Ashland & Running Ratio

I arrived in Ashland late August and promptly put in a 10 mile running week! Buuut if you count my new elliptical routine and some biking I had logged almost 6 hours of quality cardio work. Having access to a gym has been great. As I've mentioned, I had a bike accident this summer and the danger factor of biking combined with the difficulty of getting in what feels like really good quality workouts is tough. So I was excited to be able to use an elliptical. Hard to believe? Well I'm serious, and its been fun. In the last few weeks I have logged 2-3 hours of great elliptical time per week in addition to running 30-ish miles. My foot hasn't hurt on the elliptical but I finally feel like I can get completely safe and great work in without any issues i.e: Bad weather, impact on foot, potential of crashing a bike, stopping at traffic lights etc. I have been alternating different "workouts" on the elliptical and its been enjoyable and reassuring for my catching up on fitness to get ready to race.

Fairly unrelated but this is a photo Carly took of some rock climb cross training  I got in with Mr. Wet Willy Hoffman at Emigrant Lake in Ashland recently. He taught me how to lead climb, it was great practice and a lot of fun.

I met with my athletic trainer upon getting to Ashland and after talking about my injury issues I got 3 options:

1. Stop running altogether
2. Just start running more on it
3. See a specialist

I wish I had seen a specialist over a month earlier but I think the way I was handling training was probably pretty close to what would have been prescribed to me. Ok lets be honest, I would have been given a much much more conservative approach and could just about guarantee a loss of this season of XC completely. My main worry was if running on it would elongate my recovery time or not. I had no way of knowing this. I was worried it was a stress fracture and I was balancing on a not broken foot / playing with the possibility of breaking it. But enough time had gone by with no or very little running that even if that was the case it could have healed enough to bring running in appropriately anyway. SO with all these thoughts and finally talking with my coach and following his advice, we went with running 5 days in the next week. About 30-40 minutes easy for each run, that was it. This was the decisive change that finally tipped my running ratio in the favor of actual running instead of mostly cross training.

The 5 days went well, still with some irritation but nothing worse or very bad. So the next week was 6 days and a longer run up to 50 minutes. That week went fine too, and I started feeling better about it all and running was feeling good, and fun. It was relieving to be able to really get runs in at all.

That brings us to this week. I'll be running 6 days again and ran a long run on Sunday of 65 minutes. I did one workout which was a sort of 15 minute tempo and I was (barely) approved to run our race today, Friday 9/18/14 in Portland. Obviously I am not going to blow the doors off in the race this evening but I feel good about it considering all things. Its a unique opportunity. There is no pressure other than what I place on myself (which I'm trying to manage as I type this). We still have 2 hours before lunch and we don't race until 5pm. I am wearing some fairly cushy trainers in the race to ensure I don't hurt my foot, and I am unsure about how turning sharply at high speeds will feel but I will figure all that out later today. I'm excited to be racing I just wish I was in better physical condition. But that is what I am working on daily.

I have space to add 1 more, hmmmmm...

A recent addition in my section of Carly and my "Goals" whiteboard is "do something extra everyday". What I mean by this is to do something daily that is beyond the normal stuff to help me reach my running goals. Some examples so far are, adding an ice bath when I normally wouldn't have. Icing my foot while watching a movie, and going through a thorough and long stretch routine. I went on a bike ride and explored parts of Ashland that I wasn't familiar with and I even went on a walk, just to loosen up from a long and tough day of Netflix-ing.

School still hasn't started yet and the job I've secured starts when school starts so I have had a lot of free time. I managed to get a part-time gig a few days a week though...... holding a sign on the corner for a mattress & appliance store. It hasn't been too bad, except the day I was out there 6 hours in the middle of the day. At least I had Carly's ipod, the only issue was it only had 40 minutes of music on it. It mostly consisted of her weird mix of really slow acoustic music and a few top 40 radio type songs. I just stood silently for an hour or more at one point.

See the post set on my foot? Apparently I could get a hefty fine for setting that on the ground, so foot it is!

