Damn sloppy – too much running, not enough blogging? Ha, no such thing as too much running. And I certainly haven’t been doing it if there is.
It’s a nervous exciting freaked out busy time.
Heading off in 2 weeks from today to run the Twin Cities Marathon thanks to Medtronic and their Global Heroes 2011 Program. Basically, if you sacrifice the most useful part of any organ in your body, run a lot, and write a half-decent application you’re in with a shot at airfares and marathon entry. Here are the folks I’ll be running with. A bunch of interesting stories there and most of them a lot more full on than anything I feel like I’ve had to cope with. But I still get the feeling that we’re going to turn up with runner attitude and try to kick each other’s bionic asses.
Looking forward to some thin air hot nasty canyon running in Colorado after that, followed by a sluggish and fatigued, but awesome nonetheless, 50km in Moab at the Slick Rock 100 the following weekend.
So that’s all good running unknown WTF?!?!? stuff. What’s known is that running on the weekend, I had a blast at Coastal Classic, running 3:01:14 for the 30km seriously mixed modality course. Awesome support, well done to all involved. Only suggestion would be that if you’re going to be smartly enviro-efficient by not having any cups at aid stations, you need to put a drink cooler on top of a step ladder so we can squirt ourselves a drink from near head-height, rather than having to essentially kneel under the drinks table. Because that wasn’t my favourite part of the run. Everything else, superbly done. Even the staggered start created a good chase/outrun element, where you didn’t know if people behind you were really behind you but you had a sense of who was in front of you and that if you could just reel them in you’d be topping them.
Must have either been a longer course last year or much deeper field this year. In 2010 my time would have put me 17th out of 250 runners. This year it was only good enough for 45th. But I went hard, finished feeling pretty much like I’d done all I could, and saved a baby water dragon from getting stepped on along the way.
So, otherwise, stoked. Ran hard, did a big 94min/87min negative split – totally out of character for me. Training to run with less carb and take in less fluid seemed to pay off. Perhaps 80% of the field ran with bladders and packs or bottle belts. I just wore gloves to stick 3 gels down the back of each and have a better time bouncing off trees and rocks than I might have unprotected. The new Bondi B’s were just killer. I was completely expecting to slip and slide and make an ass of myself (they’re a frickin’ road shoe already!) but they were just so sweet to run in. If it had rained, it may have been a different story, but as it was they hit dirt, rock, wet rock, mud, wooden slats, metal gratings, leaf litter, tree roots, soft sand, and – my personal fave – steeply cambered single track without any thought for their own safety and just felt great.
The one unfriendly terrain was metal grating with lengthwise rectangular slots, but any shoe would have felt not-so-ready-to-soar on this. I pretty much thrashed them and they were begging for more. Runs with Darrel and the Ultra168 crew have been good exercises in managing tricky rainforest surfaces, single track, and ‘corner management’. Should be interesting to hit the Great North Walk course very soon and video and review these on some of the harder-to-handle stuff – am thinking that anything involving the Basin should be a good challenge.
And not wanting to be a total d*ck but I wanted to test my legs out for fatigue the next day. So I hit a 4.6km section of the GNW that’s a usual haunt. I matched my 26.40 p.b. on the way out, then destroyed it, pulling 25:05 on the way back. Essentially, I had a 3 p.b. weekend, all on mixed trail.
Increasingly, I’m thinking that people saying they can’t rock their road shoes on trail might just be numpties.
run, eat, sleep, run. 