Almost an Ultra Good Race

Things have continued to remain pretty hectic since the Germany trip, thus the lack of blog posting lately.  When I got back it was a bit of work catching up on a weeks worth of normal work and continuing problems with the copper plater in addition to keeping up on the issues we discovered while in Germany and preparing the facilities for the beginning of the machine installation.  In addition things are getting busier here so my boss was looking for ways to get even more capacity out of the copper plating machine.  If that weren't busy enough, the next week the machine arrived and for most of the week consumed pretty much all of my normal working hours, which meant working extra hours to get my normal work in.  It was a very exciting time though. It's not every day you get a $750k toy to put together and play with.  Work was busy enough however that my training really fell off pretty hard.  Luckily it was close enough to my next race that I considered the time off just to be a "taper", but probably more of one than is good for a person.

The upcoming 50k on the Superior hiking trail loomed on the horizon, strangely sapping any energy I had for exercising, even though I knew I would need every mile of training I could get.  I got in a couple good paddling sessions where I realized I still can't steer a boat, a nice bike ride to the cities and back the next day to hang out with my Mom and Grandma for mother's day, and part of a really killer workout with Nicole the Thursday before my race.  I would have loved to run the whole workout, but made myself bike part of it, even though it put me in a category of people who I respect about the least of anyone, guys who bike with girls who are running.  It was a terribly windy day, and I'm really impressed how close Nicole came to hitting her target times despite the rough conditions.  These last couple workouts left me with a fair amount of confidence going into the race, at least as much as I could have without having done any training runs over 23 miles and racing on a course I had never seen any of before.

I was fortunate enough to find a host family to put me up the night before the race.  My coworker and fellow EMVC rider John Stiles has in-laws in Silver Bay, which is less than an hour away from Lutsen where the race started, so I had a bed to sleep in and a bit of ice cream and cookies as a last carbo load snack before turning in for the night.  The race start wasn't until 7:00, so I got to sleep in until 5:30, not too bad a deal.

The race morning was nice and cool, but a bit muggy.  I had my small water bottle which had served me well on all my training runs, and felt like the cool weather wouldn't necessitate more extreme water carrying measures.  I started with a shirt on even, although realized within a few minutes that this was not a good decision.  I went out with the front group of 10 or so, and stuck with a group of 4 including Evan Pengelly as 3 went off the front.  My reach goal was top 5, so sitting in 7th wasn't too bad.  I hung with this group trading off spots up and down hills until the first food stop.  There I dropped my shirt off with Evan's dad and quickly refilled my small bottle before charging on.  I was feeling great at this point, so I pushed the pace just a little, and got a gap on the other guys I was running with leaving me running alone in 4th place.  I gained good time on the descents and lost just a little on the climbs, which I figured would mean I was saving energy on the hard parts without using too much more on the easy.  Running on my own felt good; it's what I'm used to in training, plus with the rocky and rooty nature of the trail it is nice to have a clear line of sight ahead.  

I stayed in 4th all the way to the turn around atop Carleton peak, where I found out the guys ahead of me had a pretty good lead already (10 min for the leader, wow!) and the group chasing me was not too far behind and had grown to 6 people.  I kept my same tactics, although I did start running some hills that I probably would have walked had I not had a target on my back.  I went through the 3rd food stop still alone, although I could hear people behind me by this point.  I was probably 10 miles from the finish when I knew I would need to start walking hills or things would end poorly for me.  It was less than a mile later the first runner went by me.  I took a good roll but luckily landed in some soft leaves instead of on rocks or a tree. and was back up and running, if a bit dizzy, in a second or two.