Coaching in Mammoth Lakes & August Fitness

I haven't written here in about 2 months so heres the skinny:

I spent a mid August week in Mammoth Lakes coaching and hanging out with my old high school and our small but awesome crew of coaches plus some parents that came along. I unfortunately couldn't run too much due to the same foot issues I've had most of the summer but managed to get in some of the teams short double runs and I biked everything else with them. It turned out to be a low volume week of biking too though because I wasn't getting in all the commute biking that I was doing back home, but I didn't mind too much.
I had been wondering how volume increases on a bike may effect me weeks/a month or more later if I did an awful lot (for me). So having this lower week was kind of comforting. By the way, a big week of biking for me was/is 10 hours so take that however you wish but it seemed appropriately high for me given my inexperience with serious cross training for running.

Coach Todo, Clemons and Myself at the bottom of Mammoth Rock trail waiting for any stragglers.

Even though I only ran about 10 miles in the 5 days in ML, I was still very satisfied with the trip. I added up the weeks I've spent training in Mammoth and its now over 4 months, including a summer of 2 months and another of 1 month. Add in various 1 week trips and I have enjoyed and come to love this mountain town quite a bit. During this trip, I had a ton of fun and shared a cabin with Steve (a team parent) and a great group of guys. I tried to impart some wisdom with the little time I had left with these guys, as I knew I'd be heading north for Oregon at the end of the next week.
It's odd coaching only for the summer as I have for the last couple seasons. Its been a blast but I don't get to see all the work unfold through seeing them race and helping them deal with nerves and strategy and all the stuff coaches do. I'm really only there for 6 weeks in summer, whereas the summer training we do will help keep them improving from July all the way to the next June. I do keep up on some results from the season and get updates though. Honestly I am pretty busy training/competing and life-ing on my own anyway so its cool to see how things progress both for them and myself.

Some of the team at Mammoth Creek park. Either pre or post workout and ice bath. Weather was great, it was a beautiful week. Photo by Mama Clemons.

We went bowling! Around my waist is Lucan, a boy presumably raised by squirrels that we found running around the trails and streets of Mammoth(okay he belongs to the Clemons' and we brought him with us).  He beat me in the first game but I pulled through with a PR performance in game 2 for the W. Photo by Mama Clemons

Training and Fitness:
Through late August, I was incredibly unsure what to do in training. To run on the foot a little, not at all, or start to slowly bring running back in completely. I had a x-ray on my foot (and knee just to check from the bicycle incident) and the doc said there was nothing. After talking more, and with more people I realized that I should have continued to a specialist who could have diagnosed me better.... or at all. I was told by the doc that I had metatarsalgia which is just inflammation/irritation in the ball of the foot. So she just said to try and not run for 2 weeks then bring running back in slowly.
I told her I had done that twice already. To clarify... On two separate occasions I didn't run at all for 2 weeks then started bringing in running only to find the same foot irritations. So she just kind of got me out of the room and on my way and I kept biking with minimal running. Due to not running but still hoping to compete in the XC season, from early July onward I kept up with biking pretty seriously. For about 6 weeks I biked as little as 4 and as much as 11 hours per week. This was all what I called "quality" biking. If I biked to work and it took 45 minutes, I'd knock a few minutes off that for my training log if there was considerable coasting time because that isn't really "quality". This was how I was logging it anyway.

It was nearly impossible to prove but I felt fit. Despite not running more than 10 miles a week for about 2 months, I felt like if I HAD to, I could run a decent 5k considering all things. This was encouraging-which was great because if I didn't feel good about that, I wouldn't have much else to be happy about fitness-wise. It was hope. Hope that when the time came, I could begin transitioning my biking fitness into usable running fitness and put a season of XC together.

The coming weeks would entail making the move back to Ashland OR, meeting up with my team and coach and seeing where things went from there. Check back for the next update on being in Ashland and training...

Spoiler alert: I ran 30+ miles the week of 9/7/14!

Injured & Mt Baldy

I have been incredibly fortunate enough to very rarely have any form of injury keep me from consistent training. That is in part by design but in no way will I claim its solely due to smart training or "taking care" of my body by rolling out, etc. I believe its merely a matter of body composition, training habits, mental head-space (belief in my body's strength and durability), nutrition and lalala.

