This is from September 2016. Newly found, recently published.

I was having a conversation with my daughter about time in the car driving back from a hike at Mt. Hood recently.  She was asking how long it was going to take to get home, “you said 15 minutes … 15 minutes ago”. I told her that sometimes time feels slow and sometimes time feels fast.

When I was running the day prior on the Pacific Crest Trail back to Frog Lake from Timothy Lake I was closing in on mile 30 or 34 (my watch was misbehaving) and I was trying to estimate time-to-car and time to a cold drink and the sliced watermelon that I had in the cooler waiting for me. The trail seemed to just keep going.

There was an aspect of expectation (I’m close to eating watermelon), and the unknown of distance remaining to get to the watermelon. I was running hard, driving and pressing as one does when the finish is close… and time stretched. So much that I looked across the tree line and thought I saw the road. There was no road.  I stopped briefly, my heart pounding, and strained my ears in the direction of the the road. Just the wind, and then silence.  Just once I second-guessed direction and distance and considered that maybe I had taken the wrong trail, maybe I would never reach the road; that maybe I’m another 30 miles to the next road.  I reached my hand back to lift the underside of my hydration bladder, took stock of my remaining rice cakes and concluded that yes, I could run another 30 miles to reach a different road.

In 2 weeks I’m running Mountain Lakes 100, my first 100 mile ultramarathon. My taper has started and I’m beginning to reduce my weekly mileage from a high of 70 miles and a very deliberate periodization schedule of increasing mileage and intensity.

As I walked around downtown Portland eating a burritto as I power-walked, I concluded that training for an ultramarathon is like having a second job. I also concluded that I’m ready. I’ve worked hard, I’m as fit as I’ve ever been. I’ve been waking most mornings not sore or tired from the previous day’s workout, but feeling relaxed and rested.

This is the plan that I followed:

And this is the reality of how those workouts fit into the bigger plan:

As the day gets closer and my recovery times hover near 0 hours (from upwards of 90 hours following my hard workouts), I’m keeping in mind to simply trust the time I’ve put in – the hours on the trails, the lunchtimes spent in the gym lifting, foam rolling instead of eating dessert.

I’m beginning to get into the mental state necessary to run 100 miles. I’m thinking about the words sanguine and sisu. I’m thinking about The Art of War and the 9 situations: specifically #9 – Desperate Ground and creating a situation where you put yourself on desperate ground. Deliberately.

I’m looking forward to going to that place where you just dig and dig. I’m thinking about sitting with the pain… and then letting it go. Forcing a smile to reset.  And I feel gratitude that I’m able to attempt this effort.

 

 

 

 

Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am-a reluctant enthusiast… a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to your body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards

– Edward Abbey

I was cleaning out some old files that I had copied into Google Drive a long long time ago this weekend and came across the following blog post. I think this must have been from about 2001 or 2002. What strikes me is how little I’ve changed in what I do and what I like to write about.

Is it really so amazing though? Maybe our identities are fixed from an early age. And as we grow older they become more calcified, we become who we always were. And yet there is a sense of the bittersweet. I was writing about Tom, our friendship and our travels – and yet I was striking out on some new path that I’ve been on for a long time.

Here’s the post:

I have been talking about going for a big run at M. for the past three years I think.  From the time that Tom and I rode there a few years ago, during which we endured a mind-expanding suffer fest, I witnessed firsthand the intensity and agro nature of the trail running beast.  At a certain creek crossing [which we were forced to ford – See Massanutten trip report] we weren’t standing more than four feet from a runner who happened upon the same creek crossing – with total intensity in his eyes – without pausing a second, he quickly forded the stream and was gone again through the trees.  He didn’t even see us his concentration was so great. It was amazing, from that moment on, I knew I had to get back out there and do a bubba run in the mountains. Well, this past weekend my goal was achieved.

I broke in my new trail running shoes, Salomon Flagstaff’s, which are closer to running shoes and not as beefy as maybe some of the east coast trails would require, but they did well, and my feet aren’t sore one day after. I also purchased a new ultimate directions ‘Gemini’ hip pack.  This piece of gear really saved me.