I was still sitting in 5th at the final food stop, but the 6th place runner arrived there with me, and I knew things were going to be rough from here on in.  There were still 3 major climbs to go in the last 8 miles, and my body was getting kind of upset with me.  I had not taken on enough water early, and as the temps soared into the mid 70's I was quickly learning the error of my ways.  I took a heed and 3 waters at the last food stop and filled my little bottle for the last leg to the finish, already knowing it would not be enough water to last.  I resigned myself to walking anything that looked like an incline at all, and on some of the steeper climbing sections my heart rate had to have been over 170 just trying to keep moving at a slow walk.  There were a lot of people going by me, and I must have looked bad because several stopped to offer me some water.  I didn't know how many were 25km racers and how many were 50km, and I didn't really care.  It was just a march to the finish line.  I did still run down all the hills, and the hamstrings got a bit close to cramping a couple times, but a short walk cleared them back up.  Whenever I could run, even at what felt like a painfully slow pace to me, I would quickly overtake those around me, which gave me some motivation to keep it up.  I finally broke out of the woods just as Jan Guenther passed me (doing the 25km luckily) and I did my best to follow her and run in to the finish.  I crossed the line in 4:32:23, nearly an hour faster than my first ultra.  I wasn't sure where I finished place wise, but based on previous years times I figured I still had a shot at top 10.  I drank about 64 oz of water and pink lemonade and started to feel a bit better.  I checked results and I had finished 8th, and beat the winning woman by about 10 minutes; so I achieved one of my goals at least.  

All in all a decent race, or more accurately 3/4 of a great race followed by a few miles of stumbling through the woods in a dehydrated haze.  Evan didn't end up finishing, he was in worse shape than me at the last food stop apparently, and decided to drop there.  Kevin Johnson came in about 5:30:00, good for a top 30 finish, and Jallie came in at 7:18:00, about 20th for women I think.  Not too bad for her first ultra I'd say.  I am kind of looking forward to another one, but maybe not until fall.  There will be enough other races and such going on over the next month for me to hop back into something too soon, plus I still have a misbehaving copper plater and a new machine at work to get up and running. 

