Urban Trail 1/2 Marathon

My plan after the Ngede challenge was to set aside a training block to hopefully put in a couple
good mileage weeks before cutting back for Birkie marathon next month. I’ve still struggled a bit
getting out and running fast however, so when Chris Sachs offered showed up to rollerski a week
ago Sunday and offered a deal for signing up for the Endurance United Urban Trail Races I jumped at the chance. I need to sharpen my trail running skills and a training race is a great way to get a hard workout in.

St Paul - A nice look back at the race start. Photo: Bruce Adelsman - Skinnyski.com

The race started in St Paul, right near downtown. By next year there will be a baseball stadium here for
the St. Paul Saints, but right now there is a lot of construction going on between the stadium, a newly
installed light rail line, and a major road construction project on Hwy 52. This gave the start a very
urban, industrial feel, but within a 1⁄2 mile of the start we cut into the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary, and
from there into the Indian Mounds Park, so the race quickly took on a much more scenic feel.

I took the lead almost right from the start, but was followed closely by two other runners until we
entered the first singletrack portion of trail. After Mounds park the course dropped into a municipal forest that has some great single track going up and down a bluff. There were steep ups and downs, stairs and fallen trees to navigate, and plenty of rocks and roots to dodge. This was my favorite section of the course, partially because I had never run any of the trails before and because it had a nice flow for running if you were confident carrying some speed. By the time I exited this section there were no other runners in
sight, I would run the race by myself from here on out.

Even though I was running by myself it didn’t get lonely. I was passing runners doing the full marathon
at a pretty regular clip, and there was a pace bike leading the way for me once I got back to the paved
trail. After leaving the woods and crossing a pedestrian bridge over Hwy 61 there were a couple miles of
flat, paved bike trail where I could really push the pace, then it was in to Battle Creek park where the course immediately turned onto some sandy single track. This section also had some big climbs that I hiked a couple of, and some fun descents that required fast footwork. There were a couple of trail signs missing, so I had to slow down to search for the trail once or twice, but course markers were frequent enough that even with a couple missing navigation wasn't hard. My friend Rob also popped up a few times through this section to cheer me along. He knows these trails well, so he would follow me for a little, then cut off on a shortcut and find me further along the course.

A few final hills in Battle Creek Park. Photo: Bruce Adelsman - Skinnyski.com

The final 4 miles of the race were on the Battle Creek ski trails where Vakava practice is all winter, so
I knew these trails well. There were a couple of long climbs in this section that were not quite steep
enough to justify hiking, even though I really wanted to hike by this point in the race. I tried to keep the pace high for the descents. I actually find running downhill on trails easier than on the roads since my attention is focused on not falling over so I tend to take shorter, faster strides than I do running down hills on the road.

All in all course navigation was very easy. The only times I was uncertain about turns are where markings
were taken down as noted above, or when I was not paying attention. There were a couple instances
of that. Rob ran a couple short sections with me at Battle Creek, and I almost missed turns while I was
talking to him. I also made sure to smile for Bruce Adelsman when I saw him out taking pictures, and
almost missed a turn because of that as well.

Smiling for the camera, and about to miss a turn. Photo: Bruce Adelsman - Skinnyski.com

I finished in 1:23:49, almost 10 minutes slower than my road half marathon this spring, for what that's worth. Going back and forth between fast, flat paved trails and hilly, technical dirt trails meant there was very little rest on this course. There was also a net elevation gain which slowed down times as well. Rumor is next year the course will run the opposite direction, which could make for a much faster race.

For a bit of extra fun (and a few extra miles) I decided to run back to my car near the starting line instead of taking the shuttle. It was nice to enjoy all the beautiful views of the river and downtown St. Paul that were beyond my scope of attention while I was racing.

Lab Rat

Early this summer my friend Kara alerted me to a study at the U of M Endrocrinology department called the TrainMeUpMN study. There are two branches to the study, one that looks at the effects of a 16 week exercise program on the fitness and metabolism of obese people, and one that looks at sugar and fat metabolism and insulin sensitivity in lean, trained, athletes. You can guess which group I fit in. The study is 4 visits to the U of M and I get all kinds of cool data back, and get paid too! The first visit was a screening where they did an EKG and VO2 max test.

