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And you think I’m nuts…

Sliiiiiiiide. ~ Marla Singer

The Marathon of the Sands is a 6-day race across the Sahara where competitors must carry all their gear and the only real support is rations of water and tents in which to sleep at night. Amazing.

Speaking of racing, I met with Janet Runyan yesterday for the first of several sessions scheduled to help with my running form and to get some training and racing advice. She is a past winner at Leadville and National Ultradistance Champion so I am very excited to see how she can help my performance and help me get and stay injury-free. She recommended some posture adjustments yesterday that really seemed to help and I am planning to go out today to see how much “sticks”. It is fairly warm up here today so as long as it doesn’t rain, I should be okay. She did think that the first 50K I have scheduled was a bit aggressive so I will probably scale that back to the 25K event.

I did get out for some turns at the Basin on Sunday. Luke and I pretty much tore it up and Pete and Edy were up as well. Pete joined us for a couple of fun runs. The conditions were a bit funky but REALLY good turns were to be had if you explored a little. We got into some really good stuff up on East Wall and did a run out the Steep Gullies which was pretty great.

I ran Betasso on Monday evening and it was more of a slog than anything to write home about. Felt pretty poorly throughout but did manage 3 laps before calling it a night. Hoping I can get my psoas issues resolved very soon.

~stubert.

Now I’ve done it…

Gentlemen, start your engines. ~ That guy who starts car races

Just signed up for two races: The Sage Burner in Gunnison on May 23rd and the Dirty Thirty in Golden Gate Canyon State Park on June 6th. Both are 50K events that I’ll be treating as training races for the potential big event, Leadville. Still haven’t pulled the trigger on that but am feeling more and more confident that I’ll be able to commit to it soon.

This past week saw several more ski days (up to day 52 now) and some great runs. Still haven’t eclipsed the 2 hour mark but am guessing that will come very soon. I did three runs this week: Sanitas on Tuesday, Crazy Snow Woods Run on Thursday and Green Mountain on Friday. I am not feeling super strong but my knee isn’t bugging me at all, which is a plus. Now I can just focus on resolving the psoas thing and be back on track.

I bailed on skiing today, just wasn’t in the mood, really and stayed home with Rach to hang out and watch movies. Just what the doctor ordered. I may head up tomorrow to either catch Eldora’s final hoorah for the year or see what other plans can be hashed out for Sunday shenanigans.

As always, I’ll keep you posted.

~stubert.

Take Grandpa skiing…

Keep your ugly fuckin’ goldbrickin’ ass out of my beach community. ~ Malibu Cop

Day 49 featured a late start, great snow and lots of obnoxious, drunken college kids at the Basin. Luke, Nichole and I headed up late (post conference call with Renewable Choice Energy, one of our clients) and immediately started spinning laps on Pali in search of our favorite spots and good snow. Both were in large supply with forays into the Black Widow, Mini Kong, Waterfall, West Turbo and more. Deep and fluffy at the bottom of 2nd too… just thinking about it makes me inclined to get back up there ASAP.

Anyway, the mountain was virtually empty save for a rather large pack of heavily inebriated co-eds and hangers on. I guess April Fool’s Day brought out the riff raff but seriously, if you can’t stand up in the lift line, you really shouldn’t be on the hill. Fortunately, they were pretty easy to dodge but I felt bad for the lift ops who were being berated left and right. Anyway, I suspect more of the same will be in order this weekend with the beach being in full effect.

I didn’t ski particularly well but had a great time. My knee was giving me grief for whatever reason and my abs are still a mess. Seeing yet another doctor about that next week. I have to get that resolved else my racing plans for this year are going to be in jeopardy. Hopefully this guy can help out.

Other than that, we’ve just been jamming on work stuff and staying busy with the critters. I am planning to attend a running injuries seminar tomorrow night so maybe that will provide more insight into how to prevent and treat.

~stubert.

Apparently, I didn’t get the memo…

One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it. ~ Oogway

A new study has taken a look into “the perfect running pace” and determined that though this pace is unique for each individual, the average optimal pace to travel 1 mile for males is 7:18. It does sound as if the study took into account only traveling a single mile so it would be interesting to know what the pace would be for those traveling greater distances. Anyway, that is my running link for the day. Enjoy!

I took Saturday completely off in an effort to recover a little bit from Thursday and Friday’s skiing excitement and drove down to Boulder on Sunday to do some really sloppy trail running. It was beautiful out, a bit breezy at times and the trails were wet and muddy. Good stuff.

I started out at Eben G. Fine park and made my way under Canyon Blvd to Prospect Park. My heartrate spiked pretty much immediately (gotta work on that) as I made my way up and over the hogback and on to Sanitas. I ran/walked up the gut of Sanitas , enjoying the scenery and perfect running weather then dropped off the top toward 4th.

This trail was SUPER muddy and very slick at points. I fell once but managed to get a hand down to keep from being coated in sloppy, wet clay, so that was a plus and eventually made it down without further incident and on to the Wonderland Lake trails.

This section was very wet but at this point, it didn’t really matter so I just tried to keep a sub 12-minute pace and let my legs spin. Unfortunately, my abs were really acting up and so I am sure I looked less than graceful. I ran North across Lee Hill road, up to the top of the hill and turned around for the return journey.

The only complication came while climbing back up the muddy access to Sanitas – just slow-going. I was pretty bonked by the end as well and man, my guts were killing me. Only 9.5ish miles, which took me about 1:45. Not stellar but given that I haven’t been running at all really, I am nursing two injuries, and it was only my second time on major hills/trails since who knows when, I’ll go easy on myself.

So the great experiment of running marathons over the fall months seems to have only really resulted in my having a nagging injury (abs) and less improvement in the efficiency department than expected. I’ll keep working to get the ab problem resolved… perhaps that is what is holding me back. The knee had several “twingey” moments but overall was okay. I definitely wouldn’t want to run 50+ miles on it right now.

Given the lingering injury situation, I have decided to postpone the double traverse until the fall but am looking at a few options for 50k races in May/June. The first, the Sage Burner, is in Gunnison on May 23rd. It follows a lot of the Rage in the Sage course which I used to race/train on heavily when I raced Mountain Bikes. This course has a hometown feel for me so it would be a fun one to do. The second upcoming event is also a “home course” kind of deal – The Golden Gate Dirty Thirty. This race is on June 6 and is run on the trail system near my house where I spent a lot of the last two summers training. Should be a lot of fun.

I am going to take today mostly off (will probably head to the gym later to lift) but am hoping to start ramping things up, move skiing more to the backcountry and start to feel better soon. At least that is the goal.

By the way, if you ever have electric motor repair needs, go see the guys at Boulder Electric Motor. They are awesome.

~stubert.