Seven: Size Up The Competition

Ultra running is all about personal accomplishment and pushing your limits, but there is no denying the race aspect of it either. Especially when it comes to Western States, a race that seems to prompt more speculation than the 2006 real estate market.

It's not been a secret that I'd like to finish in the Top 10 and come away with an automatic entry to next year's event, so I can have this much fun all over again! But that is not going to be an easy feat, as the field boasts an all-star cast and will most likely be the most competitive race all year.

On the women's side, I think there will be two separate races going on: a race for the victory and a race to round out the top 10.

I am grouping Nikki Kimball, Tracy Garneau, Meghan Arbogast, Joelle Vaught, and Devon Crosby-Helms up front, with Annette Bednosky as somebody else who could factor in.

After that I think there are 11 women with a solid chance for a Top 10 (I'd like to think I am part of this group) and then five more women who just might pull it off if they really throw down a good one that day. That's 22 women for 10 spots! Top 10 will not be easy to pull off and there are certainly no guarantees! But isn't the challenge part of the fun??

Oh yeah - I heard there might be some guys running at Western States, too. ;)

Also up for grabs is the Montrail Ultra Cup. Annette is way out in front but that is because she has more races than anybody else. Since only four races count and Western States has the most available points, the totals from everyone's three best races are:

Devon Crosby-Helms 159.25
Annette Bednosky 155.83
Pam Smith :) 155.17
Meghan Arbogast 154.70
Jill Perry 129.94

I am so honored to be in the middle of that group of ladies, but I will freely admit I had to run 12 miles more than anyone else to get there (points are proportional to miles run). But there is no option to add extra miles at Western States to let me compete in that talent pool! So I'll put myself finishing in 4th, just outside the money.

The fastest winning women's time this decade is 18:12. Assuming none of the ladies run faster than that, each point will be worth at least 10.92 minutes. That gives Devon a 37+ minute lead over Annette and nearly a 50 minute head start over Meghan. I don't know who'll be first to cross the line in Auburn, but I think Devon can stay within the spread to stay at the top of the scoreboard and win the cup. Jill is an amazing runner, but she is going to need someone to DNF (please not me!) if she is going to move up on the list.

This guessing and speculation is all just fun and games to keep me busy in my extra free time while I taper. ;) I enjoy it because I am over-analytical, but I don't plan to get caught up in it. When the gun goes off, I won't be paying any attention to the race around me (well, ok maybe a little bit...) and just run my race, my way.

Feel free to add your predictions to the mix!

Eight: Nutrition Plan

In ultra-running it seems there are two camps when it comes to race day nutrition: those who prefer to eat "real" food and those who stick to gels, pastes and powders.

I am a real foodie, mostly because I can't do more than about five GU's before I want to gag (even though my stomach is just fine). I don't know how the gelnivores are able to eat that stuff for 20 straight hours! I am pretty much able to eat anything as long as it still tastes good to me. Mostly this ends up being a lot of "junk" food, the same things that are NOT allowed in our pantry and that I try to keep my kids from eating!

The nice thing about the real food camp is that the stuff is cheap. My two favorites: Rice Krispie treats ($12 for 54) and fruit snacks ($10.50 for 80). I can get a year's worth at Costco for about the same amount I'd have to spend on gels for one race! Also, being a real food eater, I know I can pretty much rely on aid stations for food. I love it when an aid station has home baked goodies! The down side is that some of these things (especially fruit) are a little harder to pack and carry on the run than gels. So my stash will be a mix of gels, bloks, and Costco/aid station snacks. I don't pay much attention to the content/sugar type/macro nutrient breakdown in my food. I just concentrate on getting the calories in and figure whatever sounds the best is probably what my body needs at that point.

So my fueling plan boils down to no plan at all! If it ain't broke...

Off to Costco!

Nine: Asthma and Allergy Control

I am an allergy an asthma sufferer. Both have affected my running in the past. Last May, I had Claritin induced muscle weakness which kept me from doing any serious running for about a month before I got it figured out. And then in August, I had my first ever asthma attack and it was a doozy, turning the 100k National Championships at Where's Waldo into my worst race ever. Fortunately, these are things that I think I have under control so they won't be an issue on race day (knock on wood!).

Last August, I started getting allergy shots for grass. I had a little scare in the form of an anaphylaxis attack, so that I am not up to the full dose yet, but it is smack dab in the middle of grass season and I have barely a sniffle! No more head full of yuck and no more allergy meds!

