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Downhill Mile

04 Thursday Jul 2013

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downhill mileI’ve always wanted to run a downhill mile.  Would have been nice to try back in the day when I could run a mile fast, but I’m relatively fast this year so now is a good time too.  And my Garmin site has PRs recorded for a 5K, 10K, Half and Full Marathon.  Probably seems silly, but sites like this get me the same way others are drawn to online or smart phone games.  Not having an entry for the mile compels me to run one.  Fast if possible.  And Garmin won’t know the course was downhill.  Well actually it will since my watch records elevation, but the PR dashboard won’t show that.

My expectation is to be able to run a 6 minute mile – ideally a little under.  I’ve run around 6:40 for splits in 10Ks and marathons so I think 6 minutes is reasonable to assume.  Ironically, I won’t be able to break 6:30 unless I warm up first with a 2 or 3 mile run. Old runners take awhile to warm up.  The run starts at 7am, so I arrived by 6, collected my race bib, and began walking to get my heart rate up.  Of course I primed it first with coffee.

I should be less worried about my heart.  It might take 100 or 200, perhaps even 400 meters – but my heart will be with me when I need it.  It’s my sinuses I can’t trust.  Last week, specifically Thursday when the smoke from the West Fork fires rolled into Pagosa Springs, the soot and ash became trapped in the mucus of my nasal passageways.  In response to this irritation, my sinus membranes released histamine as a defense.  This in turn inflamed my sinus membranes which further produced more mucus.  This poorly coded genetic instruction might someday evolve my offspring into a super species capable of surviving a post apocalyptic world that favors over-zealous histamine production, but it gave me a sinus infection.  I visited Dr. Tusek yesterday and he prescribed antibiotics, Flonase and Allegra-D.  He said some antibiotics would in fact preclude me from running but not this prescription and he cleared me to run.  He even offered me a steroid shot but this little run isn’t that important to me and I declined it.  I’d have staid in bed if I felt too bad.  Forfeiting the $20 registration fee would irritate me but I really think I’m mostly doing this just to complete that Garmin stat.

Before the race, I jogged the course back and forth for a 2 mile warmup.  It begins a bit steeper than I expected, dropping from 5629 feet at the start to 5554 feet in the first quarter mile.  It flattens out after that for a total elevation drop of 173 feet.  The top portion could be a sledding hill.  This is a small race with 270 runners.  Many of them are young and super fit, looking to PR for the mile.  Their warmup sprints are faster than I could run all out.  I line up about 8 people deep from the starting line and watch them launch off like bottle rockets on the 4th of July.  I almost wish I’d been on the curb watching them race.

My goal is to average 90 seconds per quarter mile.  This would hurt in a 10K but I’m hoping the downhill keeps me out of oxygen dept.  It does, I’m about 4 seconds under pace after the first quarter and I feel fine.  I welcome the next quarter mile as the street flattens out but I don’t slow down much, keeping well under a 6 minute pace.  I forgot what it’s like to run this fast.  The downhill slope keeps my heart from bursting but my thighs are burning.  I thought I might run the second half faster but now that I’m into the race I’m happy thinking I can maintain my pace.  In fact, I’m confident at the half mile point that I’ll finish under 6 minutes and I do.  Garmin captures a 5:27 mile.  Hells yeah!  That’s why you run a downhill mile.  For a fast time.  And to clear your sinuses.

CT Cronica: Copper

04 Monday Jul 2011

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You drive up to the mountains Friday afternoon, along with the rest of Denver for the 4th of July weekend.  At times, it’s an uphill parking lot, especially around Idaho Springs.  It occurs to you that maybe you should have taken Hwy 285, but you reach Tumbleweed at Tennessee Pass, on Hwy 24 near Leadville, just a little after 6pm.  The traffic only adds about 30 minutes to your drive.

You leave Tumbleweed’s car at this trail head and drive to Copper Mountain to setup camp.  You find a nice spot near the rushing snow melt of Ten Mile Creek.  The parking lot is huge, it appears to be for overflow parking for Copper.  This is very near tomorrow’s trail start at the Wheeler Trail bridge.  Once you’ve pitched your tents, you head across Hwy 91 to Copper Mountain for dinner.  You quaff a Guinness at a nice pub on the pond, but select Tucker’s Tavern for dinner based on the recommendation of some locals.  You’re not disappointed.  Tucker’s serves Henke’s beef from Paxton, Nebraska and you award them a puerco pibil for their ribeye.  The guitar player/singer outside added to the atmosphere.

You retire early, and if that doesn’t reveal your age you get up sometime during the night to pee.  As you step outside your tent, you gaze upward at the night sky.  Nearly two miles up in the blackness of the forest, the stars are amazingly bright.  If you were to leave home tomorrow morning, this view right now would make the trip worth it.  Tomorrow morning is announced by Tumbleweed as he strolls by your tent to say it’s 4:35am and he’s headed down to the car to brew some coffee.  Had he only stated the time, you’d have ignore him like the beep from your iPhone announcing a tweet.  But he also mentioned something about coffee.  So after a few minutes of deconstructing his complex sentence, you roll out of bed, tear down your tent, and pack it down to the car.  25 miles and snow require an early start.

The best news of the day came yesterday afternoon when Tumbleweed encountered some through hikers who’d just completed segment 8 without snowshoes or trekking poles.  They report snow, but say it’s hard enough to walk over.  So you leave the snowshoes in the car and gear up in shorts, gators and two shirts to warm you until the sun is up.  But the sun never rises in Copper Mountain, it crests over the Ten Mile Range.  A mile into the hike, headed west, you sight this sun crest as a reflection in the eyes of an eastbound smiling girl wearing a knit skull cap and walking her dog.  She is the trail spirit Aurora.  The beauty of the CT never ends.

You climb across the slopes of Copper Mountain and at 7 miles encounter snow.  Your La Sportiva trail running shoes and REI gators are more than a match for the packed snow.  Even above treeline where you must cross sizable fields of snow, you rarely post hole your trekking pole let alone a leg.  This is passable.  You reach Searle Pass at 10 miles and cross Elk Ridge to Kokomo Pass.  The views here are among the best of the CT to date.  All you see are snow-capped mountain peaks in your 360° vista.  It’s not an original thought but you feel literally on top of the world.

