Monday tempo run

The run went: 6 miles easy/ 8.5 miles hard (average HR 167)/ 5.5 miles easy. 20 miles total with 4300ft of Garmin vertical.

Bike video

 Here's a bit of video from Thursday. The entire process took a few hours so I didn't mess around with music or anything fancy. About ~4:00 in a pickup truck came up behind me on a switchback and gunned it, slid sideways and then swerved within a foot of me. 5:00 later I rode by the guys house. So now I know where he lives. I'll let that one sit for a few months. Explicit language warning.

Thursday bike

Bike 20 miles with 4000ft of climbing. This puts me at 17k for the week so far (13000 running vertical) I shot a bunch of good video. If I have the patience to convert it from .mov, then download it in to Movie Maker, trim the clips, splice them together, then covert that again so I can upload it to Youtube... I'll post a video.

Thursday 8 X 400 hill intervals

11 miles. Average HR 150/ max HR 179

 I ran 8 X 400 hills with light jogging down after each until my HR hit 140 (which was happening in less than a minute). I started them at mile 3 on the profile below so you can see the up/down pattern. After #7 though I did the recovery uphill to see what HR would do and it didn't get below 148. The goal was to just run hard and I hit HR 170 on the first one and 175+ on the last 6. Solid efforts. 

 Then I finished today with a hard 1 mile climb to my house. HR was holding ~165-169 for the climb. I love living where I do with options like this. If I wanted to I could do a 12 mile steady climb to my house.  

Wednesday

I dug a telescope out of storage that we've had for many years. I set it up mostly to look at surrounding peaks which has been cool. If the light is just right I can look at branches on trees that are miles away. Ben has been super interested in it and we took some pictures through it tonight at the moon. The moon is only 1/2 tonight and quite small and we were using the weakest lens... can't wait for the full moon! This is a pic using my little point and shoot Canon holding it up to the lens. Ben can't wait to see astronauts.

Am) 13 miles. Pm) Easy recovery. Not sure I'll count it since I walked a bit.

Tuesday in the flow

12.3 miles with 2680 feet of Garmin vertical in 1:39. The route below (the pic is from last Monday) Average pace 8:02/ HR 147.

Monday 18 miles with hill intervals

Am) 12 miles with 2550 feet of vertical. Average pace 8:31. I did a 3 mile climb (see the profile below from mile 6-9) done as 6 X 400 above LT on 400 done at AeT or marathon effort. This was a bit more painful than I thought it would be. Bob is familiar with this route as we ran it one day with a Kenyan 2:07 marathoner where I had to walk and nearly threw up.  

Pm) 6 miles easy with 1350ft of climbing. Bonked a bit at mile 3 and ran through it.

18 total with 3900ft vert.

Sunday run/ bike

Run 11 miles with 2350ft of climbing, then bike (cyclocross) with 4300ft of climbing. This may have been the coldest I've been since we moved up here which is saying a lot. I posted the bike elevation profile below in time rather than distance and it makes it easier to see how much of the ride is climbing and how much is descending (by time). I sweated too much on the first climb, I should have taken my gloves off but the climb had a headwind and it was easily below zero at times, so I was damp for the descent... mistake. I was hitting ~40mph and both my hands went completely numb making braking very difficult. There is still a ton of ice on the roads in shaded areas and a few times my only thought was that when I go down I hope I don't slide in to a tree. I was also trying to cover my face with one hand as I was sure I was going to get frostbite. Luckily the descents are brief in comparison to the climbs. The second climb I almost felt some warmth return but the the descent put me well in to a cold hole. Very sketchy because the second descent is all dirt with tight switchbacks and frozen mud/ ice. I cut the ride there. My feet also went dead on me and killed every time I pushed hard. Still a fun ride though and I never hit the ground.

I took this before I started the bike.

Podcast

Our latest podcast at Endurance Planet. I'm still on the fence as to what I think of the podcasts. Not so sure that I like listening to me.

Old training logs

I was digging around in a box full of books and ran across my training logs from my first Ironman in 1997. This was about 1 year after I did my first triathlon and quit smoking. When I dropped out of college the day before classes started my junior year at the University of Arkansas I didn't take a single step of running for 4 years. When I decided to get back in to shape I jumped in with both feet! Looking at the log I see how effing tough I was and also how misguided I was. I raced 9:52 at Kona for my first Ironman but I think I had a sub 9 in me if I would have known what I was doing. And even worse is that my log books from 2004 make these workouts look weak.

My first brick workout ever. 

