Trail Pic of the week

I was on this trail at one point in my life. This is somewhere in the middle of the Pine to Palm 100. How could one not want to run after staring at this perfect single track?

Ouch!!!!

from the top of Mt. Pilchuck

Sometimes I think I do stupid things to slow myself down, or maybe stupid things happen to me to force me to slow down. I just finished a 3 week block of some pretty damn good training; weeks of 77, 75, and 80 which was supposed to be 90 but instead I decided to cartwheel down the trail of Mt. Pilchuck so I was forced to take a day off.

I went up with a friend on Saturday, and jammed 51 miles of running in on the Thursday and Friday before in order to have that day free to go up the mountain. It’s a pretty easy hike, 2.7 miles and maybe 2500 feet of elevation gain from the trailhead. Well, the girl I went up with is one of those minimalist trail running shoe people. I am constantly giving her crap about her not wearing real shoes and asking how the hell she could possibly run real trails without real shoes. But she did get the last laugh on that one.

So anyway on the Thursday before I ended up running a 50K, it was maybe 85-86 degrees so a little warm, but not much elevation change so I ran it easy in 4:11. I also learned that I don’t like warm Nuun too much. I used to drink that all the time but when the sun is out and it jostles in the camelbak for too long = gross.  I switched to water at the next chance I had to fill up.

Friday I ran an easy 20, and literally slept around 30 minutes on Thursday night. Sometimes it is just too hard to shut the body off after running for 4 hours or longer. Needless to say my turnover wasn’t the best but the legs really weren’t that bad. I just couldn’t make them move as quickly as I wanted them to go. I only ended up running this in 2:50 which was a little bit of a bummer. I think if I would have just run the 51 miles all together it would have been a little easier to do. Still, all told I ran the 50 miles in about 6:53 (+ 1 mile cool down) which isn’t too bad for training.

So Saturday comes and after rally car driving up to the trailhead and scaring the shit out of my passenger (sorry : ) we hike to the top. After about 4K it is constant snow to the top, after a while of this it did get a little annoying. The views from the top were pretty amazing though. Sure, it’s not a high mountain at only a little over 5300 feet, but considering it is surrounded by sea level the view is still breath taking. Too bad the clouds were hovering at about the snowline as well.

We hung out at the top for about 15 minutes and then started making our way down, slipping and sliding through the snow which is pretty damn fun. I would go about 200 feet at a time and just try to steer myself away from the more scary obstacles like huge rocks and trees until I would get to a point that I was able to slow myself down. It was like trying to steer a couch on wheels down a mountain road. I could kind of steer, but not really, and oftentimes found myself sliding down the mountain on my ass in the snow. Good fun for sure.

Eventually we got out of the snow and made it to real dirt. She wanted to run down the rest of the way, and being an ultranerd how could I say no to that? This is some pretty technical trail though, lots of rocks, ledges, etc. So I’m bombing down the trail as fast as the terrain would allow me, every once in a while I’d wait for her to catch up but it was never long as barefoot girl proved she can run downhill tech trail pretty damn good. And then I catch a little rock, ankle rolls, and boom! I’m on the ground log rolling down the trail. I knew instantly the ankle was done for the day. It hurt like a mother f*#*#!!!! I limped down and eventually it came back a little but still – there was no more running (or walking if I could help it)  the rest of the day.

So I ended up taking a couple extra days off and came back to running on the Tuesday and ran a 10 mile tempo run which went pretty well. I’m on a well deserved easy week so the timing is ok. I think in the last 12 weeks I have done 19 runs that were over 20 miles and averaged about 73 miles per week. Not too bad for someone that was completely and utterly on the wrong track in life only 5 months before. It’s amazing what one can do when surrounded with good people as opposed to shit – but sometimes the wipers just can’t clear the shit from my vision.

