Where’s the peanut butter?!

skate - shot on red - 120 fps from opus magnum prod. on Vimeo.

I don’t think I’d be accused of being a fan of horse racing, but these videos of Big Brown winning the first two races of the triple crown are just breathtaking - especially the blimp view of the final stretch in the Preakness.

134th Kentucky Derby, 3 May 2008:

133rd Preakness Stakes, 17 May 2008:

The Belmont Stakes race is a little later this afternoon and if Big Brown wins, it will be the first Triple Crown winner in 30 years.

Powder for Mr. Scott, originally uploaded by Peru Tha Damaja.

So a little over a week ago I met my good friend Scott in Salt Lake City, Utah for a weekend of tearing up the slopes, teaching some suckers what-for, and polygamy (porters).

I should mention this was only something like Scott’s fourth or fifth time snowboarding. He’s a wonder of human development on the slopes, for sure, and I remember the *second* time he was going snowboarding was a few years ago when he flew to Seattle and we took a trip to Whistler. I remember the conversation well:

(about 1.5 hours out of Seattle after picking him up from the airport -
about 3-4 hours from Whistler)
• Scott: Did you know I haven’t been snowboarding since I used that board once in high school?
• Me: Ha ha! Yeah, right . . .
• Scott: No - I’m serious
• Me: . . .
• Me: I’m going to kill you

But somehow it turned out he could just do it and we had an awesome time. But this is supposed to be about Salt Lake City…where was I? Oh yeah, I hadn’t started yet…

We arrived in Salt Lake City early Thursday evening, waited for Advantage to look for our rental car (they had all kinds of cars that we didn’t have a reservation for, just not the one we reserved - after waiting about 45 minutes they gave up trying to find our car and gave us a Jeep Liberty) and eventually got to Scott’s brother-in-law’s place in the Sugar House neighborhood. We dropped our stuff off before going to the Red Iguana for dinner. I had some delicious nachos, but an hour and a half later when I tried running some 800’s, I would regret that selection. The house was about a mile from Highland Highschool (go Rams!!!) so around 10:30 I headed out to their track to do the workout I should have done on Tuesday. There was snow on the track (the only tracks on the track were from a deer and it didn’t maintain the lane), it was brutal, I only made it through three reps and this post is really not supposed to be about running…

The person who sold our pass the previous night recommended avoiding Snowbird on Saturday since there would probably be a lot of college students there so we went their Friday morning, instead, for our first day out. This turned out to be fine advice since we didn’t wait in any significant lift lines all three days. The snow in the Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons has been just outstanding every day I’ve been there and judging from almost everyone’s accounts I’ve ever heard, our day one met those expectations. They had about 10″ of fresh powder this day and we had a bunch of incredible runs. The day was overcast and very windy at the top and the crossover to Mineral Basin, but overall it was just incredible with plenty of virtually untouched powder. They’ve recently finished a cool tunnel between the front and back sides so we skipped the Tram pass (which costs ~$10 more) and just used the tunnel to get to Mineral Basin, which worked like a charm. Run of the day: anything in Mineral Basin - even the frontside drop back over to the tunnel entrance, which was about 300′ of steep untouched powder. Friday night: We wound down with some cheap pizza from a place at in a strip mall in nearby Sugar House and talked shop through the night.

Saturday we hit Solitude. This was probably the most picturesque day with clear skies, but probably had the least awesome snow. It was still an outstanding day and still probably had 5″ of fresh powder, but there were times when it was impossible not to hit a groomed run here or there. Oh well. Run of the day: Summit chair winding back through Honeycomb Canyon to the Honeycomb Return chair. This run just kept going and going and going. When we got to the Honeycomb Return chair there were some ski patrol there with their dog loading onto the lift! The dog was having an outstanding time in the snow and a fun time riding up the lift. Saturday night: we relaxed at Red Rock Brewery with some onion rings and their microbrews. I was starting to feel like trash but like an idiot I kept drinking beer.

