Duck-Farm

I went 37 miles this past weekend. It’s just one lifetime PR after another lately. 

I did 22 miles between Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday, that included a 10 mile run on Wednesday that was my life’s fastest 10 miles. 

Saturday, I ran 27 miles in the Middle Fork canyon from Cool… Way Too Cool 50K course minus the start section. I believe I did about 3000′ of verical climbing. I ran this really, really slow, keeping my HR well below Aerobic Threshold. I came across a guy who was hurting bad and used him as an excuse to go slow. He had signed up for Way Too Cool in December, but had not checked out the course until Saturday. I’ll be shocked if he is there on March 10th. He was a very nice guy. I was happy to have someone else with me in case of mountain lion encounter.

Anyway, I got my fueling dialed on this run. Turns out a light mix of Cytomax in one water bottle, water in the other, Perpetuem every so often from the Fuel Belt, and a low HR are a GREAT combination! My body was tired but my head was still very motivated when I finished.

Sunday I ran 10 miles with my wife on a 800′ hill near our house. (Clark Mountain, immediately south of Cronan Ranch across the river if you are in the neighborhood.)

59 miles with 3800′ feet of vertical climbing for the week in about 13 hours. If I had realized I was only one mile from a 60 mile week, I would have run one more on Sunday just so I could say I had a 60 mile week… Just a couple weeks ago, my biggest week to date was only 38 miles.

So now that the hard stuff is over and the taper has begun, I am going to let the cat out of the bag and tell you all that Way Too Cool will be my 39th birthday. Won’t you join me for a run? I have had it on my radar screen since before my 38th birthday, and I have been holding my breath telling people because I just wasn’t sure my body would hold together through the training program.

My wife is calling it my midlife crisis… she doesn’t realize that I am just using my 39th birthday as a shield so she will grant me weekend training passes! She’ll figure it out next year when I tell her I want to run AR50 for my 40th birthday!!!

Oh yeah, and I picked up some more poison oak this week.

I’m gradually getting over the disdain for writing that came from writing two term papers at once. I’m transferring the energy into miles. My running has been off the hook the last two weeks by my previous standards. I ran 52 miles last week, and 54 miles this week. The coming week will bring 56 miles, and then the taper begins for Way Too Cool 50K on March 10th.

I am not at all confident that I am ready to run 50 kilometers -31 miles- in hilly terrain. But I’m going to try it anyway. The big hairy goal for 2007 is to run 50K. So this will be my first attempt. If I don’t succeed it won’t be the end of the world, just time to go back to the drawing board… Well, it might suck pretty bad if I don’t succeed, considering it will also be my 39th birthday!

There is another 50K in the neighborhood on September 2nd at Sly Park. It’s called Run On The Sly, and it looks harder than Way Too Cool, so it would be nice to finish Way Too Cool. Then I could decide (or more accurately, Erin could decide) if I will be running the Run On The Sly.

Erin has been very supportive of this effort. But our weekends have been COMPLETELY about running since Christmas. I run long on Saturday and not so long on Sunday. Yesterday was Saturday, and I ran 22 miles. It took the better part of the day. Today I followed that with ten more miles. It is always very hard to get started on Sunday, but pretty much every single Sunday run has left me feeling significantly better afterward than I felt before the run. It’s like a flushing effect or something. All the junk that builds up in the muscles the day before gets washed out. At least it feels that way.

The one thing I learned though is that you cannot follow a 22 mile run with another 10 mile run 16 hours later without having complete respect for both efforts. They are linked. The 10 mile run is merely an extension of the 22 mile run. You have to start hydrating and eating while you run it as if you had already been running for 22 miles, or else you will quickly begin to suffer greatly. Early on, I had to do 16 on Saturday and 8 more on Sunday. I didn’t have this mental link between the two runs established yet. I ended up walking home from the 6.5 mile mark because I was totally wiped… bonked. I did the 8 miles, but the last 1.5 miles were nearly impossible.

Alright, that’s enough text without pictures for now… more later.

I turned in both my term papers and got A’s on them both. I still have one final to take online. I will probably take it tomorrow.

I have been running a lot still. Last week I ran 48 miles. It was the most miles I have ever run in one week. This week I will end up running 38 miles… it is supposed to be an easy week. But 38 miles was my highest mileage ever just a couple weeks ago. My long run today was supposed to be ten miles. If it was supposed to be an easy ten miles, I blew it. I went out for what I thought would be a moderate ten miler but it ended up being a hard 12 miler. I under estimated the distance and the steepness of one hill that climbs 600′ in .8 miles and no, there aren’t any switch  backs. It’s like friggin stairs!

Seems like I have been running a lot with Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run runners lately. The trails I have been running lately are all either  part of the the Western States Trail or they tie directly into the Western States trail. So alot of these 100 mile runners are out there logging mileage on the trail. Some of them have driven for hours in order to do familiarization runs. It’s kind of luxurious to live ten miles from one of the worlds premire running trail systems!

Interestingly, there seem to be a disproportionate number of “past Marines” engaging in long trail runs. Last week I ran with a guy who was in during the 70’s that I just met at the trailhead and the same thing happened this week, and it was a different guy!  

I wish I had some pictures to post. Erin got me a little digital camera for Christmas but I can’t seem to get it to work reliably when I am out on the trail and it is 35 degrees. Today I took a little grocery store box camera, and I took a few pictures, but they will have to be developed. I got a new phone with a two megapixel camera, but I don’t know how to get the picts from the camera to my computer yet ( I think  the friggin phone company makes you buy software!), plus there is something less than pure about carrying a phone on a trail run.

I got freaked out running alone this week because there have been some mountain lion sightings in the region lately, and an attack on a Bay Area trail last week. I actually saw my first mountain lion since moving up here a couple weeks ago. It was dead beside Highway 49 in the early morning. So I figured out a hasty jingle bell that I tied on the outside on my running pack…. keys. They made plenty of noise!

OK. That’s enough for now. I have lost six pounds since January first!

Here’s a photo for ya! We don’t catch the smart ones!