Happy Thanksgiving: Gobble Cobble 7K Race Report

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

Day by day:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Total Time: 673 minutes

Total Distance: 72 miles

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

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

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


Why does every Saturday morning look like this lately?

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

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



belongs in a trail race.

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

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



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

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


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

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

End Act I.


Sunset over Watkins Mill High School - the first day.

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, numbers first:

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

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

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

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

Thursday: 6 miles easy (60 minutes)

Friday: 1 easy mile (10 minutes)

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

Total minutes: 1510
Total miles: 141

Okay, now, Beast of Burden:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Week in Review: 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: :)

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.

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

Deep breath; here goes . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Total Time: 755 minutes

Total Distance: 102 miles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Week in Review: 5-11 June 2011

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

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

Total Time: 420 minutes
Total Distance: 53 miles

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

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

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

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

Week in Review: 27 March - 2 April

This will be (for once) a relatively short update, as this was sort of a "down" week, in the sense that I didn't run a major race that I could subsequently carry on about for thousands of words. Instead, the (relatively) terse summary of my training:

27 March: 11 miles (77 minutes); the traditional post-race recovery run around Canton/Fells/Inner Harbor.

28 March: 13 miles (91 minutes); attempted to catch the end of the Fed Hill run, but nobody was running back my way, so I detoured uphill through Mt. Vernon and back down dark scary Monument Street.

29 March: 6 miles (42 minutes) as a TNT "warmup" at APG. Another 9 miles (65 minutes) at TNT, including a set of 3x(4x(400 m fast, 200 m jog rest), 400 m jog rest), with 400s in 82, 83, 83, 84, 84, 84, 84, 84, 84, 82, 81, 76 (oops). Based on the last one, maybe should have been running the whole workout less conservatively.

30 March: 10 miles (72 minutes) at APG, including some stupid-silly off-trail steep-grade-in-the-woods running in honor of the upcoming Barkley Marathons, followed up by another 8 miles (58 minutes) with the Wednesday night Canton run crew.

31 March: 8 miles (55 minutes) on a run around Harford Community College that started like garbage but ended up fast.

1 April: More garbage? Split run, 7 miles (50 minutes) in the rainy, ambivalent morning gray in Fells, then 10 more miles (70 minutes) on a similar route in the evening, when it was slightly warmer and brighter. A few intermittent fast sections in there.

2 April: Long(ish) 120 minutes (conservatively, 16 miles) at Loch Raven, on trails. This was uncharacteristically beautiful and fun, in spite of the gray, spitting rain.

Total time: 700 minutes (exactly)
Total distance: 98 (inexactly)

I was not keeping very close track of my mileage during the week, but I felt like I was running a lot of miles. And now that I've actually bothered to add it up, apparently I was, coming very close to that magical 100-mile week mark.

So maybe some meditations on the 100-mile week are in order. On the one hand, when I stop to think about it (which I try not to do), it seems like an awful lot of running. On the other hand, when it comes time to actually do my run, once I get over the fear that this might be the run where I crash, it feels entirely natural to be in motion for an hour, or an hour and a half, or however long my run is supposed to be. And especially since this past Wednesday, running has felt very, very pleasant, normal, and even a little euphoric towards the end of each session. Maybe that's the magic of the 100-mile week - it's the threshold at which one more mile becomes more pleasure than pain. Or maybe it's just me.

Another thing about a 100-mile week is that it gives you a lot of time by yourself, with your thoughts (so hopefully they're not stupid and boring). I could also use this space to carry on about the thoughts I've had while running this past week, but it's getting late, and there's more running that needs to happen tomorrow, so, for now, I'll keep them to myself. But if one of them keeps on catching my fancy, I may just drop some science on that in a day or two. Until then, I'll keep on riding this wave and continue to hope that it never crashes.

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).

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?