Redrum: Estes Park Half Marathon 2014

Redrum. That was what I thought at mile 11 when we were running by the Stanley Hotel, where the movie The Shining was filmed.

At that moment, I felt like I was going to puke something that looked like red rum.

I ran the Estes Park Half Marathon this morning as a hard training run. Might as well have been a race, except I wasn't thinking about competing. The effort was close to what I'd do in a race, except my legs are dead at the end of an 80 mile week.

The race started at 6:20 so I woke up at zombie o'clock and dragged myself out of bed. I was so tired, didn't want to wake up. But I got my act together by 4:15 and drove up the canyon to Estes Park in the darkness. It was just getting light when I arrived.

As the sun rose it looked like it would be a perfect day, it was calm, with a few clouds, and cool. In past years it always seemed to get hot in the marathon by about halfway through.

I told Wheaties Boy the other day that I would happy with a sub-2 hour effort at the half marathon. This race is TOUGH. The fact that it starts at 7500 feet and tops out at 7900 feet, with lots of hills in between, is enough. The temperatures were perfect, it was about 50 degrees, but there was a stiff headwind for about 4 miles on the downhill section in the second half, which made running the downhill part a bit more difficult.

I was doing this run more for my head than my body, even though it is a hard training run. Since I rarely train above 7000 feet, I don't generally run well at altitude anymore. I want to be able to carry a 9 minute pace easily, for hours, as part of my ultra training, but a 9 minute pace at this altitude, on this course, would be a challenge.

I was hitting 8:30 to 9:30 pace consistently, with one 7:54 and a 10 minute mile or two. I knew the effort was hard because I felt nauseated the whole time, which is typical for me when I make any kind of effort at altitude. The best I ever did at this marathon was a 4:12, in 2007, and I ran well that year in all of my other races. I've never done the half before.

The course climbs consistently from about mile 4 through 7, then there's a fairly steady downhill until mile 11 that's broken up by a few steep little uphill pitches. I was fighting that headwind and my splits were down in the 8 minute range but it was so hard.

I was working too hard to want to try a gel. It probably would have helped. I stuck to water. I carried my pack with a full water bottle and a couple of gels so I wouldn't have to stop at the aid stations. That turned out to be a good plan because every time I got to an aid station table, there were a lot of people and it was crowded.

It was interesting and somewhat entertaining to be running a distance that I rarely do anymore. I noticed a lot of funny things watching the runners. Lots of those multi-bottle waist packs, lots of compression socks, lots of camelbacks and running vest-packs. Looked like these people were out for a long day in the woods, like they packed a lunch and then some. But they were doing a road race that might take them 2 or 3 hours. Just interesting to see what people think they need for this distance. There were aid stations nearly every mile.

I ate a big breakfast at 4 am, but it was long gone and when I finished I was starving. When I got to 11 miles, we run by the Stanley hotel and I was to the point of taking deep sighs and wishing for it to over. So as we ran past the Stanley, I was thinking about how I felt like death, like redrum spelled backwards (for anyone who never saw or read The Shining). I looked at my watch at 11 miles and it was 1:39 something. Oh shit. I better push hard to get in under 2.

The last two miles of the race go on a fairly flat bike path until the last half mile, which is a steady climb up to the high school track. You finish with about 3/4 of a lap on the track. I felt a little better on the flats and picked it up, passing a lot of people. But I couldn't turn my legs over much faster, I know I would have been on the side of the path puking then. I just wanted to be done. My watch time was 1:57:29, and the chip time was a second or two off of that. My last 5K split was sub-27 minutes.

I checked the results as soon as they were posted, while I ate a breakfast burrito inside the school and stayed warm. A storm was moving in, which made me even happier that I wasn't in the marathon. When I saw the results, I noticed that 1:57:29 puts me at an 8:59 average pace. Awesome! Sub-9!

I also saw that I placed third in my age group, and the two women ahead of me were only ahead by 2 and 4 minutes. I decided not to stick around for awards, I wanted to get home and eat and sleep!

I drove back down the canyon and I realized it was the first time I've been on highway 34 since the flood last fall. I could not believe the devastation, of the river banks, boulders, trees, houses, and bridges, especially in the area around Drake. There was this one area that was completely leveled, and in the river there were still large pieces of debris in a few spots: washed out bridges, pieces of houses, furniture, pieces of cars, and other large objects that have still not been recovered. Lots of buildings with half the foundation gone, sticking out over the edge of the riverbanks, with signs all over the front entrances, driveways and windows.

It's a cool day here in the Fort and I needed some food so I made some pancakes and now I'm about ready for a nap. Tomorrow starts another week. That was so much fun this morning, I'm considering running a 10K next weekend if I can find one. Don't know where this wild hair came from!

Overflowing...

I have so much on my mind, it's hard to hold my tongue, it's overflowing!

The past few days have been busy and full. I'm trying to prepare for an hour-long radio show next week, and I got a new client last week, and then got a call from a former patient yesterday who wants me to come work with her. I met with an advertising rep from a paper in a nearby town, and I'm staying on top of things, but the pace has increased.