The tall trail posts along Elk Ridge are visible, but Tumbleweed consults with Garmin way points to guide you through some questionable spots.  You’re delighted to discover that since earlier through hikers bushwhacked their way across the tundra, you’re still blazing some of this trail as your shoes leave the first tracks in the snow.  After your own bushwhacking experience over Georgia Pass, you appreciate Garmin way points.

The difference in the texture of the snow is worth mentioning.  Above treeline are countless small seas of snow with rippling waves that fully support your weight.  It’s even stronger near the rocky beaches, whereas two weeks ago the edges were slushy and sloppy.  No doubt your early start is affording you this still hard surface.  The sky is cloudless and your skin already burning from the sun.   Two hikers you spotted about 30 minutes behind you seem to drop back on their pace.  You suspect the snow is already softer by the time they reach it and it’s slowing them down.

As if they ever stood a chance at catching you.  Tumbleweed notes your plans to begin running down from Kokomo Pass and begins to trot the start of your third 10K in this 40K hike.  Having only walked the first half of today’s hike, you have the strength to run downhill.  The pace is best described by “dancing” as you negotiate foot placement among the rocks.  You rely upon the trekking poles first as caution and later for support as your knees begin to weaken.  You run most of these 6 miles downhill but begin walking before it flattens.  Your knees aren’t in pain so much as you lose confidence in their ability to withstand any more pounding.

Once in the flats, you recover your strength by walking.  Tumbleweed clears some of winter’s damage of downed trees from the trail.  You’re surprised to encounter so few hikers/bikers on the trail given this is a holiday weekend.  The only other hiker was an older woman with a shepherd mix named Rainbow whom you passed by after Kokomo Pass.  At 16 miles, where Tumbleweed stashed refreshments Friday afternoon, you’re deluged by a clockwork orange of droogs on RTVs, filling the air with dirt from the gravel road they’ve commandeered.  The flats are further burdened with a scorching sun that taps out your energy and lengthens the last few miles.  And while not overly steep, the final 10K is measurably uphill.  Enough so that your legs feel it.  And your feet, having been slammed on the downhill, are now tender and you’re thinking of reaching the car to sit down.

But there are more odd sights along the way.  The 10th Mountain Division litters the trail with huts and other WWII paraphernalia.  You don’t know what to make of this monolithic cement structure, but recognize other huts and the coking ovens.  You recall the history of this fighting crew that lost up to 25% of its forces battling the Germans in the Italian Alps.  They prepared for battle in paradise.

You’re as tired as you’ve been on any of the CT segments after you reach the trail head.  While certainly not as brutal as crossing Georgia Pass, you credit an unrelenting sun for your complete exhaustion.  You change into comfortable clothes, shuffle cars and head to Leadville for a meal.  You consider driving another few miles to the trail head to setup your tents, but after hiking 25 miles in 10 hours, the need to refuel is paramount.

Dinner at the Golden Burro was fair, although not close to your expectations.  You’ve enjoyed some really unforgettable gastronomical experiences on the prior 7 segments of the CT, so your foodie bar is set high.  Perhaps as important as the food is you prefer a locally brewed tap beer.  Is that too much to expect in Colorado?  No, it isn’t.  But that’s fine.  You buy some chips and a 20 ounce PBR while gassing up your car on the drive back to the trail head.  You pitch your tent with noticeably less precision than the night before.  You’re tired.  Tumbleweed announces it’s camper’s midnight at 9pm and you pass out ’till morning.

CT Cronica: Ten Mile

23 Thursday Jun 2011

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The night went quick, yet you feel rested when you hear Tumbleweed tearing down his tent.  Feeling rested and feeling like crawling out of your sleeping bag are two different things, so you roll over.  It’s going to take more sun than what’s currently showing to get you out of your tent.  You inventory your hurting parts and are surprised to find everything seems mobile.  Nice.  You’re getting used to this.  Tumbleweed stops by your tent to tell you he’s going down to the car to make coffee.  You tell him you’ll be there in 15.

So 15 minutes later you get up and pack your gear down to the car.  The camping spot is just off the Gold Hill Trail.  Very convenient – this will be your earliest start yet.  Your car is at the trail at the other end of today’s trek at Copper Mountain.  Tumbleweed has a burner setup in the gravel parking lot with some water boiling for coffee.  You both have two cups and then some oatmeal with honey.  This is Tumbleweed’s typical morning routine when he’s backcountry camping.  Yours’ so far has been McDonalds, but flexible as always, you find this satisfying.  At 6:30am, you pack up your snowshoes and head out to cross the Ten Mile Range.

The trail is gorgeous.  You encounter a woman running from the other direction within the first mile.  You don’t feel the need to run today.  Yesterday’s best trail run ever has you satiated.  And you’re a bit stiff still.  You maintain a strong pace but walking nonetheless.  Today’s first hill takes you from 9200 feet to over 10,000, then drops back down to about 9900 feet at mile 3.  Around this point you turn left onto the Peaks Trail for about a half mile until you reach Miners Trail.  Man, the blokes that live around here have a lot of trails.  They have hiking trails along with paved biking trails all the way from Breckenridge, though Frisco and Copper Mountain to Vail.  Sweet.

Miners Trail, before 4 miles, begins the big climb up to the ridge crest.  You need to snowshoe before hitting tree line, maybe around 5 or 6 miles, but it’s not bad.  You’ve picked up some skill at it, and the snow is hard enough to support your 180 pounds without post holing.  The snow doesn’t even get deep until close to tree line.  Your pace slows down then.

There’s extensive sidestepping across the tundra, and sidestepping in snowshoes is hard.  Sidestepping in snowshoes at Tumbleweed’s pace is even harder.  He seems to float across the tundra.  You’re hanging ok but it’s real work.  Then the views begin and you forget about the pain in your thighs and calves.  You’re not sure which is peak 2 or 3 or 4 or 5, but they are all right in your face.  You can see the cornices up close and wonder about the likelihood of avalanches.  It seems like you are still separated by a small ridge from the peaks, so you don’t worry.