Germany in the Mix

Since it's been a month since the trip now it is really old news, but as I mentioned in my previous post I recently went on a trip to Germany.  We purchased some process equipment from a company there in March of 2010, so I have known for a while that a trip would be coming eventually, but the timing has been in flux for some time.  The original plan was for this equipment to be ready in September of 2011, but delay after delay has beset the project, so finally in April we were able to go check the machines before they were packaged for delivery.  The line I was in charge of is a DESNE line (Develop, Etch, Strip, Nova Etch).  This process takes a copper panel with a printed image photoexposed on it and turns it into an actual circuit.  The line was in pretty good shape, but there was a lot to go over, so most of the trip was working, although I did have a little bit of time to sight see.
The city I stayed in was Freiburg, which is in in the black forest far in the Southwest of Germany.  It was a college town, so there were lots of people, lots of shops, restaurants, and plenty to see.  There is a tower on a peak nearby that provides a great view of the city, so I wandered my way up there one evening, and again the next morning when the light was a little better and I knew my way there.  I had plenty of great food including some Spargel, white asparagus that is very tender and tasty, Spatzle, Saurbraten, Weinerschnitzel, and of course some German beer.
My last day there I also had almost enough time to get a long run in.  There is a mountain peak nearby in an area called the Schauinsland that I wanted to try to run to the top of.  The peak is at 1280 meters, up from about 200 meters that Freiburg sits at.  It was a great run, with pretty good trail markings for the most part.  Just as I hit the snow line (it was amazing to see snow, and even more so to run from town where temps were in the 70's to the peak where the temp was maybe 40) the trail disappeared for a bit and I had to climb directly up the slope for a while to get to where I could see a trail up above.  I made it to the peak and had some great views of nearby mountain peaks in France and Switzerland.  I could also see that the sun was dropping fast and some ominous looking clouds were rolling in, so I decided to hightail it back towards Freiburg.  I have been trying to improve my downhill running this year to be better prepared for some hilly trail races I have signed up for, and I got to put that practice to good use charging down the first steep section of snow covered road.  When I got back to the trail I did have to stop a couple more times for good photo ops, but steadily worked my way down.  Soon it was too dark to read the trail signs well, or to see obstacles on the trail, so I decided to  stick to the logging roads after that.  This made for a faster pace and a more stable and visible path, but it also descended much more slowly and hugged the mountain side which meant more distance.  It did eventually lead down to a paved road, by which time the sun had completely set and the rain was just starting to fall.  The paved road had streetlights, so at least I had a line of glowing beacons to follow the last few miles back to the hotel, where I arrived soaking wet and hungry.  A quick shower and Sauna worked wonders to leech the cold rain out of the body and by the time I wandered back out to look for supper the rain had let up.  Being a college town there were still many restaurants open after 10:00 pm, rare in Germany where almost everything seems to close at 5:00.  The legs were drained the next morning, but luckily not too sore for the long flight back to the US.
The Germany trip was over, but the weekend fun was not.  About 12 hours after arriving home I was toeing the starting line for my first running race of the season, Trail Mix, a 50km relay event.  The team I was on, the Nordic Ninjas had won the previous 6 years, and Travis Hinck and I have been on the team every year.  Matt Liebsch has been on the team for 4 years now, and this year we added Jeff Lanners to replace Dave Anderson who hasn't so much been doing the running thing lately.  My body was still pretty tired from the mountain run, and didn't really know what time it was supposed to be even, so I didn't have my best race.  Matt won, and I held on for 4th place and was the first second runner in if that makes sense.  It was pretty clear at this point that it would be a close race between the Nordic Ninjas and the Gear West Running Team, a bunch of River Falls alumni who my brother ran with in college.  Their first runner is was Kyle Donovan, who passed me with about 2 miles to go in the race.  He also beat me at the Afton 50k last summer.  Their second runner Jason Phillipe finished only a few seconds behind me  Their 3rd runner Jim Felling was not far behind, and beat our 3rd runner Jeff.  Their 4th Brandon beat Travis by enough to secure them the win, ending the longest winning streak in the history of this event.  It was a fun day though, and great to get the first race of the season under the belt.  The next up would be a much more daunting task, the Superior 50km along the superior hiking trail in Lutsen.

End of an Era

It has been a couple weeks since a post again, but this time I have a good excuse.  I was in Germany last week and am just getting through the backlog of work that piled up while I was gone.  I will talk about that trip a bit, but am working on organizing my pictures into an album I'll post that will be far better than just walking through the trip in text form.  Since adding pictures to this blog has not been a successful venture for me so far (due to being lazy, or not having pictures) maybe I'll have better luck making albums and just linking to them.  But before the Germany trip was Easter.
We just finished up a health challenge at work to see who could log the most hours of exercise.  I figured I'd fare well since I train somewhat regularly, but didn't account for the fact that a full round of golf can take 6 hours or something (I don't know if that is accurate, I don't golf) or doing 8 hours of yardwork on a Saturday will all count.  Most of my exercise is strenuous enough that I don't usually go for 8 hours at a time.  Easter weekend was almost an exception.  We had Good Friday off, not because it is a holiday but because they were upgrading the power system at work and needed to power the whole factory down.  This provided a good opportunity for a Nature Center ride.  Deciding driving was dumb I biked down and did the ride, then biked home.  After a quick lunch I biked to River Falls to meet my brother and head home for Easter weekend.  A good 90 mile day, and a good headwind for the trip home and to RF.  Luckily for the trip back the wind was only kind of a headwind, but it was still 30mph wind speeds so I took it slow and steady.  Spending Easter with my family was great fun, my Aunt even hid Easter eggs for us still, even though all of us "kids" are now in our mid to late 20's.  Instead of candy the eggs have $5 or $10 bills in them, so there is pretty strong motivation to find them.  Many of the hiding places have become well known, but there are always a couple surprises out there, and it is still fun to find someone else's egg before them and walk around for a while with the smug confidence imparted by this secret knowledge.