Either I race too much, blog too little, or both.

I have been neglecting this space.  Not only am I behind by four race reports heading into the Stockholm Marathon, all four are big deal races.  There was Quicksilver 50M, my club's race on my birthday shared with me by many friends.  There was the epic, yet moderately irresponsible, Silver State 50M and Ohlone 50K double.  And Nanny Goat -- a two-day road trip complete with camping that is an "A" event to Elisa and a lot of my new running friends.  These are all worthy of fresh and detailed reports.  Well, sorry.

QUICKSILVER 50M

My club's race happened to be on my birthday, so I had an easier than usual time convincing friends to run it.  Sopheak and Amy did the 25K.  Elisa did the 50K.  Jill, Sophia, and Paul did the 50M.  Coach Erich paced me.  And a bunch of other club members ran too.  Chikara was there and won.  Stan came out to see me finish and hang with the crew.  The post-race BBQ was awesome.  My post-race appetite has about a six to twelve-hour delay, but by all accounts the food was out of this world.  Elisa loved the snow cones, and Sopheak apparently loved it all.  But how about the race itself?

This was my second fifty-miler, and I knew it was going to be much, much tougher than AR50.  Highs were forecasted to be close to 90.  And although it was tempting to try to come out fast and beat the heat, I knew from training on the course that the late climbs deserved respect.  So I chugged up a lot of the hills, even some of the more significant ones on New Almaden and the long grind up to Mine Hill from McAbee.  That turned out to be wise, since I needed just about all of that saved energy for the Hacienda portion of the course into Mockingbird (the 50K finish) and back out of the park to Sierra Azul.  It had heated up by then, and that part of the course is gnarly.

Erich was waiting for me at Mockingbird and paced me out to Sierra Azul and back.  I had warned him that it may not be much of an ultrarunning experience and more of a hike with aid stations, and I was right.  By the time we were heading back to the big finish from Sierra Azul, I was so tired as to even forget to run the flats and downhills.  Having him as a pacer really paid off then, because he would remind and encourage me to speed up when it was practical.

I finished in 9:44 and was even more proud of that than my 9:03 at AR50.  The BBQ after was super fun, even though I hardly ate.  I met Danni and Ryan, who I really had a chance to bond with at Nanny Goat.  It was an awesome day.  I had never shared a race with so many pals.  Happy birthday to me!

SILVER STATE 50M

The Quicksilver team only had two dudes running this race, and needed three to score team points. And they really needed that, since we did not score team points in the 50M and 100K distances at RA.  The emails trying to recruit another guy for SS were getting more frequent and urgent.  I was already signed up for Ohlone, but so was Toshi (one of the two, along with Greg, running SS).  So that was out as an excuse.  I badly wanted to prove myself to the fellas after RA, so I signed up.

Greg and I got into town late, checked into a room across the street from the start for a little rest, and were up bright and early for the start.  The race was in the mountains.  Not the hills, but the friggin mountains.  Starting well over 4,000' and climbing to almost 8,000'...twice.  Chris was there, also doing the double along with Toshi and me.  Chikara was there again (and won again).  He was wearing the exact same shoes as the ones in which he won Quicksilver, complete with a huge rip in the side of one.  There were actually quite a few familiar faces there, considering the race was in Reno and the day before Ohlone.  It turns out that the New Balance Excelsior team mobbed the race.  Anyway, off we went.

Now this race really deserves a full report, but I am going to have to rush through it to ever get it done.  So here it is.  The course was beautiful.  Very rugged and remote.  The altitude did not bother me nearly as much as I had feared.  My Achilles, which had started making a peep toward the very end of QS, immediately started to bother me.  It had not slowed me down there, so I had completely forgotten about it.  But here it was, and it slowed me down considerably.  Even the slightest pressure from my shoes was killing me, so I had taken them off coming into the aid station at mile 19.  I tried cutting my shoes open, which did not help much.  Jim, who saw me sitting at that aid station cutting open my shoes and asked me what was up, suggested lacing them tighter to keep them from rubbing. I tried that at the next aid station, but it made things worse.  So I immediately undid that.  Remember, it was Jim who gave me a hard time about RA.  I decided I could not quit, so I would do the honorable thing and miss the mile 33 cutoff.  That was a long walk away.  I met a guy at the mile 22 stop where I re-laced my shoes who was having bad stomach issues and also considering an early end to his race.  We walked and chatted until he took off running again.  I saw him heading out of the mile 33 aid station, but I also saw him come back.  I am pretty sure he did not finish.  The aid station before that I chatted with some nice volunteers and told them of my troubles.  They offered me a ride back if I quit, but seemed impressed and pleased by my intention to grind it out and miss the cutoff.

