No UTMB for me this year- bummer!

Today was a great day! Caleb is here visiting for a week on his summer break from Chiropractic School and so we all went out on the San Francisco Bay for a cruise on a big Catamaran.  It was a beautiful day, freezing but clear and we all had a blast!  It was fun to do something a little different for a change.
My running is improving!  It feels weird to know that we should be in France right now getting ready and all psyched up for UTMB, but instead I am running 10 miles and feeling like a big shot!  Wow.  My legs feel lighter and my stride is noticeable stronger in the last few weeks.  I think I am finally getting in better shape.  It's exciting and  a confidence booster all in one. 

It's sad to think that if I hadn't had to have my surgery, I would be very fit and just about ready to stand at the starting line of UTMB!  Instead, I will watch from my computer and watch Krissy Moehl attempt to win once again.  While everyone is lining up in Chamonix, I will be starting the HTC relay in Portland with some Team Diablo friends!  I've never done a relay before, but it will be a blast hanging out in a smelly van for 24 hours and laughing the whole time. We will each run 3 legs of 6 or 7 miles and run from Mt. Hood to the sea.  Should be interesting....I haven't ran on pavement in years......But- I did buy some road shoes.  That's a start, right?

Medical leaves happen for a variety of reasons.  On my last short "jog" before the Costa Rican stage race, I was pushed down by Jada and ended up having shoulder surgery.  Of course I was totally bummed, but so many good things came out of it.  Spending the summer at home was a big plus, but bigger was the time I got to spend with my dog, Jada.  I loved my "alone" time too.  Lot's of time to be thankful for. 

This morning I am excited about planning another long race or some kind of adventure.  I am feeling the need to push myself, to push the limits of what we think possible.  Lot's of ideas......I think I need to go buy a lottery ticket!  I hope you all can get out on dusty trail for a great run today.

  I almost feel guilty about my long delay in writing on my blog.  All 3 of my blog friends have been on the edge of their seat waiting for me to post something.  Relax, I'm blogging at last!
  This afternoon I started my run by walking for about 100 meters up the hill.  I stopped and pet my friend the horse, and then proceeded to run down the trail to meet my sister.  Suddenly I stopped to pee.  I didn't think about anyone being around.  Why would I?  5:30 pm on a warm Thursday evening, lot's of people on their bikes, hikers, runners.  As I knelt down to do my thing, I remember thinking, what a scary sight my white butt would be to anyone coming up behind me.  I laughed to myself.  I pulled up my shorts and stood up quickly and glanced around me and much to my surprise there was a guy walking up the trail in perfect shot of my bare butt just 3 seconds before.  I was mortified!  He never gave me eye contact and didn't say a word.  I was soooo embarrassed.
  I am going back to work after being on medical leave for 4 months with my shoulder injury.  It is going to be hard to be back at work.  I have enjoyed my time off so much.  If I buy a lottery ticket within the next two weeks, AND WIN, then I could avoid going back.  Oh, if only I was rich.......I could get use to not working.  It would not be a problem for me.  I love my job, but I haven't missed it at all.
  I have been slowly trying to get my fitness back.  Stumbling along the dirt trails wishing my legs didn't feel like they weigh 100 pounds each.  I keep telling myself that it is suppose to hurt getting in shape.  The only way to get faster and fitter is to push myself.  Tomorrow I am going to run 16 miles and hopefully, I will have a decent run.  Hopefully, my legs will float and my breathing will be quiet.  I hope I will be smiling!
  

I'm starting to see improvements in my fitness- FINALLY.  Thank God.  I've been hiking and running and progressing like a herd of turtles!  Last weekend Matt and I went up to Kennedy Meadows in the Emigrant Wilderness area and camped out with the Johnson family and some of their friends.  We had a blast.  On Sunday, while Matt and Jada hiked, Tamara, Dave and I ran about 30 miles through snow and lot's of cold water.  Naturally, I was trashed, but managed to finish with no soreness or discomfort to speak of.  I even started the run with a brand new shoe- the asics trabuco 14, and didn't have one blister.  I couldn't believe it.  I don't think I have ever worn that shoe and it fit like a glove.  So perfect!

Yesterday, I ran about 15 miles with Suz and just about died the last 40 minutes of the run.  For the rest of the day I had about as much energy as a snail.  I don't think I moved around too much for the rest of the day.  I wanted to walk most of the last few miles, but Suz pushed me to finish what I started and I'm glad that I did.

My shoulder is progressing nicely.  I go to PT twice a week and improving everyday.  Nights are still painful and I am unable to sleep without pain unless I take a sleeping pill.  I am trying to only take a sleeping pill a few times a week.  It's been difficult to get good sleep these days, but if you know me that's nothing new.

My daughter Chelsea, who is 23, recently got diagnosed with Lupus.  It makes me sad to think that she got it from me.  I hope she does as well as I have done.  My heart breaks for her.  She is a strong woman and I think she will do well.