Sunday morning I woke up feeling like total trash and just wanted to crawl into bed and stay there all day but wasn’t about to do that to Scott, so we made the trek to Brighton for our final day on the slopes. I can’t say this clearly enough - it was incredible. They had about 15″ drop the night before and we were swimming in powder all day. On the first run up people were on what should have been groomed runs under the lift and getting stuck in or floating through powder up to their knees. I was a little worried there would be too much snow and it would be impossible not to get stuck, but we’re both just so awesome that that really wasn’t a problem. We stuck to the blacks and never really got badly stuck all day. The Great Western lift was, sadly, closed, but the rest of the mountain was open and they have a new high speed quad over at Millicent. We took a couple runs off Crest Express before taking the cross over to Milly (note to self: need to remember how hard this crossover is to make and how much speed you need to not hike to the lift). We did about a half dozen runs all over Milly on the blacks and probably some double blacks, weaving through the Aspens, before heading back to the main section. Then we tried a few runs over off Snake Creek and ended the day again off Crest Express. Run of the day: Wren Hollow off Crest Express. We must have done this a half dozen times and it never really got boring. I had an incredible experience where I thought I saw a small toeside hit I wanted to jump off. I started for it and just as I was about to hit it…I sunk right into the side It was just a huge powder bank - the snow wasn’t packed enough to lift off from. Sunday night: we went back to watch some of the Superbowl, then went out for dinner, finding almost everything closed, and settled on Taco Bell which was delicious.

So the summary is that Salt Lake City continues to be an incredible place to snowboard. There are a ton of other resorts within an hour or so of the city center, but Snowbird, Solitude, and Brighton are all some of the best places I’ve ever been. They aren’t the resort that Whistler is at all, but I think they have the best snow, best lift lines, and generally best lifts of any resorts I’ve been to - I already can’t wait to get back.

Drat.  Pictures are up from last weekend’s Jingle Bell Run, but they’re hosted by Team Photogenic.  Team Photogenic combine a mind-numbingly slow website with pictures that aren’t searchable by bib number or name.  The result is if you want to look for your pictures or the pictures of friends it’s a good idea to keep a 2×4 handy so you can protect your own walls when you look for something to bang your head against while you scrape through the results.  Not that this will stop me from going . . . through . . . every . . . page.  This is just the first time I’ll think to myself today: “I wish I were less compulsive about this sort of thing.”

Two short updates since yesterday:

First - all my pictures from Mt. Adams are online in flickr. My favorites are an amazing cloud shadow we saw on the way up, the panorama view between the false summit and summit (specifically in full size), the view of our campsite from the ridge heading up, and a hungry chipmunk.

Second - being tired yesterday has yielded to being very, very sore. Today is a day to listen to Crooked Fingers. I feel broken.

USGS Summit marker, originally uploaded by Peru Tha Damaja.

On Saturday and Sunday I went with Tanya, Adam, Julie and Shawn to climb Mt. Adams, the second highest mountain in Washington. The trip to the mountain on Saturday was eventful. We decided not to bother getting an early start because our directions said it should only take about 4 hours to get to the trailhead. Ha. It probably took us 8 hours. We stopped for a leisurely lunch in Eatonville at a strange restaurant that had 21 flavors of soft-serve ice cream and sold toe rings from their bathroom. Then one of the forest roads to get to the trailhead (a section of NF-23 just before NF-90) was completely washed out. This was after driving on the roughest road I have ever seen - a dirt road with huge rocks in the way and with most of it only one car wide and so overgrown that bushes were rubbing on both sides of the poor Shawn’s car. So we struggled to find an alternate way to get to the trailhead (since, from where we were our best maps only showed a bunch of dead ends). We finally got to the trailhead maybe some time around 6 and started toward the Lunch Counter where we wanted to camp. The Lunch Counter is at about 9000′, which is supposed to put us in a good position to get to the summit the next day with a pretty leisurely climb of about 3000′ but it got dark way too early and we had to camp just a little above 7000′. Not that we didn’t fumble around in the dark with our headlamps trying to find cairns or trails or anything to get us a little further along.

