My Last Few Runs & The Bolder Boulder

Wednesday


9 miles in the morning around town, then 3 miles up & down Mt. Sanitas in the afternoon. The mountain run was phenomenal - tough climb uphill for some good scenery over the city of Boulder, then bombed it on the way down.


Thursday


I went out to the Boulder Reservoir for the first time. 10 mostly flat miles on a cool but sunny morning.


Friday


I wanted to take it easy, but still wanted to get some trail work in, so I headed up to Bear Peak Trail. 5 miles took me about 65 minutes, but considering all was above 6000' and included 1200' of climbing, and I felt it was a good morning effort.



Saturday

I'd been having a lot of 'long-run anxiety' recently. It had been almost three weeks since my last long run: the Bear Mountain 50k. With the White River 50 mile looming about 9 weeks away now, I need to start planning for my last few big runs. Ideally, I'll get in 2 more 30 milers before the race, which means probably at least 3 or 4 more 20 milers. Factor in the 3 week taper, and that doesn't leave a whole lot of time. Today was the best chance to get in a long day.

I started early (for me) at 6:45 and got in 5 miles easy, then did a workout with the Running Republic of Boulder (my new group). That totaled 5 more miles, including 2x5 minute intervals. Then I wrapped up with 7 miles easy around the Boulder Reservoir. 17 total on the day plus some speed work, the new Colorado altitude and 1200' of vertical I did yesterday; and I was satisfied with the work.



Next Week


Monday I'm running in the Bolder Boulder, one of the biggest races in the country. I'm not really 'racing' it, but just trying to enjoy the experience of running a race with about 60,000 participants. The finish is in the University of Colorado's football stadium, which should be an awesome atmosphere. It should be a great way to celebrate Memorial Day.

My First 3 Days In Boulder

I've had 72 hours and six runs to get a lay of the land out here. So far, it's been a mix of hypoxia from the altitude, chills from the weather, and fatigue from the climbing.

Each morning, I've gone out for runs on flat courses. The last three days were distances of 6, 4, and 9 miles respectively. The degree of difficulty of these workouts hasn't been high; they've just been efforts to build up my mileage and get adjusted to the climate.

My afternoon runs have been when I've had my fun. My first day, Monday, I went up to Bear Peak trail. This is where Anton Krupicka, my favorite ultra-runner, makes his money. He runs up this 2000' peak about 300 times a year. I tried a fraction of his daily workout and was wiped. The trail was thickly wooded along a ridge that wound its way up this Flatiron. The run was short, but still got several hundred feet of climbing in. I look forward to taking my runs further up the mountain to increase my mileage.

Bear Peak, one of the Flatirons in Boulder

Tuesday afternoon, I ran with my sister's running group, the Running Republic of Boulder. This is an impressive collection of runner's, with several qualifiers for the Olympic trials and a coach with significant credentials. We did some good, hard intervals, and totaled 8 miles on the workout. My plan is to do speed workout with this group regularly on Saturdays. This will be an important part of my training to ensure my legs still have good turnover in them late in the White River 50.

Lastly, this afternoon (Wednesday), I went up Mt. Sanitas for some good climbing. The trail wasn't technical (it was mostly just a gravel road), but was a consistent and steady climb. It probably took me 20 minutes to run about 1.6 miles up and gain about 500' in elevation, but only about 10 minutes to get down. That was the most fun part; bombing the downhill with a controlled fall.

All in all, I've done about 34 miles through my first 3 days, and a large portion of that has been high quality. I'm happy with my start, and look forward to what I'll be able to do when I get use to the altitude.

Summer Training Camp in Boulder

Sooooo, I moved to Boulder for the next 10 weeks. I have this space of time between finishing graduate school and beginning my new job, so I figured "what the hell?, why not go up into the mountains and run a whole bunch so I can reward myself with a 50 mile race at the end of the Summer?" And that's exactly what I'm doing. And I plan on writing about it. A lot. So get ready.

