on, I finally fell into a rhythm here. I wasn't moving all that fast all the time, particularly down the really rocky downhills, but I was averaging around 10-minute miles overall. The pain hadn't really stopped shifting randomly, or gone away, but I was finally dealing with it. As I climbed the last hill, to gunshots in the distance . . .

Firing on the Mountain (courtesy of Mark Rodriguez)

. . . having passed four more people in this section, part of me was actually disappointed that now that I was making some kind of decent progress, the race was over. (The smarter part of me realized that this had been a bad day, and it was probably best to cut my losses here.) I took a log from a volunteer, ran the last loop around the field, and dropped the log into the fire to finish the race.

The (arguably weak) fire . . . maybe if all 120 registered runners had showed up, it would have been more impressive . . .

Overall, I'm still not totally sure what to make of the race. I clearly had a terrible start, but ended up finishing in a little over 6 hours, which means that the last half took me somewhere between 2 hours and 40 minutes and 2 hours and 50 minutes - a little closer to what I wanted to do for the entire race, and, especially if I had counted only the last section, probably on pace for a "good" time given the conditions. Over the course of the race, in spite of increasing foot/ankle pain (which disappeared, even the ankle sprain pain, as soon as I took off the damn Hokas - back to the drawing board with those . . .), I managed to adapt and slog through it, so I must not be totally burned-out for the year. If anything, I think the 17-mile run that I did a week ago took quite a bit out of me, and I hadn't recovered my 50K speed for this race, Truthfully, I could have done with a 100-mile slog this weekend . . . my heart was in Alabama, pining for Pinhoti, and the way I ran today, it seemed like my body was, too. Ultimately, the overall effort was one that I felt like I could have repeated twice more . . . But oh well, live and learn. I'll spend this week running gently, recovering rapidly (I hope), and preparing for my next adventure . . .

All's well that ends with a smoothie from Sheetz (the race's sponsor . . .)

Week in Review: 23-29 October 2011, and Halloweeny 50K Race Report/Product Review

2011-10-31T06:39:00.000-07:00

Getting back on track with the mileage thing:

23 October 2011: 20 miles (140 minutes), including an impromptu Diane Heiser-brand beatdown, as I joined her for pickups of ~4 minutes, 6 minutes, 4 minutes, and 2 minutes on the promenade. Almost hit by a car in the process, jeered by a group of guys in Fells when she dropped me on the 6, and saw a guy with a boa constrictor draped over his shoulder coming back on Monument Street. What a day . . .

24 October 2011: 15 miles (110 minutes), out, back, and along with the Fed Hill group, plus a little extra meander.

25 October 2011: 6 hard-fought miles (~40 minutes): 1 mile warmup, 2 miles warmdown, and about 3 miles of intervals on the track on "relay night." Mile (6:15-ish - bad), quarter, half, half, quarter, plus some jogging around. Last quarter in 68, which is the fastest quarter I've run in a long, LONG time (which is a feel-good, even though Diane ran a 64 and beat me in the last few meters . . . boo)

26 October 2011: 9 miles (65 minutes), easy with the group running from O'Donnell Square

27 October 2011: 7 miles, wandering in and around Patterson Park (50 minutes)

28 October 2011: 3 miles (25 minutes), test-running the Hokas in Patterson Park

29 October 2011: 30-ish winning birthday miles (probably more like 31), in about 5.5 hours (330 minutes) - see below.

Total Time: 760 minutes
Total Distance: 91 miles

Back to a solid mileage total. Good variety of speed, distance, and terrain this week, and getting beaten by the best on occasion, made this week productive and satisfying.

Now, the race report, and product reviews (man, this thing is going to be jam-packed - if you're just interested in the Hoka Mafate Trail Running Shoe and Nathan VITABand reviews, skip straight to the bottom now):

For my birthday weekend, my original plan was to run back-to-back 50Ks, in keeping with the tradition that I started last year of running a mile for each year (where last year's event was a wandering 29-mile loop around some of my favorite places in Baltimore City). This year, the Halloweeny 50K and the Fire on the Mountain 50K were scheduled as back-to-back races on my birthday weekend, so I had planned to run them back-to-back, in honor of 30 being a big year and a nice round number, for whatever that's worth. I was also planning to try to go under 5 hours for each of them, or under 10 hours total. But, as we shall see, the best laid plans of mice and men (especially mice, and even more especially, men dressed as women dressed as mice) . . .

In any case, at 5:05 a.m. on Saturday, Octoher 29th, my cell phone alarm rudely awoke me after a night of warm, sound, cat-free sleep in my own bed. I spent the last 10-ish minutes of still being 29 tending to my three cats and starting to put on my costume (which, for those still not in the know, was Karen Smith from the movie "Mean Girls" dressed as a mouse for Halloween, in keeping with the monologue in the movie about Halloween being an excuse for girls to dress like sluts without retribution, and that the "hardcore" ones dressed in lingerie and animal ears). My costume, which cost about $15 (total of $6 for women's size XS running skirt and size M running tank on deep clearance at Target, $5 for blonde wig, $3 for mouse ears, and $1 for a roll of pink ribbon to use as accents for the outfit), proved more complicated to put on than I had thought - apparently it's not easy being a girl. Somehow, I managed to take an hour and a half to get out of the house, in spite of laying things out the night before (maybe I should have stopped noticing things out of place and fixing them before I left).

The drive out to Gathland State Park for the race was a bit harrowing, as it was alternately snowing/sleeting, and people were choosing either to ignore this fact and drive 90 mph as if nothing were wrong, or panic and drive 40 mph as if there were already a foot of snow on the road. I arrived at the parking lot at about 5 minutes to 8 a.m., when the race was supposed to start, only to find that due to the snow, the start had been moved to the pavilion a little less than half a mile up the hill. I drove up the hill and checked in right around 8 a.m.; fortunately for me, due to the changed start location, the start time was pushed back 15 minutes to account for anybody who had gone to the original start location and been re-directed. After a pre-race briefing with more course directions than anybody could possibly remember all at once, we were off.

To back up for a second, because this was a "fatass" event, the event was not postponed to a later date due to weather. As a "fatass" (no entry fee, no t-shirt, no awards, no wimps), participants take their ability to navigate the course and their safety into their own hands, since the course is not marked, race-related medical help is not available, and the event is not sanctioned by the park. Given this background, although a little over 100 people signed up for the race, only 41 actually showed up, and, with the ever-worsening conditions (more about that later), only about 10 people actually finished the entire race.

I headed down the white-blazed Appalachian Trail (AT) section up to Weverton Cliff, behind Sean Andrish and another faster runner. The snow was coming down, the rocks were getting slippery, and it was a gradual uphill. I stopped to put on a jacket and re-tie my shoes, and Sean ran out of sight, so I held my pace once I got running again, was passed by a guy dressed as a nun and another guy not in costume, both of whom I passed by the end of the first AT section. I came into the first aid station looking like this:

Time to fly, indeed, turn sheet in hand.

Not super-fast up the mountain, but definitely rolling down the backside, where the snow had turned to light rain. The next section was "easier," following the AT down to the C&O Canal Towpath (of JFK 50 fame), but on the Towpath, the snow had turned to freezing rain, flooding the path and ensuring that I would not be even remotely dry for the remainder of the race. So a theoretically flat, fast 3-ish miles on the towpath became a slower, colder, wetter slog than I would have liked. Sean and his fast friend passed me on the towpath coming back from the aid station, about a quarter-mile from aid, which was a little bit of a blow to morale, as I had hoped to make up a little more distance here.

Due to the cold temperatures, and the tiny skirt I was wearing, leaving more leg bare than is optimal under these conditions, I didn't dawdle at the aid station, and headed back down the towpath as quickly as possible. The turnoff, on the second footbridge to the left, came sooner than I had passed Sean, which led me to believe that he had decided that enough of this was enough, and simply turned around and headed back to the start, bypassing most of the race (this later turned out to be true). This left me in first place, apparently 5-10 minutes ahead of the second-place runner, heading up what appeared to be a rough section of trail. The volunteer on the other side of the footbridge directing runners up the trail was reluctant to try to give me directions (which, in retrospect, would not have been a huge task - how difficult is "green trail, to a left on blue, to a left on red, turn around at overlook, red to green back to the towpath" to remember for an hour or two?), and, a bit frustrated with this, I began climbing the steep green trail/fire road, and worrying about how my increasingly frozen hands were going to pull out the turn sheet to keep me on track. The soaking-wet cloth gloves, which I had balled my hands into and tucked into my jacket sleeves, were doing very little to keep my hands warm, and only the fact that I had my hands balled up, recirculating body heat to the extent possible under those circumstances, was keeping me from frostbite. Any attempt to take the turn sheet out had to be completed within a couple of minutes, or else my crippled fingers may never work again.

As the snow came down harder, the green trail turned more narrow and winding, and it occurred to me that, based on prior review of the turn sheet, there was a potentially difficult turn-off on the green trail to the blue trail, and I may have gone too far and passed it. Struggling with frigid fingers, I pulled out the turn sheet, and, sure enough, the distance that I had gone seemed a bit too long, and so I turned around, brushed the snow off of an info sign along the way, and found that it was the Naval Battery location that the turn sheet mentioned was what you would see if you went too far.

Back on course, I headed further uphill, to encounter my first downed tree, due primarily to the freak snowfall on the trees, which were more leaf-covered than they typically would be when snow starts here. I then realized two things: 1.) Those shotgun-like sounds that I had heard earlier in the race were the sound of trees falling under the weight of the snow, and 2.) the tree which had freshly fallen in the path (only the slightest hint of snow on it) had fallen in the path while I was off-course, and, had I not missed the turn, I may well have been under this very large tree when it fell. As if all of this was not nerve-wracking enough, I was struggling to pull on my soaked cloth gloves and to tuck my hands into my sleeves after I exposed them in order to read the turn sheet. This slowed my progress up the hill, as I attempted, mostly with my teeth, to pull on the gloves to protect my fingers. As I progressed up the hill, a trail of footprints became apparent, and I began to wonder, since Sean had turned around, and was running with another person anyway, if the runner in second had passed me while I had spent about half a mile off-course. I decided that it was cold enough that I was just going to follow the footprints, even if they were on the wrong path, since whoever was out on foot probably didn't want to stay out in these conditions for a long time, no matter where they were going, and there would likely be help wherever they were.

All of this caused me to slow and be more cautious, and it was on the rocky downhill at the end of the blue trail to the red trail that the second-place runner passed me. He had been following my footprints, apparently, and had sped up for the same reasons that I was being more cautious. We decided to stick together, and he let me borrow an extra pair of socks and a Gore-Tex glove cover to keep my hands warm. The gentleman, Tom Kubicz, dressed in a much more weather-appropriate medieval costume, turned out to be a professor of Oceanography at Johns Hopkins Homewood campus (my undergrad alma mater), so we quickly had fodder for conversation as we descended to the overlook, then back onto the red trail, onto the green trail downhill (flying down this relatively tame trail section), and back down to the C&O Canal Towpath to the aid station where all of this mayhem had started. We also passed the gentleman whose footprints I had been following, who turned out to be a hiker with a dog (explaining the frequent animal tracks next to the footsteps), coincidentally on the same path that we were following.

I waited for Tom at the aid station, since he was taking longer than I would have, because the next section, through Harper's Ferry, was subject to complicated directions, and with minimal access to my turn sheet in the accelerating wintry mix, it seemed best to use the buddy system here. We went down the towpath, right over the canal bridge, slightly right up a set of stone stairs to a trail to more stone stairs to a graveyard to the right, through the graveyard and to the left, up a road and through a college gate to the left, back down onto the trail, down to the road and left again to loop back across a "no-bike" bridge to the right, onto a footpath which led us back to the towpath - phew! Got all that? In better weather, this would have been a lovely scenic tour of the town, and even in this weather, with more functional fingers, I could have gotten a few neat photos out of this, but at this point, I was too cold to fully appreciate any of it. We turned right on the towpath to head back to the first aid station, and the puddles had only gotten bigger and colder since we had left them last. In spite of our friendly banter, the towpath seemed interminable, although maybe it's not apparent from this picture of us heading back:

On the towpath - Lord and Lady of the Freak October Snowfall?

We reached the last aid station together, and at this point, a couple of new things were apparent: 1) Sniper and Chris, who had been patiently "crewing" for me this entire time ("crewing" which mostly consisted of making jokes about my costume and providing general moral support, so that I wouldn't think about how conditions were steadily getting worse), had firmly established my alter-ego's name as "Gerta," the steroid-pumping German, due to comments from Pam, a race volunteer, about how muscular my legs were, and 2) it was now officially too cold for that silly skirt. Tom and I left the aid station together, but Tom said that he was fading, and told me I could take off and run faster if I wanted, since I was cold, and motion was the best way for me to stay warm at this point - I wasn't insulated nearly as well as Tom was.

I scrambled ahead up the hill, up the tight switchbacks, with Tom not too far behind, competitive drive being what it is. Eventually, I lost sight of him, at about the same time that the course began to level out a bit (although it was still a gradual uphill), and also at about the same time that I realized that I probably wasn't eating enough, and was now playing a balancing game between level of exertion required to generate enough body heat to keep warm, versus energy to move forward. Or, some of the energy that I needed to move forward as fast as possible needed to be diverted to warming my body, but if I didn't keep moving foward, I wasn't going to get the benefit of the waste heat from forward progress. This was going to make the last 6 miles interesting. Although that doesn't sound like a lot of distance on paper, in practice, in drastic enough circumstances, anything can happen (see: 2011 Holiday Lake 50K, last two wobbly miles that took half an hour to complete). To add to the intrigue, the harder snowfall had now brought down so many trees that for a solid mile of the course, there was a downed tree in the path, without exaggeration about every fifteen feet. At the rate these were coming down, it was hard to believe that there would still be a forest when this was all said and done.

Nevertheless, I kept the faith and slogged through (briskly, as though Diane were chasing me, and ready to pass me at any second - ha!), passing a few more runners who had turned back early (including a very large guy - around 5'7" and 200 pounds - ambling towards the finish in a long-sleeved shirt and shorts, apparently unaffected by the cold . . . sometimes some extra body fat is convenient), and finally, a couple of hikers who confirmed that, in spite of the fact that I hadn't seen a white marker on the snow-covered trees in an uncomfortably long time, I was near the parking lot and the pavilion. I motored downhill, and sure enough, within a couple of minutes, it turned out that those car-like sounds that could have just been wind or airplanes were what I had wanted them to be, and I rolled into the pavilion, about five and a half hours after this whole ordeal began, first man, woman, and mouse to finish.

Finishing this silly thing, with a random dog. Also, note no exaggeration with respect to the snowfall.

Then the cold really set in, and I looked more like this:

Tom showed up about ten minutes later, second to finish, and we congratulated each other the best we could, given that we were both exhibiting signs of the early stages of hypothermia.

Overall, it was nice to begin my fourth decade with a win, but in particular, with a win under these conditions. It takes more than speed to finish first in a Fatass - it takes a lot of guts, self-sufficiency, and awareness of your environment to persist and make it to the finish in spite of minimal aid and no course markings. Furthermore, because Fire on the Mountain wasn't cancelled until a couple of hours after I had finished, I had been deliberately holding back a bit, under the assumption that I was going to have to run another 30-ish miles the next day under similar conditions, so I had been doing only what I needed to to get through the race in a timely fashion, win or otherwise. It was nice that that strategy turned out as well as it did, and saved my legs enough to allow me to run a 2-hour, 17-mile run the next day in the relatively warm, dry confines of Baltimore City, around M&T Bank Stadium during the Ravens game - my first stadium run this year during a game, and a huge come-from-behind win for the Ravens (down 24-6 when I passed the stadium at halftime, with folks in purple shamefully streaming out).

So that's the race, but you're probably also curious about the gear. If you are, here goes:

Hoka Mafate Trail Running Shoe Review:

In the above pictures, you probably noticed the giant, goofy shoes that I was wearing, and wondered "what on earth?" I was wearing the Hoka Mafate Trail Running Shoe for this race, the first time I had ever worn them, save for a three-mile shakeout the day before in Patterson Park just to make sure that there was nothing catastrophically wrong with them.

In the pantheon of increasingly wacky shoes these days, these are some of the wackiest, with their oversized sole and bright colors. The concept is that the thicker sole allows for more cushioning, and, in spite of the appearance, a near-barefoot 4mm heel-to-toe drop (most shoes come in at around 12mm), which, combined with a wide, slightly rockered outsole, allows for more natural running form, and saves your legs on potentially punishing downhills, while also allowing you to run faster than you otherwise would. All of this is supposed to justify a lofty $150 price tag. So, did it? (Note that I will answer this hypothetically, as I paid far less than $150 for these . . .)

Well, first off, the claims about flying downhill are warranted. The first picture in this post is pretty characteristic of how I was handling the downhills in this race. The cushioning, rockered sole, and positioning of the foot allow for a little extra "slop" in the heel-braking that inevitably occurs on the steepest downhills to keep you from face-planting. Once you're comfortable with the height off the ground, and convinced that the shoe is wide enough to provide a stable platform on which to land (because it is), you can really fly on the downhills, as the tag line suggests - they force you to engage your lower back and butt more, which helps save your quads.

That said, in my experience, they were a wash on the flat C&O Canal Towpath, and on the uphills. Some people have claimed that they are too "mushy" uphill, but I didn't notice a difference, although I am generally strong and adaptable when it comes to climbing, so I might not be the best judge of that. In this case, a flaw with the shoe, probably particular to my foot, came into play. Because the back of my heel is unusually flat, it tends to slip in shoes with a pronounced rounding in the back of the heel (which is probably ideal for people with more "normal" feet). The slippage for me in the Hokas was pretty bad, to the point that in spite of my lacing tricks, my heel was eventually slipping significantly on almost anything that wasn't a downhill. Over the course of a lot of miles, fighting the shoe this way was tiring.

As far as tread and grip on terrain, this race exercised the shoe over a lot of different surfaces - road, gravel, puddles, snow, ice, rocks. Although out of the box the shoes were a little slippery on flat, wet surfaces (I almost took a dive on the linoleum behind my front door when I was running back to the house after tossing out a bag of cat litter in the park before leaving for the race), once the race began, and the shoes were "christened," the grip improved, and, for not having an outsole specifically tuned to any one surface, these were some of the better-gripping shoes that I've ever worn (heel slippage aside, of course).

Also, these were the "waterproof" version of the shoe, and, like every waterproof shoe, that works only until your socks get wet. As deep as some of the puddles were, wet socks, and ultimately wet shoes, were inevitable. I will say, however, that after close to 6 hours in the shoes by the time I finally got them off at the finish (including 4 hours of being pretty soaked), I somehow had almost no signs of pruning or trenchfoot, so they must have at least kept the water to a minimum.

Overall, because of the poor heel fit, I definitely would not have paid full price for these. But, with a better upper fit (which, within a few minutes of putting them on, I'm sure you can determine whether or not the shoe works for you that way), these are awesome trail shoes, and definitely worth considering for long trail races. My legs didn't feel terribly beaten-up the next day (they were good enough for a relatively fast 17 road miles), which I can't totally attribute to the shoes, because, again, I was running just fast enough not to freeze, but I suspect that the shoes helped, if for no other reason than I didn't have a single bruised toenail or blister. (And, with respect to bruised toenails, being a little higher off the ground reduces the risk of stubbed toes, probably.) For me, these are an effective heel mod away from being a great trail shoe. And, for Hoka, this is another "podium" for your shoes, you know, if you care as much about those things as your website claims. ;)

Nathan VITABand Review

As people apparently read this silly blog now, sometimes companies send me free stuff to test out, and usually, I'm remiss in reviewing it. But it's a new year for me, and I'm turning over a new leaf, so here's my review of the Nathan VITABand, provided to me for free by Nathan:

Here's me wearing the VITABand, just before all of that stuff above happened.