Well... I am injured and have missed a sizable chunk of training. I came back from essentially 2 months off of running due to a backpacking trip and admittingly was not training smart at all upon my return. Heres a breakdown of my initial mistakes:

5k race
+Running up & down a mountain (saddleback, 16 miles)
+Reintroducing barefoot running with very poor timing
(all within 3 days)
= Foot pain.

The foot pain was mild but it was there whenever I ran, so I replaced some running with bicycling.
It was working.

Then I crashed the bicycle into a chain that was locked across a trail I always hopped on to ride to work. It was totally stupid of me. I rode straight into a stationary object, but this was an un-gated and un-lockable passageway so I never had thought to be particularly careful when going through. But I had a routine and one day that routine's knee was hyper-extended and dangling painfully from a chain locked between two posts.

So my left knee took the brunt of the force and right when it happened, I really thought something was broken or my knee was literally bent backwards. Luckily that wasn't the case. But it definitely hurt.
Over the next few days I limped pretty badly but wasn't in much pain unless I straightened my leg too much so I went to work anyway. Working on my feet and walking around helped keep my muscles from becoming extremely tight and immobile. Over a few days I got a lot of mobility back which I thought was really encouraging because I was fairly clueless as to how long term this injury would be. Those few days became a week and I no longer was seeing further improvement. During the second week of no running or cross training and doing only some icing (and pull-ups), I could walk without pain and ran for 3 minutes after a 5 minute elliptical warm up at a gym that I kind of snuck into :)

Those 3 minutes turned to a 9 minute mile and a couple days later I was hiking up Mt Baldy.

View down a ski-slope section Andrew and Mark took on the way up. That's one way to do it!

 I had a small group planning to run Mt Baldy on this particular weekend and I knew I wouldn't be able to do it once the crash happened, but it turned out that I could walk with no pain at all and I could run up to 15 minutes without much discomfort so I figured I'd just walk most of it. I'm very glad I did it, it was awesome but certainly took a bit longer than the time in 2011 when I raced (pretty decently I might add) up it. I ended up hiking (and running parts) up most of the way with Cris and Carmille. Cris is getting ready for Angeles Crest 100 in a few weeks and I had a blast talking ultra with him and hearing his stories. Carmille and I go back a little farther so I spent most of the time just harassing her and cracking jokes-until will got to 9k or so and the conversation and pace slowed down!

It was a lot of fun and cool to get all this in and be home by about noon. I often forget how close-by awesome places are and I know I need to do a better job getting out to see them. The way down was super technical and consisted of some running but a lot of hiking too. My foot began to bother me so I slowed a bit and mostly walked the last 30 minutes or more. Hoka One One kept the foot pain away for a while but descending 3 or 4 thousand feet in a relatively short time and keeping nagging foot pain out may be too much to ask for even from the space shoes themselves.

The group: Cris, Mark, Myself, "Muscle" Mark, Andrew, Carmille at the top!

The Frustration:
The foot pain that was the beginning of all of this, isn't gone. I'd like to think after the 2 weeks of no impact the minor issue going on in the foot might magically disappear. NOPE. So now I am dealing with what seems like a very slow final healing process for my knee and the addition of a fairly constant and unknown ball-of-foot pain upon applying pressure (sometimes)......

I will say that I honestly am handling this pretty well (in terms of not getting the crazies and not giving the not-working-out Irritable Eye to whoever I may run into) but don't let my calm and collected countenance fool you--- this is really frustrating and a huge bummer.

I have absolutely learned several lessons from this already, so here are a couple quick ones if you haven't already gathered a list from reading all of the above.

-Don't run races (especially at race effort) when you're not in shape for it.
-Don't run races like the above in flats that are 7 years old that you found in a bin in the garage.
-Don't run up and down a mountain the day after running the above race in the above flats.
-Don't run a half hour barefoot on grass the day after running up and down a mountain the day after running the above race in the above flats.
-Don't crash your bike.
-Commute biking is great for the world and you, but don't try and get going fast enough to get some solid cardio in when you are in a place that may put a sneaky chain across a otherwise always-open passageway.
-Hiking can actually be fun.
-Turmeric is a natural anti-inflammatory, but tastes pretty bad when you put way way too much into anything.

