Trails and Travails

Michael Enright wrote:It's tough to read this blog - the emoticons make me nauseous!

It could be worse...

Holy emoticons Batman!!! Nice running Mike...hopefully the hip issue will not hinder you too much...

I could've sworn I posted before my run this morning. Apparently not. Weird. I know I typed out a post... maybe it didn't go through.

Anyway...

You guys are way too much with the emoticons. Seriously. But, the laughs, support, and words of confidence were definitely welcomed yesterday. I refrained from posting because I didn't want to ruin the ridiculous streak that was going on here, but I was sitting here laughing at every new post that popped up.

So, that beat-to-shit feeling didn't really go away yesterday, even after a 1hr nap (wasn't the best nap, though). I was dehydrated and a bit foggy the rest of the day. Basically sat and watched cycling (still catching up on the Vuelta) and caught up on some TV shows all day. Oh, and I ate.

Ended up in bed at 9:30 and asleep shortly after. Which was nice. Then I woke up at 5:30 and decided it was as good of a time as ever... And besides, that meant I'd be on the trail just after 7:00. It was cool this morning - low-mid 60s - and didn't get much higher than the mid-high 70s by the time I finished my run. Still looking forward to temps in the 50s-60s, but hey, I'll take what I can get.

I did some research on sodium loss during exercise yesterday and decided to supplement my water with a bit of table salt today. Just 1/4tsp per 60oz. I don't know if it helped, but I don't feel as beat to shit today, and what does feel beat to shit is strictly confined to my muscles. Not my body overall.

Now, the run itself:
Drove to a place called Magnolia Ranch, which is really just an equestrian staging area at the north end of the South Fork River Trail, which opened... last year, I think. I had heard about the trail through my trail running group (some people started at the south end and did an out-and-back yesterday) so decided to give it a try. The topo doesn't look too painful, right? But what have we learned from Mike's blog about topos? They're fucking liars. Here's the elevation chart. That's another 5k' gain/loss on top of yesterday's. Granted, none of the hills are more than ~300-350', but there's what, at least 15 of them?

Needless to say, I bitched for the first 45 minutes. Not only was my body broken down, but my mind was, too. I wanted to just sit down and cry. Seriously. Awful. Then right around the top of peak #3 (~5 miles), I said to myself, "alright, if I'm going to suffer, it's going to be because I'm making myself suffer, not because the trail is." Kind of a harden-the-fuck-up moment, which worked... until my left glute started seriously acting up. Sharp-pain twinges every couple minutes unless I dug my fingers into the side of the muscle as hard as I could. I got all dramatic and made pleas and promises to the universe - "I'll stretch it all day, just make it stop now." And then, just as I was nearing my arbitrary turn-around (which was preceded by that awesome hill... ugh), the pain went away.

The run back was both mentally and physically easier. Go figure. Stomach started letting me know that the PB&honey&banana sandwich + granola bar I'd eaten were making their way through me around the 2hr point. Got it. Luckily, there was a bathroom at the trailhead (that one near "Movie Set" on the topo? Yeah, it doesn't exist). I ran a 1min negative split, so I got to the trailhead at 2:59:20, and after an hour of jostling a full stomach, port-a-potties never looked so good.

Now, a normal person would've immediately bolted to the port-a-potty, right? But wait, that would mean I'd hit the Garmin at 2:59:30. Fuck that. I'm running another 30 seconds. Look up idiot in the dictionary; you'll find me. Fortunately, my stomach (barely) allowed this nonsense.

But then I remembered: I was at 79.xx miles yesterday. Or was it 78.85? And I was only at 20.40. No fucking way I'm falling less than a mile short of 100. So after my bathroom break, I did a .73mi "cool down" along the highway.

