Moab Red Hot 55k 2012 Race (and other ramblings)

Allison and I headed up to Moab this past weekend so I could run in the super popular, mega fabulous Red Hot 55k trail race. I hadn't run this race before but it garners huge accolades each year so I registered as fast as I could last fall when registration opened. It's a good thing, too, because it filled up in less than 24 hours, I believe. I hadn't gotten in the amount of training I'd hoped to so I went into the race very relaxed and with no pressure on myself at all. This felt great! In fact, I was so relaxed I forgot to pack running socks (I nabbed a pair at Gearheads though.) It was rad...I packed some shoes, running shorts, gloves, arm sleeves, two gels, a flask of EFS liquid shot, visor, sunglasses and a single hand bottle. No drop bag and no aid station planning. I didn't even pay attention to how many aid stations were on the course nor how far apart they were. I was just going for a training run in a scenic location with 200+ friends. Saturday morning dawned clear and quite warm, actually. At the Gemini Bridges TH, the start line for the race, it was in the upper 20s and the sun was out. No wind. Stellar. The race started at 8:00am and enjoyed running up to about mile 12 with Ryan and Susan as well as chatting with a couple of other friends along the way. The pace was pretty relaxed and I was trying to save my legs and feet for later in the race. However, at mile 8 the ball of my right foot starting aching pretty severely. I had worn my La Sportiva X-Country shoes and that was a bad idea for this course. I love those shoes but on a course with lots of rocks and slickrock running, the lack of real cushion on those shoes did me in. I managed to grit it out the rest of the race but I had to stop a few times to massage my foot and toes to get the blood flowing again. I ran a few miles in the middle of the race with Steve Bremner. It was great to converse with him for a bit before I started feeling the miles a bit and had to just zone out with my iPod for the rest of the race. The slickrock running from miles 21 to 25ish were really tough on my feet and legs. Off-camber running that just didn't allow me to get into a groove or any real running cadence. My quads were feeling it. I felt pretty good otherwise, though, taking a pull of my EFS every now and then and washing it down with plain water. I finished in 5:25:17 (39th of 200), reaching my goal of sub-5:30 with some good padding. I was damn beat by the finish, though, and it took me a good 30 minutes of sitting down and drinking chocolate milk before I felt ready to be conversational and jovial again. I guess that means I really did leave it all out there on the course, though, so I'm pleased with that. The post-race scene was great! Soup in bread bowls, music, lots of conversation and beer were in high supply. The afternoon was gorgeous making it great for just hanging out under the sun. I hope to return to this race next year but with some more adequate shoes!

While the race was a blast and I met my goal, the true highlight of the weekend was the tower climb Allison and I did on Friday before the race. We drove up north of Dove Creek, CO, to a camp on Thursday night so we could climb Psycho Tower on Friday. Psycho Tower is a wildly exposed but very moderate desert tower climb and I was psyched to climb it with Allison. So much so, I thoroughly documented it.

The climbing was just plain fun. Not scary, not difficult and way airy. Such a cool little summit way back in the middle of nowhere. Take a look at the movie and let me know what you think if you'd like.

Already falling behind

At the start of this year I was thinking I'd be all on top of blogging, once a week. Well, five weeks into the year and I'm already behind. I think that's a good thing, though. Not that many (any?) people are reading my blog regularly and waiting with baited breath on my next post. And besides, I'm behind on blogging because I've been occupied doing other more exciting things. So yes, a good thing! Last weekend was really very rewarding. It started out on Friday evening with Allison and I having some friends over for frito pies, movies and beer. We watched the encore portion of P2yche, a climbing movie, before watching the movie 50/50. The movie was quite good with a genuine feel to it. And having a big group of friends over for great company was really enjoyable. Makes me want to do it more often. We had hoped to climb Saturday but an unexpected snow storm Friday night dropped 4 to 6 inches of snow thus canceling the climbing. There's never any shortage of fun things to do around here so Bill, Steve and I went and did some backcountry skiing/boarding in the Jemez finding really, really good powder despite having pretty low expectations while driving up there. After all, it hadn't snowed much in the past month. We were pleasantly surprised. So with the snow being so good, I went back up into the Jemez on Sunday with Sam and Josh for a much longer ski tour with more approaching and returning than actual turns but very rewarding because of the work involved. It's been a very busy work at week and I didn't get to run at all until tonight, Thursday, after work. The days are getting longer and this was my first evening post-work run since November. Hooray for longer days and thanks to Tom for getting me out this evening. I'm not bothered by the workload these days, though, it's really been fun work and to really motivate me more, I actually received a decent raise this week despite tight budgets all around. Definitely no complaints! Also, I'm super psyched for a development that has gone down this past week: I'm going to Denali again this June to climb and ski/ride it with friends Aaron, Josh, Sam, Andy and Sarah. We nailed down the details and purchased airfare to Anchorage for a two-week trip in late May/early June. I'm super excited for this trip. A great objective and a wonderful team of great friends. Can't go wrong! It's been nine years since I first climbed Denali and I'm excited to visit the mountain again with more experience and age now.

