9 December - 6 miles (45 minutes), in Baltimore City
10-11 December - off
12 December - 10 miles at APG, including a mile "time trial" (5:54, near-DNF), followed by 10 minutes easy, then 3 minutes faster, 1 minute easy, 3 minutes faster, 4x(90 seconds faster, 90 seconds easy), warmdown (70 minutes)
13 December - a.m. 5 miles (35 minutes), p.m. Baltimore City Christmas Lights Run +, for 12 miles (90 minutes)
14 December - a.m. 5 miles (35 minutes), later a.m. 4x(Patterson Park hill, up), jog down (@ ~4:00 each, both ways) - 4x(30 seconds faster, 30 seconds easy) in both the warm-up and the warm-down. 11 miles total (73 minutes)
15 December - Wandering around Great Falls Park for about 130 minutes - 17-ish miles.
16 December - a.m. 5 miles (35 minutes), p.m. Gunpowder Falls trails for about 10 more miles (80 minutes)
17 December - 10 miles in part with the Monday Night Run, including 10x(30 seconds faster, 30 seconds easy) (70 minutes)
18 December - off
19 December - 10 miles at APG, including a mile "time trial" (5:37), followed by 10 minutes easy, then 3 minutes faster, 1 minute easy, 3 minutes faster, 4x(90 seconds faster, 90 seconds easy), warmdown (70 minutes)
20 December - 10 aimless miles at APG
21 December - 4x(Patterson Park hill, up), jog down (@ ~4:00 each, both ways) - 4x(30 seconds faster, 30 seconds easy) in both the warm-up and the warm-down. 11 miles total (73 minutes) - windy and a little snowy the whole time
22 December - 27 December - holiday frenzy = only figurative running-around
28 December - 4x(Patterson Park hill, up), jog down (@ ~4:00 each, both ways) - 4x(30 seconds faster, 30 seconds easy) in both the warm-up and the warm-down. 11 miles total (73 minutes) - weather-wise, less bad than the last time, but worse than the first time. First hill felt easy, in 3:55, but crashed and burned at around 3:10 on the second interval. Pulled together to finish the last two in 4:07 and 4:10.
29 December - 8+ miles (60 minutes) around the Inner Harbor
30-31 December - off
1 January - 6+ miles (45 minutes), Patterson Park/Fells/Inner Harbor
2 January - 10 chilly, windy miles at APG - 34 degrees, feels like 28 - gravel and bay loops. (70 minutes) Later, 3-ish miles (20 minutes) around the Inner Harbor, just for fun.
3 January - 9+ slightly-less chilly, windy miles at APG, with a "mile time trial" on the gravel loop, starting at 20 minutes in, in 5:50. Slower than the last time, faster than the first time, but a far more even-paced effort than either time (and not all-out), so it's acceptable, for now.
4 January - 10 miles in cold, dark downtown Baltimore (70 minutes)
5 January - 11 miles in bright, sunny, daytime Baltimore, including 10x(30 seconds fast, 30 seconds easy) at around 50 minutes in. (80 minutes)
6 January - 8 miles across the city and back, post-Ravens-game (60 minutes)
7 January - Back to the grind at APG; 10 miles on the gravel loop and bay loop (70 minutes)
8 January - And, at long last, back to the Gilman track, for my first workout in forever. 2.5 miles warmup, 2x1200 @ 4:36, 4:34, 4x800 @ 3:05, 3:05, 3:04, 3:04, 2.5 miles warmdown. 3 minutes jog rest between reps. ~9 miles total. (~70 minutes total)
Total time: 1569 minutes
Total distance: 212 miles
. . . And that's a whole lot of numbers, without a whole lot of sense behind it, which just goes to show how much "on paper" really counts.
The interpretation, though, is that, really, since sometime this past spring, I've had a hard time putting together any sort of consistent training mileage. From late April until, well, pretty much this past month, it's been race, race, race until I finally burned myself out. It was fun while it lasted, and served a purpose at the time, and even led to some pretty nifty experiences and results, but was hardly a plan for long-term progress.
With that in mind, my first and foremost goal for 2013 is to train consistently again, which means a lot of testing the waters to figure out what sort of training pace/volume is supportable at this point. Based on my recent running, 60-70 miles per week, to include some higher-quality faster stuff, seems to be pretty achievable for right now, while still being challenging by virtue of incorporating faster stuff. I'm not feeling terrible on every run anymore, and, more importantly, I'm enjoying running.
Make no mistake, I've got a long way to go. Christmas logistics cost me a solid week, and my most recent track workout (first in forever), while not totally draining, was not very fast, although those paces FELT really fast. It's going to take a while to get some speed back. But I'm feeling ready for that process now, and excited to see where it takes me. I have some thoughts in mind for how I'd like 2013 to play out, but for the time being, I'm enjoying the feeling of all of the possibilities that come with being back on track.
(P.S. - if anybody's looking for a cat, I still have two good ones that need good homes . . .)
Showing posts with label APG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label APG. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Week in Review: 29 January - 4 February, and "Training Beautiful"
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
(WARNING HTML ERROR BELOW NOT FIXING IT SORRY GUYS)
(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.
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
(WARNING HTML ERROR BELOW NOT FIXING IT SORRY GUYS)
(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.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Week in Review: 15-21 January, and Winter Beast of Burden 100-Mile Race Report
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.