The Nathan VITABand is a Livestrong-style bracelet with a unique identifying number on it that you can link to an online profile with your medical history and emergency contact information. In the event that you, say, foolishly venture out into the cold, snowy wilderness underdressed, run out of food and water, and freeze to death, somebody can at least identify your corpse. (And if you're still alive, they might even be able to call the number on the bracelet and get you appropriate help.) The bracelet can also hold chips with your info written on it, so that the person who finds you doesn't have to call the phone number on the bracelet to ID you, and a pre-paid debit card chip, which you can use at places that accept pre-paid, touchless payment methods. Fancy.

I had just received the bracelet a couple of days before the race, so I didn't have either of the chips for it yet (they come in the mail once you fill out your profile online), but I figured that since it matched my outfit (it was hot pink - not sure if it comes in different colors), it was at least a fashion statement, if not a precaution in the event of a catastrophe on a mountain. So I really can't vouch for it saving my life, but I can offer some initial impressions:

Good:

- Pink color looks cool, is highly visible, and supports breast cancer awareness ('tis the month . . .)
- Lightweight
- Easy-on, easy-off
- Fits securely
- Holds a lot of information in a neat little package

Bad:

- Time-consuming data entry online (but basically a one-time thing)
- Subscription service ($20 per year; not backbreaking, but still not free)
- Cats think that it is a small snake and try to chew on it (mine has teeth marks in it now, and is missing the placeholder "debit" chip . . . although that's better than missing a real chip)
- Pre-paid debit service is as useful as touchless debit is available and as much as you pre-pay (which I typically do not do)

But all things considered, this is a compact, sturdy ID system, probably the best on the market in that regard. The subscription fee might be cause to balk, but at the same time, it's not terribly expensive for a little peace of mind. I wish that the touchless payment was credit, as opposed to pre-paid debit (personally, I would me more likely to use it if it were credit), but they could probably modify that without having to modify the bracelet itself. If you can keep it away from curious cats, and the subscription model doesn't bother you, this is arguably the best bracelet of its type out there.

And with that, I've written more than my share of words for the week. Now, back to running . . . :)

Week in Review: 16-22 October 2011 - Boredom

2011-10-24T12:02:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since it's been boring like this:

16 October: 10 miles (80 minutes) at Loch Raven, on the trails
17 October: 1 mile (10 minutes) at Patterson Park
18 October: 2 miles (20 minutes) at APG
19 October: 5 miles (35 minutes) in the rain in Holly Woods off of Route 7, for whatever reason
20 October: 9 miles at APG (65 minutes), followed by a late-night 6 miles (45 minutes) in and around Patterson Park
21 October: 7+ miles (~70 minutes) through the Inner Harbor and back
22 October: 15-ish miles (~150 minutes) on the NCR Trail

Total Time: 475 minutes
Total Distance: 55 miles

So there, one goal accomplished: documentation of my daily mileage, which, for the past month, has been helter-skelter (the documentation more than the mileage), because I've been spending a lot more time and effort on "races" (or, in most cases, more accurately, "epic runs") to get it together enough to put this in my entries. I'd guesstimate minimally about 60 miles per week in previous weeks (based on race distances alone, it's unlikely that it would be much less), so this was a bit of a "slow" week for me, in the grand scheme of things.

So here comes the part where I say something deep, or wise, or whatever, as parting words to my 20s, since I turn 30 this coming Saturday (October 29th), in a big way, with back-to-back 50Ks (i.e. back-to-back races of 30-ish miles, as I've come to a point in my life where I'm more than happy to associate an "ish" with my age, lest I be confined or defined by a specific number). Halloweeny 50K (a "fatass" event, for which I will be wearing a surprise silly costume, pictures of which will no doubt end up on here) on Saturday, followed by Fire on the Mountain 50K on Sunday (a "serious" race, maybe - as serious as a race can be when one of the finishing requirements is to throw a branch on a fire).

And so, setting parentheses aside, and temporarily eschewing the complex sentence-splicing techniques that I'm admittedly too fond of, time to be clear and direct: Running has been good to me. I started running at age 13, and since then, I've never gone more than a month without putting on shorts and running shoes and hitting the trails or the streets for at least an easy mile or two. Since then, I've seen and done more crazy running-related things than I'd ever have the time or patience to type out in this blog, and had many a good time with friends along the way. It hasn't always been easy. It hasn't always been pretty. Sometimes, especially at the time, it hasn't been all that fun. But however it was, it's been a huge part of my life.

All of that relative pomp and circumstance aside, though, the thing that fascinates me the most about running is this: All I did, at least once each day for the majority of days over the past 17 years, was put on shorts and running shoes, and hit the streets or the trails for at least an easy mile or two. Put that way, it seems trivial, even inconsequential, especially at the time. But I've seen and done so much that's anything but trivial or inconsequential as a result that, over time, I've changed my view of the "trivial" and "inconsequential." Because this isn't about a journey of a thousand miles starting with a single step; this is about not even knowing that a single step will lead to a thousand-mile journey in the first place.

Or, less proverbially, life's most brilliant moments are apparently built on the mundane, the trivial, the inconsequential. There is always some sort of beauty hidden behind the boredom, waiting to be revealed by the perceptive and the patient.

I'd rather not skew further abstract than that, as I'd rather not come off overly poetic or pretentious about any of this. All I know is that 17 years later, I'm running hundreds of miles in remote wilderness, getting my picture in magazines, wearing silly belt buckles and climbing trash heaps in foreign lands, and none of that was part of a grand plan of mine. It all just happened, because I just happened to stick with something and endure a whole bunch of "whatever," with eyes wide open, to get to a whole bunch of "wow." And as long as my body will have it, I'll continue to endure and embrace the seemingly mundane, because it seems that good things really do come to those who are able to wait.

Also, having to do your business in the woods really gives you a new appreciation for toilets and modern plumbing. Truth.

2011 Baltimore Marathon Pace Report

2011-10-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

These are the kind of reports that I don't relish writing - the ones where things didn't go as well as I had hoped, and I have to think about what I might have done better. Nevertheless, I think this sort of exercise is useful, so, without further ado, I give you the 2011 Baltimore Marathon, as seen by a 3:20 pacer . . .

By way of explanation (and not at all intended to excuse), the 2011 Baltimore Marathon was just a week after my 27:30:55 finish at the Grindstone 100. So I was still a little tired from that, although, on the whole, less beaten up than I usually feel after a 100-miler. 2 easy miles on Sunday, 7 easy miles on Monday, 2 easy miles on Tuesday, 1 easy mile on Wednesday, 12 miles on Thursday, and 6 miles on Friday . . . Or 30 miles on the week coming into the marathon. The 12-mile run and the 6-mile run felt iffy - I felt good enough to be running at a decent pace, but not entirely confident that I could sustain the pace for longer than the run. While 3:20 should have been well within reach for me, it was questionable as to whether or not I could pull it off.

I jogged the 4-ish miles from my house to the starting line, and didn't feel all bad, in spite of the cold. After the obligatory pacer photo, I had nothing in particular to do for the next half an hour, but the time seemed to move quickly, since the walk to the starting line was relatively slow, due to the huge number of people. I got to the starting line about 20 minutes ahead of time, and 3:20 hopefuls began to congregate around me, Rich Lavene, and Brian Hsia (of 2011 Beast of Burden win fame). It was a little chilly, but the energy was definitely there, and I was feeling optimistic about this.

The gun went off, and we, predictably, went through the first mile a little bit fast. No big deal, because that happens in just about every one of these. The race was fairly uneventful for about three miles, until somebody tripped over a cone on the way up to the zoo, which prompted shouting "CONE!" at the dozens of cones that we would come across for the rest of the race (mostly Brian would shout it first, in between taking pictures of everything, and I would echo him). The run through the zoo was mostly downhill (a pleasant surprise), and volunteers were parading animals around - a rooster, a rabbit, even an alligator! This all sounds a little silly, but honestly, if they never put the run out to Fort McHenry back into the race, I won't be too disappointed, as long as this replaces it.

And so it went for the rest of the first half of the race - mostly downhill, good crowd support through Mount Vernon and the Inner Harbor, and a very brief tour of the Under Armour corporate headquarters. Soon we were heading for the dreaded second half of the race . . .

And this is where things started to fall apart. Around mile 15 or 16, the hills start getting serious, and you have to get serious in response, which Rich did by pushing on the uphills. I followed, but my legs were not enjoying this. I wanted to hang back and go a little slower, and try to save myself for the downhills, but in the spirit of "one group," I went anyway. I could feel myself bleeding out a little more on each hill, and now I was just hoping that I would be able to hold on for the rest of the race . . .

Unfortunately, around the back half of Lake Montebello, a stiff headwind kicked in, and we were surging against it (and my legs were complaining), and so, when we got around the lake and began the climb up 33rd Street, when Rich asked me if I was okay, I said "no," and that may have been a mistake. Sometimes, like that darn coyote and his running off of the cliff, if you don't realize that there's nothing under your feet, you won't fall. So that was the setup, maybe, because as soon as we started up that hill, between the 20 mph headwind, and the incline, my legs and butt hurt so bad that I was temporarily blinded with pain.

I did the only thing I could, and I pulled off of the course, and, per instructions, waited for the 3:30 group. Probably standing still, although technically the correct thing to do, was a mistake, because as soon as I began running with the 3:30 group, I could feel that the 10 minutes of standing had caused my legs to stiffen, and I felt uncomfortable (in a different way) at what would ordinarily be a manageable pace. After about a mile and change with them, with less than three miles to go, I pulled off to the side of the course, saw Pete DeCapite (a friend of mine going back to grade school) on his way to a 1:45 half, run past, then decided to walk towards the finish, pacer shirt and visor off, and pick up the 3:40 group when they passed.

I picked up the 3:40 group with about a mile and a half to go, and things still didn't feel good, but at this point, it didn't matter - there wasn't much left, and I was going to finish. I ran it in on tired legs, with Bruce Yang, who I paced 3:20 with at Louisville, and ended up pulling him along towards the end, now pulling me along - kind of nice how that worked out. I proceeded to sit around at the finish for about 2 hours, at the pacer tent with my parents (who had surprised me by showing up), making small talk about running with whoever was passing by. Eventually, after a few sodas, a sandwich, and a really awesome blue crab cupcake, I felt recovered enough to put my all-black Asics 2150s back on and head over to the "Celebration Village" for my Maryland Double medal, and then walk my parents back to their inconveniently parked car - a good head-start for my run home.

That all capped off a 65-mile week, 35 of which was on marathon day. That's been about par for the course volume-wise for me in the past month (although I've been doing a terrible job of keeping track - this will need to improve starting this coming week). Arguably, this is all one of the more boring things that I've done and that I've written. But I still think there are a few take-aways here - I will continue to second-guess my decision to pull off when the pain became blinding. It was awful, but in retrospect, I almost wish I had attempted to push through, just to see what would have happened. Maybe I could have made it to the top of the hill and struggled through the rest of the race (easy to say now, of course). But even still, I'm glad that I got to pace a group that allowed me to test my limits. For what it was worth, I ran nearly 22 miles at a solid training pace before I fell apart, which isn't bad. And of course, I helped some people get through what is a very difficult road marathon, so there is that satisfaction.

I feel as though there might be more to say about this, but for now, I'll leave it as I was happy to participate in the biggest running event in Baltimore, and happy to have the opportunity to connect and re-connect with friends through this event, and I look forward to running this in the future.

Okay, lame, lame (although heart-felt and true), so for real, I'll leave you with this:

BLUE CRAB CUPCAKE!

Grindstone 2011 Race Report

2011-10-10T19:59:00.000-07:00

(Pre-epilogue: See above; posting late, because, after the race, it took me a full 12 hours, from 6 p.m. Sunday to 6 a.m. Monday, to drive back to Baltimore - 200 miles - due largely to a blockage on I-81 North, around mile 259, rumored to be due to a truck carrying bales of hay that caught on fire, and which the fire department was unable to extinguish, which left me sitting at a virtual standstill on the highway for four hours. Add in three or four intermittent hours of sleep in the car at random off-highway location, and a totally ineffective cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee from a rest stop, due to a random piece of plastic that fell in when I was pouring it, and brewed into the coffee as it cooled, eventually almost finding its way into my mouth, and the return trip was almost more mentally stressful than the race . . .)

At Grindstone in 2010, I had a terrible showing; I dropped out just 22 miles and a little over 6 hours into the race, a little after midnight, totally spent in every sense of the word. So of all of the races that I'm re-trying this fall, for the sake of improvement over my past performance, the bar for Grindstone was the lowest. That said, the bar for the desired finish was arguably the highest - my goal was to go under 24 hours if possible, which would likely put me in the top ten, or even top five, and would be no easy feat on a course this brutal - over 23,000 feet of gain and loss over 100 miles.

The road to Grindstone would not be easy, though. Due to my work schedule, I had to leave Israel and come directly to the race - the air travel time alone (including the painful trudge through international security checkpoints), from Tel Aviv to Philadelphia, and then from Philadelphia to Baltimore, was 18 hours, after which I would still have a little over 3 hours left to drive to get to the starting line of the race. As it turned out, the 3-hour drive turned into a nearly 6-hour drive, as traffic at the 495/66 West interchange was at a dead standstill, at 10:30 a.m. on Friday. No, I didn't see that coming, either.

I showed up at camp at 3 p.m., with the start of the race at 6 p.m., having missed the pre-race meeting at 1 p.m. I had wanted to nap for an hour or two, but seeing as to how friends were there, and were excited about the race, that never happened. That left me running on about 6 hours of intermittent sleep on the plane, which arguably put me in about the same place sleep-wise as I was with this race last year. Nevertheless, for some reason, I had a quiet confidence about the race. Although I had no specific basis for this belief, I was convinced that everything was going to be fine, that I was most likely going to run well, and if that didn't happen, then I was surely going to finish the race.

After a brief prayer, and David Horton's exhortation to "make wise decisions" on the trail (e.g. keep eating, keep drinking, pay attention to course markings and don't get lost), we were off, right on time at 6 p.m. In the interest of being wise, I had done some homework and come up with a sub-24-hour split chart, based on splits that others had run in previous years for each section to go under 24 hours. According to the chart, I needed to make it through the first section in about an hour, and the second section in about two hours (for a total of about three hours for the first approximately 15 miles of the race) . . . and that was about as far as I went in following the chart during the race. Although I carried it with me during the race, I was nervous about looking at it, for fear of putting undue pressure on myself.

At any rate, the first hour passed, I passed the first aid station on time (actually, about five minutes fast), and night fell. Time for 12 hours of running trails of varying degrees of technical by headlamp (an area where I definitely need to improve). While I climbed to the top of Elliot Knob quickly, and came down efficiently, via a gravel road, as soon as I hit the next section of rocky, slightly downhill trail, my pace slowed, and people passed me, because I just couldn't see what I was doing. Fortunately, since I was deliberately going out "slow," I took this as an opportunity to keep the pace in check, and save myself for the daylight, when running over this type of terrain would be less of a challenge. I made it to the second aid station in a few minutes over three hours - again, right on schedule. At this point, once I made it a step beyond this aid station, technically, mission accomplished, so this was a big boost going forward.

And so it went, sort of, for the rest of the first half of the race. I wish there were something more exciting to say about this, but there really wasn't - my vague plan for this race was working out well, and external circumstances (i.e. sleep deprivation, darkness, cold weather) seemed to be irrelevant.

My best over-exposed iPhone photo of the wooden bridge just before the North River Gap aid station - nope, the woods at night aren't scary in the least. :)

Even my highly inexperienced one-girl crew/pacer showed up at the right aid station, on time, and was appropriately totally business about things (more about that later). I made it through half of the race in 12 hours and 46 minutes, accomplished by a steady march forward at anywhere between a 12 and 15-minute mile pace, feeling like I hadn't run at all, even though I had 51 miles behind me. I was optimistic about the rest of the race. (Not to mention unconcerned enough about time that I stayed at the top of the turnaround long enough to take the below picture, and attempted to post it to Facebook right then and there, only to be thwarted by an intermittent data connection.)

A beautiful sunrise - better late than never.

This optimism continued when I picked up my pacer, and we ran from mile 52 to mile 66 in about 3 hours, including the dreaded "7-mile-climb" section in about 110 minutes, on the fast side of the split chart for that section. That left me with a little under 8 hours to finish the last 36 miles, which seemed challenging, but achievable.

Gradually, however, this started to slip away. More mentally than physically tired at this point, the little things that I would ordinarly be able to ignore were now making life difficult. My feet hurt intermittently, I felt heavy and out of balance running with my hand bottles (and, at the risk of TMI, being, um, "bound up," according to my pre-race weigh-in, to the disturbing tune of 10+ pounds heavier, as a result of air travel, which always seems to do that to me), and I was generally fatigued from being awake for so long and having gone through so much. In response, I started to slow . . .

And, on the way back, it turns out that the climbs are different. On the way out, they tend to be steeper and shorter; on the way back, they tend to be longer and more gradual. Especially late in this type of race, the latter is far worse. My walking got slower and slower, until I was struggling to even move forward at a typical 3-mile-per-hour pace. How much was mental, and how much was physical? Well, my pacer came out and paced me two miles in to the last aid station, and the last three miles to the finish, and once I picked her up, my walking pace picked up dramatically, without feeling cripplingly strenuous. So there was definitely a significant mental aspect to all of this. Also, the fact that just about everything in the last 30 miles blurs together in my mind as I write this (with the exception of my pacer mentioning that she saw a baby bear in the middle of the trail coming out from the Dry Branch Gap aid station, taking a mighty dump right where some poor runner would probably inadvertently step in it, and where I would have stepped in it, had she not pointed it out) is strong indication that mentally, I was suffering through some significant impediment.

I crossed the finish line in 27:30:55, 18th overall (a little worse than my 14-seed, but not totally out of the ballpark) hugged the totem pole, as is tradition at Grindstone, and then proceeded to receive a lot of comments about how it looked like I hadn't just run 100 miles, probably because I hadn't really run much of the last 30 miles of the race, and had strolled relatively leisurely through the first 70+ miles.

In retrospect, I would like to have gone faster, had I had my pacer to lean on for the remainder of the race, I almost certainly would have gone faster this year, and I'm sure that I can go faster there next year. But this was a huge, meaningful finish for me, considering that it's the first race in over a month in which I've had a proper, relatively satisfying finish. It's a great confidence boost going forward, and I'm really looking forward to taking the next step towards once again consistently putting in strong performances under duress, that show no signs of said duress, at Hellgate in December.

And that aside, perhaps the real guts and glory story here is my pacer, who, despite the notable limitations of (deep breath) not having run a race longer than a half-marathon (and that only a few weeks ago), not having run longer than 14 miles at a time, much less that distance on steep, rugged trails, never having been to an ultra, never having driven around that relatively obscure area of Virginia, particularly alone at night (and having to show up late due to work commitments earlier that day), never having run with a headlamp on trails at night (and navigating at this race with a bottom-of-the-line Petzl), and, as it turned out, being afraid of being alone in the woods in the dark (a fear that could have been validated by her bear encounter), and on top of all that (for whatever it matters; not being a girl, I wouldn't know), being on her period, bravely paced me through 19 miles of the race, 14 of which were consecutive, and legitimately at or faster than typical sub-24-hour finish pace, in addition to another 9 miles in transit on foot by herself to pace me. I'm reluctant to over-lube the hype machine here, but . . . that's hardcore, and if she ever decides to do one of these races, everybody up front should probably look out . . .

The physical evidence - as rugged and spartan as the course I took to get it.

The Best Run I Never Did

2011-09-23T15:17:00.000-07:00

DISCLAIMER

All activites detailed in the following blog post are, as far as you know, and as far as any physical evidence that you have access to suggests, entirely fictional. Any cuts, bruises, scrapes, or torn clothing of anybody's bearing a striking resemblance to anything described in this blog post are, to the extent that you can prove, entirely coincidental.