Undie Run 1 Mile

Friday night I ran in only my second 1-mile distance race, a length I'm not trained for or accustomed to. Fortunately, I felt no nerves or self-consciousness because literally, everyone else was in their underwear.

The race, the Tulsa Area Trail & Ultra Runners Undie Run, is in its inaugural running, but has some big local sponsors behind it (mostly just popular bars). Thematically, everyone was supposed to come and run in nothing but their underwear. Conceptually this would be great it if the quantity of clothing was negatively correlated with physical fitness. However, this relationship didn't always (or rarely) held true. Anyways, still a fun atmosphere. The hope is it will become a big annual event in the city, and after experiencing it myself, I share that aspiration.

The attire ranged from 'crowd pleasing' to 'grimace inducing'. Some girls wore thongs which showed a little more jiggling than would be desired, while some guys had speedos, but had anything but a swimmers physique. Others were more creative and funny; the best was a 50 year old man in Care Bears footy pajamas.

The event started at 7 P.M. in a cloudy, muggy, but rainless twilight. The temperature sat comfortably at about 72 - warm enough to provoke a nice sheen of sweat, but not too hot to cause overheating in the few minutes of maximal exertion required to race one mile. First, there was the 'fun run', or more descriptively, the 'slow, drunk, underwear parade'. This drew at all types, mostly because they handed out Jello-shots at the 1/4 and 3/4 mile marks.

I decided last minute to 'run' this 'race' just as part of my warm-up. I'd be running during that time anyway to get ready for the 'competitive' race later, so I figured why not do it with the masses. I took the first 1/3 of a mile easy, but as I had planned on doing in my normal warm-ups, I then picked up my pace a little to get my legs prepared for the full mile spring I'd have about 25 minutes later. It didn't take long before I realized I had jetted past the entire field and had come upon the 'leaders'. It was at this point that I realized there really is no pride in winning a fun run, and I didn't want to look like the narcissistic jerk going all out. You know that scene in Billy Madison where Billy dominates in dodge ball? That's what I wanted to avoid. So, I dialed it back and hung with one or two other guys at the front, and finished the race for a good warm-up.

The competitive race was at 7:30. The field shrank considerably since the fun run to only about 60 people. However, since a big chunk of even these folks were already drunk, there was an abnormally high proportion of DNFs for a 1 mile race. Some of these drunks also thought it'd be fun to start at the front of the pack (which is very poor etiquette if you don't already know), but got sufficiently elbowed and pushed early on that I think they learned their lesson. Anyways, after only about 400m, the field thinned at appropriately.

(8 hours later)

OK, so I took a break from writing this post, and now I don't even really care about the details of the race anymore. So I'll just wrap it up and said I finished in about 5:40, which was good for 4th. fun night.

-John

Race Report - North Face Endurance Challenge - Bear Mountain 50 km

The Setup

The race was at Bear Mountain State Park, which is about 50 miles up the Hudson River from NYC. The park was massive, replete with heavily-wooded, mountainous ridges and a handful of small lakes and ponds. The weather was perfect too, sunny and in the low 50s at the 7 AM start. North Face also did a really good job of organizing and operating the event (this was just one of a series of 6 endurance challenges they do across the country each year). Even though there were maybe only ~700 people running all the races on Saturday (Marathon, 50k & 50m), they had a big, elaborate start/finish village with heat lamps, tents, food, and seating areas. Really just a well-run operation.

The course overall spent almost three-fourths of its length going up or down, and probably two-thirds on loose, sharp boulders in dry riverbeds. Perfect quad-bursting and ankle twisting-conditions. To set the scene, I'll just throw together a bunch of adjectives, ad-verbs, and descriptive clauses that I feel are appropriate and effective:

Rocky, climbing, mean, ankle-twisting, thorny, unsympathetic, deceiving, sharp, repetitive but not monotonous, falling, loose, narrow, dark, sunny, sloppy and muddy, crowded and sparse, isolating, and temperamental.