You maintain Tumbleweed’s constant pace.  He’s concerned about crossing the ridge before it gets cold.  The forecast calls for thunderstorms and the sky looks like it could do anything it wants from giving you a sun burn to blowing a blizzard.  You keep up.  Reaching the ridge literally takes hours and feels like the entire day.  The approach to the pass between Peak 5 and Peak 6 is deceiving.  You keep thinking you’re there but there’s always a little more to go uphill.  You do become concerned about avalanches by the time you’re almost under the cornice of Peak 5.  This picture captures your wonder as you stare at the cliff wall.  Although to be fair, the more likely cause of your gaping mouth is that you’re sucking wind at 12,000 feet.  Tumbleweed snaps the photo of you with Lake Dillon in the background.

Just a few steps beyond Peak 5 is the crest and you find the snow melted on the western slope.  It feels good to shed the snowshoes.  You need to don your jacket though as the wind is howling up here like a banshee from Celtic hell.  Otherwise, this has been shorts weather.  You didn’t even need your gators until the snow got deep.  On this side of the Ten Mile Range, you find that you need to switch in and out of your snowshoes multiple times until you work your way below 11,000 feet.  Tumbleweed works the Garmin waypoints like a space pilot.  This is another crucial piece of gear that makes this hike passable before July.

The trail is fairly straightforward however.  From the crest you continue south for over a mile, then reach a switchback that turns you north for nearly the remainder of the trail.  And it’s at this switchback, where Wheeler Trail starts, that the snow ends to the point you can remove your snowshoes.  It’s an easy 3 mile cool down dropping into Copper.  This hike is over.

But wait, what’s this?  Well below treeline at the first wooden bridge, you run into hundreds of downed trees – the apparent victims of an avalanche.  Wow!  Although a fairly contained area, the destruction is huge.  But the bridge survived.  Crossing is an ankle-biter and the poles help.  Soon you’re crossing more bridges as you’re in a bog.  Then you reach the trail head.  Your first two day CT affair is over and it was epic.  Certainly the most amazing views to date.  You change into comfortable clothes and shoes and then drive back to Gold Hill.

After picking up Tumbleweed’s car, you turn toward Frisco and stop at the first open restaurant in search of calories.  The first place is Backcountry Brewery at Hwy 9 and Main in Frisco.  You’ve been here before so you know the food is decent.  You start with beer and nachos.  The kitchen is a bit slow to meet the demands of your low blood sugar; which reminds you that weed is legal in Breckenridge so urgency should not be expected.  When those nachos do arrive, you devour them like Stuntman Mike and order another Switchback Amber.  Tumbleweed orders another Telemark I.P.A.  You can’t even recall the burgers well enough to blog them after this point, it’s all a food blur.  You know it was good.  You make plans for hiking segments 8 and 9 over the 4th.  Then you head home east and Tumbleweed drives west.

Bolder Boulder and Beyond

06 Monday Jun 2011

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The 2011 running of the Bolder Boulder could be it for me for awhile.  It’s the last road race on my schedule until perhaps an Aspen half marathon trail run in September.  I refrained from running the remainder of this week in order to recover from plantar fasciitus in my left foot caused from pronation and wearing the wrong shoes to correct it.  Worse, after buying a proper pair of shoes, my left knee began to hurt like a sonofagun.  And there’s simply no reason for me to run through the pain any longer than I already have.  I’m no Chronic Runner.  I’ve completed most of my goals for the year.  I suppose I’d have other goals but they’ve been usurped by my weekends hiking the Colorado Trail.  First, I’ll recount the 2011 Bolder Boulder, then I’ll relate future plans.

I initially set this run as the biggest target of the year.  It was my first serious road race after over 20 years and marked my re-entry into the sport last spring.  It would serve as the perfect measure of improvement in my fitness level.  I ran a marathon down in Austin and two halves (one in Moab and one here in Boulder) over the winter to prepare.  I had planned to then perform some speed training in order to teach my muscles how to run fast again.  My goal was to beat last year’s mile pace by a full minute.  I ran an 8:01 mile pace in 2010 and truly believed a 7 minute pace was possible.  A boy can dream.  But instead of speed work I began running the Colorado Trail on weekends with a good friend.  And I have no regrets, I’m having a blast.  I’ve hiked the first 5.5 segments and intend to spend the rest of the summer – and likely some of the fall – completing the full 28 trail segments.  Additionally, work has been too busy to afford me the time to increase my mileage during the week.  A half hour run is about all I have time for.  Actually, I might get more time now that the days are getting longer.  But still, I’ve only been running 3.5 miles during week days.  So I entered this year’s run with reset goals, hoping to only beat last year’s time by any measurable amount.  I thought maybe I could run a 7:30 mile pace at best.  I came close.

The official Boulder Boulder Timex had me at a 7:46 pace.  I prefer to reference my Garmin results which showed me run a 7:37 mile pace.  My belief is, starting further back in the pack results in running less of a straight line.  Having to go around slower runners causes you to zigzag across the street.  My Garmin measured my overall distance at 6.33 miles.  And this is accurate.  Both the Garmin and the BB Timex finish times are of course correct at 48:17, but I ran farther than a 10K.  Seems like a trivial point and it is since I’m pretty happy with both times.  But it is interesting how much harder you have to work back in the pack.

If there is a reason I’m a bit focused on my Garmin results it’s because the more I consider this phenomenon, the more I believe it’s possible I didn’t run faster than last year.  I wasn’t in a qualifying wave last year and started way, way in the back.  I remember being frustrated by how much passing and slowing down to pass I had to do last year.

By contrast, I started this year in the CC wave, only 10 minutes after the first wave.  If my Garmin had me run 6.33 miles this year with only 8 waves ahead of me and minimal passing, it’s conceivable I ran 6.5 miles last year.  For all I know, I ran the same true pace.  If there’s a useful point to this, it’s that it’s important to be in an early qualified wave if you hope to meet a goal time.  I expect to be able to enter in the C wave next year based on this year’s time, avoiding a few thousand more runners.  Theoretically, my allotment into a qualified wave has me in a self-propelling spiral of faster times each year whilst only truly running the same pace.  If you think I’m pulling your leg, I propose that if the gap between my Garmin time and the BB time is smaller next year, then there’s some possible truth to my bullshit.  In fact, I suspect I could measure this gap now with other Garmin wearing runners who started in various waves.  If you’re one of them, comment with your gap.  My gap is .13 miles and a 10 second mile pace.  I imagine there are diminishing negative returns, but I suspect this effect is measurable in the first 20 or so waves.

