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Races on the Calendar

February 26, 2011 No comments

Not everyone considers racing an integral part of running. Even amongst people actively trying to improve their performance, not everyone needs a public event to do so in. Others of us, on the other hand, need something to look forward to; something for our training to be in pursuit of; something to be held accountable to. Apparently, I am one of those latter people. Yes, one of those people who finds #nothingToTrainFor to be one of the saddest hash tags on Twitter.

Bummer.

As some might now, we try not to plan our travels around races. But as soon as I know where we’re going to be (or even where we might be) I start searching1 for races near where we’ll be. And damn, there is a lot to do in Ventura County and the LA sprawl. We even accelerated our southbound journey by a day in order to get here just in time for the Santa to the Sea Half Marathon.

My “short list” of potential 2011 races grew quickly. I wanted to focus on half marathons this year, under the logic that before I try to train for a stretch marathon goal I should try to attain a half marathon time that is predictive of said marathon time2. However, there was a business trip looming since before the holidays and February is annually a busy travel month for us3, so weekends started getting spread across the country and races, especially the halves, had to be crossed off.

Yes, I color code potential races by state.

Further bummer.

The Surf City half in Huntington Beach got scrapped before it even made the list because it has no shorter race4 for my wife to do and all the beach front hotels were booked up.

The Rose Bowl Half Marathon was scrapped because it is OBSCENELY expensive for no apparent reason and I found it morally reprehensible to give them my money. (And a quick survey of my virtual running friends validated this. I’m not crazy.) Over the course of the week prior, I actually made and canceled a hotel reservation in Pasadena four or five times.

The Ventura Half Marathon was missed because it was during our anniversary trip to Ottawa. Which is really too bad because I like trying to support those small, community run races, even when they are for-profit.

The Great Race of Agoura Hills, which features TWO half marathons (run the hill trails or run the Hollywood back lot sets) and every shorter length imaginable, was one I was really looking forward to (though I hadn’t decided which half), but an “early March” business trip has been pushed out to block that one too.

And then we’re in to April, and in all likelihood leaving Ventura County before the Lake Casitas Half (and definitely before June’s Ojai to the Ocean Half Marathon).

Triple bummer.

But because the only plan we live by is the ability to adapt to constantly changing plans, we’re making the most of the aforementioned “early March” business trip, tacking on visits to our parents while we’re on the east coast. And, of course, before we leave New Hampshire, we’ve found a race that has both a half and a 5k5. This extra east coast time will make us miss two concerts we were looking forward to at the Ventura Theater6, but life will go on.

So, there’s a plan in place, and I’m actually registered for TWO half marathons. Seven days apart.

 

April 3, 2011

In Newmarket, NH, I’m all signed up for the Great Bay Half Marathon, which friends of ours ran last year and is reported to be a well organized race and a good time to be had. It starts late in the day (11:00!), but we managed to book an flight out of MHT, it ought to fit in well for our last day in NH.

 

April 10, 2011

In Paso Robles, CA, we’ll be stopping for the night on our way from Ventura County up to the Bay area, and I’m registered for the Wine Country Half Marathon. My wife wants me to try to win it (yes, outright) because the winner gets their weight in wine. Unfortunately, that will require my to shave about 20 minutes off my PR (based on last year’s results), but it’s a fun incentive!

Yup; 13.1 per coast, 7 days apart. And no “traveling to races” . . . technically.

I haven’t decided yet which race will be the full-out effort. It’d be foolish to think both can be, and while the first one is obviously better odds, I’ll let the indeterminates (weather, race morning “feel,” etc) guide my effort. I whipped out a 1:40 13.1 training this week, after 5 days without running, which is only a few minutes slower than my PR, so I’m pretty confident that with focused training over the next month I’ll be able to PR again, at least by a bit, if not hit that 1:30 goal pace.

I’m really quite giddy inside to be all registered and committed and ready to go again. I love running “just to run,” and I’ve even been doing a pretty good job of keeping to my goal of more “training runs” instead of just more “junk miles.” But finally having the races on the calendar7 has given me a new determination and excitement that has been missing from my runs lately. And that brings me joy8.

#somethingToTrainFor

Show 8 footnotes

  1. Runningintheusa.com’s mapShot feature is the greatest thing ever invented for nomadic runners. …in the USA, at least. ↩
  2. Whoa. That sentence hurt my head. Sorry. ↩
  3. It’s both our anniversary and my wife’s birthday, so we usually go somewhere fun for one – if not both – occasions. This was year 10 on the marriage thing, so we’re doing both. ↩
  4. The half technically is the shorter race. ↩
  5. This whole “shorter race” thing, by the way, is because my wife is not a distance runner, so we try to find events that have a 5k or 10k attached that she can enjoy, or at the very least are somewhere scenic or otherwise amusing for sweet lovely spouses who are waiting for their distance runners. ↩
  6. Dead Man’s Party and the Adicts, if you were curious, but at least we’ll be in town for Peter Murphy! ↩
  7. And making good progress this month towards my optimal race weight! ↩
  8. And might help fight this newfound habit of arbitrarily putting things in quotes. ↩

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Progress Check: January 2011

January 28, 2011 No comments

Setting goals is not practical if you don’t periodically review your progress and whether or not they are still appropriate.  I just gave this speech to a customer yesterday and realized that it applies to me as well.  So, one month in to the year, I’ve decided that it’s as good a time as any to examine my 2011 goals.

  1. Mileage – Consistency is moot thus far, as it’s month one, but I’m at 109.25 running miles for the month thus far, which isn’t too far off of my 104.131456 targeted average for the 2011 kilometer challenge.  The real test will be to keep it steady through February, which is wrought with business and vacation travel1.
  2. Race Weight – There’s two important rules of losing weight that many people (myself included) often disregard.  One is to not weigh yourself daily.  This is mostly psychological, because you will fluctuate upwards some days, and it’s really hard, no matter how analytical you think you’re being, not to overreact and take poor “corrective” actions when none are needed.  The second is to look only at weight.  There’s more to your weight and well being than a number on a scale, and though few of us have a way to regularly measure our BMI, we can all jot down a few notes on how large we feel from weigh in to weigh in.
    I’ve been doing this weekly, on Friday mornings, I’ve got data for four weeks.  Whee!  I haven’t figured out a good way to chart “the feel” aspect of things, but so far, so good.  With the exception of week 2 2, things are moving in the right direction.  I still feel “big,” but today was the first time I’m feeling a difference in the direction of “good.”  There’s still an inch or two to pinch, but I feel much less bloated and heavy during runs than I did in week 1.
  3. Cross Training – The Active.com cross training plan turned out to be junk.  (And, from the scuttlebutt on twitter, that’s pretty much par for the course when it comes to Active.com.)  Most of the cross training plan (designed for runners) was more cardio.  I kept it up for the first few weeks, but this week ditched it and am trying to switch to more weight workouts, using the plan only as a guide to remind me to do something other than run.  So far, I’ve fallen short of the three per week goal, but am consistently hitting at least two per week.
    I’ve also started doing yoga daily with my wife, with the tagline “Every Day; No Excuses.”  There’s really no reason not to be able to take at least 15 minutes to step through a routine.  So far, so good; day 7 of 7.  I’m not counting these towards my goal of three non-run workouts per week, but some of them are pretty good core workouts so it certainly helps.  Plus, they’re making it easier to get in to the right mindset.
  4. Water – Hitting my 100 ounces per day goal hasn’t been an issue (save for weekend events that don’t let you bring your own water in – I hate that!) but spreading it out evenly across the day has been.  On a good day, I’m easily breaking 200 ounces3, but other days I’m front loading the day with too much tea and not touching the water until the afternoon, which isn’t good.
  5. Workouts, not just runs – I’d like to blame Active.com for this again, but I’m falling short by following their plan.  Still all on me, though, right?  Gotta take responsibility for my decision to follow a stupid plan.  I did intervals (off plan) in week 2 and a (weak) time trial (per plan) in week 4.  I need to pick this one up if I’m going to hit my race goals for the year, even if it’s a simple as a one mile sprint on a Friday.
  6. 19:00 5k – No attempts on this yet.  Nothing scheduled for certain, either.  There’s a race in Ventura tomorrow that we might do, and one that might work out during my upcoming trip to San Francisco, but neither is likely a certified course and I’m probably not tuned up to race condition yet.  This goal is sort of on hold until the spring, when February travel has slowed and maybe I’m in a community that’s more in to 5ks than trail runs.
  7. 1:32 half marathon – Again, not there yet.  I only did one race – XTerra Boney Mountain – in January, and though it was almost a half marathon, it wasn’t actually a half marathon.  And it was a trail race.  A really tough trail race that I neither prepared for nor paced myself on.  Fun?  Oh hell  yeah.  But not only was it not a PR, I think it was my worst ever.  If the life scheduling gods smile upon me, I’ll see how I feel at the Rose Bowl Half Marathon on Super Bowl Sunday and/or the Great Race of Agoura, which looks like an awesome event with both a road and trail half, a 10k, a 5k, and a kids’ mile!  It’s probably too soon to expect to hit this goal, but I need to practice pacing as well as improving my speed and a race is the best place to do that.

