iCPR

I am so looking forward to fall. We got some cool wet weather this weekend. My friends Steph, Dale, and Pat & Karen all met here at our house to drop off a car while they all head up to South Dakota for the weekend, Dale is running the Lean Horse 100 and the others are crewing him. It's dark in the morning at 6 am and the days are not getting quite as hot. I love this time of year, when you start to feel fall coming, when it's no longer just a subtle sense that things have changed, like it is at the end of July.

If I didn't need to get caught up on things, I would have gone back up there this weekend to hang out. But I'm working on a revised marketing plan for my business, and getting things together for some classes I'm teaching and a cancer support group I'll be leading in the fall and winter.

My old reliable running watch finally croaked the other day. It crossed my mind a few months back that it's been a long time since I got my watch, and I wondered if I might have to replace the battery sometime soon. It was working fine, so I forgot all about it. And then suddenly, the other day, it went berserk on me.

Started flashing and doing this high-pitched beeping thing, and then it went into a loud, screeching monotone. I couldn't get it to shut up so I buried it. The back of the case looked weird, maybe it finally suffocated from all the dried sweat and peeling skin that it suffers through every day.

I think it went into V Tach and then maybe deteriorated into PEA. Compressions wouldn't help, I didn't have an AED or epinephrine, and I finally pronounced it dead.

I thought about maybe replacing it with a Garmin but decided against it. So I went over to Target and bough another, later, version of the same watch. It's the Timex Ironman. Simple. No GPS, no frills.

So then this morning I went for a run after loading a bunch of new songs on my iPod last night. I added all kinds of stuff, from the 70s through the 90s, everything from Earth Wind & Fire and Marvin Gaye to Queen. Rolling Stones to Red Hot Chili Peppers to REM. Anything that would give me some variety to get through the night in Cleveland.

I ran 10 miles listening to my tunes, mostly easy but threw in 30 solid minutes of tempo pace, between 7:50 and 8:20. Felt damn good, even though I could tell my legs are still tired. I got home and started doing some chores and at one point went to check my phone and it was dead. I couldn't believe that in two days I could lose two gadgets. I thought maybe I got some moisture in the phone, or maybe there was some S Cap powder that clogged up the buttons. I tried blowing air on it and scrubbing with a dry toothbrush. Nothing.

Other than trying chest compressions, injecting it with epi, or finding an AED, there wasn't much I could do. Damn, I'm not even tapering yet. I guess if the Taper Worm wants to attack my gadgets, that's better than attacking me.

Time to head over to the phone store and see what they had. I had the iPhone 4, so now I upgraded to the iPhone 5s. A chunk of cash I didn't want to spend, but a necessity. None of the chargers, including my juice pack, work on the new phone, so I had to replace all that too. Very smart, Apple. You know how to get the consumer.

The dead legs problem has continued, but I talked with Wheaties Boy yesterday morning. I knew he would have some good advice. He told me what I would tell someone else, if they were asking me for advice. But it's hard to tell yourself the same thing, so it was a good call to ask Wheaties Boy.

He advised me to back off, that there isn't much I can do to improve fitness at this point, but there is a lot I could do to make myself more tired. He recommended some tempo runs but not too long. No more long runs, nothing over about 15-20 miles.

Wednesday I ran 14 miles mostly with Cat, and I felt okay but my legs still feel stale. I took Thursday off, and for Friday I was thinking 10 miles or so but Wheaties Boy said, how about 3 to 5?

Friday I ran just 3 miles. Then this morning, when I went out for 10 miles with short tempo, I did feel better.

On Wednesday while I ran with Cat I was doing a test of different foot goo materials from samples John Vonhof had sent me. At Badwater I asked him about my concerns for Cleveland, since I'm not used to running in wet conditions, and if it is wet, how I can prepare my feet so I don't run into issues with blisters and maceration. September is supposed to be the rainiest month in Cleveland.

John sent me a box with 5 different products, a couple of which are prototypes for developing products, not on the market yet. I tested them on different parts of my feet and kept my feet soaked the whole time I was running, plus for a few extra hours afterwards as I walked around doing things. I found two products that worked best for me, and I sent the package of samples and paperwork back to John. It's great to be able to try this stuff. Something called RunGoo, that is already available, worked best, my wet feet stayed dry in those areas and there was no shriveling like a prune.