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.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
100 Miles Per Week, the Hard Way
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.
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.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Running Recap: December 2011 (and the rest of 2011)
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 . . .
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 . . .
Monday, October 24, 2011
Week in Review: 16-22 October 2011 - Boredom
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.
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.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Week in Review: 31 July - 6 August, and Dahlgren Heritage Rail Trail 50K Race Report
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: :)
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: :)
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Catching Up: Weekly Mileage, 3-23 July, and Escape from Trash Mountain
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. :)
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. :)
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Week in Review: 26 June - 2 July . . . Suspiciously Quiet
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 . . .
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 . . .
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Week in Review: 19-25 June, and Dreaded Druid Hills 10K Race Report
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.
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.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Week in Review - 13-19 March, and MMT 100 Training Run #3
Okay, final edit, after running 11 miles to clear my head and lungs, and to prove that such a thing is possible the day after yesterday's 40-mile MMT adventure - the next two paragraphs were work-in-progress placeholders while I put this thing together, but I'm leaving them in to document the process.
(Preface - premature post, because there are a whole bunch of pictures I want to throw in here, but am not up to fighting the system to do right now. Come back later and the parts where it seems like there should be a picture will make more sense. Also, not proof-read, so consider yourself lucky to get this limited-edition inside scoop, before I go and correct whatever minor thing might be wrong with this.
What's this? An all-nighter to get an early start on this week's blog post? In the spirit of sleep deprivation training for the MMT 100 (at 25 straight hours awake, and couting), you bet! Here goes (EDIT - I was unable to maintain consciousness for long enough to finish this post when I started it, so you now are getting the 12-hours-later version):)
13 March - 1 semi-pointless mile (to keep the streak alive) (8 minutes)
14 March - 1 sick (as in, physically ill) mile, keeping the streak alive (8 minutes)
15 March - Back to the grind - 8 miles (60 minutes) as follows: 2-mile warmup around Patterson Park, 16x(200 hard, 200 easy) on the Ellwood side of the park, running the uphill half hard (average 38 seconds/rep), 2 mile warmdown out to the Canton Can Company Chipoltle and back
16 March - 5 miles easy (36 minutes) as weightlifting warmup, 8 miles (56 minutes) as part of the Falls Road Wednesday Night Run from Canton Square
17 March - 15 miles, including, after 20 minutes warmup, 4 "3s and 7s" (3 minutes hard, 1 minute rest, 7 minutes hard, 1 minute rest); rest was "warmdown" (1 hour, 45 minutes)
18 March - 10 miles at APG (72 minutes)
19 March - 40 miles, 10 hours, 11 minutes (activity time approximately 7 hours, 30 minutes), MMT 100 Training Run #3
Total Time: 795 minutes
Total Distance: 88 miles
In spite of two low-mileage days (due to being sick with a lung/stomach bug), I bounced back pretty big this week, posting my highest weekly mileage in 2011 thus far. Of course, nearly half of that was a result of the MMT 100 training run, but considering how successful I was in achieving my goals for that run, it definitely counts. Also of note are the solid interval/speed sessions, which helped a lot with efficiency, turnover, and pace-shifting ability, all of which are important in a run like the MMT 100 . . .
So, without futher ado, the report on MMT 100 Training Run #3.
When Dave Snipes asked me how long I thought I would be taking to finish MMT Training Run #3, off the top of my head, I guessed around 7 hours, maybe a little over. He promptly told me that if I were really serious about running that time, I should stay with Keith Knipling (one of the fastest runners at MMT, year after year) for as long as possible, so as not to get lost. Considering that Dave had previously lectured me on how easy it would be for the "big boys" to drop me at any point, I approached this run with some trepidation, and I'd be lying if I said that the half-dozen Pringles and the Mrs. Freshley's Strawberry Cereal Bar that I ate five minutes before the start were sitting well on my stomach.
Sure enough, when we took off down the first relatively flat stretch of orange trail, Keith went out ahead of the crowd, although not quite as fast as I had feared, so I decided to keep pace and see how long I could last. At the first stream crossing, where most runners would cautiously wade through, Keith barrelled ahead with impunity. I later realized/remembered that this was because at times, the Massanutten Mountain Trail could more aptly be labeled the Massanutten Mountain River, as it has the potential to degrade into a rocky, muddy mess at nearly any point along the way. Speaking of which, Keith was deftly picking his way through just such a mess on a gradual incline, and this was, within the first couple of miles of the run, where I had to decide how to respond. Often, in this situation, I decide that it's best to conserve energy, and I just drop back, eventually losing motivation to push through anything difficult, leading to a mediocre finish. For a change, I decided to pick up my feet, step lightly, and let the training miles take over, and to my surprise, I maintained my distance from Keith, and felt surprisingly good. I felt even better when I noticed that the other runner who had been just behind me before the stream crossing slowed him was now dropping back. Technical trail running what what.