And there you have it: 100.42 miles on the week, 14:16:31 total time, 14.25k' gain/loss due to hills (probably another 1000'+ just due to road/trail undulations). Longest running week, both time and mileage, ever. Woot.

in·saneAdjective/inˈsān/

1. In a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction; seriously mentally ill.
2. (of an action or quality) Characterized or caused by madness
3. Mike MacLellan

Hahahaha. I swear the people here are nutjobs - I love it! I didn't like the part about your leg hurting - sounded brutal. I know you already have a Mom and it got better thankfully, but really - be careful. The mentally tough days I like to think are really good for us if we get through them - I know in every race there is a moment in there somewhere where I have wanted to say F it and quit - maybe those training moments give us strength to draw on during those bad mental race times?

And great job on the week of running - that is a lot of miles and hours pounding away on the (hilly) trails. Just please be careful...

Great job! When do you take a rest day? Seriously, I know you're in some really thick training right now but I hate for you to get to beaten up and then still have a few more mos of training to go.

You remind me of one of the guys I run with about the Garmin...he'd run an extra .2 of a block just to get the # to turn over to the right amount on a long run and I'd just want to call it good and stop.

Hmmmm - John's post seems to sum it right up.

Way to perservere Mike. Awesome getting those last 30sec to turn the dial.

Thanks everybody. You're all spot on about me really teetering on the edge. My mom noticed it during the week I moved up here, and after thoroughly catching up on my blog - be wary, there are lurking eyes now... - Aileen has expressed a bit of concern as well. I'm keeping to my philosophy of "if it doesn't affect your stride, push through it." Yesterday, the glute thing DID affect my stride to some extent, but there was really no way for me bag the run when I was 5-6 miles from the trailhead, so I gingerly pushed through it and it ended up going away. Still, as long as my legs are recovering enough to run again within 24 hours, I'm going to see how far I can push myself. Intelligently. See below.

John - You're right re: mentally tough days. I know that every time I'm able to not only push through it but force an attitude flip mid-run, I'm banking some good experience for the 50. The 50 is going to get ugly more than once and brutally ugly probably in the mid-30s (people seem to start losing it here), so I need all the HTFU moments I can get.

Julie - Next Friday is the next rest day. I take a full day on the Friday of every stepback week. There are a few more in addition to that as I taper for both of my goal races.

Alex - This is why I need this forum; no one in their right mind would tell me that risking a major GI embarrassment just to hit a full 3 hours before stopping was "awesome."

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4.18 recovery this morning. I was cruising along the canal, feeling surprisingly good after the first quarter mile (feet are both a bit tender), constantly reminding myself to really rein it in... When I looked at the watch and saw 18:xx. Uh, I'm either running REALLY slow or I'm already past 2 miles. Turns out it was both. 9:05 pace and 2.05 miles in. Found some arbitrary turn-around (a stump or something) and headed back. Again, totally reining the legs in, making sure I put in absolutely no effort. Averaged in the high 8's overall, and the run served its purpose to get some blood flowing to the legs and work out the kinks.

Changing things up very slightly this week... More like accommodating things. Tomorrow's VO2max work will be on a much flatter course than the ECG, as I want to be able to hit the "correct" paces and do 2min intervals (w/ 2min recoveries). Wednesday is going to be a nice, long trail run with plenty of elevation gain/loss, so Thursday's hill session will be slightly modified. Saturday's long is going to be 4 hours, 3 loops around Olmstead (I hate this trail with a passion, but I'm looping it twice for my 34M race, so I may as well learn where to hit and where to take it easy). Sunday is undecided, but it might turn into a double (12 and 8 or something like that) if I'm really beat up. I'd rather just get it all done at once, though, so we'll see.

That's an ambitious Saturday! Four hours on a bike is hard enough - I can't imagine running for that long in a training run. Out of curiousity, why the 2 min VO2max speed work? My schedule calls for 3x3s (no idea why 3 minutes), but I will be running only half marathon. It does seem that you recover crazy fast from some of your really tough workouts. I'm sure you would probably go (moreso than normal) insane if you had to sit out for 3-4 days. I guess I would too...

John - The 2min intervals are because I've seriously neglected my top-end speed and I'm not sure my legs are ready for full 3-4min VO2max intervals (or mile repeats, for that matter). My form at ~5:00 pace is horrific, and I need to work on that as much as I do on touching up my top end. Next week will be 3-4min intervals, and then I transition into tempos from there, just keeping up on the VO2max every couple weeks.