132 mile bike day with a 14:31 5k in the middle. The course was probably short. I also ran again and lifted that evening. All told this was a 7:45 training day in 5 workouts... WTF? 

More is better... right?  

100 mile bike averaging just over 22mph/ then brick immediately to a 22 mile run averaging 6:16 pace.  This is one of my favorite entries. I remember this day. I remember spilling the coffee on the page. This was 3 weeks out from Kona and it was my race simulation day.  I went in to Kona completely cooked. That's a damn solid day by anyone's standards. Looking at this now I see that I had a 2:40 marathon in me for Kona had I rested. 

Even 15 years ago my long runs were long. Bike 20 run 27. This was the beginning of my standard 3 hour long run that I used for the next 10 years. I think my best 3 hour run ever got me just over 28 miles. 

Tuesday rambling

 10 miles. Crazy windy today but at least it was cold. My quads are feeling fairly beat up after the run this morning. I have a crap load of vertical in the last 24 hours (I felt good last night) and I have also doubled my mileage over the last few weeks so this is expected and welcomed. If you don't break yourself down then there's nothing to rebuild. Again, the goal is to push myself to my limits and then take a 4-5 day rest block somewhere around the second week in March. If I do it it correctly then I should see a steady decline in performance over the next 3 weeks. IE: lower HR, slower paces (or higher PE at given paces), lower wattages (or higher PE at given wattages) and increasing fatigue. I prefer this over having a constant moderate schedule which is boring and you learn very little about yourself. Pushing to your physical and mental limits is where self education gets interesting.
 The trick is to recover enough to beat myself down again tomorrow and also to distinguish between good pain and bad pain. There's almost no way to describe the difference, you learn it from either hindsight (a mistake) or by playing it safe and learning incrementally where "the edge" is. I can count the number of injuries I've ever had (30 years of running) on one hand. I think I definitely have a refined sense of "the edge" having been there more times than I could ever count. But I never went over in regards to physical breakdown. I have cooked myself from a fatigue point a gazillion times, but I always pulled up and took rest days in order to prevent an injury. Today I'm sore. A good sore. I'm not limping and there's no attachment pain. The soreness is in the muscle and I can push fairly hard with 'The Stick' when I massage. No specific painful spots, just a wide range of soreness. So later today will be a hard bike session, probably Vo2 max intervals building on to what I have been doing every week. Increasing the duration of the intervals at near max efforts. I suspect that after the bike the soreness will be nearly gone. Lots of flax oil and protein (eggs and fish) today too.

Monday

    Easy run- 12 miles at 8:40 pace/ 2680ft of climbing. HR average 143. If I feel good later I might do this again.

Saturday long progression run

A couple of miles to loosen up. Then I did a progression with a loose structure of
3 miles HR 140-150 (Z2)
4 miles HR 150-160 (Z3)
4 miles HR 160-170 (Z3/4)
 6:07 average pace for 11 miles/ average HR 162. The last 3 miles went by in 17:15 with a max HR of 170 (about 5 beats below my threshold)

Thursday 21 miles

 Yesterday was 20 miles in 2 runs. Today was 21 miles in a single run at average HR 147 (high). No Garmin or altimeter, just HR. I was going to run a double again but I felt amazing so swung back home and grabbed a bottle and headed back out. More of the same for the rest of the week but out of the altitude and hills.

Lame

That's me as of late in posting here, sorry! Last week I ended up crashing quite hard. Not as in hitting the ground, but it is surprising that I haven't done that yet. Very fatigued from hard training which of course is the goal. I get suspicious of athlete's training when they never need a serious rest block of at least a few days. Over the last ~15 years, or whatever it is now, I've always tried to train hard/ big enough to beg for rest. The goal is to break the body down and then rebuild it. So I took 5 days and stepped back and just ran, biked, lifted as I felt, which was close to zero. After a day or two of rest I really crashed (hormones) and the last few days I've been sleeping ~10-12 hours a night. But today I felt amazing on my run. 6 miles in 50:00 with a max HR of 141 (I overslept and only had time for 6) 8:20 pace may not seem fast, but it had ~1200ft of climbing between 8200-8700ft altitude. Solid pace for a true jogging/ Zone 1 HR. Then I was able to get on the bike (indoors) and ride a bit with 4 X 2:00 max effort ME intervals standing.
 I have 20 weeks until Leadman kicks off with the Leadville marathon. I have several other races planned before then but I can't seem to care about anything but Leadman. So Jemez, Evans will be a take it as it comes sort of thing which most likely means I won't do them. Evans is more likely since it's just an hour away though. The other one is the Mt Evans bike which is very interesting to me since all I do is climb. I'm like JV on my bike. Weak on the flats but strong on the climbs. And I mean that in a good way Jeff :)
 Other things that I'm mulling over are FKT attempts on one of the Greens (I've run Green only a few times so I don't know which one is which), Walker for sure which will actually be a focus leading up in to Pb marathon, and Sanitas. Although Killian's FKT is, in my mind, unbeatable by a mere mortal.
 I got ripped a bit on Endurance Planet's facebook page by a crossfitter for not doing "research" on crossfit. WTF? Why would I research crossfit? I'm biting my fingers right now to avoid going off on a rant, but I don't need to research crossfit to know it is not appropriate as the ONLY training for an ultra.
 I'm pissed and edgy... now if I can just hold this for another 20 weeks.
 Tomorrow I will try to do an Ultimate Direction contest.