A photo of me hauling a sled on Denali in May 2003.

First month of 2012 is in the books

Allison climbing "Face Off" (5.12a) at the Overlookfrom BlogPhotos

The week started out a bit frustrating when I discovered my right knee was a bit swollen on Monday morning after an 11 mile fast pavement run Sunday afternoon. Given that, I didn't run all week. So zero miles last week in the running department. But the swelling was gone by Wednesday and it feels fine after 12 miles of running this week so far. The swelling is a symptom of a torn meniscus I know I've had in my right knee since 2007. Not sure where the tear came from but I found out about it after I ran the Hardrock 100 miler in July 2007 and the Leadville 100 three weeks later. By mile 70 of Leadville my knee looked like a cantaloupe. It was a long, slow last 30 miles that night/day. I saw two knee docs after that incident and the first one, Auge, was ready to cut immediately. The second opinion from Dr. Lubowitz of Taos Ortho was more conservative and I went with that. I took it easy for a month or so and hadn't had any issues with my knee since. So I'm hopeful my increased mileage and hard, fast pavement running was the impetus this time and it won't recur any time soon. We'll see. Otherwise, a standard week at work and home. Wednesday was a day to celebrate at work when we completed the migration of all employee email accounts from our cyrus servers to the Exchange servers! Wednesday night was a fun night of bouldering at the SF climbing center. Friday night Allison and I watched Ides of March and found it to be an excellent movie. I had no idea what it was about going into it so it was a complete surprise. Saturday morning enjoyed the unseasonably nice weather with some rock climbing at the Overlook before going home to wait for a new mattress delivery between the hours of 2 and 5pm (that didn't show up until 6:30pm!) It was worth the wait though and we're digging the new mattress.

Nat on "Thorazine Dream" (5.11+)"

Sunday was another fun day of rock climbing at Diablo Canyon near Santa Fe. I'm in full-on projecting mode of "Clovis Hunter" a very cool 5.12b in the Solar Cave there. I gave it three attempts on Sunday falling once above the most difficult crux. And it was a shit-show full of entertaining value for the onlookers. I was trying to clip high on the fifth clip and fumbled with the clip like a complete noobie climber. It must have looked way sketchy for the crowd. Embarrassing. But I gave it 100 percent each time and really enjoyed the climbing. The biggest news is that Allison and I purchased airfare to Spain for two weeks at the start of April. We're psyched! Going to be tourists and check out the new sport climbing mecca of northern Spain. Way excited! Now to work out the rest of the logistics for the trip. Got any suggestions?

Some snow sliding, running, and climbing. A solid week 3.

