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!