Amping Up: 100 Miler

The Mood of Eternal Running

2010-06-02T19:52:00.000-07:00

Can one run forever with Metallica concussing your tympani non-stop? I can’t.

Rather, running forever is a two-stranded braid of an eternal, unchanging, spatial tone and an insistent and subtly-changing fast rhythm. Inside, there is peace and depth. Outside, there is movement and dance.

The endurance run transcends perceived physical limits and expertly draws all the athletic potential out into the sunlight to play. The endurance meditation transcends the bounds of the real and creates new worlds. Between the two, the body unleashes endorphins and proprioceptive pleasures.

Over time, the body adapts to the insistent message that we are serious about running forever. New blood vessels perfuse the muscles. Slow twitching fibers increase in number. Red cells multiply. Support muscles grow. The heart pumps more and more blood with fewer and fewer beats per minute.

Am I running? Or is the Earth rotating under my feet? Have I crossed the Rocky Mountains? Am I reaching the Pacific Ocean? Are these big mysterious blocks appearing in front of me, paving the way to Hokkaido?

Music themes without end and insistent rhythms create the illusion of infinity, the ultimate goal of endurance running.

The "secrets" on how to generate a training plan

2010-01-08T15:12:00.000-08:00

Total Heart Rate Training by Joe Friel was a revelation to me on where training programs come from (I experienced something similar when I learned babies do not grow in lettuces. Did you know they are not air-dropped via storks either?). Anyway, it gives you all the keys you need to structure a training program using heart rate zones. It assumes you know your current lactate threshold; let me know if you're interested in finding out yours - there is a qualitative, free! way to approach it, or I can point you to someone who does it with a portable device. Also, if lactate threshold doesn't mean anything to you, let me know and I'll post info on that too. If you get into this even deeper, you might look for Run Workouts for Runners and Triathletes by Bobby McGee, a catalog of specific workouts with which to populate a training plan.

The limits of a mechanical metaphor

2010-01-06T13:47:00.000-08:00

The chronicles tell of Neil Armstrong's dim view of exercise; to paraphrase: "The heart is a pump designed with a limited number of cycles; why would I want to reach its design limit earlier by increasing its beating rate?" As much as I consider Neil Armstrong a role model in many areas of life, we know better than that today. The heart is a muscle, not a mechanical pump. Assuming healthy genes, the heart muscle lasts longer if we exercise it.

And, as it turns out, lots of other organs seem to follow a similar behavior. Recent study after recent study (see the news release about a couple of them in earlier posts) shows that more exercise is better than less - all the way to 50 miles a week, and including knees - that joint sedentarians use to torture us runners psychologically. The studies show that sedentarian knees actually degrade *faster* than running knees. Like the heart, knees benefit from useage.

So go out, run and enjoy yourselves!

Running slows aging and postpones disability, study finds

2010-01-06T13:44:00.001-08:00

Running slows aging and postpones disability, study finds

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Who said you have to run to enjoy running?

2009-12-27T21:01:00.000-08:00

The morning after Christmas, Boulder got a bit more snow - just to top off the postcard-like landscapes. Immediately after, the skies cleared up and the Sun shone brightly. What better excuse to go for an epic run? Out went Wendy and I - Wendy is running again! Her workout being shorter than mine that day, we parted ways after 30 minutes.

Undisturbed snow on trails provide an exhilarating experience - all the more so if it's in great terrain. So up Shadow Canyon I went, intimate, shady, covered with undisturbed snow, and steep.

A loud bird added a soundtrack to the run. As I approached the crest of the Flatirons, the view toward Golden was graced with layers of breaking clouds in the Sun. South Boulder Peak was its usual beautiful; the Continental Divide had a garland of clouds. To the North, Boulder sunbathed.

Fern Canyon turned out to be a new kind of "running" for me: too much snow, too much slope - half the time I was sliding on my glutei maximi (a new way to exercise them!) and half the time I was "skiing" on my feet, trying to maintain my center of gravity very slightly backward so as not to tip over face first into barely hidden rocks. I did get my foot caught into a fallen tree once and did tip over face first but was lucky to land on snow. It was so much fun!!!!

On the technical side, I am learning to increase fluid intake enough to compensate for sweat rates. I was "overly successful" and easily exceeded my target of 25oz/hr as I ran out of fluids after 2h20 and 70 ounces.