Then we began the climb up the Gap Creek trail, and that's where all of the uphill training paid off. I steadily gained as we power-hiked, until finally Keith let me pass. A 100-calorie celebratory Mrs. Freshley's Strawberry Cereal Bar was in order. Of course, passing him and bombing down the hill to the Gap Creek crossing was a bad plan, since I really didn't know where I was going, so instead I cautiously stayed ahead of him (up to 50 meters) for the next 12 miles or so, on the climb up to Jawbone Gap, on the section along the orange trail on the ridge, occasionally letting him come back to me to make sure that I hadn't run off course. It was somewhere along the road down to the first aid station (at around 14 miles) that he mentioned that he was going to skip the pink/purple loop and cut ahead to the last stretch, which both explained why he had asked me while we were picking through rocks on the orange trail on the ridge if I had planned on running the whole thing and made me a bit nervous about continuing on my own.
Nevertheless, I had some pretty good directions coming out of the first aid station, not to mention six chocolate-chip cookies in my fuel belt pouch (plus the two I had eaten at the aid station, and another half-dozen Pringles), and on the climb to Bird Knob, and me and the mood ring that I bought at a 7-11 on the way to the race were doing pretty well:
And to add to the awesomeness, I actually descended from Bird Knob to the road, found the pink/purple trail, and navigated it successfully without mishap. (This picture of the trail marker is the closest thing that I have to proof of that. That, and the confirmation that it really is 5 switchbacks from the peak of the purple trail to the transition point between the purple and pink trail.)
I also had a bit of a spiritual moment on the pink trail, right here:
If this picture doesn't explain it, then I can't, either. I was suddenly filled with peace and joy. That's just how it was.
Of course, not all could be well, or this wouldn't be a run on the MMT. At the end of the pink trail (which, like most trails in the area, eventually turns orange), at the Picnic Area, I wandered around for about 15 minutes, trying to figure out where to pick up the orange trail to get to 211, given the only direction on the turn sheet of "head east" (which, in the absence of a compass, I found by staring indirectly at the late-morning sun). In the meantime, a half-dozen people who were running slower than I was, but still fast/careless enough to miss the pink/purple marker, came off of the section of orange trail that I was supposed to head down, thus solving the mystery, but irritating me, so I hauled down the orange trail to the second and final aid (two clear 32-gallon plastic containers full of junk food, and a pile of 2-liter bottles of soda and gallon jugs of water), at around 25 miles. Because I still had 12-ish miles until the finish, with plenty of opportunity to get lost, I was meticulous in refilling my water bottles, stowing a half-dozen Wegman's Brand Oreo-Style Chocolate Sandwich Cookies in my belt, and double-and triple-checking my internal vitals to ensure that I wasn't going to leave the last traces of civilization on bad terms.
Which of course gave the half-dozen accidental course-cutters time to catch up with me, and me time to marvel at how raccoon-like they appeared, rummaging through the bins for food, and greedily pouring paper cups full of nasty soda down their gullets. This is ultrarunning (stereotypically).
I climbed up to 211 and crossed the road to the white "trail," a dirt-road, powerline-cut-esque affair that was exposed to the sun (which is probably how I got burned). This is the kind of "trail" that makes me happy, so I ran bits and pieces of the climb, where ordinarily I may have walked. The turn-off onto the white single-track was excessively marked, with a huge pile of branches in the way of the straight path, and a white turn arrow spray-painted on a tree just below the white blaze.
White gave way to orange as the trail bottomed out, and the rocky climb commenced. I stopped for about 10 minutes to try to give directions to a group of lost hikers, but all I could tell them was where 211 was based on where I had come from, which they seemed no interest in. They did confirm that I was heading for the yellow Scothorn Gap trail, so it was not entirely a wasted stop. It was at this point that I started feeling the munchies, and decided that, remaining 8-10 miles be damned, I was going to Cookie Monster those Wegmann's and hope that I had enough energy to hold on to the finish.
One thing I did have enough energy for was to add a rock to the top of this carin, before bombing down the Scothorn Gap Trail:
My satisfaction with this minor accomplishment distracted me from the fact that I was out of food, and nearly out of water, when I reached this point in the course, the last place where I wasn't lost:
The trick is, the directions tell you not to continue down the road, and to turn right off of the road, and that the Aid Station is called Gap Creek (of course, this being a training run, there was not an actual aid station at Gap Creek). In fact, the correct thing to do at this point is to go further down the road and turn left, where the blue trail becomes Jawbone Gap Trail (it's that little white spot at the very end of the bend in the road). Instead, I dutifully followed what the turn sheet appeared to be telling me, and turned right and headed up the Gap Creek Trail. The situation was worsened by the fact that I recognized the trail from the morning (since both Gap Creek and Jawbone have already been covered at this point in the run), and that there were yellow blazes (that look sort of orange; see picture below) at almost exactly the distance where the turn sheet said that orange blazes should be (of course, the turn sheet also said that the trail would end at orange, which it clearly did not, and which was my first indication that something was amiss).
To make a long, sad story short, two other runners made the same mistake that I did, and through a 90-minute process of introspection and self-discovery, punctuated by brief periods of sitting down on logs and feeling hopeless, we finally correctly concluded that if we continued on the trail that we were on (Gap Creek), we would eventually hit the orange trail, at which point we could turn right and head back the way we went out at the start, and wind up in the parking area, which was nice, because if we had done the course the "right" way, we would have wound up at the finish line at Caroline Furnace Camp, with about half a mile to get back to where our cars were parked. I was not thrilled with the prospect of having to re-climb to the top of the Gap Creek Trail, then descend the rocky backside, so I ambled a bit listlessly until we hit the orange trail again, at which point I decided our logic was well-founded, and that I could get back to my car in 20-25 minutes if I stepped on the gas, so I redoubled my rock-picking efforts and started pushing 7-8 minute miles on the flats until at last I was back at the car, a little over 10 hours after this whole thing had started, and not one of the few people who had actually run the entire course correctly.
