Thirteen to Thirty-ish Miles

Running that XTERRA half marathon last October, I learned several things:  (1) I was really starting to enjoy trail running, (2) I should confirm that the safety pins holding my bib number on the front of my shorts are safely closed (you only need to be taught this once) and (3) my plan of not running any long races before the LT100 (so as to make my introduction to the ultra-running world all the more dramatic) was impractical and counter-productive. 

Initially, the thought of skipping the usual progression (half marathons, marathons, 50-K's, 50-milers, then 100's), and jumping straight to the 100-milers, strongly appealed to my -- some might say -- overdeveloped flair for dramatics (Incredulous Person upon hearing that I'm preparing for the LT100: "WHAT?!? You've never even run a marathon before?!?"  Me, casually, with feigned puzzlement, "Why, no, no I haven't. Should I?"), and of course, plainly exposed my -- some might also say -- overdeveloped ego and vanity. 

However, that XTERRA race last fall showed me that I could benefit from at least some race experience prior to the LT100 because a race environment is appreciably different from a training environment.  All the other runners, the nervous energy, the aid stations, the crowds, these are all major distractions that can take you out of your own groove and prevent you from running your own race.  And over the course of 100 miles, that could be disastrous, I've heard.  So, I abandoned my vain and dramatic approach, and decided to run a medium-distance race to get some more experience.  I wanted something longer than a marathon, so I chose the Golden Gate Dirty Thirty in Black Hawk, CO because the distance and terrain (~7,700' vertical gain) would make it a great training run.

To give myself something to shoot for during the Dirty Thirty, I set a challenging but achievable goal of seven hours.  Then, because I can be somewhat methodical (I've heard other adjectives used), I determined intermediate goal times for each aid station based on my overall seven-hour goal and my anticipated pace for each segment.  If I could stick close to each aid station goal time, I would hit the thirty-mile finish right at seven hours.  I figured this would be great practice for coming up with a "race plan" and seeing how well I can stick to it. 

On race day, I wrote the aid station goal times on my forearm with a sharpie, and off I went.  Early on in the race, I bumped into a buddy, Patrick Thiessen, and we ran together for a good while.  He's a good runner and had me at a pace slightly faster than I would have run by myself, so I reached the first aid station ahead of schedule.  I felt fine though, so I didn't mind being a little ahead.  About twelve miles in, I settled into my own planned pace, and Patrick ran on ahead.  Things were looking good.

This is when I first started congratulating myself for having such a great race plan, and executing it so well.  And, yes, for those thinking ahead, "pride doth come before the fall."

I reached the second aid station right on schedule, pausing only to pat my own back.  Continuing on at my planned pace, I cruised into aid stations three and four almost exactly on schedule.  Leaving the final aid station, with about seven miles to go, I mentally reconfirmed that my planned pace would bring me into the thirty-mile finish right at seven hours.  Everything was coming together perfectly.

Then... approaching 28.5 miles, according to my Garmin GPS watch, I came upon a volunteer course marshal who was directing the runners which way to go at a particular intersection.  He was standing next to a mileage sign confirming that we were at mile "28.5."  Pointing me in the right direction, he cheerfully said, "Looking Good!  Just under three miles to go!" 

It took a couple seconds for his words to register in my brain, but when they did, the word "three" hit me like a brick to the head.  According to my Garmin and his sign, I was at 28.5 miles, meaning I had one and a half miles to go to finish this Dirty Thirty.  Something was not right.  I slowed down and squawked, "What?!?"  He repeated himself in an even more encouraging tone, which in my growing confusion, I took to be sarcastic.  My brain whirled with the inconsistency between what I was hearing and seeing.  In a mental haze, I continued running on, trying to sort it out.  How could I have almost "three miles to go," when I thought I only had a mile and a half to go?  I considered the only logical possibilities:

• the volunteer was a sadistic liar;
• both my Garmin and the mileage marker were wrong, possibly intentionally, just to screw with me;
• the GPS satellites had strayed from their geosynchronous orbits, again, possibly intentionally, just to screw with me.

I spent a full three or four minutes seriously considering each of these possibilities before the truth hit me like a second brick to the head.  I had screwed up. The race, though called the Dirty Thirty, was not a thirty mile race at all.  It was a 50K race, that is, a 31.1 mile race (I guess the "Dirty Thirty-One Point One" didn't have the same poetic ring to it).  I admit I knew it was a 50K, but the lovely sing-song rhyme of the race's name made me forget this little tidbit of information, and thus I made my race plan based on thirty miles. 

Now I was in a bind.  I realized I had about 2.6 miles left to go, but in my perfect race plan I had only allotted myself enough time to run 1.5 miles.  I didn't want to give up on my seven-hour goal just yet, so in a bit of a panic, I tried to do some quick mental math to figure out what pace I would need to maintain to make it in time.  If you've ever tried to do mental math while panicking (and/or after 28 miles of running) you know that your arithmetical accuracy is going to suffer a little.  So, I was a bit skeptical when I concluded that, according to my frantic calculations, I needed to maintain a pace of 6.8 furlongs/cubit in order to finish in seven hours.  Somehow, even in my hazy brain, that seemed off.

