countdown's on

figured i should probably write at least a little something now that the countdown to the 'satch is on. again, not that anybody pays any attention to this, but in the interest of gathering my own thoughts.

taper is coming along i suppose. have not really been adhering to any particular strict plan, besides eating and sleeping a lot! the initial taper plan was to cut my usual training time in half during week 1, then cut that in half again during week 2, with week 3 being spent at elevation. during week 1 i was pretty much drained due to 6 solid weeks of the hardest training i've ever put myself through for a race. the only thing that may be comparable is double sessions of football practice, and anybody who has lived through double sessions will be the first to tell you that they were brutal. but at that time, quitting was just not an option. for better or for worse, i simply could not have imagined going home and telling my parents that i quit! i would have been too scared of what my parents would have done to me! this time is no different, quitting simply is not an option. if i fall off the mountain, or break my leg, that's one thing. but quitting due to tiredness, soreness, pain, fatigue, etc just isn't an available option.

don't know whether all that laurel highlands water finally caught up to me, or maybe it was just general nerves, but i had some stomach problems for about a week. things seem to be somewhat back on track now, but i'm trying to play it cautious for the time being. two nights before laurel, i had major stomach problems, so i'm trying to make sure that doesn't happen this time too. still not sure what that was all about.

for the first week, the legs were downright tired, but i kept all the sessions brief and easy. during today's run, the legs felt a little bit sluggish so i walked most of the hills. the general philosophy of my taper is to just move around enough to burn off some of the unused energy, which is coming on like a tidal wave.

for 6 weeks, the body got used to producing at a certain level. i think on some base level, the body adapts to this training by generating a certain amount of "drive" that gets used up in training. during the taper, the body is still producing that "drive" but the training load has been reduced. the result, for me, is usually what i like to refer to as "mindless directionless energy" (with all due respect to The Damned).

when i was a teen, i remember having a tremendous amount of what i will call angst. i didn't know it at the time, but what was happening was that my body was growing out of control, both inside and out, and the testosterone levels were probably in high gear. the result was that i had a tremendous amount of energy. i sometimes used to go outside when nobody was home, and scream at the top of my lungs in the backyard. football was a perfect outlet for me because it afforded me the opportunity to burn a lot of that off in a semi-controlled environment. i really didn't care if my team won or lost, i really didn't even care about the games. i just liked being able to level people during the daily practices. again, with the benefit of hindsight, i had a huge amount of energy just boiling over and football practice was a perfect way to burn some of that off.

the taper feels pretty much like it did at that time, i just have energy oozing out of my pores.

few tings

Well I am pretty happy that the heavy training load for the 'satch is done, because I've got nothing left. Normally, today would be "Hill Repeat Tuesdays" but that's all behind me now. I put in a monster week last week and I've got nothing left in the tank. My biggest concern right now, besides not really wanting to run one bit due to being so tired, is blowing the taper by doing too little. I took Sunday, Monday, and today off so I reckon I'll still be ok if I pick it back up tomorrow.

Interesting factoid, the dog hates the free ginger chews that Zombie Runner gives when you order stuff from them. She always wants to come lick my face when I eat them because she is intrigued by the smell, but once up in my grill, the smell turns her off. However, yesterday I ate a ginger-laden rice/quinoa dish for dinner, and washed it down with a huge glass of ginger beer, and she was all over it. Licked my face for a good 5 minutes without stopping. Go figure.

Usual work nonsense, for some reason when I was younger I had the general impression that adults behaved like adults and not children. Evidently, not true. It does keep things spicy though.

Finally, Sepultura and Saint Vitus rule.

Invictus

I am not some kind of poetry geek but "Invictus" is some right-on stuff. I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly. It is a hard lesson but the only person you can ever really rely on 100% is yourself. When I am in Utah in 3 weeks there is going to be nobody else to lean on.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

my last week

Well, this is my last week of hard training for Wasatch. Somehow it feels anticlimatic so far, although admittedly, the hard stuff for the week has yet to come.

I purposely avoided excessively studying the course in the early part of the training. I found that the more I learned, the more frightened I got. Therefore I tried to just keep it simple: run lots of hills, do some speedwork every week, do the back-to-back long runs, and be consistent every week. I feel pretty good about my level of fitness, probably the most confident I've ever felt going into a race. Without a doubt I am definitely my own worst critic, so I think when I say I feel "pretty good about my level of fitness," in reality I could possibly run through a brick wall without breaking my stride.

