Views from the trail

You gotta love that first snow fall of the year!

1:34, 2:47, 1:30, 1:42(cw), 1:25, 1:30, 1:20, 1:21, 1:21

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Check out April!!!

It's Shela's turn for her 15 minutes of Fame.

Up Down Repeat

As most of you have gathered, I've taken my racing schedule down a notch or three. I'm back to recovery and base building. No more really long runs for a while. Add in lots of biking and a few short runs on dirt. I must hurry up and learn some patience, come on...come on. This seems to be an annual pattern. My speed and abilities go up in the spring and summer but then by fall I'm back to limping along slowly.

I'm biking to work, not sure how far it is exactly, about 14 miles with a monster hill right at the end.


Here's a look at the elevation of a nice 6 mile loop I've "discovered". I think it's soft enough to let my foot and ankles heal.

iUWR

After taking 3 weeks off I was still about to finish 26.2 miles. Slowly but I finished, my legs are pretty fresh today, but my foot... My foot is no better than it was 3 weeks ago.


If I hold my watch up like this, it keeps go time.


It was a nice day. No sun but we did missed the big downpours that some people got caught in.


Next I'll try running on dirt to see if that feels any better.

Manskin

Obviously a good time was had by all. Even the two people I saw crash, Evil Knievel and the PBR delivery driver, didn't mind a little road rash.






























P.S. Me.

1st D.N.F.

I ran most of the first 50k of 20Th Century 100k this Saturday. I then walked about 8 miles to the next A/S hoping things would get better before I got there.

I dropped at mile 40 because I didn't want to make the injury to my foot worse by pushing the last 20 miles to the finish, just to keep my DNF'less streak going.

I started out the day in my regular road shoes. After about 6 miles I knew this was a mistake. At 12 miles I switched to a different pair of road shoes that I was going to switch to at mile 40. They have "Sole" inserts that give me a lot more protection from rocks than a normal sockliner. They have a hard moldable plastic bottom. This change helped a lot and the thought of not being able to push through the discomfort never even entered my mind.
Somewhere about a mile into the tunnel I noticed it was a lot worse. I guess in the dark you can't be as careful with your foot placement. I had been changing my stride so I didn't put as much pressure on that put of my foot but that was making my hamstrings tight.
The trail turned downhill and my pace increased, again taking the pressure off the foot and easing my pain. I continued along trying to just enjoy the day. It was sunny and cool. Perfect for running. I stopped on a couple of the trestles to take pictures and stretch out.
I passed the 51K A/S at about 5:45. I knew as I left, there was a good chance of not making it to the next A/S. Sure enough, about 1/4 mile later I started my long slow walk to Rattle Snake Lake (mile ~40). I thought maybe it would get better if I just walk for a while. And, well I have some time to kill because Shawn's riding the 51k back to the car.
I tried running a few times and it didn't really feel any worse than walking but I didn't keep going because I didn't want to make things worse. I've nearly DNF'd 2-3 times before and I've slways said to myself, self you can DNF at the next A/S. But before I get there I'm feeling better. I was really hoping it would happen again.
I finally got to the A/S. I hung out with John and Mike until it was time to pack up. The Co-RD said I would get credit for a 50k but later the Scott the other RD Vetoed him. I drove an extra vehicle to the finish and waited for the runners to start coming in.
I've "fine" with taking a DNF. It had to happen sometime. I'm sure there were a few people betting it would be at Plain 100. I've been to one Dr. and I have an appointment with another. They think it's a stress fracture on the bone behind the second toe of my left foot. It was hurting after CCC 8-24 but it wasn't really that bad at Plain 9-8 or Baker Lake 10-6.

"Cover Boy"

OK
So I'm on the cover of UltraRunning Magazine. It's pretty cool but I can't seem to get Dr. Hook out of my head.

