The word for the day is NO!

Hello Kids. This blog posting is brought to you by the word No and its close affiliate can’t. Side effects of this post may include crying, whining, bitching, loss of motivation and hair loss. Do not try to read this posting while operating heavy machinery.

NO – I did not get into Massanutten via the lottery; neither did JD so I will not be pacing either. On the brighter side I will put my name on the waiting list and have compiled a short list of late May / early June non lottery based Ultras that I am interested in. Will pick one sometime over the winter.

NO – There is no race report for the Egg Nog Jog. Running this race seemed doomed from the start. First friend (and ride) Gregoire could not go as he had to go to Paris France for a job interview. That’s a good thing although I am jealous that he keeps getting to go to Paris. Then we found out that Kim’s dad was able to come for a visit from out west that weekend. This is also a good thing as we don’t get to see him very often. So we shelved the race but had a much better time with family anyway. I would tell you all about it but is very hush hush.

NO – I didn’t get my full training miles in last week. I ended up too hung over after the Longboat Christmas party to run doubles on Thursday. Thanks to John and Toni for hosting again this year and to Roger for buying me extra beers, which was just what I needed. I find training in December very difficult but still managed to get 100k in last week. I will be happy with that.

NO – I didn’t win the lottery (the kind that they give you cash as a prize), I didn’t find a bag of money walking home and didn’t fart diamonds (I did fart however…. Lots). Opps to much information.

BAH HUMBUG

lottery whining... next .... lets try that again ... revising race history

Okay so I am not going to whine about the lottery for Western States. I didn't get in and since JD didn't get in either I will not be pacing it. It was a long shot and I knew going in that it was not likely the first time around. No problem I will keep putting my name in every year until they get sick of seeing it and I get lucky enough to get my ticket pulled. Turns out that I am only luck in love not in lotteries.

As a fall back both JD and I have put our name into the Massanutten Mountain Trail 100 lottery. The drawn is this coming weekend. I hear that its kind of hilly and rocky so just about perfect. I have much better odds of getting in and its a really damn good alternative to WS. I am also making a short list of non lottery alternatives for the spring. Suggestions? The one downfalls of this one is it will mess with my Toronto Marathon plans so if I do get in it will be an earlier marathon for me in the spring.

Last weeks training went really well as I built my long run up to 33km and got 113k in for the week. This week is a much needed and deserved mileage reduction week which works out perfectly with the Egg Nog Jog this weekend.

Speaking of which memory is such a fickle and funny thing. In my last blog I lamented on how I had a bad race at the Jog last year and had not planned to run it again. Strange because when I went back and read my race review from last year I said that "I would run this race again anytime". Weird... this is your brain .... this is your brain on running. Its a good thing I am writing this stuff down because it appears that I might be going senile already.

4000K in the bank ... Last Months Training, Egg Nog Jog coming up.

I officially surpassed 4000k, 2500 miles for you non metric people last Sunday. That pushes me past my running totals for last year with still a month to go. Not as many miles as I had hoped but I lost some time due to injuries so I am very happy with it.

November ended up being a decent training month for me. That in spite of my super cement legs and crunchy ankle….. mmmm… crunchy. I slowly have been building my mileage back up from scratch and ended up getting in 400k for the month. More importantly I am finally starting to feel somewhat normal again with most of my easy runs starting to fall back into my regular pace. Not quite there yet but instead of one good run a week its becoming 3 or 4. I am looking forward to putting some harder workouts back into the mix in the coming weeks.

November was tough for me. Behaving myself is not one of my strong suits. I managed to not race in November. That’s right you heard me, NO racing in November. You have to go back to February 2009 to find the last month I went raceless. Don’t worry though that’s not going to last. Next weekend it will be off to Terra Cotta for the Egg Nog Jog. It will be hilly, it will be cold and we will race the ever popular 10.8 distance because as you all know 10k is just too damn short.

Last year after I finished this race I swore I would never run it again. We ran in horrible weather conditions and the course was, well lets just say it was challenging. Okay actually it was kind of the winter version of hell. You know the saying when hell freezes over? Well it did last year in Terra Cotta. Besides that it was a great race. I bitched and moaned about never doing it again but then in the end all it took was my friend Gregoire telling me he had registered and asking me if I was running it to “convince me” to sign up. Thanks Gregoire? I decided to spread the misery around by getting Kim to sign up as well. Should be a blast, I noticed its sold out again this year.

Ankle is still not right but slowly getting better. Its rarely an issue during runs but I do feel it when I get up over 25k if I am running a hilly route. So of course I have been sure to do all my long runs on the Boston Special route in order to get in as many hills as possible.

