admin – Page 18 – RunStuRun :.

Get up, stand up…

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that! ~ the Queen

Tues 2 March: 00:40, 4.9 miles, Boulder Creek Path surges
Wed 3 March: 1:48, 12.5 miles, Westview loop tempo
Thurs 4 March: 00:39, 4.4 miles, Mtn. Meadows/Beav easy

Still rolling consistent mileage. I felt a little whooped going into Wednesday’s tempo run and slightly blah about the whole endeavor. Once we got rolling, however, it ended up being a decent effort. I blew up quite dramatically at the end but still managed decent splits. Lessons: Pay attention to what your body is yelling at you, time your kick, push through the finish. One out of three isn’t great but gaining the knowledge of the other two makes up for their absence during the effort.

These runs aren’t all about time on my feet. They work as training for my head as well. Getting up for a daily run can be difficult. Some days, my brain tells me to just bag it, to take the day off and everything will be right with the world. These are the days that when I pull on the trainers and get moving, I can make that big, wuss part of my brain shut up for awhile and then I realize how much better I feel for having ignored the naysayer in me and gotten out for awhile. It is rare that I feel worse after having gone out for a run. And that is a big part of why I do it.

Americans are an “all or nothing” kind of society. Sometimes (when embracing the “all”), this works to our advantage and great discoveries are made, records are broken and we really shine. Unfortunately, the “nothing” takes over much of the time and we are left with generations of couch potatoes with carpal tunnel syndrome or video-game-thumb. I can’t count how many times I have had people ask me about running and comment that they would like to run a marathon (or half marathon or whatever) but that they just don’t have enough time. So they do nothing.

My advice is always this: If you only have 15 minutes to run, go run for 15 minutes. That’s it. Sure, the bigger goal may still loom out there but running 15 minutes will get you moving in the right direction where sitting on the couch will get you nowhere. It’s the same advice I give people who want to go vegan but just can’t give up food-item-x. So eat less of food-item-x… you will be doing yourself a favor and helping the planet. Strap on the trainers and go out for 10 minutes. That’s 10 minutes more than nothing. Which is much more than just a start.

~stubert.

RIP Skip…

Skipper Dipper — Skipper doin' the flop.

You were sitting backstage in a dress. A perfect mess. ~ Red Hot Chili Peppers

Sat 27 Feb: 00:40, 4.18 miles, Treadmill barefoot and weights
Sun 28 Feb: 3:55, 24.35 miles, North Boulder LSD

Quick update since I have been on the computer way too long today. The running news this weekend was all good. In contrast to other events. Our beloved bunny, Skipper/Skipper-Doodle/Skipper-Dipper, died this weekend. He was an awesome, HUGE New Zealand with the sweetest disposition and a knack for making friends. He came to us with serious problems with his jaw and Rach nursed him through multiple surgeries and many late nights. He delivered the goods, always excited to see us and to hop his big butt around for our entertainment. He will be sorely missed.

On the running front, I put in some barefoot miles on Saturday on the Treadmill then lifted some weights. Barefooting is interesting and I am fascinated by the biomechanics of it. Since my experiment last week where I noticed a marked jump in effort after switching to shoes mid-run from barefoot, I have been paying a lot of attention to my stride and how it affects my efficiency. On Saturday, I warmed up for 30 minutes barefoot and felt great. When I switched to shoes, I felt a lot less great and started to immediately experience tightness in my glute. I removed my insoles and that helped a bit but not completely. Interesting stuff. Going to keep my eyes on it.

Sunday, I jammed down to Boulder for a Long, Slow Day. Warmed up for about 9-10 minutes (1+ miles), then joined the group for a tour of the back-roads between Boulder and Lyons. Felt very relaxed (average heartrate: 144) and relatively sporty (average pace: 9:42) throughout. Got full expression in my right hip, which is something for which I have been striving for a couple months now and felt smooth and fluid throughout. Excellent.

Finished February with a good 52+ mile week and ended the month with 157+ miles and one race under my belt. All in all… not too shabby.

~stubert.

Rocket Man…

I’ve got some of this Mendocino Rocket Fuel, that’s supposed to be really… ~ Viv Savage

Several weeks ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Charles Corfield – LT100 3rd place finisher, Everest summiter, and all-around great guy. Charles took the time out of his busy schedule (I get the impression that he runs at 4 in the morning every day) to meet with me to discuss some ultra tips and tricks, his experience running and his famous Rocket Fuel mix.