Now that I am slowly starting to think about the specifics of this course, I thought back to when I read a book about the first ever double crossing of Badwater ("The Death Valley 300: Near-Death and Resurrection on the World's Toughest Endurance Course"). One of the two runners had some very clearly defined points of view on what he was about to set out to do. I think his points of view are relevant in my case as well:

Don't ever look at this challenge in terms of conquering, overcoming, or beating the course. That is pseudo-macho and a waste of precious psychological energy. The course is there whether you happen to step onto it or not, and it will still be there in all its glory whether you step off it in defeat, successfully finish it, or come to your senses and don't go anywhere near it. Don't fight the course, because the course is larger, older, wiser and much more powerful than I am. Use the occasional advantages the course allows, and flow with the adversities it presents. It will be there long after I'm gone to dust.

And finally, I ripped this off from Andy Jones Wilkins' website, and since nobody reads this except me, I am not at all scared about potential plagirism or copyright issues:

"In the last 30 miles of a 100 miler everybody's hurting. Everybody is way beyond physical fatigue and mental, emotional, and psychological fatigue is setting in, Big Time. If you want to succeed in these things you need to know that, dig deep, and fight it. In the end, you need to race every step like there's someone three minutes ahead of you and someone three minutes behind you."

While that is certainly good advice, AJW's website also comments that "Brighton eats runners for breakfast." I have put my time in though, and am fully prepared to hang in there trading punches to the face for all 12 rounds. Doesn't mean its going to be pretty, but I'm confident in my ability to hammer it out until the end. This is certainly confidence I did not have 6 weeks ago and was gained the hard way: through hill repeats, thousands of hindu squats, more back to back long runs than I care to remember, triple digit heat, and humidity so bad that its hard to breathe.

long run(s)

Took Friday off as usual, and did a long run in the Laurel Highlands. The usual route, although I decided to make this run more of a realistic dress rehearsal. That meant the Nathan, two handheld bottles, and the trekking poles. Long story short, started to run short on water therefore I could only do two hill repeats of the big hill. I reckon that with that amount of fluid, I can probably last about 4 hours. I will certainly keep that in mind when doing my planning for the 'satch. This time 4 weeks from now, I will be in a monumental amount of pain, but I will have that belt buckle in my hand.

Saturday, was looking for somebody to run with since I am starting to lose it as far as spending large amounts of time by myself in the woods. Turns out, there was an organized race at Mingo Park, put on by the Pittsburgh Road Runners Club I believe. Saw a bunch of good people I have not seen in a while, met up early with some and got some time in on the trails, then ran the race, then some of us decided to put in a couple more hours. Listened to some good stories by a guy who just finished his first hundred miler at Burning River, sounds like he had a great time. Another we ran with will be doing his first hundred at Oil City in October. He is a machine, I have no doubts that he will finish. Anyway, it was very good to run with other people besides my Ipod. It was a heater out there.

Today, got in about 2 hours on the bike to round out my training for the week. Now that I am 6 weeks into it, looks like I average a little over 15 hours per week training. That figure is a bit low compared to some others I have read: I was told 15 is a minimum to just get through it, if you want to do well, plan for 18 or 19. I saw a Youtube clip of a Badwater racer who said he was putting in 30+ hour weeks training. For me, right now, 15+ is a pretty good balance, considering everything else going on.

Picked up another case of the much heralded Lake Erie Monster before it goes out of production! Need to go bathe, going to Nakama in a couple minutes!!

favorite rekids

If I had to pick only one rekid to take with me to a faraway place where I would have no access to any more music, it would for me be a very easy decision. Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder. Hands down the best thing ever recorded. Not even open for debate.

If I could take 5 or 10 with me, it would start to get difficult. Some contenders include:

The Idiot by Iggy Pop
Funkentelechny vs. the Placebo Syndrome by Parliament Funkadelic
God Ween Satan by Ween (or perhaps, The Mollusk?)
the first album by The Stooges
Repeater by Fugazi
first album by the New York Dolls
...And the Circus Leaves Town by Kyuss
The Correct Use of Soap by Magazine

I probably could not also survive without hearing Slayer, the Dead Kennedys, Brian Eno/Roxy Music, Hendrix, or the Minutemen (I met George Hurley outside a hotel once in Orange County, I had no idea what to say but he was very nice about it).

weekend run(s)

The long run trend has been for me to take Fridays off and head down to the Laurel Highlands for a long run on those difficult hills the first 8 miles. Then, Saturdays I usually head to Mingo Park for a somewhat shorter run. Unfortunately my schedule had to be juggled around a bit due to other commitments so I was unable to take Friday off.