I was able to fit all of the emergency gear that I felt I needed to carry:

• Two 20 oz. bottles of cytomax
• Knee warmers
• Shell jacket
• Emergency space blanket (in case I needed to sleep out)
• TP
• Gel flask
• 3 powerbars
• polypro gloves

As I started up the fire road from Elizabeth’s Furnace campground, the sun was shining, it was very warm and I was feeling great – actually, my hip was hurting from carrying this big-ass pack.  But I was trucking – I started off slow and eased into a steady pace.  I started thinking that maybe I should have carried a headlamp or something, I really didn’t know how long I was going to be out for.  I was running a loop, so I needed to get back to the pavement (about a ¼ mile from the car) before dark.  This worried me a little bit.  I knew I would be moving significantly slower on foot than on bike – how slow I really didn’t know.  I estimated that it would probably take me about 4-5 hours, I planned to cut out some of the side trails that Tom and I rode the previous weekend and stick to the most straightforward loop in the interest of time and safety.

I kept in mind ultra running articles that I had read about walking the steep hills and running down the other side, so when I felt like the grade was getting too steep and I was on the verge of blowing up, I backed off and kind of fast walked up the hills.  It took me a lot longer to hit the singletrack than I thought it would.  As I entered the woods from the fire road, the sky darkened and clouds began to roll in.  I thought to myself that If necessary, lighting, thunder, hailstorms, I could hit the next fire road and then turn around and high tail it back to the car.  I would still have 6-7 mile run in.

When I got through the first section of singletrack (it’s much easier to hop creeks without a mountain bike!) the sun came out again and I hit the main fire road that runs up to Signal Knob.  This road has a nice gravel, dirt surface, is closed to cars, and has an even, steady grade.  I was able to make great time on this road.  I stayed on the fire road across from the reservoir and continued to within one mile of Signal Knob.  Here I took the white-blazed trail to the right that leads over the mountain to Elizabeth’s Furnace.  This was only about .6 of a mile, but was probably the steepest, gnarliest part of the run.  Loose rocks, and really, really steep.  I walked most of this trail, thinking how much it would suck to push a mountain bike up it.

Just as I got to the ridge, I looked across the valley, and sure enough, I could see the rain moving toward me like a wide gray curtain hanging over the next ridge.  I just wanted the rain to hold off until I got over the ridge and started down the other side.  The gods must have heard me and the rain held off until just as I crested the ridge and was about 200 yards down the other side.  The rain was cold and I had a flashback to my Kenosha pass ride where I was benighted and found myself in dire straits.  It started slowly and then halted, only to pick up with greater intensity.  I wasn’t wearing a shirt until now and quickly decided against pushing on for a few more minutes.  I stopped, unclipped my hip pack and quickly threw on my polypro shirt and shell.  I was sweating and getting rain soaked, but I knew that I wouldn’t have any hypothermia issues, I was about 5-6 miles from the car at this point, and knew the trial back.

Most of the trial back down the mountain was runnable and I made great time.  The rain picked up and then abated and I was able to remove my shell and keep running.  I finished both bottles of cytomax at this time and finished off the last swig with a large shot of powergel from my flask.

I lost the trail right near the pavement – running about a quarter of a mile toward the Signal Knob parking area and away from where I was parked.  I suddenly realized that the trail didn’t look or feel right and backtracked until I found the split.  Once I hit the pavement I kicked it up again, feeling great and double-timed it back to the car.  2:37:02, much faster than I thought, and I felt much better than I thought I would. I’m going to try to push through to maybe a three hours plus run soon.

Chris Rivard, 2002

One of the best things for me to improve in alpine touring are transitions. Being quick in a transition will allow you to do more laps or get out of bad weather in a hurry. No one likes standing around when weather is moving in, or waiting for someone to re-pack their exploded pack.

Yesterday I skied from Government Camp to just below the top of the Magic Mile lift. I was planning to go to the top of Palmer but mid-way up Palmer to the summit was in the clouds and dark skies were moving in from the East.

Going out solo takes some pressure of moving faster or slower than you would with a group, or stopping to snap photos or take a snack break. I was planning to put in the ear buds and listen to some music on the way up – but it never became important to stop and I just kept climbing.

The other thing that I like about going solo is that you can try new things and dial in your systems with little risk of slowing down a larger party. Yesterday I did a few things that I like that worked well for me:

•  I carried a Salomon soft flask in my pocket – it’s about 500mL and fit perfectly in my shell pants pocket. It’s soft enough (silicon) that I never felt it and as I drank it collapsed down to palm-sized. It was great having water when I needed it and not worrying about a bladder in the pack (that it exploded or is leaking or freezing).
• I just wore compression shorts under my shell pants. I have been wearing a pair of Marmot 3/4 fleece pants as a first layer but they’ve been way too hot for skinning up. My knees were completely exposed under the shell pants, but never got cold. And with my side zips open my legs stayed cool while I was skiing uphill.
• I took my GPS (Garmin CSX60) yesterday and marked a waypoint where the trail back to Govy cuts into the trees – I was worried last time I skied this trail that I’d miss the turn on the way back down and end up somewhere at the bottom of a lift with no pass.
• My upper layer system is working well. A thin sleeveless poly shirt and a long-sleeved zip-T over that, a buff as a headband with the top of my head exposed to shunt heat off as I’m going up. When I got to treeline I added a hooded softshell and pulled the buff into a balaclava. I also switched my thin gloves for my warmer leather Kinco gloves.