I am starting to get excited about Cleveland. After feeling better this morning, and running with my new tunes, even more so. I stopped off and got a box of salted caramel Gu. I just need to get some of the high caffeine crack and I'll be set with gels.

New Beer Report: New Belgium's seasonal Tour de Fall Pale Ale. Reminds me of a cross between Fat Tire and a hoppy pale ale. It's good. It's darker than I expected. Good flavor.

And I have been diligently stretching and doing strengthening exercises for my hips, and I think it's paying off. I can already tell I'm going up and down the stairs with more ease. I can only hope to approach Isabelle's flexibility. She moves so easily, it's like she has octopus legs.

It's not quite taper time, I still plan to get a few miles in next week, but I am to the point where I can start tapping my feet. Less than a month away!

Loaded Rocket!

It's recovery week, and things are going well. I still have some residual soreness in my left hip and the inner side of my right knee, which I presume are from the track curves. Each day they've gotten better. Today I hardly notice the hip. It's the knee that I can still feel.

The swelling is gone and I can see tendons in my feet again, my ankles and knees are back to normal size, and my appetite has settled down some, after a major sushi binge Tuesday night.

I've been taking naps and getting some good sleep and I feel like I'm mostly recovered already. I'll find out the truth as soon as I try to run fast again, that should be interesting.

Having these few days off with nothing urgent to do has been great, it's given me a chance to kick back and think about what I want to do the rest of the year with my running. I'm full of ideas today, but I have a plan that should work well.

I took Rocket for a run this afternoon, my first run since the race. I only ran about a mile with it, in the heat of the afternoon, 83 degrees or so. I put a big cooler in with tons of full water bottles in there, and it was heavy. It's comfortable and it feels fine, both pushing and pulling. Dennis ordered a bigger wheel for the front, so we're waiting on that to make the adjustment, and then Ed and I will have to take it for a test run. I'll do a few miles each day and build up slowly, I think getting about 20 miles max with that thing is all I need.

The other thing I need to add to my training now is heat. I'm going to add a couple of visits to the sauna each week from now until Double Mick, and continue some of that all the way to Lean Horse. If we have a hot summer I won't have to spend much time in the sauna, I'd rather be out running in the heat. But it's there if I need it.

I rode the Surly 10 miles yesterday and 20 miles today, easy, and I feel pretty good. My butt got sore from the seat, since I haven't been riding the bike. I'll have to get used to that again. It feels good to ride, I'm going to do a lot more of that this summer than in the past.

I go back to work tomorrow, just for one day, which is an extra shift I picked up for someone. If I didn't, it would have been a full 2 weeks off, but this just means less vacation time I have to use, which is fine with me. I feel like I got enough of a break from work that I am ready to go back. I have this weekend off, then I have a weird schedule for the next two weeks, work a day, have 2 off, work another day, 2 more off, etc. As of Memorial Day weekend I'll be back on my normal schedule, just in time to go away in mid-June for the Double Mick.

This weekend is Nick's Quad Rock 25 & 50 mile race, unless I find some other pressing thing to do, I will go up to the park and cheer for the people I know who are running. I hope the race goes well and becomes a popular one. It's a great course, and I'm hoping it gets some media coverage too. If it doesn't get local coverage, I'll put it in my running column at the end of the month.

I just found out about a new race, the Equinox Half Marathon, this fall in Fort Collins. I'm going to sign up. It's September 23rd and it runs down the Poudre Canyon, like the Colorado Marathon, but from Mishawaka to Ted's Place. Lisa Sinclair is organizing it and she's got her act together. I don't run too many local races these days but I think this one will be good, even in the first year.

I need to find a few short races this summer, anything from about 20K to 30K, to use as fast training runs. That will be one of them. I'll have to find something in July, August, and October too. Maybe a marathon in early October. As soon as I get my August schedule and am sure I have the time off in the end of August, I'm signing up for the Lean Horse Hundred. And the same with the race in Oklahoma, 24 The Hard Way, I'm going to do a 12 hour there.