Still, I knew that all but a quarter mile of the remaining course was downhill.  And I was feeling good on the downhills.  So, unable to calculate how fast I actually needed to go, I just switched off my brain, which was annoying me at this point anyway, and I just ran as fast as I could (which wasn't too fast) for the remaining 2.6 miles.  I hit the finish line (31.1 miles) at 6:54.

Lesson for me and other novice runners out there:  it turns out that, among the other important factors worth considering when preparing for a race, the actual distance is pretty significant.

Leadville Training Camp -- Night Run

Driving back into Leadville yesterday (Monday) evening as the sun was setting with the top down and singing along to Thunder Road (RIP Big Man), I knew I'd made the right decision to head back up for the last event of the training camp -- the night run from Twin Lakes to the Tree Line crewing area. 

The night was sublime.  Even though there were dozens of runners participating, we spread out quickly, and I spent almost the entire run utterly by myself on that mountain trail.  It was definitely a new and memorable experience for me:  the quiet of the night, the explosion of stars and visible bands of the Milky Way, the crisp air, the dancing shadows, the peaceful solitude...  I'm actually looking forward to running that section of the trail again during the race itself, even though that will happen around mile 60.

Before last night, the only other night run I'd ever done was a few months ago when Tim was visiting Fort Collins with his kids over their spring break. 

Side note:  I live in both Fort Collins and Denver, and I split my time between the two.  I'm up in Fort Collins every weekend, from Friday until Monday morning (or Sunday night), where I live with my kids (my 18-yr-old daughter Savannah is currently in Melbourne, Australia for a few months enjoying Australia's liberal drinking age (18), and my 17-yr-old daughter Michal is a senior at Ft. Collins HS and just informed me that "blogging is for narcissistic d-bags") and my ex-wife (no, it's not weird; we've been sharing the house for four years, but we've been divorced for 13 years, and it works great).  During the weekdays, I stay in a small apartment in downtown Denver because I work downtown, and there are few things more frustrating to me than the I-25 commute.

Anyway, when Tim was visiting back in April, the only time we could sneak in a long run was after he put his kids to bed.  So, we took off one night around 10pm and ran through the night along the trails between Fort Collins and Loveland (Blue Sky, Indian Summer, Devil's Backbone, Rimrock and the aptly named Coyote Ridge, on which we actually heard coyotes on the ridge howling back and forth).  That run was a milestone for me not just because it was my first night run, but also because it was pretty long (seven hours or so).  Back in April, I'd only just become somewhat accustomed to 20+ mile runs, so I was glad I was physically able to put in the distance that night with Tim.  Now, fortunately I'm able to get in a couple 20 to 30 mile runs almost every week, usually up in Fort Collins (or Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park) back-to-back on Saturday and Sunday. 

The best part of my weekend runs is the moral support I get from my kids.  Typically, when I return home after a long run -- dirty, sweaty, salt-stained and completely exhausted, but feeling a sense of accomplishment that occasionally, I'm sorry to admit, swells into self-satisfaction -- Savannah will immediately burst my pride-bubble by sarcastically congratulating me, "Wow, Dad, you ran almost one quarter of the actual distance you'll need to cover in your race!  Great job!"  Then, Michal will scrutinize my haggardness and earnestly encourage me to increase my life insurance before August. 

Actually, that may not be a bad idea.

Leadville Training Camp

Tim and I are up in Leadville sharing a tiny room at the Delaware Hotel.  We arrived late this afternoon after a beautiful drive up from Denver.  We checked in with the Training Camp folks, checked into the hotel and then checked on the two houses I rented over the internet for our respective crews to use during the race in August.  It turns out renting a house sight unseen can be a hit or miss proposition.  In this case it was both:  the house I rented for Tim and his crew is a "hit" -- big, spacious and clean.  The house I rented for me and my crew is a solid "miss" -- small, dark and sticky.  The only good part was the pungent odor coming from the kitchen region; it stung my eyes and burned my nose so as to distract me from the small, dark stickiness of the house.  But, I'm sure it'll work out just fine because we won't be spending all that much time in the house during the race weekend anyway.

After we checked out the houses and we had a hearty meal, we took a walk down 6th Street, which happens to be the first and last mile of the LT100.  It's just a neighborhood street running out of town, but because the race starts and ends there, that stretch of road has seen some powerful and dramatic moments.  We both felt it as we walked down the hill out of town where in the distance we could see later sections of the race course:  Turquoise Lake, Sugar Loaf, the Power Line and the Fish Hatchery. We felt that energy even more so after we turned around and walked a mile back up towards where the finish line will be in August.