So that’s where I’m at.  Month one is just about in the bag and I’m not too disappointed with my efforts.  Mostly I need to improve the cross training and specific training runs.  And that water thing.  I still think by goals are what I want to work towards; nothing to change yet.

How about you?  Did you take on any goals for 2011?  How’s the progress going?

Show 3 footnotes

  1. Oakland, Ottawa, San Francisco, Maui, wheeee! ↩
  2. Which I can pretty well attribute to polishing off the egg nog and leftover Thai the night before… ↩
  3. When I learned that my water bottle was 20 ounces, suddenly five bottles seemed insufficient to quench my thirst! ↩

General Blogginess, Training ,
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Race Report: XTerra Boney Mountain Trail Run

January 9, 2011 2 comments

I’m not sure if this race was ever operated as a non-XTerra event, but there seems to be a very inconsistent quality in preparation.  Some things were really well run, others were just not there.  Overall, though, it was a great event and a challenging course (which I was not at all prepared for!).

Getting There

I didn’t know if I’d actually be able to run this race, so I didn’t pre-register.  The race web site was never updated to indicate if they’d sold out or were close to doing so, even after online registration was closed.  Things like that drive me crazy, but it looked like a fun race, so I was hoping to still be able to do it.  Earlier this week I posted to their Facebook wall asking about the likelihood of race day registration being available, never got an answer, and even tried calling them, again with no answer.  But, C had the idea to book a hotel in Thousand Oaks, make it a weekend getaway1, and hope for the best as far as the race was concerned.  Which turned out to be an awesome plan.

There isn’t much parking at Boney Mountain, so parking and race day registration was about three quarter miles away at a local high school.  Where nobody really knew which way was up.  They didn’t really have enough parking for everyone2, there were no toilets, they apparently had no record of people who registered in the last couple of days of online registration, nobody was quite sure of where the shuttle was or which direction the start line was, and for those of you who find shirts important (“seriously, it’s not a plain white one”), they were pretty bland beige ones.

C dropped me off, I registered, gave her my wallet and jacket and then sent her on her merry way.  I followed people who seemed to know where they were going until we came across the start line arrows.  We got to the park and mostly headed for the restrooms.  One more shortfalling; there was only one stall and two urinals available in the men’s room 3 and all was out of toilet paper.  Delightful.  Later, we’d learn that there was one more stall closer to the start line and two or three pot-a-potties.  Signs, people.  Signs.

But, fortunately, once we got to the start line, organizational details went way up.  There was a guy with a PA that was actually loud enough for the size of the crowd, there was water and Gu4 for all, there was a clear view of the start and finish lines, and there were numerous announcements informing us of pretty much everything we needed to know about when to be at the start line (we started late due to insufficient shuttles or some such thing) and how to get there without needing to bushwhack too much.

The Race

Assembled at the start line, there was suddenly whispers of “what’s Jimmy Dean doing here?” as a tanned guy with camouflage climbed the scaffold of the start line with a megaphone.  It turns out, they were referring to Jimmy Dean Freeman, one of the coaches for the SoCal Coyotes, a running group that focuses on trail runs and distance racing, and like to howl when their coach is in a position of authority.  Jimmy gave us a run down of the course profile, which I really wish I had recorded in some format so as to quote verbatim.

The general gist; go over this hill, hit a paved fire road, and go down the very steep descent in to the canyon.  Don’t push too hard (as Jimmy did last year), or you’ll trash your legs and hate the rest of the race.  Climb a 500 foot ascent over a mile, then descend back down some switchbacks to mile six, where you start an almost 2000 foot ascent5 over four miles to the summit of Boney Mountain (“This ain’t no hill; it’s Boney Mountain!”) before the descent.  At mile 11.5, you hit a quarter mile hill that feels like two miles before the final descent to the finish.  At which point, you’ll either love the course and want to run it again immediately, or never set foot in the area again.  Oh, and the course is “almost exactly” a half marathon.

Jimmy also took a survey by show of hands to determine who was doing their first race of 2011, who was doing Boney Mountain for the first time, who was doing their first half marathon(ish) distance, and, of course, who was doing their first ever trail run, which actually got a few hands and a rising round of laughter from those who’ve done this before.  Yeah, it’s that kind of race.

And then we were off.  I stuck at the tail end of the lead group for a while, but hung back to avoid pushing too hard at the beginning and having nothing left for that four mile climb.  Unfortunately, it quickly became evident that my lack of preparation (read, specific hill work and maybe some sort of a taper) was going to result in a muscular rebellion in my legs.  The hills were just not happening.  I had the energy, I had the drive, but I just didn’t have the muscles.  I kept stumbling and kicking myself in the ankles on the first major climb, and had to walk a big chunk of the four miler.  All told, my time isn’t so much a half marathon trail race time, but more so the sum total of a nine mile trail race time and a four mile hike.  On the up side, this left me lots of energy to push on the downhills, making up some of the positions I’d lost.

Frankly, I don’t think I’ve let so many people pass me in any race since my first marathon.  And I don’t mean “oh, wow, look at all the people passing me” – this was a “I guess I should get the hell out of the way so these people behind me can pass.”  That happened a lot.

20/20 Hindsight

Looking back, had I known the course better6, I would have pushed harder at the beginning, building up a bit more “in the bank” before having to walk the hills.  Or better yet, not started a new training plan last week and worn my legs out.  I might have been able to pull off finish time under two hours.  Ah well.  Live and learn.

Jimmy Dean’s summary was pretty much accurate.  With the exception of his estimated depth of the final creek crossing 7, everything was spot on.  Right down to looking back on it at the end.  Yeah, I ran my slowest half marathon ever and it wasn’t even a full half marathon distance.  Yeah, it was 14 minutes slower than the Mount Diablo Trail Adventure Half Marathon that I ran more than two years ago when I had far less running experience.  But it was wicked fun and I want to do it again.

Plus, when my wife pointed out that only the first two finishers came in faster than my PR (on a road half), it put my finishing time in perspective.  49th overall and 8th in my age group, but only 36 minutes behind the winner isn’t all too shabby.

Show 7 footnotes

  1. Since, you know, there were no football games that mattered today… ↩
  2. And didn’t have an overflow lot or plan for such a situation. ↩
  3. Presumably two or three stalls in the women’s ↩
  4. Surprise discovery of the day: Jet Blackberry is actually a tasty flavor.  Not blackberry flavored, but of the fruit ones, it’s the first I’ve tried that’s tasty. ↩
  5. He exaggerated; it was only 1622′ according to the Garmin GPS gods, which are, admittedly, limited in their accuracy, particularly when hills are concerned. ↩
  6. Like, you know, all the people who’ve run it a dozen years in a row and recreationally in between events. ↩
  7. Estimate: ankle to knee deep.  Actual: wet shoes. ↩

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‘Tis the Season

December 31, 2010 1 comment

We twa hae run about the braes,
and pu’d the gowans fine
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
sin auld lang syne.

It that time of year when bloggers create lists.  Best of lists, worst of lists, lists of lists, to-do lists, accomplishment lists, resolution lists, and so on and so forth.  They usually reflect a significant bit of thought and reflection, which is, in general, a good thing.  But that’s not me.

All the same, I thought it might be good to kick myself out of my slump by doing the whole accomplishment/resolution thing.  But since I’m big on the whole “looking forward” thing, I’ll focus on that.

Reflecting-wise, I hit a marathon PR in January, then ran three more before July, getting slower each time.  I qualified for – and let myself get talked in to joining – the Marathon Maniacs with the last two of these, then swore off them for a while in an effort to hit my goal of a 19 minute 5k.  But I didn’t plan well enough to have a target race for this goal, so the fall was essentially a spattering of races run with last minute sign-ups, less running overall, a lack of anything resembling a “training plan,” and a twelve mile obstacle course with an ego problem.  But, to cap it all off, I also ran my first half marathon (with last minute sign-up) since 2008 and managed to PR by 30 seconds or so.

Which brings us to . . .

Goals

Not resolutions, but goals.  Not because there’s anything wrong with resolutions, but because my biggest problem is not having concrete goals to chase, so I get all fuzzy and flounder about.  Plus, resolutions are implicitly something you set at the year’s outset and need to accomplish by December 31, whereas goals can be set at any time and can each have their own timeline.  So I’m using this year’s close as an opportunity to set new goals.