And I saw on Nick's blog that he made it up Longs Peak last week, so that's on my list soon- I want to at least run to the Boulderfield. Most of the trail isn't too rocky until you get up higher. I can test out my ankle up there with a good high altitude run. I'll try to do that before Memorial Day- when the crowds come back. I used to run a double Boulderfield or a triple Twin Sisters once a week years ago, it was a staple of my training when I used to run Leadville.

I don't enjoy the drive to Estes Park so much anymore, but I'd like to get back to doing those trails, at least once in a while. I don't spend enough time in the mountains anymore, since I spent so much time doing heat and road training the past several years. Now that trails are an option again, I can look forward to more variety this summer.

Nirvana at Night: Lean Horse 100

Final score: Argyle Road 100, Alene's feet -4 toenails in overtime, 28 hours, 22 minutes.

I had to run the Lean Horse 100. It's inexpensive, it's close to home, it has the same climate and terrain as Fort Collins, I know a lot of the runners who were there, the time of year is perfect, and I needed a training run for Across the Years. Mission Accomplished.

By the time I reached the finish line twenty-eight hours and twenty-two minutes later, my feet had been screaming expletives at me with every step since about mile 80. Ask my feet if they needed it.

But the real outcome of this race was that I was once again reminded of why I do ultras, despite the temporary pain like sore feet. Running through the trees and scenery of the Black Hills, and through the moonlight at night, is the ultimate high. And the Mickelson Trail is the perfect place to do that.

Overall it was a fun time and everything you could want in a 100 miler was there. It wasn't my best race, not by far, but it was one of those gems, low-key, easy on the budget, great scenery, nice course.

Holley Lange from Fort Collins was running the 100, and Doug and Marji Nash were coming up to help both of us. The plan was for Doug and Marji to crew for me from the 16 mile point until about halfway when Doug would begin pacing Holley, and Marji would crew for me throughout the night.

The way things worked out, Holley ended up having muscle problems that resulted in a painful 45 degree lean, and at about halfway she decided it was enough, a wise decision. Marji gave Doug and Holley a ride back to Custer, where Holley found a ride back to Hot Springs so she could go back to her motel room. Doug ended up crewing with Marji all night and then he paced me down the last 16 mile Argyle Road stretch in the morning.

Another nice thing about Lean Horse is the reasonable 6 am start time. It's always great to get a decent night's sleep before the race. I need that.

I appreciate so much that Jerry, the race director, kept the pre-race briefing short and to the point. It lasted no more than about 20 minutes. There is nothing worse than pre-race events that go on for hours when all you want to do is eat and finish preparing for the long day ahead.

The pre-race dinner was a little disappointing, but it is a low key event. They had only hamburgers, bratwurst, and potato salad loaded with mayonnaise. None of those things are appealing to me anyway, but especially not the night before a race. I choked down a dry hamburger and then walked across the street to the grocery store and bought a couple of frozen pasta dinners to heat up in my motel room microwave. Ugh.

Hot Springs doesn't have much for restaurants, there was a Pizza Hut, a Subway, a Dairy Queen, and a few little mom & pop places.

I saw a lot of runners I knew at this race, and I met a few for the first time. I saw Badwater/Across the Years runners Dan, Jamie, and Dave. Pat and Karen were there, along with Steph, my super alpha crew chief at Badwater. Karen was running and Pat and Steph were crewing for her.

I also saw Brad, who reads my blog and was running his first 100 at Lean Horse. He ended up having an outrageously great race, finished 5th overall in about 20 ours. Way to go Brad! Congratulations! I saw him around halfway during the race and he had his son with him, and he looked fantastic. Mike from Fort Collins finished 3rd, and I haven't met him yet, but congratulations.

I met Fuzz from Oregon for the first time, whom I know only from the ultra list. I met Bob, who was paced by my friend Cat at this year's Grand Mesa 100. And I met Ray.

I first met Ray around 15 miles on the Argyle Road, he was chasing butterflies. I threatened him. I said if you're not careful, you'll end up in my blog as "The Butterfly Man". But I had several conversations with Ray during the race as we leapfrogged each other. Turns out Ray has not only had a lifelong interest in butterflies, but more recently has developed an interest in tree farming.

We talked about trees from our respective parts of the country, the Southwest and Pacific Northwest. Ray has a tree farm on Vashon Island in Washington, on family property. You never know what conversations you might have with other runners in these events. Meeting Ray was one of the highlights of my race, because it's always fun to talk about mutual interests and things you would never imagine talking about during a 100 mile race.