"It's not the load that breaks you down; it's the way you carry it." -Lena Horne

On a positive note, today Chelsea and I were driving around and found a lawn mower in front of a house with a FREE sign on it.  Much to the embarrassment of Chelsea, I stopped and loaded that baby into the back of my car.  I brought it home and BINGO!  It works like a charm and even self propels itself.  What a find!

ENJOY LIFE

"The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer
is this, ‘What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?’ and my answer
must at once be, ‘It is no use.’ There is not the slightest prospect
of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior
of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn
our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But
otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single
bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not
find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise
food. It’s no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is
something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and
goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself
upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. What we get
from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end
of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money
to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is
for."
--George Mallory, 1922

Age is only a number

 I celebrated my Birthday last week.  It was a "hard to swallow" Birthday.  53 years old , sounds and looks so OLD.  I hated every minute of turning that horrid number.  I didn't even feel good on that day.  I felt old, ugly and used up.  But, today, almost one week later, I am feeling good and moving on with my 53 year old bad self.  Enough said!! Matt surprised me with a Greg LeMond spin cycle that is big and beautiful.  It is displayed in our living room (for now anyway), and it is as quiet as a mouse.  Now I can watch all my reality shows and get in shape at the same time.  I am really excited. 

 I was also given the okay to start running again.  My Doc gave me his blessing and then said, "but you can not fall!"  Duh....who goes out running and plans a fall?  Come on, Doctor K!  If I had any control over the subject, I would never, ever ,chose to fall! 

I have power hiked until the cows have come home and I still am sucking wind at every hill.  I guess I have a lot of running to do before I am feeling fit again.  Hopefully the spin bike will help me achieve my fitness goals. 

I don't think I have really ever talked about my dog, Jada.  I feel like a first time parent these days.  Everything is about Jada.  I go to the dog park, I take her on runs, long hikes, I kiss her a hundred times a day and I talk baby talk to her.  I think I've lost my mind.  Maybe its time to go back to work.....

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.  Ursula K. LeGuin

Memorial Day training weekend is almost here on the Western States Trail.  It kills me that I won't be there.  I had played around with the idea of going up and hiking/jogging from Foresthill to the River.  I figured I could do that and still enjoy myself.  But then reality set in and I thought about it for a few minutes and I know that it  would not be the smart thing to do.  I would most definitely get caught up in the excitement of things and it would be hard not to run and the possibility of hurting myself is high.  So.......with much sadness, I will stay home and do a hike/joke thing closer to home.  My Doctor said that I could run on a paved surface or treadmill as long as I don't fall.  I don't think Foresthill to the River is what he had in mind.  :)  
“It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.” ~Proverb
   I am lucky enough to be sponsored by La Sportiva shoes.  Yesterday I got  a new pair in the mail.  They are the Quantum trail shoe.  They have a funny wavy sole and they are ergonomic, adaptable, shock absorbing, stable and lightweight.  I can't wait to try them out! 




 My daughter Courtney had surgery today and had her Tonsils removed.  A big deal when you are 21 years old.  I feel so bad for her because I know it's going to be a painful and uncomfortable recovery.  Hopefully, she will be a healthier person without those gross Tonsils that constantly get infected.   

To everyone heading up to the WS trail this weekend, have a BLAST!  I will be there in spirit!!                                        

Rhabdomyolysis and Ultrarunning

This weekend I read a story in the new June issue of TrailRunner Magazine titled, Up Against a Hardrock. It is a story about Diana Finkel's amazing 2010 Hardrock 100 race and its devastating aftermath.

I was especially drawn to this story for two reasons. The first is that in 2006, I was lucky enough to pace my good friend Stephen to a great finish there. I promised myself and Stephen that I would return there to kiss the rock myself. The second is that in 2006 and 2007, I ran Wasatch 100 and experienced, both times, the same condition as Diana did after Hardrock. It is a story worth reading because as extreme athletes, we push ourselves beyond normal. Sometimes we can push our selves over the edge and into a sometimes fatal condition, and always a very serious condition called Rhabdomyolysis.

I read this article that was written by Diana's husband and it took me back to my Wasatch DNF, where I was unable to finish because I knew I couldn't continue the last 25 miles crawling. It took me back to my 2nd Wasatch where I knew I had Rhabdo again, but I just had to redeem myself and finish this time. Both times I was hospitalized and was very sick. I was stupid during that 2nd Wasatch when I recognized the symptoms and practically crawled my way to the finish, sicker than a dog. We as ultra runners sometimes do stupid things. We cross health boundaries to achieve higher goals we set for ourselves and sometimes they have dire consequences. Rhabdomyolysis is a serious condition in which muscles break down quickly and spill their contents into the blood stream. Myoglobin is a protein that is contained in muscle cells, and if enough is spilled into the blood stream, it can clog the kidney's filtering system and lead to kidney failure and a variety of other serious medical consequences and complications. While muscles routinely get sore after physical activity, rhabdomyolysis takes that muscle injury to a higher level. Rhabdomyolysis is the result of massive muscle destruction.