And now to really speed things up.  I made that stupid cutoff, climbed the eight or so miles back to the summit and back down the mountain into Reno for the finish.  Almost thirteen hours.  31 miles of basically walking.  I have never been so proud of such a crappy result, and even got nice "way to grind it out" emails from Jim and Jean.  The team scored in both men and mixed, since Jim showed up and Greg recruited a couple others at the last minute.  That was a real ultra experience.  And a tough effort, even if I do say so myself.

OHLONE 50K

My Achilles was still hurting.  I made it all the way to the parking lot not knowing if I would start.  Well, I did.  And finished.  And saw Lisa Benham hiking along the way.  That was another tough course.  Climb after climb after climb.  Under 8 hours.  Another slow, but proud, result.

NANNY GOAT

My Achilles was still hurting.  Stockholm coming up.  I approached it as Elisa's race and decided to limp along mainly supporting her.  I walked 26 miles in flip-flops in twenty-four hours, in spite of only signing up for twelve.  Super fun event that I enjoyed mostly through and for others.

1st time pacing: Amanda's sub-2 half.

Jill and I met Chad through Sopheak at the Headlands training run we did back in February.  The week after that we saw him pacing at the Niles edition of the NorCal half.  He invited us to run the Pleasanton edition Cinco de Mayo (May 5th) as his freebie buddies.  Free half and complete the series for double bling?  Yes, please!

Only problem was that Quicksilver was the following weekend, and I was feeling a little nervous about racing on roads after Ruth Anderson.  My dear pal and improving runner Amanda was also running.  She had run her first half at Niles in like 2:02.  I saw her post about Pleasanton on Facebook, asked if she was gunning for sub-2, and offered to pace her.  She jumped all over it.

I was having a bit of a crisis.  I was not all that fired up about running the race.  It would have been fun trying to PR and inch closer to the ninety minute mark, but I did not want to beat myself up going into Quicksilver -- a PA USATF GP race.  With Ohlone and Stockholm not far behind Quicksilver, it would have been the worst time for an injury.

Pacing Amanda was the perfect solution.  Fired up for the race, because I had a goal to run for now (just not my own).  But guaranteed not to push it too hard.

Amanda and I got to be close at Cisco.  She was an admin when I was doing desktop phones.  She was just super sweet, and I generally like people.  Not much more to it than that.  We just genuinely like eachother.  She gave me a hug and seemed genuinely concerned on some particularly rotten days, and I will never forget that.  She took an interest in me and my happiness without any reason to do so.  She just genuinely cared long before I could figure out why.  I notice when people do that, and it can endear them to me forever.  Amanda is one of those, and she is in elite company when it comes to how dear she is to me because of it.

She has gotten into running and fitness through Team Mo of the Go Team Mo crew I had seen at races.  This Mo has inspired some people very dear to me (Amanda and also Obie) to take better care of themselves.  She seems super supportive and a great motivator.  Anyway, Amanda has been working with Team Mo.  Amanda seems like a hard worker and tough gal.  I can tell she cares about her running by the questions she asks me and things she posts on Facebook.  Helping her in any way would be a joy.  Helping her meet a running goal might just be more satisfying than my own PR, so I was way into it.