All that said, discounting the nearly 2 hours of being lost, and the half-hour of generally screwing around taking pictures and texting/posting to Facebook, my net time was about 7.5 hours, for closer to 40 miles of actual distance (including the parts where I was temporarily going the wrong way). So I really wasn't all that far off of my time goal in terms of actual effort, and, what's more important, that effort felt very reasonable and controlled. I walked away feeling as though it would be possible to run that section of the course like that (minus the Facebook-posting and wrong-turning) in the actual race. Plus, now that I've (unintentionally or otherwise) sandbagged pretty much every run since Beast of Burden in August 2010, nobody will be expecting me to do well, so I'll have the added benefit of surprising everybody on race day (assuming my training doesn't hit an unforeseen snag).
And in conclusion, the MT100s are not designed for rocky East-Coast trail mishaps, as evidenced by the cut in the toe of my shoe from a brief run-in with a rock:
No, really, though, the real conclusion here is this, which I saw at a rest stop on the drive home, and which completely speaks for itself:
(Preface - premature post, because there are a whole bunch of pictures I want to throw in here, but am not up to fighting the system to do right now. Come back later and the parts where it seems like there should be a picture will make more sense. Also, not proof-read, so consider yourself lucky to get this limited-edition inside scoop, before I go and correct whatever minor thing might be wrong with this.
What's this? An all-nighter to get an early start on this week's blog post? In the spirit of sleep deprivation training for the MMT 100 (at 25 straight hours awake, and couting), you bet! Here goes (EDIT - I was unable to maintain consciousness for long enough to finish this post when I started it, so you now are getting the 12-hours-later version):)
13 March - 1 semi-pointless mile (to keep the streak alive) (8 minutes)
14 March - 1 sick (as in, physically ill) mile, keeping the streak alive (8 minutes)
15 March - Back to the grind - 8 miles (60 minutes) as follows: 2-mile warmup around Patterson Park, 16x(200 hard, 200 easy) on the Ellwood side of the park, running the uphill half hard (average 38 seconds/rep), 2 mile warmdown out to the Canton Can Company Chipoltle and back
16 March - 5 miles easy (36 minutes) as weightlifting warmup, 8 miles (56 minutes) as part of the Falls Road Wednesday Night Run from Canton Square
17 March - 15 miles, including, after 20 minutes warmup, 4 "3s and 7s" (3 minutes hard, 1 minute rest, 7 minutes hard, 1 minute rest); rest was "warmdown" (1 hour, 45 minutes)
18 March - 10 miles at APG (72 minutes)
19 March - 40 miles, 10 hours, 11 minutes (activity time approximately 7 hours, 30 minutes), MMT 100 Training Run #3
Total Time: 795 minutes
Total Distance: 88 miles
In spite of two low-mileage days (due to being sick with a lung/stomach bug), I bounced back pretty big this week, posting my highest weekly mileage in 2011 thus far. Of course, nearly half of that was a result of the MMT 100 training run, but considering how successful I was in achieving my goals for that run, it definitely counts. Also of note are the solid interval/speed sessions, which helped a lot with efficiency, turnover, and pace-shifting ability, all of which are important in a run like the MMT 100 . . .
So, without futher ado, the report on MMT 100 Training Run #3.
When Dave Snipes asked me how long I thought I would be taking to finish MMT Training Run #3, off the top of my head, I guessed around 7 hours, maybe a little over. He promptly told me that if I were really serious about running that time, I should stay with Keith Knipling (one of the fastest runners at MMT, year after year) for as long as possible, so as not to get lost. Considering that Dave had previously lectured me on how easy it would be for the "big boys" to drop me at any point, I approached this run with some trepidation, and I'd be lying if I said that the half-dozen Pringles and the Mrs. Freshley's Strawberry Cereal Bar that I ate five minutes before the start were sitting well on my stomach.
Sure enough, when we took off down the first relatively flat stretch of orange trail, Keith went out ahead of the crowd, although not quite as fast as I had feared, so I decided to keep pace and see how long I could last. At the first stream crossing, where most runners would cautiously wade through, Keith barrelled ahead with impunity. I later realized/remembered that this was because at times, the Massanutten Mountain Trail could more aptly be labeled the Massanutten Mountain River, as it has the potential to degrade into a rocky, muddy mess at nearly any point along the way. Speaking of which, Keith was deftly picking his way through just such a mess on a gradual incline, and this was, within the first couple of miles of the run, where I had to decide how to respond. Often, in this situation, I decide that it's best to conserve energy, and I just drop back, eventually losing motivation to push through anything difficult, leading to a mediocre finish. For a change, I decided to pick up my feet, step lightly, and let the training miles take over, and to my surprise, I maintained my distance from Keith, and felt surprisingly good. I felt even better when I noticed that the other runner who had been just behind me before the stream crossing slowed him was now dropping back. Technical trail running what what.