  1. Mileage – I love the DailyMile community, but am not a fan of the distance-obsessed goals.  It’s a fun way to chase a goal, but for me there should be more to running that total distance.  I set a 1000 mile goal in 2009 and found myself stubbornly doing five-some-odd miles on my in-laws’ treadmill on New Year’s Eve, despite having a cold, just so I could hit it.  This year I wanted to up it to 1200, to average 100 per month, and I hit that a while back, finishing up with 1320 for the year, but it’s anything but evenly distributed across the year.
    Yeahhhh… so rather than upping the mileage goal again just because I think I can, I have a twofold mileage goal:

    1. Consistency.  A 203 mile month does not balance out the lethargy of a 73 mile month1, so I’d like to try to get 2011’s chart a bit smoother.
    2. 1,249.57747 miles.  Why 1249 and change?  Because it’s 2011 kilometers.  This is my compromise between not liking mileage goals and needing mileage goal.  @NimbleRunner started a 2011 kilometer challenge, and I know I can do 1200 miles, so 1250ish isn’t a huge increase.  It makes the math a little trickier, but 104.131456 miles per month seems reasonable.
  2. Race Weight – I don’t like thinking of running as a means of controlling my weight, but I’ve finally accepted the fact that my weight controls my running.  The most recent issue of Running Times pointed out that 10 pounds on a runner can equal a minute’s difference in your 5k time, given the same effort of training.  Not in an “everyone should lose 10 pounds” way, mind you – it’s a balance of finding your best race weight.  For me, I’m pretty sure it’s closer to the weight I was in January than the weight I was now.  I’m holding off on weighing myself until next Friday, but I’m committing to doing so weekly through 2011 to figure out what my best weight is.  I’m guessing it’s somewhere between 140 and 145, but that depends on the success at my next goal.  In the meantime, I’m going to execute this goal as reducing the random snacks and heavy drinking2.
  3. Cross Training – I despise cross training.  Mostly because I’m weak.  Gotta fix that.  I’m simply not built to be a hulking mass, but a bit of muscle tone and upper body strength wouldn’t hurt.  It would be nice to be able to climb a 12 foot wall without needing a boost.  Active.com had a freebie cross training program available a couple of weeks ago, so I grabbed that and scheduled it to start on January 3 to kick things off right. Goal-wise, I’m shooting for a minimum of three non-running workouts per week.
  4. Water – This one is pretty straightforward. I need to drink more water. Which, presumably, will help with the whole not snacking thing. For measurability, I’m going with 100 ounces per day as my target.
  5. Workouts, not just runs – I enjoy running just for the sake of running, but I also enjoy trying to improve upon my past performance. I’ve gotten to the point where simply running a bunch isn’t enough to improve any more. To break the plateau I need to do more specific workouts, and not just be happy to be out running. To give it a measurable stat, I’m going to say at least one, but ideally two runs per week will be specific workouts of some sort.
  6. 19:00 5k – Yeah, I’m that damn stubborn. I still need to break this time mark like a junkie needs his next hit. And I need to do it in an accurately measured 5k.
  7. 1:32 half marathon – Last year I kept trying in vein to hit a 3:10 marathon time in order to get that ethereal Boston Qualifying time before 2011 registration opened. (I’ll be 35 for 2012.) In hindsight, this was ridiculous. While it’s one thing to make a 20 minute improvement from your first marathon to your second, it’s a whole other ball game to take 20 minutes off your fifth. Now that I’ve crashed and burned that foolisness out of me, and can run a half at the pace I’d need for a 35 year old to BQ, Io want to reach the half marathon time that Greg McMillan claims can be reasonably projected for a 3:15 marathon. Then I’ll start considering marathons again3

That seems reasonable for now, eh? Some things to measure on a daily or weekly basis, some goals to chase. Yeah.

But now it’s 2011 on the east coast, intermission at this improv show is almost over, and I’ve got to get up early for the Rose Parade tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll see you on the road some time next year.

Happy New Year, kids!

Show 3 footnotes

  1. Granted, I was on a Nile cruise in September, but there’s no excuse for December’s 75! ↩
  2.   My wife recently discovered she’s allergic to alcohol, so not going out to trivia night and other events where drinking for a few hours is the primary activity ought to help! ↩
  3. Unless of course I get picked for New York in 2011. ↩

General Blogginess ,
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Race Report: Santa to the Sea Half Marathon

December 15, 2010 2 comments

There once was a Christmas that almost wasn’t … almost wasn’t … almost wasn’t.

Getting There

If I haven’t made it clear before, I have a general aversion to traveling to a race.  I’m all for true “destination races” to exotic locales1 that you can turn in to a vacation, but I find long drives or flights just to do a certain race to be ridiculous from an inconvenience stance, a green stance, and a leg comfort stance.  I’m not going to judge those who fly all over the place every weekend to run every race in the world2, but, in general, that’s not me.

So when it sounds like I drove 973 miles to run a half marathon, let it be noted for the record that this is not the case.  My wife and I change plans often, and did so several times in rapid succession starting in mid-October.  The short version is that the plan to spend the winter in Portland, Oregon was revised when snow first fell in Bend, but that wasn’t until after booking flights for the holidays that terminated in PDX.  So when we returned from a few weeks with family, it was to Portland, with our rig in Bend, and a reservation six days away in Southern California.

I had learned of the Santa to the Sea Half Marathon while looking for races near Santa Paula, where Ceridwen had found a nice looking park, but the chances of getting to SoCal in time seemed slim at best, especially considering the fact that there was supposedly no race day registration.  Over the course of last week we revised the plan to try a Saturday 5k just south of Redding and maybe shoot for the Los Angeles 13.1 in January.  This was still the plan when we got to Redding, but Friday morning Ceridwen had worked out that if we left that afternoon and got up real early on Saturday, we might be able to make it to Oxnard in time before registration closed.  So we went for it.  And I’m so glad we did, because it was an awesome event.  And it was undoubtedly raining in Redding.

The Race

You can learn most of this from the event web site, but the brief summary is that the Santa to the Sea is a half marathon route through Oxnard, California that starts at a giant concrete Santa Claus statue on the side of route 101 and ends at the marina.  Id est, from Santa to the sea.  Clever, eh?

The race raises money for underprivileged kids in Oxnard, and, probably in part as a result of their charitable intentions, has great sponsor support.  Race registration included a nice technical tee (50% recycled, too) and finishers medals not only for the half, but for the 5k as well.  This comes at a price though: in addition to the race registration fee, all participants are required to bring a toy, valued at $10 or more, to the start line.  For the half, we piled the gifts at the base of the Santa statue, like some sort of ancient offering to the gods.

The Santa Claus statue actually started it’s life elsewhere, in Carpenteria, California, where a juice stand owner paid an “artistic motorist” $500 to create it in 1948.  Santa stayed there for over 50 years and several owners before the most recent owner decided he didn’t want Santa there.  So Santa was moved to Oxnard in 2003, where a water company had some land to plop him down on right along the highway for all to see.

And this is where the buses brought us at 5:30 in the morning.  They weren’t supposed to start running until 6, but apparently organizers got a lot more registrations than anticipated, so they told people to come early and they’d start the buses as soon as they could.  I was on the first bus, dropped off my toy, and hung out for over two hours waiting for the sun to come up over the mountains and take some of the chill out of the air.  (Put away your violins, kids; if I were running somewhere cold I’d’ve been bundled up.)  In hindsight, I was actually waiting to run for significantly longer than it took me to run.

More people means more demand for everything.  Fortunately, they had things pretty well in hand.  The course was wide enough to handle the larger crowd.  The port-a-pottie to participant ratio at the start line wasn’t sufficient3, but they managed to get five more delivered while we were waiting to start, which certainly took the edge off.  There was still a line, though, but as soon as the guys had loaded one off the truck it had an occupant and a line.

Everyone seemed in good spirits, and many people dressed up.  There was an official finish line costume contest, but most people just went for simple Santa hat or similar non-intrusive costume, as I did4.  There were plenty of people who went all-out though, ranging from naughty Mrs. Clauses to a girl covered in gingerbread men sporting the phrase “Run run as fast as you can…”5  My personal favorite, however, was the toy soldier costume, which, as it turns out, was sported by two people; one in the half and one in the 5k.

Volunteers and/or police cars were at every corner – and with 13 miles of Oxnard, arguably an L.A. suburb, as the course, there were many corners.  After the initial 100 yard dash and right turn over the 101 overpass, it was an open course, but the whole thing was lined with orange cones with signs every block reminding motorists to stay to the left of the cones and runners to stay to the right of the cones.  I’m sure a few runners disobeyed this, especially early on when we were still congested, but fortunately I don’t think any drivers did.