That’s really the biggest thing I got out of this year’s event – it made for some good discussion at the Gadget Girl’s post race Memorial Day BBQ.  Other than that, nice running weather – the light rain felt good.  Finishing in Folsom Stadium is always cool and I believe one of the key features that makes this event.  And I think the new start works out much better.  Parking is improved by an order of magnitude.  More importantly, the first mile is no longer downhill.  In past events, this would lead inexperienced runners to start too fast and then die on mile 2 which runs up Folsom.  It’s difficult enough to maintain early pace discipline with 56,000 runners breathing down your neck.  Now I believe, based on some of the times I’ve queried, many runners ran strong through the second mile and didn’t slow down until mile 3 – which is a tough one.

My personal race experience is best illustrated in the pace chart near the top of this blog.  It shows me running an extremely even pace – I didn’t just average 7:46 per mile, I ran within a few seconds of that time each mile.  You might think I’ve been running for so long that perhaps I don’t know a different pace.  There’s a little truth to that, but trust me when I tell you this is fast for me.  My training pace is closer to 8:30.  So I’m happy that I did in fact race this event by pushing myself.  I had two concerns toward this.  I was fairly certain I could run a 7:30 pace after warming up.  But I didn’t know if I could start off that fast.  And I was concerned I might start off too quickly by following the crowd.  I discovered however that many of the runners in my wave were experienced enough – God knows they looked a lot more athletic than me – to control their starting pace.  So being able to begin with a 7:45 mile and then maintain that pace has me quite pleased with my performance.  I had a smile on my face the rest of the day.  I can tell you though, while my legs felt strong the entire run, my weak-assed stomach got in my way when I wanted to turn on the jets in mile 5.  I’ve given up on trimming it down much more, but some situps are in order.  I could do that while I’m not running.

As I mentioned at the start, I’ve taken the rest of this week off from running.  My knee feels totally better already; that would be stupid to let a knee injury continue.  I don’t know that my plantar fasciitus will heal quite so quickly, but it should heal over time if I have the right shoes.  It does feel marginally better after a few days of rest.  I can tell by how sore my heel is when I wake in the morning.  I’m not exactly jumping out of bed like Cameron Diaz just yet.  Whatever, I’ll take a sore heel over a knee injury any day.

A little something about buying the wrong shoes.  I reviewed the Runner’s World review on shoes for stability – to correct the pronation in my left foot.  I clipped the picture of the ASICs Gel-Kayano and went to Dick’s Sports which is only 2 miles down the road.  They had a shoe that matched the picture, and to add confidence, the $140 suggested retail price matched.  But it didn’t have a label with the shoe name.  I bought it and it never seemed to help.  I then bought inserts, but it still always hurt and my plantar fasciitus has continued to progress.  A week before the Bolder Boulder I visited the renown Boulder Running Company to purchase new shoes.  Their help there consists of expert world class athletes.  I explained my issue.  The guy barely glanced at my shoes without a name and said, “Those aren’t the Kayano, those are the Nimbus.  They’re designed for supination.”  Dammit!  That explains my pain.  That helps to also explain why the Austin Marathon hurt like hell.  They got me on the tread mill to ensure the Kayano corrected my pronation.  This is why you go to the Boulder Running Company.  I’ll never go anywhere else again.  I picked up a pair of racing shoes too to reward myself for all my running and so I could stop racing in heavy trainers.

I might go a second week without running to heal.  I’m not worried about losing my conditioning, or more importantly, losing my discipline.  I’m comfortable that I’ll stay in shape.  Too much competition from the neighbors to let myself go entirely.  You live in Boulder County – you know what I mean.  The typical house wife is 5-11, world class at something, and can kick your ass while her spouse is out shopping at REI.  If I feel I’m no longer running sufficiently to blog a runner’s theme, I’ll change up the topics here.  Wouldn’t be the first time.  I’ll archive the blogs tagged with the “running” category into a menu item above like I’ve done with some of my other stories if I do end this theme.  Wait a second.  Just added the menu item.  Hot damn, my running category has 56 posts, over half my blog.  And this post makes 100 total stories.  Time to change up my content because I’m done with forking over copious coin for the digital downloads of these race pics.

CT Cronica: Snowshoe

29 Sunday May 2011

Posted by in Colorado Trail

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You have further to drive this morning than previous segments, so you’re out the door by 4:30am and headed toward Breckenridge.  You were up late the night before, but have all your gear set to go.  You hope it’s all your gear.  There’s much more of it for segment 6 as you plan to camp over night to complete the full 34 mile segment over the Memorial Day weekend.  And you take along your snowshoes expecting to need them.  You could view the Georgia Pass from your run on segment 5 last weekend, so you know there’s a good amount of snow – at least up high.

About a mile out, you realize you forgot your driving instructions.  You decide to keep on because you’re fairly certain you remember the directions well enough.  You know of course how to get to Breck and you just need to find the turn to the left off Hwy 9 at a traffic light.  There aren’t that many traffic lights between Dillon and Breck – you’ll know it when you see it.  You have a banana for the drive, but also stop at McDonalds 10 miles from your house for a large coffee and Breakfast McMuffin.  Mickey Ds makes a decent brew.  In Dillon, with your coffee nearly empty, you drop into Safeway to use the facilities.  Feeling obligated, you purchase a couple of glazed donuts.  You ask the cashier if she knows the turnoff to the trail head at the North Fork of Swan River.  Your understanding is it should be at a light a few miles south toward Breck.  She doesn’t hike but says yes in fact Swan River Road is just a few miles down the highway.  Excellent.