There is less then a month left of coaching the Running Room Marathon clinic at Rosedale. I will be hauling my ass over to the High Park Running Room to start doing a marathon clinic there at the end of January. With this location being right in my normal running hood I am going to be able to bring all kinds of torturous workouts and routes to these unsuspecting runners. Crap maybe I shouldn’t put that on my blog some of them might notice. Yeah that’s the ticket, don’t be afraid kiddies sign up now.

Tonight I will be headed out to High Park to run with Longboat as we start up the new training cycle. It’s the return of the every popular Frisky Fridays. I have a feeling this one is going hurt. I expect its going to involve some hard running and me with no fast twitch muscle fibers left after a season of ultra running.

I will be glued to my computer tomorrow morning watching to see if my name gets pulled from the lottery for Western States. I think the email they sent me said I have like a 1 in a gazillion chance. I have made a side deal with JD that I will pace him if he gets in and he will do the same for me. Keep those fingers crossed.

Muddy times ..... Training update .... Running Room clinics and coaching

So this week Kim got some awesome pictures or maybe that's awful pictures depending on your point of view that another runner took of her at Haliburton. I remember that it was pretty muddy but had managed to blot it all until now. Anyway here is the photographic evidence and for fun now just pretend its pitch black running by headlamp in the middle of the night with only another 30 miles or so to get to the end of the 100 miler. Talk about fun times.



Last week I ended up pushing my weekly mileage to just over 100k. This week all is still going well and I should be close to 110. I managed to get in 30k last Sunday and my legs felt decent afterwords. Then on Tuesday I went out for 14k easy and could have thrown myself a party once I got done. For the first time in months my easy run felt really easy at my normal pace instead of tired at a slower then normal pace. Could my legs actually be starting to feel normal again? Could it be? I am not going to say yes just yet but all the signs are encouraging.

I have been coaching a marathon clinic at the running room and we are just heading into week 10. It has been interesting to say the least. I have mostly enjoyed it but the clinic is very small and so sometimes there are not very many people to actually coach. Hey did you hear that tumbleweed roll by? No sorry I couldn't hear it over the chirping of the crickets. Of the people that are out regularly there are some good runners and they all are a lot of fun. Some of them even listen to me and think I have a clue about what I am talking about. That is cool, scary and hilarious all at the same time. The clinic ends in January (that's why its small with it being off season, honest its not because of me I swear). Currently I dont have another clinic in the spring as they have a regular marathon coach as opposed to me the irregular coach. Hopefully something will come up tho but if not I will just focus more on Longboat.

This weekend I also start my first classes to begin working towards my National Coaching Certification. Once I get certified they will have to listen to me Mummhahaa!!

Oh ya I did end up throwing my name into the lottery for Western States. With only a 1 in 5 chance of getting in I figure it could take a few years.

Training is a pain the the _________ !

Back to normal training and as we all know training can be a real pain in the ______ ! No not in the ass, as much as some of you want me to say that. In fact I love a nice consistent training schedule. Training has almost never lead to a pain the ass or felt like a pain in the ass unless you count the one time I slipped on ice and landed on my rear. Now that was some pain.

Unfortunately training can lead to pain in just about every other part of the body. Oh my aching back, quad, neck, finger, ear, nose hair are just some of the normal background noise you might hear in our household and thats with Kim not saying anything at all.

On the bright side my feet are getting back to normal and I have begun to rebuild my base while at the same time desperately attempting to not sign up for any races. Its been hard but I managed to take a pass on horror hill and the Hamilton Marathon. I also didn't sign up for the 100 miler at Creemore next week although I desperately wanted to and decided not to run the cross country provincials this coming weekend. I did register for Robbie Burns at the end of January and Around the Bay at the end of March.

Training is going well and I am quickly getting back to 100k weeks. That said its been almost all easy running, tempo and speed work will come soon enough. I am still suffering with a sore ankle that seems to be taking forever to heal. Doesn't seem to get better or worse whether I run or not. Think I will give it a few more weeks and then if its still gimpy I will be forced to see the dreaded doctor.

Should I jump into the lottery for Western States or not. That is really the big question thats on my mind lately.

Vulture Bait 50k race report .... OUSER final standings

The Vulture Bait 50K on October 16^th in London Ontario is the last of the OUSER races this year. It also spelled my last Ultra for the season. Usually I give a long drawn out blow by blow race report but this time I decided to keep it brief.

