100 Mile Week Teton Style

i often get asked about my training. i have even been told i should blog every day on exactly what i do. i think that is taking it a little bit far, but here is a big week (for me).

last minute i jumped into the devil's backbone 50 miler in bozeman on july 12th. it sounds pretty bad ass, no trail markings, 1 aid station at mile 25, etc. so after dreamchasers ultra camp, which was a 90 mile week for me, i then had two weeks until race day. i took this past monday off and was pretty excited to put together another big week of real trail miles so i could continue my progress. this would also leave me one week for a quick taper before the race. a one week taper for a "b/c" race is plenty.


Mon
Completely off, massage

Tues
11:30am - 21min easy mtn bike ride to park for real workout
11:45am - 19min Full Metal Jacked workout with jay. the first set of this workout had jay and i almost throwing up. great stuff.
6pm - 4 miles total running at lisa's free group track workout in jackson = 4x 400s

Wed
11:45am - 15 mile long run/crampon trek to buck mtn, 7,000ft to 10,600 foot pass. did some recon for a run around the tetons. 15 miles in 4:36 = "15 the hard way", tough work with all the snow.
6pm - 3 miles easy lisa's free weekly trail run at grand targhee - i did the shortest option available because my trek worked me over a bit. 3 nice singletrack miles.
10:30pm - ran through some yoga poses before bed.



Thurs
2:30pm - 17 miler w/3,700ft of gain at moderate effort in the heat of the day up moose creek to mosse lake.
10:30pm - yoga and foam roller before bed



Fri
7:15am - easy 17 w/some pickups, started with jay on the road and split off to run the aspen trail then finished his road loop.
11:45am - suuuper easy 1hr road ride to try and catch the batchens at the victor 4th of july parade.
10:30pm - yoga and foam roller before bed

Sat
8:30am - 20 tough miles with 5,900ft of gain on the big hole crest trail with jay and chris (2:30 marathoner). we were scouting for a possible 50km and got a good 2hrs of buschwhacking and some added climbing. we had planned to run it out and back, but by the end we had all been running without water for over 2hrs.
5pm - 13 miles w/1,400ft of gain at grand targhee (8,000ft).


Sun
11:40am - 13 easy. this was a hard workout for me. i wanted an easy 10 miles and i got more than i bargained for... but the real reason was that the fatigue had set in from my mileage all week and the 33 miles yesterday. ugh.

run totals: 103 miles with 18,232 feet of gain

i now feel very tired but very happy to have no real issues. no aches, no pains, no injuries (well other than my morton's nueroma i've been managing). now i get a week to taper, doing shorter faster running and lots of cross training (just to stay sane). the idea is to let the body absorb the hard work already put in. hopefully i can sit still with the amazing mtns right out the front door. it won't be easy!

Ty's Seattle Dirt Trail Tour

the last few days have been pretty sweet... patagonia and nuun ultrarunner ty draney flew into seattle for a whirl wind tour of our trails. living in wyoming ty hasn't seen dirt for a long time. here in the pacnw we've had some great crazy storms and some low freezing levels that have left our winter trails pretty covered. so i wasn't so sure i would be able to come through. but with ty's arrival came some warmer temps and we got some good multiday training on actual dirt.



thursday: 12.47 miles total - 8 miles at cougar mtn, spin class, 4.7 mile night run at discovery park

friday: 20 miles total - 10 miles at bridle trails, lunch at microsoft with matthew, hike up poo poo with cory and a 10 mile run down the poo poo and high school trail and back. darn near hypothermic by the end. very blustery day as you can tell from the video!

saturday: 32 miles in one shot with 6,000 feet of climbing! what a great day. ty and i joined justin angle, scott jurek, jeff philips and tom ederer for about 22 miles from cougar mtn to squak and back with a little bushwhack.. then ty and i banged out another 10 more on our own. we followed that up with dinner with my good friends the copsons in issaquah. amazing way to finish a great day. thanks copsons!

My Last 7 Days

"you have two choices in life. be a lamb, or be a lion." - quote from steep, which i saw last night... great flick.

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first off i'm having a blast watching rod bien close the gap in the hurt 100 miler right now. check out the live updates - go rod!

