Night Run

In the winter, when the days are short, I usually try to get my run in during the daylight hours, when it is sunny (I do after all live in Colorado) and warmer. When I do venture out after dark or, heaven forbid, before the sun comes up, I usually wear a headlamp. This is both so that I can see where I’m going (ever try running on a trail at night without a headlamp?) and so that others, namely cars, can see me.

Last night, I got out of work late because I had to take an electrical safety class. Since I did not get home until after dark, running during the day was not an option. For some reason, maybe because I planned to run on roads without any stretches on the trail, I also opted to leave my headlamp behind.

Somewhere around 2 miles into my run, I turned up a residential street (Kalmia west of Broadway, for those who know Boulder) and there was suddenly nobody but me anywhere around. The street lights were intermittent at best, and before long I found my focus narrowing, until there was nothing in the world but me, the sound of my footsteps, and a certain trust that the road would be there when I put my foot down.

If this were a book, I would start flying. My pace per mile would steadily drop until I was flying along at sub race pace. This is not a book, and I was taking it easy after a hard run the day before, but that’s not to say I didn’t feel like I was flying. Something about having your world shrunk to just you and your footsteps is incredibly freeing. I felt light, as though, at any moment, my feet would come down not on the road but on solid air, which would bear my weight and take me off into the sky.

That feeling was also fleeting. All too soon I took a left turn towards home, onto a busier road, and the illusion was shattered.

But the feeling is still there in the back of my mind. With any luck, and maybe some practice, I will some day get there in a race, and then we will truly see what I can do.

Flying High

It is now almost a full two months into 2012. Normally this time of year I am primarily skiing (Tele-style) and not running so much. This year is decidedly different. I have not gotten as much skiing in as I might have liked, but my running is going decidedly better than it usually has. In fact, my mileage and general fitness right now is better than it was in the weeks leading up to my Leadville race last summer.

I realize I keep coming back to that race, but it was my major goal last year, and a major milestone in my running over all. As they say, you never forget your first.

Several happenings in the past week or so have made me much more confident in my running (tracing a previous theme). My disastrous (results-wise) race last Wednesday was a big blow to my confidence. I began to wonder if I no longer had the focus and determination to race the way you have to in order to get a good result. I had pushed it hard up the first hill, feeling pretty good, but then eased off. A mile or so later, I found myself running easily through the woods, looking up at the stars. Then it hit me: I was running along easily in the middle of a 4k race! I managed to push it a bit from there on, but the damage was done and I came in 4 minutes after the winner, who also happens to be my training partner.

Obviously that was not the result I would wish for.

As I said, I wondered if my will to race, the will to push myself hard enough to get a good result, was gone. My answer to this question, decidedly a no, came on Tuesday.

On that day, I left from work at my normal time to head up Sanitas Valley. I decided on the warm-up run to the trailhead that I would push the valley, both up and down. The goal was just a bit of tempo to see how my legs were doing.

It felt good. I pushed the uphill at a reasonable tempo, though nothing more than half-marathon pace, and bombed the downhill, hitting a sub-five minute mile for the first time in several years. Even though it was on a downhill, I took it as a sign that I still have some turnover in my legs, if I just have some fun with my running.

On my way back through Eben G Fine park, I ran into the Boulder Trail Runners Tuesday Tempo Runners (TTR). A friend of mine from the local running community happened to be with them, and I decided to run their tempo portion with them. The tempo bit just so happened to be up and down Sanitas Valley, twice.

Unsure of whether I would do the whole workout, I took off with about 6 other runners up the trail, which up the valley more resembles a one-lane dirt road than a typical Boulder trail.  Having already done one stint up and down the valley, I started out a little slower than the rest, coming to the top a little under a minute after several of them, and turned to bomb the downhill.

I again hit a sub-five minute mile, this time throwing in a 2:15 800 for good measure. When I hit the bottom, I decided "to hell with it" and turned around to head back up. It was hard, and I didn't push as hard on the downhill this time, but I completed the tempo portion and ended up doing 12 miles for the day (6 up-tempo). This was definitely a confidence booster, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The other confidence boosting run (this week) was yesterday (Saturday). I generally take Saturday off, since it is the only day both my gf and I have off, but I had opted out on Friday to go for a short hike with said gf, so I went on Saturday morning instead. The plan was to go for about 5 miles easy. About halfway through, I glanced down at my watch to see that I was going (easily) at 6:45 pace, which is a good 45+ seconds faster than I generally consider my truly easy pace. And it felt comfortable. It felt like I could keep that up for ages without slowing.