The First 10 Miles

Once the race started, about 250 of us set off. I tried to stay close to the back of the pack early to avoid the trap of getting caught up in the fast pace at the front. The first half mile was relatively benign, just some flat, smooth, double-wide trail, and I fell into the pace of the group at around 10 min/mile. After that, the fun started with the first prolonged up, then steep, hazardous down; each segment lasting about maybe a quarter to a half mile with one or two hundred feet in elevation change. That pattern pretty much repeated over and over for the first 10 miles, which took me about 1:50 to finish. Mentally, I was just trying to get through it with as little damage and fatigue as possible.

I also learned a lot very quickly in this early segment. Given my substantial inexperience in trail running, trail racing, and unfamiliarity with the course, my strategy coming in was very primitive and ill-informed. I basically had the expectation of power-hiking the uphills, and making up my ground on the downs and flats; and if I did that, then I should finish in about five hours. However, it was also a big risk that my strategy would get discarded on the trail like a used Gu-packet, as these strategies often are in the midst of competition. However, I stuck to it, which was easy to do since everyone else in the race seemed to be employing the same plan of attack. This lead me to my second key lesson about trail racing: play the course 'to par'. Like in golf I just wanted to cover each segment with the same efficiency as the average person. This made me feel a lot better about taking 10 minutes to get through a half mile in some nasty parts - I just reminded myself that I wasn't actually losing any ground to the field.

The Second 10 miles

The next 10 miles were a mix of some more ups and downs, but with a very nice, soft, and un-rocky flat-stretch of about 2 miles around mile 15. While this felt good on my feet and in my climbing/descending muscle groups, it actually broke my concentration. I have never done too much trail running, but I really benefited from the necessary concentration the trail commands to ensure you don't trip on a root or step sideways on a rock. Staying focused on the the 5 to 10 feet ahead of me made for a great distraction to not realize how tired I was getting or how much longer I'd have to work to finish. Hitting that flat, easy stretch freed up enough of my mental faculties and let my mind start drifting and realizing I was still only half-way down after about three hours.

Also at about this time, I caught up with another runner (the field had become pretty stretched out at this point, such that I usually had about fifty to a hundred yardss in either direction to the next runner), a guy named Kris who I ended up spending most of the next 15 miles with. This was a huge help for the both of us, as we each had somebody to be directly accountable to, and also to compete with. I was thinking 'no way am I going to drop behind and let him get ahead of me', and I'm sure he was thinking the same. Turns out we actually had a lot in common, and he provided me with a ton of experience, as this was the fourth time he'd run this race.

I've also got to mention how fantastic the aid stations were. All were well stocked, and staffed with very helpful people. Every time I came in to one, somebody took my water bottle from me, asked me what I was drinking, and filled it. I had my bottle back in my hand in no more than 15 seconds, full of fresh, cold water. I usually grabbed a small banana, some pretzels, and half a PBJ sandwich; shoved it all in my mouth; and was back out on the trail in no more than 2 minutes. The people who volunteer at these stations are doing God's work.

The Last 10.6 Miles

After I had 20 miles behind me (and four hours on the trail), it became much easier to start thinking about the end and pushing myself through - my mindset shifted from conserving energy to expending whatever I had left. The sun was also getting higher in sky, which started lifting the temperature a little and increasing the strain. Miles 20 to 25 were relatively benign (relative being a very important adjective in this context, as they still required a ton of climbing and steep descending).
The last 6 miles had a bit of a strange set-up, as there was an aid station around mile 25, then another one just about 2.5 miles later. The reason for this was the section of trail between these two points was referred to simply as "Hell". This consisted mainly of climbing and descending on two ridges, each several hundred feet high, each equally steep. Imagine climbing halfway up and down the rockiest parts of your favorite mountain, minus all the flat, runnable segments, and without all the 'safety precautions' installed by the parks department; then doing it again; and all after running 25 miles of an otherwise very difficult trail. At times, the description of 'death march' seemed like an appropriate appellation for that stretch of trail. The last descent was so treacherous due to its grade, abundance of jagged rocks, and complete absence of solid footing that they had two medics waiting at the bottom. This was also when my partner for the last dozen or so miles, Kris, separated himself from me. His experience clearly paid dividends on the descents, as he was able to pick his footing on the loose, sharp rocks much faster and more efficiently than I cared to attempt, given I don't have a reckless abandon for breaking my neck or dying alone in the forest. His performance during this section could best be described as a 'controlled fall', while mine was a 'reluctant tip-toe'.