Pacing is hard.  I think I am pretty tuned into my body.  I think I can run with a pretty consistent effort.  Well, that may or may not be true.  But if it is, that does not translate to a consistent pace.  I really had to watch my GPS.  And to make it worse, holding the "live" pace where I wanted it did not seem to produce good split times.  I have come to rely on average pace and pay closer attention to whether it is trending up or down.  I also kept an eye on the event pacers in front of and behind me.  The last complication was being Amanda's personal pacer.  If I were simply pacing 2:00 or 1:55, I would have a set pace and be bound to it.  But as Amanda's personal pacer, I had to be responsive to her her bursts one way or the other.  I encouraged her to run a smart race, but I was reluctant to hold her back when she was cruising early.  She tricked me into thinking she had plenty of gas in the tank with two miles left.  I asked her if she just wanted to take off, and she indicated that our pace was fine.  Shortly thereafter, she started to drop back.  The 2:00 pacer (an excellent pacer I knew from Morgan Hill and met personally through Chad.  He has or will soon have run a marathon on every continent, if I am not mistaken.) was right on our heels for a while, but Amanda did it.  She finished in 1:58.  I was stoked.  She was stoked.  There was a lot of love being sent between her and I.  I ran pain-free and had a blast.  I got my double bling.  Thanks Chad!

One jacked up thing: Picking up my packet the morning of the race, they look up my name and call out my bib "333".  I was stoked!  But it was gone.  331, 332, 334....  They had to change my number.  Well, somebody had swiped it.  I got emailed his event proofs.  He has a result as bib 333.  Not sure how he got it, but that is jacked up.  I ended up with 805.  Still have never had a 9.  If my replacement bib would have had a 9, there would have been an even more epic tantrum.

My first race not racing: Miwok with CRC

I want to run this race.  It is on my bucket list of races for sure.  But by the time I knew about it, the lottery had happened.  Ron from CRC contacted me and their mailing list about volunteers for their aid station.  Since I could not run and was overdue to volunteer and maybe mostly to improve my chances in next year's race lottery, I signed up.  And convinced Jill too.  We were at Bridge View in the Marin Headlands with breathtaking views of the City.  It was a beautiful and uncharacteristically warm day -- great for volunteers but hot stuff for runners.  I worked a road crossing at the bottom of the hill with Margaret, instead of at the actual aid station.  I wore my Quicksilver tank and should have worn more sunscreen.  This was a brilliant idea.  Although it is not always possible, as a general rule for races that interest you, if you cannot run it, volunteer it.  Some highlights:

1.  A woman endurance cyclist asked me the question I answered the most from passers-by: What is the race and how far?  Miwok 100K, shortened to 60K.  The subpopulation one finds in the Marin Headlands, especially on a bike, is super fit.  I was surprised how few of the cyclists had heard of ultras.  She said I was the first ultrarunner she had ever had a conversation with or met.  That was hella cool.  That was how I spent most of my time waiting for the first runners.

2.  I saw everybody, including the first runners, pass through.  That was bitchen.  I knew so many of them!  QSURT teammates recognized the jersey, whether they actually knew me or not.  I got recognized from Way Too Cool by a runner.  I saw Franz and Ron from CRC.  Sophia stopped for a picture.  It was awesome.

3.  Everybody thanked me.  It frustrated me at first, since I felt so lucky to spend such an amazing day such a fulfilling way.  It was like are you kidding me?  You are running these hard trails in this heat.  I am standing here with a pirate flag wearing an eye patch.  THANK YOU!  Then I remembered how heartfelt my own thanks are when I am racing and realized that these thanks were just part of that same cycle and that I was screwing it up by thinking it was weird that I was being thanked, and then it was rad.

I took pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge and sent them back to Alabama.  I want them to see it here so bad.

Do not run to lose weight. Lose weight to run.

Or, my almost thirteen miles in a ten pound fat suit.

I was overdue for a humbling run.  They happen every so often.  The worst one was last year around Alviso loop.  It was supposed to be an easy nine miles -- easy because I think I was already in marathon shape at the time.  Yeah, because I had done track the night before and Wednesday morning yoga.  So that was relatively recently.  I exploded and ended up having to walk part of it.  Still not sure what the heck happened, but it was a total bonk on a super short run.  Today was nowhere near that bad, but certainly humbling.

Remember that post about being able to justify eating more and skipping workouts during the peaks of racing season and how to manage the extra net calories?  If not, you will not have to go back far to look for it.  This week has been good for that balance.  With two off weekends between RA and Quicksilver, I have had fewer excuses to train less and eat more, and my habits have been better.  But it has not kicked in yet, and I am carrying about an extra ten pounds.  Jeez.  I felt all of them.  In addition to feeling fat and slow, my joints really seemed to feel the extra hammering of the extra weight.  I know this is just a phase, and that if I am patient and consistent with my good choices it will be a short phase.  Nonetheless, this run was much harder (and less pleasant) than it should have been.  I am taking two lessons from that, and hope any of you hoping to run and lose weight pay extra attention to the second one.