Suffice to say that was a confidence boost as well.

Today's longish run was not so enjoyable. I headed up Flagstaff easily enough, hitting 23 minutes without ever pushing myself, then donned my microspikes and dropped over to Green. Green, though, was a mess of ice, with a steady, 20+ mph west wind making the ascent generally miserable. It also brought to my attention that it might be time to get new spikes (or to sharpen my old ones), since my current pair no longer grip very well in icy conditions.

The descent into Bear Canyon was a trail-hunting trial, as people had wandered seemingly all over the mountainside following what may have looked like a trail at some point. At this point, I decided Bear was out for the day, and headed down Bear Canyon back to Mesa. Bear Canyon, however, was ice the whole way down. Not flat ice, even, but ice full of frozen footprints from the people hiking during the warm spell yesterday. I was concerned enough that I was putting in 12 minute miles on the downhill.

Not a pleasant run, all told, but I was out there. And the entire way, I had this song stuck in my head.

Brief Update

As I said last post, I opted to take last week pretty easy. I dropped the mileage by 10m, but I threw a snowshoe race into the mix on Wednesday. This week I'm heading back up the mileage counter, and it is feeling pretty good so far. A Tuesday Tempo Run with the Boulder Trail Runners led to an unexpected 3 x tempo up and down Sanitas Valley, which has left me fairly tired tonight.

As for the race itself? Suffice to say, I was running along through the woods at Eldora, and it was feeling easy. Too easy. I went far to slowly, and realized when I finished that I could have easily done another lap at that pace.

So I did.

More to come soon.

Confidence Up or Down?

I recently started to read the book "Run" by Matt Fitzgerald. The basic idea is that the mind is a very powerful influence in running. Now, this simple fact will not come as any surprise to the average runner, since we all know that running takes more mental "guts" than anything else, but the extent to which this is true is astounding. And a growing amount of scientific research supports this.

But since I have not yet finished the book, I cannot yet give a full review. That will have to come later. Rather, this post is about two prime points from the book, and two examples from my running in the past week that I believe illustrate those points well. 

At the risk of changing the subject, I have always had a bit of a non-traditionalist take on training. I do not have the necessary obsession to compulsively plan out, and then track, my training. Instead, I tend to wing it. I rarely know exactly what type of workout, how fast or how long, I am going to run before I start running. Even once I start, I don't always know how things will turn out. Generally, I take it as it comes: if I feel like going fast, I go fast. If I feel like going long, I go long. The only runs I force are my easy runs, otherwise I will go too hard.

Of course, there is some planning in this as well. I know I have to take rest days now and then. I also know that in order to run truly long I have to schedule my long run on the weekend. More precisely I have to run on Sunday due to other scheduling issues. But for the most part, I take my training as it comes. The results of this, I have come to realize, are a passion for Fartleks and a propensity towards trail running. 

Back to the book, Fitzgerald recommends two metrics to rate your runs. The first is confidence: after each run, record whether that run increased or decreased your confidence in your overal fitness and ability to race whatever your goal is. Your brain knows how fit you are, because it directly controls the firing of your muscles, and receives feedback from them. Therefore, if your brain is telling you the workout is helping, it likely is. 

The second measure is enjoyment. Every runner knows that running is more fun when you are more fit. And if you enjoy running more, you're more likely to keep at it and get more fit. Therefore, rate your runs on an enjoyment scale. Fitzgerald recommends a simple three point scale. You can then easily track trends in how enjoyable certain types of runs tend to be, and tune your workouts accordingly. And if runs are consistently less than enjoyable, that's a good sign that you may be over-training and should cut back a bit. 

As examples , I think two of my runs from the past few days are telling. 

Last Friday I was a bit worried when I started out on my usual Friday tempo run to the top of Flagstaff mountain here in Boulder. I knew that, despite the shorter (distance) run on Sunday, I had run more volume that week than I was used to. I had upped my mileage by about 10% from the week before, and my legs could feel it. Despite this, I decided to head up Flagstaff from work and see if I could get in a good ascent any way.

To my surprise, I hit the lower slopes and I felt great. I kicked it into high gear and charged the 3 mile, 1500 foot ascent to the top. I will grant you that my legs were shaking, and I was gasping for air by the time I hit the summit road and tagged the post, but the entire run was more fun than I'd had running in a while. It was also a huge boost to me mentally after feeling a bit flat the day before running up Sanitas Valley. I am quite sure that I crushed my previous best time on Flagstaff, despite not having a watch on this run.

