Brett Farve in Heaven

I mostly try to keep this blog just for running and outdoor adventures but this is to funny not to share. Happy Friday!

Brett Farve, after living a full life, died and went to heaven. When he arrived, God was showing him around. They came to a modest house that had a Green Bay flag in the window. God turned to Brett and said, “This is your house for all eternity, Brett. This is very special because most people don’t get to own their own home in Heaven.” Brett felt very special as he walked up to his house. On his way up the porch, he noticed another house around the corner. It was a HUGE 3-story mansion with orange and blue trim, a 50-foot flagpole with a Broncos flag flying high, a swimming pool with a Broncos logo embedded in concrete on the bottom, Broncos decals in every window and a Tim Tebow jersey on the front door. Brett looked at God and said, “God I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but I was an all-pro quarterback, won multiple Super Bowls and even went to the Football Hall of Fame. Why does Tim Tebow get a better house than me?” God said, “Brett, that’s not Tim’s house…..it’s mine”

Books Read in 2011

At the end of year I post my list of books that I read at year and link them to Amazon so you can check them out if interested. Here is my list for 2011. The ones that I put the number in bold are worth the read, the rest were either for work or just plan crap.

If you have any suggestions of books to check out for 2012 I am all ears. I try to read at least 12 a year but if I ever want to knock down my growing list I am going to have to read more than 25. I just don't see that happening.

1. K2: Life & Death on the Worlds most dangerous mountain
2. The Extra Mile- Pam Reed
3. In Defense of Food
4. Coaching for Performance
5. Food Rules
6. Eiger Dreams
7. Paleo Diet for Athletes
8. Relentless Forward Progress
9. Running on empty
10. Seal Team Six
11. Cycling home from Siberia
12. The Big Year
13. The Man Who Cycled the World
14. The Big Book of Endurance Training
15. And Then the Vulture Eats You
16. The Raw Truth
17. Now Discover Your Strengths
18. The Paleo Diet
19. Steve Jobs

Looking into 2012

Been kind of lazy with my posting lately but not really a lot to talk about. Just been training hard for the Red Hot 55K in Feb. With the Hardrock lottery last weekend and not getting in again of course really got me thinking about races for next year. My wife and I need to sit down and figure out what will work before everything sells out. Guess I better quit dragging my feet. Here is what I am looking at for 2012 from April on, now I just need to make some decisions.

April
28th- Collegiate Peaks 25 or 50 was thinking the 25 then Greenland a week later but maybe the 50 would be best.

May
5th- Greenland 50K
6th- Fort Collins Marathon (still want to get that Boston qual time)
12th- Quad Rock 50miler
19th- Buena Vista Adventure Race

June
2nd- Dirty Thirty 50K
16th- Mount Evans (one of my favorite races, 2 close to Black Hills to do?)
17th- Estes Park Marathon (only consider if doing Leadville)
23rd- Lake City 50 (only consider if doing Leadville)
22-24th- Black Hills 100
30th- Leadville Marathon (only consider if doing Leadville)

July
8th- Pace at Hardrock again- 50 miles (not sure if I can do this if I do Blackhills 100)
15th- Leadville 50 (only consider if doing Leadville)
14th- Devils Backbone 50 (only consider if doing Leadville)
14th- Summit County Adventure race

Aug
18-19th- Leadville 100
18-19th- Pike Peak ascent and marathon double (if I do Blackhills)

One race that I am eyeing due to being by my dad’s in MT is

Oct
Le Grizz 50

Thoughts? Or other races I might be missing that are not far away? I use the shorter races as practice training runs for the 100.

Turkey Chase 10K

I signed up for a 10K race today hoping to get a new PR, needless to say I did but it doesn't count because the course was short. Ran 35:53 for the 5.75 mile course according to my Garmin for 5th overall. Little disappointed that I paid $40 for a cluster fuck of a race. I would say that I wasted about 30 seconds at 3 junctions trying to figure out where to go. Who ever thought it was a good idea to do a race on the cart paths of a golf course without course markings is a dumbass, it was a maze. This course is not "flat" like the website said but had lots of small hills. That is ok, at least the money went to a great cause, The Denver Rescue Mission. Here are my splits according my watch.

Mile 1: 6:06 Ave HR 164
Mile 2: 6:33 Ave HR 176
Mile 3: 6:24 Ave HR 175
Mile 4: 6:11 Ave HR 174
Mile 5: 6:21 Ave HR 174
Last 0.75 mile: Not sure, watch includes cooldown for 0.25 of this mile.