Running with the Tribe

2009-12-19T17:42:00.000-08:00

A delightful morning it was when our tribe (Jennifer, Dawn, Wendy, Cindi, Marianne, Mountain Dave, and Dave) gathered at Heil Ranch with 20 rapidly rising degrees. Beautiful and varied surfaces, great views from the top, lots of conversation. Dave Harrison taking the picture - thank you Dave! And, Wendy is back on the trails! (Not that she ever left them; it's just that she is running again)

Cadence, it's all Cadence

2009-12-12T16:59:00.000-08:00

Did I mention high cadence in a previous post? One of Coach Cindy's simplest and most intriguing requirements has been to run at 180rpm (so to speak). To me, that's ridiculously small steps! But oh boy do they increase efficiency. Today's 3 hour run through 4000 feet up and down and 16 miles was a walk in the park (ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit - the other way) with the higher cadence - and that after five days of sustained training. Long live short strides!

After I wrote this post, I ran into research studies mentioned by the NYT - they conclude that a shorter stride decreases the probability of a tibia stress fracture - the decrease in load intensity is higher than the increase in load cycles.

It's Cascade Crest 100

2009-12-12T16:49:00.000-08:00

Oh well - did not make it through the Western States 100 lottery. One-time loser. Two-time losers get an automatic entry. Good to know two-time losers are winners. One-time losers, however, are losers. :-) I qualified for the lottery via my 50 miler last year. There is an 11-hour limit to qualify, and I ran 8 minutes under that. A bit arbitrary, since different races have very different profiles.

And so my A race for 2010 will not be WS100. Instead, I am targeting Cascade Crest 100, allegedly one of the most beautiful races on the face of this planet. 20,500 feet up and down. Not shabby. In the middle of the National Parks of Washington State and following the Pacific Crest trail. It's an intimate race with 128 starters last year (about 95 finishers). Because it is increasingly popular, it is likely to setup a lottery this year (damnation!) If I am a loser on this one, my alternates are Angeles Crest 100 (but did the fire consume an otherwise beautiful layout?) and Grand Teton 100.

Would love to run the Tahoe Rim 100, but music is not allowed on that race. And music, along with gorgeous landscapes, wild wilderness, and epic ups and downs are the essence of why I run this crazy distances. It's a three month vacation packed into 30 hours!

Ungainly Gait

2009-12-09T15:45:00.003-08:00

Turns out my gait has all kinds of issues. Have to learn to run again! It's all about efficiency - using hamstrings and quads only to run, and letting gravity do as much of the work as possible.

Amping Up - will the fuses blow?

2009-12-08T21:13:00.000-08:00

Training is off to a good - and hard - start. Ramped up straight from a 30-mile week to a 45-mile week. Who said 10% is the way to go? Is coach Cindy pushing to see where the cracking point is?

Born to Run - a fun book

2009-11-27T17:11:00.001-08:00

Over the top? Most certainly. Fun? Totally. If you want to read in words the unreasonable energy that propels you on the trails, this is a fun book to devour. Don't take it too seriously, though. Except for persistence hunting, and how we were... well, born to run!

And we're off

2009-11-26T14:56:00.000-08:00

Cindy has loaded my TP (as in Training Peaks) with months worth of training sessions. My immediate question: can I pack them all up in the next few days and be done with it? :-P

The discipline these bring will help me complete my recovery runs - the ones that make our running more efficient... little... by... little...

The plans also makes it clear that I'll be running the D RATS 50M - yes, mam!

The plan starts tomorrow; in the meantime, I ran

with members of the IPR tribe to celebrate Thanksgiving - thank you Cindi, Dave, Amy, and Marianne! And thank you, I guess, to the rock that gave me the little kiss on the knee... :-P

First, the coach

2009-11-14T17:00:00.000-08:00

I managed to learn how to run 50 milers all by my lonesome - literature, asking other people, training and experimenting. 100 miles is quite the step up. I am looking for someone who will know what is going on with my body better than I can myself.

I have interviewed a few coaches, local and not. After interviewing them and the references they provided me with, I have found my coach. The references were invaluable in understanding and characterizing the coaches. Thank you to the coaches for supplying the references and to the references for taking the time to guide me. In fact, several of them were passionate enough about their own running that they shared their own experiences and advice. Thank you Megan, Joy, Kyle, and Ryan. And thank you Buzz Burrell and Scott Fliegelman for your recommendations.

How we got to this point

2009-11-14T16:50:00.000-08:00

Without ever having run a marathon before (as my friend Craig Skinner likes to point out in amazement) I successfully trained for and ran the North Face Endurance Challenge San Francisco 50 miler (injuries on the way there are reported on http://onthewaytonfec.blogspot.com/) .

It was an epic and wonderful run. Peak moment: cresting a tall hill and getting a plunging view over Stinson Beach, bathed in a double line of ocean breakers. And with a happy ending, as the finish pic indicates.

After taking it easy in 2009, it's time to go for the next learning challenge: the 100 miler.