Patience

Is patience ever a name? Like a kids first name.. like Constance, or Grace, or Hope---ok Hope is always the middle name. It seems like patience falls in line with all those other not-actual-name words and classy definitions enough that people would start naming their offspring after it. Maybe not? I don't know.

 Exercising my patience muscles for an hour while trying to hitchhike in Puerto Natales, Chile

I've always envisioned myself pretty patient, but then I started to get to know myself better and found that it really depends on the situation and the circumstances. I probably have a fairly typical patience threshold in general but I realized something about patience recently. You're always practicing having it. Well, those of us that believe we are trying to improve ourselves are always practicing it. Its never polite to have an outburst because you're done waiting around for some seemingly useless cause, but you try and try to be patient and nice because that is how you keep friends and not alienate people around you, right? I don't know.

I'm having trouble being patient with my running. I just want to be fit ("fit" is definitely a completely relative term)again. I am finding myself wishing the same thing everyone wishes for, whether secretly or out loud---to be fit without having to wait around through all the building phases of hard-work and sacrifices and time gone by.
I enjoy running, so even though I'm not as graceful as I'd like to be yet, it's okay. It's not like I am training to be a champion weight lifter, I don't think that would be fun, so it would be a huge bummer to be doing that all the time. I am happy to be healthy and running, and I try to exude gratitude for my health and ability to do what I love as much as I do. But this phase of practicing patience is HARD! It's not AS fun as training while you're already pretty fit. The difference is like fine tuning your guitar after a little strumming and before you go out on stage Versus hurriedly putting strings on your guitar while walking out on stage only to have to delay the show and face the shining lights while you try and get the strings to at least look correct, despite what they may sound like(the show must go on!).

I may be exaggerating. How can I complain about being perfectly healthy and training with no major necessity to be in really-good-shape for another 10 weeks? Not to mention my humongous wealth of help I have along the way from my family, friends, bosses, co-workers, teammates and competitors alike. My personal lesson about patience morphed into a miniature epiphany that is more about gratitude, thanks, and personal satisfaction.

I don't think I have anything cooler sounding to say than that last bit so please just pretend this sentence isn't here and reread the little section above before you exit out of the page. Thanks :)

The Process of Becoming Fit again

While traveling in Latin America some bad stuff happened early on that made me a bit nervous to explore new, exciting, and potentially lethal places. Combine that with then arriving in Central America where it was quite humid, sunny, and hot, I only ran a few times within a solid 2 months. We weren't by any means inactive. We hiked, lugged around big backpacks, walked, went volcano boarding and all sorts of stuff but not much running. Upon getting home to southern CA, I quantified my lack of fitness by promptly running a 5k at race effort. 18:00.

Burning some extra calories on our 4 night hike of the "W" circuit in Torres Del Paine. Patagonia, in the Chilean Andes 

Normally, it would have taken me over 2 minutes less to cover the distance. But thats not normal anymore. In the past 3 years (maybe more), I have not taken much time off. At least not all at the same time day after day, so I was never all too far off from "race shape". I now can understand better what its like for friends of mine who have seriously slowed down their running to all of a sudden try and run like they used to-FAST. To be fit is to be able to run fast and feel good (I mean, basically). Coming back to daily training and not being able to run what for years has been my "easy, whatever, daily run, nice" pace is a bummer. It's not that I don't understand my current fitness, I do. But my body hasn't gotten the idea yet. I take off for a run and my body wants to start cruising at a decent clip but it reminds me with these weird feelings that it can't do it so well right now, I call these feelings pain. In various places and types. Leg pain, head pain, chest pain, confidence pain, pride pain, and ego pain (this ones the worst).

I've been back less than 2 weeks and I have to remind myself on a daily basis to cool off and not try to do an easy 80 minute run at 7 minute pace. I am having to hold back and hold back so that I return to fitness properly and will be able to build off of it. But it sucks. I want to jump right to 40 miles per week then 55 then 60 then cruise around thinking I'm cool and hold more than that all summer but thats freaking stupid. I am happy that I know its stupid, but my plans for the end of summer and fall don't allow enough time to reeeaally properly get fit. So I think I'll compromise. Maybe I will do it right and run 40 minutes until its really easy then 60, then some 70s and finally start to mix it all up like a real collegiate runner, but I don't now yet.