And re: days off... I dream about them, then I get them and all I want to do is run. Go figure.

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I bought a pair of Cascadias today. I walked in the store, said I'd been wearing Ghosts and was ready for a trail shoe and had heard good things about - "Go straight to the Cascadias," I was told. I think she read my mind. Mark is right; they're tanks, but I think I'll want something tanky for the trails around here. To be honest, my feet could probably use a bit more support than they've been getting recently. I think it's a bit ambitious to break these guys in on Wednesday's 18+, so maybe just tomorrow's afternoon run, Thursday's morning run, and Sunday, instead.

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3.1 miles just putzing along (at an embarrassing pace) tonight. I'm beginning to think that even Monday's doubles serve no purpose anymore. Sure, they've helped me get up to 100 miles reasonably comfortably by tacking on 3 bullshit miles in the afternoon, but I'd rather have the 24 hours of recovery and just do 5 in the morning, like I'm doing for Fridays from now on. The mental break will be nice, too. It won't be too much of an issue tacking on a mile per day for my T-Th runs, and I feel like those miles will actually have a point to them.

All hail Mike's new shoes!



I'm still looking for the Brooks logo, though... (oh, wait.. that delta right in front of the number looks familiar...)

Yeah yeah yeah. They're big and they're heavy, but if they're good enough for Jurek... Actually, that has nothing to do with it. It's more that Brooks seem to like my feet, and vice versa, and I need some traction. We'll see how they play out.

9.18 w/ 16 minutes of VO2max intervals today. The plan:
20min warm-up (gratuitous mileage, plus I actually needed the full 20min)
2 sets (5min recovery between sets):
4x 2min @ RPE 8-9 / 2min recovery
15min cool-down.

The results:

The reason for the at times large discrepancies between pace and NGP is that the first 4 intervals were on a negative slope (ranging from -2.1% to -.4%) and the last 4 were on an uphill (ranging from .5% to 2.1%).
I'm not concerned with perfect splits or nailing a certain time, as is probably obvious given the fact that I'm not running these on a track. What I get from these results is that my RPE (which increased very slightly with each interval after the first 2, which were creaky and not at all fun) lines up pretty consistently with the NGP; for me, that's an indication that I'm learning to listen to my body and how it's responding to what I'm doing.
That said, the last interval is a bit perplexing to me, since I was running flat out for the last 20-30 seconds. I think what happened, though, is I got sloppy on my form and significantly slowed my cadence (from really-really-fast turnover to much longer strides) which actually slowed me.
My recovery intervals were around 8:00 pace. I know, way too fast, which probably means that my "on" intervals were too slow. I'll probably care a bit more about that when I'm training for a road marathon again; for now, the extra high-end stimulus to my legs and body are all I'm looking for. Feels good to zip along again.

Mike MacLellan wrote:Yeah yeah yeah. They're big and they're heavy, but if they're good enough for Jurek... Actually, that has nothing to do with it. It's more that Brooks seem to like my feet, and vice versa, and I need some traction. We'll see how they play out.

Well, I was figuring that 120 mm smoothbore gun would deal with your rattlesnake problems.

Kidding aside, I hear that the Cascadia is a great shoe. And I'm a huge believer (just check my blog for the latest chapter in my shoe-search saga) in the fact that it's more about how a shoe fits you than how well it does in reviews or preforms on somebody else.

Nice run today Mike. So how heavy is this tank? 12oz.??

That is really neat data - my tri training goes pretty much by RPE, so I am just beginning to learn that as well - I usually only look at my pace at the end of a workout (except for long runs when it is useful to keep me slowed down at the beginning). Really good running as usual!

Mark - I can sidestep the snakes. I'll use the cannon on the bears. Have yet to see one, but I've seen enough scat to know their around. Eep.

Nick - 12.4oz according to the website.

