Experiencing a Voyage and Yuck

I'm still trying to figure out my fall racing plans, but the Birkie trail marathon is on the calendar, so I'm getting off the roads and looking for elevation to prepare myself. I got a good shot of trail love this weekend when I went up to the Voyageur 50 mile to immerse myself in the ultra running world. I wasn't racing, but went up to cheer for and support my friends Jeff and Rob. Former TNC athlete Kara was up cheering for her friend Emily, who just happened to be about the same speed as Jeff and Rob, so the two of us carpooled to the various aid stations. It was nice to have some company while hanging out waiting for our runners to come through.

The day started out cool but quite humid, and then got hot while remaining every bit as humid. There were no pacers allowed, but I did run back and forth a bit near the 14 and 18 mile aid stations cheering on Jeff and Rob. The course was beautiful; I ran 8 miles or so up and down the longest hill on the course and along a nice creek. That was enough to make me glad I wasn't doing 50 miles though, it was muggy.

Jeff started out with Kristi Nowak, who went on to dominate the womens race. She looked in control, but the pace was a bit too fast for Jeff. He backed off around mile 14, but was still making good time. When I saw him at mile 18 he was feeling good. When I saw him at the turnaround and at mile 32 he had a 25 minute gap on Rob was itching to start racing, but by mile 36 he was in a pretty bad way. The fast start and not eating enough were catching up to him and his stomach was shutting down and really hurting. He laid down at the aid station for probably 20 minutes or so trying to get cool and taking in slow sips of dilute coke to try to coax his stomach back into operation. Eventually things settled down a bit and he got back on his way. When we saw him at mile 43 he was running, but not fast. At mile 47 he had to take a short lie down again to settle his stomach down, then he raced the last 5k in strong, finishing in 10:15.

Jeff still running after 50 miles

Rob looked calm and in control the whole day. His goal was to finish in 10 hours, and he came in at 9:56. He ran his own race and took care of himself well, this guy knows how to execute! Emily was also looking pretty rough on the way back, but forced herself on and finshed in 10:04, an impressive 4th place female in her first 50 miler.

Sunday the Vakava crew joined up with SCAR (St. Croix Area Racers) for a long skate rollerski. It was fun to have a bigger group, and Nate, Andy, Hans, and I pulled a few of the younger guys along at a pretty good clip for the first 25k. A number of us hearty folks took off for a second lap, and we almost made it back before the rain started.

Nate and I leading the pack - photo: Bruce Adelsman (Skinnyski)

Skate rollerskiing has been a bit frustrating this summer. I feel like I'm not doing a very good job maintaining the technique cues I'm trying to learn and I have just felt weak on the skis so far. Hopefully this comes around in the fall once I lighten up on the running load a bit.

This week has been off to a rough start. Among other life issues my computer decided last night that it no longer felt like running and just shut off, leaving me feeling a bit cut off from the outside world. I've been having trouble sleeping for the last couple weeks. I was hoping it was due to the heat or to my reduced training volume and would go away when I started to ramp the mileage back up, but that hasn't been the case. It has been wearing me down and I picked up a head cold over the weekend, so I've pretty much been a walking (and running) zombie all this week so far. Today's speed work was miserable, slow and laborious, and trying to focus on anything at work seems like an exercise in futility. Hopefully being sick will finally convince my body that sleeping is a good idea.

I brought Mozzarella in to the vet a couple weeks ago because she had a pretty bad sore on her stomach. The Vet put her on a couple weeks of antibiotics, but when that had no effect he sent a biopsy sample in to the lab. The results just came back in Monday, she has cancer, and based on the size of the tumor it is pretty aggressive. So far she doesn't seem to be in any distress and is still happily eating and hopping all over the place. As long as quality of life is good there is nothing to do, but I fear my adorable roommate may not be around much longer.

Mozzarella eyeing up the camera

I usually try to keep things pretty upbeat on the blogging front, but sometimes good news is hard to come by. I'll at least end on a high note. When I got home after Sunday's long rollerski there was a box waiting in my mail full of aluminum foil and more importantly chocolate and peanut buttery goodness hand crafted by my friend Sharon. She put together a care package for Nichole and I when she was on one of her baking kicks. Plus when I stopped to drop off Nichole's her and Nate fed me some of the tasty pizza they were baking up.

Delicious mail - thanks friend!

Biking like a fish

With no running races on the immediate horizon (11 weeks until Birkie trail marathon) I have been taking a more relaxed approach to training the last few weeks. My hours have been down significantly, and my exercise has been all over the map. I've been doing more biking, a few running workouts, a bit more rollerskiing, and a little canoeing. One of the perks of not having structured training is that I can just jump into random events like the Lift Bridge 10 mile last weekend, a ladder track workout or a run in the dark with Jeff, or the Rice County Brew Tour, which some EMVC riders were embarking on. 