END DISCLAIMER

Before I begin this little story, I'd like to briefly explain (but not justify) why on earth I would do something so downright stupid. Let's chalk it up to things being "weird" lately, being unsure of what to do with myself, part of me not really wanting to go home, part of me looking for a challenge as a distraction, part of me wanting to accomodate others at my own expense, and a whole lot of "let's worry about that later." And there might be some other stuff. But for the moment, that's not really the point, and in any case, what may have happened may have happened, and its only use now is as a teaching point going forward. With that . . .

A week ago today, I left my car parked at the Park and Ride at the I-95/I-495 intersection, en route to North Coast via carpool. I had originally planned to long-term park at Greenbelt, only to find that all of those spots were taken. So, in the interest of not holding up the trip, I drove to the next available place for leaving a car, parked in what may have been a somewhat questionable manner, and continued on my merry way to my race, and then Israel, all the while, in the back of my mind, I couldn't help thinking occasionally that I wasn't sure how I was going to get BACK to the car.

You see, it turns out that there is no service (other than private taxi, maybe) to that Park and Ride. And nobody was going to be around to pick me up and take me there. So, I decided to walk. From above, on Google Maps, the route seemed walkable. I arrived at the College Park Metro Station at around 1100, after a 12-hour flight, a 2.5 hour layover, and another hour flight.

Not to spoil the surprise too much, but to illustrate what happened, here was my actual route (sorry, HTML, like most basic features on Blogger, is "borken"; you have to copy and paste):

http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/51736190/

The squiggle on the screen is pretty much meaningless, especially without the topographic view, so allow me to explain what happened. But first, let me mention that I was carrying all of my stuff from the trip (about 40 pounds of whatever), some in a backpack (about 10 pounds), but most (about 30 pounds) in an awkward shoulder-slung duffle bag, thereby increasing the baseline agony by about 30%.

The first thing I did, predictably, was to go the wrong way from the metro station. At this point, it wasn't raining very hard, so the consequences, other than the time it took to walk a little over a mile all the way down to the anything-but Good Luck Road before I realized my mistake, were minimal. Of course, right around the time that I realized what I did wrong, the rain started coming down harder. I took cover under a bus shelter, hoping that it would pass. Half an hour later, it did not. I decided that I was going to have to move, and move quickly, if I was ever going to get back to my car. I put as much stuff as I could inside as many plastic bags as I had at my disposal, and, when the rain let up slightly, I made sort of a break for it, as fast as one can break with that much extra weight.

Keep in mind, that if you're in the rain long enough, there is no such thing as a "light rain." It's either raining or it's not. Eventually, you get soaked all the way through. This eventually happened somewhere between the Metro Station, where I started, and the University of Maryland College Park campus. This was about when the rain temporarily stopped, although not long enough for any of the standing water to dry, so I was getting sprayed by passing vehicles about every five minutes or so, ensuring that my clothes (a button-down plaid shirt, and "destroyed" skinny jeans - this will become relevant in a bit) never got any dryer.

In retrospect, the walk through the UMD campus was the best part of this misguided journey. Although at this point, a little over halfway through the trek distance-wise, I was getting tired, and shifting the duffle bag from shoulder to shoulder more frequently, the terrain (other than the blasted climbs from one side of campus to the other) was pavement or concrete, a luxury that would soon pass . . .

. . . when I reached the first questionable part of this route. On the map, it appeared that there was a road cutting behind one of the agricultural buildings. In reality, there was . . . behind a fence that separates UMD's agricultrual utopia from the rest of crappy old regular nature. Seeing as to how I was right near the entrance, and getting caught here would cause far greater problems, I instead chose to bushwhack along the fence into a neighborhood bordering ag-world. There was a semblance of a trail that somebody may have once used for this purpose, but it was long-since overgrown, and there were plenty of opportunities to cross mini-streams and get thorns in my sandal-shod, ill-protected feet (and, for good measure, one branch-poke in my right eye that dislodged my contact lens). I snuck around the side of somebody's house (I don't think they were home anyway), then dashed through the yard into the public street before anybody but the mailman across the street (who, like everybody else in the world, clearly didn't care that I was walking along soaking wet with huge heavy bags) was the wiser.

Now it looked like smooth sailing - up the road in the neighborhood, cut through the wooded area behind these houses, Park and Ride, profit. Except that as I began to climb yet another stupid hill, the realization that this wooded area was probably part of ag-world hit me. Which meant more fences, probably. As I cut down to the pool (also marked off-limits, but guarded only by a gate to stop vehicular traffic), the fences came into view, and I just about cried and gave up hope. I dropped my bags on the front step of the pool house and sat for about fifteen minutes, being wet and sad and thinking about admitting defeat. As if the universe knew it had me on the ropes, it started raining even harder. Then I decided that I had come too far, and victory was so close on the map, that I needed to at least try to find a way through. I left my bags and scouted the area. To the right of the pool house was a lower section of fence, thanks to the buildup of sand and other silt-like material in front of it. Conveniently, the barbed wire on the top was down.

I thought a few times before I did this. I double and triple-checked the map. I lowered my backpack to the other side of the fence, hesitated, brought it back over to the legal side, and did a test-climb of the fence. I knew that once I dropped my bag on the other side, there would be no going back, and I had no idea what was coming next. But knowing that I could climb over the fence gave me at least some confidence that I might really be able to get back if I needed to.

I dropped my bags over the side, then my sandals, and then I straddled the fence. Mistake. While I was busy being preoccupied with the downed barbed wire, my pants caught in the barbs on the top of the fence. Perhaps I could have been more graceful about this, but as this was a major turning point, and nothing was going to stop me from gaining the other side of the fence, I pushed over, and ripped through my jeans and my boxers, about three inches down from the crotch along the inseam. There may be a few other catches in the seat of the jeans, too. Good thing they were "destroyed" to begin with - now I can wear them a bit more legitimately.

Smelling victory at last, I crested a small berm, and slid down the other side, cursing the awkward bags as I struggled to stay upright. Back on a road - hooray! A gravel road, of course, but one that was on the map, with recognizable landmarks on either side. I could even see where I was going to cut across . . .

And just to taunt me a bit more, I cut across right in front of the bee keeping zone of ag-world. Yes, somehow, even though it was raining, a bee stung my foot. Hooray. I pressed on towards - yep, you guessed it, another fence. This one was taller, and I was going to have to toss my bags over. Except not really, because, having learned that pretty much anything will stick on the barbs at the top of one of those fences, I just lifted them up and over, let them hang, and then rolled over the "safe" zone that I created with the bags, thereby not ripping my jeans any further. I had to damage the fence a bit to get my bags down, since I wasn't tall enough to lift the duffle bag high enough to get it off of the barb. So now one of them is bent down. And, for good measure, I decided to relieve myself on that fence, since I thought it would be the last one.

But wait - one more. The seemingly easy road from the area where all of the road construction equipment was hanging out to the Park-and-Ride was gated, and the gate was shut. Fortunately, this was a padlock on a chain, chained loosely enough that I could slide my bags through the opening, then climb up and over the chain myself (of course, not without the requisite cuts and scratches on the hands that come from this). Miraculously, my car was still there, albeit with a warning and a ticket on it for (allegedly) parking outside of a designated space. That's all for later, though - for now, my prize was braving 3:20 p.m. DC-area traffic in pouring rain (that means two hours to go 30 miles . . .)

So, to recap, that was an incredibly stupid 6+ mile venture that left me muddy, bruised, scratched, and stuck with thorns that I'm still picking out of my feet with tweezers. And probably it would have made a lot more sense to cab, or call a friend desperately for help. But then again, there are some situations in which you get in too far, and there's no turning back, and you're the only person you can rely on to pull yourself through. And really, in a situation that's this stupid, where you're the only one at fault, you really shouldn't drag anybody else into it. (Which in this case created this bizarre side effect of being, at a glance, part of civilized society, and yet actually drifting through the world as some sort of ghost, everybody looking right through you, having absolutely no idea what kind of trouble you're in. Although, in a less immediate way, that's not all that strange.) This was one of those situations. And while the overarching lesson is to keep yourself out of this kind of trouble in the first place, the secondary lesson here is that if you do find yourself in too deep, you've got to find a way to slog through that mud, and climb those fences, because sometimes, you're the only person that can (or should be expected to) help you. (Plus, in a strange way, that was all kinda fun . . . emphasis on "kinda" . . .)

2011 North Coast 24-Hour "National Championships" Race Report

2011-09-18T06:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, I ran some miles this week, but that can definitely wait, because right now, this race report is way, way more interesting and important.

Before I start, though, I'd like to make a few things clear. Although what I write here may (no, probably will) be construed as insulting to the city of Cleveland and its residents, I am in no way blaming the city for my disappointing performance. Rather, dry/irritated sinuses (as it eventually turned out; fortunately, not a cold or infection) made it difficult for me to run without generating tons of mucous, which found its way into my lungs and sent me into uncontrollable coughing fits of increasing frequency as the race progressed. If anything, this was a result of pacing on the dry, dusty Wasatch course last week (as I type this, my lips are still sort of chapped from that). Fortunately, by this time tomorrow, I'll be in humid, 85-degree weather in Israel, and that should go a long way towards clearing this up. Ultimately, it's my responsibility to take care of myself, and I did a poor job with this (although I did a remarkably good job with everything else, which perhaps made this worse by comparison), and I suffered as a result. (But make no mistake - I laughed harder and longer at this race than I did at any other race that I've ever run, which is why I will be first in line when registration for this opens next year.)

With the bottom line out of the way, begin humorous rant:

If you're one of the three people who hasn't seen these videos, or if you'd like a refresher, here:

and, here:

So you know what they say about a lot of truth being said in jest . . .

Well, Mark Rodriguez, Jackie Ong, and I saddled up this past Friday for another road trip, all having seen the videos, but of course thinking that this was no doubt exaggeration. The trip was totally uneventful until about here:

Don't worry if you miss this one - there's one about every 50 feet along I-71, which proves that Cleveland has no idea exactly where their corporate limits are.

After a totally safe, homogenized lunch experience at the Olive Garden, we headed to our rooms at the Days Inn on Lake, just outside of Edgewater, the "host hotel" of this "national championship" event. We should have been a little bit more prepared when everything along 130th and 117th looked exactly like the stuff in the parody "tourism" videos, but apparently, we're slow learners. For the moment, I'll let this picture speak for itself:

Why aren't there bars on this window? (Maybe the front desk has them on request.)

The "non-smoking" room smelled like a seedy bar (i.e. cigarette smoke and cheap perfume, more the former than the latter), there were bits of pizza and fried chicken all over the chairs and carpet, the sheets were stained . . .

Zero points to the first person who can guess what caused this stain, because if you know, you are no doubt familiar and/or complicit with horrible, horrible things . . .

But fortunately, we're good sports, so we couldn't stop laughing. One of the hotel employees overheard us, and when we told him that the room smelled like somebody had been smoking in there as recently as ten minutes ago, he responded "yeah, everybody does that." Okay, Cleveland, stop and think about that for a second - is that not your property, that you charge people money to stay in? Don't you have any concept of pride, or ownership, or pride in ownership? You can't just ENFORCE YOUR NON-SMOKING RULES? Okay, maybe to their credit, somebody did come in with a spray to try to clean things up . . .

Other hotel employee: "Isn't that the spray that they use when they evacuate buildings?"
Spraying employee: "Yeah, and it works great!"

Not long after (now that the window was open), we heard yelling outside the window, and saw a bunch of cop cars. Most of the shouting was unintelligible, but the clearly audible "this is bullshit!" would become our rallying cry for the weekend. We made the best of the situation by blasting gangster rap and gunshot sound effects from YouTube out the window, in an attempt to appear "hard."

The "official" pre-race dinner of the "national championships" was at a place called "Players on Madison," which I won't dignify with a link here. Go ahead and Google it if you like, but all I will say is that any place that calls itself "Players" and doesn't have gambling or strippers involved is clearly mis-named. We opted for the Pizza Hut instead, which was right next to this lovely establishment:

Racism, alive and well in Clevelandtown.

Then it was back to our hotel room, which still smelled terrible, and was now really cold on account of having the window open, to sleep on our dirty sheets and pray that we didn't wind up with bedbugs.

Oh, right, a race happened eventually. We went to the breakfast lounge, where there were no spoons for the cereal, and where somebody comically asked "is that real orange juice," as if he could expect to drink anything in this city that wasn't tainted with antifreeze. Then off to the race, where, in an attempt to play upon patriotism to band everybody together in spite of the poor conditions, we listened to somebody sing the National Anthem, then had about two minutes of pre-race meeting before the blasted event began.

There was a veritable "who's who" of ultrarunning at this event: Zach Gingerich, Jamie Donaldson, Phil McCarthy, Byron Lane, Connie Gardner, Anna Piskorska, Serge Arbona, Nick Coury, just to name a few. Suckers, all of them; all of us, really. At this point, there's not much to write about running around in a circle about a million times, except that the leaders went out way, way, WAY too fast (50 miles in the first six hours is ridiculous, sorry, guys), and there was a brief period where there were some overweight nuns flying kites in the park (god, how I wish I had my camera for that, but they were gone by the next lap).

EDIT: PICTURE OF KITE FLYING NUNS:

For my part, I went out pretty conservatively, and everybody commented on how good I looked, and I kept saying (the best I could, considering that I could barely talk through these sinus problems) that as long as this stayed out of my lungs, I would be fine.

And it did, somewhat, for about 8 hours and a little over 50 miles, and then things just became unbearable. I tried to sit down and change shoes and eat food and all that, but the fact was, mucous was draining into my lungs, and I was coughing hard, and my chest hurt, and without knowing for sure that it wasn't something more serious, I was hesitant to push through this, even though I felt pretty much okay otherwise. Besides, they had gotten about ten Hammer Gels for this first-class "national championship" event, and by three hours in, the only gels left were the ones loaded with caffiene, so I had no steady nutrition source at this point, making forward progress even more risky.

So I slept for about six hours, got back up, and decided to run a few more laps at 1 in the morning (what better time to run?) and passed a number of people who had been out there the whole time (who, with their fast start, were now predictably trudging along), but the mucous was heading back into my lungs, and that was it for me. I hit just over 60 miles, went back to the tent that Laurie Colon had so generously set up for us, and hung out with Mark Rodriguez (stopped due to blistering at about the same mileage) for a little while before we went back to his heated car to sleep some more.

We got up around 7, and I took the most brutally cold shower ever in the restrooms (I had to, because I was not getting on a plane that dirty), cursing all the way, accusing Cleveland of being a giant concentration camp as I shivered uncontrollably under the cold mist, which did almost nothing to rinse the soap off. We went to the timing table to officially check out, to take our medals, and to have one last photo op:

Race official: "Just ignore the part on the sign that says '2010'"

Then off to the airport, to eat a burrito at "Currito" (which was actually pretty good, or maybe I was just hungry), and to write this report.

Okay, in all seriousness, a few parting comments:

The biggest problem with Cleveland is not that it is this bad, but that people in Cleveland seem to think that it's OKAY for things to be this bad. From the smoking in the non-smoking hotel room, to the randomly-stocked aid station at the race, everybody had the attitude as if this was fine, and it was okay to inconvenience people this way. Look, guys, seriously - if you want people to take this seriously as a NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP event, you have to raise the bar a little. It's not a big deal if this is just some random stupid race, but you've made lofty claims and failed to deliver.

The exchange between Mark and I on the course: "we are all witnesses" (reference the Lebron James poster), to which the reply is "this is bullshit" is an epic classic, and was totally worth the price of admission.

I have never laughed so long or so hard at a race in my life. I'm going to be first in line to sign up for this ordeal next year. :)

2011 Wasatch Front 100-Mile Endurance Run - Pace Report

2011-09-13T13:47:00.001-07:00

(. . . weekly mileage at the end, maybe, if I feel like it . . .)

Dave Snipes, aka "Sniper," is an East Coast ultrarunning legend for the frequency and consistency with which he races (coming in to Wasatch, 220 ultras run in the past 10 years, with only 1 ultra DNF), as well as a good friend of mine ever since he "saved my life" by giving me a water bottle at Old Dominion in 2008, when I was foolishly running without one. So when he gave me the opportunity to pace for him at the 2011 Wasatch Front 100-Mile Endurance Run, the last race in his bid to complete The Grand Slam of Ultrarunning (Western States, Vermont, Leadville, and Wasatch, all100-mile runs, all about a month apart) The Last Great Race (all of the preceding, plus Old Dominion, about three weeks before Western States, and Angeles Crest a week after Vermont, both 100-mile runs),and The Western Slam (Western States, Angeles Crest, Leadville, and Wasatch), I was immediately grateful for the opportunity to help him out, as well as to preview the Wasatch course. I made my travel arrangements a couple weeks before the race (thanks, Priceline, for the awesome last-minute deal), and before I knew it, I was on a plane bright and early on Thursday morning, headed from Philadelphia to Salt Lake City.

The flight was uneventful, and I met Sniper at the rental car counter at SLC, where we soon were introduced to Magellan, the voice-changing lesbian GPS (so dubbed for the seemingly arbitrary lower voice when naming certain streets), which quickly acquired the "ego-boost" feature, as a result of my irritation at the GPS's apparent need to reassure us that we were going the right way every 15 seconds, rudely interrupting our conversation. We added our own commentary: "Gosh, you look nice today!" "Is that a new hat? It looks great on you!" "Where did you get that haircut? They did such a great job!" Yes, we were going to have fun on this trip, no matter how awful the race might turn out.

After the requisite Wal-Mart stop for a $99 point-and-shoot camera to photo-document our adventure, plus a stop at Sniper's favorite retail outlet, the Dollar Tree (which, it turns out, has all of the supplies you might need to run an ultra, at an unbeatable price), and finally, a stop at McDonald's (where the sodas were tightly controlled, but the french fries were somehow the best I've ever had at a McDonald's), we went to the packet pickup and pre-race meeting. The meeting lasted only 20 minutes, and they went over only the most important rules (most of which were not very strictly enforced during the race anyway). I suppose when the race is as difficult as this one, they figure common sense will ultimately reign supreme. We collected our swag (containing a lifetime supply of camo-pattern Moeben sleeves, courtesy of Shannon Farar-Griefer, as well as four pacer bibs - you know, just in case anybody else wanted in on these wilderness shenanigans), and then went to meet Collin Anderson for a run up to Grandeur Peak (with the race tomorrow, Sniper wisely chose to sit this one out). I got a few good pictures from the top, and a few good road rashes from a wipeout on the way down, when I was flying down a steep downhill and caught my left toe on a rock - thankfully, no serious injury, and then it was off to dinner at the Spaghetti Factory, final preparations at the hotel, and then sweet, sweet sleep for about five hours.

The alarm went off at 2:45, and we dressed, packed our things, and headed for the buses to the starting line, conveniently a block down the street from the Motel 6. We had a dark, quiet bus ride, and then, ominously enough, we were dropped off AT THE BOTTOM OF A STEEP HILL, left on our own to walk uphill to the starting line. We had about half an hour before the start to make any last-minute changes to our plans, which involved me going back to the hotel with another runner's wife (Miriam Wilcox, whose husband Adam Wilcox would finish eighth, in a bit over 22 hours, and earn the prestigious Cheetah belt buckle), sleeping a bit more, then going out to the Big Mountain aid station with her when she went to wait for Adam, then waiting at the aid station until Sniper showed up. This all seemed good enough, so I had plenty of wherewithal to take a video of the start (which was hard to see, because unless you pass the gate in front of the start, you can't see the runners in front).

The start . . .