The first one is easy.  If I eat more and workout less, I will gain weight.  I need to manage calories better during racing season.  I should just eat like normal, perhaps only slightly less just the day or two before and after races -- but that is it, not a week!  I will probably burn fewer calories.  There is no way around that with the rest periods that I will need.  But I can work my fitness to shorten my recovery, find other ways to burn calories while resting my legs, maybe take in fewer, and overall just manage calories better.

The second lesson is that I was very lucky and hindsight-wise to have lost the weight first, instead of running to lose weight.  Running and extra pounds is a terrible combination.  Now that I run, and with the experience of today's run in a ten pound fat suit, I am highly motivated to trim extra pounds.  They friggin suck to carry around!  And the extra hammering on the body of just a few pounds is disturbing.  OK, back on my training diet.  Steady on with the cross training.  And you out there: Do not run to lose weight.  Walk or elliptical.  Then lose weight to run.

I run less (but workout more) than you think.

Very typical exchange between me and another amateur athlete or an aspiring athlete:

Them: "So how many hours a week do you workout?"
Me: "Fifteen to twenty hours a week."
Them: "And that is all or pretty much all running?"
Me: "Heavens no.  Jeez."

I ran my way into running shape, or marathon shape.  That was when I was logging sixty and more miles every week, sometimes running twice a day.  But now that marathon distances and six-hour runs are fairly routine (OK, that was kinda weird to say/type, but it is truthful and accurate.  Wow.), my strategy has been to train more but run less to save the miles on the body.  I might actually train less too.  I used to do at least an hour on the elliptical almost everyday, almost always more, and in addition to running.  I have not been on the elliptical in weeks.  A lot of my peers run in the hundred-miles-per-week neighborhood.  I am currently sitting at about half of that, but racing more than once a month -- assuring regular thirty or fifty-mile supported training runs.  I spend considerable time on upper-body workouts (my vanity workouts), but the vast majority on cardio and core.  Fifteen to twenty hours per week is based on this:

8 hours running: Tuesday track; Thursday and Saturday and/or Sunday runs with Jill.  Track is an hour and usually three to five miles.  Jill and I run up to, but seldom over, twenty miles and three or so hours.  Since we are "in-season", and usually right up against either a taper or recover, these have been more like twelve or so miles and two hours -- but then that means a 50K or 50M or whatever race and all those miles and time.  Catching a bonus run on the weekend happens plenty often enough to round up to an average of eight hours per week here.

3.25 hours yoga with Delanie: Monday 5:30PM and Wednesday 6:30AM at Cisco, one hour each; 8:00 to 9:15AM Saturday at the studio on Lincoln.  I obviously miss the Saturday class for a Saturday race.  Other than that, I basically never miss yoga.

2 hours rowing: 10K three times per week at forty minutes each.  I usually row on Mondays and Fridays.  I row after yoga.  Sometimes I row twice on Wednesdays.  I still do not think I have rowed four times in one week.

3 hours vanity stuff: Pretty much everyday that I am in the SJQ gym (for yoga, sometimes after track, Wednesday and Friday evenings), I do twenty to thirty or so minutes of weights (upper-body) and stretching.  I move quickly and purposely in the gym, doing rounds of a set of push something, then a set of pull something, then stretch.  I can usually get in at least five rounds.  I also do push-ups and pull-ups around the house, usually in the mornings (but Thursdays and weekends too).

That is over 16 hours and pretty much guaranteed.

Bonus time: It happens.  I find extra workouts for fun.  Seriously.  Like training runs with Franz and Coastside Running Club or free guest night yoga at Planet Granite with Annie and Dave.  I might kill some time on the elliptical or stationary bike.  Crazy, right?

So yeah.  That is how I workout fifteen to twenty hours per week.  I work my friggin tail off, so it definitely is not for everybody.  If you want to try it, you will probably have to give up television to get those extra hours.  Good luck!