Then yesterday we rose bright and early (and covered in suffocating ash, which blew right into all of our tents) and climbed the “non-technical” route to the summit. The climb was tough but fun and the views and way down were incredible. Maybe most incredible is that Shawn made it down at all since he started having some terrible IT pain in his left leg on the way down. After stopping to take down our tents we got to the parking lot and on the road at about 8 or 9 and didn’t get back to Seattle till about 3AM. Mad props to Adam and Shawn for getting us back. I was exhausted and not trying to be totally selfish about the trip back but I was thinking about what was ahead of me Monday morning…

Which was the Super Jock ‘n’ Jill half-marathon today at 9AM. I don’t know exactly what my time was and won’t know how I did against my three goals until times come online, but I think I probably made two of the three, which were:

1. Finish better than 1:40
2. Finish in the top 100 overall
3. Finish better than 1:30

My time was somewhere between 1:31 and 1:32 which is shy of 1:30, but about a 7 minute mile pace and I’m happy with that. And I’m very, very tired.

Performance Nutrition for Runners is an awesome book. It’s incredibly dense with information on how to properly nourish your body before, during, and after running and towards understanding runner physiology and tailoring it to your individual situation. There are tons of useful guidelines and I haven’t gone through all of them yet but there are two that I’ve definitely incorporated into my post-run routine. Oh, and I’m certainly no nutritionist so take whatever you want from this but it’s certainly nothing like professional advice.

• Carbohydrate and electrolyte intake, post-run: while you’re running, your body is destroying tons of muscle tissue, oxidation levels are soaring, and you’re basically sucking all the glycogen (the available, carbohydrate-based, energy stores from in your body) out of your muscles. Recent research has revealed that your body is incredibly more effective at synthesizing glycogen from carbohydrates within the first 30 minutes after running. So it’s super important (if you want to replenish the available energy stores you just depleted) to get a bunch of carbohydrates after a run. I usually do this with some combination of a banana, sports drink (usually gatorade since the mix is pretty cheap and I’m pretty happy with it but recently I’ve tried nuun - more on that in a sec), or high-carb/low-fat trail bar or energy bar.
• The second part of this has to do with electrolyte intake which is closely related to hydration. As you run, you sweat, and your sweat is a combination of water and electrolytes (sodium, magnesium, potassium, and chloride). There has been a ton of attention to hyponatremia - the condition when blood sodium (Na) levels get dangerously low (hypo) - because people have died from it in marathons and trying to win Nintendo Wiis recently. Basically it becomes a risk if water intake levels get incredibly high without an associated elevated sodium increase. So during or after a run if you hydrate, it’s really important to use a sports drink because these replenish your electrolytes in addition to giving you water. Most also include carbohydrates, which is nice on the run because you’ve got an immediate source of energy and can somewhat start using that to help you on the next leg of your run. On the run this usually comes in the form of a sports drink (which can be a hassle to carry) or some energy goo (which are easier to carry and just need you to add some water after you take the goo to assist in absorbing the energy in the goo). There’s another interesting product called nuun which I’ve been using recently which is strictly focused on hydration. nuun doesn’t contain any carbohydrates so it’s basically 0 calories and lets you get your carbohydrate intake from whatever other source you want. There are tons of benefits to sports drinks outlined in the book but one I didn’t realize has to do with the chemical composition of sports drinks. This turns out to be very close to your blood and your body is able to absorb and synthesize this much more easily than water, which is another reason to avoid simply drinking water while running.
• Finally - one exercise the book recommends yielded a result that really surprised me. If you want to hydrate while running it’s important to have some sense of how much? This varies from person to person and based on factors like the terrain or weather, but you can calculate your sweat rate by weighing yourself in the buff before and after a 1 hour run. I just did this today and was amazed to learn I sweat 4.5 pounds in a 1 hour run! Today was pretty cool and my run included strides over 1 mile at a not too strenuous 7:50 pace over a pretty flat course. On a more hotter day, more strenuous course, or at a harder pace I’m sure it would go up.

It’s amazing how much there is to learn about running. And this is just some of the beginning of the nutrition side of things and doesn’t get into exercises, form, more of nutrition, or physiology. I definitely should have been doing more of this earlier in life, but I’m glad I’ve started!

So last Saturday was the 13 mile Cougar Mountain Trail run. Holy shit it was hard. Most of the run itself was super, super fun but the course was very hard. This was the second time I’ve done a race on a trail. The first was three weeks earlier in Fairbanks, but that course didn’t prepare me at all for this trail run. There was another 1000′ of elevation gain at Cougar Mountain and 2500′ more of net elevation gain (the Fairbanks run started in the mountains and lost 3000′). Also, the Fairbanks run was on a large, wide ridge road with beautiful views of the Alaskan mountain ranges, whereas Cougar Mountain was a single-file trail weaving through a canopy of trees and constantly going up and down switchbacks. Speaking of the switchbacks - they are *hard* to run up. Early in the race I though I’d run the entire thing, but I got to sections where basically everyone was walking and I realized that by trying to run I was just expending energy raising my body into the next step but not actually moving any faster than the people doing a quick hike up those inclines. So if I saw people walking, I walked, too.