Then we began the climb up the Gap Creek trail, and that's where all of the uphill training paid off. I steadily gained as we power-hiked, until finally Keith let me pass. A 100-calorie celebratory Mrs. Freshley's Strawberry Cereal Bar was in order. Of course, passing him and bombing down the hill to the Gap Creek crossing was a bad plan, since I really didn't know where I was going, so instead I cautiously stayed ahead of him (up to 50 meters) for the next 12 miles or so, on the climb up to Jawbone Gap, on the section along the orange trail on the ridge, occasionally letting him come back to me to make sure that I hadn't run off course. It was somewhere along the road down to the first aid station (at around 14 miles) that he mentioned that he was going to skip the pink/purple loop and cut ahead to the last stretch, which both explained why he had asked me while we were picking through rocks on the orange trail on the ridge if I had planned on running the whole thing and made me a bit nervous about continuing on my own.
Nevertheless, I had some pretty good directions coming out of the first aid station, not to mention six chocolate-chip cookies in my fuel belt pouch (plus the two I had eaten at the aid station, and another half-dozen Pringles), and on the climb to Bird Knob, and me and the mood ring that I bought at a 7-11 on the way to the race were doing pretty well:
And to add to the awesomeness, I actually descended from Bird Knob to the road, found the pink/purple trail, and navigated it successfully without mishap. (This picture of the trail marker is the closest thing that I have to proof of that. That, and the confirmation that it really is 5 switchbacks from the peak of the purple trail to the transition point between the purple and pink trail.)
I also had a bit of a spiritual moment on the pink trail, right here:
If this picture doesn't explain it, then I can't, either. I was suddenly filled with peace and joy. That's just how it was.
Of course, not all could be well, or this wouldn't be a run on the MMT. At the end of the pink trail (which, like most trails in the area, eventually turns orange), at the Picnic Area, I wandered around for about 15 minutes, trying to figure out where to pick up the orange trail to get to 211, given the only direction on the turn sheet of "head east" (which, in the absence of a compass, I found by staring indirectly at the late-morning sun). In the meantime, a half-dozen people who were running slower than I was, but still fast/careless enough to miss the pink/purple marker, came off of the section of orange trail that I was supposed to head down, thus solving the mystery, but irritating me, so I hauled down the orange trail to the second and final aid (two clear 32-gallon plastic containers full of junk food, and a pile of 2-liter bottles of soda and gallon jugs of water), at around 25 miles. Because I still had 12-ish miles until the finish, with plenty of opportunity to get lost, I was meticulous in refilling my water bottles, stowing a half-dozen Wegman's Brand Oreo-Style Chocolate Sandwich Cookies in my belt, and double-and triple-checking my internal vitals to ensure that I wasn't going to leave the last traces of civilization on bad terms.
Which of course gave the half-dozen accidental course-cutters time to catch up with me, and me time to marvel at how raccoon-like they appeared, rummaging through the bins for food, and greedily pouring paper cups full of nasty soda down their gullets. This is ultrarunning (stereotypically).
I climbed up to 211 and crossed the road to the white "trail," a dirt-road, powerline-cut-esque affair that was exposed to the sun (which is probably how I got burned). This is the kind of "trail" that makes me happy, so I ran bits and pieces of the climb, where ordinarily I may have walked. The turn-off onto the white single-track was excessively marked, with a huge pile of branches in the way of the straight path, and a white turn arrow spray-painted on a tree just below the white blaze.
White gave way to orange as the trail bottomed out, and the rocky climb commenced. I stopped for about 10 minutes to try to give directions to a group of lost hikers, but all I could tell them was where 211 was based on where I had come from, which they seemed no interest in. They did confirm that I was heading for the yellow Scothorn Gap trail, so it was not entirely a wasted stop. It was at this point that I started feeling the munchies, and decided that, remaining 8-10 miles be damned, I was going to Cookie Monster those Wegmann's and hope that I had enough energy to hold on to the finish.
One thing I did have enough energy for was to add a rock to the top of this carin, before bombing down the Scothorn Gap Trail:
My satisfaction with this minor accomplishment distracted me from the fact that I was out of food, and nearly out of water, when I reached this point in the course, the last place where I wasn't lost:
The trick is, the directions tell you not to continue down the road, and to turn right off of the road, and that the Aid Station is called Gap Creek (of course, this being a training run, there was not an actual aid station at Gap Creek). In fact, the correct thing to do at this point is to go further down the road and turn left, where the blue trail becomes Jawbone Gap Trail (it's that little white spot at the very end of the bend in the road). Instead, I dutifully followed what the turn sheet appeared to be telling me, and turned right and headed up the Gap Creek Trail. The situation was worsened by the fact that I recognized the trail from the morning (since both Gap Creek and Jawbone have already been covered at this point in the run), and that there were yellow blazes (that look sort of orange; see picture below) at almost exactly the distance where the turn sheet said that orange blazes should be (of course, the turn sheet also said that the trail would end at orange, which it clearly did not, and which was my first indication that something was amiss).