I had a good lunch break – good being very fast. I carried my puffy in the outside shove-it pocket on my pack and was able to take it out without unbuckling any straps on my pack. My lunch was in my lid so all I had to do was pull my puffy out, put it on and grab my lunch to eat. It was quick, warm and I only opened my pack to take out my tea which was on top.

Not so good was my turnaround transition. It was very windy above treeline when I decided to turn around and I was trying to find a shelter behind a boulder to take my climbing skins off and put on my helmet. Additionally, there was a huge dark cloud coming toward me and I started to worry that I was going to be in a whiteout momentarily. I was just outside the boundary of Timberline, but the thought of skiing in a whiteout had me freaking out a little bit. The freaking out caused me to tramp around in a circle trying to find the sheltered aspect of a huge boulder. Not sure what I could have done differently except remain calm, turn away from the wind and not let go of anything (gloves, skins, poles).

The last thing I’ll mention is the percentage of time it takes to ski uphill vs. downhill. I’m having a hard time calculating uphill to downhill ratios. I could have continued to climb for another 45 minutes and still been back to the car and home for dinner. This is the second time I’ve done this route and I’m always amazed at how early it is by the time I get back to the car.

All in all a good day in the mountains – and good tests of old and new systems.

 

PS – What’s in that pack? (It’s an Osprey Variant 37):

+ puffy, 1 liter vacuum bottle and lunch.

Medium-long run yesterday –  15 miler Council Crest loop. It’s a ridge, so if there is weather the wind is often ripping through the trees – there was some kind of generator running at the radio tower yesterday. I touched the geo marker at the top and then bugged out to get back in the trees and out of the wind. My hat blew off a couple of times before I tightened it down. Took my Salomon vest along with a fleece hat, gel flask and a 500ml soft flask of water. This time of year the availability of water in the city fountains is sporadic – I think if the forecast is anywhere near freezing, the city will turn them off.

Getting extremely antsy to get on the snow. I may try to steal away in the next few days with the racing snowshoes and get in a snowshoe run somewhere around Govy… unless the girls want to go skiing. Skiing with my girls trumps all.

Apogée – Memorial film for Andreas Fransson and JP Auclair from Bjarne Salén on Vimeo.

I’m proud of this. It was extremely difficult. A good read on the subject.

I have this push-up app on my phone – if you follow the 6 week program, you’re supposed to be able to do 100 push-ups in a row. I reset it three times to week 4, because it got really hard beyond that. 280 push-ups in one session hard. I make the kids lunches in the evening for the next day … and in between cutting crust off pbj’s, I knock out a bunch of push-ups.

I got to the end of the 6 week program last week sometime. So today I just reset it to week 4 and started over. But this time I put on my pack. In my pack is a 50m rope, my climbing harness, shoes, chalk bag, and old grigri, my ATC and a few biners. I don’t know how much it weighs. It made it kinda hard. Fun but really hard. Same.

That’s what I did this morning. Then I went out to the garage where I installed a pull-up bar. It’s just a piece of 3/4 black pipe that I got from Home Depot lag bolted into the wall across a 6ft span. I got this belt thing… with a chain on it. And I’m trying to find out how much weight I can pull-up with so that I can do no more than 5 pull-ups. With no weight – I do a lot of pull-ups. With 20lbs on, I can still do a bunch. Today I chained up to 30lbs. and locked-off after 5, then took it down slow back to the ground. Closer. I’ll try 35lbs next time.

At lunch I went for a run. I’ve intentionally slowed my runs down. I found that tempo runs are hard on my body – okay and necessary to do sometimes…but sparingly. It’s fun to go really fast, but it’s actually harder to go slow. I’m trying to keep my heart rate in zone 1. For me it’s under 144bpm – conversational pace. Agonizingly slow. Audiobook pace. Today I tried something new and only breathed through my nose. And kept my mouth shut. A good policy oftentimes. If you can run and nose-breath – then you can eat and drink and run at the same time…for a really really long time. So that’s what I did today.

Training. Training. Training.
Taking this energy and focusing it. Making lists. Winter is coming. Stoking the fire.