My time (2:17:00, 41st out of the 204 people who ran it) feels a little disappointing. I originally thought “I’ll crack 2 hours.” Hah! That would have put me in 8th place and was way unrealistic for me for this course. So as I was getting into the run and sizing up the terrain I thought “OK, if I aim for 2:10:00, that gets me just under 10 minute miles.” This was the goal I really wanted to hit, then, and the fact that I didn’t is why I’m a little disappointed. But when I’m out pushing myself up an incline now and I start feeling a little lightheaded, I don’t take any chances so there were times close to the end where I just had to decide to not take a chance with my health and let the time go. Not that I needed much convincing because I was definitely working hard and there’s nothing like a run like this to get your head to feel like it’s going to explode from the pressure, anyway. At the end of the race I met a fellow ChuckIt member who I was under 2 minutes behind and he has qualified for Boston so that was encouraging after feeling like I’d backpedaled on some (really unrealistic) goals.

So overall it was a great experience and I’d love to do it again. One other observation about the race: the entry swag they offered was a pair of running socks with the race series knit around the ankle. They’re really cool! After getting a nice UPF 40 hat from the run in Fairbanks I’ve realized a couple things about longer runs - all of which I really like:

• You get way better free stuff from longer runs! If I never get another cotton t-shirt, that’d be fine by me.
• The field for longer races is incredibly different from who typically comes out for a 5K (however there are certain 5K’s which still attract a unique crowd…).
• Way fewer people enter for longer races

If someone had told me three months ago that I would ever be thinking “Ooh - a half marathon with (allegedly) 2700′ of elevation gain? Great! I could use a break!” I’d have called you crazy, but here I am. I just signed up for the last in the Cougar Mountain Trail Running Series from Seattle Running Company. I’m really looking forward to it. And all I need to do is come close to my pace for the trail run I did in Fairbanks and I’d be setting a new course record for the 13 miler! Which makes me think this is going to be a tough, tough race. But still - I did 19.5 last weekend and haven’t run under 14 on a weekend in over a month so at least right now, I really am looking forward to it.

I just got back from the Gold Discovery Run our near Fox in Fairbanks. It was awesome and the whole run has been a totally great experience. I got my coach’s approval to do the 16.5 mile run, even though the long run planned for this weekend should have dropped me back to 13. But Fairbanks is an incredibly sprawling town and I don’t have a car so I wasn’t sure how it would all work out but everything is just clicking.

First, I’m staying at Billie’s Backpackers hostel (which I recommend) which is pretty close to the University of Alaska - Fairbanks but not near downtown and feels (to this city boy) like it’s in the boonies a bit. I’d seen the registration for the race is at a place called “Toy Quest” and, amazingly, that’s probably the closest business to my hostel! Yay! So (and I blogged about this earlier - sorry for the old news), Friday I went over to register for the race. I met a nice guy named Bob who is part of Running Club North, the local club who organize the run and was managing registration. He very nicely put in a call to Steve, who I gather had been president of the club for years, and who was super helpful and willing to take me to the run on Sunday if I could go to the site Saturday for a bit and help set up. Perfect! And even more good news - unlike every other race I’ve run in where you get a cotton T-shirt for registration (well, there was one race where we got tank tops), they had nice SPF 45 running hats! This is terrific since I’d forgotten to pack a hat on the trip and think one of these would be handy sometimes. These hats alone probably cost close to the $25 race registration fee.

So Saturday morning I was planning on heading downtown to catch the parade and some other events that are part of Golden Days and gave Steve a call. It turned out they were putting on a run that morning - the Golden Mile - and I could meet him or some other club members and get everything set up for me getting to the race Sunday. While I was there I met a nice woman doing the Golden Mile named Lena who said if I was in a pinch she could probably get me to the race. This would later turn out to be great because Steve would need to get to the race early Sunday morning for setup and other things. So I had a pretty good looking plan B lined up that was becoming my plan A.