After the holiday on Monday it was an average day at work on Tuesday with a hearty lunch run of 7.7 miles with Tom before more on-going email migrations at work Tuesday night. Migrations were OK despite some network issues that caused us to restart ~50 migrations (out of ~300). Still, I was home by 8pm. Wednesday I skipped running for lunch and instead went to check out the new snow from Tuesday's storm up at Pajarito Mountain with Amy. We were pleasantly surprised by the 6 to 8 inches of new snow on the Townsight run and vowed to return the next day for lunch too. Wednesday night I got my plastic climbing on down at the Santa Fe Climbing Center. Allison is taking a 10-week training-for-climbing class down there on Monday and Wednesday nights so I've been trying to get down there once a week with her. I'm not a fan of the roped climbing there but the bouldering is really quite fun and a good workout so I've been enjoying doing that. Thursday morning I was motivated enough by the snow at Pajarito to get up early and head up for a Dawn Patrol lap with Tom and Sarah. It's always a bit difficult to roll out of bed early but once I'm up there, I'm always very happy I motivated. Thursday's reward was great with an incredible sunrise as we neared the top of our 1,000' ascent.

Tom at sunrise during Dawn Patrol Thursday. From BlogPhotos

Amy carving a lunch lap turn. From BlogPhotos

Friday I went on a solo run to try to run Santa Fe Baldy. I've done this run the past two Januarys and wanted to keep the streak going. However, I was a week late for ideal running conditions and only made it ~4 miles to the meadow called Puerto Nambe before being stymied by loads of new snow from Monday/Tuesday. I tried to push on but the post-holing was just too frustrating and slow. I even tried some crawling on the snow surface to avoid post-holing but doing that in minimal running clothing wasn't very pleasant nor efficient. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful day and I still ended up with 8 miles and ~2,000' vertical of activity out of it.

My crawling tracks in Puerto Nambe. From BlogPhotos

The shortened trip up SF Baldy afforded me more shopping time in Santa Fe so I finally purchased a new Cal King mattress to replace our aging, sagging mattress. It was pretty ballsy to purchase a mattress without Allison giving it some test laying but that's how I roll. I'm pretty confident I know what she likes in a mattress and I hate burning up time shopping for things like this so I just went in, negotiated a bit and got 'er done. It gets delivered next Saturday. Ironically I had the best night of sleep I've had in a long time that night on our current mattress. Man I slept well; it was awesome. Friday night I ended up bouldering at the Santa Fe Climbing Center again for a few hours with a great, fun group of people while Allison had her "Monday makeup session" (since Monday was a holiday). Allison, Nat and I went climbing down at Diablo Canyon outside of Santa Fe on Saturday meeting up with Amy, Aaron, Claudia and Hagen. The day started out beautiful and warm and slowly got colder as the clouds and wind picked up. Still, it was a very productive and enjoyable day of climbing with Allison, Nat and I all sending routes we hadn't sent before in the Solar Cave. Allison and I both sent Lucy (5.12a) while Nat sent the super fun Clovis Hunter (5.12b). Amy and Aaron finished establishing a new two-pitch 5.12a route called Icarus and both of them then promptly sent the route. It looks very cool and I'm excited to try to climb it the next time we can get down there. And I managed to get a few pretty good photos thanks to the decent cloud cover.

Nat on Clovis Hunter at Diablo. From BlogPhotos

Sunday was crazy windy in Los Alamos for much of the morning so we did some chores around the house until around noon when Allison took Bill's dogs for a walk around the neighborhood and I went for a saucy 11 mile run that felt fast by my standards. I was encouraged by running a decent-for-me pace and still feeling quite good even though it was only 11 miles. I'm hoping to get out for a run of twice that length this coming weekend to see how my legs are feeling in anticipation for the Moab Red Hot 55k race in a month. We wrapped up the weekend with a pizza and beer session at Bill's while watching the NFL NFC Championship Conference Playoff game between the 49ers and the Giants. I was pulling for the 49ers and they lost. But now I'm pulling for the Giants in the Superbowl because I'm damn tired of the Patriots. I'll sign off on this post with a badass time-lapse movie of Yosemite scenes. This is really impressive and inspires me to try to do more time lapse movies despite not owning a motorized dolly or decent video editing software. Until next week!

Second week of 2012...