The Laurel Highlands are nice to run but a 1.5 hour drive, one way, is tough to stomach on a Saturday. Therefore I was limited to running locally this weekend. Saturday I ran at Mingo Park, and was really not having much fun. It just was not clicking for me. After completing a lap of the orange loop in a really slow time, I knew I did not have it in me to do another full lap. Therefore I did sort of an out and back for a total time running of about 4 hours 45 minutes. I usually like to do my training in a somewhat calorie-deficient state in order to force my body to learn how to use fat as fuel, rather than relying on sugar. I think I pushed it a bit too far, because I just was not having any fun whatsoever.

After this year's epic battle at Western States I have been following the training of Anton Krupicka and Geoff Roes pretty closely. In particular Anton has said he usually eats very little during his training to force his body to use fat as fuel. He also said that he does not race this way, he does in fact eat during the race. The drawback to this strategy is that during the actual race, you're doing something you didn't really practice much during training, which is high risk. I think I read somewhere that Geoff tries to eat 100 calories every 20 minutes during a race.

In an effort to experiment a little bit with a race-day eating strategy, I decided to do my long run today while eating a gel (Gu, the local Fleet Feet does not carry Hammer products) every 30 minutes. That is roughly 200 calories an hour. I went back to Mingo Park today, not really knowing what to expect. One thing I did do was to run the first loop in the opposite direction that I usually do it, just to mix it up a bit. It helped, big time, the first loop went by pretty easily. The second loop I did in the usual direction.

I decided to push it a little bit on my second loop, since I was feeling pretty strong. During my long runs I usually walk the hills, since I will walk them during the race. What I have found is that training slow almost always produces a race performance that largely mirrors the pace I have trained at -- slow. I am thoroughly sick of finishing in the middle of the pack, at best. I am as competitive as they come and while I'm happy to finish the distance, I am usually never happy with the time, relative to the rest of the field. I don't like to think of myself as "mid pack" at anything and endurance racing should be no exception. Anyway, on the second lap I decided to push it a bit and tested myself by running hills I would usually walk. An interesting thing happened: as long as I continued to eat every 30 minutes (which I did all day) I was able to pretty much run any and every hill I wanted. It got to the point where I was running the uphills, downhills, and flat parts at pretty much the same speed. Granted the heart rate either reached, or exceeded, 80% when I was running the hills, but in terms of effort, it felt very, very comfortable. I have had dreams before where I was running hilly trails, and was moving very fluidly with the terrain with minimal effort. That is pretty much what it felt like for the last 2 or 3 hours of my run.

I attribute the success of today's outing, first and foremost, to the 200 calories an hour I consumed religiously all day long. The gels did contain caffeine too, which probably also had something to do with the easy effort. I have also been doing hill repeats, coupled with the dreaded Hindu Squats, once a week. I feel that this has produced remarkable results with respect to power running uphills, as well as just getting comfortable with running hills and learning how to do it relaxed.

When I got home and let the dog out, first thing she did was to lick all the salt off my face, and all the mud off my legs. I have said it before, but I love my dog unconditionally. She is without a doubt the greatest friend I've ever had (besides the wife).

In other news, looks like I've finally gotten the trap to stop leaking for the laundry tub in the basement. I've been dumping the dehumidifier contents into it for 2 days now and have not detected any leaks. I've still got to find some way to anchor that thing to the wall or floor (or preferably both) because I can't just leave it free standing. After I do that I can hook up the supply tubing to the new water lines I installed a few weeks back, and can then check that little project off the list.

My wife said she feels the baby moving all around in there, sometimes I can feel it too. The movement is getting stronger and stronger by the day. Yesterday morning I put my hand on her stomach and could feel my daughter in there, kicking ass.

Also, I think I might lose my pinky toenail. I have never lost one before but that one is a little bit tender, and sort of feels like it is becoming somewhat detached near the front of my toe. Kind of cool, at least a milestone anyway. I still have never thrown up during, or after, a race. Can't say I'm looking forward to meeting that particular milestone.

2nd Law of thermodynamics

I just realized that I have done a SIGNIFICANT amount of work while failing to keep in mind the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which basically says that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Ouch. This one will take some serious cleaning up.

painting

MAN do I hate painting. I just don't like it. I'm sorry but to me, it is just unskilled labor. I really, really hate painting. I will take plumbing, electrical, concrete, or landscaping ANY day of the week over painting.