At the race, I met Keith, who (I gather) is the current Running Club North president. Keith was super nice and we drove in his pickup past the Alaska pipeline and out to Silver Gulch Brewery, where the race would finish, and started moving some things around to get ready for the post race BBQ. Steve showed up at Silver Gulch, too, and we lugged around some tables and “candlesticks” (the traffic sticks used to direct cars or channel runners), then he took me back downtown where I bummed around a little trying to figure out subsequent travel plans and booking.

So that night I got back in touch with Lena about a ride. She and Mike would be able to come pick me up in the morning at 7:30 - which would be *way* better than the option I was looking at of getting out there with Steve at or by 6, so that was perfect. They don’t live too far from my hostel and Lena said when she originally came to Alaska 5 years ago or so she’d stayed here, too.

OK, so on to the race. Today we got to Silver Gulch and boarded a bus at about 8:15 to get to the starting line. The race started at 9 and was really amazing. I have to say this again. It was amazing. I’ve never done trail running before (at all - so why not start with a run that matches the longest run of my life?) and though it doesn’t look exactly like it from the profile, the course itself was fairly hilly. But what the profile and course map don’t show is the incredible scenery on a clear day of the surrounding Alaskan mountain ranges. It’s just breathtaking. It would have been even moreso if I hadn’t been incredibly paranoid about getting stuck in the middle of a rural mountain trail with a sprained ankle and unable to continue my training, unable to run in Alaska, and possibly missing my marathon. But I caught enough peeks of the environment to say that the beauty is just staggering and it almost makes me understand how people suffer the long, frigid, dark winter months to live in a place like this.

I didn’t know exactly how hard to take it and didn’t want to injure myself and so on, so I ran a somewhat moderate pace I finished at a time with almost exactly 8 minute miles and walked through most of the drink stations. But here’s where the story gets - um - interesting…

If you have especially delicate sensibilities, you might want to skip past this…

I’m really still figuring out the whole race nutrition and eating thing. One new thing I did on this race was eat a goo (some mango flavored Clif brand). It seemed OK and probably helped me. But about 11 miles in I really needed to pee. I hate having to do this in the middle of a run because it’s uncomfortable, feels like it screws up your pacing and so forth. So, having to go to the bathroom on the run is probably an encouraging sign for your level of hydration (which is something I’m keenly aware of, having almost died 6 weeks ago probably due in part to poor nutrition) but it still sucks on the run.

But that’s not the worst part. Somewhere after 15 miles - less than 1.5 miles from the finish - something I’d been struggling with ever since the last hydration station at mile 14 became unavoidable. Borat might say “it was time make shit.” And there was nothing I could do to stop it. I ran off the road, trying to get to the bushes in time to take care of what needed to be done. I mostly made it. I really won’t go into too many details, but I was very happy to finish the race - VERY happy this happened at the end, and I spent a while trying to clean up in the toilets at the brewery and wound up borrowing their mop to clean up the bathroom. So…I really need to figure out more about what I should eat before a race. Today I had a banana, cup of OJ, and a little coffee. I think I should probably avoid the coffee (since I identify with Dr. Dorian wisdom about the physiological response it triggers). Lena and Mike suggested that they eat a bagel with natural peanut butter and it’s always been a good combination - which certainly sounds worth a try.

At the end, they hosted a very nice cookout in the parking lot of the Silver Gulch Brewery and the brewery donated a bunch of beer. I tried both beers they’d donated - one was “Vienna” something and I can’t remember what the other was. Both were very good, but one was more IPA/hoppier than I usually like, but it was definitely good for the beer it was. At the awards Steve very nicely called out people who were doing the run from out of state. He asked me “how it went” and I was a little troubled figuring out what to say about “The Events Described Above In The Questionable Part” but said I had a good time, which was certainly true.

All in all - a great, incredibly memorable, and educational race. And I should mention that all of the guys I met from Running Club North - Bob, Steve, and definitely Keith, are all awesome people and I would definitely encourage anyone visiting Fairbanks and who has even a casual interest in running to see what the club has to offer, or to just come out to one of their events and say “hello” and maybe “can I do some heavy lifting for you?” You’ll be glad you did.