Seashore Strider YMCA 5 Mile Road Race - 14th Place

"Back, back and we're glad he's back..."
-The Mighty Mighty BossTones

I'm back from a week at the Delaware Shore (I mean, Delaware) at a family reunion. The high point of the constant party that is the First State, was running a road race my first full day there. I found the Seashore Strider YMCA 5 miler online a couple of weeks before and the only one of my family who showed any interest was my Nephew-in-law Eric. When we showed up last weekend and he had already registered, I decided to run too. I hadn't registered prior to arriving because it was a road race and it was a 7:30 start time. But once I had a companion, I was in.

I wasn't expecting to do much at this race. The roadie crowd is different from the trail crowd, I mean it's entirely different sport and the turnout is always higher at a road race; so my plan was to use this as a workout. Which means I'm pretty pumped to report back that I finished 14th overall. I don't know my exact time and I don't know the amount of attendees, but I would conseratively estimate 300 runners. The person who finished ahead me told me that she was in around 32 or 33 minutes and I was less than a minute behind her, so I really couldn't be happier with my performance. However, I would really appreciate if they would post the results from the race, as promised, on the Seashore Striders website. It's been a week and they're still not up there. The only reason I know I was 14th is I saw the finisher board they were piecing together before I bailed for a day of beach and beer. RD's take note: part of putting on a race is finishing it with the results posted ASAP. Oh well, regardless, it was a good showing.

I don't think that I'm going to do the XTerra 12.5k next weekend. After the 5 miler I only ran one other time this week, so I don't feel very prepped. I'm sure I would do fine, but if I'm going to pay to race and after the 5 miler and the trail 10k two weeks ago, I'd rather save my money for something I've prepared for. So barring a change in heart my next race will the be the Moose on the Loose 10 miler in Nashua, NH at the end of the month. Details to come.

To celebrate returning to New England, I took the mountain bike out for a 1.5 hour ride today. So fun to be on the bike on these trails. They're much more technical than the trails we rode in the Front Range. More roots, rocks and mud...but less steep climbs and more rolly. Super, super fun to rip around through the tight turns of the forested Massachusetts trails. Next year...I am definitely doing an XTerra triathlon and at least one local AR.

On another note, at the beach I finally got to see The Dark Knight and it immediately found itself residing on my all time top movies list. Holy crap what a film. It was the perfect blend of thriller, drama, comedy (some small moments), comic-book-flick and action in one movie that I have yet to see. As a former comic book guy I'm pretty forgiving on the movies based on funny rags. But this flick stood on its own. You could loath comic books and comic book movies and you'd still dig this movie. Good times. Can't wait for the next one.

Winnekenni Downpours and New Trails

So as the 2 people who may actually read this blog may have heard, there was some crazy weather here in New England the past few days. New Hampshire actually had a tornado touch down, not too far from where I used to live. Yesterday morning I was up and running at the crack of dawn and I lucked out to not get too wet.

My go-to place to run these days is Winnekenni Park and trails around Kenoza Lake. The trails are super fun and varied for the amount that are there. Everything from fire road to singletrack and some decent hills make for a good close to home destination. Yesterday morning I woke up with the intention of doing the long loop that I've been running there and instead woke up to some major thunderstorms passing through the area. I got up and checked out the weather channel to see that there was about to be a small break in the weather so I laced up my shoes and headed out.

It was super dark out but I managed to negotiate the trails pretty well given how wet everything was and the lack of light. I decided to forgo my plan of the long loop and try to find some singletrack that I had heard about on the south side of the lake. Well, I found it and it was fun! The trails lead all the way over to Lake Saltonstall on the southwest side of Kenoza lake and then opens up into a fire road that leads to more trails around this smaller lake. I've only had my mountain bike out once since coming back, but I'm super motivated to get out on the bike and do some serious exploring around these two lakes.