I will still talk to all the little people.
I did buy the biggest tub of Vaseline at Costco I could find so my Huge head wouldn't get stuck in the bathroom door.
You don't have to kiss my pinkie ring or bow at my post 100 mile feet.
No the Photo wasn't doctored or airbrushed. If it was, I would have had him hide my secret to speed. The wings in my hair!
All Hail King Arthur!!! That's a good one.

Huge thanks go to Glenn and Tony.

Go ahead take your best shot.

Baker Lake 50k

I finished in 6:58 with Robin Blais who helped motivate me for the last 6 miles.
I ran good for 9 miles then my banged up body started a revolt. I limped into the a/s in just under 3 and then crawled back to the finish.
Dave Dutton put on another great race. There was plenty of good food at the Start, A/S, and Finish.

I hadn’t really run since Plain. I did a couple 2 and 3 milers, easy, but that was it. I knew I was going to be slow but I didn’t know how slow I would go. Or for how long, but I knew it wasn’t 32 miles. I decided to just run how I felt.

In the beginning all was well. My legs felt fresh and ready to run. I had thought it would take a mile or so to warm up but it didn’t.
After a few miles on the trail I noticed my ankles kept trying to roll over on the downhill sections. I do go pretty fast downhill but the trail was in such great shape there was really no reason to go slow. So, I just tried to watch my foot placements a little closer. That didn’t really help. It seemed like they just weren’t very strong, like I had never run on trails before. I didn’t actually full on roll an ankle but I did do some quick shifting of my weight a bunch of times. This was creating a lot of extra work so I tried slowing down a bit. That helped for a while but it was getting to be work going downhill. What’s up with that? I stopped 3-4 times on the way out try and stretch and loosen my ankles but it didn’t do any good.

I got into the A/S at 2:48 and I didn’t want to leave. There was no reason that I couldn’t finish so after 10 minutes or so, I headed back out.

The trip back was much different than the trip out. I basically just started to run when I got too cold and after I warmed up I would walk. I even stopped a half a dozen times to admire the scenery. The trees were so beautiful, dripping with moss. The lake was calm and pristine. A runner would come by and I would start running so I could chat or just step off the trail and let them go by. Twice I stepped off into some nettles! I’m going to have to practice that stepping off the trail maneuver some more so that doesn’t happen again. Ouch!

With about 6 miles to go Robin came along and she was interesting to talk to so that made me run just fast enough to keep up. And then I noticed we could just make it in under 7 hours if we picked up the pace just a little. My ankles were feeling a little better from all the walking so we decided to go for it.

When we got to the road we had 17 minutes left to finish. Robin took off down the hill at an 8:00 m/m pace. We ran together to the damn and then I tried to get her to go a little faster by pulling a few yards ahead. It seemed to work and we both finished with 2 minutes to spare.

Trail Work

Well I finally made it out to a work party on Cougar. I've been trying to get out to one of SRC's work party's for over a year but my schedule never seemed to match up. I guess I just had to try a little harder.

I went out to the trailhead a little early so I could get a 3 mile run in before we started. Everything seemed to be working well but I know I need a little more recovery after the craziness of doing the Slam. I ran 2 miles on Thursday which worked out a lot of rust and kinks in my legs. I also figured there'd be a lot of standing around a waiting for something to do. Luckily I was wrong about the standing around part. If there's work to be done, I don't like standing around just talking about it.

There were about 8 volunteers that started at 10 am. None of us had any idea what we'd be doing when we got there. It turned out to be a pretty good workout. We used wheel barrels to haul gravel about 1/2 mile to a section of trail that needed repair by Coal Creek Falls. It was pretty tough pushing them up some parts of the trail and even harder holding the wheel barrels back on the steep downhill sections of trail.

We finished the repairs about 2 pm. It's good thing because we were slowing down a lot at the end.

Anybody out there that hasn't done this should try a little harder to get out and give a little back. If you can't make a work party then volunteer at a local race. Even one race a year from each of us would be more than enough. You'd be amazed on how much fun you can have working your tail off. And what other time do you get 4 hours of chatting with fellow runners without having to worry about tripping on a log.