**** update ****
rod won the hurt 100km. congrats dood! here are the rest...
100 Mile race winners:
Paul Hopwood 27:17
Suzanna Bon 31:56

100 Km winners:
Rod Bien 17:02 100Km
Jamie Donaldson 20:30

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training has been good lately. i got 30hrs in this week which is my longest in a long long time. i'm starting to feel like an athlete again. the highlights of the week were sunday's long day and today's 55km fat ass race (see next post on cap forest 55km). sunday i took my coaching client cheryl out for a great 11hr+ long session. perfect overdistance winter training for an athlete who is preparing for the 400+ mile primal quest in july. i don't like cars. i'd rather use human power to get around. and i've always though it would be cool to ride a bike to mount si for a hike/run. so after a 2hr kayak on lake union and lake washington cheryl and i mounted our road bikes (with 25lb backpacks!) and rode the 100 miles (round trip) from seattle to mount si. we tackled the 3,400ft hike in the dark then returned home. it's been a long time since i've ridden a hunge. great day out and cheryl did awesome.

another highlight for me was signing my 2008 contract with the montrail ultrarunning team. this ad on the right is from this months ultrarunner magazine, it announces this years team ~ of course meissner is in it.. but i'm not sure who the woman is (lots of new teammates to meet!). as you can imagine this was a tough decision with other interesting offers and options. after talking to paul and getting some good advice from sean meissner i'm super excited about this year. it sucks that we have a smaller team as they had to let a lot of great runners and people go, including my adventure racing team DART-nuun (where i got my start). but the smaller team will undoubtedly be more manageable. montrail sounds dedicated to the core user and making the best trail shoes on the planet. they want the ultrarunning team to be a part of that process - this is important to me. companies that don't employ athletes to test outdoor products.. well they simply aren't making very good products.

My Training Year 2007

this is a snapshot of my last 356 days of training (climb is in meters). it's pretty interesting to look at actually. it's my first year logging all my data in one place so i've never had this luxury before. of everyone on the website i logged the 2nd highest training volume for the year. two major injuries, and one major surgery that combined took me out about 3 whole months.

i'm automatically drawn to the big numbers. how many miles did i run this year? i didn't realize i was so close to getting 2,000 miles on the year, just 49.94 miles short. my biggest week was 206 miles (not normal or suggested - unless your name is anton). in looking at this i feel like it was a good year of racing and training. i have to stay focused on my periodization and taking recovery weeks. it's funny because i frequently have to reassure coaching clients that this is a necessary thing to do.. why is it your own advise is so hard to follow?

what i need is a coach. even a coach needs a coach. it's the objective point of view i'm missing for sure. i am still hopeful that lisa smith-batchen will have time to coach me as we have talked about coaching together... but we'll see. i might just have to ask justin to coach me. what i'm scared about is giving up that control of my training and trusting someone else.

i'm very tempted to make goals like "run more than 2,000 miles with over 300,000 feet of gain". both of which i was very close to. however i didn't realize i was close until just now in looking up the data and it doesn't much matter. what does matter is that i periodize my training volume and intensity correctly for the races that are important to me.. and above all else this year listen to my body, not my head and my ego.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome."-Albert Einstein

Training Through the Winter

big packs, big day = good times.

train through the winter? yep you can do it pretty easy here in seattle. yesterday i headed out with a coaching client who is preparing for the 2008 primal quest. our goal was a long day out of base miles. 10 hours of training with heavy packs!

1:18 kayak - yes december 9th and we are paddling!
4:30 trek - awesome mountainous trek with a bit of trail navigation
4:11 road ride - we rode from seattle to the mountains and back again - it was cold



notice the nuun bottles! gotta stay hydrated.

What's The Haps?

training: i'm enjoying the off-season. i'm coaching a lot and increasing my client list - i love this job!. i'm still healing from my double hernia surgery, so there is a bit of residual ab pain and even worse are my hips. i used to think my hip issues were related to the hernias, now i'm not so sure. i've gradually increased my volume since my surgery, 11:51; 12:13; 15:06; with this week around 19 hours and next week being my peak volume week of this meso-cycle at 25 hour-ish. got in a good 30 mile road ride today with kimberly and i'll ride 50 miles tomorrow... likely in a downpour. i've gotta be done by nuun so i can watch the seahawks with the boys.