The second week of 2012 is in my books. It was another good one. I'm a night behind on my weekly blog because today is the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday so it felt like a Sunday despite being a Monday.  Speaking of MLK Jr., if you're interested in his life and the story of his assignation, I highly recommend reading "Hellhound on His Trail" by Hampton Sides. I read it last year and really enjoyed it.
This week was pretty standard. I didn't get to run as much as I had hoped but managed to get in a couple decent lunch runs and one ~17 mile run on Saturday morning. The faster pavement runs with undulating terrain feels like good training for the Moab Red Hot 50k+ next month. I don't expect a super fast time at the Red Hot and instead just hope to run and finish an ultra without IT band pain after being plagued with IT band irritation all last fall. Saturday afternoon Allison and went climbing down at the Overlook to squeeze in a few routes and replace an aging bolt and hanger on a fun arête route called Paul's Boutique. We had replaced four of the five bolt hangers (and upgraded the anchors) a few weeks ago so now the route is fully upgraded.
I worked a couple more nights during the week on our ongoing project of migrating all the email accounts from the old system to the newer MS Exchange infrastructure. Things went smooth and the nights were short.
Friday night we had a small pizza party and movie viewing session at our house to watch the highly-acclaimed ski/snowboard movies "The Art of Flight" and "I.All.Can".  Both films are phenomenal! If you haven't seen them yet, check out the trailers below.

Allison and I went climbing with friends Nat, Matt and Gabriela at the scenic and fun Utopian Vistas crag along the Rio Grande Gorge near Taos, NM on Sunday. It was a beautiful, sunny day and we really enjoyed ourselves. I enjoyed it so much I'm still quite sore now, more than 24 hours later!

Gabriela on "Nirvana Blues" at Utopian Vistas. See more photos.

2012. A New Year, Some New Blog Action

I've been really bad about blogging despite enjoying it quite a bit. So while I don't "do" New Years resolutions, I'm going to try to make a concerted effort to blog more by writing weekly recaps. I'm not sure anyone at all reads my blog but I'll enjoy capturing what I'm up to and I'm constantly inspired to blog more by blog-constant friends such as JV who's always on top of it. The year 2012 started off excellent by unwinding at home after a week in Las Vegas, NV visiting Allison's Mom and climbing with good friends at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. Allison and I were both in bed by 11:30PM on New Year's Eve so we didn't see the new year come in. New Year's Day I got out on a "12 for 2012" run with many local friends in White Rock, NM followed by a great brunch. I ran approximately 1,250 miles in 2011 and it felt great to start 2012 off with a solid pace 12 miler. Later that day, Allison and I tried to do some cross-country skiing on the local nordic trail but found conditions too icy and sketchy for our liking so we punted after a short bit.

From Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, NV. December 2011.

Monday was the New Year's holiday so I got out into the New Mexico backcountry for some skiing with Andy, Bill and Steve in an area called Big Tesuque. Considering it had been sunny and dry in NM for over a week, the riding was quite good.

Andy skiing Big T

At work, we've been migrating user email accounts from the long-standing Cyrus email servers to the new Microsoft Exchange service using a product called Transend. I wasn't impressed with Transend initially but that once we got it figured out, we've been doing 200-300 user mailboxes per night without much issue. This means I worked a couple nights during the week but not too late so it's not a problem. I ran some more during the week managing a total of 23.5 miles, all pavement. I'm going up to Moab, UT for President's Day weekend in February to run the Moab Red Hot 55k trail race so I'm getting some minimal training in. Running roads should be good for that course, I think. Friday was my regular Friday off from work and I went out rock climbing with Daniel to a not-often visited nearby location called the Sewer Crag named for its proximity to the White Rock sewage treatment plant. The climbing is a lot of fun on great pocketed basalt that's common along the Rio Grande Gorge. We established and bolted a new 5.10+ route we called "100 Years of Solitude" that was fun to establish and climb. Despite the proximity to the sewage treatment plant the climbing and scenery is wonderful.

Daniel on the FA of "100 Years of Solitude"

Friday night I drove up to near the Great Sand Dunes, CO with Bill to meet up with our friend Jeff for a weekend of 14er climbing and camping. Saturday morning we drove up the Lake Como road to about 10,000 feet taking advantage of very little snow in CO this season. We then hiked up to setup a high camp above Lake Como that morning. From there we continued up basin to climb 14ers Ellingwood Point (14,042') and Blanca Peak (14,345') in some gnarly cold wind. We got descended back down to our high camp by 5:30pm to eat and settle in for the night. It was great fun to meet up with Jeff for this fun outing. I typically do one winter 14er trip per season but with the low snowpack in Colorado this season, I may be back up there again this winter.