Why? Because I am one tired out Ultra runner right now. Even a week or more later I am still too tired to write for pages and pages. Did you buy that? Yeah didnt think so. Okay I am tired but thought I would keep this short because of how the race unfolded for me. I killed my feet, my ankle and my legs at Haliburton and Ottawa. They had not recovered for Vulture Bait (they still havent recovered). My thinking going into the race was just to put in the Kms and enjoy the trail. That plan made total sense until I got to the race and started to hear about how fast a course it was. I began to think that maybe I would run it hard. I could run it hard, that would be okay.

We got to the race early Saturday morning a nd picked up our race kits. Kim was running as well but was “only” doing 25k. Thats amazing seeing how she had run the Chicago Marathon only 6 days earlier. See that craziness is contagious, Kim seems to have caught some of mine. We also ran into Kinga and Stephan who had been kind enough to pick up my Run for the Toad race kit (I DSNed that one), once again thanks guys.

Before you knew it we were at the starting line and off we went. It was a nearly perfect day for running and right away I started to toy with the idea of running this thing hard. That lasted for exactly 11km. My mind was willing but my body was not and as I chugged along the trails I began to question who had poured cement into my shoes. Man my feet and legs were so heavy, unbelievable really. I decided I would except this and just enjoy the run.

This course is very fast (not for me on this day though) and the 50k is made up by running the 25k loop twice. The rest of the first 25k went much as expected from this point on with the exception of my feet really starting to hurt due to the damaged and lack of skin caused by previous races and a RIVER CROSSING. Thats right a river crossing because wet feet are just what I needed at that point in time. By the time I made it to the end of the first loop my feet were &*$#ed. I was forced to sit and deal with them at this point. Time to make the donuts. I lost about 8 minutes or so as I popped a couple blisters, applied some second skin and change into dry socks. Then it was off again.

Second loop went much like the first as I ran alone for the first 5k until finally catching up to Maryka. I had run about 20k with her at Haliburton so I figured I could make her really sick of me by running with her for the rest of the loop. I hopefully didn't drive her too crazy as we made our way around the course. I know that I was making her nervous though as she ran in front and during the last 10k or so I must have stumbled on roots at least 5 times. Somehow I managed not to fall once on the loop, don't have any idea how that happened. We managed to pass a number of people in the last hour of the race and before long we were headed into the finish line. I ended up coming in a little under 6 hrs, Kim on the other hand killed her race doing 25k in 4hrs which is a trail PR for her. If not for wonky marathon legs she would have been much faster.

OUSER AWARDS

With the official end of the ultra season the Ontario ultra series gave out there end of year awards. I managed to hang on to 2^nd place in my age category (40-49) which is based on the points from you top 6 races. I also ended up 3^rd male overall for total points. I got a cool plaque for the age group and nothing for 3^rd overall cause lets be honest people third overall is really just the second overall loser HA. Man that sounded kind of harsh when it was not meant to be at all. See the final standings here.

I also was one of around 15 runners to get the Norm Patenaude Award which is given to runners that complete 7 or more ultras in the series. I ended up running 11 out of 12.

Also want to give a big congratulations to Ken Moon who won the Ultra Cup for most overall points by a male and Laurie McGrath who won the female division for like the millionth year in a row. Okay maybe its only 7 times in a row but still.

I am planning on spending the next month recovering and building my base back again. Time to catch up on some sleep.

Ottawa 24 hours on the track race report

September 24th / 25th was the Sri Chinmoy 24 hour race around the track. It took place in Ottawa on a really great track at the Louis Riel Dome. The track was a standard 400 meter indoor track so no worries about heat, rain, mud, uphills, downhills, bears, sleet or snow for this race.

I really had no idea of what to expect when it came to this race. I have done a number of races this year where I was on the course for 24 hours or longer but they were all trail races. This was to be something completely different as I attempted to run around in circles (literally) for a full day. As a track Ultra virgin I when into this race feeling good about the physical effort that would be required but nervous about the mental challenge that running the same 400 meters again and again might present. I got to say in the end I was pretty clueless.

Prerace
As those of you that follow this blog know I ran the 100 miler at Haliburton just 2 weeks before this race. In the process I completely demolished my feet as well as straining my left ankle. As I got ready to head to Ottawa both of those conditions had improved but not healed completely. My ankle was still a little tender and my feet while not blistered were still a little raw in places. To be honest 2 days before this race I was still not sure I would be healthy enough to go but by Friday morning I decided to give it a shot.

The plan was to try and run 160km so that is how I would pace the race however I would be happy with 140+. The real factor would be how my feet held up, if they were an issue then all bets would be off.