Seven of the EMVC crew met in Faribault after work on Friday and headed west looking for gravel roads, idyllic lakes, and cold beers. The route was almost entirely quiet gravel roads winding around gorgeous lakes (we passed 12 different lakes on our ride), and the stops were all small bars out in the middle of nowhere. The stops were pretty well timed so someone with my level of fitness and lack of alcohol tolerance could hold a slight buzz for most of the evening, which made the riding very pleasant. The weather was really perfect, a light wind, not too hot for riding, not too cool for sitting around drinking.

Nothing but lakes and cornfields as far as the eye can see.

Characters arranged in order of increasing seriousness

The pace stayed pretty relaxed and there were plenty of stops to regroup and pose for some photo ops. We stopped at 3 different bars before I left the group at about 10 pm at the North end of their loop to make the trek through the darkness back to Northfield. I haven't been riding at night since the spring, and I was very pleased with how my headlamp held up. The light I had on my bike barely made it an hour, but my headlamp picked up the slack no problem and visibility was not an issue at all. Once the alcohol wore off with about 10k to go I noticed that my legs were actually pretty tired. I guess speed work on the track and 90k of biking in a day will do that. 

Headlight ready for action

The next morning I woke up and decided that Friday night was so fun I would do it all again. So I headed up to the cities to join my friends Kevin and Jallie for another brew tour. This ride had less biking and more drinking, but surprisingly my alcohol tolerance seemed much improved from the night before so I was able to keep up no problem. We started at Fulton brewery right near Target Field. The second stop was Boom Island Brewery where I had a rasperry wheat beer that had a nice sour taste to it and a cuvee that was super smooth despite being almost 11%. After that we went to Indeed brewery where I ran into a bunch of my brothers friends out for a bachelor party.

Boom Island Brewery, my favorite stop of the day.

It was a lot of fun riding around Northeast Minneapolis, since my commuting and exploring back in college took me on many of these roads, so there were fun memories of first learning my way around the big city under my own power, and experiencing a city by bike is nothing at all like experiencing it in a car.

City Scenery, no cornfields to be found.

We eventually made our way over to St. Paul to BangBrewing, which is nothing more than an insulated grain silo filled with brewing paraphernalia and a couple of picnic tables outside. After this stop we got some food and I ventured back home to re-hydrate and rest up for Sunday, which was the first Vakava over-distance ski of the year.  What does it say about me that even when I go on a bender it involves a lot more exercise than it does drinking? Endorphins are better than alcohol anyway.

BangBrewing. Simple but effective.

I did get some more serious training in this week as well. Wednesday were skate and classic time trials at Vakava. My skate time was dismal, over 14 minutes and 2 minutes behind Nate. My classic time was actually 30 seconds faster than my skate on a double pole heavy course. I'm really not sure what happened there, but I know it means I need to keep working on skate technique and power. I did a run afterwards with Jeff, Rob, and Nate at Afton, a fun test for my headlamp which hasn't seen much action since I got it. Friday was a fun track workout with Jeff and Meghan McGree. I need to start back into VO2 work soon. If I'm going to bring my half PR down I really need to be doing tempo work at a faster pace, so that means getting a bit more speed in the legs and pushing that threshold down. Sunday was our first long rollerski for Vakava, so I got to reacquaint myself the the hills around Afton.

A Summery Summary

I'm still struggling with motivation and energy to get back into training post Grandma's, but I had a couple events this week that helped me get some quality mileage in. I also signed up for the Ngede Challenge on August 9th. It is a 50k race that includes 2 running and 2 biking legs, so I will need to bring some fitness into that event if I want it to go well. My friend Erik Teig started this race 4 years ago and it has been fun to see it grow every year since. The mountain bike and trail run legs use the Balsam Branch ski trails, where I learned to cross country ski, and the road legs are on nice country roads. It is a unique event that benefits Ox Lake Bible Camp, and if you are looking for a race to do in August I highly recommend it.

The first event last week was the TNC invitational mile on Friday afternoon. Since I knew I would have to run fast I decided to do 400's on Tuesday to assess how my leg speed was. My plan was to do up to 10 x 400's at interval pace (around 68 seconds) or stop whenever my pace slipped above 70 seconds. I made it through 7 repeats before that happened. It was a tough workout on a hot day. Summer has definitely arrived in Minnesota. Coincidentally this was pretty much the exact same workout that Nichole had planned for Jeff that day, she was rather impressed with my workout guessing ability.