I don't think this will be a race I do again next year. Think I will find one that is measured correctly.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Bear Creek 10Spot

Ran a race this morning at Bear Creek Lake Park in Lakewood called Bear Creek 10Spot. It was 10.4 miles with about 1000ft of climbing. Not a lot of climbing but that last uphill at mile 8 hurt! Here is the elevation profile and map from Adam's website.



My plan was to use it as my long easy run this weekend keeping my heart rate under 150 but that did not happen. My average heart rate for the race was 175- OUCH!!! I finished th 10.4 mile course in 1:15:00 flat on my watch which gave 8th overall and 2nd in my age group. Here are my mile splits along with the average heart rate for that mile, can you guess where the hills are.

7:28- HR 170
7:00- HR 177
7:13- HR 173
7:29- HR 173
6:33- HR 170
7:40- HR 177
7:25- HR 174
6:56- HR 176
7:57- HR 179
6:48- HR 178
Last 0.4miles in 2:26- HR 184

This was a really fun low key event that could easily become a yearly affair to run. Great job Adam!!!!

Ramblings and Pranks

Been pondering all week if last Saturday's effort at the 12 Hours of Boulder warrants a race report or not. Most likely not since I treated it as an easy long 6 hour jog and did not do the whole 12 Hours. Anyways props to GZ for finishing is 100!

This weekend I am going to race- strike that- run the Bear Creek 10Spot on Sunday. If I feel good (which has not been the case all week) then I will run hard, if I don't then it will be a fun jog. Could not beat the $20 sign up fee ($40 now for last minute people).

On a side note I had to share this. Now that is a PRANK!

Gemma

So we have been having a lot of issues with our Malamute howling when left alone over the past 2 years since we got him, he gets lonely very easily. This past Saturday we came home from a hockey game to find a written warning on the door from the Westminster Animal Control for the noise after only being gone from 11am-2pm. One of my neighors had complained. DAMN IT!!!

We were at a loss on what to do. We have tried toys, me coming home at lunch, and even taken it to the point of a shock collar. All which have not seemed to work. We can not afford the ticket and possible court cost that this could bring.

My big boy TONKA:



So as a last ditch effort we got this sweet little girl to keep him company.

Meet Gemma-



She is a Black Mouth Cur. Very very sweet and all she wants to do is please everyone. She does have lots of energy because she is only 9 months old which makes Tonka put her in her place more than once.

Lets hope this works. Otherwise we will have to re-home Tonka to a place where the noise will not be an issue and I really don't want to lose my big boy.

Bear Chase 50K

I finally got back on the horse this past weekend and ran my first ultra since last year's Leadville 100 by running the 50K version of the Bear Chase. I just have not had the interest this past year with everything going on in our family's life to do the long races. Anyways a super quick report and some pictures.

I signed up for this race without really putting in any long runs. I was running about 50-60 miles a week for a while just as a stress relieve but my longest run was only 14 miles every weekend doing the Dirty Bizmark loop. About 3 weeks out from the race a I did a 24.5 mile run in the Marshall Mesa/Dowdy Draw area in 3 hours and 45 mins at an easy pace. After that weekend I took the next 2 weekends off due to family coming to visit, needless to say I was a little under trained.

I had 2 goals in mind for this race- A) break my PR at 50K distance which is 4 hours and 31 mins or B) Finish before noon which is 5 hours and 10 mins.

To keep this short I went out at a moderately hard pace but never close to the red line with the exceptions of the small hills on this course. I was able to finish the first 19 miles in about 2 and half hours or so. The third and final lap (12.4 miles) I was doing fine the first 5 miles of the loop then gradually got slower and slower until by mile 29 I was on my hands and knees with the puke fountain turned on in full force. My stomach just shut down again and my body quick absorbing what I was drinking and eating. I was able to walk it in losing about 4-5 places in the standings to finish in 4:50:22 for 14th male and 16th overall. At least I hit my B goal, got an ok time, and got back into ultras again.

What is next? I am pondering doing either the 6 hours or 12 hours of Boulder on Oct 15th. I am leaning towards the 6 hours so that I can go see Braden's hockey game that morning but I am unsure right now. I kind of want to go out for 50 miles which should be very doable on this course in 12 hours. We will see, here are some pictures from the race.

Longs Peak Run

On Friday night I put out the word on Facebook to see if anyone was interested in doing a 14 mile trail run in the Boulder area. This lead to Donald inviting me to join him in trying to break 4 hours to the summit and back of Longs Peak on Sunday. Challenge accepted!


Due to the snow that we discovered from the Boulder Field up we did not summit. And the winds were outragous on the other side of the Keyhole as you can see in this video.


We turned around shortly after this at just over 2 hours. I think if we would have had our mountaineering gear it would have been game on but being in shorts in 30 degree weather with that wind just was not doable. We ended up with 12.5 miles/ ~4000ft of gain in 3 hours and 5 mins.