To make a long, sad story short, two other runners made the same mistake that I did, and through a 90-minute process of introspection and self-discovery, punctuated by brief periods of sitting down on logs and feeling hopeless, we finally correctly concluded that if we continued on the trail that we were on (Gap Creek), we would eventually hit the orange trail, at which point we could turn right and head back the way we went out at the start, and wind up in the parking area, which was nice, because if we had done the course the "right" way, we would have wound up at the finish line at Caroline Furnace Camp, with about half a mile to get back to where our cars were parked. I was not thrilled with the prospect of having to re-climb to the top of the Gap Creek Trail, then descend the rocky backside, so I ambled a bit listlessly until we hit the orange trail again, at which point I decided our logic was well-founded, and that I could get back to my car in 20-25 minutes if I stepped on the gas, so I redoubled my rock-picking efforts and started pushing 7-8 minute miles on the flats until at last I was back at the car, a little over 10 hours after this whole thing had started, and not one of the few people who had actually run the entire course correctly.
All that said, discounting the nearly 2 hours of being lost, and the half-hour of generally screwing around taking pictures and texting/posting to Facebook, my net time was about 7.5 hours, for closer to 40 miles of actual distance (including the parts where I was temporarily going the wrong way). So I really wasn't all that far off of my time goal in terms of actual effort, and, what's more important, that effort felt very reasonable and controlled. I walked away feeling as though it would be possible to run that section of the course like that (minus the Facebook-posting and wrong-turning) in the actual race. Plus, now that I've (unintentionally or otherwise) sandbagged pretty much every run since Beast of Burden in August 2010, nobody will be expecting me to do well, so I'll have the added benefit of surprising everybody on race day (assuming my training doesn't hit an unforeseen snag).
And in conclusion, the MT100s are not designed for rocky East-Coast trail mishaps, as evidenced by the cut in the toe of my shoe from a brief run-in with a rock:
No, really, though, the real conclusion here is this, which I saw at a rest stop on the drive home, and which completely speaks for itself:
Sunday, February 20, 2011
13-19 February: Week in Review, MMT 100 Preview
FIRE!
Okay, I didn't mean to clear the crowded theatre, but apparently, this stupid website really, REALLY wants me to, since no matter how many times I try to post this picture from this weekend's MMT Training Run at the END of this entry (the count is at about 5 now), it stubbornly inserts it at the BEGINNING, and adds three extra spaces after each paragraph for good measure. If this is some easy problem to solve, and you're laughing at me right now for not being able to fix this, then at least I've managed to entertain. (And wherever it winds up, or whatever horrific website it probably links to now, since who knows what else this website insists on insidiously breaking, it's still a cool picture.)
But if you're still reading . . . the business:
13 February: 10 miles (73 minutes), Canton/Fells/etc.
14 February: 6 miles (45 minutes), Patterson Park
15 February: Butcher's Hill reps (4, in 2:52, 2:51, 2:54, 2:56), 9 miles (60 minutes)
16 February: 3 miles (23 minutes), APG
17 February: 7 treadmill miles (10:00/mile, 10% grade), +1 mile warmup/warmdown (77 minutes total)
18 February: 6 miles in the morning (45 minutes), 9 miles in the evening (65 minutes), Patterson Park
19 February: 32-ish miles, MMT 100 Training Run #2 (6 hours, 42 minutes)
Total Time: 790 minutes
Total Distance: 83-ish miles
So, in summary, slight mileage bump-up, good distance, good intensity. Overall, a good week.
Also, on Friday, 18 February, I was accepted for Badwater 2011 - more about that in another post, but for now, suffice to say that I'm excited, and thank you to Natural Vitality Sports, my sponsor for this event.
. . .
This wouldn't be a typically verbose post if I ended it there. So for the rest of your attention span, I'm going to carry on about the Massanutten Mountain Trail 100, the greatest 100-miler I never ran (but am excited to finally be running for real this coming May). Get ready for disorganized discussion of the course, my race strategy, and maybe some other stuff that doesn't quite fit.
In the interest of qualifying myself for this mini-dissertation, I completed the Old Dominion 100-miler in 2008 (from which MMT 100 plagiarizes parts of its course), paced runners at MMT in both 2009 and 2010 (2009 was the year of the torrential overnight downpour), and ran substantial portions of the course during my attempt at The Ring in September 2010. Oh, and there was the training run this past Saturday (http://www.vhtrc.org/events/academy/two/). For those of you who can't be bothered to click on the link, the training run covers about 30 miles in the middle of the course, which contains a mish-mash of terrain - everything from gently rolling gravel roads to rocky, technical, semi-exposed single-track, for a grand total of nearly 6,000 feet of climb (and around 5,500 feet of descent). All in all, a fair representation of the course as a whole.
The 6 hours and 42 minutes that it took me to complete this 30-ish mile section of the course doesn't sound too eye-popping. However, considering that I was running at "100-mile pace," this went very well. I ran (a conservatively estimated) about 2 miles off-course when I missed a turn onto the yellow trail heading towards Shawl Gap, and debatably took a wrong turn on the orange trail on the Veach Gap Ridge (opting for the leaf-covered, narrow, cliff-face-style exposed low road, as opposed to the wide, gentle, comfortable horse trail on the high side). Subtract about 20 minutes for shooting the breeze and having pictures of my cut-up MT100s next to somebody's giant puffy Hokas taken at the aid stations, and for taking pictures of the Shenandoah River and a fire in the valley and posting them to Facebook during the run, and add in a little bit of extra hustle assuming that I don't screw up my nutrition during the race, and I'm looking at a very comfortable 6 to 6.5 hours to finish what I would consider a very representative third of the race, a pace that would put me on track to finish between 18 and 20 hours. (Incidentally, the course record is something like 17:40).