Sometime before the snow came in Ashland OR, maybe November '13. Post warm up, pre interval workout of some kind. 

I've found that my quarter life crisis (My life at age 25[its not actually a crisis]) has brought many things into the forefront of my mind even more than usual. One great example of this was my decision to skip a track season/term of college to go backpacking for 2 months with my lovely girlfriend. I hope that I will train as smart as I know how to train, but I'm not worried. I know that if I make sacrifices such as running 80 minutes at 7 minute pace far too early because I'm having too much fun running with some friends or experiencing the trail, they will be worth it. It may sound naive, but it feels more like a priority change. One for the better. Bearing confidence in changes untested is such a reviving sensation. I think it comes with age, failures and successes. Experience is paramount, but it has to be translated into terms that will affect change in future decisions and situations.
Sometimes I feel like I don't write in english. If I lost you somewhere in there, just imagine I was mixing up Spanish, English, Creole, and 2 other indigenous caribbean Nicaraguan languages. I heard people speaking like that, it was nuts! Oh, and they had what sounded like a Jamaican accent on top of it all!

Old Goats 50 (K) Race Report

I recieved an email from the race director the day before the race. It said the forest service couldnt clear the main divide well enough to okay its use for the race. This meant the 50 mile race went to a backup course which included one 11 mile loop followed by two 20 mile loops. This presented the unique opportunity to run a perfect 50k distance and call it a day right there. I jumped at this chance and felt incredibly more relaxed going into the race with this new change. I had run a 29 mile training run 10 days earlier, up and down mount Ashland, and it went pretty well so my confidence in just finishing was very high. I let go of many more concrete performance goals once I beared the full weight of the toll the motorcycle ride took on me mentally and worse, physically.

I slept pretty poorly the night before the race, due to a combination of pre-race nerves and leftover soreness. I got up early {3:40am} to get to my beloved bluejay race morning. This would make close to a dozen races at bluejay. I parked and got my bib and took care of final gel and drop bag stuff between bathroom stops before the start. And we were off.
I knew that if I felt fine, I should be near the front of the group considering I was running a mere 50k compared to the people I was running near that had 50 miles to go. I was in the top 10 for a half hour, then I started dry heaving. I had run a lot of these trails before in Big Baz´s Winter Trail Run Series so I was comfortable with all the tight turns and bad footing, but my minor nausea was back. This was especially odd because I typically have an iron gut and don´t get bothered by much. This condition kept me from my practiced fueling of 1 gel every 40 minutes and 1 salt tab every hour. I couldn´t get my first gel down until the end of my 11 mile loop at about and hour and a half. This was very bad news for the rest of the race.

I knew what was happening the whole time, that this energy debt would be no fun at all, but I literally could do nothing about it. So I just kept running fairly conservatively on a heavy, empty, and twisted stomach. I made progress and hoped things would get better so I could hammer for 2 hours on lightly used legs to close out in a halfway decent time. This did not formulate. I finally got to the 18 mile aid station where my friend Jay was volunteering and got some more wáter and was happy to hear the cheers and see a familiar face. The next 4 miles were largely downhill but somehow the most difficult yet. This second wind hope I had was crumbling. I made it to the Candy store aid station and refilled and downed my 10 oz handheld a couple times, making me realize I hadn´t been drinking enough along with my not eating much. I saw some pinapple and shoved it down before I could think of it. It helped! I had been running near a fellow competitor Keshav for a while and we were helpìng to push eachother. He encouraged me to get out of the station and start moving, I chased him down somehow within a minute or two after the Candy store at approx. 22 miles. We went back and forth a couple times and I began having trouble just continuing to run from a serious bonk. I eventually decided I would not stop running until I got to my friend Jay at the next aid station which would mark about 25 miles. I did it. I ate some lil cutie slices as I still couldn´t handle gels for some reason. Some electrolite mix and wáter chugged down before I headed out, and these next 4 miles were about as slow as I have ever run in my life. I often questioned if I could see myself, if I would consider what I was doing running anymore. I made it to bluejay and somehow managed probably a sub 8 last mile, which I hadn´t done in the previous couple of hours.