Anyway, by this time another thunderstorm was gearing up so I high-tailed it back towards Kenoza and ended up getting rained on for most of the way home. Ended up doing a roughly 50 minute run which I duplicated this morning in better conditions. Tomorrow we leave for DE, so I'm not sure how many updates I'll post...hopefully a few...and hopefully I find some trails. I'm not looking forward to road running, but so it goes. Cheers...

Long couple of days

I'm whupped. Got up yesterday for a client meeting in Providence, RI. Got up at 4:50 to go running and left early to beat the traffic around the city, but didn't get up early enough. Spent all day calorie and water deprived (lunch was at some awful mexican place...not kidding when I say that Taco Bell would have been better) before getting in a good dinner in downtown Providence and headed home to arrive around 11pm. Skipped running this morning so I basically got up and went to work. Yeah, I'm whupped.

But motivated! I'm up early tomorrow for an hour long run. First run of any length or intensity since this past week, so I'm psyched to stretch out my legs. We leave Saturday for our DE beach vacation and will probably be road running most of the week so I'm going to build in some interval training and hopefully some good sand workouts.

Very psyched for vacation. I'm going to eat, run, sit by the pool, sit by the beach, play guitar, drink frosty cold beer than go to sleep, get up repeat. I'm going to have so much fun with my little Lily who has become obsessed with the water. Good times.

Sore Feet

So, I don't think it was the terrain, but my feet are still sore today from the race on Saturday. Weird.

Anyway, I'm back at it tomorrow morning. It will be the kick off to a long day as I'm heading down to Providence for a client meeting that will last through dinner. But I elected to skip today so I have not choice but to do the 4:50am rise for a 40+ minute run before heading out to do battle with Boston area freeways.

As noted last night my next race will be in Hanover, NH on 8/9, the XTerra Stoaked 12.5k. I decided on this one over the 10.5 miler in Oxford, MA by the scientific method of telling my wife about both of them and seeing what she thought. She said that she had a hankering to check out Hanover so that was where her vote went. It actually makes the most sense since it's roughly three weeks away and slightly longer than the race I did this past weekend. From there I'll do the the Moose on the Loose 10 mile race in Nashua at the end of August. That seems to make sense.

Next week we're heading to the Delaware shore for a family reunion of sorts. I've found a state park nearby and I'm hoping it has some trails, otherwise it's on the road or the beach for me. It will be great to head down there and take a week off. I haven't had a vacation of any length in two years and last year my family did a reunion in New Hampshire but I had just moved to Colorado so I missed out. This isn't the best timed trip with work, but it was planned before I started my new job, so I'm not going to miss it and frankly, I'm pretty pumped!

The last trip I really took, was two years ago when I climbed Mt.'s Shasta and Rainier. Amazing, amazing ten days. I got the itch to do another "expedition" so I'm working on organizing a winter trip to Katahdin. I use the word expedition in quotes because by most standards, Shasta, Rainier and Katahdin wouldn't qualify as an expedition. But for my purposes they're about as close as I will ever, or even want to get. I have very little interest in climbing big mountains, and I've realized that most of the fun of those types of trips is planning them, the road trip to get there and the approach to the peak, much more than the actual summit. Heading out west to start on Shasta was just my buddy Gary and I. The flight out, the drive up to Shasta, the subsequent drive up to Rainier from No. California after climbing the mountain; that's where most of the memories from that trip were forged. On Rainier we had an amazing crew and the day and a half leading up to our summit attempt also resulted in some great memories. To this day and I'm sure for the rest of my life, I will be unable to talk about or with these folks without remembering back to the time we all climbed Rainier together.

I've found that I love to be in the mountains. I have a drive to climb them, but it's more for the outdoor experience with friends. Some climb big peaks because they are driven to do so. They wake up in the morning and if they aren't headed to the hills something gnaws at them until they do go. I get that feeling about different things and I'll take care of that part of my personality either trail running or mountain biking. The mountains were meant to be savored. They were meant to be visited with your pals and be climbed with no agenda, and plenty of long photo indulgent breaks. They were meant to build friendships. Cheers Team TBL OP '06.