All of which sounds outlandish for a city slicker who exhibits an occasional dislike of trails. And of course, there are a few things that could throw a wrench in the works: the weather (it's been brutally hot and unbearably cold there, all in the same race), poor nutrition, some really horrible section of trail that I forgot about, a stupid decision that causes me to get injured during the race, getting lost, probably a lot more things that I can't think of off the top of my head right now. With methodical preparation and good ol' common sense, the effects of these can be minimized, and rest assured I'll be compiling and cross-checking this list with appropriate mitigation strategies prior to race day.
But let's focus on why I think such an aggressive finishing time is achievable. First, I'm gradually coming around to the "trail running is the only kind of running" camp, although I will never give up my late-weekend-night runs around Canton, Fells, and the Inner Harbor (the drunken hecklers are too funny, and the homeless people usually say nice, encouraging things to you, when they're not shouting random racial slurs), and I refuse to grow a beard (I'm not sure that I could in the first place). In particular, I love the trails in the Massanuttens, as I've now amassed sufficient memories on them for the thought of a late-night, headlamp-guided, caffiene-addled rock stumble to get the adrenaline and endorphins flowing. In fewer words, mega-positive mental state about this race, but not the kind that's totally disconnected from reality. Yes, at times it might be miserable and hurt a lot, but for the thrill of power-hiking a steep incline, then reaching the top and barreling down a rock-strewn mountain at breakneck speeds, it's more than worth it. It's compelling enough that I now go out of my way to run on the grass in Patterson Park, or wherever else would otherwise be too "urban" to simulate trail running.
Second, patience and consistency are my strengths, and I believe these are also the key to running well at MMT. In many ways, MMT can be an infuriating race, especially for the front-running types that insist on dropping sub-6 minute miles where they can early in the race. By and large, the trail sections are very rocky and technical, and require a huge amount of coordination and patience to navigate successfully. When you're playing "track meet" from the start, you're chipping away at that reserve that you're going to need when you're sleep-deprived and trying to wade through a sea of rocks at mile 93. I've seen broken-down runners in 100-milers, but the breakdowns at MMT have definitely been the worst. Burn yourself out too soon, and you'll pay dearly at the end of this one.
Third (and following closely on the heels of the second point), I proved to myself this past weekend at the training run that the kind of effort needed to run sub-20 hours at MMT should be within my limits. I finished the training run feeling as though I could do it again (and again), and ran 9 miles the next day, without any significant soreness or lingering effects of the run. All this by fast-hiking the climbs, letting momentum carry me on the downhills, and settling into a steady pace on the flats. Overall, I felt as though I had a good, consistent effort level dialed in for the duration of the run.
Taking all of that into account, my race strategy: Stay steady, let the inevitable "track meet" at the front of the pack go on without me. Comfortable 7-ish minute miles on the flats, power-hike the uphills at about 15-minute miles, roll the downhills at whatever gravity will allow, within the limits of my knees and quads. (And definitely no walking the downhills, as that is a sure way to wreck my knees and quads.) 200-ish calories per hour, mainly in the form of gels, wear the Nathan bottle belt (as I have better balance with this than I do with a bottle in my hand on the steep downhills) and the MT100s (unless I can sufficiently break in the MT101s). Enjoy the day, gradually reel in the people who went out too fast, and if I don't feel completely wrecked in the last 10 miles or so, give it everything I have left. And do something cool after the race (TBD).
13 February: 10 miles (73 minutes), Canton/Fells/etc.
14 February: 6 miles (45 minutes), Patterson Park
15 February: Butcher's Hill reps (4, in 2:52, 2:51, 2:54, 2:56), 9 miles (60 minutes)
16 February: 3 miles (23 minutes), APG
17 February: 7 treadmill miles (10:00/mile, 10% grade), +1 mile warmup/warmdown (77 minutes total)
18 February: 6 miles in the morning (45 minutes), 9 miles in the evening (65 minutes), Patterson Park
19 February: 32-ish miles, MMT 100 Training Run #2 (6 hours, 42 minutes)
Total Time: 790 minutes
Total Distance: 83-ish miles
So, in summary, slight mileage bump-up, good distance, good intensity. Overall, a good week.
Also, on Friday, 18 February, I was accepted for Badwater 2011 - more about that in another post, but for now, suffice to say that I'm excited, and thank you to Natural Vitality Sports, my sponsor for this event.
. . .
This wouldn't be a typically verbose post if I ended it there. So for the rest of your attention span, I'm going to carry on about the Massanutten Mountain Trail 100, the greatest 100-miler I never ran (but am excited to finally be running for real this coming May). Get ready for disorganized discussion of the course, my race strategy, and maybe some other stuff that doesn't quite fit.