It was a great day. The weekend before the race it had been 100 degrees in Hot Springs, the day before the race it was 101 degrees, and on race day we had cloud cover for the first two hours and the temperature never got much above 90 degrees even on the hottest part of the course. It rained in the evening and cooled things down.

The only glitch I noticed in the whole race was in the morning, 10 miles in, at the Morph aid station. About a dozen of us showed up there at the same time. No crews are allowed on the first 16 mile stretch which includes the Argyle Road. It was already getting hot and the aid station had no ice, which was concerning. All they had was warm powerade and warm water. They were out of water in their coolers and were refilling them as we all stood there. They seemed a little unprepared.

Other than that the aid stations were great, the volunteers were helpful and enthusiastic throughout the course.

I started out with a plan: I wanted to see if I could finish under 26 hours by pacing myself to go to halfway in 12 hours. I got to 25 miles in 5:52 and 50 miles in 12:05. Might have been a little too fast given the heat of the day. If it was a good day, and all went well, I know I could have done 26 or better. It was a little hotter than I anticipated, but I could have avoided some of the suffering by planning a little better.

The lessons will be repeated until they are learned. It was warm, and I didn't cover myself from the sun with my jacket during the heat of the day, which might have contributed to my lack of appetite. I did wear tons of ice on my neck and my hat and sunscreen, but the clouds make you think it's not as sunny and hot as it really is. I ate two sandwiches in the morning but all afternoon I struggled with taking in calories, it was just too hot to be interested in food. As a result, I was playing catch up with my blood sugar for most of the second half of the race.

My hydration was perfect, I did my usual ice topped with gatorade and a salt stick capsule in each bottle until night time when I started getting sodium from the chicken broth in the soup at the aid stations.


The one thing different about this race was that I never slept. Usually I take a nap, but I never reached that weaving, inefficient place where I am dead on my feet. I was drinking Starbucks frappucino and double shot drinks from about mile 50 on for my main source of calories. Liquid was the only thing I could deal with in the second half. I ate a lot of shot blocks too.




Around halfway I had grabbed a baggie full of cantaloupe and strawberries from my cooler and then picked up a banana at the aid station. After eating all that fruit I felt nauseated from about mile 50 to 60. It eventually passed but I couldn't deal with solid food anymore.

The middle section of the course was beautiful, between Custer and Hill City. Also there was a view from the trail of the Crazy Horse memorial.


One thing I noticed during the heat of the day were the signs warning of rattlesnakes along the side of the trail. I also saw a "Danger Buffalo" sign. I thought of this on the way back in, in the evening because it would be warm, but the rain kept the critters away.





During the night I saw the horse poop, a few times there were stepped-on road apples that looked like tarantulas, and the crickets in the grass sounded like rattlesnakes. But I swear I wasn't hallucinating.

I completely enjoyed the course, especially the part at night, going down the trail in the darkness, only with moonlight and stars in between the dark spaces of clouds, the big black shadows of ponderosa pines, smelling the trees and rain, seeing the moonlit meadows and beaver ponds, and listening to trance music on my MP3 player as I powerwalked the Mickelson trail.

I think it was nirvana, or heaven, or something, from about mile 55 through 75 in the darkness. I didn't use my lights hardly at all, and I reached that place that is why I do ultras. That feeling of being out there under the stars, moving forward, with music, like a dance. It doesn't get any better than that.

I did try sleeping at mile 80 at the Lime Kiln road aid station, but after climbing in the back of Doug and Marji's Ford Explorer, five minutes passed and I realized I wasn't going to sleep, so I got up and went on.

It did rain off and on at night but only enough to cool things down, never enough to get soaked or have to put on heavy rain gear. It also cut down on the dust on the Argyle Road the next morning.

What I didn't count on was the impact the Argyle Road would have on my pavement trained, dirt and rock-naive feet. I've been training almost exclusively on pavement for the past year, since my sprained ankle mishap last August. I did do a few Rock Repeat runs on the dirt road, which helped for the hills. My muscles and joints felt good and I am not sore anywhere except for my feet.