For the VO2 max test they told me to set the speed to my normal training pace, and that the test should take about 10 minutes, with the grade of the treadmill changing every 2 minutes. Not having much of an idea how much the grade change would effect me I set the pace at my tempo pace (about 11.5 mph), which I figured I could run for 10 minutes without too much difficulty. Boy was I wrong! The grade was raised by 2.5% every 2 minutes, and I made it a little over 7 minutes before I was absolutely shot. I guess that's the point of the VO2 max test, and it was successful. By the end I was gasping, although whether it was my legs or lungs that ultimately led to me giving up I'm not sure, the last minute or so of the test is a bit hazy. My VO2 max was 68.2 ml/kg/min. Pretty decent from what I gather, but not elite by any measure (Elite male runners typically have VO2 max values in the mid 70's or higher, and elite skiers are higher still). Since efficiency also plays a large part in endurance sports however, VO2 max isn't a super accurate measure of potential, just a neat piece of information to know. Also, according to the test my heart rate maxed out at 218, which I find hard to believe. I've never seen it get over 195 when I've had my heart rate monitor on.

The second visit I had a blood draw and a DXA scan done. This is a low power X-ray that can measure all kinds of cool stuff from body fat and lean composition and location to visceral fat to bone marrow density. Then I ran for 90 minutes and had another blood draw and scan done to compare values and see what I was using as a fuel source while running and where that fuel was coming from. I had to show up for this study fasted and the run was at a fairly easy pace, so hopefully my primary fuel source was fat vs glycogen. I only took a couple sips of water during the run, so no surprise I lost a fair amount of weight, mostly water. I did go from 10% body fat to 9.8% though (about 330g of fat loss).

DXA Scan Results - I'm 10% energy storage

Another cool result of the test was the lean mass balance, which tells where body mass is distributed. Because I moved between the before and after tests the numbers have some variation, but in general my right arm has more mass (unsurprising since I'm right handed) and my left leg does as well. Nate and I hypothisize this has to do with V1 skiing. Since I typically V1 on my right side, my left leg has a push phase without poling assistance, so that might explain why it is larger.

I guess I'm a bit lopsided

I also got blood test data. It was the first time I have gotten hemoglobin/hematocrit values, but everything was in range, if a bit on the low end of normal. I guess this is typical for endurance athletes though, because one training adaptation is an increase in blood volume.

My next couple tests won't be as exciting. I'm having an insulin sensitivity and fat metabolism sensitivity test done, which basically just involves sitting around for several hours getting pumped full of insulin or sugar to see how my body responds. I also have to have a muscle biopsy to see how fat is distributed within my muscle. I'm a bit less than excited about giving up a couple chunks of muscle, but the timing should hopefully work out so I'm recovered by my races at the end of September and October. All in all I'm pretty excited to be part of the study and interested to see what kinds of data/publications come out of it.

I tried to go on a running adventure on Saturday, but was foiled by Nature. I was planning to explore the Cannon river wilderness area, but the trails took some damage in the summer flooding and haven't seen any use since, so there was burning nettle as tall as me grown all over the trail. I explored a newly formed ravine for a while, but couldn't get through the deadfall very easily, so I soon gave up and headed home.

The washout was more passable than the trail, but not by much

Here is my CSA flower picking for this week. I guess it was a blue kind of day. When I was picking up my veggies I heard there was a birds nest in the tomatoes, but it well disguised, I was standing right in front of it picking tomatoes and would have never noticed it if the little chicks hadn't started making noise.

Blue/Purple flowers in a classy blue waterbottle vase

Ngede Challenge

This weekend was another fun multisport event, the Ngede Challenge.