For the asthma, it seems to work pretty well to do a three to five day lead up with the steroid inhaler. Yep, hitting the 'roids right before race day. Shhh! Don't tell anyone! Just kidding, these are NOT anabolic steroids so they won't help me get big and strong. It does help my running, however, if I can breathe properly! I will be carrying my short acting inhaler with me the entire way on race day and I plan to use it if I feel even the slightest tightness in my chest (I did this at Bandera and in the Grand Canyon and never had any problems).

In addition, I have been taking Omega 3 fatty acids, Vitamin C and Vitamin E supplements for the anti-inflammatory properties. Do they help and am I sold? I don't really know, but they don't seem to be hurting any so I will keep taking them at least through race day.

So that should keep me breathing easy...well, at least when I am not hyperventilating thinking about the race!

The Countdown Begins!

TEN: Heat

The final count down begins!! My mileage is in half this week and already I feel fat, slow and lazy. I think that means the taper is going well.

My big push is for sauna time right now. I have said to a few people about my ultra-running that I am not great at anything but I don't suck at anything either. Well, I am starting to doubt that statement. I might suck in the heat.

I really melted down in the Grand Canyon when the temps soared. At the time it was a positive experience because I was able to turn it around and snap out of it. But now I am finding I really hate the sauna, too. I sweat like a pig and feel so mentally out of it. I can barely focus on a People magazine while I am in there, and that is a far cry from rocket science! Hopefelly, these suffer-fests are affecting some miraculous adaptations so I don't even notice the heat at WS.

Best Weekend Trip Ever!

Last weekend (June 4-7 ...I took too long finishing this up) was the weekend of The Last Big Run, and I had the extreme privilege to join Meghan Arbogast, Rob Cain and John Price on a Rim to Rim to Rim double crossing of the Grand Canyon, a 47 mile jaunt with 11,000+ feet of climbing with elevations up t0 8400' on a day that topped out at 112 degrees. It was every sort of training you could ever want for Western States with majestic scenery all around.

Most people start from the South Rim, but we had our base camp in a cute little cabin on the North Rim. We hit the trail head just before 5:30 and made our way down the North Kaibab to Phantom Ranch, enjoying pre-dawn cool temps and shade from the canyon walls.

From there it is UP, UP, UP to the South Rim with the last four miles to the top a long steep march. Fortunately, we only got caught behind one mule train for a short while so the day contained only a small section of wading through mule piss. Once you get above Indian Gardens, the tourists hit the trail en masse so there is plenty of entertainment on the climb. Seriously, why would anybody be on the trail in a strapless dress and ballet flats?? Hopefully to make us laugh, because we did. Plenty of other interesting people out for a little hike as well.

The nice thing about going N to S is that we were able to stop for lunch at the half way point on tourist-y South Rim, whereas the North Rim offers nothing more than a parking lot at the trail head. So we had a nice stop for lunch, where I had the best tasting grilled cheese sandwich ever along with some fries and a big rootbeer to wash it down.

When we started back down, I couldn't believe how good I felt. As we started running down the steep trail, I could feel my full belly, but my legs felt great and there was no stiffness at all from sitting around for 45 minutes to eat. Meghan wanted to add a side trip out to Plateau Point to make the run an even 50 miles and I told her for sure I was going because I wanted 50 miles, too. And then, in a matter of minutes, things all went haywire.

We had just passed the three mile house about thirty minutes into our descent and I just started to feel extreme fatigue. The noon day sun was beating down on us and I was just melting. The effort to run went up exponentially, even though everything was still all downhill. We got to Indian Gardens and the thermometer read 112 degrees, which is about 40 degrees warmer than any temps we've seen in Salem this dismal spring.

I knew there was a LONG way to go before we were done for the day, so I ended up bailing on the trip to plateau point, but Meghan was rock solid and set on getting in the extra miles, so we all lazed at Indian Gardens while Meghan alone ventured out to the point. We spent the time at Indian Gardens tending to a guy suffering from heat and offering him all kinds of ultra-type advice on fueling, nutrition and salt as well as giving some of our supplies to help perk him up.

Meghan got back and was ready to keep on rolling. I was OK for a couple of miles and then just started losing it again. Every time Meghan would walk, I would be so thankful. I gave an inward groan every time we had to start running, but I managed to keep up until we got to Phantom Ranch. There I just slumped onto the counter waiting to order my lemonade. I was starting to worry about getting out of the canyon before dark!