Unfortunately, I have not returned to Hardrock to run that spectacular and difficult race. Rhabdo got in the way of that. I have done a couple of successful 100's since and several difficult races without problems. I hope Diana will be back to run 100's without issues too. Rhabdo is a reminder that we must take our health seriously even while pursuing our dreams. Maybe someday I will get a chance to kiss the Hardrock, maybe not. I'm okay with that.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
- W.B. Yeats

Walking with a purpose

Let's see.... four rattlesnakes in three days, a coyote, lot's of deer and turkeys, and a owl and her family high in a tree. This is what my daily hikes have presented to me. As a runner, you miss so much. Now, as I am rehabbing, I am seeing so much and enjoying what I am encountering. I thought walking would be so difficult for me. I can run 100 miles, but I hate to walk across a parking lot. Walking has always been too slow for me. Slowing down and hiking has brought some balance to my life that I have not had in awhile. I actually am enjoying the hiking. I happen to live in an area with miles and miles of beautiful mountainous trails and I am seeing them as never before. Hopefully, the power hiking will make me a stronger hill climber. I hope it helps me "walk with a purpose", when I need a break during a long race. Sometimes we need to slow down in order to build up. I hope I am doing that.

It's been six weeks ago today that I had my shoulder surgery. I am getting closer to the time when I can run. I am trying to practice patience. This video inspired me. I always need inspiration and something to keep me motivated. I hope this video sparks your fuse today. Kilian Jornet is an amazing athlete. The man named Bruno Brunod that Kilian speaks of in this video is his hero and also an inspiration to him. Today they are an inspiration to me.

Don't separate mental training from physical training

If you’re running, you’re training your mind as well as your body. Remember that.

Written by: Matt Fitzgerald

Your mind, not your body, gets the final say in determining how fast you run in races. After all, you set your pace mainly by feel (perhaps with a little help from time splits), and that sense of feel—those cues of comfort and discomfort—come from your brain. Obviously, the mind and the body are linked in such a way that you start to feel awful—that is, you start to feel the need to slow down—as your body nears its physical limits. But the mind is always a step ahead of the body, as has been shown in numerous studies finding that when athletes quit an exercise test in exhaustion, their muscles remain physically capable of continuing. It’s an intolerable level of suffering that precipitates the bonk.

Because the mind is always working with the body during running, the mind (which is to say, the brain) is also always being trained along with the body during running. It is while you run that you develop and refine the sense of feel you use to find your maximal sustainable pace. The brain changes physically in response to training every bit as much as the muscles do.

Mental training in endurance sports, as in most other sports, is typically treated as something separate from physical training. You do your run in the morning and/or afternoon—that’s your physical training. Then, in the evening, you lie down and close your eyes and envision yourself running prettier than you real do—that’s your mental training.

There’s nothing wrong with mental rehearsal, but all the visualization and talking to yourself in the mirror in the world won’t improve your running performance as much as taking full advantage of the mental training that occurs during your training runs. Your race performance is ultimately determined by how fast your mind/brain feels your body can go, and that, in turn, is determined primarily by how fast you have proved to your mind/brain that you can go in training. It’s all about confidence, and confidence comes from hard evidence of what you can do. You can’t talk yourself into having the confidence that you can run a sub-four-hour marathon or whatever your goal may be. The only way to build real confidence in your ability to achieve any race goal is to effectively prove it in training.

Therefore I encourage all runners to approach training firstly as a means of building confidence in their ability to achieve their race goals. On a practical level, this means you should create and execute training plans that are overtly designed to maximize your confidence. Don’t worry about which workout you need to do to boost your VO2max, and so forth. Those details don’t matter. Just think about the sorts of specific training experiences you need to have behind you going into a race in order to arrive on the start line confident in your ability to achieve your goal.

You also need to think in terms of setting yourself up for success in your training. Do everything you can to minimize the number of failures you experience in your training. For example, if you’ve planned a critical “peak” workout intended to put the finishing touches on your race fitness and prove your ability to achieve your race goal, be sure to rest up for a few days before that workout so you can crush it.

I’m not suggesting that the body is not important to running. Of course it is. What I’m suggesting is that you don’t really need to think about your body in training. That approach is unnecessarily complicated. The point of training is to get ready to achieve race goals, and the single best indicator of relative readiness to achieve race goals is confidence. This is something that all of the best athletes understand, but that all-too-many age-group runners miss.

Six-time Ironman champion Dave Scott said it well in an article for Active.com:

I knew going into each race that my confidence would help to support a fast day and a successful outcome. After transitioning from coaching myself to coaching others, I knew the best place to start was to establish and build upon an athlete’s confidence level. The technical stuff is secondary if you don’t have the inner-drive, mental edge and physical foundation to take the leap.

running.competitor.com