Long time no see

Saturday morning was a long run, 21 miles including my run over to meet the Poraths and their friend Brooke.  It actually went pretty well, although the last couple miles when I was carrying a jar of maple syrup did get a little long.  Still, with a long workout out of the way before noon and someone else cooking me waffles the day was off to a great start.  I loaded up the boat and headed to the cities to meet Krystal for some rollerski adventures, paddling, and nightlife.  We also stopped at the co-op a couple times for green juice (or peanut butter banana smoothie in my case) and salmon for supper, a meal I've been craving for a while.  We headed to the Finn so I could pick up some rollerski ferrules and Krystal could try out rollersking after reading about it in a book.  KJ was working and was gracious enough to lend us some boots and poles to go along with the rollerskis.  Krystal made some decent progress for a beginner to skating as we tooled around the parking lot.  Then we headed to the chain of lakes for some leisurely paddling, singing, and general discussion of life the world and everything.  Then it was back home to make some supper before biking downtown and hitting up the club (Crave) to meet up with Elizabeth and friends.

I haven't been to a club in years, so it was like coming into it with a fresh perspective.  The dancing wasn't half bad, far better than the music, and it was fun to hang out under the open air, even if it is in the middle of the city and everything smelled overpoweringly of cologne.  Afterwards it did take my hearing took a while to come back completely, since Elizabeth and friends like to be right by the speakers.

The next morning we went out for coffee, and by that I mean I biked along and hung out while Krystal drank coffee, then went to Brits to see if we could catch some of the Olympic marathon.  Unfortunately all that was on was wrestling and team rhythmic gymnastics.

Monday I went to the Twins game with Jeff, Gar, and David.  As Jeff and I were biking over to meet Gar someone started yelling our name, and low and behold it was Annie Bunio out to eat at Brits before heading to the game.  We sat down to have a drink with her and her dad.  So I ended up hanging out at Brits 2 days in a row when I have only been there maybe 2 times in my life before last weekend.  It was fun to catch up to Bunio a bit, any chance to see her before she heads back to Africa is good.  The game was fun, the Twins got a big win over Detroit, and I got back to my car to find a banana with my name on it hanging out the window.

Tuesday morning was a workout with Nate, Nicole, and Brian.  A total of 50 minutes of tempo work with pretty short recovery.  We didn't quite hit our target paces, but all in all not a bad way to start a morning.  I seem to have more energy after these morning workouts, but I have to be careful to keep up on my sleep on other nights.

Friday I joined Nicole for 2x 4 miles MP (6:00) 1 mile tempo (5:40) that we nailed.  Not only that but it really just felt fantastic to be running, almost joyful even.  The legs, abs, and lungs hurt like they are supposed to on a hard run, not painful, just that growing fatigue that lets you know your body is having to work at this.  Despite that we just seemed to sail down the road.  I don't check my watch during workouts, I listen to my body and what I can make of of Nicole's effort level and just go with how things feel.  I have enough practice running at a variety of speeds that this frequently works.  We absolutely crushed this workout.  The pain point, where it turns from hard and fun to a struggle to hold things together never really came.  We finished our last tempo mile under 5:40, and then it felt really good to just walk for a little bit.  I wish every workout could go this way, but sadly that can't be the case.

Another action packed weekend followed, beginning with some swimming and a pizza party to welcome Emily back to the cities for the few days she'll be around before leaving on a camping trip with some girl scouts.  There was lots of tasty food and glow in the dark frisbee.  Then we went to Jeffy's and slept out on his mosquito free porch, although not a lot of sleeping was done on my part.

Saturday we did yoga, made waffles, and watched Dr. Horrible before biking down to Afton to ride more bikes in a day a bit fraught with trouble, both people and their machines.  David broke a spoke before we even took off, then when we got to Afton Gar made a sharp turn that I didn't see and I T-boned directly into his front wheel.  Luckily a bit of spoke work was able to compensate for both of these problems and keep us on our way.  There is a Cat. 4 climb in Afton that we hit pretty early in the ride, and that turned out to be nearly the end of Christina.  It certainly didn't help that while most of us were on road bikes she was on a hybrid with a loose front tire that was causing some significant brake rub.  Poor route planning on my part, to put the big hills at the beginning. This fractured the group a bit, with David and Krystal riding on ahead and me jumping up to join them after getting Christina's tire secured.  We hit a couple extra hills then met Gar and Jeff who said Christina was hurting pretty bad and they were heading back to the cars.  The three of us remaining decided to see a bit more of the route and also provided a chance for David and Krystal to try out some fixed gear fun times.  Neither fell or had trouble unclipping, so a great success overall.  Then we headed over to a nearby church for pulled pork, corn on the cob, and other goodness, along with singing by Fixie Paul and his troupe.  If it was a bit awkward being introduced to a new and loud singing style while being the only ones there wandering around in spandex the size of our group at least helped mitigate the awkwardness a bit.  Then some of us biked back to Jeffy's, and David got a flat a few miles from his house, shortly after re-entering South St. Paul actually, a frequent source of trouble for David's bike.

I drove Krystal home and slept on the floor at her place, then we made a trip to the co-op to find supplies for fruit pizza.  After a good breakfast I was on my way back to Jeffy's just in time for... Breakfast!  This time it was a good sized omlette at a nearby burger joint.  Then we did a bit of shopping and I was on my way home to crash and catch up on some sleeping.

Monday there was a going away party for Bunio at Elena's new house, including taco's and ice cream cake.  Jeffy and I ducked out for a bit of rollerskiing and then ate some pretty good food.  It was fun to catch up to some camp folks and hang out with Annie and Jallie a bit.

Tuesday morning was supposed to be a bit of an early morning, but it turned out to be a lot of an early morning.  I got a phone call at about 4:15 that there was machine trouble, so I went in to work and got the machine going just in time to run over to the middle school for 7x mile repeats.  No breakfast or preparation time makes for a rough workout, and I just wasn't feeling the pace.  We were not too slow, maybe 5-8 seconds off on most of the repeats, but it just didn't feel fluid.  Not the best last hard workout before racing this weekend, but I know it was just one data point, and the Ngede challenge on Saturday will be a chance to prove out my fitness.  I feel like I haven't been on the bike as much this year, so we'll see how well I hold my own, but I'm as ready as I'm going to get I guess.

Next post will come after Ngede challenge, and maybe after the weddings the next weekend, and maybe much later the way things have been going lately...

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.