skiing: this seattle weather is killing me! yesterday was supposed to be my first day in the backcountry on skis. the plan was to skin and ski mount rainier.. thwarted! crappy conditions had us then turn our attention to mt baker area, table mtn and ptarmigan ridge. woke up and the telemetry data said 1 inch of rain had fallen overnight and it was still raining below 6,000ft.



we hiked mailbox peak with 30 lbs backpacks instead. i'm still waiting on getting those first turns.

racing: i'm debating whether or not i'm going to do an early season 24 hour solo mtn bike race. i'm undecided partly because i really want to return to run big horn again. i won the 50k last year and would run the 50 miler in '08 if i went.. and i'd hope ty draney would run another distance! however if i did the round the clock 24hr solo i wouldn't be recovered for big horn, or even trained for it for that matter. recovery from a 24 hour mtn bike race is not joke, so i wouldn't be able to race for over a month after, maybe longer. which makes me think maybe i'll do it as two person team. when i think about local mtn bikers to race with... it would have to be my dart-nuun adv racing teammate ryan vangorder - doods a monster.

december 1st is the western states lottery. "there are a record number of entries in the Western States lottery this year (1,352!)... and a dismal 16% chance of getting selected." this is from ajw's blog, he then goes on to list the top male contenders who have signed up. it's an impressive and intimidating list. gets me all fired up to run it!

coaching: coaching has been an absolute joy lately. i've just finished a 5 week session of weekly track workouts and demand was so high i'm doing another one in december!! i've also added to the client list a couple of adventure racers getting ready for primal quest 2008 - very exciting.

quote of the day:
"We have found that there is no conflict between our business model of everyday low costs and everyday low prices and being a more sustainable business," Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott said in the Wal-Mart Environmental Report.

103 Miles of White River

friday i headed down to the crystal mtn area where the white river 50 mile course lives. the race is put on by seattle running company owner scott mccoubrey and is only 1:45 drive from seattle. the views of rainier on course are reason enough to run this one... but there are many others.

i've been coaching my friend and massage therapist ellen with the goal of running her first 50 mile ultra... the rugged white river 50 mile on july 28th. being her coach i suggested a weekend of camping and running the course. the plan: run the first 27 miles of the course saturday, the last 23 miles sunday.

with the pressure of my first 100 miler (the grand teton 100) weighing on me i got all excited and went down there a day early. my plan was to run with ellen on the weekend and add a day before and a day after so i could get 100+ miles in 4 days.

friday: 27.4 mi - 5:51:14 (12:47 / mi) with 5,187 ft of gain
ahr:129 max:157 shoes: montrail highlander
"rain doesn't bounce" and "isn't this the last day of june!?" where some phrases that came out of my mouth during this solo endevour. but it was awesome, albeit cold for an hour or two. i ran a modified first 1/2 of the white river course. since i was running it the very next day with ellen i decided to come down the deep creek trail 1196, simply because i never had.

saturday: 28.09 mi - 6:03:16 (12:55 / mi) with 5,095 ft of gain
ahr:127 slept:6hrs shoes: continental divide

ellen and i ran first 1/2 of the white river course. it was a perfect partly cloudy day and mount rainier was out in full force! there is also some massive downed trees to still clean up before the race.

sunday: 26.25 mi - 5:10:23 (11:48 / mi) with 4,464 ft of gain
ahr:123 max:153 slept:5.0 shoes: montrail nitrus (.5 size bigger bc my feet were swollen)

another beautiful day out as we ran and power hiked the 3,000 feet up to suntop peak. running the suntop road down sucks. however you quickly forget about the pounding once you hit the skookum flats trail. there was a massive section of skookum flats that had been washed into the white river.

monday: 21.13 mi - 4:15:36 (12:04 / mi)
ahr:124 max:149 slept:5.0 shoes: montrail nitrus (.5 size bigger bc my feet were swollen)
today i ran up suntop again, this time solo and not stopping or hiking... ran every step. once up there i couldn't bring myself to run the dirt road down again so i ran back down suntop trail, the way i came up. i had planned to get another 10 miles out the dalles trail. however once i started out on it i felt a twinge in my left inner thigh. since i already had my 100 trail miles i decided to be smart and turn around rather than finish with an issue. i'm happy i did.

great weekend of training and i have to say that soaking in the white river was key to my daily recovery. it was freezing! but i felt way better than i would have without that 10 minutes of torture.