The elevation profile is pretty negligible.  My Garmin said we started at 50 feet, climbed to 175 or so over the first four miles, then descended back to sea level, but it also claims that we ducked to 75 feet below sea level three times along the course.  I don’t remember any tunnels.  In real life, it was essentially flat save for the two highway overpasses.

If I had to pick on the race organizers to improve anything, I’d try to come up with a way to enforce the toy donation thing.  While the pile of donations was indeed impressive, it didn’t seem to be one-to-one with the number of runners.  There’s a built in checkpoint as we get off the bus, so, well, an army of elves can demand an offering or something, right.  They also apparently ran out of medals, which is probably due to getting way more people than anticipated, but they’re apparently ordering more and delivering them to everyone who didn’t get one, so that’s pretty awesome.

The finish line corral was wide and easy and there was no problem getting food and water from yet more great volunteers.  I honestly don’t know how they would have pulled this off if there weren’t so many people willing to give their time for the event.  There was never any situation where a volunteer was clearly absent.

All in all, it was an awesome event from start to finish.  If I were a permanent resident of the area, I’d totally do it every year.  And I’d bring a sweatshirt or something to check at the start line instead of assuming the sun would warm me up “soon.”

My Race

Did I mention that I didn’t train for this?  It seemed unlikely that we’d even make it, so I never started any sort of formal plan.  I wasn’t exactly sitting around on my ass all day, but I hadn’t put in the long miles for a while.  In fact, as I hit mile three or four, it occurred to me that I hadn’t run farther than seven miles since Tough Mudder – and those miles were slow, wet, muddy, and broken up by silly obstacles.  13.1 continuous miles suddenly seemed like something I’d never done before.

All the same, off I went, with a rough intention of trying out my marathon target pace in the half.  Realizing that I’d never run a half at this pace suddenly made my frustrations at my marathon performance seem totally unwarranted.  My first few miles were faster than target, in part because I never start slowly enough and in part because waiting around the start line with nobody to talk to resulted in an unusually high water intake and not enough time to stand in line for the porta-potty again.  So after a couple of sub-7 miles I slowed it up and, appropriately relieved, tried to stick near that elusive 7:20 pace.  I did okay overall, but couldn’t really hold it steady.  I think I just got distracted talking to people or zoning out and enjoying the views.

Yeah, I hung my finisher medal on the tree. And yeah, I'm Jewish.

When all is said and done, my finish time was 1:37:10 chip time.  Which is a PR by 35 seconds over the 2008 3M Half Marathon I did in Austin.  It took almost three years to shave off 35 seconds, but the only half marathon I’d done in between was the Mount Diablo Trail Adventure half marathon.  Not too bad at all.  Plus, taking the 7:27 average pace from my Garmin (1:37:17), I realized that my math skills need work.  A 7:20 pace would be a 3:12:08 marathon, but a 7:27 pace would still be a 3:15:11 marathon, a Boston Qualifying time for me (with 48 seconds to spare) now that I’d be 35 for the next one I can enter.  Wow, neat!

The 2011 plan I came up with while running this race was to run more halves until I could reliably do my target marathon pace before signing up for another marathon.  The revised plan is to run more halfs until I can reliably do a 1:32:28 half – the McMillan time projection for a 3:15 marathon time.  A nice, delicate balance between setting myself up for disappointment and never running a marathon again.  By focusing on halves I can still reasonably work on my 5k and 10k times.  Perhaps the fates will be with me and I’ll hit my 19 minute 5k, the 1:32 half, and then get drawn for NYC and BQ there, all in 2011.

Or perhaps not.  The point is that this was a wicked fun race and had gotten me excited about training again.  In fact, my wife and I just discovered that there’s a 5k this Saturday in Santa Barbara.  And registered for it.  So we’re going.  Wheee!

Post Script

I suck at stretching.  I just don’t have the patience to do it.  I know I need to, and I go through the motions, but 80% of the time, I’m not stretching sufficiently.  Yet time and time again I manage to race without injury.  Luck, anti-karma, whatever it is, I take it for granted.  At Santa to the Sea I once again managed an injury free race.  Then, just when I thought I was done cooling down, an intense pain shot me in the back of the leg as I set my foot on the car bumper to untie my laces.  That’s right: 13 miles of running and I hurt myself walking to the car.  I limped most of the afternoon and can still feel slight hints of the strain (or sprain?) as I finally get this all written up, more than three days later.  The yoga mat rolled up next to my desk chair is mocking me for my tomfoolery.

Show 5 footnotes

  1. Great Wall of China, Tromsø, Negril, Cayman Islands, and so on… ↩
  2. Okay, I might judge a little, but not harshly, and usually not out loud. ↩
  3. Not that it is at any race, but there’s a difference between typical needs to limit costs and simply getting way more people than you expect. ↩
  4. I originally intended to annoy everyone with jingle bell suspenders and maybe reindeer antlers, but did have time to hit the craft stores. ↩
  5. You know damn well that if she had run in a full-on gingerbread man costume that she’d be a shoe in for the contest… ↩

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Race Report: Tough Mudder Tri-State

November 20, 2010 1 comment

Time to catch up on some skipped race reports.  There’s a draft report from the Denver edition of the Skirt Chaser 5k that I did back in August, shortly after I started a new job, but that never got done before we headed off for a few weeks’ vacation to Egypt in September, followed by up and moving the rig from Golden to Bend via Bonneville in October.

So now it’s practically 2011, we’re done flying around the country to visit family for the holidays, and have settled in SoCal for the winter, so it seems as good a time as any to get back in to things here and update some bloggy goodness.

A Brief Background

For the past few years we’ve been doing Thanksgiving with my family in New Jersey, which we preceded for the past two years with a 26.2 mile run through the streets of Philadelphia with a thousand dozen or so of our closest friends.  This year, however, we opted to pass on the chaos, expense, and frustration of an overnight hotel in Philly and figured we’d find something more low key to do closer to my parents.

Somewhere along the way we caught wind of the Warrior Dash series and eventually managed to register for the one they run in Copper Mountain resort north of Denver.  Starting just a day or so after I joined the Warrior Dash Facebook group I started to get about half a dozen ads each day from Tough Mudder.  Which is a behavior core to the problem with the Tough Mudder event, but still enough of an interesting looking event for C and I to notice that they were doing one just ten minutes from my parents’ house in New Jersey the weekend before Thanksgiving.  Oh, Fortuna!

We didn’t register immediately, as Tough Mudder is significantly more expensive than the Warrior Dash and we weren’t sure if we’d actually enjoy an obstacle course “race.”  So we held off until after the three-ish mile Warrior Dash before signing up for the twelve-ish mile Tough Mudder Tri-State.  And damn is it fun.  These courses are completely different than a road race or even a trail run, but incredibly fun in their own right.  So we registered for Tough Mudder.

The Hype

Tough Mudder is all about hype.  Just take a look at the opening paragraph of their home page:

Tough Mudder is not your average lame-ass mud run or spirit-crushing ‘endurance’ road race. It’s Ironman meets Burning Man, and it is coming to a city near you. Our 7-12 mile obstacle courses are designed by British Special Forces to test all around strength, stamina, mental grit, and camaraderie. Forget finish times. Simply completing a Tough Mudder is a badge of honor. All Tough Mudder sponsorship proceeds go to the Wounded Warrior Project.
WARNING: A Tough Mudder is 3-4 times longer and much tougher than a typical mud run such as Warrior Dash. Only 78% of participants at our last event in New Jersey finished. Only those in reasonable physical condition should enter.

So, yeah, they want you to feel hard core for finishing it.  In fact, if you tattoo their logo on your person at the post-race party you get free entry to any and all Tough Mudders for life.  Or, presumably, until you come to your senses and get it grafted off or covered up with some other corporate logo.

The problem is that the majority of it is an “average lame-ass mud run.”  All they did was make it longer.  The fact that they build themselves up to be cooler than a “typical” mud run and use the Warrior Dash as an example1 of that just highlights my problem with the event.  And it is an event.

Not a race, but an event.  They make quite the point of this.  So, after building it up as the most difficult thing possible, they want to make the day about taking your time and having fun.  In fact, they don’t even time it – there’s an “elite” wave, which requires a 3:15 marathon time or 2:15 Olympic Tri, and everyone can submit their own times to qualify for the as-yet-to-be-scheduled “Toughest Mudder.”  You’re supposed to just take your time, have fun, and help each other out.

So then why are we running?

The Hope

I was going to crop out the guy behind me, but his hat is too awesome.

Despite them being down on other events and not being sure whether they’re a difficult event or a fun event, they do not turn a deaf ear to complaints and negative feedback.  After every event their Facebook page is covered with race organizers letting us know what was wrong, what they’re doing to fix it for future events, and asking if there’s anything they don’t have on their list yet.  Even between days on multi-day events.  That type of communication and commitment to improving is something you rarely see in small local races, let alone large corporate ones, so kudos to them on that!