Swan River Road sounds right, but you discover it’s the wrong road as it simply circles around the south end of Lake Dillon and dead ends at Hwy 6 after about 4 miles.  Dammit.  You turn around and head further south.  The next light shows Tiger Road.  That’s it.  You drive 10 or so miles before you see Tumbleweed’s car parked at a campsite.  He says he couldn’t go any further down the road to the trail head because it’s blocked by snow, but that you could easily walk it.  Okay.  You shuffle gear between cars and drive to Kenosha Pass to begin the longest segment of the Colorado Trail.

The trail begins winding through Aspen groves and would make for some good running, but you quickly discover it’s too difficult to run carrying snowshoes.  Tumbleweed’s shoes are attached to his hip pack and will bounce against his legs if he runs, while yours’ are poking out the top of your back pack and would fall out with too aggressive a pace.  That’s fine as this will be a long trek and you figure you might need to reserve your strength.  You enjoy spectacular views along the hike and encounter your first fellow hikers – a couple perhaps in their 50s or 60s – after about a mile.  They’re returning as they were spooked by some shooters up the trail firing weapons in a dangerous manner across the open meadow.  You proceed cautiously.  The campers appear to be taking a break from their morning shooting session.  Various weapons, from hand guns to a crossbow are scattered about their campsite.  To each their own.

Within two or three miles, you remove your gators and tights as the day has warmed up tremendously.  You apply sunscreen generously and hike the remainder of the trail in shorts.  Mounds of snow cover the trail at random, infrequent spots.  You see this within the first mile and a half but they are easy to negotiate with your trail running shoes.  After 3.5 miles you’re climbing the second hill but it doesn’t affect your pace since you’re not running.  You meetup with a wild dog shortly after crossing Deadman Creek.  He doesn’t appear dangerous as he drags half a frayed leather leash attached to his collar.  You throw him some salami and continue onward.  Around 5 miles you cross paths with another hiker with two Labs who has started toward Kenosha Pass from the Jefferson Lake Road trail head.  He tells you he first went the other direction but encountered too much snow to continue.  Hmm.

You’re not surprised then when at 7 miles you’re forced to strap on your snowshoes.  You find it interesting that having only first snowshoed this winter for recreation, you’re now using your gear because you have to.  Garmin lets you know that your pace has slowed from roughly 3 miles an hour – typical walking speed – to under 1.5 miles per hour.  Not only have you donned snowshoes, but you are now climbing up to Georgia Pass and the Continental Divide.  Four hours have passed at the 3 mph pace, and now you’ve slowed to half speed.  This is going to be a long day – easily 10 hours.

Long doesn’t begin to describe how difficult this segment becomes after donning snowshoes.  There’s nothing recreational about this snowshoe adventure and the reason is the snow.  This is horribly bad snow.  The texture of it, while icy, is as soft as Dairy Queen ice cream.  Your shoes constantly post hole up to your crotch.  By 10 miles, the snow is easily 6 feet deep and three or four times you post hole into buried evergreen saplings.  The first time this happens, you’re able to extract yourself by digging down to the back of your shoe and pulling it out.  The other times you’re in a position with your other leg above the hole to where you’re unable to reach your trapped foot with your hand.  You discover the best method, really your only hope, is to dig out the snow from your trapped snowshoe with Tumbleweed’s trekking pole.  He lent you one of his poles after your first such episode.  Having your foot trapped under the snow like this is a near panic event.  You learn what it is like for avalanche victims wherein the snow immediately hardens into ice after you crash through and without tools or help, you’d be stuck for good.  You gain respect for the snow with this experience.

You learn a great deal from snowshoeing in these conditions.  The trail is of course buried and CT trail signs are infrequent.  Tumbleweed teaches you how to read trail blazes on the trees.  These are patches of bark stripped from trees in a specific pattern so that you know it is man-made and purposeful rather than simple tree disease.  The patch is on both sides of the tree so that you can see it approaching in either direction.  This picture shows one such trail blaze above a CT sign.  The trail blazes are frequent enough to keep you on the trail if you go slow enough to search for them.  But by 10 miles these markers are buried under the snow and you lose the trail entirely.  Tumbleweed has been using his topo map and Garmin waypoints but missed one and you’re forced to head up to tree line in order to find the trail over to the pass.  The climb is brutal and eventually leads you to a point above the pass where you gaze down upon it and a spectacular 360° view of the eastern plains, Keystone ski runs to the north, and 13,297 foot Mount Guyot to the south, captured in the picture below.

You’ve covered 13.5 miles in 8 hours as you head down to the pass.  You’re exhausted but excited to reach the Continental Divide.  You want a picture of the big sign you’ve seen in other pictures, but don’t find it.  Presumably it’s buried in snow.  You do bend down to get a pic of a small sign that is nearly buried too.  You spot a fox crossing the Divide and take some video upon reaching this truly fantastic panorama.  The snow is melting seemingly on the exact spot of the Divide and running down the western slope of the trail – the absolute head waters of the Swan River.

It takes another 3 hours to get down to the North Fork Swan River trail head.  The trail runs along a ridge near the pass, but it’s nearly impassable with deep snow drifts, so Tumbleweed guides you down a steeper path by Garmin waypoints.  A little too steep and your thighs burn until you’re at the point of collapse.  You suffer from waves of nausea whenever you stop to rest.  While your fatigue requires eating, you’re too sick to swallow anything.  You can barely drink without vomiting and your stomach begins to cramp.  Tumbleweed’s reliance on the waypoints ignored the topo map and you discover you need to climb back up to the ridge.  The downward trek left you completely spent, so you’re not certain you can.  You keep moving forward – one slow step after another.  The climb is indescribably painful and leaves you whimpering from distress and the uncertainty of completing the trail before nightfall.