Oh Sh!t

It's funny how sometimes you take the ability to run 20 or 30 miles every weekend for granted, and then follow that up with another 10-20 miles the next day. No problem right? That's what we do. And we sandwich it around going out with friends, chasing kids around the playground, mowing the lawn, and everything else people do in life each day. But then one day you are in the middle of a longish training run and it doesn't work out that way. That happened to me this past Saturday.
   So I was supposed to run 50 miles, although it didn't quite turn out that way. It was not even 30, and it completely sucked. I headed out to Duval to run 50, and decided to do a double out and back just so I could get enough liquids. So anyway, I start off nice and easy running 8:30's which generally feels like a walk, nice and easy and the heart rate is barely even elevated. It's a little warm, a little humid but nothing too crazy. I start running and by mile 3 I am already feeling hungry. OK, no big deal, I eat a powerbar as I shuffle along. And drink my Nuun out of my camelbak every so often. I think I'm doing just fine as far as nutrition goes. Whatever, I'm just running relaxed and everything is as easy as it should be for the 1st 12.5 miles. I turn around and continue back down the trail toward my car - just taking a little detour at about mile 16 to stop at a store and get some water and refill my liquid. All is still well. I continue running and pop some clif bloks and continue to drink.
   35 minutes later I am walking. I am trying to figure out what is going on and I cannot. My legs really don't hurt at all. But I feel like all of a sudden I am in survival mode and it happened in the blink of an eye. Fast. i walk for a mile and eat and drink, and slowly start to jog and I just don't have it. If I were on a bike I would say that I lost all my power. I can still run, but it is an embarrasing slow shuffle. Only 2 weeks ago I won a 50K and was running sub 6:00 pace at mile 31. Now it is remarkably flat and I'm barely moving. I eat some more and drink some more, and try to keep running but it is obvious that whatever I did just wans't working for me this day. I eventually recover enough to run the last hour back to the car @ 8:30 pace - but it was ugly and felt worse.
  It's not like I haven't ever had this happen before. But usually it's in a race after running for 9 or 10 hours - not after 2.5 hours of pretty flat terrain at a sedentary pace. I decided to just cut this run short as i know forcing the distance can take a lot out of oneself, and training is not the place to wipe myself out for a couple weeks.
   I got home and jumped on the scale and said "oh shit!" That lies part of my problem. My weight is coming down from running 70-80 miles per week, but there is no way in hello? that I should weigh 164  pounds -not yet anyway - after a run and drinking the 25 minute drive home. So I would guess the root casue to be: A) I just didn't drink enough B) i didn't eat enough in the days before the run.
On the bright side my legs were fine and I ran 20 the next day  @ 7:45 pace which was comfortable and relaxed.
  The moral of the story is yes ultra runner type people can go out and run for a long time fairly comfortably, but we need to make sure the tank is full before we leave. I don't want to have to suffer again like that needlessly, and after all the years I have been running or riding bikes or whatever I should damn well know better by now. I just need to remind myself every so often.

Intermittently

Recovery from Echo Lake was only so-so. I am not running much elevation this year, only a few thousand feet per week as JJ doesn't have all that much. The 50K I ran nearly had as much as the 100 miler - it would sure be nice if I could run the same pace for the hilly 50K as the flatt(ish) 100 miler, but I guess that is not going to happen. And although my recovery wasn't exactly as swift as I would have liked it to be, in retrospect a 50 mile run week with a 23 mile run just below 8:00 pace isn't exactly a recipe for recovery for mere mortals like me but it works. But the 23 was a pretty simple easy run, I could feel the race seep back into the legs at about mile 21 but overall it was a relatively chill little run. I have an epic day planned this Saturday so hopefully that goes pretty well. But I am happy I am still feeling like my fitness is in a good spot, I shed some pounds, and running long once again puts me in a happy zen state.
  To repeat again - I must say that it is sure nice to be "in training" again and have my head completely wrapped around a race, yet still do other things in life to have a balance (as much as you can have balance while running 90 miles in a week, going to work, being a dad, and other little nuances in life), not to mention other social (non running) aspects of life and it's a pretty sweet spot I'm in now.

Echo Lake 50K

It was so nice to have friends drive to a race for a change, more so on the way home so I could sit on my ass and fade in and out of being awake if I needed it. Some of the races in the past were pretty sketchy staying awake after a long race, White River and Waldo were absolutely the worst, the WA DOT could have used me as a test driver as the rumble strips were put to good use in keeping my sorry ass awake after those. Also,  It’s a good way to catch up on a million and one text messages and emails; a good way to pass the time as texts can often turn certain ways to become very entertaining/amusing. Plus it’s always fun to talk about running with your running friends, because really – no one else gives a shit – which is quite ok with me.  And having not raced in 7 months - last year my body just plain sucked as I suffered from IT band crap all year - I had no idea how the body would  behave and was anxious to find out. Sure, I did a lot of mileage in the past couple months, probably averaging over 70 miles per week with the heaviest weeks approaching 90, but most of that carried little elevation change as my utmost goal is a fast 100 @ JJ which is a fairly flat course. So anyway, off to the races for the first time (healthy) in about 18 months.