Also, they have a great bunch of volunteers and/or employees at the event.  They could use more along the course, but their pre-race people and post-race people were awesome.  (The guy who would supposedly give you a free tattoo was nowhere to be found, but I’m guessing they were contractors for the day.)  Since everyone was started in waves, they had a staging area for us to gather in before a pair of gatekeepers would hold up a poster that matched the bibs of the next group up.  I was in one of the last waves and they were still going strong, keeping things in line, and putting up with obnoxious New Jersians2 who can’t read signs, listen to announcements or follow common sense.

So, pretty much the only people that suck are their marketing people.  Play nice with other events and promote it as a fun event OR a hard event and you’ve got a very enjoyable day.

In other words, for the record, before I go in to the play-by-play, I HAD A GREAT TIME.

The Race Event

This particular edition of Tough Mudder claims 19 obstacles over just over 12 miles (12.08).  For comparison, a “typical mud run like the Warrior Dash” consists of 11 obstacles over a 5k.  Why do I point this out?  Because an average of 1.58 obstacles per mile is not “more extreme” than 3.54 obstacles per mile.  Especially when the first an last obstacle is “run in a straight line on a flat surface.”  Just sayin’ . . .

So here’s what they had;

  1. The Monster Chase – This makes more sense if you noticed where the event was; Raceway Park is a drag racing and motocross venue.  The gun goes off at the starting post of the drag strip, and a monster truck floors it down the 1400 foot straightaway.  We follow in his exhaust, with some smoke grenades thrown by the staff to make it more, uh, smokey, until a rather unassuming arc of traffic cones indicates that we should turn off the strip around the 900 or 1000 foot mark.  Perhaps the obstacle is not missing the turn?  I’m hanging on to the lead pack in either fourth or fifth position, which is more of a concern to me.
  2. The Ball Shrinker – This is simply a very slack line postman’s walk over a cold pond.  Being in the lead group had a huge advantage here as there was only one person on the rope at a time, so other people’s swaying didn’t affect you.  Plus, with only two or three lines crossing the water, it’s the first bottleneck.
  3. Walk the Plank – Climb up a wooden ramp with a rope assist to a platform fifteen feet over the water.  Jump in before the National Guardsman feels you’ve taken too long or he makes you go back down.  It took me a couple of beats to work up the nerve, given how cold it was OUTSIDE the water, but I was in the air before “last chance” was declared.
  4. Underwater Tunnels – Three rows of 50 gallon drums tied together to create a floating barricade you have to duck under before you can get out of the water.  No so much a physical challenge as a mental one as you’re already in the water and know damn well how cold it will feel when you’re totally immersed.  Two gentlemen wearing nothing but black Speedos caught up with me as I was catching my breath before the last row.  And by “caught up” I mean “attempted to swim up my bum.”
  5. Spider’s Web – Cargo nets.  Up, down, up again, down again.  Shorter cargo nets than the Warrior Dash, if anyone wants to be sizing them up.  The real challenge is that this is where you start catching up with the prior waves, so any advantage for being toward the front – or even in a mid-pack pocket – is gone.
  6. Mud Mile – Just big ol’ trenches filled with mud.  The dirt they dug out of them is piled up every twenty feet or so to create little hills you have to climb over before you can slog through the next part of the trench.  It’s a little unclear how far this obstacle “officially” went, as the trench led right in to the motocross track, which has it’s own hills and dips, and was wet not only from wet mudders, but from strategically positioned hoses.  I’m proud to report that I only wiped out once, but that one of my Speedo-clad friends passed me and was never seen again.
  7. Cliffhanger – This is the first obstacle where the whole spirit of teamwork was really apparent – and necessary.  Aside from helping people up when the slipped in the mud or encouraging them across the ice cold water, there’s not much to do other than plod along at whatever your pace of choice is.  But when you get to a pretty darn steep twenty-some-odd foot mud cliff, you’re suddenly very glad there are people at the top holding their arms out to help you up the last bit . . . if you can get to them.  I imagine the instructions to “grab onto anything you can” might have been more relevant for the first dozen waves, but by my noontime start it was nice and smooth.  Which is good for slipping and sliding back down on your butt – or face – but not so good for getting to the top.  Some people managed to maintain their momentum right up and over, but it took me a dozen tries before I was able to get to a point where there was something – and then someone – to grab.  I tried to turn back and offer a hand to others for a bit, but the top of the cliff was already overcrowded with people sticking around for their own teammates, so I continued on, having lost at least a couple others from my wave.
  8. Kiss of Mud – More mud, but only surface mud this time, instead of hip-deep.  Kind of like Warrior Dash’s “Muddy Mayhem” obstacle3, only the wire’s not barbed, the mud’s not deep, and there’s no sharp gravel involved.
  9. Berlin Walls – This is where my complete lack of upper body strength caught up with me.  As the description says, it’s hard enough dry, but try it wet… I might have been able to swing a leg over if the wall and my feet weren’t covered in mud.  After a minute or so or struggling, three girls in hula skirts caught up and offered to help me up4.  Since there’s no staff on the course or signs to say otherwise, I then popped around the wall and helped them do the same.  I think there were four or six walls to scale, so I had to make friends a few more times, but that’s apparently their point.  If I did this again, I’d really want to cross train better to prove to myself I could do it solo.
  10. Boa Constrictor – Contrary to the photo on their website, this was actually a series of wooden tunnels somewhat narrower than the plastic drain pipes pictured (which would have made it the exact same thing as Warrior Dash’s “Tunnels of Terror”).  In a cool little variation, they built a platform up over the tunnels for spectators to stand on.  I’m pretty sure squeezing through these tunnels (twice – once in each direction) is the source of most of my scrapes and bruises.
  11. Rubbernecking – This one is actually pretty cool.  Grab a tire and carry it around a lap of a paved track.  Probably about 400 meters, give or take.  Lots of people were carrying them around their waists like a pool doughnut, but I opted for the over-the-shoulder technique, which, with the exception of getting mysterious water dumped on my shoulder when I first lifted it up, seemed to be the better approach.
  12. Tired Yet? – More tires, this time flat on the ground a la the classic high-knee football workout.  Maybe twenty yards worth?  Warrior Dash called it Knee-High Hell.  Pretty much identical executions.
  13. Fire Walker – “Walk, run, or leap over fire.”  Except not.  The challenge here is actually two rows of flaming hay bales set about 12 feet apart which you are expected to run between.  So, provided you don’t panic and come to a complete stop or lose your way in the smoke, it’s just a refreshingly warm (and dry) ten or fifteen yards.  Another mile or two of this would have been very welcome, though the local fire fighters might have disagreed with my request.
  14. The Devil’s Beard – Another cargo net, but this time on it’s side for us to crawl under.  I think there was another one of these in between the Mud Mile and the motocross track, so it was a little confusion when we got here and were all like “uh… didn’t we do this already?”  Maybe we were all hallucinating from inhaling too much hay smoke.  Anyway, this was another great teamwork obstacle, as it’s much easier when there’s a row of people on the far end pulling all the slack out of the net.  Of course, that’s assuming that six burly Marine-looking guys don’t let go when their last teammate emerges right in front of you.  I managed my way out, hend the tension as best I could until there were enough people to keep it going, then continued on.
  15. The Log Bog Jog – This barely qualifies as an obstacle.  It’s a nice trail through the woods with a couple of downed trees crossing it with no instructions.  Over?  Under?  Around?  This is par for the course on any wooded trail in any park in America.
  16. Funky Monkey – These are greased monkey bars over another body of cold water.  With a massive line in front.  I stood around for five minutes.  The line didn’t move.  My body was cooling down.  Waiting in line is not an obstacle, so I skipped my first obstacle and took the “easy” way out and just swam across the water, noting that most people were falling in and having to swim anyway, only after waiting for half an hour.
  17. Twinkle Toes – Of course, what I didn’t realize until much later is that these two obstacles are connected.  You skip Funky Monkey and you also skipped Twinkle Toes, which starts from a floating platform half way across the water and is just a balance beam to the opposite shore.  No wonder it backed up!  Continuing merrily along my way, oblivious that I’d skipped two, I came to the last obstacle . . .
  18. Mystery Obstacle – Jellyfish – They don’t let you know what the mystery obstacle is until race day.  It’s right near the start and finish line so they can point at it when you line up and make clever remarks about how no, it’s not the framework of an unfinished one room house; it’s the framework of an unfinished one room house with hundreds of electrified wires dangling down from it.  And there’s no way you’re getting to this point dry and graceful.  I took the blind and stupid approach and just picked a path with no others in my path or wake and charged in full speed.  I made it about 80% of the way through before completing a circuit and going down, face first, like a professional wrestler who doesn’t get a cool nickname.  Now I understood why this spot had the most spectators.  I pulled myself along the last bit as quickly as I could on my elbows, taking a few more zaps to the back before I made it to open air.
  19. Insane Bolt – Supposedly, this final obstacle is a mass wave started every two minutes for the last 100 meter dash.  If there was someone who was supposed to be holding us back for a scheduled start, I – and dozens of others – missed it.  I was one of maybe three people putting in a “run” effort, let alone a sprint, but I made it to the finish, where there was no clock and no staff members to be seen.  (You could barely see the finish line itself with all the spectators mulling about.)  I found a spectator with a watch and learned that it was 1:55, which, given my high noon start wave, was a 1:55 finish time.  But it wasn’t a race.