Washington Slam

According to my research there have been 5 finishers of both CCC and Plain in the same year.

	Washington Slam
	Name	CCC Time	Plain Time	Total Time
2007	Arthur Martineau	25:05:00	31:51:00	56:56:00
2006	Darrell Jenson	21:58:00	32:15:00	54:13:00
2006	Chris Perry	28:44:00	34:46:00	63:30:00
2005	Chris Perry	26:55:00	33:54:00	60:49:00
2002	Tom Hayes	22:59:00	32:00:00	54:59:00
2002	Liz McGoff	23:27:00	32:00:00	55:27:00

48 + CCC 100 + Plain 100 = 50

Well I did it. I finished Plain plus about 3 bonus miles in 31:51.


Thanks go to my "nascar" crew. Shawn, Rob, Steve, and Jay. They changed my wheels, gassed me up and restocked my pack in under 30 minutes.


Plain is just plain tough. If you run smart and prepare yourself, you too can finish under the 36 hour cut-off. But you’re really going to have to want it.
The highlights of the course are:
More dust than you can imagine. It will get everywhere. Be prepared for blisters and rashes. It’s like the really fine ash in the bottom of your fireplace. There actually is ash on the trail from a forest fire. I could tell because it was a different color.
The hills seem to go up forever and down forever. Get your glute’s, quads, and IT’s in shape. You’ll need them. I don’t remember any flat sections.
Extremely beautiful scenery and views, but don’t expect to see any of it. If you look up you will fall down. The trails are wonderfully maintained by the people who use them most, Motorcyclists. They’re not designed for feet.
The trail is extremely varied. There are wide dusty trails, narrow dusty trails, narrow dusty troughs just wide enough for your foot, dusty motorcycle “whoopty de do’s” or upside down moguls for you skiers, some fire service roads, some rock fields, some really nice shaded forest trails, some really hot burned out forest trail, and more switchbacks then Stephen Hawking could count (he wanted to study Mathematics but Oxford didn’t have it so he studied Physics instead).
And of course no aid or course markings, if it was easy what would be the point?

Here are the highlights of my race.