Then I caught a ride with Miriam back to the hotel. I got a few more hours of sleep, a little tour of Temple Square, an awesome breakfast at a Mormon cafeteria there (really, they're too nice!), and did a little bit of sightseeing and geocaching with Miriam at the "holding area" for cars before we went up to Big Mountain around noon to wait for Adam.

At Temple Square - almost as imposing as some of the climbs and descents in this race. ;)

Our lovely "holding area" . . .

Miriam said that Adam wanted video of him coming down Big Mountain, so I decided to practice by shooting a video of the first person I saw coming down the mountain, which turned out to be none other than ultrarunning elite Karl Meltzer.

Karl Meltzer, crusing in to Big Mountain (mile 39.4)

So that immediately went on Facebook, properly tagged and hash-tagged, poor cell phone signal be damned. Adam came through about 20 minutes behind Karl, looking strong as well.

Adam Wilcox, entering Big Mountain

After his quick stop at the aid station (a minute, if that), Miriam packed up and left, and I was on my own, meandering about the aid station, alternately seeking shade and warmth as the situation warranted, watching the runners come in. Sniper was hoping for a sub-30-hour finish, which would have had him at the aid station at around 2:30, but 2:30 came, and instead, Collin showed up, to pace another runner for about 15 miles. I chatted with him briefly before he had to take off, and he commented that my pack (15-20 extra pounds, depending on the amount of water in the bladder) was a bit much, to which I responded that I felt like it was a fair handicap, on top of which I needed to be absolutely certain that I had all of the supplies that I might need to ensure a successful finish for Sniper. Collin eventually left, the clock continued to run, and still no Sniper.

At about 4:30, as I sat in a chair near the aid station entrance, jacket on, legs wrapped in a trash bag to keep warm against the insult of the cold wind, Ryan, a local gentleman who is a friend of one of Sniper's friends, and his father showed up to help crew. Since there are very few crew access points during the race (only three, and none in the critical last 25 miles), we weren't sure how helpful they could be, but as it turned out, they had an extensive knowledge of the trails and local environment, and were an able extra set of hands at the aid stations that they could access.

Finally, at around 5 p.m., Sniper came in, later than he had hoped.

Sniper arrives at Big Mountain

Knowing Sniper, I suspected that things were generally not going too well. The first words out of his mouth - "This is TOUGH!" were instant confirmation. I knew that we were no longer pushing for a sub-30-hour finish, but simply a finish within the 36-hour time limit, to complete the Slam,the Last Great Race and the Western Slam. My role would be primarily of the patient companion, helping to maintain a comfortable pace for him, and administering the ass-kicking only when necessary. After about ten minutes at the aid station, we set off down the trail to Upper Alexander, and my first taste of this amazing race. Part of my job as pacer was also to be his "PP," or Personal Paparazzi." With my trusty red Wal-Mart camera in hand, I would be taking pics along the course of the beautiful mountains while he was running the race.

Sniper was right - this was tough. We immediately started climbing out of the aid station, under tree cover, but that soon gave way to an exposed downhill, which afforded incredible views, but not much help in the way of increasing the pace, due to the steep, rocky trail. The exposed roller-coaster ride continued the entire way to Upper Alexander, and we enjoyed views of an ominous raincloud in the distance, occasional flashes of lightning, and conversation about everything and nothing. It was clear that my presence was helping, as we caught and passed seven runners on our way to the aid station, in spite of our slow, steady progress.

Thunderstorm in the distance . . . thankfully, it never reached us (or, we never reached it . . .)

We reached Upper Alexander, admired the sunset (and I posted pictures to Facebook for the rest of the world to share), and then it was off to Lamb's Canyon.

Sun sets on Friday . . . still more than half of the race remains.

We stopped briefly a couple of times - for a photo op with Andy Kumeda and Catra Corbett, and to put on our headlamps as it got darker.

Light-hearted photo op. :)

We kept our eyes peeled for the tricky hidden right turn onto a single-track trail, just after the power lines crossed over the path. The turn was marked, but in a way that you could have easily missed it if you weren't looking for it. We went back and forth with Shannon Farar-Griefer and her pacer Cheryl in this section, ultimately arriving at Lamb's Canyon at about the same time. This gave me a chance to take a picture of Sniper with Shannon and Cheryl (where all were clearly showing signs of the toll that 50+ miles of this rugged terrain had taken on them), post it to Facebook, and assemble my pack for our trudge to Milcreek.

The start of a long night for some legendary ultrarunners . . .

We set off down a seemingly endless paved road that went under I-80 and climbed to another hard-to-see right turn onto the trailhead. At the trailhead, Sniper wanted the Butt Paste to stave off some potential chafing, but when he went into my pack to look for it, he couldn't find the baggie that I had put it in. This prompted a brief panic, as that baggie also had my iPhone charger in it. I reassured Sniper that we would worry about that later - right now, the focus needed to be on getting through this race, and particularly, this next hellish climb. After a single-track climb and descent, we were dumped unceremoniously onto another paved road, where we walked uphill about three miles against an increasingly cold wind. By the time we reached Milcreek, we were both uncomfortably cold, in spite of our added layers.

I took the relatively rare opportunity at Milcreek to use an outhouse, as well as to empty my pack, and discovered the "lost" baggie - it had been shoved deep into the bottom of the pack, behind the water bladder - no wonder Sniper couldn't find it. We rearranged our layers, put cream on our bare legs to stave off the cold, and thanked Ryan, his wife, and his father for their generous assistance at the aid stations, since they had no opportunity to see us for the rest of the race.

Then, onward, to another cold climb to the next aid station, at Desolation Lake - cheerful indeed. Sniper and I were both starting to fall asleep on our feet at this point, and shots of Mountain Dew could do only so much. They did make us punchy enough to have a flirtatious exchange with a woman at the aid station, where her friend revealed that she also had nipple rings (although regrettably, the brain cells were not firing quick enough to propose a "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" deal at the time - that bright idea sparked later, about 10 minutes down the trail to the next aid station), and then Sniper asked her if she wanted to make out in the bushes, to which she responded that her husband was right there, to which Sniper responded that his back was turned (which it literally was, towards the campfire).

This bit of levity made the climb up to the next aid station, at over 9000 feet, a bit more bearable, not to mention that we felt good about having helped a fallen runner in the previous section by giving him a poncho for warmth as we passed him sleeping by the side of the trail, pacer standing watch. We gave another runner Tums for cramping in this section of the course, because we're good (Samaritans) like that (especially Sniper). When we had finally traversed the windy, cold, exposed ridgeline, we were heartbroken to learn that we still had 4.8 miles to Brighton. I thought that Sniper was upset because he thought that it was only 4 miles, but I later learned that he thought that Brighton was the next aid station, which is a much more severe mental blow.

In spite of dashed hopes, we trekked onward towards lower ground, mostly on roads. For me, this was where lack of sleep was at its worst. I was hallucinating anything and everything on the side of the dark, endless paved road, including a Lufthansa jet (seriously). Of course, being the steadfast pacer, I couldn't tell Sniper this, so when he asked (as he periodically does) how I was doing, I simply said, "Sleepy, but I'll make it." Fortunately, as we reached cell phone signal range again,Facebook on my iPhone provided the stimulus to wake me up, without the need for caffiene (which really says something about the drug-like nature of Facebook). I took and posted a picture of Sniper making the last cruel little climb to the Brighton Lodge, and we were then treated to warmth, real bathrooms, and egg sandwiches and hash browns for breakfast.
Our last climb in the dark, to the Brighton Aid Station

At this point, about 75 miles into the race, it was about 6:30 a.m. - 10.5 hours until the time limit, to go 25 miles. But the climb to Sunset Pass, the highest point on the course, loomed imminently, not to mention the unknown (but probably difficult) terrain beyond the pass. Sniper was beginning to worry about not making it to the finish line on time, but I was ever-optimistic, as was my duty. We made the steep climb to Sunset Pass - 10,200 feet elevation - and descended to the next aid station, having seen one moose along the way, with no injury to show for it, in spite of my flash photography to capture the moment. With daylight in full effect, and the belief that our worst climb was behind us, we left the aid station with high hopes . . .

Good morning, baby moose. :)

Highest marking on the course. I think there might be a nice view, too. :)

Only to be thwarted by a hellishly steep climb, followed by a similarly steep descent. It took a little over an hour for us to travel the next 3.12 miles to our next aid station - worst 5K ever. Now Sniper was really starting to worry that the rest of the course would be equally miserable. It was not helpful when he asked the aid station volunteers about the next section, and their response was "six miles that everybody says runs like 9." Upon hearing this, Sniper took off in a huff, with me in tow. He proceeded to be what we call a "Betty Bitchy Britches" as he complained that the trail was impassible, and that there would be no way to make up time.

Grunting up a short, nasty climb during the "5K" stretch of the course . . .

It was here that the ass-kicking was needed, and I administered it strategically. On the steep, rocky 600-foot descent (called "The Plunge"), I gave him a lecture on fast downhill running, and then proceeded to demonstrate by bombing down the descent at about half-speed, leaving him and several other runners in the dust. It worked, though, because although he begged for me to slow down, he had to speed up to catch me, which, in the process, convinced him that he could do better than he was doing on these trails. Sure enough, about two hours later, we arrived at the last aid station, at around quarter to 1 p.m. - 7 miles remaining, and over four hours to complete the distance.

From there to the finish, the race was anticlimactic, as we both knew finishing was within reach, and there was no need to push too hard and jeopardize completion when we were so close to the goal. We spent the last seven miles climbing briskly up a very east-coast style graded dirt road, to a downhill on a very east-coast style rocky ATV trail (minus the divot in the middle of the trail, but that's to be expected in a state which is apparently obsessed with divots, ever since they realized that Salt Lake City was built in a giant one), to a final clean, gently-downhill single-track trail onto a road to the finish. The last, very East-Coast-style climb

With his signature sprint, Sniper crossed the line in 33 hours, 38 minutes, and 35 seconds, 2 hours, 21 minutes, and 25 seconds ahead of the 36-hour cut-off time. He hugged me, and we proceeded to the Homestead for uncomfortably cold showers before the post-race meal and awards ceremony, where Sniper was honored for his Grand Slam finish along with the remainder of the "Class of 2011." The Grand Slam Class of 2011

All in all, the race was a wild, unique experience. Pacing somebody else is definitely an exercise in unselfish patience, and although I've paced ultras in the past, this was my highest-stakes pacing job yet, and arguably the most challenging. Because of that, I'm proud of Sniper for finishing, and grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this once-in-lifetime experience. Wasatch is now on my "must-run" list for 2012, and I'm excited to chase the coveted sub-24-hour Cheetah buckle . . . Not to mention the paper crown that comes along with it. :)

Epilogue:

A few more minutes won't hurt, so here was my weekly mileage, 4-10 September 2011:

4 September: 10 miles (75 minutes), after The Ring, narrowly missing the Grand Prix, wearing my beloved LunarGlides

5 September: 8 miles (60 minutes), Patterson Park area

6 September: 2 miles (15 minutes), loop around Patterson Park

7 September: 9 miles (65 minutes), downtownish

8 September: 1 mile (10 minutes), just keeping the streak alive

9 September: 7 miles (90 minutes), climb to Grandeur Peak and back

10 September: 35 miles (780 minutes), pacing Snipes at the Wasatch Front 100-Mile Endurance Run (end week at 6 a.m. on 11 September)

Total Minutes: 1095
Total Miles: 72

Race Report: The Ring (Update - Includes Week of 28 August - 3 September)

2011-09-04T08:48:00.000-07:00

The Ring 2011

The road to redemption is rugged, rocky, and relentless when it goes through The Ring. First in my Fall 2011 "redemption series," this 71-mile circuit of the Massanutten Mountains via the orange trail is deceptively difficult. Virtually no support other than a water stop around 13 miles for the first 25 miles, and then, as the aid gets closer, it's offset by the increasing difficulty of the trail. Still, with the training base that I had coming into this race, I thought I had a good shot at a strong finish.

And for a little while (something to the tune of 50 miles), it seemed like this was the case. With my hydration pack loaded with 80 ounces of water, PowerBar GelBlasts, and assorted other goodies, I set off down the trail with high hopes. After a few minor wrong turns at the beginning, we began the first climb, and since it was humid and swampy and I was losing water at an alarming rate, I climbed conservatively, letting the leaders go. After passing a few people, I settled into third, and the run to the Milford Gap aid station at mile 13 was efficient and uneventful - just over 3 hours.

At the aid station, I downed more than half a gallon of water straight from the jug, ate a cookie, and continued down the trail, still feeling pretty good. Another relatively efficient section, still in third, and running conservatively, since I was running through my entire water pack quickly (empty about halfway through the section). Running out of water made taking my electrolyte tablets a problem, since I can't swallow a pill without water, so I resorted to putting a couple of Gel Blasts in my mouth, chomping down to bust open the pill, then frantically chewing the Gel Blasts to kill the awful taste. I kept on my 20-minute schedule for this, and rolled in to Camp Roosevelt at about 5 hours, 40 minutes, still feeling comfortable.

At the aid station, Jonathan was hanging out (and had been for the past 20 minutes), and was not looking like he wanted to leave. He asked how fast I would be going, to which I responded "not very," and that, combined with the urging of the aid station volunteers, got him up and running with me. Jason Lantz, the apparent leader, was nowhere to be found.

We continued down the trail, and about 20 minutes later, we came upon Jason Lantz, walking and out of water. Apparently, he had missed the turn-off onto the road to the aid station, in spite of the dozens of orange streamers marking the turn. (Which really should be enough to pass the title of "Lost Boy" from me to him.) So with him off to drop out, Jonathan and I were in the lead. We pushed back and forth a bit, until he ran out of water and salt and started cramping, and I ran off ahead. At this point, nearing halfway through the race, I was potentially permanently in the lead, assuming that I did nothing too stupid, and this was super-exciting. So of course, I immediately did something stupid - I ran straight through a switchback and off-course about a mile, costing me about 20 minutes. I didn't see Jonathan when I returned to the trail, so I figured that he had probably passed me in the meantime. I hauled up the steep, formidable Waterfall Mountain in 17 minutes (bettering Dave Snipes's best for this section by 3 minutes, a minor victory, in spite of stopping three times along the way to get my skyrocketing heart rate under control), and rolled into the aid station at a bit over 8 hours . . .

To find Jonathan sitting there, as he had been for the last 10 or 15 minutes. He was still talking drop, as people were still trying to talk him out of it, so when I came in, it was motivation for him to keep going . . . So it would be another 6 miles with Jonathan. I stayed just ahead of him, and predictably, he cramped once he ran out of water, and I took a slight lead, although not enough to prevent us from entering the next aid station together.

At 40 miles, Jonathan said that he was going to drop, and of course, I was going to do everything in my power not to drop, so, after 15 minutes of collecting myself, I left the aid station without him, in first place, and put on the headphones . . . Only to find him AND his girlfriend coming for me a couple of miles later. I sped up to put some distance on them, but his girlfriend could run for real (which was an extra psychological detriment, given my current life situation), so it was going to be me and my iPod against him and his girlfriend. As it turned out, I had only about a minute on him, heading into the next aid station.

Mile 48, 12.5 hours in, a solid pace, especially given the amount of dawdling I had done, but unfortunately, I had lost a bit of concentration in the last section, gotten behind on nutrition and electrolytes, and was now in a bit of nutritional trouble. After a while, eating and drinking on a schedule just plain sucks, and between the rolling, rocky Kerns Mountain ridge and Jon and girlfriend, it was just a bit too much suckage for me to handle. I should also mention at this point that my feet had been blistered badly since sometime in the first 10 miles, and although I was trying my best to ignore this, it was becoming too much to bear at this point. Chalk that up to a failed experiment with different shoes - Nike LunarGlides for life. I spent half an hour at the aid station, until the next runner came in. Meanwhile, Jon dropped for real, mainly because he "wasn't feeling like doing this." As he walked back to his car with his girlfriend, I decided that this was the best time to make a move, psychologically, so I got up and started shuffling down the trail again, before anybody else could come along to change Jon's mind.

The climb up to Powell's Fort was not steep or severe, but here was where the wheels came off. I hadn't settled my stomach all the way, and now I was really struggling the foot pain (and cursing my decision to experiment with different shoes). I slowed and slowed, and eventually stopped, and fell asleep on a rock (or tried to, anyway - there were too many bugs to make this possible) for a while. A couple of people passed me and tried to offer assistance at what would later be dubbed "The Ploskonka Inn - Powell's Fort" - Cam Baker with a trash bag for warmth and chocolate candy, and another woman with a startled scream when she came upon me (it was dark now) and thought that I was dead. Finally, a man came along who said that he might be in last, and I decided that it was time to get up, since I still had six miles to the next aid station. We walked slowly, and he broke off a couple of branches for me to use as makeshift trekking poles. Eventually, we reached the turn-off where there was still 3 miles to the aid station, and I decided that I couldn't make it that far without rest, so I stopped again to sleep. Eventually, I got up and shuffled about a mile down the trail, being passed by the slowest people, until I came upon Dave Snipes, the one-man search party, and we walked the last two miles to the aid station in about an hour, reaching Woodstock Tower at around 20 hours - 8 hours to do 8 miles.

At this point, 57 miles in, although part of me really wanted to finish, another part of me knew that my feet were trashed, and considering that at this point, my priority was more pacing Snipes at Wasatch next weekend than suffering through the next 14 miles, I decided to drop (Snipes voted strongly for this, as he wanted me fresh at Wasatch) and Snipes and I drove back to the campsite for a shower and a nap.

So, all in all, not how I wanted this to go down, but technically a success. I made it further than I did last year (I dropped at mile 35), so technically, some level of redemption. I almost drank enough water (although even at 80 ounces per 40 minutes, it still wasn't really enough), and my nutrition plan was sound, as I made it nearly 50 miles without even a hint of a stomach problem - a first for me. But ultimately, my stupid shoe choice - a rookie mistake, really - did me in, and made me subject to tons of ridicule as I sat around in the Signal Knob parking lot, waiting to congratulate the rest of the about 10 finishers (out of about 33 starters) . . . And also subject to the worst mushroom cloud of ultra-stench ever (I blame it on the Pittsburgh and Ohio contingent), which put a bit of a damper on the really amazing cookies and quesadilla. Nevertheless, I'll be back for a third round next fall, and this time, I mean it. :P

Addendum:

Because I posted this shortly after the race, just to get it out there, I didn't bother with my weekly miles summary. But, if you want to know . . .

28 August - 9 miles, Patterson Park area, post-hurricane (65 minutes)

29 August - 11 miles (80 minutes), generally in the direction of Fed Hill and back

30 August - 9 miles (65 minutes), including a botched track workout that consisted of one 2500-meter interval at around 5:50/mile pace, then dropping out of the next interval at about 500 meters in.

31 August - 11 miles (80 minutes) on my own Wednesday Night Run, in a similar area

1 September - 5 miles (40 minutes) on the treadmill, easy

2 September - 1 mile (10 minutes), shakeout/hydration pack test

3 September - 60 miles (counting "off-course" distance) at The Ring (20 hours, or 1200 minutes, not all of which was time moving forward)

Total Time: 1540 minutes
Total Distance: 107 miles

Week in Review: 21-27 August, and Fall 2011 Preview

2011-08-31T07:52:00.001-07:00

I realize this post is coming late; I wanted to wait until I could confirm a little bit more of my "fall preview" before I posted. So, with minimal ado, first, here was what my last week of running looked like:

Sunday: 1 mile easy (10 minutes); post-BoB shakeout at Patterson Park

Monday: 15 miles (110 minutes), out to the Fed Hill group run and back, meandering here and there to make up miles.