My sexy knees. All cleaned up and back at mommy's house.

In between the obstacles there were a few other minor obstacles, like having to climb over the barricade of the drag strip to continue the race on the other side, or hitting a twisted part of the non-muddy motocross track and having no idea which way to turn, loop, hook, or meander to get to the continuation of the trail on the other side5.  It would have made more sense to give these things names and eliminate the “Monster Chase,” “Fire Walker,” and “Insane Bolt,” since there’s no point in straight running if the thing isn’t a race.

The run itself was awesome, though the runner in me wanted it to be a full half marathon.  The mileage seemed arbitrary – with 12 miles to play with they could have spaced things out and avoided bottlenecks, but instead things were clumped together with random stretches of aimless running (or jogging, or walking) in between.

The obstacles were, for the most part, pretty cool and a lot of fun, save for the bottlenecks6.  The staff, though lacking on the course and finish line, were really quite good.  It’s just that nagging “we’re so hard core, but it’s not a race, and you’re still tough if you skip some obstacles” indecisive marketing that annoys me.  A lot.

When all is said and done, I suppose if I had stood around and waited for the monkey bars, I would probably have had a 2:15 or 2:20 finishing time.  Technically, if you skip any obstacles you don’t qualify for “The Toughest Mudder,” but I entered my results in to the results anyway (though at the time I thought I’d only skipped one obstacle, not two).  Imagine my surprise when I got an e-mail saying I’d qualified for the Toughest Mudder.  A little part of me wants to put my name in anyway – not sure if it’s an error or if they didn’t have enough people who waited in lines or whatever so they grabbed some of the one obstacle skipped people.

Final Gripes

I’ll reiterate one more time: I had a great time.

But the finish line “party” was awful.  You get one Dos Equis for doing the event.  The music was over by the time I finished.  (Or hadn’t begun yet?)  Plus, we’re all cold and wet and there’s not really anywhere to remedy this.  I could get hosed off by the fire department, but I wanted to get a photo first, so I ran back to the car for that, by which point the last thing I wanted to do was get wet again, so I joined a dozen other people in the men’s room washing up at the sinks.  Between the mess in there and the trash people left around the parking lot, I’d be amazed if the facility ever lets Tough Mudder come back.

Seriously, people, if there’s a place at the post race party to donate your shoes, why the hell are you leaving them in the parking lot?

Oh, and no medals.  Because medals are for soft mamby pamby marathoners, right?  Us cool kids just need a cotton t-shirt and an orange headband.  (“You’re checking out my awesome headband when . . . oops.“)

When it all gets down to it, the event is just disproportionate to it’s cost.  Am I glad I did it?  Yeah.  Hell yeah.  Was it fun?  Absolutely.  Would I do it again?  Probably not.  Not unless they dropped the cost significantly or I had a really good reason to want to do it again.  I’ll just donate directly to the Wounded Warrior Project.

That is all.

Show 6 footnotes

  1. In their defense, on another page, they acknowledge that the Warrior Dash and the Spartan Race are also fun events, but of course in the same sentence they claim that their obstacles are tougher. ↩
  2.   I promised myself I wouldn’t rip on my home state in this post.  So, to clarify, I’m not saying that everyone from New Jersey is obnoxious.  Obnoxious New Jersians is a subset of New Jersians.  A large subset, but a subnet nonetheless.  Also, I made up the word Jersians. ↩
  3. The Warrior Dash’s only mud-related obstacle, by the way.  Since, you know, mud isn’t technically an obstacle, unless it’s making a near-vertical surface very slippery. ↩
  4. I was going to have my own teammate, but Ceridwen was sick and couldn’t come… ↩
  5. I thought I was doing it right until another runner approached me head-on… ↩
  6. Which, according to other people’s feedback, hit different obstacles at different parts of the day. ↩

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Race Report: Warrior Dash Rockies

August 25, 2010 2 comments

I’m a bit slow on the race report this week.  The Warrior Dash came to Colorado this past weekend, August 20 and 21.  The pattern with Warrior Dash seems to be about 90 minutes outside a major metropolitan area.  In the “Denver metropolitan area,” that means Copper Mountain, a ski resort near Breckenridge that’s open year round for non-ski activities such as mountain biking, hiking, drinking, and running ridiculous obstacle courses.

The Warrior Dash is the second of three “mass market” events produced by Red Frog Events1 at assorted and sundry locations across the country.  Unlike the Great Urban Race, which happens in major cities, the Warrior Dash is more remote – specifically choosing areas where they can rip up the landscape for a few miles and create a fun but challenging 3-4 mile race full of reasonably difficult but messy obstacles.

The Reverend Horton Heat, live at Copper Mountain

The “Rockies” edition of Warrior Dash had the added fun of starting at a 9800 foot elevation.  According to the local crew scuttlebutt, this was the first time that they held a Warrior Dash at a location with any sort of infrastructure, which is certainly a successful model, as within a week of Rockies 2010, they announced that the event was renewed for Rockies 20112.  We got a room up at Copper Mountain for Friday and Saturday night, which included a free pair of tickets to the post-race Reverend Horton Heat concert, and a private, heated shower for after the race.  As opposed to the “Warrior Wash” – a series of PVC pipes with holes in it, spitting cold water on a bridge over a wading pool.

In order to avoid absolute chaos, the Warrior Dash is separated in to  a series of waves of 350 runners every half hour.  Each wave kicks off from a relatively narrow starting corral through a starting line truss that spits fireballs in to the air with the starting gun.

The focal point of the Warrior Dash is the series of obstacles spread across the 5k-ish course.  And maybe the warrior costumes and post-race beer sponsored by Pyramid Brewery.  We start off with a short, paved, downhill sprint to the first obstacle; two pairs of wrecked cars (with all glass removed) parked bumper to bumper, requiring a simple scramble over them.  Next up, the start of an uphill climb to a 15 foot-ish pyramid of hay bales to climb over,   From there, a little more uphill before a steep segment of hill with a rope assist.  Obstacle four was a tire strut on a flat segment – not quite laid out as a high school football team might be expected to attack, but a reasonable obstacle for the “all comers” scope of the event.

Obstacle five may or may not have been the 500 feet elevation gain over the next mile through a series of switchbacks up the ski slope3.  After reaching the crest and a short bit downhill on a more established trail, we hit obstacle six – the mud pit – five or six lengths of barbed wire stretched a couple of feet above a pit of mud requiring at least a modicum of mudcrawling, depending on your personal approach to such an obstacle.

Ceridwen clearing the final obstacle . . . in her leopardprint awesomeness

The mud pit was followed by a sewer pipe tunnel crawl, then series of hip-height “hurdles,” which, given the fact that we were all covered in mud and pretty worn out weren’t all that Lolo-espe, then a short cargo net climb and a plank walk before a shallow creek crossing and the final, eleventh obstacle, a pair of fire crossings about twenty yards from the finish line back in the center of Copper Mountain’s commercial district.

The best way to describe the Warrior Dash is simply awesome.  We weren’t sure what to expect of an obstacle course race.  It’s the first one we’ve one and a fairly corporate one at that.  But frankly, despite my general opposition to “chain” races like this, I’ve got to give Red Frog some awesome props for a superbly executed event.  From the check-in to the starting line to the race itself, we were incredibly impressed with the execution of the whole thing.  We never felt genericized or forgotten; the staff never appeared overwhelmed, and nobody ever appeared to be in danger.

The 80s cover bands playing the main stage throughout the event was an awesome addition.  While the early morning waves may not have had this perk, a majority of us were able to gauge our proximity to the finish by when the opening riffs to Sweet Child O Mine4 were audible for the first time.