It was dark, and a little chilly at the start. Within 2 miles I could no longer see any headlamps in front of me or behind. Scratch plan A of following someone who knew the course. ;-)
The 7.5 miles up to where the trail starts is pretty runnable but I probably should have walked more.
The Hi Yu trail was harder than I expected. Some sections were more of a scramble than a chin scrapper. When I got down off the ridge and into the meadows near the Guard Station all the leaves were glistening with frost. It looked pretty cool.
If you are not in a hurry, stop and have a snack at the top of Klone Peak. It’s a 360 degree view. Nice!
I pushed hard down from the Klone peak turn off to the Entiat River, pretty much all downhill. 13.59 miles in 2:29, that’s less than 5.5 mph. It sure seemed like I was going a lot faster than that.
The climb up Signal Peak wasn’t too bad but it was a cool (~85) day. FYI there are many false summits and after you take the turn to the long “downhill” section to Billy Creek, you have to climb another 800 feet as you run up onto the ridge. On this cool day, 100 oz of water turned out to be more than enough to get me up and over Signal Peak and all the way to Billy Creek.
I got to the only crew point / Drop Bag / A/S of the race in 15:09 (8:09pm). My watch had the mileage at 60.47 and a pace of 4 mph which was my pace for the 100 miles of CCC.
I was too full to run so I just walked and jogged after I left my Crew averaging 3.3 mph for the next 7 miles.
About 18 hours into the race (11pm) I went into kind of a funk. My feet hurt, I didn’t have much energy, and time, as I knew it, nearly stopped. I would look at my watch every 30 minutes or so but only 5 or 10 minutes passed and I had only gone a few tenths of a mile. This continued for an hour or so at which point I started to fall asleep. This was on narrow dusty rocky single track trail with switchbacks and cliffs that normally keep me awake. This went on until dawn then I stopped for the 3rd time to empty out my shoes. In the early light of the day I could see that my socks (toes) were also full of dirt.
From Twin Creek to the top of Pond Meadow 18.68 miles took me 7:52. That’s just over 2 1/3 MPH!!! Wow that’s really slow.
Well getting that dust out of my socks helped a lot, combined with day light and the end of the last never ending climb. It was like I was starting a whole new race.
I passed 5 people on the way back down to Twin Creek (Glenn, Roger, Davy, and Beat) and finally Joe (who was way down on Rd 160).
The final 11 miles to Twin creek I averaged a painful, quad tearing pace of 4.8 mph.
I got a little turned around at Goose Creek campground, but it was less than 10 minutes of jogging around to get back on track.
Now for one of the Biggest mistakes of my race. There is a dirt road about ½ way between Goose Creek and Deep Creek. When I came upon it I thought I was at Deep Creek. I was at Deep Creek in the dark and had been running for 30:15! And look there’s my Road to the finish off to the right just like it’s supposed to be. Of course there were no signs, or S&R, and had I looked closer at the area across the road, I would have gone the right way. So I bust out onto the road for the last 1.5 miles to the finish, sprinting a smoking 5 mph! even 6+ mph until my IT said SLOW DOWN. I remember thinking it should be more downhill but I’m almost done. After 1.5 miles right where the finish should have been I round the bend to Deep Creek. What the H%*^, Oh CR*P!! So the volunteers told me to go back the way I came and come back down the trail the right way. Well after a couple minutes of negotiating they let me take the trail back to where I got onto the road and then turn around and come back. I know the trail is longer and more difficult but my feet couldn’t take one more step on that hard road. On the trail I ran passed 6 runners all with a very similar look. What the H%*^!!! As I ran by I briefly told each that I had taken a wrong turn and had to go back. Glenn had just crossed the mystery road when I got to it. I told him what happened, touched the road with my foot and headed back toward the finish. I quickly caught up to and passed Glenn, Michelle, Roger and Beat. I didn’t think I could catch Joe or Davy but I was going to run hard anyway. About a half a mile from Deep Creek I mentally lost it. Pain, stupidity, pain, fatigue, and more pain became more than I could handle silently and I cried out a sort of grunt whimper pout with every step, especially on the downhill’s where my quads and feet really paid the price for my mistake. The S&R check point guys heard me coming into Deep Creek, and they gave me more encouragement and cheers then should be allowed. Now it’s just a mile and a half to the finish, again. And they said that Joe and Davy weren’t moving very fast and that I could catch them. I don’t know if it was true but it got me to give all I could. The thought of not losing my finishing place inspired me for a half a mile or so. I was very emotional out there on that road. I was also a bit dehydrated, ok a lot dehydrated. I had been conserving water; I didn’t want to run out of water before the end but I was drinking it now. I stopped to walk a few paces 4 or 5 times to dry my eyes. I think I was on the verge of a total emotional breakdown or maybe I was in the middle of one. Does someone in the middle of a breakdown know it during the breakdown? I don’t know but my eyes are watery just typing this. … So I did pass Joe, I think he was content on just walking it in. But I didn’t catch up to Davy. Just finishing this race was enough. It didn’t matter to me, after I finished, that I went from 5th to 6th place.

I want to thank Jennifer, my wife, who said, “Just run it. You know you want to. I’ll figure out the kids.” She had already made plans to be away for the weekend.
And thanks to Chris and Tom for having such an infamous race. It was great!
And thanks and congrats to all the Finishers, and S&R, and Volunteers. Everybody is always so nice, it’s not natural. If feel like I don’t deserve to be part of the group.

And thanks again to my crew, you guys were awesome. I felt like a rock star!