Setting sun casting a shadow over 6th Street

 I was chatting away (when I could catch my breath), and Tim asked me to be quiet so he could enjoy the moment and the view of the approaching finish line in silence "... so I can remember this view in case I never see it again."  He's not fooling me -- I don't think for a minute that he has any doubt that he'll be seeing that finish line again on August 21.

I, on the other hand, felt my confidence dip a little when we got to Leadville.  When we got to town and checked in with the Training Camp staff, there were many other runners out and about in the area -- serious looking ultra runners.  I couldn't help but notice how damn fit and athletic they all seemed.  I also couldn't help but notice how I was out of breath just walking up the steps at the hotel, so I didn't feel particularly fit or athletic.  I felt a twinge of that what-have-I-gotten-myself-into feeling mixed with that who-am-I-kidding feeling.  It was fleeting, but it shook me a little, even though I should know better.  I'm sure I'll feel better after our run tomorrow morning.

I shared this thought with Tim, and I expected him to say, "Of course you feel inadequate -- you ARE way out of your league."  Instead, he told me he's felt that way a time or two in the past, and I shouldn't worry about the feeling; I should embrace it and use it to train harder.  Ultimately, he said, my race is my own, and the only real competition will occur inside my own head.  It's just the runner and the trail and that's it.  Like Yoda he can be sometimes.

Zero to Two Miles

Tomorrow, eight weeks before the LT100, my brother Tim and I will drive up to Leadville to get in some high elevation running at the LT100 Training Camp.  The plan for Saturday is a 26-mile run from May Queen to Twin Lakes, apparently with some ice climbing near the top of Sugarloaf (or so the trail reports suggest).  Sunday's run was supposed to be a Hope Pass double crossing, but the glaciers on the Twin Lakes side of the pass have not receded enough to allow us to run that side of the mountain yet.  So, we'll get a reroute for Sunday, but at least we'll get to climb and descend the steeper Winfield side of the pass and log probably 20 or so miles.

Now, I casually describe this upcoming 46-mile weekend (above 10,000' with several thousand feet of elevation gain) as if it were a normal, no-big-deal thing for me.   And frankly, in the last several months, it's almost become that.  But what I need to remind myself -- in fact, my main goal in writing these things down here -- is that ten months ago a 50-mile weekend was unthinkable.  I truly started at zero-mile weekends (hell, I was logging zero-mile years), like this blog's title says, zero to one hundred.  Now, I'm not "there" yet -- I haven't gone one hundred miles, yet -- but I've made modest progress in the right direction.  And though it is against my nature (usually) to look backwards or to pat my own back, in this situation, I think it's worthwhile to remind myself of that progress and that my training is working (mostly) -- especially when I feel like I'm way out of my league, like my ignorance has colluded with my arrogance to allow me to bite off way more than I can chew.  Sometimes, when such thoughts try to creep into my head, a quiet reminder of where I was ten months ago, and where I am today, gives me confidence (hopefully, not false confidence) that I'll be where I need to be in eight weeks.

So, with that purpose in mind, over the next few blog entries, I'm going to recap for posterity the last ten months of this adventure as best my waning memory will allow.  I've kept a haphazard training log on my refrigerator, and I began using a Garmin early on, so I should be able to recount at least some of the training details with reasonable accuracy. 

2010 LT100: me & Tim

As you know, my experience last August pacing my brother at the 2010 LT100 inspired me to run the race in 2011.  However, registration for the 2011 LT100 didn't open until sometime in November.  So, between August and November, I merely considered running the race, without actually committing (mentally, financially, spiritually) to it.  I knew I wanted to run the race, that it was exactly the kind of goal I could get into, but I'm not as impulsive as I might seem.  So, in that three-month period before I'd fully committed, I kind of tested the trail running waters.  




Horsetooth Reservoir

  For my first training run, in August 2010, I drove to the east side of Horsetooth Reservoir in Fort Collins to run on the trails that I assumed would snake around the reservoir because that seemed to be where a real trail runner would run, and I didn't know where else to go. 


Note:  the main photo at the very top of the blog is another view from the top of Horsetooth Rock, which months later became one of my bread and butter training grounds.  But back in August 2010, I had no idea where any of the trails were.  So, I just parked my car at one of the car pullouts on the side of the road, put on my six-year-old Brooks road shoes and ran through the knee-high grass near the side of the road for about 20 minutes, covering about two miles and never finding an actual trail.  I didn't realize that I had parked at about the only car pullout along the reservoir that didn't have a trail right next to it.  So, for my first trail run I never ran on an actual trail at all -- an inauspicious start.

I wasn't exhausted by the end of that run, but I was tired, hot and thirsty.  Twenty minutes was definitely enough for me that day, I recall.  I was also a bit frustrated because I knew there were actual trails all around the Reservoir, but I just didn't find any of them.  Still, I remember feeling a small confidence boost after that first 20-minute run and thinking that, despite the objective audacious absurdity of the thought, I just might be able to pull off this Zero-to-100-thing after all. 

Most memorably, I felt a tiny bit of that primal and free feeling of running in the wild, and I liked it.