Since Doug wasn't pacing Holley as we planned, I asked him if he'd like to pace me down the Argyle Road starting at mile 83. It was a good thing because my feet started hurting around mile 80 and once we made the transition from the soft Mickelson Trail surface to the gravelly, hard-packed dirt of the Argyle Road, it was excruciating.

Every time we made the transition from going uphill to downhill and then back up again, cresting a hill and bottoming out on the endless repetitive hills of that road, the muscles and tendons on the front of my lower shins, and the surface of my feet, were screaming. The pain only compared with my foot pain at Badwater.

The bottoms of my feet felt like I jumped up and down with my full body weight, plus a couple of 50 pound dumbbells, on top of spikes for 28 hours. Every step was painful, and I wasn't the only one suffering. I had gaiters and my shoes stayed gravel-free, enough that I never had to take off my shoes.

Going down the Argyle road in the morning, there were several runners who were having to dump out their shoes and then deal with the nearly impossible task of getting them back on, and getting started again. I tried not to stop at all once we hit the Argyle Road.

At the Morph aid station at 90 miles I saw Fuzz. His eyes were wide open and he was drinking a beer! He offered it to me, but I said no. Soon he came flying by me and finished about an hour ahead of me.















It warmed up in the morning, but I was hurting too much to notice the heat. I couldn't manage running very well even when I reached the finish line. I could not wait to get off my feet.




By the end I had a huge blood blister on my left heel, a smaller one on my left big toe, a few little friction blisters on top of my toes, heat rash, and a hugely swollen left ankle. I had taped my right foot because of my peroneal tendon which has been bothering me, and my right foot looked 1000 percent better than my left foot. I should have taped both feet.

I am also going to lose 4 toenails. Less weight to carry.

Doug and Marji were a fantastic crew, and I was so glad they were out there. We sat there at a table in the post-race party, and Fuzz joined us, there was more leftover food from the pre-race dinner. Even as hungry as I was, I couldn't stomach the two day old bratwurst they were serving. I got some fruit and my belt buckle, said goodbye to people, and went back to the room to put my feet up while Doug and Marji unloaded my stuff into my car.




I got my training run for Across the Years. I plan to take it easy in September and then hit it hard again throughout the fall into Across the Years. As much as my feet hurt from Lean Horse, I imagine I'll be back, it's too convenient and close to home to not run this race.

Sunday I took a long nap in the afternoon. After that I went for a short drive around sunset to Wind Cave National Park and the wildlife are amazing. I saw buffalo, antelope, deer, elk, wild turkeys, and beautiful views of the Black Hills.













Monday morning I drove home to Fort Collins, and now I can start paying back the sleep bank and resting my feet before I go back to work Wednesday!

Sunflowers

Sunflowers bloom in late summer, when the days are getting shorter and the air feels cooler than before, just enough to notice.

Sunflowers always remind me of driving through the Navajo reservation in northern Arizona, following slow red Ford pickups down the road, beer bottles propped on fenceposts, and turkey vultures swooping down on roadkill. I can see big fluffy white clouds in a huge blue sky over pine-dotted bluffs with the sun coming down at enough of an angle that it can't be mid-summer anymore. And the highway shoulder lined with tall sunflowers for miles.

August always feels like it's time for a road trip south. This time I'm going north.

Next weekend I'm running the Lean Horse Hundred, a 100 mile race that starts and finishes in Hot Springs, South Dakota and about 2/3 of the race is on the Mickelson Trail through the Black Hills.

The ponderosa pines of the Black Hills also remind me of northern Arizona, around Flagstaff, where I went to school. The smell of pine needles and the whoosh when the wind blows through the needles and small limbs, and the sunbaked smell of pine bark, like vanilla and caramel.

It's less than 5 hours to Hot Springs from here, it will be a good road trip to clear my head and get myself set for fall.

It's been a whirlwind, the past few weeks, and just this morning I finally stopped to think about the upcoming race and got my supplies together. Doug and Marji will be there to help me out. I'm looking forward to the long day and pacing myself carefully. I plan to go out slowly, slower than at the Keys, and if all goes well, to be able to use the mostly downhill second half to my advantage.

I'm looking forward to spending some time on my bike this fall and taking a break before I start preparing for Across the Years. I'm hoping to get up to the cabin and see some fall colors this year. As much as I love the hot weather, it always feels good to cool off.