Next Race

Just a quick update that my next race will be the XTerra Stoaked 12.5k on Sat. 8/9. More details to come...

Run for the Hills Recap

Whew. It was sticky today.

I'm pretty please with my results (see post below) and this race was the perfect first race back in New England. The race was broken up into a 5k and 10k with 52 participants in each category. This is the first year this race has been held, so that's a pretty decent turn out. I actually just found out about the race this past Monday when I was trolling around on Trail Runner Magazine's website. The course was a classic New England rooty/rocky singletrack trail in the woods; a 3.1 mile loop. So the 5k racers did one loop while us 10k'ers did a double. The day was sticky from the get go. I went out to walk my dogs at 6:00 this morning and while it wasn't too hot yet, the air was thick. By the 9am start time the clouds had burned off and it was well into the upper 80's with soupy conditions. The heat doesn't bother me too much, but the humidity does make it harder to breathe deeply so that slowed me down a little.

The first lap was classic for me. I started off a bit too quick, which provided separation from the pack but I had to force myself into a steady pace rather than spend all my energy in the first loop of the run. It's easy to start worrying about who's around you and not letting other runners pass you and trying to chase down those in front of you. But in a race like this that's silly because you don't know who's doing the 5k v. the 10k so you could run down someone who's going super fast, and as you set out to start your second loop you realize that he/she has stopped because they're only doing the 5k! So mentally I tried to get into a rhythm and not think too much about who was around me.

I finished my first loop in 20:37, which was mainly a product of my quick start. I was happy with that because I knew that unless I bonked under the heat or I hurt myself I should definitely finish in under 50 minutes. I kept up my pace through the second loop. The most techy sections of the trail were mostly within mile 2, with lots of mud (it rained last night) rocks, roots a big blow down and some short uphills. I started notice the toll that the heat was taking on a few of the uphills when I didn't seem to have the seem pop in my legs that I had during the first loop. Between miles 2 and 3 I started to catch a few folks and I had to resist the urge to attack the remainder of the course. One other race and I stayed with each other until just before the mile 3 marker when I left what I had been saving on the trail and took off toward the finish where Carli and Lily were there waiting for me.

A few variables to consider: Although running is my strong suit, my last 3 months in Colorado I pretty much exclusively mountain biked. I was at my peak for running last fall, but then through a bad winter cold/flu season I backed off, had to miss an adventure race in April due to a lingering chest problem, than the last event in CO before moving back east was the aforementioned 24 Hours of Erock mountain bike race so I pretty much stopped running altogether and focused on the bike. After that I didn't do much of anyting for a couple of weeks to deal with the actual move and than once we got here at the end of June, I started trail running again. So, basically what that long-winded diatribe was meant to spell out is that I'm still finding my running legs a bit. With that in mind and with how I performed during the first loop I'm feeling that I can definitely run a sub-40 minute 10k. Time to start working on some hills and getting some speed work in.

I'm encouraged with how I ran today and starting to look towards the next race, either 10.5 miler in Oxford, MA or an 12.5k in Hanover, NH. The 12.5k is put on by Xterra (there's an Xterra triathlon the same day) so the competition will be much more intense, so the 10.5 miler may be a better option, but we'll see. Either way, I'm psyched to be back on track and racing. Today was a lot fun and I can't wait to get back out there!

-ct

Results

Run for the Hills, Greenbelt Trail Run 10k
Overall: 11th out of 52
Category: 5th out of 13
Official Time: 46:07

Race recap with pictures will be posted later...

My pain box

This is a picture of what my pain box looks like. Or at least that's how I picture it looks like. Jen Seggar (http://challenge-by-choice.blogspot.com) once told me before a race in Tennessee that she was dealing with plantar fasciitis. I asked her how the hell she made it through long races. She told me that she just puts it all in her pain box and she doesn't think about until the race is over.