The snow never diminishes and Tumbleweed navigates you down entirely by Garmin waypoints.  You fall often from weakness but finally you reach the Middle Fork Swan River trail head.  You determine to walk the Tiger Road back to your car from here rather than climb the final ridge over to the North Fork trail head.  About the same distance either way, but the flat road will be measurably quicker.  Your logic is that you won’t be able to complete the trail before nightfall and you’re totally too weak anyway.  The road lies across the headwaters of the Middle Fork of the Swan River.  This is likely a dribble during the summer, but at this time of spring it’s gushing with snow melt.  You find a suitable crossing and Tumbleweed leads by falling and drowning both feet and half his body into the icy water.  He warns you to not trust the tree branches, so you hold them more aggressively and skip across the water successfully.  This is jump one, another branch of the river remains.  That one requires you to jump through two bushes and Tumbleweed fairs much better, although dipping an already soaked foot into the stream.  You measure your jump carefully and reach the ground on the far side.  Except that this ground is actually an ice patch which collapses back into the river.  You flail your arms for the branches to keep from falling straight back into a bath of glacially cold water.  Both feet are under with the rest of your body bent at the knees parallel to and inches above the river.  Fear gives you the strength to pull yourself up by the branches seized in your fists.  Your feet have been sacrificed and you accept their fate of a cold and wet 2 mile walk to the car, almost distracted by the thought of your evident upper body strength.

You decide not to hike – snowshoe – the remaining trail tomorrow.  There are sufficient reasons from your fatigue and wet shoes to having something left for the Bolder Boulder on Monday, but the primary reason is you’d be an idiot to hike through such miserable snow after what you experienced today.  You understand why other hikers are waiting until later in June.  You walk another two miles in soaked shoes (you can only expect so much of Gore-Tex), still strapped in snowshoes, back to your car, and reach it as the sun falls below the mountain peaks after over 11 hours and 20 miles.  You make plans to meet back at the trail post in this picture in about three weeks when you can be certain the snow has sufficiently melted into the Swan River.  You eat one of the most satisfying double cheese burgers in memory at Empire Burger in Breck – a place you’ll return to for sure.  Tumbleweed shuffles you back to your car at Kenosha Pass and you recount the suffering of today’s epic expedition.  You both learned a great deal about hiking in Colorado before the snow melt.  You drive away leaving Tumbleweed to camp on the pass and surprise Karen by arriving home early.

CT Cronica: Foothills

15 Sunday May 2011

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Between traveling to Austin to visit your mom for Mother’s Day and work, it’s been a long week.  You were up late Friday, and likely drank a bit more than you should have considering you have a 15 mile trail run today on segment 5 of the Colorado Trail.  But you’re up by 5am and out the door by 5:30 for the drive to Kenosha Pass on Hwy 285.  This drive is less eventful than your last journey this way.  You stop in the Aspen Park King Soopers again to stock up on trail food and drinks.  The drive from Aspen Grove to Conifer is in thick fog and you have to drive under the speed limit.  But the sun comes out and you figure the weather is shaping up to make for an awesome day.  You’re excited to finish this segment because it will mark the completion of the first section to the Colorado Trail – the foothills.

You pick up Tumbleweed at the Kenosha Pass Trail Head.  This is a convenient car shuffle to the Long Gulch Trail Head where you start segment 5.  As always, the first order of business is to determine how to gear up.  You both expect the snow will be minimal and that it might warm up significantly.  You both dress fairly light. You take further gear risks by leaving your gloves and YakTrax in the car, along with your gators.  You’re trying out a new hip pack on this run, the North Face Sport Hiker, and it won’t easily hold as many extra clothes as your pack.  You pull on a light pair of Under Armour running tights, two shirts, similar to last time with a thin nylon undershirt and cold weather gear top over that.  A runner’s hat and sunscreen complete your preparation and you launch off for the final segment east of Hwy 285.

This weekend was nearly cancelled due to a fire started the previous weekend.  Monday and Tuesday was bad news but then a cold front came in and dropped snow and freezing rain for two days in a row – squelching the fire.  You drove past fire fighters on the trail head road and you wonder if you’ll see any traces of damage on the trail.  The trail conditions are simply spectacular.  The dirt is soft with moisture and the trees make for a cozy feel to the trail.  After a slow start up a particularly steep beginning slope, Tumbleweed has warmed up and sets a strong pace.  The trail is ideal and looks like it should be run fast, but you falter.  You can’t believe how heavy your legs feel.  Last night’s drinks?  Perhaps.  More likely the long week.  You missed 3 days of running, the most in a row in over a year.  You did run yesterday and maybe you haven’t fully recovered.  Nope.  It’s your hip pack.  The weight is killing you.  You feel strapped to the ground, fighting to clear the rocks with each step.  You fall behind.

This new hip pack is a problem.  Your water bottle fell out and a second water also dropped that you didn’t hear and is now lost.  You’re not overly concerned about liquids because you don’t expect it to get hot, and you’re comfortable you still have enough water.  You determine the bottles are too big for the pack’s pockets and carry the bottle in your hand.  You resolve to drink it early to get rid of it.  You stop after 1.5 miles to adjust your gear, removing a shirt.  You take a slightly longer stop at 2 miles and remove your tights.  You finish the water and store the empty in your pack.  You take out an extremely heavy protein sports drink, EAS Myoplex, and carry that in your hand – with the plan to drink that as quickly as possible too.  You alternate holding it in each of your hands as it quickly tires your arm.  You don’t whine about it though, instead you think it’s nice that you’re getting an upper body workout in with this run.

But the hip pack continues to bog you down with weight.  You adjust it lower, then higher, then lower again.  You figure it’s still an awesome pack, and you just need to learn how to pack it and best position it on your hips.  Clearly, you will need small waters.  And this pack might not work on all segments.  It never feels comfortable the entire run, and you miss your old back pack.  While the pack is a gear failure, your GPS promises to not disappoint.  It calls you at programmed intervals – each mile – with a small vibration.  You have a new trail spirit seemingly running along with you.  You refer to this spirit as Garmin.  Garmin’s synchronous calls are comforting as they provide you with precise time and pace information.  Garmin’s only shortcoming is its inability to load waypoints, but this trail is so easy to read it’s not a biggie.  You look forward to reviewing Garmin’s digital trail tracks after the run.

These charts are great.  The top chart shows your pace and is aligned with the elevation chart immediately below it.  You can adjust the display so that both show time or distance, but it’s not really necessary given their alignment.  The charts show that you start off slowly with the trail’s initial steepness.  And you spot your rest periods at 1.5 miles, 2 miles, etc., as the pace falls dramatically and is noted by big dips in the chart.  Likewise, hills illustrated in the elevation chart correspond to a slower pace in the timing chart.  You expect further fun searching for correlations among the two chart’s patterns.