I was going into the race as the favorite. I have won 2 of the 3 past editions of this race, and was second last year after making a wrong turn and adding 5k to the mountain bike leg. My good friend and race organizer Erik Teig was my closest competition each year, but he wasn't able to make it back for the race this year. My co-worker and Tri-loppet partner Dave Rowe was coming out to do the biking legs of the race as part of a relay team, with my friend Meghan McGree so I figured he may give me a challenge on the biking legs. Jeff was coming out to run all 4 legs as a long training day to get ready for the Sawtooth 100 next month.

I took the lead right off the start line and never looked back. I ran a 37:25 for the 10 road section and was out of the exchange onto the mountain bike before the next runner had come in. The mountain bike leg is the toughest of the race, it took me over 29 minutes, not much faster than I had run the leg before. It is on the hilly Balsam Branch ski trails which are used as horse trails in the summer. I was too lazy to load up my mountain bike, so I just used my cyclocross bike for both biking legs, which made the transition quite quick. On the road bike leg I did my best to stay in the drops and just work hard. I was able to hold 20mph average, which I was happy with considering my biking mileage has been lower than usual this year. Since the road bike was an out and back I was able to see how far ahead of the rest of the field I was. I saw Dave with another rider close on his heels about 2 miles after I made the turnaround, meaning I had about a 4 mile lead on the next two competitors, a pretty safe margin. The trail run is also hilly, but I was able to run the whole 5.5k, even though some of the climbs would have been as fast to hike. I was just under 23 minutes on the trail run, for a finishing time of 2:17:20. I had the fastest time on every leg, although Dave was only 30 seconds slower than me on the road bike leg, a very strong performance.

Awesome hand carved trophy, anyone want to help me come up with a name for him?

Now I have a big training block ahead of me. My next scheduled race is the Birkie Trail Marathon and then shot at a half marathon PR this fall at the Columbus Half Marathon. There won't be a lot of recovery time between these races, but I'm excited to give them both a go and enjoy seeing a couple new courses.

Adding another state to my race collection

I've been bringing my running mileage back up and I also had another go at the "Nichole Special" interval workout last week. It went pretty well, but for just over 17 minutes of hard work this workout really cleans my clock. I've also been trying to run more hills to get ready for the Birkie Marathon. It was our second Vakava fitness test last Wednesday and my midrange fitness is definitely lower than it was in the spring, so I need to get back to tempo work soon too I think. Somewhat surprisingly all of my strength results were higher, so that is a good sign for ski training heading into the fall.

In other news I got a couple fun surprises at work this week. One of my co-workers dropped off a copy of the Riverbend Nature Center news letter that had a recap of the Maple Syrup run this summer complete with a couple pictures of TNC athletes winning maple Syrup. I also got a letter from one of our chemical supplier account managers who lives in Stillwater and saw a picture of me in the Stillwater Gazette from the 1/2 marathon I won there this spring. I always love getting newspapers with race results in them, it reminds me of highschool before there was all this fancy internet results keeping and the local newspaper was the place you always looked for race results.

A couple good pictures in print

I finally got around to trying out a bike trailer my dad gave me. He found it for free somewhere and the only thing wrong with it was a flat tire. I took a trip over to Target to get groceries and a couple odds and ends I needed. It rolled surprisingly easily, and all of my groceries (including eggs) made it home unscathed. I had no acceleration on the bike though, and hills were harder than usual, so it wouldn't be my first choice for a long trip perhaps.

The grocery getter ready to go.

My CSA is a in full swing, so I'm surviving mostly on fresh veggies these days, and when I was in Amery for the race I stayed with my parents and they sent me home with even more fresh food, sweet corn, raspberries, and lots of beets! My CSA also has flowers for picking, so I've been trying to pick one every week to brighten up my house a bit. Here are this weeks selections, the made the trip home in my backpack pretty well.

Pretty

Go forth and vote beard

For anyone who reads this blog and not the far more popular blog that my friend Nichole writes, she is currently hosting a poll to decide which beard is the best beard for me (or none, but hopefully that won't win). So head on over to Nichole's Blog and vote for team beard!