Sunday was a different matter entirely. I rolled out of bed, said goodbye to my girlfriend who had to head to work, and prepared to head out on a long run. 

And I kept preparing. 

It took me a good hour and a half after my GF left to get out the door and started on my run for the day. Even when I did, I never felt good. I had planned to head out from my door, to the summit of Flagstaff, over to Green Mountain, and back down again to hit a good 16+ miles for the day. Instead, my legs felt dead, and I considered bailing out before I even started up Flagstaff. I considered bailing again at the cutoff on Panorama, and yet again at Crown Rock. 

I pushed through the ascent of Flagstaff, however, but decided not to head up Green. Suffice to say that it was not a particularly enjoyable run. That said, I did gain a bit of confidence out of it since, even though I felt like I was running with legs consisting of bags of wet noodles, I powered through Flagstaff at the very least, and made it back to my house without ever going below a running cadence.

I think both these runs did quite a bit for me, training wise. Friday both gave me a good workout and a good benchmark for further progress. Sunday let me know that, even on a bad day, I can head out and run 10+ miles and 1500+ feet of vertical and, if not set any amazing times, at least power through it. Friday was enjoyable and increased my confidence, and Sunday at the least increased my confidence, and I think both types of runs are great for my overal fitness and training. 

I took my body's message to mean that I need to lower the volume this week and let my legs recover before continuing on my training regime. I also plan to mix in a bit of cross training in the form of a Cross Country Ski race on Wednesday. That said, last week was the most mileage I'd run in the 6 months since I had raced in Leadville, and that too is a big boost to my confidence. 

Bear and Mash

Ok, so it's a bit of a corny play on the British dish Bangers and Mash (which my sister incidentally had for dinner last night at the Hungry Toad here in Boulder), but that is basically what Bear Peak felt like on Sunday.

A little background: on Friday morning here in Boulder, we awoke to find about a foot of snow on the ground. The snow was not quite powder, nor was it quite wet. Over the course of that day we got an additional six inches of snow, with significantly more at the higher elevations. Eldora Resort got 31 inches over the course of the storm. The top of Bear Peak probably got two feet or so.

Sunday dawned, and naturally my friend Matt called up suggesting that we see how Bear is. Soon enough we met his friend Brian at Brian's house, and the five of us (dogs Diesel and Etna romping along) started out from Cragmoor Trailhead to head up Bear Peak.

Initially, the trail was pretty solid. A large number of people had been out on snowshoes already and packed down the trail for us, and we made decent time (sub 15 minutes/mile on snow-covered, uphill trails) until we came to the mouth of Fern Canyon. Here we started to get a glimpse of what it might be farther up on the peak. The snow, where it was in the shadows, was as Matt said "the consistency of mashed potatoes."

The first mile had taken us about 15 minutes. The second half mile took us about as long. We slowly made our way up Fern Canyon, hiking at least as much as we were running, and talking less and less as we got more out of breath. Still, we made it up to the saddle at about half an hour, with the help of sun-melted snow on the upper reaches of Fern Canyon. Not too bad a time given the conditions.

Nothing we had encountered up to this point, though, prepared us for what came next.  As we headed up the north ridge of Bear,  a stretch that reduces even the best runners to hiking in the summer,  the sun had no longer helped us by melting and firming up the snow. It did not matter that my microspikes bit into the snow when the snow underneath it constantly gave out and slid down the hill.  Much of the time we resorted to clawing up the ridge using our hands as much as our feet.

We topped out at just under an hour, and were met by astounding views of the Divide.

Still snowy and cloudy over the divide.

Looking out towards Longs, which is in the center of this picture. Trust me.

Matt and Brian, clearly feeling triumphant, celebrated reaching the top as runners will do: by making funny faces and plugging awesome products.

UD pretty much rocks. Gotta admit. 

I took a slightly less silly shot of myself, with a snowy Continental Divide in the background. I have to plug myself sometimes too.

The pack really wasn't necessary, but it was certainly useful, among other things, to hold the camera. 

Now, of course, since the dogs were whining (neither Diesel nor Etna is much of a climber) we got to the really fun part: heading down.

The nature of the snow made the descent a combination of fun and terrifying. Since there was so much of it, there was little danger of twisting your ankle or anything on a hidden rock. However, since there was very little way to control your descent, crashing headlong into a tree was a very real possibility. So we kept it semi under control while simultaneously hollering and sliding our way down the mountain. It took us 25 minutes on the ascent from the saddle and less than a third of that on the way down.