You encountered a hiker, which has been rare to date on the previous segments, within the first few miles.  And after 11 miles you discover the fire and numerous firefighters protecting against flareups.  You’ve never seen the effects of a forest fire so closeup immediately after the event before.  It’s evident how the firefighters either dug fire lines or leveraged the trail to stem the flames.  The dark ground in these pictures represent the burn between miles 11 and 13.  You can still feel heat rising from the scorched earth on the left side of the trail.  The lone hiker and firefighters were all you saw today.  Very soon now the trail is bound to become more crowded.

Despite your rough start today with the gear failure weighing you down, and possible hang over, you eventually loosen up and have a fast run on mile 7 – covering that segment in under 9 minutes.  The chart shows it to be mostly downhill.  Not surprising but even the downhills hurt today.  Your muscles don’t immediately transition from running uphill to downhill.  Your legs are becoming hard however.  These hills are getting you in shape.  Tumbleweed suggests running the Goldenleaf Half Marathon in Aspen in September as a way to celebrate your trail fitness.  Based on his performance today, he should be competitive in his 50-54 yr old age division.  He finishes today a couple of minutes in front of you on the wide gravel road that leads to Kenosha Pass Trail Head.

You struggled today with heavy gear, grogginess, tight muscles from a long week, and pain from pronation in your left foot.  You celebrate your relief for the finish with a couple of shots from a flask that magically appears from Tumbleweed’s car.  Camper’s provisions.  This completes not just segment 5, but the foothills section of the Colorado Trail.  About 70 plus miles.  Future segments will vary dramatically.  Segment 6, the longest at over 30 miles, will take you over the Continental Divide at Georgia Pass.  The rise in elevation and increase in steep grades will bring about much more walking.  Running will become less common.  In fact, you’ll likely wear hiking shorts, if not pants, rather than running shorts.  The pockets will be nice.  And you’ll carry your snow shoes, at least for the next segment which is buried in snow.

After picking up your car from the Long Gulch Trail Head, you drive into Fairplay with plans to lunch at the Brown Burro.  Tumbleweed has eaten there before and it comes with strong reviews.  You stop in front of the place and see that it is closed.  This is a few blocks off Hwy 285, on Hwy 9 that leads into Breckenridge.  So the decision is made to drive into Breck, there will be no shortage of open eateries there.  But after driving maybe a block, you sight a German Bakery – the Beary Beary Tastee Bakery – and you decide to give it a shot.  Good call.

In addition to award winning breads, they have a decent lunch menu.  Having just expended 1900 calories on the trail, you order both a bowl of red bean chili and a sirloin cheese burger with iced tea.  The servings are generous and flavor outstanding.  Since this is a bakery, you should try their dessert.  You order apple pie á la mode, Tumbleweed selects the blueberry pie.  These pies are to die for and you award this bakery with a puerco pibil award for their desserts.  The bonus to this great lunch is the owner who chats with you throughout the meal on her hiking and hunting exploits.  She’s a retired police officer and you sense she could tell you stories ’till the cows come home.  Fun place.

You plan segment 6 with Tumbleweed.  It could be done in two days but you are anxious to complete your first ultra distance event.  You believe you’ll be able to drop off provisions at a trail head somewhere part way to reduce your load, like you did on segments 2 and 3.  You plan for Memorial Day weekend.  It’s not even summer yet and you’re set to begin the second section of the Colorado Trail.

Texas Wins Again

07 Saturday May 2011

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Three generations of women in this pic from 23 to 77 years of age.  Karen told me to cash in some miles on United and fly down to visit my mom for the Mother’s Day weekend.  I arrived on Thursday night and will return Tuesday.  I brought two pairs of running shorts and to my surprise have run two days in a row.  So right now I’m doing laundry.

I can run out the door from my mom’s house in Round Rock and hit a hike and bike trail after about 1.5 miles.  The trail runs along Brushy Creek.  The Garmin comes in really handy when you just run out the door without a good sense of distance.  There aren’t any mile markers along the Brushy Creek path.  Well, there are numbered markers of some sort but I have no idea what they reference.

I ran 5 miles on Friday.  It was much warmer than what I’m used to in Colorado, and I think it affected my pace.  But it was bearable.  Not today though.  I should have turned around earlier but I pushed it to the end of the path at just over 4.5 miles.  After 6 miles on the return I stopped to walk.  There was a little park at this spot and I was able to replenish liquids at a water fountain.  And from there I mixed walking with running to the finish.  This of course reminded me of my last big run down in these parts – the Austin Marathon in February.  I folded in that run after 16 miles and walked at each of the remaining 10 or so aid stations while drinking water.  That failed run was from starting out too fast.  Today was the heat.  Either way, Texas wins again.

I knew the morning would be cool – low 70s if not upper 60s.  That would have been nice, but I needed to hang with my mom until she was ready to run errands and it was 1pm before I could get out.  Tomorrow I’ll run early.  Even though Brushy Creek is lined with trees and some nice rock bluffs, there’s total sun exposure past noon.  It’s been a cold spring so far in Colorado, a couple of weeks ago I was running in a snow storm.  My body has been pulled from the freezer and thrown into the oven.  That’s not an easy adjustment.  Hope I at least get a little tan from it.  As if my zero pigment skin can tan.

Not the perfect segue but that makes me think of some family history my mom related to me this morning.  We were talking about her dad’s side of the family, the Freitags; and how even though they were mostly dark skinned Austrians and Germans,  at a family reunion several years back they were all certain I resembled a Freitag.  I don’t but apparently there were a few blonde German Freitags.  The Freitag clan came from a town near the German-Austrian border that is no longer there.  It was destroyed by wars over a century ago.  Not sure if that means the Austro-Prussian Seven Weeks War in 1866, or simply the re-occurring wars during that time frame.  But this is information I already knew.