Tuesday: 1 mile warmup/warmdown (10 minutes), with 4 miles of treadmill hills (35 minutes, 1615 feet of gain) in the middle

Wednesday: 10 miles (70 minutes), along with the Wednesday Night Canton Run crew

Thursday: 1 mile warmup/warmdown (10 minutes), with 4 miles of treadmill hills (35 minutes, 1658 feet of gain) in the middle, followed later by 15 miles (110 minutes) of hilly running on York Road towards Towson, followed by pontificating about ultrarunning over a Slurpee to a stranger in a 7-11 parking lot

Friday: 13 miles (95 minutes) "early" morning, around the Inner Harbor/Fed Hill; later, 6 miles easy (60 minutes) around Patterson Park/Canton

Saturday: 7 miles pre-hurricane-Irene (50 minutes), out to Hopkins Bayview and back, and that felt like enough.

Total Time: 640 minutes
Total Distance: 77 miles

All of which leads me to an interesting point about this past week, before I move on with the aforementioned fall preview. If you replace this past Saturday with the Saturday prior (when I ran Beast of Burden), my 7-day miles over that period total 177, which, as far as I know, is a new high for me. Funny what a difference a day makes, because otherwise, it sounds like I had a sub-par 77-mile week. Just more evidence that 100 miles per week is pretty arbitrary (but at the same time, not something that will convince me to change my strategy as far as that's concerned).

Okay, finally, on with what I REALLY want to write about, which is my schedule for this fall. If you've been following this blog at all, you know that I've had probably more than my fair share of failures in the fall. This is partially due to my typical training cycle (which tends to lead to a mid-to-late summer peak), combined with the fact that, for whatever reason, fall seems to be an emotionally difficult time for me. From where I am now, though, I think that my training has been consistent enough throughout the year to put up some good performances this fall, and emotionally, well, as far as I can tell, things are at least trending better. This weekend kicks off what I'm calling the "Fall 2011 Redemption Series," where I attempt to take on every race over the past couple of years that's gone poorly for me, all in one season, and at least better my previous attempt (if not be very competitive, depending on the race). It all starts this weekend, and goes down something like this:

3-4 September - The Ring (http://www.vhtrc.org/news/theRing) - a 71-mile circuit around the Massanutten Mountains on the "orange" trail. Last time: I got lost and didn't finish.

9-10 September - pacer, Wasatch Front 100 Mile Endurance Run (http://www.wasatch100.com/) - Along for the ride as motivator, photographer, and companion, as Dave Snipes runs the final race in the 2011 Grand Slam of Ultrarunning.

17-18 September - North Coast 24-Hour Endurance Run (http://www.northcoast24.org/) - US 24-Hour National Championship Race; enough said. Last time: Stopped at about 50 miles, due to sore feet and general burnout.

24-25 September - SURPRISE (I'm still toying with a few things here, but I promise it will be awesome, whatever it is.)

1-2 October - Another wild card. (If 24-25 September is a bust, maybe this one will be something cool instead.)

7-8 October - Grindstone 100 (http://www.eco-xsports.com/events/grindstone/) - Debatably the hardest 100-mile race on the east coast. Last time: Stopped at around 25 miles, due to everything was wrong.

15 October - Baltimore Marathon (pacing 3:20) - Support the hometown race. :)

22-23 October - Wild Card #3. Surely something fun will come along . . . ;)

29-30 October - Halloweeny 50K (http://www.vhtrc.org/news/node/379) and Fire on the Mountain 50K (http://www.phdispatch.com/FireontheMountain50K.html) - Because 30 is a big age (maybe), celebrating twice on my birthday weekend, with two races that are just over 30 miles.

5-6 November - Wild Card, part 4.

12 November - Richmond Marathon (pacing 3:10) - Because really, why not?

19-20 November - Hmm . . . let's make this one a Wild Card for now, too. ;)

26-27 November - Tamest wild card of the bunch; seems to be a quiet weekend in general.

3-4 December - Wild card, at the moment. ;)

10-11 December - Hellgate 100K (http://www.extremeultrarunning.com/) - That 66.6-mile race that starts at midnight. Last time: Did not finish due to all sorts of problems.

Rest of 2011 - "Off" (maybe . . . ;) )

I think the above schedule (which, of course, is subject to change, and has a fair amount of change built in, anyway) ensures that I hit all of the major races (save Oil Creek, which, unfortunately, is on the same weekend as Grindstone this year) where redemption is required, while still allowing for a fair amount of flexibility to throw in some new stuff, and perhaps to even nab a few PRs at shorter distances (in my quest this year to PR at EVERY DISTANCE).

Of course, brilliant ideas are always welcome, particularly those that are a new sort of challenging and/or stupid . . . ;)

Week in Review: 14-20 August, and Beast of Burden Race Report

2011-08-21T05:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, numbers first:

Sunday: 4 miles easy (30 minutes), Canton/Fells

Monday: 11 miles (75 minutes) at some random place off of Route1 in Nottingham.

Tuesday: 2 miles warmup (15 minutes), 5 miles of track intervals (really complicated workout that I can't exactly remember -35 minutes), 2 miles warmdown (15 minutes)

Wednesday: 10 miles (70 minutes), on the greatest Harbor Promenade run ever (end of a rainbow what?)

Thursday: 6 miles easy (60 minutes)

Friday: 1 easy mile (10 minutes)

Saturday: 100 miles. Beast of Burden. 20:15, 3rd male, 5th overall.

Total minutes: 1510
Total miles: 141

Okay, now, Beast of Burden:

It should be no secret that after my 100-mile PR (16:19) at Beast of Burden, I thought that this year's edition of the race would be ripe for a 100-mile PR. Add Valmir Nunes, the Badwater record-holder, to the mix, and we were in for a fast race.

After a bunch of photos of me and Valmir with various people for personal use (minor celebrity what?), we lined up ready to rumble. The horn sounded, and we were off, super-fast. I stayed behind Valmir's suicidal pace, already feeling as though I was going to have to concede first to him. Everything hurt and felt wrong, and I was sweating profusely (it was hot at the start, as Valmir demonstrated before the start by rubbing his finger on his wet shoulder. So I soldiered along, completing the first 25-mile loop in just under 3:40 - behind last year's pace.

So it was to my surprise to see that Valmir was only about a mile and a half ahead of me. Considering how awful I felt, this was a minor miracle. Still, I wasn't focused on winning - I was trying my best to enjoy the course, which included jumping up on the drawbridge as it was descending for the crossing (it was randomly timed to be coming down just as I was approaching it).

I reached the end of my otherwise uneventful second lap to frantic claims that Valmir was in trouble, and that I could pass him and take the lead. At this point, a little over 50 miles in, I had finally found my stride, and I began to chase him down. I nearly caught him just past the unmanned aid near one of the bridges in the first segment of the loop, but when I came close, he looked back, and I instanty felt my stomach get sick (not sure how coincidental it was) and I backed off.

I maintained the chase, and it was getting exciting, because people passing on their way back were getting excited and telling me how close he was. Finally, I reached the aid station at mile 62.5, and, knowing that he had mentioned that he liked 100Ks a lot better than 100-mile race. I figured that this was a good time to pass him, as he was just sitting at the aid station (somebody asked him if he liked the summer version of the race, or the winter version of the race, which he won last winter, better, to which he responded "I don't speak English.")

As we left the aid station and crossed the bridge, I subtly slipped ahead of him, and now, after 63+ miles of chasing, I was finally in the lead. As if my water bottle knew it, it shot off a spurt of pale orange water (from the peach Endurolyte fizz that I had put in it at the previous aid station).

But the celebration was premature, because Valmir was not about to give up without a fight, and so, after holding the lead for only about 15 minutes, I suddenly lost control of my stomach and started dry-heaving. Valmir, gunning hard from behind, passed me. I hadn't eaten enough at the aid station, and I was feeling weak, sick, and out-of-it. I struggled to the next aid station, where I lay down for two hours, trying to get myself together. Between being pushed to my physical limits chasing Valmir, and being in a strange place emotionally, at least in part because less than two weeks ago, I had broken up with my fiancee of three years, I needed this time to get myself together. I didn't want to give up - I couldn't sleep, and my mind was still on the race. But my body wasn't ready yet, and I was still emotionally disheveled. There would be nobody there to give me a kick in the ass and make me move; I would have to do it on my own.

So finally I did, resolved to finish the race and to enjoy the beautiful night, the view of the Erie Canal, and the opportunity to be there, doing this ridiculous race. I started out at a walk, but quickly graduated to a run, and soon I was at the finish, ready to set out on my last lap, armed with the news that Valmir was again having trouble. Comeback, maybe?

Alas, not in the cards. I was getting sleepy and chafed, and still having trouble eating enough to sustain a solid pace. So I ran a lot of the way out, but when I saw Valmir at the 8-mile mark on the way out (still 6 miles ahead of me), I decided to just enjoy, and practice my powerwalk on the last 12.5 miles, channeling my best Badwater climb up Mt. Whitney. Of course, the course wasn't finished kicking me in the teeth just yet - it started raining with about 5 miles to go, which was hell on my chafing. I waddled several miles before the rain thankfully stopped. I walked across the finish line in 20:15, happy to have finished.

It turned out that I was third male, 5th overall, and the winner had run 17:52, not close to the course record of 16:19 that I set last year, which was some consolation. I was thankful to have finished, and jonesing for some A&D ointment to soothe my chafing.

So yet another "moral" victory, which you and I are probably sick of, but nevertheless, there were a lot of great things about the race, not the least of which was the emotional purge that my final dry heave catalyzed. Having come into this race in a weird place, and having spent so much of it on the brink of disaster chasing down Valmir (who didn't win anyway; as it turned out, we beat each other up so much that an uninvolved third party, with no dog in our fight, stole the victory), I needed my "slow, miserable" last lap to prove to myself that in spite of circumstances, I am still strong, and I can still finish an ugly race on my own. Not to mention there was some pretty sweet lightning to look at on the return trip.

So now that that's over, and I've lived to tell the tale, it's onward and upward to new adventures. My September is 90% set now, and I'm ready to keep churning out the 100-mile weeks, as this race, save for the chafing, has left me remarkably physically intact. On to a new week . . . :)

Week in Review - 7-13 August 2011, and Semi-Shabbat Run Recap

2011-08-15T20:14:00.000-07:00

It's that compelling list of numbers you've all been waiting for:

Sunday: 5 miles (35 minutes) on the east side, starting at 0630, then another 10 miles (70 minutes) after church on the west side

Monday: 15 miles (105 minutes) out to the Fed Hill Monday Night Run and back. Some of this was at upwards of low-to-mid 6-minute mile pace

Tuesday: 4 miles of treadmill hills (35 minutes, 1532 feet of gain), then drive to the Gilman Track for 2 miles of warmup, 5x300m @ 58 seconds (100m walk rest), 400m jog, 1x1100 (supposed to be 1500, but wasn't going well, so I stopped with a lap to go), 4 miles of barefoot running around the track, 2 more miles of warmdown (entire workout: about 60 minutes), then one more mile before bed for good measure (10 minutes)

Wednesday: Slow, lazy 2 miles (20 minutes)

Thursday: 4 miles of treadmill hills (35 minutes, 1615 feet of gain), then 15 miles around the Canton/Fells/Inner Harbor/Fed Hill area (105 minutes)

Friday: 8 miles (60 minutes) in the general vicinity of the Hopkins Homewood campus - feeling "whatever" about this, so I cut it short.

Saturday: 17 miles (120 minutes) out to Essex and back via Eastern Avenue, with detours of arbitrary interest thrown in here and there. Followed up with a very late night 9 miles (65 minutes) in a light rain around Canton/Fells/Inner Harbor.

Total Time: 720 minutes
Total Distance: 100 miles

In my last "real" week before Beast of Burden, I made it to 100 miles, although not without some figurative kicking and screaming. The last 9 miles were technically completed early Sunday morning, but since I was running from a little after 5 a.m. to a little after 6 a.m., and I didn't start logging miles for this week until 0630 on Sunday, this was technically within the 1-week window, and since 100-mile weeks are nothing if not a technicality, I'm counting it. (I ended up running another 4 miles later on Sunday, which will count towards this coming week.)

Of course, all of that obscures the real story, which is the 127-mile 7-day period from the previous Wednesday to the Tuesday described above. This was not at all on purpose, and it was only when I seemed to be tanking on Tuesday that I took a minute to count the miles, and realized that my volume was way over the top. This is the biggest 7-day period I've ever run that didn't include a race longer than 50K. The ragged last few days of this week are a testament to the aftermath of that, but I guess that's what happens when the dividing line between calendar weeks in no way constitutes a line of symmetry for your training.

Now, not that every run isn't an adventure in its own right, but seeing as to how, for the last couple of weeks, I've had a race on Saturday to carry on about ad nauseam on here, I needed to do something just for fun this week, not just for the sake of the blog (not hardly, really), but also (and mostly) to keep things fresh. I batted around a bunch of ideas, but when Saturday came around, the thing that made the most sense was a sort of running shabbat (thanks, Tel Aviv, for this great idea). Or, I would do whatever I wanted to do all day, run whenever I wanted, whatever I wanted, feel comfortable, and stop when I felt like I had enough.

So, in that spirit, I sat around for most of Saturday, eating cereal and watching King of the Hill and a documentary on the JFK assassination on Netflix. I listed to vicious thunderstorms pound on my skylights all afternoon. Finally, at around 7:30 p.m. (oddly enough, nearing sundown), I decided that it was time, and I headed off down Eastern Avenue, towards Essex.

The direction and destination of travel are relevant here, because they hearken back to the fall of 2008, just after I had met my former girlfriend and fiancee. Earlier this week, we broke up, and in some ways, it's been like a return to that fall (albeit a month early). There was a lot of beauty in that fall, and there was a lot of beauty in this running route, which I discovered that fall, and which I re-lived this weekend. For those of you who insist that beauty while running can be found only on a trail, I submit the following, taken on the bridge to Essex on Eastern Avenue:

Admittedly, man-made mayhem (such as this car crash that I saw on the way back) is a constant environmental hazard:

But man also makes some pretty cool stuff, like this fountain (be patient, and watch the whole thing, or skip to about 20 seconds in if you can't . . .):

So in the end, beauty is where you find it, but in order to find things, you have to look for them. You don't have to do much looking on the trail to find what typically passes for beauty. But in the city, you have to be open and adventurous and aware, because, for the most part, beauty doesn't just come up and smack you in the face (unless you consider being mugged a beautiful thing).

And sometimes, if you're looking hard enough, you find some really amazing stuff, like this mix CD I found on the run, containing, among its 18 unique tracks, "The Seed" (The Roots/Cody Chesnutt), "Sell Out" (Reel Big Fish), and "Otherside" (Red Hot Chili Peppers), twice:

Upon a few more runs through, I am now at least momentarily infatuated with Rise Against. :P

All things considered, it was a good run (both the literal one described above, and the relationship), and it's always sad when these things are relegated to memories. But then again, memories serve a purpose, too, and sometimes, that's where things need to be. Time to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and embrace whatever may come. :)

Week in Review: 31 July - 6 August, and Dahlgren Heritage Rail Trail 50K Race Report

2011-08-06T15:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, the numbers:

31 July - 13 miles (95 minutes), in the evening, Patterson Park/Canton/Fells/Fed Hill. (Was only planning on doing 10 miles, but felt oddly fine, so I went a little longer . . .)

1 August - 4 miles (30 minutes), at APG (lazy lazy)

2 August - 1 mile (10 minutes), at APG (super lazy)

3 August - Treadmill hill workout - 1698 feet of climb in 4 miles (35 minutes), plus 1 mile total warmup/warmdown (10 minutes), followed up a few hours later with 15 miles (105 minutes) around Baltimore City, in circles that seemed endless, except for the parts where I sped up to chase down other runners (ad hoc speedwork?).

4 August - 5 miles easy (35 minutes) from SURVICE Engineering, Belcamp on my lunch break, 15 more easy miles in the evening around Baltimore City (105 minutes)

5 August - 10 miles (70 minutes) around White Marsh Mall, plus, I found a really awesome power line cut:

6 August - 32 (?) miles (50K plus a little), Dahlgren Heritage Rail Trail 50K, 4 hours, 10 minutes, some-odd seconds (250 minutes), 6th place overall.

Total Time: 735 minutes
Total Distance: 100 miles

Okay, now the race report:

"Fresh" off of last week's 6-hour run adventure in Astoria Park, I found, after a few low-mileage days this week rid me of the delayed-onset soreness in my quads, that the wanderlust had me again. So I hit up the trusty ultrarunning.com website for suggestions for the weekend, and lo and behold, the system works: Dahlgren Heritage Rail Trail 50K. Although there was some indication that the terrain was iffy, at least it would be flat (on account of being a rail trail), and perhaps a chance to re-PR this year at 50K (my previous best being the 4:19 that I ran at Seneca Greenway in early March). Maybe even (dare I say it) a chance to pull out a win - although 50K isn't my strongest ultra-distance, the fact that the course was relatively flat, and the course record, at a shade over 3:50, relatively "soft," meant that barring some superhuman competition coming out of nowhere, I would be in the mix for one of the top spots. The promise of a barbecue after the race was enticing, too. :) Anyway, all good enough for me to get up at 3 in the morning and make the 2-ish hour drive down to Dahlgren and the Caledonia Nature Zone, or whatever they call it. (If nothing else, the early-awake thing was good for randomly running into a lost cat outside my house, which rubbed up against my leg and emitted the most well-enunciated "meow" that I've ever heard a cat make. Delightful. :) )

I was first in line for race-day sign-up, and was pleasantly surprised to see how organized their operation was. After a briefing at 6 a.m. that warned us of the "bullet impact zone" on the western out-and-back, we all milled about uncomfortably for about 15 minutes until it was time to line up and wait for the gun.

The gun went off, and I went out slightly in the lead. My legs were feeling surprisingly okay, considering that I had run 50 miles in the past three days, a substantial portion of which was not particularly slow, so I hung on where I was across the field, out to the road, and down the steep hill to the rail trail. I bombed down the short single-track stretch so fast that even though I had clearly turned in the direction of the arrow, I put so much distance on the pack so quickly that I wasn't hearing footsteps, and was temporarily concerned that somehow I was running the wrong way. A quick turn of the head confirmed that there were a few other runners hard-charging after me, so I thought it best to turn around, keep sipping my Gatorade and downing my Endurolytes, and concentrating on running strong on the sloppy terrain.

It is at this point that I should mention that, on paper, this is a PR course, because it is so flat. In practice, this is no NCR Trail - it's ragged, littered with gravel, rocks, downed branches, all on a sandy bed. Nice cushioning, but not exactly built for speed. It takes a fair amount of concentration to achieve road-like speeds on a surface like this, which, except for maybe a mile total (intermittent throughout the race), never lets up. So, in all fairness, this really is a trail race (unlike races on the NCR . . .)

I reached the eastern turn-around in the lead, with runners gunning hard just behind me, but I managed to maintain through the next aid station, at around 7 miles. When I stopped to fill my bottle, one guy passed me, then another, and another . . . For whatever reason, I was hitting a rough patch, and struggling to keep my pace. I put my head down and soldiered forward, and, to my surprise, I pushed through, and by the time we were about three miles into the western turn-around, I was back up with the leaders, and feeling somewhat better. We made the climb up the single-track re-routing around the gun club (which seemed pointless at the time, but was a nice break for the muscles that were handling the brunt of the work for the majority of the race), and down the gravel road back onto the trail, and continued towards the western turn-around point.

It was somewhere about 3 miles from the western turn-around that thing started to fall apart. The fatigue from the past three days of heavy volume, the humid heat (80-ish degrees, 75% humidity), and the ragged terrain turned my stride from smooth to struggle. Four people passed me. Now in fifth place, I did what I did the last time that this happened: I soldiered ahead, albeit at a slower pace, and concentrated on nutrition/hydration. At about a mile from the turnaround, I stopped losing ground at an alarming rate, but I came into the turnaround feeling wrecked, and concerned about the 11 or 12 miles that I still had to run to complete the race. I took about a minute at the aid station to eat half of a banana, drink some Coke, and generally collect myself before I started walking from the aid station back down the trail. After about 5 minutes of walking, I decided that this was no way to end the ordeal quickly, so I began to run again. After a while, I slowed to a walk for another couple of minutes, and that was when Karsten Brown caught me. Sixth place now, but determined not to throw in the towel, I kept pushing forward, with the occasional walk break, but I limited myself to a minute or two, except for the climb around the gun club, which was now alive with the sound of shooting. Bullet impact area, indeed - fortunately, no impact on me.