After doing these kinds of events a few times...I realized that it's not a bad purchase...so I went out and got my own pain box.

I'm not as good as keeping mine shut as Jen. I feel like I have everything squared away and the the mental demons start to creep in, telling me to stop, that I'm not fit enough, that I'm going to hyperventilate...and every once in a while one of them picks the lock to the pain box and everything starts to hurt...and I start to think that I should listen to the voices telling me to stop. But invariably I force them to the back of my mind, re-lock the box and continue on. That's the hardest part of racing for me and I would be lying if I said that I had control over them yet.

My last race in Colorado was a 24 Hour Mtn. biking affair, and by the afternoon of the second day one of those classic Colorado gusts was blowing across at a steady 35 mph. Of course the first leg of the course was directly into the wind. I was tired, not quite as fit as I wanted to be, and the idea of stopping started to become a little too tempting. I had wrecked hard on my first lap and though I had fought through some light injuries, they were beginning to take their toll. Eventually my times got to the point where it was agreed that I should be skipped for the last lap. I'm happy I didn't quit...but I wonder if I had better control over the mental side of things if I wouldn't have muscled through a little harder. Hard to say, I think I went hard for what I had, but I come from a long line of second-guessers, so the only way to know for sure is to keep trying to get better.

(Aside: The good news is that we finished second in that race. The winners were a crew of pure mountain bikers and our team was comprised entirely of adventure racers. The finish was great for us since we typically compete in events that are made up of multiple disciplines, so to finish second, and only by minutes at that against a team that is dedicated to their sport...let's just say it gave us the warm fuzzies.)

Tomorrow I run. I tweaked my foot and ankle this week, but I intend to put those injuries in my pain box and run hard. I'm using tomorrow as measuring stick of where I need to get to in order to be competitive with the local trail runners here

in New England...but I'm also trying to notch a victory over my own head. Tomorrow my pain box will look like this, and I'll let you know if stayed this way:

Welcome home and my first race back

Welcome to my blog! I'm a 32 year old endurance athlete who is married with one kid. I just recently moved back to New England after a year spent in Boulder, Colorado and before I went west, I was into outdoor sports, but after my time out there, short as it was, I came back with a renewed vigor to try and be competitive in the sports of trail running, mountain biking and adventure racing.

Being a father with a full time job, I have to pick and choose which events I'm going to participate in so that I'm being a good Dad, and not shirking job responsibilites. It's a challenge that most racers in their 30's go up against and it usually results in early mornings and late nights out running and riding. Since moving back, I've been focusing almost solely on trail running. Running is the easiest activity to work into a busy schedule. Get up early and go, or go out later after everyone has gone to bed. So until we figure out our exact weekly schedule, and where I can fit in riding, I figured I'd focus mostly on trail running. So, I'm entering my first trail running race this Saturday. The Essex Greenbelt Trail run in Hamilton, MA. I'll post results later this weekend.

I'm not really sure what to expect. Based on how I was running in Boulder, I know I can hold my own and of all the sports I do, I'm probably best at running. But I've never focused on one sport before, and I'll be going up against people who have been running for a very long time. So this race is to be used as a measuring stick to see what I need to do to become competitive with the local trail folks. The weather isn't going to be a huge help...forecast is for high's in the 90's and very humid...I hate the heat.

Seriously, I hate the heat. I feel that when it's cold, it's easier to get warm. Just go run around the house a few times and you'll warm up. But when you're really hot...it's not always as easy to cool off. When running or biking, it's hard because the humidity doesn't let your sweat evaporate so you don't get the cooling effect that your body is going for, so you have to be really careful. With that in mind, Saturday's results should be interesting. I have to think that most folks will be going slower than usual. Oh well, so it goes...I'm just looking to see what the local trail scene is all about and how I can improve so that I'm competitive.

I'm hoping to update here frequently...so please come back and see what I've been up to.

-ct