Nichole decided to do a seeded pursuit start for the mile based on predicted finishing time. My marathon time predicted 4:40 for me, a goal I thought would be painful but maybe possible to achieve. This meant that I started over a minute behind Nate, and some runners had already come through the lap before I even got going. I started too fast and came through the lap in 67. It didn't hurt as bad as I expected, but by the last couple laps my legs were feeling pretty flat and just not turning over well. Still, I ended up running a 4:46. While it wasn't good enough to hit my predicted time it is still a fairly respectable effort I feel, considering I did one speed workout that wasn't even all that fast to prepare for it.

Friday also happened to be cow appreciation day at Chick-fil-A so a merry herd of bovine headed up to the cities to get a free meal. As always the mad cow costumes were a big spectacle and many other diners and employees, and passers by stopped to take our picture. Mesa even got to wear her cow costume and come with. I'm not sure fast food is the best pre-race meal, but eating a free meal the night before a free race seemed fitting.

Our Herd headed to Chick-fil-A

 Saturday morning The Poraths and I headed up to Bayport for the Lift Bridge Road Race. Renewal by Anderson offered Nichole some free entries a while back and then later extended the offer to everyone who signed up through their facebook page. Nate and I decided to race the 10 mile, and Nichole and several of her athletes were racing the 5k. The weather race morning was not pleasant racing weather. It was almost 80F and the humidity was above 95%. The air was just soggy, as was I by the time I got done warming up. I went through my usual pre race routine of wandering around watching other runners warm up to get a feel for who my competition might be. There were a couple Gustavus kids going through a full on warmup routine, one guy a few years older than me in racing flats, and a young kid in an orange jersey who looked like he was all business on his warmup.

Keeping it relaxed at the start - Photo: Stillwater Gazette

I took an early lead and by the mile mark it was down to just me and orange jersey (his name was Blake I would later discover). My legs were feeling the mile from Friday (what, sore after running only a mile?) so I planned on taking the uphill section in control and picking it up on the downhill if I felt good. I let Blake take the lead and just sat on his shoulder trying not to work too hard. I tried a couple times to strike up a conversation, but he was focused on racing and having none of it. He got a bit of a gap on me climbing the steep hills around mile 4, but when the course turned back down hill I quickly caught and passed him. I got a decent gap by the bottom of the first long downhill and could hear him working to reel me back in. I figured I had the leg speed to win a close race, I had just run a sub 5:00 mile the day before after all, so I let him go back into the lead and just hung on his shoulder.

Lift Bridge 10 mile course profile

I was wringing wet by this point in time and regretting my decision to wear a jersey, and to pin my number on it so I couldn't just remove it. I had a moment where I thought maybe I could unpin the number and pin it on my shorts so I could remove that saturated blue garment stuck to my front, but quickly decided that playing with pins, even safety pins, on my moving legs while running 5:45 mile pace was probably not a workable strategy. Blake threw in a couple good surges that I had to work to match, but he was never able to get a gap. When we turned a corner with about 1/2 mile to go he tried to make his move, but I was able to match it and cruise by him. I powered ahead and got some great cheering from the TNC gals on my way to the finish line. I finished in 58:38 winning by about 6 seconds, a small but comfortable margin.

No, there wasn't a water hazard on the course. - Photo: Stillwater Gazette

I congratulated Blake when he crossed the line and then felt a bit guilty for making him do most of the work when I found out he had just graduated from High school and this was his first 10 mile race. Not too bad though, because he made me work pretty hard to get the win, so it was a well fought race.

Other fun stuff this week: I had a lot of CSA veggies to use up, so I just decided to roast them all. Since it just so happens that pizzas cook at the same temperature as roasting veggies I also threw in a pizza. I topped it with bok choy, garlic scapes, sun dried tomatoes, and beet greens. I was amused by the contrast of cheap frozen pizza topped with absolutely fresh, organic, CSA greens, so I put together a picture that I think captures the experience well. The pizza was delicious!

Taijitu Pizza

I was also surprised to find this in my interoffice mailbox on Thursday.

I've got the Fever!

I have no idea who sent it, but it immediately made me want to bust out the rollerskis and get training. Birkie Fever is very contagious, or at least I'm quite susceptible to it. Nate and I got a good rollerski in Sunday. I remembered my V2 technique cues fairly well, but my open field still needs work. I held a V2 all the way up Dog hill, which I'm pretty proud of. A year ago I would not have been strong enough to do that.

Head Games

I put up a blog post on my race at Grandma's Marathon but didn't spend much time on what to me was one of the most intriguing aspects of the race, which was my mentality during training and during the actual race. This is the first race where I tried mental preparation before the race, and also paid attention to managing the mental aspect of running while I was racing. This will almost be like another race recap, but not focusing on the race as much as my mental state during the race. By writing this stuff down I'll have this post to look back on as mental prep for the next challenge I take on, to remind myself of the benefits of having the right mindset for training and racing.