Charles placed third at the 2007 Leadville Trail 100 race after being talked into running it by some friends. He had no real intention of running the LT100 and so just jumped into the fray and treated it like running two consecutive 50s. Apparently that worked pretty well as he finished without a crew or pacers in 19 hours 42 minutes. Solid effort.

During the course of our conversation, I learned a lot about how to approach racing, training, hydration and nutrition and discovered that Charles really thinks things through, does extensive research and, perhaps most importantly, experiments to find out what works. He is practical as well, often offering simple solutions to common problems vs. recommending expensive or cumbersome alternatives. He asks questions and then thoughtfully presents solutions. For example, when he inquired about my ’07 LT100 attempt and what, in my opinion, went wrong, I mentioned that blisters were an early issue that then escalated to other, larger problems. His solution: Superglue a sock into my shoes to work as a gaiter and superglue the tongue to the upper to keep dirt and grit out. Not particularly elegant but cost-effective, light, and efficient.

One item I really wanted to discuss was his hydration and nutrition regimen. Charles is very scientific about his nutrition needs and calculates exactly what he will need during any given race (or training event) to be sure that he is able to consume the right amount of fuel during the event. This keeps him from getting bogged down by too many calories or bonking from too few. Charles relies primarily (in fact, exclusively, I believe) on a mixture of amylopectin (Waxy Maize) and maltodextrin which has found the name “Rocket Fuel”. I started experimenting with the mix in January this year to see if the solution worked for me and I have found, thus far, for it to be a great supplement to, if not replacement for, my “normal” on-trail nutrition. Here is the formula for 3000kCals (~750g of solids):

340g amylopectin
340g maltodextrin
25g protein (Charles uses whey. Being a vegan, I use soy.)
non-sugar flavoring to taste (cocoa, Kool-Aid, vanilla, almond, etc.)
some electrolytes (I take care of this with nuun) and antacids (ground up)
~3 cups of water (to the thickness desired)

During my initial experiments, I was mixing about 3 Tablespoons in a bottle of water. Though this worked well, it was not concentrated enough to work as a stand-alone fuel source. I checked with Charles and he indicated that he mixes his to produce a fairly thick, gel-like consistency that then can be delivered via a fuel bottle vs. in a more “drinkable” form. I subsequently tried this as well and it definitely is the way to go.

During the Moab Red Hot 50K, I used Rocket Fuel from the start. I did make the mistake of mixing it a bit too thickly and this, coupled with very low temperatures, made the fuel a bit tough to work with during the race. I should have added water on the go, but in my hydration depleted state didn’t think of that. So really, had I been smarter about it, I know that the mix would have worked even better for me than it already did.

On top of all of this great information, one piece of advice Charles had for me was to listen to what your body is telling you. If you are craving salt, you probably are low on electrolytes. If you are feeling bloated and too “full” you probably have eaten too much too quickly (there are studies that show that we can only process 240-280 cal/hour). Just listen to what your body is telling you and you should do well.

~stubert.

Back on that pony…

Ya gots ta sass it. ~ Homer Simpson

Mon 22 Feb: 00:19, 2.375 miles, track barefoot
Tues 23 Feb: 00:48, 5.58 miles, North Boulder loop with surges
Wed 24 Feb: 1:41, 12.19 miles, Watson Park tempo
Thurs 25 Feb: 00:41, 4.2 miles, Neighborhood snow run

Great training so far this week supported, as usual by Rach’s yummy, vegan cooking. “Yummy” modifies “cooking” in case you mis-read. No vegans were cooked. It might be interesting to keep track of actual caloric intake sometime but given that everything Rach makes is from scratch, that might prove to be more of a challenge than it’s worth. But I am guessing the number is large. And probably a little scary.

I got back after it on Monday with a short run on the track. Opted to go with the Vibram KSOs to continue to hone the barefoot stride as it seems to not only be more efficient, but causing my calves to want to secede. Guessing it will just take a little time to get them to fall into line and actually, as runs progress, they start to loosen up. Anyone else out there running barefoot with advice? Any would be welcomed.

I also hit the weights for a couple of quick circuits. Really think adding strength training to the regimen is helping out. Thanks again to Duncan Callahan for the info.

Tuesday’s run, as Marcia Brady would say, was just dreamy. Dropped Sharkey III off at Super Rupair and spun a lap in North Boulder. About a quarter of the run was on the snowpacked Foothills Trail then I moved on to the slab for some surges. Really continued to work on the barefoot stride and I believe that the results were positive. Great run overall for sure.