Anyways, I got through that and to the next aid station, which was the beginning of the end. All that was left was a three mile 'victory lap', which seemed like a chip shot at that point. I felt so strong at this late stage, that I began worrying that maybe I hadn't gone out as hard as I could have. Regardless, I had a strong finish (except for the one root that I finally tripped on and completely crashed after about a dozen close calls earlier in the race), and crossed the finish line actually feeling a little fresh - six hours and twenty-eight minutes after I started.   

All-in-all, it was a fantastic morning. The weather was perfect, the trail really kept me in a focused state, and I was fortunate that my body was just ready and energetic on that day.

The Beginning of The End of The Beginning

Tomorrow I’m kicking off my summer racing season with the North Face Endurance Challenge Bear Mountain 50k. After that, I leave New York for good. I’ll spend the summer running the mountains around Boulder, CO; then compete in the White River 50 around Mt. Rainier in Washington. After that, it's down to Dallas, TX – where I’ll begin my post-graduate school career. The summer will be intense and challenging, and that’s exactly how I want it because once I reenter the professional world, I’m accepting that my growth stage, at least as a runner, is over. I’ll begin a new phase that will be less about ambition and more about realization. My running will change from an exercise in dreaming about what I could be to exploiting what I actually am.

Over the last 9 years, since I went from a pudgy high school senior to manic endurance runner, I’ve never been able to keep up with my ambitions. When I stepped on my first treadmill, I anxiously anticipated the day I could last more than 20 minutes. When I finished my first 10K, my thoughts immediately turned to the next hurdle: a 15k. Half Marathons followed, then eventually, the Marathon. Once I entered the ‘Ultra’ category, however, I felt satisfied. While there is still room for me to progress in terms of distance, I feel reasonably satisfied that my life won’t be incomplete if I never finish a 100 miler. Accomplishing myself at the 50 mile distance should be enough to tide my appetite.

Me and my Dad after my first organized race, the LMU 10k in April, 2003

After the White River 50 in late July, I’m hanging up the Ultra boots (at least for a while), to reprioritize and focus on my new job. If I can redirect the energy, sacrifice, and enthusiasm I’ve channeled into my running, I’m confident I’ll succeed just as much professionally as I have athletically. Without bogging one down with too many details, I won’t be able to approach my new career half-heartedly. That means no more obsessing about getting enough sleep before my next workout; no more distractions from my work responsibilities to obsess about my fitness and preparation; and more early mornings filled with emails instead of speed work. With less time and energy for my running, I doubt I’ll be able to train properly for a Half Marathon, let alone any Ultras. Never before have I willingly taken such a step backwards in my running career.

Running the Lost Dutchman Half Marathon in February, 2009

Instead, my racing and running will be defined by what is possible after I meet my other priorities; while in the past the converse has been true. Maybe I’ll refocus on 10Ks and 5Ks to build my speed, or maybe I’ll just run Halfs at a recreational pace. I don’t know the outcome now, but I do know things will change.

After the Niagara Falls International Marathon in November, 2010 - the start of a great Winter of racing

So now, I’m starting the beginning of the end of the first phase in my running lifetime. These last 9 years have been the opening act. I have no idea what will happen in the next phase, but there’s no utility in fretting about that now. Instead, I’m paying attention to running a good 50K tomorrow at Bear Mountain, which will give me a good expectation of what I’ll be capable of later in the Summer at the White River 50 Miler – the closing scene on the beginning of my life as a runner.

-John