This year I made a couple commitments to marathon training that set me up for the high mileage I put in through April and May. The first was running through the winter. Some of these terribly cold runs made good mental fuel for hard workouts in the spring. The second was running consistently. This meant running when it was windy, raining, snowing, or sometimes all three at the same time. These sacrifices gave me motivation to train hard on hard days and to race hard on race day. Running in miserable weather meant I had no excuses to not run when the weather was nice. I also set a race goal, committed to it, and announced it so my success or failure would be evident.

Wintery Mix, good for mental toughness!

Nichole has been a great fan of Dr. Asp, and she has worked with him for her last several marathons to help with mental preparation. He has a somewhat generic marathon training program Nichole used for her first marathon that she sent out to her athletes to try. The program mentally walks through races, hard workouts, all the buildup to the race, all the work done in preparation. It has you picture the day before the race and the morning of the race so when race day approaches it is easier to stay calm and relaxed. Then it walks through the race itself, staying relaxed, "almost holding back" in the early race, dealing with the pain and using it as information as the race goes on, and working hard, fully committing as the end of the race draws near. My favorite quote from the program is "full effort is full victory."

The race went well for me, but how well did I follow my plan? Was the good race just a result of a lot of training, or were there other factors? Well, I can tell you the mental focus was a defininite factor in racing as well as I did. I did my best yet at holding back at the start, running easy and letting a lot of runners get away as the race spread out. Things didn't stay rosy for long though.

I took my first gel and my stomach wasn't happy with it at all. I began to worry that I would have trouble getting calories during the race. My shoe came untied and I lost the friend I was running with. These small upsets and the effort level I was holding were enough that I considered dialing back my goals and settling for just a PR race. Mentally the race started to seem like a lot more work and motivation just wasn't there until after mile 10. By mile 13 I knew I something had to change. I came through over 1:20, not on pace to meet my goal. I decided I had worked too hard to just coast in, months of training, passing up other racing opportunities for this goal, so I committed to running through mile 15 at a faster pace. Nichole really stresses that there are no negative thoughts allowed while racing, so I just refocused on what race was still left to run.

By mile 15 my attitude was starting to turn around. There was an interesting study a while back describing how marathon finishing times look somewhat like a bell curve, but with distinct peaks at arbitrary time intervals, 2:30, 2:40, 3:00, 4:00 ect. This has been attributed to runners pushing themselves harder when that next time cutoff looms closer. I was determined to use those statistics in my favor, knowing I could push myself to make it under that 2:40 mark. I resolved to stay under pace until mile 20 so I would be ahead of pace for a slowdown late in the race.

Distribution of Marathon Finishing Times

After mile 20 I tried to take things one mile at a time, or one person at a time. I was using every mental trick I could think of to not give in to the building fatigue and slow down. I reminded myself it was only 10k to go, that almost every run I had done since March has been longer than 10k. I looked at the glittery nail polish on my fingers and reminded myself that I had a team out there running, of all those training miles where they looked up to me to always be the one on pace, to make running look easy. I worked off the runners around me, making up reasons why I should be going faster than them. When my mile 21 split was a fast I used that surge of adrenaline and excitement to lock in at that faster pace.

From mile 23 on things just really hurt, so I tried very hard to shut out signals from my body. Only 5k to go, but miles seemed to take forever. I reminded myself that it wouldn't hurt less if I slowed down. I remembered how much some of those tempo workouts hurt, and how I responded then. Erik was cheering, urging me to keep up the pace, keep passing other runners. For the last 20 minutes my focus never moved further than about a 10 meter sphere around me. When I finally got to the part of the course we had run on the day before I was so relieved because I could wrap my head around what was left. After that it was just pushing through to the finish.

A runner has a lot of mental tricks they can bring to bear when racing (or training) get tough, and I had to use just about all the ones I knew. Going into the race calm and prepared was key for going out in control and conserving energy. Using the energy of the people cheering for me helped me dig out of a couple low points. Using other runners as goals, to stick with or pass, helped me keep my pace where I wanted it. Pushing out negative thoughts let me focus on the race ahead of me. Breaking the race into reasonable chunks helped keep my mind from wandering. Being prepared to hurt to chase a goal is the reason I stuck out the last miles.

I think my increased training and the ideal race day weather would have been enough for me to easily get a PR even without a great race. The mental preparation is the edge that let me set an aggressive goal for the race and actually achieve it.

I have been sitting on this post for a while, not sure if I really wanted to put it up. It was interesting for me to write, but don't know that it will be that enjoyable for anyone else to read. I have had a pretty quiet week last week though, and in the interest of putting up blog posts on a somewhat regular schedule I decided to post it. This Friday is the TNC invitational mile, and Saturday I talked myself into signing up for a 10 mile in Stillwater (even though I still haven't gotten my prize from the last race I ran there) so I should have more interesting things to post about.