I jammed back down to Boulder Wednesday morning for a run with the group. Warmed up around the Res for about 45 minutes then joined Art and Scott for tempo. We spun low 7s until Scott dropped the hammer and the group split up a bit. I continued to roll low 7s for 6 miles total then cooled down for about 15 minutes. Terrific run.

Today I headed out again, this time in a pretty serious blizzard. Felt good to get out there in crappy conditions and I spun easy sub 10s for about 40 minutes around the ‘hood. Felt great. Depending upon how much snow we get, I may have to head up to the slopes tomorrow morning for a few turns. Will play that one by ear and keep you posted.

~stubert.

Runs without running…

Pull up at the function and you know I’m Kojak
To all my party people that are on my bozack
I got more action than my man John Woo
And I got mad hits like I was Rod Carew
~ The Beastie Boys

Fri 19 Feb: 00:54, 7 miles, Track barefoot/shoed
Sat 20 Feb: 5:30, Crested Butte skiing
Sun 21 Feb: 3:30, Crested Butte skiing

So I suppose I lied a little. There was some running involved on Friday but Saturday and Sunday were all about logging vert in incredible conditions at Crested Butte.

Friday, I jammed over to the gym to get in one final run for the week. Opted to wear the KSOs for the first half of the run and felt incredible. Was relaxed, ran smoothly, good pacing. Particularly excited about the low heartrate for the speed I was able to sustain. Even more interesting was that when I switched over to shoes mid-run, my heartrate jumped by several bmp at the same pace. Weird. Going to have to experiment with this more as well as trying to adapt a more barefoot stride pattern while wearing shoes. I do realize that as the run progressed, my heartrate would naturally increase but this was a marked jump. Very cool discovery. I’ll be testing this one again.

The only ill-effects I experienced was a tightness/soreness in my calves – particularly the lateral portion of the muscle group on my left calf. Any thoughts on that would be greatly appreciated.

So then the journey to Crested Butte began. Pete and I headed that way for what we hoped would be a couple days of better skiing than we have been able to accomplish this year in Summit County (or at the Rock). And let me tell you… we were not disappointed.

The Butte started getting hammered by a significant winter storm on Friday and it just kept coming. We were greeted with about 19 inches of fresh on Saturday morning and took full advantage of the prime conditions. Seems like everyone else in the county had the same idea and lift-lines were quite long but it was so worth it. Patrol started getting the good stuff open mid-morning and by noon we were spinning laps in tasty pow on Headwall and (after giving Telly’s head a good rub) NFL. All sorts of good.

CB is renowned for the high-caliber of skier and with the Extreme Championships going on, the level of talent on the hill was ratcheted up several notches. It was just cool to be in such close proximity to hundreds of rippers and to talk with people about how awesome the new snow was. This was the Butte’s first major storm since early December and the locals had the excitement level on 11. Pete and I worked the mountain, I showed him some cool stashes and we had a blast. It snowed all day as well which amp’d up the stoke for Sunday.

Post skiing, we wandered around the town of CB for a bit, grabbed a beer at Kochevar’s (a storied bar on Elk Ave.), then settled down to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Donita’s Cantina, for some tasty grub. Kay and Heli, the owners and all-around nice people make an amazing meal. If you are in the area, I HIGHLY recommend it.

A lazy evening watching Olympic coverage followed then we set it for “repeat” on Sunday.

Even more snow greeted us Sunday morning coupled with greatly reduced crowds, better visibility (well, for parts of the day… it was still snowing pretty strongly up there) and extreme terrain open from the gun. Perfect combo. We headed up High lift again and dropped into Figure 11, which was simply amazing and followed that with more NFL action. We stopped for a bit to watch the Extremes (Dead-end Chutes and Body Bags the primary venue for the day) then continued on our quest for excellent terrain coupled with killer conditions. Since a lot of the extreme terrain was closed on Saturday, when the rope dropped on Phoenix/Spellbound on Sunday, there was a LOT of fresh goodness to be had. And we had it. Seriously the best skiing I have had in a long, long time. Rivaled the conditions we found in Canada last year. I’d tell you where we went, but then I’d have to kill ya.

The drive home was fairly uneventful until about a mile west of Eisenhower Tunnel. Then it got ugly. Not sure what the solution to the I-70 corridor problem is (aside from avoiding it) but man… it is a mess. What is normally a 3.5 to 4-hour drive turned to 5.5 and it could have been worse. Rach had soup on for me when I got home. So I ate, ate some more, then hit the sack. Terrific weekend. Hope to put it on repeat soon.

~stubert.