Wednesday

I'm very intrigued...

Saturday snow video

 We had an 'official' 42" of snow according to a weather underground station near my house. Here's a brief video.

Friday the (snow) ball's rolling

 We've had over 3 feet of snow in the last 24 hours and it's still falling. My knees ached this morning so all I did was shovel. The snow was light enough to only be annoying, not a great workout but it'll do. Yesterday's hilly 25 miles gives me insight in to my fitness which motivates me to be better. The fact that I'm tired and achy after just 25 shows me that I have a lot of work to do before I reach an acceptable level of fitness heading in to the Leadman which starts in 22 weeks. I pretty much have to have the meat of my Leadville 100 run training done before the Leadman starts because after that the races come too quickly. And in order to run well at Leadville I need to be bike fit. If I'm tired after the 100 bike then that hurts my 100 run. When I look at a calendar with the races lined out it looks quite tricky to be able to pull off what I want to will do and the key lies in my killing it now. The ball is rolling and I feel ridiculously motivated, I just need to break this old man's body back in!

 The Leadman schedule with the time between races:
June 30th- Leadville Marathon
    2 weeks
July 14th- Silver Rush 50 mile mountain bike
    4 weeks
August 11th- Leadville 100 bike
August 12th- Leadville 10k
    5 days
August 18th- Leadville 100 run

Thursday 25 mile run

The Garmin has it at 7500 feet of climbing, I doubt it. I ran from home, around Walker and then over to Eldorado Canyon and back. Walker was a sheet of ice for much of it and I wore the shoes below (I had originally planned on 20 miles of just roads) Busted my ass several times and had to walk slowly and carefully for quite a bit which cost me on the average. But I do need to get back in to the ultra mentality on the average paces. 10:30 pace for Leadville gets me a 17:30 finish time. Not that I can hold 10:30 pace... but in that context it doesn't totally suck.

Wednesday 0

 I woke up at 2:00am this morning feeling quite sick and completely exhausted. After the podcast I got all up in my jogging suit to get the planned 20 miles and ended up laying in the middle of the floor and falling asleep. I skipped the run in favor of rest. Tomorrow is still the other planned 20 miler.

 Today I was asked to speak to a high school about my life, specifically about growing up in a small town in Kansas and ending up traveling around the world and being 'successful' at Ironman. I was talking with my wife about how I'll present it.
 I dropped out of college and starting smoking, drinking, and doing (mild) drugs and traveled. I lived out of a back pack for years on beaches and boats in the Caribbean and did my first triathlon on a whim. Now I'm 40 earning ~17k a year. Not sure what the take away message is here or if I should even try to give one... stay in school or follow your passion? I'm fortunate to have learned to live on nothing and not want for material things, hardly a common thing when I look around. But I'm not sure I can inspire a bunch of teenagers to do the same. I'm truly happy and if I could go back and do it all over again the only thing I would change is that I would drop out of college sooner, or not even start- but I can't say that!? I guess I need to look at this no differently than if I were talking to my own sons. I am excited though to possibly inspire kids to run. The only other time I've tried was talking to students in Japan a couple of times about Ironman. I would love to be able to do a photo presentation too, I have piles of photos from the last 20 years. My baby face in the Amazon when I was 20. Standing in 3 feet of water with a 10 foot bull shark swimming by my legs. Bartending when I was 22 in the Virgin Islands with hair past my shoulders and a huge black eye that I got over an argument with a drug dealer about selling coke at my bar. Pictures from Venice, Japan, South America. Tons of seriously crazy memories. I have no doubt that a lot of my life would be fairly entertaining to a bunch of high school kids, but I have to draw the line somewhere... or do I?