Brutal ...

So today's little escapade involved 16 miles on the AT.  It's time to be hitting the bigger mileage if I'm gonna be ready for this 50k in September, but this was an inauspicious start.  

I slept late.  I'm not good at getting up "early".  Never have been.  Early for me is anything before 10 a.m.  It's not that I don't like mornings, I just hate the process of becoming awake to enjoy them.  And I stay up too late.  Truthfully, some of the best trail runs are right around dawn.  The air is (usually) crisp, the light is amazing, and the terrain takes on a whole new feel.  Fog banks pop up here and there, giving the mountains a very serene, old, and distant vibe.  It's awesome.  Too bad that I suck at getting out of bed.  *sigh*  On the upside, Katie Lyford has joined me for a couple of runs and we've scheduled them early. When I have somebody waiting for me, I can get out of bed.  So this is good.  We run slower as well, also good.  Training is always better with variety.  Going full speed on every run is a good way to burn out, at least for me.  There are freaks of nature out there ... ahem ... *Rick Kraics* ... to whom this maxim probably does not apply.  I don't mind.  I'm slow anyways.  Honestly, I have relatively little desire to be fast.  I enjoy being out there and covering the distance.  And then I figure if you've collapsed on the trail as I run by, it doesn't much matter if you had an early lead on me.  At present, Rick can blow me away on distance as well, but I've got time ...

So today's run, not surprisingly, did not begin until the afternoon.  Could've been earlier, but I repeat myself when pointing out that I'm a bit lazy in the a.m.  It was in the low 80's, per weather.com.  Didn't seem as humid as when Katie and I went out earlier in the week.  That day was HOT and nasty, even affecting Jax quite a bit.  But for whatever reason, I ran well anyways.  Not so much today.  From the start I felt sluggish.  I hadn't planned on running up the bigger hills, given my planned distance, but today I couldn't have even if I'd wanted to.  I'm not entirely sure what the problem was.  It had been a couple days since my last run, and that one had been quite short, so I really shouldn't have been fatigued.  Got 8-9 hours of sleep, so that was fine.  I do know that I should have been out there earlier, when it was cooler.  I'm also thinking I was probably not hydrated well enough from the get-go, and probably ate the wrong things.  I'd had a couple of hard-boiled eggs, some walnuts, and some blue chips with hummus.  I felt a bit bloated.  Perhaps I needed more time between eating and the run.  Perhaps something lighter.  I'll fiddle with it as time goes on.  Incidentally, I ordered Chia seeds.  Yes, Chia pet seeds.  The Tarahumara eat them when they run.  If this works, I may look into their diet a bit more closely, although I'm planning on drawing the line on BBQ'ed mice.  Not that I find the concept that bothersome, actually.  Just pointless.  Mice?  Really?  Really?  As in the tiny little hairy gray f@ckers?  I don't get it.  Not even with a good steak sauce.  Then again, I don't live in an incredibly remote canyon in Mexico with virtually zero modern amenities.  Very interested in trying the Chia out, however.  Apparently nature's Gu.  Slow release carbs and hydration.  I'll be stoked if it works, given that they're non-processed, no preservatives, and that they're gonna be roughly 1% the cost of Gu.  I need to see if there have been any scientific studies done on them.  More on that in a future post.

Between the heat and feeling crappy, I was cooked from the word go.  I'm not sure whether it would have been a good idea to cut it short, or keep going, as I did.  I finished, although at a walk and in a hell of a lot of pain.  I don't really mind that tho.  I expect that the roughest runs are the ones that result in the most growth, both mentally and physically.  So maybe my suffering today will pay off bigger.  I don't know.  I need to drop somewhere between 15-20 lbs.  I'm not really worried about what I look like, but I know for sure I would run a lot better without the extra baggage.  Takes a lot of energy to haul around a spare tire.  When not running or paying attention to my diet, I hover around 210 lbs.  When I was in residency, I was under 190.  I would like to get back there again.  Less weight = faster and easier, no?

Today's jaunt was not helped by the fact that I severely underestimated the vertical.  Didn't have an altimeter, but I'm quite certain I did over 6k between all the ups & downs.  The 20 mile route that Chad LeBlanc and I used to do in residency probably had less than 1000 feet of elevation change.  BIG difference.  I'm not afraid of the elevation, especially as it'll leave me stronger on the back end, but obviously I need to train differently.  Ultimately, feeling crummy + heat + underestimated route = ran out of water at mile 11.  Good times.  At that point in time I finished my last Gu figuring that when my mouth got dry enough I wouldn't be able to choke them down anyways.  The last 5 miles were mostly downhill, but it was still pretty rough.  My proverbial goose was already slow roasted.  By mile 14-15, I had bonked pretty hard and was reduced to mostly walking.  It sucked, but at the same time was pretty awesome.  I know, I know, I'm a spaz.  If not, I wouldn't have spent an hour on the phone last night trying to convince Mike Barthman to take up barefoot running and read the book "Born to Run."  Brings me back to two of my favorite quotes.  1- "You owe it to yourself to live outside the box and suffer a little bit." -Charlie Engle, and 2- "It doesn't have to be fun to be fun." -Mark Twight.  At what point in time in my life did I decide that being in a lot of pain is awesome?

  When we got to the parking lot, I walked down to the trout stream and sat in it to ice my legs.  Jax was confused.  My thighs and calves felt vaguely like they'd been beaten with a rubber hose and my hammies would start cramping if I wasn't very careful about how much I flexed my knees.  Fortunately, there were two 20 oz diet cokes in the truck, both of which I promptly sucked down.  It's now 8 hours later and I'm guessing I've put down 2 liters of fluid since, but I'm still not peeing clear.  On the upside, I'm fairly certain I don't have rhabdomyolysis, my legs feel better, and my joints never bothered much.  I'll credit the minimalist shoes to that one.  The quick recovery may be the Udo's oil.  Stuff tastes like oily grass clippings, but if I can feel fine this fast, totally worth it.  Bottoms of the feet were beat up, but this wasn't unexpected.  I figure this will improve with time.  Even if not, it's a small price to pay for hips, knees, and ankles that don't hurt.

During my little dance with pain and suffering, Jax was entirely non-plussed.  Mile 15 and he was still chasing squirrels as if we had just started.  Bastard.  He did manage to freak a herd of cows.   We had to cut thru them to get back to the parking lot.  It was rather amusing.  They were clearly intrigued by him and followed him around, but they would get alarmed when he would move quickly, which he sort of tends to do.  So a curious bovine would edge close to him, run away, edge close, run away, etc., etc.  Multiply by a herd of maybe 20-30.  I was actually briefly concerned about being trampled by 2000 lb. cows running away from my 25 lb. dog.  Ironic, no?  But all in all, I'm still quite glad that nobody has told Jax he's not supposed to be able to run like this.  Not sure what I'll do when he figures it out.  Cry, maybe.  Next week I get to introduce him to Tom, and maybe Bear.  Bring on the next adventure!