   We rolled into the Chelan area with tons of daylight to spare, set up some tents, stared at the ski hill and instantly thought back to Waldo which also started out at a ski area (albeit a mountain) but was nonetheless thankful we didn’t start running straight up that like @ Waldo.  Not much really to do after that except pay attention to nutritional needs (donuts – why don’t they have donut flavored gels?) and fluids (water = Nuun). I was good to go. Tried to go to bed at a decent time and read for what felt like forever, but then learned I drank way too much water. Off to the bathroom. What a pain in the ass that is when spending the night in a tent. But the stars were absolutely amazing. I have not seen the stars like that since I ran Waldo in 2010, some events or nights for some reason just hang out in the clearest parts of my memory, and that night did for the pure beauty of the night sky and the simple things in life that we often miss or forget to take in – myself included. It was also the last time (before this race) I showed up at a race not completely stressed out about life and divorce and kids and other stupid crap– but hey, you gotta screw up big time to learn a big lesson. And running is always there for you, and the people that love you, blah, blah, blah. : ) You can watch Oprah for the rest.

  Read 2/3 of a novel, eventually fell asleep, woke up, fell asleep, woke up, fell asleep, noticed it was light out so I just got up and B was already up for the start of the 50 mile. I thought of doing it and could have probably done ok, but I wanted to see where I was and didn’t want to jump in the deep end quite so soon. After that it was hang out and relax, a gentle rain began to fall and then I had to get ready to run. Eat more food, lube up, tie my shoes, run a couple miles to warm up since we climbed a 900+ foot climb from the get go, and then it was time to start.

 I swear the rain stopped as soon as the dude sent us off. We had about ¾ mile on fire road and then it was all single track after that. My goal was to run the first 10K @ 8:00 flat pace since it had 1000 feet of climbing, and somehow I nailed that just by relaxing and running easy up hill, and not banzaing back down. I stayed around 6:10-6:20 pace while the leader was closer to 5:30. I already drank 3 bottles in the first 10K and noticed that he didn’t  even have a bottle – though he picked his up after the first 10K. There was one more guy that was kinda staying close to us and I noticed he wasn’t carrying a bottle either. The weather forecast was 82 and sunny, and with 4 hours of running planned for the day I was going to come prepared. The guy in front would gap me on the down hills about 15-20 seconds per mile, but I would always close up without even exerting much effort. I knew that running without a bottle as the sun came out and the temperature rose would greatly reduce the power available to my 2 running companions as the day wore on. I just tried to run relaxed, and felt like I was more fit (and possibly more experienced) then the other 2. When we got to mile 11 we had some flat terrain for a while and I let the one dude lead and he wanted to run 7’s for a while, and I was fine with that. If solo I would have saved more energy but this is generally  a comfortable enough pace to live with. We did a 7.5 mile loop of the course with a few short climbs @ maybe 7:15 pace which brought us to mile 18 or so. I was just sitting and more worried about myself than the race. I came here to train and see where I was at, if I won then that’s a bonus, if I didn’t -  I didn’t care as long as I learned where I was and got in some race miles. And no, I didn’t say I was going to win the race to Steve from SCRC, that was his spin on stuff to make me look like an arrogant ass in weekly email to the run group. Thanks Steve!

  After a while I decided it was time to test my current fitness level. So on a longer climb I pushed myself just a tiny bit and as the terrain flattened out I dropped the pace to maybe 6:30 for a while to see what the other 2 guys would do. They didn’t respond, I was alone so I just ran my own race for the remainder. At around mile 22 it got really warm on a longer climb as the heat started to suck some life out of me. I dragged ass up this maybe 7-8 minute climb, and then it took maybe another mile or so of sucking (as in sucking air and running slow) before I recovered. I just continued to drink and pop clif bloks and although starting to get tired I was ok considering it was almost 30 degrees warmer than anything I am used to running in. And sunny. There was another climb at about mile 26 that sucked (I passed the marathon at I think 3:44), survived up that (barely) and then got a rhythm going and with 900 feet to drop in the last 2.5 miles ran about 6:00 pace to finish in 4:26. Overall it was an ok day, I knew my legs would be not so good on the parts they weren’t, but I also know my fitness is coming along. This course is probably harder than Baker lake and I was a good chunk of time faster than I ever ran there in definitely warmer temperatures. So hey! That’s a positive. Fitness is coming along, and it’s all just building blocks to AZ for the JJ100. So I’ll just keep building. And I got a free bottle of wine for winning. Ha ha. As always has been the case I give the alcohol away to friends – but it’ll be appreciated at least. I don’t even like the stuff. I have no idea what race is next, I am trying to find one that will fit in a schedule of kids birthdays and travel plans, and whatever else gets  in the way, but until then I will keep adding to the weekly mileage so I can finally run a 100 miler I can be proud of. I don’t have any time predictions for a 100, but I know if I will be satisfied or not once I look at the clock upon crossing the finish line.