5 hours and 29 minutes after I started, I finished and apparently won the 50k officially. To be eligible for awards, you had to claim which distance you were racing before the race started whether it was 50k or 50 mile. I was not the first person to finish 50k but I was the first person who had planned on only 50k, and finished. There were probably 10 people to actually cross through before me, but they either continued to run a full 50 miles, or decided to call it a day after their 50k, thus officially not being eligible for an award. Despite all that, I was just glad to be done.


I knew I was going into a 50 mile race without the time to prepare, but I went for it anyway. This takes a combination or courage and stupidity, I know. I am dissappointed in my performance mostly because had my health been fine, my body could have run this 50k a solid hour faster. But of course talk is cheap and its imposible to know.
The biggest benefit from taking over eager risks like these is the speed of the learning curve, verus doing it a smarter or more conservative way. I feel like what I learned overall packs quite a punch for the tie spent learning it. Its really intiguing to me knowing how much more is so out of your own control when lining up for a race that is a mínimum of 4ish hours. It is hardly comparable versus a 10k or 5k or 1500m. The attitude cannot be the same. Creativity becomes necessary, and adaptablility becomes crucial.

I don´t know what my future racing looks like right now, but I will be back training seriously in june and see where that takes me!


PS:  Again, I am typing all this in Valparaíso, Chile on a hostel computer. This means the computer and keyboard and online settings are in a limbo between spanish, english, and whatever languages travelers set them to. So please excuse misspelled words and weird punctuation, if any at all.

The days leading up to my first ultra!

(Race report will be the next blog post)

Read this section if you need to be caught up to speed:
I signed up for Old Goats 50 mile race 1 month before race day, in a slightly mad craze to give my remaining 3 and a half weeks of time to train in Ashland purpose. I was scheduled to depart the country for 2 months, a couple days after the race. So I signed up for the race, got in from the waitlist and had begun some more specific training for it. I quickly got a cold and that put a damper on training for over a week... this brings us up to date read on for the report...

I took my last final for school and hopped on my motorcycle to start my ride home from Ashland,OR to Trabuco Canyon, CA. I did this over 2 days so I only had to get to Davis, CA for night 1 on wednesday before the saturday scheduled ultra. This portion of the ride home took 4+hours just as expected. I had my two saddlebags filled with clothing and I wore my backpacking pack on my back that was chaulk full of gear for my (now less than a week away) upcoming backpacking trip in south/central america.
I made it to Davis with no problems and had pizza and beer with my (sometimes running) friend Spencer, whom along with his girlfriend Julie was gracious enough to let me stay at their place for the night to help break up my ride home. Julie kindly made me breakfast in the morning and I was off by 8am to start the 7+ hour ride home. I cruised at 75/80mph on I5 eager to get home and start my recovery and maybe get a short run in before the race. I made it a goal to get 100 miles between every stop. As I got through the first and second stop, I was increasingly uncomfortable physically and a bit nauseus. This began to make for a miserable ride. I just persisted and knew I had no other option but to get home today and despite the soreness coming on, I needed to start recovering for the race.

After many hours of what I can`t call anything other than agony, I got to L.A. and made my last gas stop. I was at the peak of my stomach sickness and laid down next to my motorcycle to rest. I got up for wáter, and threw up all over the ground next to the gas pump. I didn´t even have the energy to go inside and tell the worker what I had done to his gas station. I heaved myself onto my hog knowing the next time I got off I could rest indefinitely. It took about an hour and a half to cover the next 40 miles, but I made it home by some miracle of will power, and the need for the finish line.
It was thursday and I got home at 5pm after 9 of the longest hours of my life. On the upside, I have now experienced ill-prepared long distance motorcycle traveling. May I suggest getting a windshield before riding anywhere near this distance, and a backrest!

As I laid down for the next 18 hours, I worried about how I would run this 50 mile race in a day. To my surprise, I was not really sore on friday. I walked around a bit and ate and drank wáter fine. This all made me very happy considering how things were going for me lately. I was coming to terms with everything just fine and then I checked my email in the early afternoon. The news from the race director, the old goat himself Steve Harvey was the best news I had heard all week.

