So Chris, in response to your comment about the atrocious elevation accuracy - does that mean I haven't been getting 5000 feet of elevation gain/loss during my runs?? (just kidding. only if i lived in colorado, right? )
Welcome to a new month, gang!
Leslie Living and Running Behind the Redwood Curtain -------------
Trail Runner Nation
Sally McCrae-Choose Strong
Bare Performance
LOL, probably not. I did a Grand Canyon R2R2R and my Garmin reported 58,000' of gain!!!
Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! We're headed out to Utah to freeze our butts off in the desert. The forecast is 11 for the low and 34 for the high. This is gonna SUCK!!
- Chris
We're headed out to Utah to freeze our butts off in the desert. The forecast is 11 for the low and 34 for the high. This is gonna SUCK!! - Chris
We're headed out to Utah to freeze our butts off in the desert. The forecast is 11 for the low and 34 for the high. This is gonna SUCK!!
My desert (Mojave Desert, Ridgecrest, CA) says a low of 47, a high 58, partly cloudy for the Desert High 50k. And yes, I'm bragging. Chat with ya'll on the other side.
Bacon Party!
Re GPS elevation accuracy... I've been logging my runs in SportTracks (sorry RA!) and use an elevation correction plug-in to correct elevation based on 1 arc second (30 meter) SRTM data.
Based on what I know about the terrain around here, it seems more accurate. But, I don't get quite the ego boost on my in-town daily runs - Garmin reporting 150+/- , corrected it's more like 25+/- (and, yes, it really is that flat).
Liz
pace sera, sera
Ultrachick
MY FRIEND, KATE, GOT INTO WESTERN STATES!!! YEE HAW!!! I am so excited! Her very first try. She was #78. I can't wait for June! Her sister, Karen, and I will be crewing for her, and it's gonna be a blast!!
Lucky Kate! As you may have noticed.... I didn't get in-no one from VT got in. Yeah, I'm bummed but their loss! You will have a blast Leslie-I crewed for Jack in 2006 alone. It was a long, hot day but it's where I learned my professional crew skills which I have put to good use over the years and have shared with others . For a small fee, I'll share them with you too! Just kidding!
I'm hanging in there, running about every day and trying to stay on top of things. Congrats to Kate!!
Kelly
Happy
BTW, aren't you running a 50K trail race tomorrow Dec 6? If it's so I wish you a great run and loads of fun - and I want to hear about it when you return. Any way to track you? I'll be away all day for a Swim Meet with my kid so I won't be able to track you but I will be checking in ASAP to read your race report. I just have the feeling that you will do very well!!!!
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I am not running much - nothing long, just a little threshold running here and there. My Marathon is next week end and I just don't know what to do. My confidence is trying to slip away but I keep holding on the best I can.
Another great weekend on the trails...
Spent three hours on new-to-me trails at Highland (thanks pozmoore!) - did the first hour in my regular trail shoes; then, when I found myself (unexpectedly) back at my car, I switched into my VFF KSOs for the final two hours. (I'm still getting used to them, trying to take it easy, but they're so much fun!)
Had a blast with the footbridges - I ran through the unmolested dusting of snow, leaving "barefoot" prints. I would loved to have seen the reactions of the hikers who came along after me. Bare feet? In the snow?!
I'm finding the VFFs on trails to be a mentally grueling exercise - so much brain power going into mapping the terrain for foot placement. It's been a totally fascinating process for me.
Did another two hours today in my regular shoes (on my regular trails). Was nice to have the VFF-imposed form follow me to the shoes (more or less). I was grateful to have the shoes on some stretches, but I was missing the VFFs.
Now, I'm thinking about doing the HUFF 50K in the VFFs...
Me, the Barbie version
Hey guys. Sorry I have been gone so long. My life is a perfect storm right now. My health problems require major surgery to mend and it is scheduled for December 22 so that we can take advantage of my husbands time off at Christmas for some of my recovery. Around the first of the year, he is leaving for 6 weeks to Arkansas or Louisiana with his work, at which time my mother is flying out to help for a week or so. I spent 10 day in CA with my family over Thanksgiving (thankfully, I had that time) and learned I need the surgery the day after I came home. I have jury duty this week. I do not think I will find much time for running in the coming months. I will be lurking.
Kitrin
Ostrich runner
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I showed up at check-in with the thermometer showing 14 degrees. By that point, I was pretty scared. Thankfully it warmed a bit. I didn't really train for this race in particular--I really just hoped that training for half marathons was sufficiently similar. It isn't. At the start I felt very distant from my long runs and from hard hill work. I was. Things I thought were my strengths, like maintaining form and pace, aren't. At mile 15 I felt like I could do this for a living. I had slipped a few times on frozen mud, but I managed to stay vertical. I was cruising along at just under 10 min pace through most of it, and I had survived the utterly ********ing ridiculous hill that looks like a wall covered with ants spreading to sky. I recalled it being mentioned by some guys I trained with, but I thought they were talking about a different hill a fraction of this size...I had no idea it was coming up. At mile 16, unexpectedly, I crashed. The next 7 miles were very, very bad. I let at least 100 people by me and even deliriously lost the course for several minutes. Luckily the route I took was still in a similar vector, but being on the wrong side of a ridge at mile 19 is really lonely. From mile 20-23 I learned to accept the pain and at 23 I channeled some inner sui/homocidal place in me and managed to get back on pace. By the finish I didn't want anybody to see me, but I knew I was done and that was enough. Then I made another mistake. I went straight into the heated picnic shelter. I hadn't realized how cold my legs must have been until they started to thaw out, and nothing touches that pain. I got very scared again until I figured out why they hurt. Then I just went to Jen's car, elevated them and had the heat blow straight on them. Within a few minutes I was alright. In the end the smartest thing I did was bring a 22 of Old Ruffian barley wine for the finish. It took me 4:59, which still put me in the top third of the field somehow.
http://www.runningahead.com/groups/Indy/forum
under a rock
Beef, congrats on the AG placing! 14 degrees is brutal, I opted for the treadmill today instead of going out in 30 degrees. I need to HTFU!