Working with clients has been rewarding and satisfying beyond description. I loved working with patients at the hospital but you were so limited in what you could do or say. There wasn't enough time to give them. Now I can spend the time, and give them the attention I always wanted to.

When I got the call from my former patient, it was this feeling of gratitude that came over me, I felt like melting into the ground. I happened to really like working with this person and I felt like I'd just been handed a gift. To be able to help someone in ways that they never can be helped in traditional health care.

It was a strange coincidence, maybe, that the same day I got the call from the former patient, I also ran into one of my former co-workers, and was contacted by another former co-worker on Facebook. I was out running and saw one of the nurses I used to work closely with. We spent a lot of time talking and catching up, and whenever I hear from people I used to work with, they say things haven't gotten better. They look tired, spent, and are looking for ways out.

It's so sad. I think it's sad that in our rush to implement the ACA we've allowed the new health care model to be a wholly profit-centered big corporate one, where the people calling the shots have no idea about what it's like to work directly with patients as a health care provider. Fits right under the armpit of our oligarchy. I have a lot to say about that, as you already know if you've followed this blog for any length of time.

And I am writing about it...and will be putting quite a bit of time into that project before long.

Which reminds me, this cartoon from this tweet by @MalwareTechBlog cracked me up this morning!

Ran with Wheaties Boy at the cemetery this morning. I ran as hard as I could but only got into the 7:20s for my miles. My legs are still tired, but at least I was consistent and I did them. I will have improvement in the coming weeks. I feel better this week but my legs are still sluggish. The half-marathon on Sunday should be interesting. I am so glad I didn't sign up for the full marathon. I will end up with between 75 and 80 miles this week.

Last night I made a pizza at home on my travertine tile in the oven. It was for sure the best pizza I have ever made, thanks to the tile. It works the same as a pizza stone. You have to use an unglazed tile. I need to get motivated to post the recipe on Bitchen Swill. I got the ingredient ideas from Whole Foods but I did it differently than they do.

A few weeks ago I was starving and walked into Whole Foods (generally a verybad idea) but they had these different pizzas, and I tried a couple, and this one was amazing. It was a barbecue sauce base with barbecue beef brisket and pineapple, some hot peppers, and I can't remember what else. But I decided I needed to make it for Dennis. I used fresh mozzarella cheese, cilantro, red onion, and tabasco in addition to all those things and of course my own pizza dough recipe, which worked out much better on the tile.

For our anniversary I asked for a pizza stone- or something like it, and a tile is a lot less expensive. Even though I do shop at Whole Foods on occasion, I don't like to pay more for something than I can get at a much more reasonable price. When I found out you can use an unglazed tile as a pizza stone that's what I asked for, on one of Dennis's trips to Home Depot. Where else can you get your wife an anniversary present for a couple of bucks?

The one thing I've had to push back is writing. I really want to work on my writing project and all these other things are priorities right now, but I have one more presentation in mid-July to prepare for, and it won't take too long, but as soon as the radio show is done I will have more time to focus on the writing. I have so much I want to say, things that want to spill out of my brain constantly and I've been making notes and the notes are piling up and taking over! So much to say...

A Visit From SpongeBob

No I wasn't still hallucinating from some anesthetic from the colonoscopy.

I walked outside this afternoon, I'd been mesmerized by the computer for hours, working on some promotional stuff, so my eyes were a bit glazed over. There was something yellow stuck under my windshield wipers.

Felix!!!

Felix is back from his trip to China, and SpongeBob followed him.

It was a bamboo SpongeBob, something soft and absorbent that I could use to clean my car.

Felix acquired the curse of SpongeBob in the Owens Valley late one night in July of 2011. SpongeBob jumped out of the shadows in the desert and he never left. He stalks Felix everywhere, halfway around the earth.

As soon as I was sure I wasn't hallucinating, I sent Felix a message on Facebook to see if he had anything to do with this...

I've been feeling pretty good today, though Thursday, which was the day after, I wasn't so sure. I'm not sure if I got so dehydrated that I felt funny, but I did try to run Thursday and after about a tenth of a mile I gave it up. I didn't feel right. So I walked, did about 5 miles of walking, and that was good. I felt like I needed to catch up on fluids more than anything. I ate a lot, too, and felt better after I ate.

Even a colonoscopy is an adventure.

This morning I went out for a run and felt so good I decided to push the pace for about 30 minutes of it. Ended up running under 8 minute pace without pushing too hard. I got a little over 12 miles today. Next week it's back to the cemetery with Wheaties Boy for mile repeats.

I signed up for the Estes Park Half Marathon today. Finally, after all these years of running that damn marathon and suffering, I got wise. I will get a good hard training run without it killing me.

I'll run hills tomorrow at Horsetooth and get some easy miles in over the weekend, and then Monday, as Wheaties Boy would say, shit gets serious.

At least this time I won't have to drink the mag citrate!