And maybe I knew this too at one time and forgot, but this morning my mom told me that my Irish Great Grandfather Mahoney migrated to Chicago from Ireland, and married a red haired Italian also just off the boat.  And ironically the light skin complexion on the Mahoney side comes more from this maternal Italian than the paternal Irish.  I’ve read a book or two on pre-historic Celtic migration patterns and while their initial homeland is theorized to start in southern Germany or the northern Alps, they did in fact migrate through Italy.  They even sacked Rome in 390 BC but history didn’t record much of the Celts.  They moved through Spain and contributed to Basque culture – have you ever seen blonde Spanish – and formed their only nation-state in Ireland.  My high school sweetheart was Mexican-American, but as blonde as me.  People sometimes commented we could pass as brother and sister, although I found such semblances specious beyond our hair color – and perhaps we sparred like siblings.  Not sure what this has to do with running, but visiting with my mom on Mother’s Day weekend has left me thinking of genealogy.  The running theme to this blog is really just sort of a guideline – I can write about anything.  It’s my blog.

Garmin Run

01 Sunday May 2011

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  I received the Garmin 310xt for my birthday Sunday and have logged 4 runs with it since.  This is somewhat extraordinary considering I haven’t worn a watch in two decades.  Fashion or sport.  I run based on how I feel using approximate time as a rough estimate of distance.  Not exact time since I’m not wearing a watch, but about a 30 minute run, an hour or so run – that sort of thing.  And that’s been good enough to satisfy me.  Running has been more of a hobby to me over the years than a fitness regimen.  The health benefits were consequential.  But that’s all changed now.

Not just because I have the Garmin.  Before receiving this gadget boy dream toy, I started to actually train.  I dieted for the first time in my life last year.  Registering for last September’s IPR put the fear of God into me and I got serious.  I knew that run would hurt, and I trained to minimize the pending pain.  And somewhere along the way I crossed the line back into the world of measurements.  And that’s ok, I’m in the mood for it.  Toys like this make it fun.

The coolest thing for me is that I tend to run trails or courses where I don’t have a good sense of the distance.  This changes that.  I’ve been running the East Boulder Trail for well over 20 years.  I have a 6 mile run, an 8 mile run, a 10 mile run, and a longer run that I’m not really sure of – 12 or 13 is my guess.  It’s an out and back run with the 12 or 13 mile route completing it trail head to trail head and back.  My first day running with the Garmin lead to somewhat of a disappointment as I discovered my neighborhood 4 mile run is only 3.5 miles.  And on Friday I learned my nearby 8 mile run is just 7.  I would have been super disappointed had my Garmin short changed my East Boulder Trail runs in similar fashion given my history with this course.  But it did not disappoint.

I always felt like the initial hill starting from the trail head up to the water tower was about a half mile.  Well it is – exactly.  I didn’t know that the flat top of the hill is a quarter mile – good to know.  It’s a nice recovery before heading down the far side.  I also know now that it’s a full mile to the bottom of the hill.  This side of the hill is such a bear on the return – and now I know it’s a quarter mile bear.  I also know the elevation of both sides – the Garmin doesn’t stop with just distance.  The run begins at 5308 feet, peaks at 5420 – the highest point for the entire trail – and drops down to 5289 at the 1 mile point.  This explains why running it on the return is so hard even though it’s half the distance, it’s both a larger elevation climb and steeper.  The elevation chart above appears symmetrical because it’s an out and back course.

The second mile occurs at the bottom of the sling-shot gorge.  If you run this trail you should know what I’m talking about even though I just made up that name.  I always run to the foot bridge over Boulder Creek for my 3 mile turn-around.  The Garmin suggests this is about 100 yards short of 3 miles, but that’s close enough to not upset me.  The run is still closer to 6 than 5.5 miles.  My 4 mile turn-around was about as close.  I know now that I need to cross Valmont and continue to the parking lot before turning to make an 8 miler.

Today I was going for my 10 miler, and to my surprise, I’d been running a good 100 yards farther for the turn-around than what the Garmin calls 5 miles.  Nice.  I’m of course extremely curious to map out the entire course, and I’ll do that soon enough.  I’ve always been somewhat irritated that this trail doesn’t have mile markers.  It’s a hugely popular running and biking trail.  But now I don’t need that.  I have my Garmin.

Gadget Girl

06 Sunday Mar 2011

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I ran 7 miles this morning with my friend Amy. I rarely run with anyone because I don’t generally have the time to synch up with people, but it’s amazing how fast the time goes by when you’re chatting away about your kids, training, injuries and the next big event – which for us will be Moab. We ran on one of her favorite trails, McIntosh Lake in North Longmont. Nice route, it’s a 3.5 mile loop about half trail and half sidewalk.

Now, you know I like gadgets as much as the next guy. But apparently not as much as this girl. Amy has it all. She wore this killer wind jacket – it was so light – made by Pearl Izumi. I could have used that for the IPR last fall where jackets, gloves and hats were pre-requisites for lining up in the corral. The weather was just cold enough for a light jacket. I got by with a single layer compression jersey, but the wind picked up before we were done and dressing any lighter would have become uncomfortable.

Of course, Amy had a top-of-the-line Garmin GPS sportswatch. This thing knew our distance and would have told us what we had for breakfast if we were interested. Now the next piece of gear might surprise you. She wore patella knee straps. I’m not sure what brand but they could either be ProCare, Bioskin or Breg based on the pictures at this gear catalog website. Amy has had knee surgery and swears by these straps. The last gear of significant note would be her compression shin socks – not the full socks which I understand you can also buy. I like my compression tops and tights, so I have no doubt those things feel good. The theory is they help with circulation to avoid cramps. She also wore some good looking Mizuno shoes which I heard are among the lightest on the market; and she had this cool running long sleeve top – not sure the brand – that had holes to hook her thumbs through to act like partial gloves. Perfect for today when the temperature was such that many other runners on the trail were in fact wearing gloves – but it was too warm for me.

Running with Amy this morning was a wake-up call. Before we run the Canyonlands Half Marathon later this month, I need to gear up. High altitude running in the desert could be tricky. It’ll likely start out fairly cool but warm-up dramatically. I’ll want light and efficient gear. I want what Amy has, but in more masculine colors.