Yesterday I did an 8 mile run, my longest one yet since coming back to running this year. It amazes me that I can do 8 miles on trails with no ITband problems but 3 miles on the treadmill makes me feel it. I'm so thankful that I have so many great options for running trails and don't have to do the same trail every time, really helps keep the trails feeling fresh.
I've recently decided to put doing a marathon in 2010 on hold for now in favor of running trail races. I'm going to do the Xterra Series in SC and GA. Right now I'm third in my AG for points in the SC series. I'm aiming for the Xterra Xduro Half Marathon at Fort Yargo State Park in Winder, Georgia at the end of Feb. After that I'm might do one or two trail HM's if I can find some but the main race I'm aiming for is the Paris Mt 15k in May. I want to improve my time on the climb up the mountain and see if I can win my AG instead of placing 2nd. Hopefully by the end of next year I'll have a good solid base and can find a marathon that fits whatever my mood is at the time.
Anybody else putting together their goals for next year?
Yikes... good luck w/ the surgery Kitrin. We're all pulling for a fast recovery and quick transition back to the trails.
Nice job Beef!!
A group of friends went to Moab, UT this weekend to attempt to run the 100 mile White Rim trail in Canyonlands National Park. It was insanely cold... 8F for the low and mid-20s for the high. 4 of us got sick, likely from a pizza buffet in Moab. I dropped at mile 27 due to that. Otherwise I felt pretty good and was on a sub-20 hour pace (unlikely I could sustain that for another 73 miles though). We may go back in March and try to finish it off. It's beautiful country but the trail itself isn't very thrilling. It's 90 miles of hard-packed jeep roads and 10 miles of paved road.
"Anybody else putting together their goals for next year?"
Yeah...loosely anyway. I didn't get into Western States (thankfully... seems too hot for my taste) so next is to wait on the Hardrock 100 and Wasatch 100 lotteries and see what happens. If I don't get into Hardrock I'll do Bighorn. If I don't get in Wasatch I'll probably do Cascade Crest. My calendar is a total mess at this point, but looks something like:
January: Ghost Town 38.5 - New Mexico
February: Moab Red Hot 50k - Moab, UT
March: WRIAD attempt? (White Rim In A Day) - 100 miles - Moab, UT
- or -
March: Kokopelli's Trail? - Fruita, CO to Moab, UT (148 miles)
- or-
March: Grand Canyon Trip - either R2R2R or something new (and longer) - Arizona
April: Annual spring desert trip. Locations TBD
June: Bighorn 100 (if no Hardrock 100)
July: Hardrock 100??
-or-
July: Softrock 100 (Hardrock course over 3-4 days, staying in hotels, eating nice meals, and sitting in hot springs)
-and-
July: Colorado Trail - 465 miles - 16 days - supported run - Denver to Durango ,CO
July: Mountain RATS 4-day stage race, 100-ish miles - Copper Mountain, CO
August: Cascade Crest 100? - Washington
Sept: Wasatch 100 (lottery pending) - Salt Lake City, UT
Sept: Bear 100 - pace a friend 62 miles - Logan UT to Bear Lake, ID
Beef - Way to suck it up and get to the finish line. Those temps sound ridiculously cold. Thankfully, no frost bite, it sounds like.
Chris - Bummer about the food poisoning. Your schedule for next year looks like a beast!
Kitrin - Wishing you the best of luck with your surgery. Even though you won't be running for awhile, drop in and let us know how you're doing.
Kelly - Hi! And any info you'd like to send me re crewing would be most helpful. And yes, WS lost out on a great runner. Keeping my fingers crossed you get in next year.
My run Sunday - Well, my official time was 6:39:29. I figured I'd finish in 6.5 to 7 hrs, but was secretly hoping for a 6-hr finish. The wind was horrible!! My uncle sent me an email this a.m. saying their paper reported the winds to be 30-40 mph with gusts of 55 mph. I'm not surprised. I think if it hadn't been for the wind, I could've finished 15-20 mins faster. It was a head or front left wind about 99.5% of the time. You'd be running up hill and feeling it trying to force you back down. The couple of times it was at our backs was one short up hill and and a couple of down hills. Other than that, it was relentless. Oh well. There's always next year. I'll do a more in-depth report later.
On the up side, Coach found the name of a chick who has run Desert High for the past three years, followed by AR50. She finished DH in approximately the same times I did, and AR50 in about 12 hrs, so there's hope for me!
After a 12-hr drive yesterday, I was too tired to even think about getting up and running this morning, so will get back in the saddle tomorrow.
Regarding plans for next year - post them in the thread at the top entitled "Training Running Events 2010 and Beyond" and I'll get them sorted by month.