   And after that, bigger things await.

Downswing

Being injured totally sucks. Just when I start to get my head wrapped around running now that I'm in the 8th month of the year my body takes a proverbial shit on my psyche. I ran a couple 70 mile weeks back in early July, my recovery from each run was very good, no issues whatsoever. Then during an easy 10 mile run, after a day off, my left calf muscle locks up tighter tighter than Scrooge's wallet. It literally came out of nowhere. 4 miles into the run, running easy 7:45 pace on very flat terrain I felt things ever so slightly tightening. I didn't think much of it. I decided to just keep running. I mean who hasn't had an issue creep up during a run, this happens often in some form to everyone and goes away. Well, 2 miles later my calf muscle was locked up solid and I ended up hobbling the last 4 miles to my home. Shit!

This has happened to me before. Right before the White River 50 mile last year a very similar ordeal happened with my other leg. I got some deep tissue massage, did some cross training and I was good to go. This time things are not quite as easy.

I took a couple days off, did some cross training. Still ran 45 miles per week or so, not a ton of miles, but certainly enough to offer some recovery. I thought I was in the clear. 4 days before my 8/6 50K I ran 9.5 miles at Lord Hill park. I ran what I thought was an easy pace, 8:20 miles which is actually pretty decent for that many miles with that much elevation. But again, it felt really easy. No issues with any muscles. I thought I was completely in the clear.

The next day I ran an easy 5 miles. Legs were only so-so. But there was nothing making me raise a flag concerning my calf muscle. The next day was where the problem started to make me take notice. The goal was to run an easy 6 or 7. I ran out to the turnaround, and was feeling decent, saw one of my friends up ahead and decided to catch up to him but he was running faster than I thought. I ended up running a 5:35 mile to catch him, ran with him for a mile and then after my run my calf was fucked. I knew right away things would not be good for the 50K.

That Thursday I slept about 3 hours, went to work, got some more deep tissue massage, went roller blading in the evening. Friday I got a good night sleep.

Raceday comes and I know my calf is not even close to 100%. But I am signed up so I figure I might as well try and see what happens. For the first 6 miles everything is fine. But I slowly start to feel the muscle tightening up. By mile 10 am in agony. I am running on one leg. Downhill isn't so bad, up hill completely sucks. To make a long story short I suffered like a son of a bitch, not fun! I was in 2nd at mile 27 when all that was left was 1 5 mile loop. But I had to throw in the towel. I was so pissed. The RD told me he would give me credit for a marathon finish but I was so disgusted with my time because I could barely even run for the past 10 miles, I just said "Just gimme a DNF." There were actually lots of swear words in the middle of the woods, maybe a minor temper tantrum or two, but no one was around and I was pissed as I really need my running right now.

The rest of the day I couldn't even walk. Literally. I had to use my other leg to push in my emergency break on my truck. WTF! Stupid injuries.

Now I guess I just need to let it heal. I took the Sunday after the race completely off, went out with some friends, had a couple beers and just tried to forget about running (not too mention all the other stupid drama) and relax. I've been cross training like crazy since thought, 1-2 hours each day either on the roller blades or bicycle, a couple more deep tissue massages, and things are starting to feel normal again. This weekend I will be in the back country of Rainier and if my calf locks up I am going to pull a 127 hours trick and saw off my frigging leg.

Upswing

I think I finally turned the corner on this messed up year. After running a mediocre 39:30 10K (and the course was a bit long, and I haven't done official speed work in years) I feel like I am back on the horse. I have run 120 miles in the past 2 weeks, the body is recovering, and I am enjoying every run. I have a 50K to race in a few weeks, and tentatively am going to run a (hopefully) fast 50 mile in October, followed by a respectable 100 in November. Of course, the way things have gone this year everything is tentative, but I am optimistic that I will be racing more often and will hopefully find the fitness I had last fall. Things are looking up anyway, I hope this feeling extends to some of my other running friends going through not so fun times. It's been a tough year for a lot of people.