Post race, when the cover bands wrapped up, the start line and finish line MCs converged on one stage to handle the costume and beard contests.  If I had to criticize anything about the event, it was how this was handled.  C and I certainly didn’t prepare well enough to be contenders in either event, but if we did I’d be pissed5.  “Finalists” were selected by a combination of random pointing and “cheer for your favorite” for people who weren’t visible to more than the first few rows of spectators.  While the eventual winners were certainly the best of those invited on stage, there were tons of people who put a lot of effort in to ridiculous costumes6 who didn’t get any acknowledgment whatsoever.

But How’d You Do?

I thought I was pretty hard core coming in to this thing.  I’d been running in Golden (elevation 6000 feet) for a few weeks now and thought I’d gotten the whole running at elevation thing under my belt.  But an extra 3000 feet still affects things.

I didn’t get too aggressive in the starting corral, having observed prior waves7 start and get pretty spread out before the half mile mark.  Being a “fun” race there were plenty of people who don’t race regularly and have no idea how to find their place in a start corral, nor did the organizers make any effort to stage people – even if you know your average 5k finish time, that’s pretty moot in this environment.

In the starting sprint, I just stayed to the side as things widened out and passed a couple of dozen people before the cars.  Then, in possibly my favorite moment of the whole event, while everyone was bottlenecking over the touched bumpers between the cars, I stayed to the side and leapt over the trunk of the first car and hood of the second car.  I overheard a spectator chastise the masses with something along the lines of “Oh, he just passed all of all y’all’s asses!” as I cleared the second pair of cars.  I gained at least 20-25 positions in that first obstacle.

Me, post-race, representing Golden, my current home

As soon as we cleared the tire obstacle and started on the switchbacks proper I felt the elevation like I’d just flown in from sea level.  My original fear was that all the water I drank to avoid dehydration would cause stomach cramps, but when I hit that point suddenly everything slapped me in the face; my mouth was dry and I was winded more than my very first 5k.  I held my position as best I could, pacing the guys in front of me for most of the climb, grateful for every walk break they took.

Eventually, I realized that I was holding back too much and passed them, gaining a handful of positions before the crest of the hill.  The only two people who caught me on the uphill were a Marine with a Semper Fi tattoo on the back of his leg and a guy with a emergency rescue squad t-shirt that I’d passed on the uphill and didn’t catch back up until just after the crest.  On the downhill I hung with the two of them pretty close, but eventually the rescue squad guy pulled away and it was just the Marine and I.  I suppose there are millions of less glamorous competitors to be neck-and-neck with.

As we neared the mud pit, a spectator’s dog finally wiggled loose of it’s leash, so my Marine friend and I had a canine companion through the mud pit and following obstacles, much the the gleeful amusement of spectators.  I slipped a bit on the way out of the mud pit, but managed to catch my Marine friend somewhere between the plank (where our dog escort turned back) and the creek.  I’m not sure exactly where I placed in my wave, but we were told by finish line staff that we were top twenty, which was pretty cool.

27:43.25

My final time, according to the official results.  My Garmin read 27:49.188, so I’m not complaining.  When all came out in the results, my time was good for 80th place overall for Saturday9, the 73rd guy, and the 12th in my age group.  As appealing as the overall awards were – yeah, a full-on metal Viking helmet! – the guys who pulled that off were solidly in the 25 to 26 minute range.  Pushing a little harder on the downhill and making up 15 – 20 seconds would have gotten me in to the top ten, but, well, that’s part of why they keep the specifics of the obstacles a secret until race day.

Brooks Adrenaline GTS-8, before and after

(Yeah, you can click on these awesome photos and get a bigger one.)

All in all, an awesome day, a great change from the routine of standard road races, and a race I’d certainly do again.  In fact, I’ve already registered for 2011, despite having no clue where in the world I’ll be come August 2011.  We’ve also registered for the Tough Mudder Tri-State this November, which is a similar event put on by a different company, but four times the distance.  Want to join us?  Pop me on Facebook or Twitter and join our Teenagers From Mars team.

Show 9 footnotes

  1. The other two being the Great Urban Race series and Beach-Palooza. ↩
  2. Yes, I’ve already registered.  I’m that big a dork. ↩
  3. Or mountain bike trail, if you prefer… ↩
  4. Okay, not literally, but it was certainly something similar to G’n’R.  Back off Total Recall police. ↩
  5. Not as pissed as the last time we attended a Hillbilly Pirate Ball, but pretty pissed. ↩
  6. …and ran the obstacle course in costume! ↩
  7. We started at 3:30 pm ↩
  8. Yeah, I wore a GPS on an obstacle course through a mud pit.  I wouldn’t recommend it, but if you’re interested, I’ve got an excellent methodology including saran wrap and a comfort level with audio indicators only. ↩
  9. Saturday and Sunday are treated as separate events, though all waves on a given day are treated as one. ↩

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Confessions of a Very Bad Blogger

August 19, 2010 1 comment

Wow.  I’ve let this slide for a while.  Between traipsing1 from the twin cities to Nebraska to Colorado and my starting a new job and, well, Golden being like a huge outdoor playground, it’s been the last thing on my mind.  But not really.  I’ve been frustratingly aware of the fact that I’ve been ignoring this blog and have even started a few posts that are sadly awaiting my attentions again.  So tonight, dear reader, as thunderstorms roll over the Denver metropolitan area and my wife sits on the couch, ill2 and watching Nip/Tuck, I shall remedy this.  For you.  Yes you.  No, not you.  Just you.  Yeah.  You.

A quick summary of recent life events.  As they pertain to running.  Or rambling.

Nebraska

Southeastern Nebraska was an interesting stay.  We took a leisurely two days to get to Greenwood, stopping in Story City, Iowa en route from Prior Lake.  There’s really not much of note to tourists (that we know of) in Story City other than their annual Scandinavian festival, but it’s about half way between Prior Lake and Greenwood and close to Ames, IA, home to Prairie Moon Winery, which had some very tasty wines.  It’s also home to a fairly decent regional chain called Happy Chef, which is a diner style eatery and not a Chinese food place as one might assume by the name.  Just to prove that there’s always someone dumber than you out there; as we were paying our bill, another couple was waiting to be seated.  As the host started leading them off, they asked “Is that the name of the town we’re in?” . . . pointing to the “Velkommen” sign hanging over the counter.  Yup.

The nice thing about Greenwood is that “blocks” are about a mile long and more or less perfectly square – save for the occasional interruption of a highway.  So the shortest run I could do (without doubling back on myself, which I detest) was a four miler.  One more block for a six.  Another block for an eight.  It was kind of fun being so geometric.  On the other hand, most of the roads were large stone gravel, which was a little rough to run on, but more so a major dust storm when the occasional vehicle rumbled by.

Additionally, southeast Nebraska is apparently a hotbed of wineries.  They’ve even got their own Wine Trail group.  We hit three3 of them; Deer Springs Winery was very tasty indeed, James Arthur Vineyards was crowded, boring, and overpriced, and WindCrest Winery was isolated, friendly, and extremely delicious4.

The plan was to stay a week and then continue on to Denver.  I think we made it to Wednesday before realizing that C is allergic to corn pollen.  Who knew?5  So there we are, half way through my first week on a new job, and having to haul westward, including a few hours working from a highways rest area.  Good times.

Colorado

And now we’re in Golden, CO.  Where the west lives.  Since we got here four days early, we used the weekend to scope out the area and catch up with a friend of mine who lives nearby.  Golden is literally an outdoor playground.  The RV park is about three miles south of the downtown area, but there’s a trail system that connects the areas.  We scoped out the local track6, which is only open to the public on weekdays when there’s no team practice in session, the downtown shops, and, of course, more of the extensive trail system that surrounds the river and stretches off in all directions to connect all the nearby neighborhoods to downtown.

Plus, we’re a few minutes from Lookout Mountain and not much further from tons of other open space parks.  Clearly, this month I’m going to frequently break my vow of not driving to where I run.

There will be much photography posted.  Soon.  I promise.

5k Fridays

I haven’t been purely awesome on my 5k Fridays7, but have been trying to participate every few weeks or so.  This past Friday I had intended to time myself in spikes on the aforementioned track at Colorado School of Mines.  But, alas, it was closed for maintenance!  Having not brought anything but spikes with me8, I opted for a barefoot 5k on the nice paved trails around the river.

28:06.47

Certainly not my best.  In fact, it’s actually four minutes slower than my first 5k ever.  BUT, it’s certainly a barefoot PR, so there’s that.

Incidentally, the city of Golden would like to remind you not to seek shelter under the bridges during heavy rains.  River waters rise and drown you in the I-beams, fool.