Unfortunately Ice Beard is not one of the options

A lucky Save

I haven't quite managed to shake the stuffy nose I picked up last weekend, but it hasn't slowed me down much this week anyway. I am starting to ramp the training back up in preparation for the Birkie trail marathon and a fast half sometime later in the fall. This weekend was just easy base miles though, and none of them running. With ski training starting to ramp up for the year I'm going to have to manage my training load a bit more carefully over the next couple months. Last Wednesday was the first harder Vakava rollerski interval session on Burlington road in St. Paul. I remember this workout last year and thinking at the time how hard rollerskiing felt compared to running. I had much the same feeling this year. I know it will be the opposite come March when I start running and it will feel so hard compared to the easy glide of skiing.

Which is harder, the correct answer is the one I am not trained for.

Saturday morning was the Tour de Save. This is a ride that the Northfield bike club puts on to raise money for suicide awareness. The ride used to be called the Tour de Nick, named after a club rider who committed suicide. A few years ago the club teamed up with the SAVE foundation to extend the reach of the event and last year changed the name of the ride. It is a great event and one I always try to fit on the calendar to catch up with friends in the Northfield bike community and to support a good cause.

This year I was off to a late start and without a working computer at home I couldn't easily check on the rides meeting point. All I had to go on was an overheard comment over the cube wall at work on Friday that the ride would use some of the same roads as the brew tour a couple weeks ago.

I was a bit confused on where I was going

So I set out to ride some fun gravel roads, and if possible to find some other riders. I followed some roads that I knew for a while, then not finding anyone decided to just work my way west until I got to 50km, then head back home. I found a full water bottle on the side of the road, and since it was sealed and I was thirsty I picked it up and used it to refill my water bottle.

But I found what I was looking for - fast gravel

I was on a bit of nice new pavement when I saw a small crew of riders heading the other way. I had successfully found everything I was looking for on the ride, except the start line I guess. I tagged on the back of the pack, and almost dropped off again right away. I had been keeping a leisurely pace, and the rest of the group seemed on a mission to ride each other into the ground. I managed to hang on, and a few minutes later we rolled in to the rest stop that was set up at the far point of the ride. After leaving the rest stop the pace was a bit more sane for a while, and even included a stop for whiskey shots after riding through the Riverbend Nature center. Then the pace picked up in fits and starts, but I was finally getting used to the speed and was able to throw down with a couple of the speedier riders at the front of the pack. I was still no match for Galen on the bigger climbs though, he has been training hard and it is paying off for him.

Eventually I ran into these fine folks

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology I could actually go and see how lucky I was to run into the other riders out on course. Strava has an Activity playback feature that lets you play back an activity (as the name suggests) and see other users who have uploaded data on a similar route. Here is my replay from Saturday. If you track me and Galen you can see where each of our rides went and when we met up. If I had been a bit slower I might have missed them altogether. This is a fun feature and one I intend to play with more in the future. (Here is my Grandma's marathon playback, another fun one since there is a lot of other runners with data uploaded).

Near the end of the ride

After the ride I was able to drop off my donation that I wasn't able to deposit at the start. I was justifiably (and jokingly) chastised by the event organizer for missing the start and not signing a waiver. They still let me eat though, so I built myself a couple of very tasty cookie sandwiches. The recipe is simple, take one pretzel bun, cut open and line with peanut butter. Then take the cookie of your choice, put it in the bun, and enjoy. I tried a chocolate chip one and an oatmeal raisin one, they were both equally delicious.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Sandwich!

I have at least temporarily fixed my computer, thus I could put up a blog post with shiny pictures, and do other fun stuff like upload my GPS data to my training log and see my friends adorable baby girl on Skype. My PC is still a bit unstable however, so I am now starting to make plans for a new system build, which is always exciting.

Last weekend was also the first long classic rollerski of the season. I was feeling pretty good despite the long ride Saturday, and had a lot of fun striding the hills around Afton. As an extra bonus we ran into Andy Brown and Josh Doebbert who joined Nate and I at the front of the pack.