Phil Maffetone Interview

I have really been trying to follow Phil Maffetone training principles lately and have been trying to absorb anything that I can find about it. It all came about reading Lucho's blog where he talks about it quite often.

This lead to reading this book which I really seemed to agree with what Phil has to say, it just makes sense in my mind. Since reading this book I started wearing a heart rate monitor and minding how my body feels when running. I started doing this about the beginning of July. Since then I have dropped my 145bpm heart rate pace on flat ground from 8 mins per mile to about 7:20 mins per mile. I am very interested to see where this goes.



Ben Greenfield just did a great interview of Phil. You can listen to it by clicking here.

Let me know your thoughts about this training philosophy. Here are a couple more links with more information.

Mark Allen on Heart Rate Training

Want speed? Slow down!

My Last Day Without a Jog: 1971

Very interesting article on WSJ that you can find by clicking here or just read the text below.

And my wife thinks that I am crazy.......

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By Scott Cacciola

On Tuesday, Jon Simpson, a retired dentist from Memphis, Tenn., will have run at least a mile every day for 40 years. He joins five other Americans who have accomplished the feat.

Barring a catastrophe on the order of the Earth spinning off its axis Tuesday, Jon Simpson will rise at dawn and do something he has done every single day since Aug. 30, 1971: He will go for a jog.

This will take place without fanfare at a quiet pumping station adjacent to Simpson's home in Memphis, where he lives with his wife Caroline. A retired dentist, Simpson will cover four loops in 33 minutes on the same well-worn path. When he's finished, he'll become only the sixth person in the U.S. who has ever jogged at least one mile, every day, for 40 years.

In a nation that likes to glorify sports benchmarks—3,000 hits, 1,000 yards, 56 games—it's hard to know what to make of Simpson. A soft-spoken septuagenarian with a bit of a paunch, he doesn't look like anyone's image of an elite athlete. He's not in this for the attention. "I live a pretty mundane life," he said.

The only thing dazzling about his achievement is the almost unfathomable force of discipline that has driven it. "I'm just glad to get my first 40 under my belt," he joked.

According to the U.S. Running Streak Association, which began to chart running streaks in 2001, there are 286 registrants on its books who have run every day for at least one year. But before Tuesday there were only five people, all men, who'd run every day for more than 40 years.

Mark Covert, a 60-year-old college track coach from Lancaster, Calif., owns the association's longest streak. He has run at least one mile "unaided," per the association's rules, since July 23, 1968.

To get there, Covert said he's dealt with a Dickensian list of obstacles. There was the day he got spooked by a rattlesnake, fell and broke his ankle (he spent the next few weeks jogging with a laced-up boot). There was the morning he underwent minor knee surgery and had to "hobble" around the next day—an experience he describes as "not too horrible." A congenital issue with flat feet has caused him severe back pain.

Mr. Simpson's plaque honors the daily run he has done without missing a day for more than 40 years.

After tearing his meniscus this summer, Covert does acknowledge having considered calling it quits, particularly when it has taken him 20 minutes to put on his socks. But he cannot stop, refuses to stop. "What we're doing is not a mark of intelligence," he said.

Steve DeBoer, another member of the club who has run every day for 14,694 straight days, said he's taken extreme measures to preserve his streak. When his family took a trip to Australia, he made sure to book a long enough layover in Los Angeles to squeeze in a jog along the Pacific. He was worried about the time change. "What these guys do…" said his wife, Gail, her voice trailing off.

"Most people just think you're crazy," said Jon Sutherland, a 60-year-old writer from West Hills, Calif., who ranks No. 2 behind Covert on the association's list. Sutherland, who once ran with a broken hip that took nine months to heal, keeps a list of his "50 dumbest runs," which he said is under constant revision. He still considers himself more sane than others. "One guy told me he once ran on the deck of a boat in the middle of a hurricane," he said.

Sutherland and Covert, former track teammates at Los Angeles Valley College, are the grand poobahs of streak running. Neither has missed his daily jog since the moon landing. In May 1969, after college, Covert told Sutherland he'd been so inspired by the British distance runner Ron Hill that he'd been running every day for about 10 months. Sutherland laced up his sneakers and followed suit. He's been running daily since, covering some 185,000 miles, which equates to roughly seven and a half circumnavigations of the globe. During one 28-year stretch, he averaged more than 100 miles a week. "I'm 300 days behind Mark," Sutherland said, "and I can never catch him."

If you're wondering how we know these men have run every single day without cheating, the answer is: We don't. The whole enterprise is based on the honor system. "You can't have a notary out there every day clocking you in and clocking you out," Simpson said.