This continued for a while, until the end of the race. Okay, that sounds stupid, but seriously, in the last five miles, my legs were tired - not so tired that I couldn't run, but tired enough that I felt like I didn't have the extra gear that I needed to mount a chase. I still managed a finishing "sprint" for show, crossing the line in just over 4 hours and 10 minutes, with Paul Jacobs less than a minute behind me, although I had no idea at the time (had I known, perhaps I would have tried to make the latter portion of the race less lazy). For my efforts, I got a glass imprinted with the race logo, for alcoholic beverages (probably), and the option to swap out my green t-shirt for a purple 2011 t-shirt (which I exercised). Oh right, and there was a barbecue, but it was hard to enjoy, because with all of the Gatorade, Coke, bananas, and Endurolytes, combined with the humidity, killed my appetite. So I mostly sat there with Chris Avedissian, a friend who had come out to the race, talking about nothing in particular and greeting the other finishers as they stumbled in to Shelter A. After far too many hours of that (when I left, the clock was at 7:30; the race time limit was 8 hours), I packed up what little there was to pack up, and went home.

Overall, I'm pleased with my effort. Since the "soft" in the course record turned out to be more in the trail surface itself than the time, I didn't feel too bad about my finish (hey, it was a PR), although I did feel a little bad when it turned out that the winner was "only" about 15 minutes ahead of me, and third place was just a few seconds under 4 hours. Considering that the last 3 miles took me about half an hour for no good reason (other than being tired and adopting a "training run" mentality at that point), that was 6 minutes lost right there. At any rate, for last-minute, un-tapered effort, it was another good call, another good training run, another fun adventure, and . . . another pile of swag: :)

Week in Review: 24-30 July 2011, and 6-Hour Pajama Run Race Report

2011-07-31T05:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, making with the miles:

24 July 2011: 6 miles in the morn (45 minutes), 9 miles in the eve (60 minutes), all on the streets of Tel Aviv

25 July 2011: 10 miles in the morning (70 minutes) - last run in Tel Aviv for a while

26 July 2011: 14 miles (95 minutes), back in Baltimore, MD, USA

27 July 2011: 1 mile (10 minutes), in Baltimore - feeling lazy

28 July 2011: 5 miles (45 minutes), including a half-mile warmup, 35 minutes of treadmill hills (1628 feet of gain), and a half-mile warmdown, followed a couple of hours later with a 15-mile (105 minute) run through the streets of Baltimore

29 July 2011: 1 mile (10 minutes), in Baltimore - lazy again

30 July 2011: 46.81 miles (360 minutes), 2nd place at the 6-Hour Pajama Run in Queens, NY (revised total - see race report)

Total Time: 800 minutes

Total Distance: 107.81 miles (revised total - see below)

And now, the Pajama Run Race Report:

The 6-Hour Pajama Run, put on by the Broadway Ultra Society, in Astoria Park in Queens, NY (so-called because it starts at 6 p.m. and ends at midnight) was a "spur-of-the-moment" decision for me. I had been toying with jumping on the Burning River bandwagon, but a 100-mile race between Badwater and Beast of Burden (alliterative though it may have been) seemed like I might have been pushing the envelope a bit too far, not to mention the significant time and cost commitment (probably around $500). I still felt like this was a good weekend for a long run, and so on Thursday night, I looked at the ultrarunning.com website, and lo and behold, a race that was relatively close, time-limited, and only $50 to enter on race day. Pretty much sold . . . but I still waited until Saturday morning to decide to drive up there.

The drive was well-timed, with minimal traffic and only one wrong turn, and I arrived there in about 5 hours, right at 5 p.m. . . . only to find that they were waiting to let "post-entries" (i.e. race-day entries) in, because they had only 6 volunteers, and probably no extra pajama pants. I waited for about 20 minutes for them to let me enter; in the meantime, I made small talk with a long-time internet-only acquaintance who lives in New York, and who, via a series of Facebook posts on the drive up, I conned into running the race. Definitely an odd time to be meeting somebody face-to-face for the first time.

With 40 minutes before the race, this gave me just enough time to go to the bathroom, change into my shorts and singlet, set up a bag to put near the one aid station at the start/finish, and meander about for a few more minutes before the pre-race briefing.

At this point, I should mention that I did absolutely no research on the course prior to driving up, and, as it turned out, it was a paved path (good), but under a noisy bridge (bad-ish), in a crowded park (which meant dodging and weaving between people the entire race, also bad-ish), and on a hill. Over the course of the 1.27-mile loop, there was about 50-70 feet of gain/loss, which doesn't sound like much, but adds up, lap by lap, until you're not really running a very flat, fast course anymore. To add to this, the temperatures at the start were in the mid-90s, and humid, thanks to our proximity to the water (and never dropped below 80 as the night progressed). None of this boded well for a 6-hour PR for me (my previous best was 44.4 miles, set in the fall of 2007 on a much more forgiving course), but nevertheless, since I figured I was in much better shape now, and my Nike LunarTrainers seemed to have an extra spring in them today, I thought, why not go for it?

The race started exactly at 6 p.m., and the "lead group" of 4 or 5 of us (consisting in part of Phil McCarthy, who holds the US 48-hour record, Byron Lane, who usually wins the Staten Island 6-hour race, and is capable of running around 50 miles in 6 hours, and Tommy Sung Pyon, the heretofore unknown Asian) ran tentatively through the first loop, since the race director had only been allowed to mark the route lightly with chalk. Once we made the circuit, it was time for everybody to take off and settle into a pace. Tommy led the chase, with me close behind. We were hitting low-9-minute laps (or high 7-minute mile pace), which was pretty fast, especially considering the hilly course and the heat. I decided not to push the pace too hard, and diligently took my Endurolytes (one every 20 minutes or so) and my cups of water/Gatorade/Coke at the aid station after each lap.

Things were feeling good, and everything was clicking, but Tommy had run off. I was slowing to a walk through the aid station at each lap to make sure that the fluids wound up in my stomach, and not on my singlet, but I never heard footsteps behind me. With no idea where anybody was, I decided to continue to run conservatively, in the hopes that Tommy would blow up, and I would take the lead by default. I was worried about a Badwater epic-cramp repeat in these temperatures, and I felt as though I was running on the edge of what my nutrition would allow. (Several people later told me after the race that they didn't think I was going to last, because I was sweating so hard at the beginning. Of course, nobody knew who I was at this race, so it was pretty amusing to tell people - including Byron Lane at the start of the race - who asked if I had ever run an ultra that I had run "a few" . . . In Byron's case, he yielded a position on the starting line to me due to that response.)

This all proved to be a tactical blunder, as somewhere around 2 hours and 45 minutes, Tommy lapped me. Now I had pretty much no choice - I had to sit in second, keep up the pace, and hope that he would blow up, because it was far too risky at this stage in the race to mount a charge to make up the 1.27-mile gap. So I sat where I was, running around 10 minutes per lap (or just under 8-minute mile pace), and it felt pretty good.

I was in such a good groove, in fact, that the rest of the race hardly felt like a struggle at all. There were a few points where I thought my stomach would rebel and ruin things for me, but as it turned out, 4-6 ounces of water every 10 minutes or so seemed to be just the right amount for things to stay steady. The fact that I had to re-adjust every 10 minutes was also helpful, as I spent a fair portion of my laps (when I wasn't dodging pedestrians or gawking at the sunset over the New York City skyline) deciding exactly what would be the appropriate nutrition the next time I passed the aid station.

The crowd, as it were (minus my internet friend, who, somewhere between two and three hours, left, as it probably was not all that fun for her at that point), was starting to get excited, seeing that I was cranking out the laps with hardly a sign of exertion, even if they weren't sure exactly what place I was in (these things are confusing in a short-loop race with 70+ people running). The race directors had me run the "big loop" all the way up until about the last 6 minutes of the race, at which point I switched over to the "small loop" (a 0.323-mile loop, divided into 17ths, just to make any kind of mental math virtually impossible).

At that point, I was solidly in second, and the only question was whether or not I would PR (as it later turned out, I would have had 44.45 miles, had I simply stopped at 35 large loops, which is how many large loops I ran - EDIT: actually, I had run 36 large loops at this point; the initial results were incorrect). Not having any idea how many miles I had run, I dropped the hammer on the small loop, and, in the last 6 minutes, made it around 2 and 11/17ths small loops, finishing with a heroic dive for the "11" marker, in part because I wanted every last bit of distance that I could get, and in part because after all that running, it seemed like fun to dive in the grass. 45.22 miles (EDIT: 46.81 miles, in the corrected results), a 6-hour PR by nearly a mile, and good enough for second place . . . because Tommy kept on rolling, and ended up with 47.22 miles (EDIT: 48.34 miles), 2 miles (EDIT: about 1 and a half miles) ahead of me. He must have slowed in the second half, which of course makes me question even more my tactics in the first half (especially since early on, I was gaining on him on every hill), but, oh well . . .

The real point of all of this, though, is that there was free pizza and soda after the race, I got a nice plaque for my second-place finish, and the race director was even nice enough to give me a pair of pajama pants, after I thanked him copiously (and genuinely) for allowing me to enter the event last-minute, and he found out that I had driven there all the way from Baltimore to run the race.

In conclusion, a fun race, a solid training run, and I felt pretty good for almost the entire time, which made me wonder how much damage I could have done if they had let me at the course for another 6 hours . . . but I suppose I'll have to wait until Beast of Burden to find out.

The spoils . . .

(Epilogue: The Molly Pitcher rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike was a mess at 3:30 a.m., with somebody in the restroom vomiting just like in that Crank Yankers "Phone Sex Vomit" skit - I couldn't believe that anybody vomits like that for real - and an arrest in the parking lot, involving four police cars. Oh, adventures . . . :)

Catching Up: Weekly Mileage, 3-23 July, and Escape from Trash Mountain

2011-07-23T13:28:00.000-07:00

Badwater race report aside, my blog has been a little bit quiet this month, as I've been a little bit busy with a lot of things (most notably, being in Israel, for longer than expected . . . international negotiations, as it turns out, are tricky).

Anyway, because there aren't enough irrelevant things in the world to bore you, here's what my weekly mileage has looked like lately:

3 July: 15 miles (110 minutes), on a super-hot day, through some super-bad neighborhoods

4 July: 10 miles (75 minutes), downtown Baltimore vicinity

5 July: 12 miles total: 25 minutes on the treadmill, at a 15% incline (2 miles), 2 miles on either side of that (15 minutes), 2 mile warmup before track workout (15 minutes), 6x800m (2:48, 2:51, 2:49, 2:49, 2:49, 2:52), 2 minutes jog rest between, 2 mile warmdown (15 minutes), 95 minutes total

6 July: 12 miles (90 minutes), with the Wednesday night run group

7 July: 2 miles easy (15 minutes)

8 July: 2 miles easy, in creepy Las Vegas Sunset Park (15 minutes)

9 July: 2 miles easy, also in creepy Las Vegas Sunset Park (15 minutes)

Total Time: 425 minutes
Total Distance: 55 miles

10 July: 2 miles, just outside of Stovepipe Wells resort (15 minutes)

11-12 July: Badwater Ultramarathon - 135 miles in 34 hours, 18 minutes, 14 seconds (round to 34:20 for ease of calculation)

13 July: 3-mile shakeout in the ol' Sunset Park in Vegas (25 minutes)

14 July: 5 miles in and around Sunset Park (35 minutes)

15 July: 5 miles at good ol' APG (35 minutes)

16 July: 11 miles (80 minutes) in Baltimore, before my flight to oblivion . . . um, I mean, Israel

Total Time: 2230 minutes
Total Distance: 161 miles

17 July: 13 miles (90 minutes) along the Mediterranean (out to Jaffa-ish and back)

18 July: 10 miles (70 minutes) in the morning, 5 miles (35 minutes) in the evening - south along the sea in the morning, and north in the evening

19 July: 5 miles (35 minutes) in the morning, heading south, and 10 miles (70 minutes) along the sea in the evening, heading north

20 July: 5 miles (35 minutes) in the morning, heading south along the sea, and 13 miles (90 minutes) in the evening, running off the script and heading into town, getting lost, and taking an extra 3 miles to get back to the hotel

21 July: 8 miles (60 minutes) in the morning, adding 3 miles to the planned 5 due to being lost in the city

22 July: 6 miles (45 minutes) in a late-night Jaffa jaunt

23 July: 24 miles (180 minutes) on my journey to Trash Mountain and back

Total Time: 710 minutes
Total Distance: 99 miles (so close to 100! oops :P)

And now, for something different . . .

If you haven't noticed, I've been taking full advantage of my first trip to anyplace outside of the US, and I've been turning every run into as much of an adventure as possible (without heading into disputed territory, of course). 23 July was my first truly "free" day since I've been here, so I took advantage of this opportunity for a long run to venture east from Tel Aviv, towards the mountains, to see if I could make it to something worth climbing. I wasn't entirely optimistic, but as it turns out, I did . . .

I wound up in an overgrown lot behind a run-down neighborhood - a lot which was full of this:

Which soon gave way to this:

Which I have dubbed "Trash Mountain." (The real story behind this is that it's a landfill about 87 meters high, containing about 16 million cubic meters of waste, in Hiryia that's being converted into a park, to be named after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Please note that I mean no offense to him with my informal name for the mountain.)

So, counting the climb from the ditch, I had the opportunity for about 100 meters of gain, which, running from pancake-flat Tel Aviv, was an opportunity that I couldn't pass up. I'll skip the part about the watermelon patch and the rose field in front of the mountain, and get to the climbing. As it turns out, there's sort of a trail up the mountain for construction equipment, which is smelly and dusty and ends like this:

To venture beyond the construction equipment plateau, you have to navigate a series of uncovered trash mounds, which look a little like this:

And then, the trail ends, and you have to go straight up this:

Did I mention that it was dusty and hot and smelled bad? Like, fecal-waste bad? Because that detail bears repeating.

Anyway, why go through all that trouble? Well, if only my cell phone camera were good enough to do this justice, but you have a 360-degree view of Tel Aviv, a bunch of other cities, and even, way off in the distance, Jerusalem. Also, you get a little preview of the park at the top. Here's the payoff:

and

and

and

and

And then some guys in a white SUV drove over to me and told me that I couldn't be there, Shabat be darned (so apparently they weren't Jewish). I left peacefully, since at that point, I had all of the exclusive photos of the view from the top that I could reasonably take with my camera phone.

Then I had to run all the way back to the sea, which ended up taking longer than the way out, because they made me run down the backside of the mountain, which, it turns out, has a very convenient (but also very clearly prohibited-to-traffic) paved path to the ground. Then I wound up running further south than I thought (using the "follow the sun" method to work my way west), so I had to run about 3 miles north from Jaffa back to the hotel.

I hope you enjoyed hearing about my little adventure as much as I enjoyed experiencing it. In conclusion, I leave you with the following: The question all week is, do the streets smell like urine in Tel Aviv because people are peeing on the streets, or because of the stray cats peeing on the streets? (My vote has been mostly for people, as I am well aware of what cat urine smells like, and the urine smell is not that smell.) Here's the picture; you decide. :)

Badwater 2011 - Revenge of the Fallen

2011-07-12T23:32:00.000-07:00

Okay, normally I wouldn't post on my blog from my cell phone, but since this seems to be a hot topic, and right now, the memories are the freshest, here goes (weekly miles prior to Badwater at some other point, but suffice to say that I ran at least one mile every day).

In case you haven't been following, my goal at Badwater this year was to be as competitive as possible, which would mean a sub-30-hour time at a minimum. Considering how close I was to this last year, and how much more experience I had this year, I thought it was a reasonable goal. So, with the list of lessons learned from 2010, the same crew members (minus one), a team of reporters from the Washington Post documenting my race (along with Michael Wardian's and Brenda Carawan's), and a red Nissan XTerra tricked out with some tight gear organization scheme that my crew developed, and some haphazard-looking renditions of my last name on a four sides (including one that made it look like my name was "Plosko Nka," which led us to joke that we should develop a fake accent, language, and country of origin for me, which, as it turns out, Chris Kostman thought was funny when we told him about it at the finish line), per the race rules, we were confident coming into the race that I would do well. Add to that a "cool" year (115 F as the "high" is cool by Badwater standards), and it was looking to be an exciting race.

After the traditional countdown from 10 to start the race, our expectations were met, as I soon found myself in second place, behind Zach Gingerich, last year's winner (who showed up at the start in flip-flops, with a 2-liter bottle of diet soda, and claimed to be feeling nervous, scared, and not excited to run). This was by design, as I decided that my strategy would be to start aggressively and make a statement. This worked through the first time station (Furnace Creek, 17 miles), but then I slowly started to drop back, as more conservative starters passed me. I came through the first marathon in just over 4 hours, though, so I wasn't too worried. Still, I wasn't feeling quite right . . .

(Early in the race, when life was better . . .)

And then, as I was nearing the second time station (Stovepipe Wells, mile 42), things started falling apart. My calves and quads started to cramp violently, and my stomach was in knots. My body was failing me, shutting down, telling me that it wanted no part in this. I had never had these problems in a race before, and didn't know what to do, so I foolishly chose to hope that they would work themselves out. (And yes, in retrospect, this was stupid, although it did afford the media folks a chance to watch ms dry-heave several times by the side of the road, as my crew looked on).

As it turned out, pushing through made things worse. I started running up the climb to Townes Pass, and while I was passing people on the climb, my cramps and my stomach were worsening. Finally, I reached the point where I couldn't walk without fear of a sudden, violent cramp, so I "staked out" (left a stake with my number on it where I had stopped racing), and went back to the medical station at Stovepipe Wells with my crew. The medics advised putting my feet up, switching shoes, upping the water and electrolyte intake, and slowing the pace. An hour later, I was back on course, with Jason Wara as my reliable pacer. And for a little while, it looked like this was going to work. Jason and I even struck up a conversation about UFOs (we're both big fans, as it turns out) while we climbed. Amusingly, the Washington Post people heard us talking, and I had to tell them that that was the first time he and I had ever talked while he was pacing me. (Normally; he follows quietly behind me, footfalls in unison, silently urging me on).

Unfortunately, all was not well, since when I reached the top of the pass and started to run down (as the medic suggested, since, at 5'4" and 137 pounds, I am a "light" guy), my stomach and cramping issues came back in full force. Here was the first time when a DNF seriously crossed my mind. As I struggled down the pass on the seemingly endless hike to Panamint Springs (the time station at mile 72), I thought about all of the people that I would be disappointing if I failed to finish (family, friends, crew, sponsor, donators to CAF on my behalf), and this made the idea distinctly unappealing. At the same time, my body was falling apart, and I had tried pretty much everything in the book to pull it together, and nothing was working. The only thing I could think of to do was to keep trudging towards Panamint, and re-assess from there. I kept telling my crew this, and it was really killing any optimism that might have still been lingering.

When I finally reached Panamint, it turned out that Sara had told one of the race officials about my predicament, in a particularly emotional way, and so the first thing they did when they saw me was to send my crew away, and ask me how I felt. I told them that I was falling asleep when I was walking, my stomach was a mess, pretty much every muscle in my body was twitching and/or cramping, I felt weak and sick, and I had the hiccups for half of the descent. Cory Linkel, the race official who spoke to me, finally solved the problem. He told me that he knew that I wanted to finish, and my crew wanted me to finish, but right now, my body was out of control. He told me to lay down on the floor in the cottage for about half an hour, let everything settle down, and then see how I felt about continuing. Sara later told me that to her, he said that he understood what it was like to be the emotional leader of a crew, having been in that position when he crewed his partner at Badwater. He told her to get all of the angst out of her system, then buy breakfast and bring it to me, and tell me to get back on the course and start walking.

