Racing Again...at least until the world ends

There isn't much of a break in trial running. As far as I can tell there isn't really an on season or an off season. Certainly there are months where races are more numerous, most notably in the summer months when a lot of the high country opens up due to snow melt. A runner can however find a race at just about any time of year. This isn't really much of a dilemma for those of us that like running...but it can definitely take a toll on the body. I'm fairly confident that I will be taking a pretty solid 6 weeks off at the end of this next season. (So..not until the December 2012, January 2013 timeframe...assuming the Mayans weren't on to something anyway)

Speaking of time off, following the North Face 50 in December I took about 4 days completely off from running. This was a bit difficult for me as a fair bit of my mental well being is now dependent on my ability to lace up a pair of shoes and pound away on the dirt or pavement on a near daily basis. The following two weeks were pretty light, running just enough to prevent myself from going crazy while taking it easy enough to allow my body to recuperate after a fairly full year of running. I believe the final tally last year put me at around 2,200 miles with upwards of 220,000 feet of elevation gain. Not bad for a wannabe athlete. Barring injury I will most likely increase that number by about 1,000 miles (or more) this year. It should be a blast.

As far as this year goes, January has been a fun month so far. I've spent about 80% of my time on the trails, up from the 55% I spent on the dirt last year. I'm hoping to keep this going through the entire season. Not only is trail running more interesting...but it also seems to be a bit easier on the joints. I've also been able to ramp up from about 40 miles a week (the arbitrary amount I decided to start off with) to 70 mile weeks without any issues physically. For reference last season I topped out with a 78 mile week. My hope is to ramp up to a couple of 90-100 mile weeks at some point prior to the 100 mile race I have planned for August. Suffice it to say my training is going great and I'm looking forward to keeping the ball rolling for the next 10 months.

After a solid month of training I'm ready to race. The Orcas Island 50K is this Saturday. I raced it last year and though I felt pretty good with my performance, given the fact that I was and really still am pretty new to Ultras, I'm confident that I should be able to greatly improve on my time from last year. Orcas is a beast of a 50K, much more difficult than many of the others floating around. It probably clocks it a mile or two longer than the advertised 31 miles and has well over 7,000 feet of elevation gain. (Probably more like 8K) I'll be giving the New Balance MT110's their first go in a race on Saturday. Awesome shoe...we shall see if they can turn this wannabe runner into something that resembles a real runner. In any event...Orcas Island, the rematch this Saturday the 4th in Olga, Washington. It should be a blast. Lets get ready to rumble.

Hopefully the next post will be funnier...this one just seems like it's full of numbers. I guess it makes sense though...what did you expect from an engineer? I'll leave you with a goofy picture of my dog.

Get Ready! Here we go!

For the past four months I've been focused on one goal...finishing my first 50 mile race. By finishing I hope I don't mean limping or crawling in, I want to finish on my feet, uninjured with a decent time for a first time 50 mile runner. I thought it would be fun to offer up a summary of the past 4 months of training along with some thoughts on how things have gone, what I will likely change in my next round of training, and which training runs were my favorite of the bunch.

First some notes on the math, I'm going to be offering weekly and monthly totals. Adding up the weekly mileage won't really equate easily to the monthly totals because of the way in which the weeks fall month to month. I personally just think it's interesting to see weekly vs. monthly. Weekly is much more helpful in determining overall training volume but the monthly numbers are nice ego boosters.

April Training

Week of April 4th - 30.05
Week off April 11th - 38.47
Week of April 18th - 35.54
Week of April 25th - 17.42

April Total - 127.48 Miles
Elevation Gain - 11,0059 Feet

April was a tough month. I was coming back from an extended vacation in South America that lasted the entire month of March. As such I was basically attempting to ramp up my training volume from zero. I ended up with an injury shortly after an excursion up on the Tiger Mountain trail which caused the drastic drop off seen in the week of April 25th. More core training was necessary. Sadly...I wouldn't really learn that lesson until early June.

May Training

Week of May 2nd - 41.19
Week off May 9th - 47.46
Week of May 16th - 44.48
Week of May 23rd - 55.27
Week of May 30th - 48.07

May Total - 200.09 Miles
Elevation Total - 15,779 Feet

May was pretty awesome. I finally started to feel pretty decent week to week and noticed some remarkable pep in my legs when climbing. My favorite training run had to have been the memorial day weekend 30+ mile run around the Mt. Rainier area. In fact I felt it was so awesome that I wrote a blog entry on it earlier in the year.