From Ellingwood Point (14,042') and Blanca Peak (14,345'), CO. 2012-01-07

I bought a new album this week, Awolnation's Megalithic Symphony after listening to it repeatedly on Spotify. I highly recommend it. All in all, a great week! I hope the next 51 are just as entertaining.

2011 Salida Run Through Time Marathon Race Report

2011 Salida Run Through Time Marathon Race Report
Salida, CO
March 12, 2011
3:49:03
16th overall (129 starters) Official results
4,500’ elevation gain/4,500’ elevation descent
Garmin Connect Report
SportTracks Per Mile Report

This was my third time running this race and it just keeps getting better. I ran it for my first time in 2007 and finished fourth overall in 3:38:21. In 2010 I ran it despite having the flu during the race and finished in 4:28-ish. This year the race substituted the last six miles of dirt road with six miles of fun, more difficult single track trail that had been recently built. This change was awesome! The new singletrack trail was very fun and made for more late-race difficultly which I appreciated.

Hunter and I had drove up to Salida on Friday after work arriving at the newly built Hampton Inn around 9pm after dinner at the East West Grill in Alamosa (a favorite food stop of ours). The Beist had made the room reservation and had planned to join us for the weekend but ended up with food poisoning on Thursday night after nearly three weeks abroad for work so he didn’t make the trip with us. Our friend Dan had planned to join us as well but had recently come down with a case of metatarsalgia and had to bow out of the race at the last minute.
Hunter and I enjoyed a quiet night of sleep at the Hampton Inn and got up at 6am on Saturday. The day had dawned beautifully and any worries about the weather were nixed. I ate a banana, some yogurt and a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast. I washed it all down with 16oz of strong coffee and a bottle of orange juice.
We arrived at the check-in right around 8:00am and got checked in quickly before a short course briefing from RD John MacManus.
We all cross the bridge to the railroad tracks and got lined up for the 9:00am start time. The weather was perfect for a late winter run with a predicted high in the mid-50s. I started in shorts, a short-sleeve shirt, light gloves (I always get cold hands), my visor, sunglasses, a hand bottle full of vanilla EFS liquid shot mixed 50/50 with water and my iPod. In my shorts I had three gels and 10 endurolyte tablets (I only consumed two of the endurolytes during the race).
At 9:00am we all took off and I ran the first few miles catching up with friend Jeff Kunkle as we warmed up along the dirt road and short bit of pavement road. I hadn’t seen Jeff since last year’s run so it was great to talk to him for a bit as we ran. This was also good for my strategy--don’t start out too fast so I’d feel good later. Soon enough Jeff and I left the pavement behind and began the long, steady run up the dirt road. Jeff throttled back a bit around mile four so I put on my headphones and began cranking A Day to Remember from my iPod to slowly throttle up my pace.
As my paced picked up a bit I began passing a few runners on this long climb. I passed by the first, small aid station without pause as I still had plenty of fluid in my hand bottle. Shortly thereafter I said, “Hello” to another runner and he introduced himself as Jacob. Turns out he was from Santa Fe, NM, so we chatted for a short bit before parting ways. I was feeling very good and still had enough fluid in my hand bottle to pass through the second aid station without stopping. I was very pleased to have run the entire uphill to this point while feeling great and continuing on to the turn-around at mile ~10.

Around mile 9, though, I saw the lead runner, Timmy Parr, already on his way back and looking strong. Just behind Timmy was Nick Clark, Dan Vega and Ryan Burch all looking strong and hauling ass back. A couple minutes before the turnaround I saw my friend Brian heading back already. Brian and I had been hyping up a friendly competition between us for the week preceding the race and, obviously, I was losing. Brian had four minutes on me and is a very strong runner. I knew I had my work cut out for me to catch him.

I reached the turnaround at mile 10 at 1:30:35 into the race meaning I had averaged an 8:53 pace to that point. Knowing that much of the remaining distance was downhill, I was encouraged and pleased with my pace to that point.