Show 8 footnotes

  1. Yeah, that’s right.  Traipsing. In an RV.  Some motorhomes rumble down the road.  Some roar.  Some spin.  Some cruise.  Some even vehiculate.  (I love that word.)  But we traipse. ↩
  2. Get well soon, my love! ↩
  3. Our attempts to reach a fourth were thwarted by road closures due to severe flooding.  Darn plains. ↩
  4. We gave them much money. ↩
  5. Apparently her mother knew, or at least suspected, but never shared/warned.  If she weren’t such a gosh darn cute mother-in-law I’d shake a tiny fist of rage at her. ↩
  6. At Colorado School of Mines, recently rated highest in Colorado by US News and World Report. ↩
  7. Haven’t been keeping up?  5k Friday was an idea put forth on Weight in Vain to track progress over time. ↩
  8.   See?  This is another reason not to drive to a run – if you forget stuff you’ve got to drive back.  Or improvise. ↩

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Drive to Run?

August 19, 2010 No comments

A thought has been running through my head for a while, then, a few weeks ago, Scott Jurek tweeted a Running Times blog post by Anton Krupicka, posing questions about driving to a running route.  Essentially; is it wrong to do?  And is it selfish?

As you can see from the comments, people’s answers run gamut from “yes, it’s terrible; you should have ridden your bike or taken the bus” to “no, runners are good people and therefore not responsible for their individual decisions.”  (Yeah, really.)

As part of the twitter chat in response, @simpsoka shared an article she wrote in support of “destination runs” last January.  She sets herself a 40 mile limit and explores a new destination that she hasn’t been before.

Which got me thinking more.  And since tomorrow is National Trail Running Day (in the U.S., at least) and most of us don’t live at trail heads, it seems a good time to get this post published.

Driving Bad

My typical outlook is that I don’t like driving to somewhere to run.  It’s partially environmental hippy thinking; part of my universal attempts to drive less.  But mostly it’s pure convenience.  I don’t like to have to plan everything out in advance.

I like to be able to say “yeah, it looks nice out now.  I’ll go for a run.”  I like to be able to take off my shoes and grab some veggie juice in the same minute.  I like to be able to determine how much time I have before I need to get to work by simply adding ten minutes’ shower time on to my estimated time left in the run.

I don’t like having to fill bottles of something to drink post-run before I even step out the door.  I don’t like having to pace around the car until I cool down enough to not soak the driver’s seat with sweat.  I don’t like having to remember to bring a driver’s license with me and finding somewhere safe to stash it while running.  And I definitely don’t like wondering if it was okay to park where I parked and whether the car will be there when I return.

But that’s just me.  I definitely don’t begrudge people who prefer to drive somewhere more scenic and/or safe to run.  And I certainly understand the allure, especially in certain parts of the country.

RVing Bad / RVing Good

In the interest of full disclosure, both my lack of desire to drive to new runs and my general desire to drive less are tied to the fact that I live in an RV.

On the scenery side of things, I’m living somewhere new every few weeks and am constantly discovering new places to run right outside my front door.  Most people don’t have that luxury.  The neighborhood you live in is going to eventually get pretty routine.  I’m already sick of my parent’s neighborhood, and I didn’t start running until more than a decade after I moved out.

On the hippy side of things, the RV gets 8 miles per gallon.  Now, we don’t drive it nearly as much as most commuters drive their car in a year, but we put about 6000 miles on it each year, which is 750 gallons per year.  To balance this, we picked up a nice old Saturn as a towed vehicle, getting a nice stead 30+ mpg.  Still, I like to minimize how often we use it.  RV parks are rarely in the middle of all the exciting things to do, so “sightseeing” or whatever sort of cultural activities we partake in usually requires driving.  We try to do all our errands on one outing and walk or ride our bikes whenever it’s feasible.

Running Good

I get really grouchy when I have to drive to run.  When we were living near Louisville, the RV park was on a road with zero shoulder and no sidewalk.  I only had to drive a few blocks to get to the start of the sidewalk, but the fact that I had to do that not to get clipped by a truck was frustrating.  On the other hand, in Redding, CA, there were plenty of safe places to run near the RV park, but there were far more scenic trails down along the river, so more than once I’d ride my bike to the running trails, which somehow doesn’t anger me as much.

Some DailyMile friends in Minneapolis were looking for companions on a early morning long run around the lakes.  It was far too far to bike there and there was no bus route I could find that would do it, but I didn’t hesitate to drive to meet them.  And I had a great time.  Unless we were neighbors a few blocks apart, there’s no way we could have met up without driving.

And now I’m living in Golden, not far from Boulder, where Anton Krupicka’s moral dilemma began.  There’s tons of beautiful, awesome places to run, anywhere from five to thirty minutes away.  But there’s also a network of paved, off-road, multi-use trails that connect just about everything to everywhere, so there’s no need to drive.  I can run to the downtown trails in twenty-some-odd minutes.  And keep going on a different spur if I desire.  I can ride my bike to get there faster if I want.  Hell, I can actually ride my bike clear across Denver to use an actual office if I so desired – and only be on a road for about a half mile, total.

In other words, I totally understand the allure of driving to run.

Driving a “Sometimes Food”

Frankly, if you put it in context, driving to run is no different than driving to the gym.  Or driving to the amusement park.  Or driving to the trail head of a great hike.  Or driving to your favorite restaurant.  Or driving to your friend’s house.  Or driving to work.  Or the airport.  Or school.  You get the idea.  Environmentally, we should try to do all of these things less.  I could do better, but I make an effort.  (Another factor of moving all the time is rarely getting to understand the local transit system well enough to make effective use of it.)

To Anton’s points, is driving to run selfish?  Yes.  But it’s okay to be selfish at times, as long as we’re aware of it and don’t do it all the time.  Is it wrong or right to drive to run?  No.  It’s not either, but if there’s a viable alternative to driving it’s certainly worth pursuing.  To Kathy’s point, is it exciting to discover a new place to run, to mix up the routine and go somewhere scenic?  Hell yes.  Go somewhere new.  Run somewhere fun.

As with most things that people disagree about, the “good” answer is still in the middle.  All things in moderation, right?  Personally, I’m still going to shy away from frequent driving if I can help it.  (I haven’t even mentioned how evil traffic is!)  But I’m not going to make it a rule like I used to.  If we could get everywhere we wanted to without burning fossil fuels, that would be awesome.  But we’re not there yet (“we” as my wife and I, nor “we” as a culture).  As long as it’s the goal, we’re on the right track.  Trail.

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One More Time Around Might Do It

July 30, 2010 1 comment

It’s been a short two and a half weeks in the Twin Cities1 but it’s been a very busy two and a half weeks.  No major racing, short of the 5k fun run in downtown.  But I got to meet some people I previously only knew from DailyMile, and even went for a run with some of them around the lakes.

But before I go, I had to get one more run in.  The original plan was for an early morning long run with my wife, but we both managed not to hear our alarms go off, so that failed.  So, since I haven’t joined in on 5k Friday since it’s first week, this seemed like a good day to sneak it in at lunch.

I plotted out a course that included a cut through the delivery side of the Mystic Lake Casino, but when I got there I learned that there was a guard gate, and he was having nothing of my “can I just run through and pop out that side there?” . . . so I had to back track a bit and it threw me off.  In hindsight, had I entered through the spot I planned on popping out, I would have been leaving the secured area as I passed the guard.  Plus, if I hadn’t asked permission he probably wouldn’t have even noticed me.  Eh, the price one pays for honesty.

I got out early enough to avoid most of the Friday night casino traffic, but still hit a busy light.  I’m normally not a stop-the-clock-at-delays person, but since the point was to track my 5k speed over time, I did pause it briefly.  In the end, despite the two delays (guard and light) and a significantly hillier course than the out-and-back along Scenic Drive in Knife River that I did three weeks ago, I was only seven seconds slower.  Granted, the two delays gave me unrealistic mid-run rests, but I’m pretty pleased with the number.

19:41.01

Plus, despite the stop-and-go, my heartrate was steadier compared to last time’s crazy spiking action.  Which is probably a good thing.

In completely unrelated news, after work and a kayak ride around Cleary Lake, we got Chinese take-out for dinner from a place in Prior Lake called Fong’s2.  They had a Curry Vegetable Fried Rice dish, which, of course, I had to try.  It was wicked awesome in every way and I’m hoping it will be awesome again for lunch tomorrow.

I’m going to miss Minnesota.  Between Knife River and Prior Lake (a.k.a. “the Duluth area” and “the Twin Cities area”), I’ve been here nearly two months.  And I still haven’t found a store that sells those “Minnesota” shirts in the Metallica font.  I think we’re going to miss Minnesota.  The people, the scenery, the overt presence of sidewalks and running/cycling trails; all of it.  We might just have to come back.

That is all.

Show 2 footnotes

  1. Okay, technically the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community out in the suburban sprawl south west of the Twin Cities, but y’know…. ↩
  2. …who have let their domain, fongspriorlake.com, expire.  Tut tut. ↩

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