That said, each member of the group knows what the others have endured over the decades. When Covert informed Sutherland, in 2008, that he didn't have any plans to commemorate his 40th anniversary, Sutherland drove out to run with him.

Covert said he's often heard people say they're going to try to join the club—but he knows they never will. If you're 30 years old and would like to equal what he's done, he noted, you'd have to run at least once a day until you're 73.

DeBoer, the dietician, started his streak June 7, 1971, which puts him fifth on the association's list. He often tackles the 11-mile roundtrip between his home and his job at the Mayo Clinic, where he works with patients who have problems such as diabetes and obesity.

He owns 30 pairs of running shoes, he said, including one from 1980 with 6,000 miles on them. When executives from the sneaker company Brooks heard about that, they sent him a free pair. "Of course, now I have about 2,000 miles on the free pair," he said. DeBoer estimates that he has accrued more than 135,000 miles since he began his streak—an estimate he recently had to adjust downward.

In December, DeBoer picked up a watch with GPS and discovered one of his favorite running routes was two-tenths of a mile shorter than he thought. "So I had to subtract 260 miles from my total," he said. "That was unfortunate."

Another member of the elite club is Ken Young, a 69-year-old software developer from Petrolia, Calif., who started his streak July 6, 1970. He said debilitating knots in his leg muscles once turned a 1-mile jog into a 40-minute ordeal. That was nothing, he said, compared to the day after taking a hard fall, when he defied doctor's orders and jogged 1.1 miles with new plates in his broken wrists.

Jim Pearson, a 67-year-old retired high school teacher from Bellingham, Wash., who has a 41-year streak, told of a scary episode with blood clots in his lungs. For him, "streaking" has been a family affair: His 25-year-old son Joel started his own current streak when he was 7 and now ranks as a favorite to someday supplant Covert.

All these men say running is simply something they enjoy. Sutherland said he loves to break a sweat and fill his lungs with fresh air. Covert is drawn to what he describes as the "discipline" of the pursuit.

DeBoer has heart disease in the family. Simpson began running to strengthen his legs after contracting polio as a teenager. Now 73, he still walks with a limp—a limp that is barely perceptible when he runs. He has never stopped.

Write to Scott Cacciola at Scott.Cacciola@wsj.com

UTMB -- PRE RACE 2011 Video

Damn, now I want to head off to the mountains for a run. Great video.

Quick Pikes Report

Well not a lot to say but that I guess I was sandbagging in my last post a little bit.

I went down the night before and stayed with the wife at the firehouse at the start line where she works. This is so nice to have this option. In the next few years I plan on doing the double and this will hopefully still be an option for free housing that weekend.

Anyways, I started in wave 2 and just cruised on a moderate hard pace up the hill. I did not want to put any real hard effort until after I broke treeline. I caught my first 1st Wave person about 3 miles up and for the next 10 miles to the finish it was 2 1/2 hours of saying "on your left", that got old real quick, especially the A-holes who thought because they were in the 1st wave that they did not have to share the trail or did not want to get passed by a second waver. There was a couple of times I had to elbow my way past someone.

Anyway ended with a 3:03:52 for 60th overall and 11th in my age group. I think that if I would not have had to pass so many people and if I would not have stopped for a beer 1/4 mile from the top of the mountain I would have broke 3 hours. There will always be a next time.

Results can be seen here.

Pikes Peak Ascent thoughts.

Well this weekend will be a fun new adventure for me. I will be running the Pikes Peak Ascent on Saturday which is about 13.3miles and 7500ft of gain. This a major mountain race in the Colorado region and is what some dudes like this guy live for. My plan is to just go and have fun running it under 4:15 so that I have a Wave 1 qualifier for the next 3 years in case I decide to run this again. The reasoning behind my outlook of not really racing it hard is that I am stuck in Wave 2 behind about 1000 people due to the fact that I did not have a fast marathon or half marathon time in the last 3 years to put me in Wave 1 since I have only been running trails. I had to use a trail marathon as a qualifier and of course it was not fast enough for Wave 1, oh well. I think I am in 3:00-3:15 shape but I expect to run between 3:45-4:00 with all the passing I will have to do even when running at an easy pace.

Should be fun!

Weekend- Boulder Ironman 70.3

I was planning on doing the Audubon Duathlon this weekend but the wisdom of my wife convinced me that I need to ride farther than 12 miles in a single sitting before attempting this huge climbing bike ride. So on Sunday I rode my mountain bike all loaded up with gear from the house out to the Boulder Rez to watch my buddy Neal finish his first Half Ironman. While waiting for him to come off the bike I was able to get in a good 12 mile run around the Rez. This gave me a good 45 miles on the mountain bike and 12 miles of running, not a bad slow endurance training day.