June Training

Week of June 6th - 61.05
Week of June 13th - 44.91
Week of June 20th - 65.05
Week of June 27th - 50.79


June Total - 232.03 miles
Elevation Total - 21,953 Feet

June was another really solid month. I spent a bit more time in the rainier area, familiarizing myself with the white river route while taking in some pretty spectacular vistas. Snow continued to be a problem at the higher elevations but we have such extensive trail systems out here in the Pacific Northwest that it was still pretty easy to link together long runs without topping out on the buried ridge lines. I didn't really have a single training session that I would call my favorite this month, though the June 30th jaunt up to the Ranger Creek Cabin (and a little beyond) was pretty spectacular. Unfortunately I bonked pretty hard and had to cut the run short.

July Training

Week of July 4th - 70.27
Week of July 11th - 20.23
Week of July 18th - 32.0

July Total (So Far) - 152.5 Miles
Elevation Total - 12,500 Feet

July has been interesting so far. My training called for a pretty nice even taper but the chest cold that I came down with after my 70 mile week forced me to reduce my training volume a lot more than I would've liked. I had anticipated the week of the 11th coming in around the 45 mile mark with the week of the 18th being around 30-35. I'm pretty confident though despite my forced reduction and am feeling great heading into the final week before my race.

Another 63 miles forthcoming this week, 13 from some training and another 50 from a single race coming this Saturday, July 30th. That will push me over 200 miles for the third month in a row. Am I ready? I certainly think so. I probably should've done a bit better job ramping my mileage up to my max of 70 but I got there and didn't completely destroy myself doing it. As can be seen from the weekly totals I had a difficult time increasing week over week and ended up ping ponging a fair bit between low and high mileage weeks. Still...I was able to ramp up to 70 miles without my joints failing so I'm fairly confident that I'll be able to move up into that volume again in preparation for my October races.

The race this Saturday will be awesome. If I bonk, it will still be rad, if I nail it and can move consistently through to the end then that will be even better. Regardless...it will be a fantastic day on the trails. Hopefully I'll see some familiar faces out there but if not I always have the Mountain.

Oops...we ran an Ultra

So what happens when you take two runners, both known for being stubborn explorers with a knack for getting lost, put them in the Rainier area on a long weekend and ask them to run 20 miles? You get a 31 mile excursion. Unintended of course. Before recapping the run in it's entirety I would first like to point out some lessons learned from this little trip.

1) Following somebodies footsteps on a snow covered portion of an unfamiliar trail is a good way to get lost in the woods.

2) Pack more gels then you think you need if your route isn't set in stone. Gels help keep up your blood sugar, which in turn prevents you from turning into an exhausted zombie.

3) Phone batteries drain fast when your in an area with a weak cell signal. I probably would've realized this sooner if I had fully appreciated lesson two listed above.

4) Don't ever let Doug or I lead you on a run unless you want to go further than originally planned.

5) Don't be intimidated by bad weather...just get out there and go for a run...or a hike...or anything.

Snow can be fun

Woefully unprepared for 8+ hours in the woods we set off with good intentions, a nice 4-5 hour, 20 mile run around the white river area of Mount Rainier. The weather was pretty decent (For Seattle) and neither of us had any afternoon plans. We should have known what we were in for when we got lost within 2 miles of the start. Our attempt to locate the Sun Top trail was ultimately successful, however we ended up adding an unexciting loop through a campground during our search. We knew full well that we wouldn't really be able to get to Sun Top this time of year but decided that it would be fun to see how far up we could get before running into impassable snow. (Note...what we thought was impassable in the beginning of the run was in sharp contrast to what we felt was impassable during the latter stages of our adventure)
 

Stream crossings are more fun

Before long we were running through mountain streams, post holing in snow drifts and enjoying the many views afforded by the trail while making our way up the ridge line. At about 3700 feet we decided the snow on the trail was only going to get worse and made our way back down to the buck creek area. We managed to find our way back to the parking lot without getting lost in another campground though we did run into a fun couple that were out Geo caching and stopped to chat with them for a bit. They showed us some crazy pictures of the snow up at paradise.



After making a quick stop at aid station 1 (my car) we made our way out onto the Skookum flats trail.