.....Stay tuned for my next blog post which will be the actual race report!

PS.. I am typing all this in Valparaíso, Chile on a hostel computer. This means the computer and keyboard and online settings are in a limbo between spanish, english, and whatever languages travelers set them to. So please excuse misspelled words and weird punctuation, if any at all.

One Month Out

I will be back home in southern California for a few days soon, and I was looking at volunteering at a local 50 mile race thats happening while I'm there. I quickly looked up the race again (I am familiar with Old Goats 50 and have read about it before) and I got on ultrasignup.com and started learning more about times and stuff. LONG STORY, SHORT: I thought about racing instead of volunteering-I contacted the RD Steve Harvey of Old Goats and found out that despite it being sold out, I had a good shot of making it in from the wait-list.
I gave it a night to think, then promptly put in my credit card # and did a couple longer-than-usual runs on Mt Ashland in next few days. (I had been in pre-season track & field training)

Me nerding out on some of Ashland's local talent's ultra trophies on display at rogue valley runners. No big deal or anything. :)

SO, about 2 weeks out from the race and I find out I am in, then before I can think at all.. I get to the big red deny or green confirm button and click confirm as fast as I can. Then immediately think "what did I just do".

The longest running day I had about this time was 2 hours and my biggest week was about 8 hours or 70 miles and all I had was 2 weeks before the 50 mile race-my first race over a marathon distance. I began to worry. I got sick with a decent cold after a 3+ hour run and wasn't able to run as long or as well as I planned prior to finding out that I got in to the race. So, with 2 weeks to get in the most important stuff, I set it for two 4+ hour runs with a lot of vert within 8-14 days out from race day. I had already done one 3+ hour run but it left me sick and weak.

11 days out on a tuesday, I got my 4:08 run in and about 29 miles according to my educated guessing, with about 5000+ of vert(and then decline). Now time to focus on recovering to do it again on friday or saturday. Second guessing myself, I looked for some confirmation (or some tweaking of my plans) from a running friend/old coach Liam. I settled on running a double of 90 minutes each run on friday or saturday instead of a 5 hour effort in an attempt to focus on being fresher and recovered for the race. Liam added "WWJD" in a text, and I responded "Jurek?" and I was right on.

Today is Thursday, 9 days out. I will be accepting all good thoughts and mojo from now until I toe the line and eventually finish(thats the plan at least! haha) a week from this saturday in Cleveland National Forest.



P.S. To those of you more familiar with Ultrsignup: What is with me being ranked #1 with a top 5 time ever on the course? My only result on the site is a 21k from a year ago! When I saw this I couldn't help but laugh to myself about the whole situation and what fun this is going to be, and how much I am going to learn from it!

P.P.S. I'm also accepting all advice and thoughts on preparation and during race ideas for a first time ultra-runner. Thanks!

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Degradation
Erosion of the soul is what's happening when we follow what were told and not move by the guide, the drive that resides inside each of us
When we move and build and create a reality that is so strong-we run towards a classroom as to not be marked absent because we know we'll need that 10% of the class points in order to offset our poor test grades.

We will find ourselves fracturing friendships in order to wake and get to work in time to live with a half hearted smile drawn across our face while greeting everyone who enters through that doorway within 3 seconds-or else they'll get awkward and too entitled and we'll edit that half-hearted smile to one of a nearing perfect image of genuine regret and I'll-make-it-up-to-you, attitude.

Inspire

Inspiration

Desire

ACTION

Creation

A mason of anew. To identify and move toward the reality we want to be. To dream while awake and never say a commonplace thing. To do rather than only say. Anticipation morphs into momentum and blooms into an orchid-so fragile, but our life becomes versatile and carries the strength, flexibility, and power of water. It's weight at heaviest and its weight at a mist. Creativity is the BOOM we need and the spark we greed for the seed of the most precious nutrient rich flesh there is.

Mulch is who I am. Its who I want to be. A mixture of materials aged and experienced through its time combined to create the most essential substance necessary for anything else! As a forest fire destructs-it really creates. Its ability to demolish only in order to provide the possibility of more, and better life.

Inspire

Inspiration

Desire 

Degradation

Action 

&

Creation