In the interest of qualifying myself for this mini-dissertation, I completed the Old Dominion 100-miler in 2008 (from which MMT 100 plagiarizes parts of its course), paced runners at MMT in both 2009 and 2010 (2009 was the year of the torrential overnight downpour), and ran substantial portions of the course during my attempt at The Ring in September 2010. Oh, and there was the training run this past Saturday (http://www.vhtrc.org/events/academy/two/). For those of you who can't be bothered to click on the link, the training run covers about 30 miles in the middle of the course, which contains a mish-mash of terrain - everything from gently rolling gravel roads to rocky, technical, semi-exposed single-track, for a grand total of nearly 6,000 feet of climb (and around 5,500 feet of descent). All in all, a fair representation of the course as a whole.
The 6 hours and 42 minutes that it took me to complete this 30-ish mile section of the course doesn't sound too eye-popping. However, considering that I was running at "100-mile pace," this went very well. I ran (a conservatively estimated) about 2 miles off-course when I missed a turn onto the yellow trail heading towards Shawl Gap, and debatably took a wrong turn on the orange trail on the Veach Gap Ridge (opting for the leaf-covered, narrow, cliff-face-style exposed low road, as opposed to the wide, gentle, comfortable horse trail on the high side). Subtract about 20 minutes for shooting the breeze and having pictures of my cut-up MT100s next to somebody's giant puffy Hokas taken at the aid stations, and for taking pictures of the Shenandoah River and a fire in the valley and posting them to Facebook during the run, and add in a little bit of extra hustle assuming that I don't screw up my nutrition during the race, and I'm looking at a very comfortable 6 to 6.5 hours to finish what I would consider a very representative third of the race, a pace that would put me on track to finish between 18 and 20 hours. (Incidentally, the course record is something like 17:40).
All of which sounds outlandish for a city slicker who exhibits an occasional dislike of trails. And of course, there are a few things that could throw a wrench in the works: the weather (it's been brutally hot and unbearably cold there, all in the same race), poor nutrition, some really horrible section of trail that I forgot about, a stupid decision that causes me to get injured during the race, getting lost, probably a lot more things that I can't think of off the top of my head right now. With methodical preparation and good ol' common sense, the effects of these can be minimized, and rest assured I'll be compiling and cross-checking this list with appropriate mitigation strategies prior to race day.
But let's focus on why I think such an aggressive finishing time is achievable. First, I'm gradually coming around to the "trail running is the only kind of running" camp, although I will never give up my late-weekend-night runs around Canton, Fells, and the Inner Harbor (the drunken hecklers are too funny, and the homeless people usually say nice, encouraging things to you, when they're not shouting random racial slurs), and I refuse to grow a beard (I'm not sure that I could in the first place). In particular, I love the trails in the Massanuttens, as I've now amassed sufficient memories on them for the thought of a late-night, headlamp-guided, caffiene-addled rock stumble to get the adrenaline and endorphins flowing. In fewer words, mega-positive mental state about this race, but not the kind that's totally disconnected from reality. Yes, at times it might be miserable and hurt a lot, but for the thrill of power-hiking a steep incline, then reaching the top and barreling down a rock-strewn mountain at breakneck speeds, it's more than worth it. It's compelling enough that I now go out of my way to run on the grass in Patterson Park, or wherever else would otherwise be too "urban" to simulate trail running.
Second, patience and consistency are my strengths, and I believe these are also the key to running well at MMT. In many ways, MMT can be an infuriating race, especially for the front-running types that insist on dropping sub-6 minute miles where they can early in the race. By and large, the trail sections are very rocky and technical, and require a huge amount of coordination and patience to navigate successfully. When you're playing "track meet" from the start, you're chipping away at that reserve that you're going to need when you're sleep-deprived and trying to wade through a sea of rocks at mile 93. I've seen broken-down runners in 100-milers, but the breakdowns at MMT have definitely been the worst. Burn yourself out too soon, and you'll pay dearly at the end of this one.
Third (and following closely on the heels of the second point), I proved to myself this past weekend at the training run that the kind of effort needed to run sub-20 hours at MMT should be within my limits. I finished the training run feeling as though I could do it again (and again), and ran 9 miles the next day, without any significant soreness or lingering effects of the run. All this by fast-hiking the climbs, letting momentum carry me on the downhills, and settling into a steady pace on the flats. Overall, I felt as though I had a good, consistent effort level dialed in for the duration of the run.
Taking all of that into account, my race strategy: Stay steady, let the inevitable "track meet" at the front of the pack go on without me. Comfortable 7-ish minute miles on the flats, power-hike the uphills at about 15-minute miles, roll the downhills at whatever gravity will allow, within the limits of my knees and quads. (And definitely no walking the downhills, as that is a sure way to wreck my knees and quads.) 200-ish calories per hour, mainly in the form of gels, wear the Nathan bottle belt (as I have better balance with this than I do with a bottle in my hand on the steep downhills) and the MT100s (unless I can sufficiently break in the MT101s). Enjoy the day, gradually reel in the people who went out too fast, and if I don't feel completely wrecked in the last 10 miles or so, give it everything I have left. And do something cool after the race (TBD).
In conclusion, if you were wondering why this post is entirely in red, it's because in addition to not putting my picture where I want it, this stupid website also insists on changing the font size and font color semi-randomly in various sections of this post, and, honestly, I give up. Red on black = visible. Whatever, blogger. I guess you got paid, so does it really matter?
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