Fern was similarly entertaining, though with more running and rather less sliding down on our butts. When we hit the mouth of Fern Canyon, Brian took off for the cars while Matt and I headed off towards Mesa and Bear Canyon to get a few more miles in. I made a comment heading down Mesa that "we look like we're drunk!"

And it was true. It was impossible to tell until you put your foot down whether the snow would be compact or loose. And it made us stagger fully half the time. Coming down out of Bear Canyon, though, we saw another little butte in front of us, where somebody had evidently been skiing, and decided to get a few more feet of elevation in. It was a good thing, or we would not have gotten some of the better shots of the day.

A snowy vision of the Flatirons, from a vantage point I had never been to before. 

Bear Peak, a couple thousand feet from where we were. 

The route back to the car from this Butte was somewhat unclear. A little bushwhacking down the slope, followed by some creative trailfinding, left us trudging along a fence line toward the trailhead, marking the first time I think Matt and I had walked from sheer fatigue rather than slope in all the time we've been running together.

All in all, a run of slightly over 5 miles took us almost two full hours to complete. It was a gorgeous day, and one I won't soon forget, but I think my comment at the end best sums it up:

"I feel like I just got back from two hours of doing leg presses at the gym, instead of from a run."

Legs Are Thrashed, And a Few Changes

My legs are thrashed.

After the race on Saturday, because of my stomach issues during said race, my legs were not as tired as I expected them to be. On the one hand, this says quite a bit about my improved fitness over the past month or so (happy February!). On the other, this encouraged me to do a long, more difficult run on Sunday.

For some time, I have been meaning to try the classic Boulder run heading from Eldorado Springs, up through Eldorado Canyon, and around Walker Ranch. Done properly, this is a 18.5 mile run with a significant amount of elevation tossed into the mix. I knew there were others from the Boulder Trail Runners doing the same run on Sunday, but got a later start, and so was hoping to run into them out on the trail.

The first half went well enough. I had traversed this area before, during the Rattlesnake Ramble race this past fall (I took 13rh place, and hope to do better if I run it again next year) and so was comfortable with the fully expected elevation gain on Eldorado Canyon trail. What I was not prepared for, however, was the distance from the edge of Eldorado State Park to the Walker Ranch loop. I was also not prepared for my left ankle flaring up.

It's hard to see, but there's a train working its way up towards the Moffat Tunnel. The engines are at the center.

According to signs, it is 3.5 miles from the edge of Eldo State Park to the junction with Walker Ranch. My GPS said 2.5, but it's still a ways with a bit of vertical. However, despite the race the day before, my legs were feeling strong on the uphills, and I briefly gave thought heading up the West Ridge of Bear Peak and heading back towards the car that way rather than heading back the way I had come.

The downhill was my downfall, however. My left ankle, which I tweaked heading down Flagstaff a few weeks ago and had aggravated in the race the day before, started acting up, and I realized that even doing the full Walker Ranch loop was out of the question, let alone heading up Bear Peak from the west.

Coming back down through Eldorado
 State Park

Even turning around a mile into the Walker Ranch loop, my ankle started affecting my running about halfway back to the trail head. I noticeably slowed during this portion of the run, and was at a particularly low point mentally. I did not particularly care that I had to make it to my car one way or the other, I wanted to stop and call it a day.

Needless to say, I got through it, and even somewhat enjoyed the last bits of my run. But come the next morning,  I realized just how tired my legs were, and that there was no way that I was going to get a run in that day.

That said, I am actually quite glad I put in the 14 or so miles on Sunday. It was good preparation for the bad portion that often comes in races. And doing a long run the day after a race is great preparation for running while fatigued, which is also quite likely going to happen in some of the races I have on my radar this year.

That said, I have realized that I need to make a change or two in my training. First, and this was already planned, I need to push my long runs out further. The 14 I ran the last two weekends are a good start, but I need to push those out to 20 before long. I also think I need to up my overall mileage over what I did to prepare for the marathon last year. Finally, I need to work on my core strength. I believe that, along with the Gu issue, a somewhat weak core might be responsible for the stomach problems I had on Saturday, and felt creeping up again tonight when upped the pace a bit. So I will institute a core strengthening regimen (starting as soon as I finish this entry).

Finally, those of you who have readi this blog for a while might start noticing a few changes soon. I hope you'll appreciate them. I trust they will be welcome.