Aid station number 1 was a big hit

 
Both Doug and I had mountain biked this trail several times in the past and were pretty stoked to see how quickly we could run it. Excellent conditions and a nice 8 mile warm up set the stage for a pretty quick jaunt down the rolling single-track. Approximately a mile in we ran into a WTA trail work party. Big thanks to those guys as it turns out they have their work cut out for them. About 2/3 of the way into the trail we ran into a ridiculous amount of dead fall. Not normal dead-fall...these were giant old growth trees that blanketed a fairly large portion of the trail. Doug and I ended up doing a fair bit of tree climbing, which though fun, drastically increased the amount of time it took for us to get to the end of the trail.

It was decision time after reaching the end of the skookum flats. Would we hit highway 410, with it's miserable pavement and slight uphill? Head to snoquera falls? Hit the white river trail and run through camp Sheppard? Or perhaps we would try to link the palisades trail up with the white river trail despite the fact that it would be most certainly buried in snow? Doug and are pretty notorious in our own minds for picking what could be described by some as the stupidest path so unsurprisingly we chose to run up above the snow line, follow a bunch of footprints that may or may not have been on the actual trail and eventually turned around about 3 hours after we had run out of gels and Doug had run out of water. 

There is a bridge under there somewhere

Note that at sun top we barely got over 3700 feet but we ended up topping out at over 5000 on this portion of the run. And yes...we ran into what we should have

Here are a few more pictures of the run. Wish I would've brought a better camera. Phone camera's are just awful for these types of pictures. Oh and here is a link to the garmin if anybody is interested:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/88617512

Skookum falls from 410

Snoquera Falls from the Palisades trail

Doug heading up the staircase

One of the many views of the valley from the trail. Looking forward to running this on a clear day.

3...2...1...POO POO!

Poo Poo in this case is not what you think it is. Today my buddy Doug and I went for a trail run in the tiger mountain area. The plan was to hit the three western "summits" and then tack on an out and back to Poo Poo point. The point is actually named for the sound steam whistles used to make when workers called the loggers. That being said the name still causes me to break out into fits of laughter. I guess parts of my brain still functions like a 10 year old.  

We started the run in the traditional lake area and took the West Tiger 3 trail up to...West Tiger 3. We found that many of the trails in the area have the word tiger in them and as such it was quite easy to confuse one with several others. We ended up adding about a mile on the Tiger Mountain Trail (not to be confused with the West Tiger 3 trail) and doubled back to hike slowly up the cable trail. This exceptionally steep section was completely unrunnable and very nearly unhikable. Several times I felt like I would end up sliding or tumbling down the slope doing my best John Cusack "Better off Dead" impression. 

Thankfully the slick footing didn't result in an epic slide and we reached the top without too much difficulty. After reaching the summit we took all of 3 seconds to enjoy the lack of a view and proceeded over to West Tiger 2. There is a bit of a saddle coupled with some more steep uphill sections. This section was uneventful and the view at West Tiger 2 was about as unsinpiring as that on West Tiger 3. The continuation to West Tiger 1 involved a bit of a downhill section coupled again with a fairly steep uphill. At the summit we were greeted with terrific views of mount rainier, the peninsula and downtown Seattle. Too bad neither of us wanted to carry a camera. We also found a hikers hut. We immediately set upon this treasure only to find it devoid of anything interested. I'm not sure what we were hoping to find. A pot of gold maybe. I did however imagine several things that I most definitely did NOT want to see there...

 At this point we linked up with the bypass, poo top and west tiger trails. I took a bit of a spill on a section and immediately checked to see if I had Taco'ed my femur. Thankfully my notorious mountain bike exploits didn't directly carry over to our trail running adventures. After the misstep we linked up with another unmarked trail and made our way to Poo Poo point. This would've been a decent view if we hadn't just descended off West Tiger 1. We spent a few seconds checking out Mt. Baker and then set off the way we came to descend another unmarked trial to the tradition lake plateau. Doug flew down this portion as I was already dragging a bit and struggled to keep up. I almost ate it several times but my intact legs kept me upright through the descent. Once we got down to the fire road we simply followed it back out to the High Point parking area. All in all it was a great day of running. We got less lost than usual and took in some great views. There was enough snow to add some character to the area without negatively impacting our pace.

Final Tally - 12.5 miles, Elevation Gain 3264 Feet, Time 2:54. Great way to kick off the 2011 running season.