I plopped myself on the floor in the cottage at 5:30 a.m., and oddly enough, woke up on my own exactly at 6 a.m., to find that Sara was still sleeping in the cottage, in another room (I have no idea when she got in there). I decided that it wouldn't be right to wake Sara so I could go on, since she and the rest of the crew had been awake for way too many hours straight at this point, and she was driving the crew vehicle, so I let her sleep, and returned to the floor. (EDIT: apparently, this is something that I either hallucinated or lucid-dreamed, as Sara later told me that she and the rest of my crew slept in the car while I was in the cottage.)

Exactly another half-hour later, Sara woke me up, with a breakfast of buckwheat pancakes, eggs, and hash browns. It was a very sweet moment, and suddenly, I understood what Corey was saying, and I felt at peace with where I was. Yes, it was 6:30 a.m., 72 miles and 20.5 hours into the race, and if I wanted to at least equal my time from last year, I would have to run the remaining 63 miles in 14 hours, a Herculean feat, considering how much I had already run, and that 13 of those miles were the climb to Whitney Portal, which typically takes about 4 hours, leaving just 10 hours to run 50 miles, over a section of the course where the WINNERS typically struggle to run 5 miles per hour. But right now, none of that mattered. Sara brought me breakfast, and was going to be there for me even if it took the full 48-hour time limit to finish, and knowing this was all that mattered.

I set off down the road, walking, and feeling a profound sense of peace with my self, my crew, my body, my situation, and my environment. I wisely moved slowly, and upped my fluid and electolyte intake. After about two miles of walking, for some reason, the hill in front of me looked like it would be fun to run up, so I did. Slowly at first, but it felt okay, so I started pushing the pace. Before I could even process what was happening, I was plugging along at a solid 10-minute mile pace over the rolling terrain, including crew stop time, and Sara and Andrew were "teaching people how to Dougie" in celebration, courtesy of the mix CDs that we made for this event. In the back of my mind, there was still fear that maybe this was another temporary high, and that I would soon find myself doubled over by the side of the road, wretching in agony from cramps in places in my stomach that I didn't even know existed. I kept plugging along, listening to my body, running gently, and remaining at peace, and soon I was at the time station at Darwin - about 18 miles from Panamint on the strength of about 3 hours of tough running.

I could have slowed there. But I was gaining momentum, and passing people, and my crew was enjoying the show, and especially since I felt like I owed them, after all of the crap they had been through so far, I kept running. No pacer, just me and the 32 miles of rolling, open road between Darwin and Lone Pine. Somewhere along the way, the media crew spotted me, and, realizing that I was no longer dead, resumed questioning and picture-taking, which only spurred me on even more. I ran nearly all of that 32 miles, and passed even more people, and I could feel my confidence building. I reached Lone Pine at almost exactly 31 hours, or 7 hours after I reached Darwin - over 5 miles per hour!

(On the hunt - somewhere between Darwin and Lone Pine)

Now, to equal or better my time from last year, I would have to climb 13 miles, with about 5000 feet of elevation gain, in 3 hours, 27 minutes - a very aggressive pace, given the terrain. But I had a couple of additional motivators here: Jimmy Dean Freeman, who beat me by 5 minutes last year, and only because I was chasing him hard up the climb to Whitney Portal, saw me running between Darwin and Lone Pine, and told me that if I kept it up, I could beat his time from last year (and also, he said that I should do the climb in 3 hours, 20 minutes). Also, the media people wanted to take finish line photos in the daylight, and since night was just beginning to fall when I finished last year, I would have to finish faster (I told them, with a smile, that I would see what I could do about that.)

My crew knew from last year that I could climb, and they were in full support as I took on the climb, while everybody else looked on in amazement as I ran and power-hiked at 15-minute mile pace or better up the steep, winding road to Whitney Portal. Jason and Andrew traded pacer duties up the hill, and Sara kept me sprayed down and stocked with water, electrolytes, and Natural Vitality Energy 28, which tastes amazing and really gets me going on a long climb. When I reached the final time station and learned that I had just 3.6 more miles to the finish (I was expecting 4), and nearly an hour to do it, I doubled my effort and pushed hard to the top, with Jason and Andrew alternately behind me, pushing me forward. I think this pretty well sums up what it was like on the final climb (that's Jason pacing me in the picture):

My crew and I broke the tape in 34 hours, 18 minutes, and 14 seconds, ten minutes faster than last year, in the daylight, and faster than Jimmy Dean Freeman's finishing time in 2010, on the strength of a climb that took 3 hours and 15 minutes. Considering the circumstances, this was a beyond-miraculous victory, considering how hard I had to push, over the remaining distance. Make no mistake about it - while I was at peace with my body, it didn't mean that I wasn't in pain. It meant that I accepted the pain, and ran at the crippling edge of it, for 14 hours, at the END of such a brutally difficult race. I told Chris Kostman, the race director, that I liked the black-and-purple finisher's shirts (from Baltimore, and a Ravens fan), and he joked that they made them that way just for me. With that kind of finish, it's forgivable that AdventureCorps would mistakenly post on their website that I won the race. :P

(Race Director Chris Kostman presenting me with the awesome Ravens-themed finisher shirt by Moeben)

In a way, all of the above can be summarized pretty simply: my fluid/electrolyte balance was off, because I had never run that fast for that long under those conditions, and my body didn't know how to handle it. Had I taken in more fluids/electrolytes from the start, especially considering my performance at the end, I may really have contended for the win. (Incidentally, I eventually found that an Endurolyte every 15 minutes, and 20 ounces of water every 30 minutes, was the recipe for staying cramp-free, which sounds outrageous, which is probably why I didn't attempt it in the first place.)

But in another way, this is about working through a desperate situation, a seemingly ruined race, with the support of everybody around you. I am so grateful for the support from my crew, my sponsor, Natural Vitality, my friends and family, all the people who donated to CAF in support of my run, the people who texted/tweeted support before/during the race, the Badwater staff, and I really hope that I'm not forgetting somebody. Because at the end of the day, Badwater is more than just a 135-mile race through Death Valley in the hottest week of the summer, designed for lunatics or people who feel that they need to do something this "macho" to prove themselves to others. Badwater is a test of yourself, to find your limits and your weaknesses, to face them head-on, and to conquer them. Badwater is a race that requires the support of everybody around you to be successful, and it tests the limits of patience, charity, and love in those people. And finally, Badwater is an inspiration to everybody, in that knowing that ordinary people can work hard and achieve amazing things. So although I didn't get the victory that I was seeking (okay, I did get it erroneously :P), I believe that the race was victorious on all of these levels. And next year, I hope to have that victory on one more, for real. :)

(Epilogue: I hope that I didn't forget anything important, but if I did, I'll update this post. Maybe I'll even get ambitious and post some pictures. :) )

(Epilogue to the epilogue: So I did get around to making some editorial changes, and posting some pictures - all courtesy of Sara MacKimmie. Enjoy!)

Week in Review: 26 June - 2 July . . . Suspiciously Quiet

2011-07-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a long 4th of July weekend, this update is a little later than usual (but not so late that I don't remember what happened) . . .

26 June: 15 miles (105 minutes), Canton/Fells/Harbor

27 June: 15 miles (105 minutes), Canton/Fells/Harbor (and, since it was the evening, a little Old Towne Mall thrown in for good measure)

28 June: 4 miles, treadmill hill program (35 minutes), 1608 ft of climb

29 June: 20 miles, part of which consisted of me being the sole participant in Wednesday Night Run from O'Donnell Square (until Arjun showed up partway through), and 2 miles of which were barefoot (at about 10 minute/mile pace). (150 minutes)

30 June: 6 miles at APG, consisting of a half-mile warmup, 35 minutes of treadmill hills (1598 ft of climb), a mile and a half of warmdown (for 50 minutes of total workout time), hot car ride home, then 10 more miles, a lot of which was on Baltimore Street (70 minutes)

1 July: 10 miles, warm morning, returning a library book along the way (70 minutes)

2 July: 13 miles (95 minutes), with a "fast finish" (1.5 miles at ~6:05/mile pace at the end), then 7 more miles (50 minutes) just before midnight, when apparently, according to a passer-by, I change into Urijah Faber

Total Time: 730 minutes

Total Distance: 100 miles

If you want to get really technical about the definition of a week, I completed my 15-mile run on July 3rd earlier than the 15 miles that I ran on 26 June, thereby cramming 115 miles into a 7-day period. But since that's splitting hairs, suffice to say that another 100-mile week is in the can, and I am not unduly worse for wear.

Which brings me to "taper time" . . . When I hopefully start feeling more rested and stronger, and when the positive effects of all of this hard work should become apparent. After taking an easier-than-usual 4th of July (a token 1-mile run to keep the streak alive), I'm already feeling a lot more rested than I have in about a month, which I think is a good sign. If that trend continues, by race day, my legs will be feeling fresh, and I'll be ready to spend a lot (but not too many) hours on a hot road in Death Valley. Overall, I feel much more prepared, and in much better shape, than I was for last year's excursion. Of course, anything can happen on Monday, but with the past year of experience, "anything" stands a good chance of being "better than expected."

Oh, right, and to acknowledge that I sub-titled this post "Suspiciously Quiet" . . . I don't have any particularly deep thoughts to share this week. Not that I haven't been thinking, of course, but unlike previous weeks, I have yet to sense a particular unifying theme within the mental noise. Until that happens, I'll keep quiet, and keep running . . .

Week in Review: 19-25 June, and Dreaded Druid Hills 10K Race Report

2011-06-26T20:56:00.000-07:00

Another triple-digit week, like this:

19 June - 4 miles from Arjun's place back to my house (30 minutes), another 3 miles before church (25 minutes), 8 miles around John Carroll School after church (60 minutes), and 10 more miles (70 minutes) in the Canton/Fells/Harbor area at night.

20 June - 5 miles (35 minutes) at APG, nothing very exciting.

21 June - 5 miles (45 minutes) at APG, including a 30-minute treadmill hill session (1366 feet of climb)

22 June - 13 miles (90 minutes) at APG - hot

23 June - 7 miles (60 minutes) at APG, including a 30-minute treadmill hill session (1569 feet of climb), another 5 miles (35 minutes) in Canton/Fells

24 June - 20 miles (140 minutes) at APG - sorta hot

25 June - 6 miles from home to Druid Hill Park (45 minutes), 1 mile warmup (10 minutes), Dreaded Druid Hills 10K in just under 40 minutes (39:58), 1 mile warmdown (10 minutes), 6 miles from Druid Hill Park back home (45 minutes)

Total Time: 740 minutes

Total Distance: 100 miles

Pretty "standard" week, with nothing terribly exciting to report, except that I'm gradually building distance and speed, and feeling pretty good doing it.

And now, a short summary of the Dreaded Druid Hills 10K:

Dreaded Druid Hills has been a race that I've wanted to run for a while now, but circumstances never seemed to permit it. Not that I was exactly tapered and ready for the race this year, but considering how hard I've been hill-training lately, and how many miles I'm trying to run each week, I figured that this would be a good opportunity to see what good (if any) all of that hill training has done.

On a bet, I wore my Nike Mayflys, which I realized was a bad idea about a mile from my house, when I could feel the hot spots forming under my arches. Sure enough, by the time I got to Druid Hill Park, I had two giant blisters. I decided that popping them was the best course of action (and by "best," I mean "least uncomfortable"), but it was still not particularly fun to run on them (and now they're a little bit bloody under the arches).

The race started, and I took off with the lead pack, running fast and feeling fine, until about three-quarters of a mile in, when I suddenly felt all of those miles in my legs (especially the 20-miler that I ran the day before the race). People started passing me. I did my best to do better than I usually do in hanging on in this situation, consoling myself with the possibility that I might be a better climber than these other runners, and end up passing them later.

As it turned out, this assessment was partially founded. Somewhere around 3 miles, the tide began to turn, as the course got hillier, and those that had gone out fast at the start were now paying for it. I caught three people on the hills, and at some point in the low-30-minute range, I started to pick up speed as the course started to flatten.

Unfortunately, I also saw a number of people who were ahead of me coming from a different direction - turns out that one of the course marshalls had mis-directed some of the runners, so perhaps I didn't get a fair shot at chasing the runners in front of me. Nevertheless, I did catch one more runner on the flat section near the finish (too bad it wasn't one more, because on some level, losing to a shirtless guy wearing jam-length boxer-style shorts is pretty disappointing), and snuck in just under 40 minutes (39:58). Supposedly, the correct and incorrect courses were about the same distance, and since the mis-direction was the fault of the race staff, nobody was penalized or disqualified for running the incorrect course.

In any case, I finished 13th overall, and, as I ran the entire 10K, including ridiculous hills, at around my pace for the Boston Marathon this past spring, I'll declare it some sort of fitness victory (particularly as the middle segment of a 20-mile run).

Finally, a word (or several) on the Western States 100, as I was glued to my phone/computer for most of Saturday, watching it unfold. First off, congrats to everybody who finished (especially Kilian Jornet, the winner, and Dave Snipes, in the first race of the 2011 Grand Slam of Ultrarunning - 3 more to go!), and all due respect to those who ended up dropping, for making it as far as they did. Second (and related to dropping), in arguably the deepest, biggest-name field at the race, there were some big-name drops (Geoff Roes and Hal Koerner, both previous winners, and Dave James, come to mind), and it got me thinking . . .

Having dropped from a couple of 100-mile races this past fall (described in excruciating detail on this blog), I can understand what it feels like to drop, and why somebody (especially a typically fast somebody) might drop. Ultrarunning is a sport full of contradictions, and one that's particularly applicable here is the idea that what you don't know tends to hurt you less. That is, the better-conceived your idea of how the race should go, the less-prepared you are for unexpected circumstances. Things that complicate this dilemma are having run a race before, and, in particular, having performed exceptionally well in a previous year's running of the race. The best way to enter any ultra is to be physically well-trained for any and all conditions, and mentally flexible enough to deal with any and all conditions. A previous win or course-record-setting performance makes the latter extremely difficult. The experience becomes a part of you, and a "building block" of your concept of yourself as a successful runner, so when things stop fitting that script, pulling yourself together becomes even more difficult.

In light of all that, I feel as though I'm in a good place mentally for Badwater. Last year's performance there was good, but not as good as I would have liked, so there are areas where I can easily improve, and I can focus on success in those areas as the race progresses. At the same time, because in some ways, last year's race is a bit of a blur in my mind now, I have no pre-conceived notion of how any part of the race should feel, other than "hot" and "maybe difficult."

Over the next couple of weeks, as the miles pile up, I plan to be focusing heavily on strategies to break through the mental walls that might hamper my performance. If any of them prove to be particularly interesting or insightful beyond the above, perhaps I'll post about them here.

Comments

2011-06-20T10:16:00.000-07:00

For anybody who's posted a comment on this blog at any point since its inception: Somehow, I've managed to read maybe four or five out of, well, more than four or five total comments on this blog. This is mainly because once I post something, I've already read it over a few times before posting it, and I don't plan on reading it again in the near future.

So if you felt ignored, I suppose you were, but not intentionally, and at any rate, I apologize. I think I'll turn e-mail notifications on, or something silly like that, so that I won't miss any more comments. And at random times in the near future, I'll read through the old comments, and respond in whatever way makes sense at the time (which may not make sense in the original context of the post, but hopefully will be amusing nonetheless).

Now, back to life . . .

Week in Review: 12-18 June 2011, and Anatomy of a 100-Mile Week a 100-Mile Week

2011-06-19T19:17:00.000-07:00

Deep breath; here goes . . .

Sunday: 6 miles (45 minutes) Canton/Fells, early p.m., then 11 miles (75 minutes) fast-ish around Harbor East

Monday: 6 miles (45 minutes) at APG, hot car ride home, 11 more miles (80 minutes) out to the Fed Hill Run and back (but not with the Fed Hill run, since my timing was so far off . . .)

Tuesday: 5 miles at APG; 4 of those on the treadmill (hill program - 1438 feet of vertical in 35 minutes, plus another 10 minutes warmup/warmdown); hot car ride home, then 10 more around Patterson Park and such (70 minutes)

Wednesday: 1 very slow mile that wasn't very fun (10 minutes)

Thursday: 7 miles at APG; 20 minutes warmup/warmdown, plus another 35 minutes on the treadmill (hill program - 1459 feet of vertical), hot car ride, then 10 more from the Falls Road Running Store with fast people (65 minutes) after Baltimore 10-Miler packet pickup

Friday: 15 miles in the morning, around the Inner Harbor, up Fed Hill, and all that business (105 minutes)

Saturday: 6 miles to the start of the Baltimore 10-Miler, along Monument Street (45 minutes), Baltimore 10-Miler in 1:09:40 (pacing the 1:10 group with Keith McBride), then 6 miles home, carrying my silly Fila vest down Madison Avenue (45 minutes)

Total Time: 755 minutes

Total Distance: 102 miles

Normally, this is the part of the blog entry where I write my race report, but (without any disrespect to the Baltimore 10-Miler), the race wasn't a particularly epic experience (which is not to say that it wasn't fun, only that it wasn't a struggle to the finish that would make for a compelling read). But in short, the last two miles are difficult, but not a surprise, since you run them (downhill) on the way out, there were cold, wet towels and watermelon at the finish, two beer tickets for every runner (many of which were being diverted to a few runners trying to collect as many beer tickets as possible), and a band that opened their set with that Ramones song "Blitzkrieg Bop" and didn't bother to censor the lyrics. (Nobody seemed to be paying enough attention to care.) I had a lot of miles on my legs coming in, so I was a little worried about the uphill finish, and that, combined with most of the mile markers in the first half of the race being wrong, led to a first half that was slightly faster than pace, but it all worked out in the end. And, Fila "running vest."

Because that was a crummy race summary, I'm going to leave you with something a little more substantial: the anatomy of a 100-mile week. I may not speak for everybody else when I say this, but in a typical 100-mile week, accumulating mileage at a steady rate throughout the week (as opposed to running very little on some days, and "binging" on other days, particularly with long races), the thought process ends up being something like this:

Day 1 - 15 miles total - Wow, that was a solid day.

Day 2 - 30 miles total - Another great day; almost a third of the way there!

Day 3 - 45 miles total - Um . . . 3 days and I'm not even halfway there?

Day 4 - 60 miles total - Another day, and barely over halfway . . . this is distressing.

Day 5 - 75 miles total - Seriously, when does progress happen? 5 days, and 3/4ths of the way there?

Day 6 - 90 miles total - Okay, wow, that snuck up on me; now I'm almost at 100. And I only have to run 10 miles tomorrow!

Day 7 - 100 (or 105, or something) miles total - I did it! I feel great! And now . . . do it again next week?!?!?!?! Then again, on second thought, it doesn't sound quite so bad now . . .

Given the mind game involved in reaching 100 miles in a week, you may be wondering how anybody can deal with it, week after week. As it turns out (and as I type this, I already have 25 miles in for this coming week, in one day), it gets easier and easier the more frequently you do it. After a while, your body gets used to being in motion that often, and the mileage becomes strangely comforting. Once you find yourself running in the moment, and not thinking about your weekly total, you can fully submit to the task; you accept that, at any given moment of any day, you might be on your feet and running - through sunrise, sunset, rain, wind, sleet, snow, jeers, catcalls, noise, silence . . . and in this submission, there is a profound peace. (For me, anyway.)