At the turnaround, I filled up my hand bottle and consumed my first gel of the race. As I started back and picked up my pace down a short downhill I passed an older, gray-bearded, long time Salida runner that said something like, “Do you know who that woman was?” (referring to the lead woman that had just passed by us.) Since I was wearing my headphones at the time, I pulled them down and said, “I’m sorry, what did you say?” He replied, “Oh, that’s right, you only heard the disc jockey. I hope you get attacked by a mountain lion.” I couldn’t believe this guy was such an asshole and was taken aback enough that I laughed and said, “Ah, that’s fine, it’s worth it” or something to that effect. As I thought about it in the next 15 miles, I really couldn’t believe that jerk had the gumption to say what he said. For some odd reason, a number of runners (mostly old school runners) have something against runners that wear headphones while running and I get that. But to wish a mountain lion attack on a runner because he/she wears headphones is just plain retarded. For starters, did he really think a runner would hear a mountain lion coming up on them even when not listening to music? No way. That’s how mountain lions operate--you don’t hear them before they attack. So that’s a super weak argument that borders on complete idiocy. And secondly, if that’s this dude’s MO, I don’t want to hear what he has to say anyway so I’d rather just keep listening to my motivating music rather hearing his nonsense. OK, sorry for my rant there...

I really enjoyed seeing my friends David, Tom, Sean, Hunter, Steve and Deb heading towards the turnaround--it was quite the boost to see them. I continued to feel great and run almost all the way to the next aid station. There I came up on the runner in front of me as he slammed a PBR at the aid station. I couldn’t imagine drinking a beer at that point but it did remind me of the cold beer in my car back at the finish line so I kept on cruising through the aid station without stopping to refill my bottle. I did suck down my second gel of the race here, though.
To this point the course was the same but I knew around mile 20 we’d get onto some new single track and I was excited for that.

I ran the next few miles solo without seeing anyone until I caught a glimpse of Brian around mile 19. I timed it and he was 1:30 ahead of me. I was gaining ground on him. I still felt very good. And I could see the town of Salida again. We were closing in on the finish so I kept on churning.

At mile 20 I unexpectedly came across the aid station where we were to turn off onto the new single track. I hadn’t expected this aid station (I didn’t read the race manual very well) but was very happy it was there because my hand bottle was getting low with water. I filled up, thanked the aid station folks for being there and eagerly turned onto the single track. This new section of trail was really fun! Twisty-turney with some technical obstacles--I was loving it. And then I saw Brian up ahead just a few seconds on me. Another minute or so and Brian stopped and let me pass by. I slapped him on the shoulder and said, “Let’s go, Brian”.

And then the trail made a sharp left up an abrupt and short-but-steep climb. All my running steam evaporated but I saw a couple more runners ahead of me and power-hiked as hard as I could to catch up to them passing them just before the top of the climb. At the top of the climb I felt rejuvenated and quickly found my rhythm again. A number of times I looked back over my shoulder expecting to see Brian coming back at me but that didn’t happen.

Just before the last aid station around mile ~23, I stopped to pee and suck down my third and last gel of the race. I then noticed another runner coming up strong. It was Rick Hessek from Colorado Springs. He seems to make a habit of passing me in the final few miles of any race we run in and this was no exception. I tried to up my pace to hold him off but around mile 24 I stepped aside to let him go by. I could see Salida now and we were close to the finish. The single track, while enjoyable, continued to wind around Tenderfoot Mountain more than I had expected and we were running away from the finish line. But, soon enough, we were down at the flats and on the homestretch. I looked at my watch and while I had been hoping to beat my PR of 3:38:31 on this course, I knew that wasn’t going to happen but I knew I’d be able to finish well under 4 hours and was super stoked about that.

I ended up crossing the finish line in 3:49:03. The new six miles of single track trail at the end was more difficult than years previous so I was very pleased with my time. It was one of those rare races where everything went well for me. I paced myself well, ate and hydrated properly and just felt great the entire time. I had a great race and great time out there with my friends and everyone else.