For most distance races like this Kim and I will take the day before off so that we can drive up, get accommodations and relax but for Ottawa we just couldn’t. That meant that we would not be able to start the 5 hour drive until Friday evening and even then it would be in Toronto evening traffic which is not exactly fun or fast. By the time we go home, packed up the car and got out on the road it was already 8pm.

The drive up went well but slow and we didn’t get into Ottawa until close to 2 AM. Both of us were struggling to stay awake and so when we pulled into the parking lot of the Dome we decided that with less then 6 hours before the start of the race there was little point in getting a room that we would use for 4 hours or so. We opted instead to just sleep in the car. We had a tent but it seemed like way to much effort to set it up.



After a very restful (HA .. as if) sleep we slithered out of the car around 7 AM. Hmmm that’s strange there were still no other cars here. Kim had been told that the Dome would be open at 6 AM. It was after some map consultation that we realized that we were at the wrong dome and that the actual place we were supposed to be was a bit further down the road. In our very sleepy state the night before we had just figured that there could only be one dome on the same road. Man talk about being a dummy. We headed farther down the road and found the actual race venue around the next corner.

We spent the next little while drinking coffee and setting up our tent and chair. The track looked great but I discovered it also looked bigger when its inside. Soon each runner meet their official counter, we had some final directions, a group photo and it was time to race.



The race
Not much to report from early on in the race. I tried to make sure my pace was the proper speed for a 160km run. I found that I had to really work on staying slow. I also just kept a very close eye on my hydration, salt intake and food. It was easy to loss track of this as you circled around and around. The first 50k went really well and I was right on pace and feeling good at that point. The mental fatigue I had expected just was not there as I found myself chatting to different people as I went along. Some people were really flying out around the track as there were a lot of really good runners. Laurie McGrath lapped me so many times that we practically had an ongoing conversation.



Kim stayed up until this point and then left to go do a long run on the canals in downtown Ottawa as I continued to circle. I managed to hit the 80km / 50 mile mark at just over 10 hours which was again right on pace. I felt okay but was begin to have issues with my feet. The areas that had been in the process of healing from Haliburton were now beginning to blister. I took 10 minutes at just after 50 miles to lance and drain a number of growing blisters and apply some newskin.





It was also at this point that I made my first appearance on the leader board in 7th place (men) and by 85km had moved to 6th and I was still running well even with my blisters. Unfortunately somewhere just before I hit 90km I began to feel pain in my previously injured ankle. Not bad pain but it was there. Now as everyone that runs long distances knows the best thing to do when you have pain is to run through, it so I did.

The blisters continued their growth over the next 10km despite repeatedly stabbing them with sharp pins while at the same time the small pain in my ankle continued to grow. I hit 100 km in 13 hrs, still right on pace for 160 but now I was aware that I was slowly heading into deep trouble. Soon after this point my ankle became incredibly painful and by hour 14 I was no longer able to run. Any type of pressure greater then a ginger walk became impossible. Continuing to run no longer became a mental challenge. It became a physical impossibility.



At that point I did what every good runner does. No I didn’t quit. No I didn’t cry, okay at least not where others could see me. I started walking and I keep walking. I walked slowly, very very slowly as that was all my ankle would allow but I walked. I figured I am here on the track and it’s the middle of the night so what the heck else was there to do. It was frustrating but round and round I walked that damn track and my blisters continued to grow. They grew so big that I should have given each of them their own name before they demanded it. How big does a blister have to get before it becomes self aware? The more I stabbed and drained them the bigger they got. It was like they were mocking me. No matter though, I keep on going at somewhere around the pace of a dung beetle. Somehow I kept this up until 6:30 am and then my feet would go no farther so I called it a day. Maybe I could have continued for the last hour and a half but I was so slow that I may have only gotten around the track 3 or 4 laps in the time left. There will be no pictures of my feet in this blog posting. I didn’t take any as I found my feet actually too scary to look at.



Post race
Total distance 128km
Place 22/41
2nd mens 40 – 45

After the race they served us up a pretty good breakfast although it was vegetarian (I knew that going in). Then they gave out the awards. Everyone got a photo of themselves running (sorry I cant post it as I haven’t scanned it into the computer), a certificate with their mileage on it and a finishing metal. I also managed to pick 2nd place in my age category.



I actually really liked this race / type of race. It would have been a lot better if I had not been injured but hey that’s the breaks when it comes to running. I didn’t find it a bigger mental challenge then other long races like 100 milers but somewhat different. On the track there is no place to hide.

I will definitely be doing another one of these races in the very near future.

Next up for me is the Vulture Bait 50km on Saturday October 16th.