And along those lines, given than running a lot of volume is a strategy for success, optimizing the payoff for the volume becomes a concern. After all, in order to run fast, you need to run fast. ;)

This is where an insight from an unlikely source has been guiding my training lately. A couple of weeks ago, when I was called for jury duty, in the excessive wait time, I was reading a book called "On Studying Singing" by Sergius Kagen (a faculty member at Julliard). The author makes a number of interesting points that seem strangely applicable to running, but one in particular stood out to me. Kagen claims (in slightly different words) that there is a certain element of futility in teaching somebody to sing better, because the actual skill cannot be taught directly. Instead, teachers must come up with metaphors and visualization tricks as guides to help students improve technique. These teaching methods act on the conscious mind, but this is only to steer the unconscious mind (which does all of the actual work) in the right direction.

In a way, running a lot of miles has this effect. Physiologically, yes, it strengthens the body, but subconsciously, it strengthens the mental faculties that enable a person to run quickly and efficiently. As usual, these variables are confounded, but I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that both aspects of running are equally important, and developing them in tandem has a synergistic effect on performance, yet most people focus only on the physical aspect of the sport. Most likely, most people have a fair amount of untapped potential as a result of this myopic view.

Or, you know, I could just be making up a bunch of stuff to fill up space. But it seems to be working for me . . .

Week in Review: 5-11 June 2011

2011-06-13T19:59:00.000-07:00

As I begin writing this, I actually have no idea how many miles I ran last week. So let's find out . . .

Sunday, 5 June: Bel Air Town Run, 3.1 miles, 25 minutes, 17 seconds (we went over this last week)
Monday, 6 June: 5 miles (40 minutes), through the usual Canton-area haunts
Tuesday, 7 June: 7 miles (55 minutes), again, around Canton, Fells, and all that bit
Wednesday, 8 June: 9 miles (70 minutes), Canton, Fells, whatever
Thursday, 9 June: 12 miles (90 minutes), Canton, Fells, Mount Vernon - woah!
Friday, 10 June: 4 miles of treadmill hills (~1300 feet of climb in 35 minutes), 7 miles through Canton, Fells, and whatever (55 minutes)
Saturday, 11 June: 6 easy miles on trails at Loch Raven (60 minutes)

Total Time: 420 minutes
Total Distance: 53 miles

In short, another crap-tacular week mileage-wise, after my Saturday adventure at Old Dominion. Then again, counting Old Dominion through the following Friday, that's 147 miles in 7 days, which is probably the most mileage I've ever done in a 7-day period, with the exception of Badwater week last year, when I hit somewhere around 155. (And, considering that I ran Badwater in about 34.5 hours, I reached a similar mileage in about 10 less hours, so at any rate, more miles faster than ever before.)

All that said, though, I need to get back in a better routine of posting high mileage during the week as a result of putting in solid mileage every day (as opposed to what's been happening over the past few weeks, which has been more like a few ridiculously long runs, punctuated by ridiculous periods of inactivity. So far, so good this week - 32 miles in the past two days, and not a very slow 32 miles. I finally feel like I have my legs back under me, after what felt like about a month of malaise (unfortunately concentrated around MMT). With any luck, I'll put in a solid next few weeks, at around 100 miles per week, and be in great shape for Badwater.

In conclusion, lately, people have been saying wacky things to me when I've been out running around the city, which I think is because I've been out running around without a shirt on, and the weather is nice enough for other people to be out at the same time. This makes putting in huge mileage a lot more entertaining. (Today's entertainment: a girl who was out running with some guy who may or may not have been her boyfriend/fiancee/husband, after I passed them in front of the Science Center, repeatedly imploring the boy to take his shirt off, presumably inspired by my example. He didn't oblige.) If anything really super-funny happens, I'll post about it on Facebook, so you don't have to read through a bunch of junk here to get to it!

Okay, one more thing - sometime this week, I'm going to post about inspiration for running that came from an unlikely source. If I remember. If you care, remind me to write about this!

Fear and Laziness

2011-06-06T20:24:00.002-07:00

While my memories of a race are usually freshest within 24 hours of the event (hence the updates like clockwork), my reflections on the experience are usually deepest a few days afterwards. And in some cases, they don't really sink in until years later. This is one of those . . .

When I was doing my "massive" two-week buildup for Rocky Raccoon in 2009 (which, after a weak attempt at a 30+ mile run, consisted of a 20-mile long run, and 800-meter intervals every other day), I was cooling down in Mount Vernon (Baltimore) after one of my silly 800-meter interval sessions when I saw, spray-painted on the side of a truck: "The only things preventing anybody from doing anything are fear and laziness.". At the time, this seemed insightful enough, especially given the undertrained effort I was about to put forth at Rocky Raccoon (which was still good enough for a sub-19-hour finish, and top 10 overall).

But after my Old Dominion 100-Mile/Bel Air Town Run double this past weekend, the words don't sit the same way in my mind. To do the double was weird, no doubt, but on a more basic level, it was scary. These were both important races to me, and I needed to run strong in both to be satisfied with my effort. Who knows what could have happened that could have derailed this effort?

At the same time, those thoughts are thoughts that are rooted in fear and laziness. Obviously fear, but indirectly laziness, too. Because really, fear and laziness aren't all that distant. We are often afraid of things because we're too lazy to prepare properly to face them. And we are often too "lazy" to prepare properly to face things because we are afraid of what putting out the proper effort might involve.

In a way, what I did this past weekend, and what ultrarunning is at its core, is only possible by conquering fear and laziness. To be successful as an ultrarunner, you have to build more than just muscles and capillaries and cardiac efficiency. You have to also build willpower, determination, self-sufficiency, and, above all, the vaguely romantic sense of awe and wonder at the thought of spending hours and hours running on rocky trails through the woods, and hot, shadeless roads, to find out how it feels, to find out what will happen, to find out if you could. Fear and laziness are the enemy.

In that spirit, I went running earlier tonight, to see if I could, and managed a little over four miles, at a little over 8-minute mile pace. And it was good. Fear and laziness? Not here - they're on a different sort of run.

Week in Review: 29 May-4 June, and Old Dominion 100-Mile Endurance Run and Bel Air Town Run 5K Report

2011-06-05T07:47:00.000-07:00

Same ol' drill; first the miles, then the race report:

29 May - 1 mile (10 minutes)
30 May - 10 miles (75 minutes), around the Harbor - hot.
31 May - 9 miles - 6 in the morning, another 3 in the afternoon, including a 15-minute treadmill hill session. (95 minutes)
1 June - 8 miles, from O'Donnell Square (60 minutes)
2 June - 1 mile (10 minutes)
3 June - 1 mile (10 minutes)
4 June - 100 miles, Old Dominion 100-Mile Endurance Run, 19 hours, 14 minutes, 30 seconds

Total Time: 1415 minutes
Total Distance: 130 miles

Now, the race reports:

First, a little background. When I ran the Old Dominion 100-Mile Endurance Run back in 2008, I was able to run both Old Dominion and the Bel Air Town Run 5K because, in a relatively rare turn of events, the first Saturday in June and the first Sunday in June were not on the same weekend. Collin Anderson, who had put me up to Old Dominion in the first place, had said at the time (before I had checked to see if there was a conflict) that I should just run both races, thereby keeping my Bel Air Town Run streak alive. The more I thought about this, the more I thought I'd want to try it some year. This, apparently, was the right year.

First up, the Old Dominion 100-Mile Endurance Run. This was the first time that I'd run the same 100-mile race more than once. Despite knowing the course, I didn't know was how the race would turn out. As I mentioned in my last post, my training runs over the past couple of week have been shorter and more painful than I would like, which was either a sign that I needed some extended downtime, or that I had just hit a low point in my training cycle, and was on the road to recovery.

In any case, since I knew that the race would be stacked (70 entrants, up from about 40 in 2008, and the list being a bit of an ultrarunning who's who . . . of course, they don't post the entrants list online, so the best information that I had was through the grapevine: http://nealgorman.blogspot.com/2011/05/deep-field-at-old-dominion-100.html), my plan was to go out aggressively, but not totally kill myself, and hold on the best I could.

This plan worked very well for about the first 30 miles, as I was relatively comfortably leading the race. I was climbing well (I actually ran all the way up Woodstock Gap, without feeling over-exerted), attacking the downhills, and generally feeling strong. Then, nutrition caught up with me. Old Dominion is very old-school when it comes to aid stations, so most of the food, aside from bananas and oranges, was sugary-fatty (Snickers bars, cookies, etc.), and my poor digestive system couldn't handle that much fat, sitting there, most likely getting rancid. So I started slowing, from my relatively breakneck pace that put me through the first marathon in around 3:40 pace, and people started to catch me. First Neal Gorman and Eric Grossman (running together at the time), then a couple others, and before I knew it, I reached Four Points (around 32.5 miles) in fifth.

Over the long loop out from Four Points and back in, things got worse. It was starting to get hotter, and I had no desire to eat or drink, and my stomach was churning. I continued to press forward, but at a slower pace, jogging a lot less and walking a lot more. The end result was that I reached Four Points again, 15 miles later, probably looking okay on the outside, but barely hanging on on the inside.

Still, I remained patient, knowing that the dreaded exposed, rutted, ATV-ridden "ATV trail" was the next section of the course. I wasn't moving forward as well as I would have liked, but I kept moving forward, somehow in fourth place. It was somewhere along the ATV trail that Jeremy Pade passed me, relegating me to fifth place (spoiler: where I would remain for the rest of the race).

From then on, the rest of the race was less of a race than a war of attrition, which, in the end, most 100-mile runs turn out to be. I navigated the dreaded 11-mile Sherman's Gap/Veach Gap section in around 3 hours (starting a new tradition by shouting "911" from the top of Sherman's Gap), and kept a fairly steady (albeit slow) pace from there to the finish. My stomach never felt better enough, and my food never digested enough, for me to move much faster, which was a shame, because I still had legs left at the end, enough to run down Woodstock Gap into town (where a woman standing outside her house asked where I got my headlamp, because it was really bright, and then asked if she could have it for walking at night . . . bizarre.) As it turned out, Keith Knipling finished about 10 minutes behind me, which meant that he had been chasing me for the better part of the second half of the race, without my knowledge.

If all of the above sounds a little more mundane than usual, it was. Other than my stomach problems, I didn't have any problems with chafing, or blisters, or any of those other ultrarunning nuisances that can ruin a race. For me, Old Dominion was about continued forward progress, even as my pace slowed, and at this race, more than at any other, I successfully worked the "dogged persistence" angle. It helped to have a crew out there, because nobody wants to crew for somebody who's having a crummy race (and, on the flip side, people like to crew for somebody who's doing awesome), and it also helped that if I didn't finish the race in a timely fashion (i.e. before midnight, or sub-20-hours), it would be much more difficult to make the 3-hour drive back up to Bel Air for the Town Run in the morning.

The bottom line was that I finished in 19 hours, 14 minutes, and 30 seconds, which would have been good enough to win the race many years, but this year, was only good enough for fifth (the place that I can't seem to get above in ultras - I've also placed fifth twice at the Seneca Greenway 50K). I was pleased with my effort, but had my nutrition been a little better, up to two hours improvement in my finishing time seems plausible.

In any event, water under the bridge, because the Bel Air Town Run 5K (my 16th consecutive Bel Air Town Run) was at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, so I had about 8 hours after finishing my 100-mile run to get myself together for that. I can honestly say that I've never stood at the starting line of a race more afraid than I did at that run. I had no idea how my legs would respond. I walked around with my dad for about 15 minutes before the race to loosen up, and it was clear that I could walk, but this is the Bel Air Town RUN. As much as I wanted to keep my completion streak alive, I didn't want to have to resort to walking to do it, and I hadn't run a step since I finished Old Dominion, so there was no telling what would happen. My legs might just seize up, I might trip and fall and not finish the race.

For the first time ever, I started so far back that I couldn't hear the starting commands, so at a random gunshot, the pack lurched forward, and I began to desperately hope that I could keep up. So I took my first running steps, and - surprise! It hurt, but not as bad as I thought it would. Pretty soon, I was tucked in the crowd, running what would turn out to be about a 9-minute first mile. In fact, that first mile felt very cleansing. For the first time since things went south at Old Dominion, I was moving forward at a decent pace, without expending a lot of effort. It was, I imagine, the kind of pace I could have maintained at Old Dominion had my stomach not betrayed me.

Since the first mile felt okay, I started gradually picking up the pace, and came through the second mile in just over 17 minutes - an 8-minute mile. So I figured, why not? and ratcheted things up one more time, running the last mile at around 7-minute pace. It hurt, a little bit, but not much worse than it would have hurt had I been running on fresh legs at race pace. I crossed the line in 25:17 net (26:00 gun), which was a huge relief, since I was concerned that I would run over 30 minutes and be one of the last people staggering towards the finish. I stayed around for the post-race awards, and sadly, still did not win the bike, but nevertheless had the distinction of having bib number 999.

All in all, mission more than accomplished. While not optimal, I ran a strong race at Old Dominion, and I didn't run too badly at Bel Air. Provided that I recover quickly from this epic misadventure (which, at some point, will require having an appetite for some kind of nourishing food), this weekend's result indicates that I'm on track to do well at Badwater.

Week in Review: 22-28 May - Calm Before the Storm

2011-06-01T05:48:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason, my recollection of the week that is the subject of this blog post is particularly fuzzy. Here's my best attempt at a re-construction:

22 May: 12 miles, in and around Patterson Park (100 minutes)
23 May: 8 miles, 3 of which were treadmill hill work (60 minutes)
24 May: 1 mile (10 minutes)
25 May: 6 miles, 3 of which were treadmill hill work (45 minutes)
26 May: 9 miles (70 minutes), in and around the Inner Harbor
27 May: 1 mile (10 minutes)
28 May: 20 miles, around the Inner Harbor, out to Homewood and back (155 minutes)

Total time: 450 minutes
Total distance: 56 miles

I sat on this post for a while, because I wasn't really sure what to think about this week of contradictions . . .

On the one hand, this was my lowest-volume week in quite a while. On the other hand, it included two of the highest-intensity treadmill workouts.

On the one hand, I had two nearly "off" days. On the other hand, I had my longest continuous road run (20 miles) since the Kentucky Derby Marathon at the end of April.

On the one hand, getting "up for the game" before and during every run seemed extremely difficult. On the other hand, afterwards, every run felt like no big deal.

On the one hand, nearly every mile seemed more painful and laborious than any of the miles I've run so far in 2011. On the other hand, the trend towards the end of the week was towards slightly less painful.

I think that my success so far this year is due at least in part to framing the effects of my training appropriately, and moving forward from that frame of reference. In less abstract words, I've been doing a better job this year figuring out exactly how spent I am from the training that I've done, and what level of training makes the most sense going forward. The context for this week is the most ambiguous yet, but here's my attempt to make sense of it:

MMT, as my first 100-mile race in a long time, was rougher on me than I thought. The physical and mental fatigue from the race were still lingering during this week, but I was recovering gradually nonetheless. The lower training volume was a natural consequence of the recovery process, but is not necessarily an indication that I'm "burned out" from the first half of the year, as evidenced by the fact that later in the week, I seemed to be running in less pain.

This weekend, the Old Dominion 100-Mile Run and the Bel Air Town Run 5K (a.k.a. my grand, ridiculous adventure) should be a much better indicator of whether or not that assessment is accurate. I won't make predictions here about how I think these will turn out, except to say that if I've assessed things correctly, the recovery process should be nearly complete by this weekend - just in time for another round. If not, well . . . it could be a long couple of days. But in either case, I'm excited about doing this classic-race double for the first time, and have no doubt that it will make for a far more memorable experience than this past training week.

Week in Review: 15-21 May, and MMT: The Aftermath

2011-05-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

Alright, miles . . .

15 May 2011: 31.7 miles, as part of the MMT 100, 11 hours, 47 minutes (sounds even worse typing it now)
16 May 2011: 1 mile, slow, at APG, to Burger King (10 minutes)
17 May 2011: 2 miles, at APG - twice as much mileage as yesterday! (15 minutes)
18 May 2011: 5 miles, at APG again. Continuing with the double-mileage trend (plus a little extra) (35 minutes)
19 May 2011: 9 miles, at APG, half on the treadmill, doing hills (70 minutes)
20 May 2011: 13 miles, at APG, with another half-hour of treadmill hills (95 minutes)
21 May 2011: 13 miles, around Patterson Park, the Inner Harbor, and all that business. (90 minutes)

Total time: 1,022 minutes
Total miles: 74.7 (75, more or less)

Probably another deceptive week, since counting MMT on 14-15 May, I posted 130 miles in 7 days (although the fitness benefits of covering that distance in that much time are probably debatable). That said, the mileage that I put in over the past few days is more in line with the density required for a 100-mile week, so hopefully next week, the numbers will look a little better.

And now, speaking of MMT, if you haven't already accidentally discovered it:

http://www.ultrarunning.com/ultra/features/news/meltzer-pastalkova-win-at.shtml

. . . which marks the third time that I've had a picture of me racing show up in UltraRunning online/magazine (Mohican 2009 and Cascade Crest 2009 were the other two). Also, my picture showed up in the 2009 Boston Marathon race record book (the first time that I broke 3 hours at Boston).

That said, I didn't have the performance that I was hoping for at MMT, and I type this with mixed feelings.

On the one hand, it appears as though my running is inspirational in some way. Not only do I have a track record of getting my pictures printed everywhere, even when I have a crappy race, but also, I have a way of being inspirational in spite of (or, at times, because of) my sub-par performances. After MMT, a woman came up to me and told me that she had seen me at one of the aid stations when I wasn't doing so well, and then, many hours later, when she was driving down the road at the end of the race and saw me running again, she started crying.

A few minutes later, as I trudged through camp, barefoot, shirtless, and carrying my water bottles, shoes, and shirt, the kids who were camping there for the weekend saw me and asked me if I ran 100 miles. I told them yes, and then they proceeded to ask me tons of questions - How long did it take you? (31 hours and 47 minutes.) Did you sleep at all? (No, and now I'm very tired, I said with a smile.) Did you see a bear? (No, and I was a little bit disappointed that I didn't!) You could tell that they were in awe that a "regular person" who didn't look much older than them had run so far.

In all fairness, I think that the above is a valuable byproduct of my running. A lot of runners compete and win, but competing and winning with style and grace seems rare, particularly in ultrarunning. This is a topic that I had hoped to discuss in a different blog entry, in greater depth, but to me, an important part of running is motivating others to run, and being motivated by them in return. Being out on the roads and in the streets, around other runners, and people in general, affords a greater opportunity for my running to inspire others. To me, spending a lot of time on trails, alone, or with only a select few people, is very self-serving, and part of the reason why I put in most of my training miles on the roads. Unless this is going to be something bigger than just me, I can't justify the time, effort, and pain involved in training and racing at this level (or, at least, the level to which I aspire).

But, on the other hand, at some point, inspirational though my efforts may be, the bottom line on my MMT performance was that the outcome was mediocre at best. Can I run much better than I did? There's no doubt in my mind that I could, on a different day, under different circumstances. But to really take things to the next level, I need to perform my best when it counts, and at MMT, I didn't.

Fortunately, to that end, there were a couple of positive consequences from my MMT experience. The first is that the fire in my training has returned, after flagging somewhat as a result of 4+ months of slow, steady mileage-building. Sometimes it takes a roadblock like this to re-ignite, because a long string of gradually-improving performances does more to make one complacent than anything else. I recovered quickly from my "bad" race, and put up some decent mileage later in the week.

The second is that the DNF demons of Grindstone and Oil Creek have been at least temporarily suppressed, which is no mean feat. This should give me at least a little bit more confidence in my next race, the Old Dominion 100.

The bottom line is that, for me, running is still joyful - it's hard not to sit in my office all day and not have the itch to go outside and run (especially the way things are in the office lately). If I can keep holding on to that, everything else should fall into place.