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4.55 @ 8:00 pace tonight. Not much effort but felt like I should've posted better times... Then again, the canal has a few sections that are extremely tough to glide over - rocks/roots/uneven terrain - so oh well.

Wore the new Cascadias for the run. A lot more ground feel than I expected and way less flexibility than the Ghosts. If I hit a rock, my whole foot banks on it now instead of conforming to it. I feel like they pushed me into more of a mid/forefoot strike, too. Either way, they worked out nicely and I'm excited to use them on a longer run.

One of my professors asked me if I was okay today. I said yes and asked if I looked tired. She gave me a sympathetic nod. Yeah, I know. I feel it, too. Pretty exhausted today.

Looooooooong trail run tomorrow. Probably a bit over 18 miles.

12.4!! Those are tanks...I had a pair of Saucony ProGrids once that weighed over 12. Let's just say that I didn't wear them that much

Now that's more like it.
18.62mi, 5.5k' gain/loss, 2hr40min (8:36 average pace).

Took the Wednesday route from 2 weeks ago (the supposedly flat 12-miler that ended up being continuous rollers) to the turn-around point and headed up to the WS100 course. I knew the trail going up to it would be steep, since the sign says "Maine Bar Trail (STEEP)", but uh, 28% for the first third of a mile? 23% average for the first half mile, 18.4% for the entire .75mi of the trail. Not to mention that most of it looked like a dried up stream - a little 1' wide rocky/rooty dip in an otherwise overgrown hill. Yes, I walked the large majority of it.

After that misery (the first 6 miles didn't help, either, as fireroads aren't exactly "fun" to run on), I met up with the WS course and... wow. Just wow. Almost 5 miles of beautiful, winding singletrack with ferns, oaks, pines, and spots of chaparral greenery intermixed in it. Oh, and it's a net downhill of 1%... but the scenery sure as hell made it seem like a lot more. Went down a steep, technical trail back to Quarry road (the fireroad) and cut up into the hillside again after a mile or so. Glad I trusted my gut and went on the side trail, since it was an unmarked singletrack with a single sign saying bikes weren't allowed. Someone had slapped a "Cool: 3mi" sticker onto it, which was the only reason I took it. Back up, up, up for a steady 1.5mi slog @ just under 9%. Again, intuition paid off more than once, as the trail would just randomly split with no signage.

From the highway crossing back to my car was mostly familiar trail, though I did make a wrong turn at one point and tack on an extra .2-.3 miles onto the run because of it. The fireroad splits off into a singletrack that cuts across a large meadow. I took the fireroad, which wraps around the meadow instead before meeting back up with the singletrack. The WS course takes the shortcut. Then it was down, down, down - once I reminded myself to RELAX and just let my stride fall into place, I was able to zip down the hill pretty easily - to No Hands Bridge, where I turned right instead of left and went to my car. Only complaints are that my hamstrings started cramping a little bit on the way down the last hill, but I've already given them a good stretch and they're feeling good.

...I guess all of that description was mainly for Schuey, since he's the only one who's expressed serious interest in running the race, assuming he's still interested with his new grown-up job and everything

Elevation profile, as per usual.

Mike how does your Garmin or whatever you're using do in the trails? The heavy trees and such doesn't screw with the GPS?

Alex Kubacki wrote:Mike how does your Garmin or whatever you're using do in the trails? The heavy trees and such doesn't screw with the GPS?

Shhh! Don't burst Mike's bubble, Alex! He's be crestfallen to discover that GPS errors have skewed all his altitude readings by a factor of ten.

(Seriously, I think the area around Auburn where Mike runs isn't heavily forested. The readings might not be too far off.)

Alex Kubacki wrote:Mike how does your Garmin or whatever you're using do in the trails? The heavy trees and such doesn't screw with the GPS?

Mark B wrote:
Shhh! Don't burst Mike's bubble, Alex! He's be crestfallen to discover that GPS errors have skewed all his altitude readings by a factor of ten.
(Seriously, I think the area around Auburn where Mike runs isn't heavily forested. The readings might not be too far off.)

Au contraire, Mark! Some sections of the trails around here are pretty heavily overgrown to the point that I'm sure the Garmin is giving me some wonky information here and there. For the most part, however, I've found it to be accurate.

For example, today there were trail mile markers from the junction of Maine Bar/WS course all the way to NHB. Other than my little detour, they were lining up pretty damn close with the Garmin... And I trust them, given that they're the mile markers used by the WS100 and the horse race along that trail. For 10.5 mile-marker miles, the Garmin read just over that (again, I took that little detour), so it gave me some reasonable confidence that in the end, it all evens out.

I do, however, think that it'll read switchbacks inaccurately and read the mileage as a bit short and the gradient as a bit steep.

In terms of elevation - I use GPS coordinate correction (feature on WKO+) for the charts. Sometimes, this will add a thousand or more feet of gain/loss - other times, it will subtract that much. On today's run, I think it was a little generous, since much of the trail was cut into the side of a steep hill, so I'm sure the minor inaccuracies in position on the Garmin caused it to read me climbing and descending 10' every time it recorded a new data point. Still, it's good for overall trends, and if I feel like a trail had a good amount of undulation, I reason that it probably works out to something close to what the chart says, anyway.

Down to the river and back this morning for a total of 10. Pace down was around 8:12 (ugh), pace up was 8:3x, I think. Overall, about a minute slower than last time I did this - which was the Saturday morning after a stepback week and Friday completely off - with just about the same pace going up, and I was able to run all of it (sometimes my legs are blown out to the point where I walk the steeper parts).

4 to come after class. Gonna try to crank 'em out right after I get home so I can just relax for the evening.

If you're forced to walk, that's a serious incline! (No matter what the GPS states)

Dave - I'd say it's 50% failure of mental fortitude and 50% failure of legs. Sometimes I just don't have it in me to push anymore.
That said, yes, those inclines are generally at least 12%.

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Did the whole get-home-and-run thing this afternoon, since Thursdays are kind of like my Fridays and I wanted to get a jumpstart on the "weekend." Ate a granola bar as I left Trader Joe's after class and started my run about 45 minutes later after getting home and tending to a few things.* Can't say I felt amazing, but I didn't suffer, and I didn't bonk. So, I'd consider it a successful experiment. Plus, my legs were really open and ready to run, as opposed to the usual 1+ mile slog at the beginning of every single run.

4.09 miles @ 7:40 pace overall on the canal. My legs were a tad shaky at the end of the run, probably because of the truncated warm-up + I was getting hungry, but it feels nice to be done.

Assuming all goes well (wow, way to jinx it, Mike), I'll have around 105 miles this week and just short of 15 hours. And I'm feeling way better than I did at this time last week, which is nice.

*A short, sad story: I've been neglecting my fry (baby fish) lately. School and running have taken up all of my time, so I haven't been keeping up on the maintenance of their tank. Well, the tank likely had a combination of low O2 levels (their water is kept deliberately hot so their metabolisms are sped up and they grow faster) and high nitrite (a result of how much I feed them ---> how much waste they produce) going on, as I'd noticed them at the surface of the water this morning (an indication of both issues described above).

When I got home, two had died. Now, I know it's "common" for fish to die. Not for someone who actually knows how to keep them. I don't lose fish. And to lose 2 meant I was seriously neglecting them. So, I decided it's time to move them to the big tank with the sub-adults (3-4" for the most part, some pushing 4.5"). The fry are just under 1". Or, were. The rule of thumb is that they're safe at 1.5", but if they can't fit entirely in a bigger fish's mouth, they should be fine.

Not so. Tonight, my fish dined on 18 babies, first mob-killing them (swarming one and pecking it to death), then ripping them apart. Lovely, right?

Lesson learned.

Yipes! Are you raising piranha, Mike? That must have been quite a sight.

Good job on the runs, and 105 miles is amazing. And I know you're hardcore and all, but aren't you supposed to learn how to power hike on some of these training runs so do you don't go all XY chromosome on your ultra and burn yourself out a third of the way in?