We sat for a while and I pounded my ice cold "lemmy" and then chugged a liter of ice water (ah, ice! so much nicer than drinking warm water!). I made myself eat a double bag of M&M's and a bag of pretzels, I took three S-caps and then went and totally submerged myself in the Bright Angel Creek. I came out totally revived and ready to roll!

Meghan later told me: "I didn't want to say anything at the time, but you looked really bad at Phantom Ranch."

We ran most of the seven miles up to Cottonwood camp with two stops to jump in the creek. After Cottonwood is the steepest stuff of the day, almost all hiking to the top. But this is the most gorgeous part of the canyon with huge rock walls towering overhead in a deep red color (much darker than the South side). Plus the temps were starting to fall and the walls provided lots of shade.

We got to the Supai tunnel and ran into a pair of rim to rim hikers, one of whom was suffering badly. We offered what we could but we were anxious to get going. I definitely gained a spring in my step knowing we had only two miles to the top!

With a whoop we arrived at our starting point just under 14 hours after starting and with plenty of daylight to spare!

The next day, I awoke with sore calves but everything else was feeling pretty good. We continued our weekend adventure in Zion, NP with another two and a half hours of running/hiking which included tackling the crazy climb to Angel's Rest - that steep little spine of jagged rock in the picture.

We thought that was the end of our excitement, but a blown tire on the way back to the airport kept us on our toes. We had a mad scramble to make our flight, but everything ended on a happy note.

The whole weekend was amazing with phenomenal scenery as the backdrop for some awesome running!

Titus Van Rijn

A week ago my training partner Steph and I headed to the Charles Bowles track at Willamette University for Salem's addition of the Titus Van Rijn. The idea is simple: run around a tracjk to accumu;ate as much distance as you can in one hour; the execution is not always so simple!

Last year's Titus Van Rijn did not go as I had hoped, so this year, I made two crucial changes:

1) I invited my training partner out to keep me company, and

2) I convinced the weather gods to keep things 20 degrees cooler than last year!

The track was mostly empty, but the infield was swarming with boys high school soccer players. The oblivious teenagers would often drift on to the inner lane, with ensuing yells of "TRACK!" from us.

Steph had the awesome idea to trade of the lead every mile, which helped the first six miles go quickly. We hit 4.5 miles at 30:15 and I joked that we would have to negative split if we were going to make nine. Steph joked back that she was just fine with eight, so maybe we should run slower. But we didn't slow.

We drifted a bit apart after about 6-6.5 miles and just ran the last 20 or so minutes doing our own thing. I had 20:37 for a 5k to get me to nine miles and I was going for it! I thought it'd be close, but I had 47 seconds to spare and added a bonus 178 meters in that time. Steph also passed nine miles with 10 seconds to spare!!

We did our cool down and then celebrated with a black cherry "spritzer" because neither of us drink a lot of soda.

My total was 14,578 meters for the hour, a good 1K farther than last year!! The only downside is that I now know my Garmin overestimates distance a bit (it was about .25 miles over for the hour+, though not enough to make any real difference.

Roller Coaster

It's been an interesting two weeks, definitely with some ups and downs, but fortunately, I feel like I am back to a good spot.

Two weeks ago, everything was just off. No, not just tired. You can't be an ultrarunner if you can't handle running tired. It was so much more than that. My hips were hurting; I felt like every run was a struggle; my legs throbbed when I ran; and they ached for hours after a run. This training requires riding a fine line of exertion, but I had passed my limit.

Still, these are the most important weeks of training and I felt like they couldn't be squandered. And so even though I wrote on my blog that I might take a few days off, every part of me was thinking,"Just pust through. It is only 20 more days till you start to taper. Suck it up and get it done!" And so that night I did eight miles on the treadmill, and tried to convince myself that was an "easy" workout because half of the miles were "power walking" with incline and not even running. Then on Tuesday, I dropped the kids off at school and set off for a run around town (I was home for the week single parenting while Mac did manly things in Alaska). Sixteen miles of pure misery. More achy, sore legs and complete exhaustion despite running over a minute per mile slower than usual for a run like that. My legs hurt all day afterward. Twenty days no longer sounded like a short period to train but a really long time to be miserable if I didn't do something. And so I took four days off. Yes, four, and there was no cross training, no walking, no lifting, no nothing - just rest.

This is a sport where more is better, where we all continually push ourselves to go beyond what we have done before. That is part of the appeal - to test your barriers and to find the inner strength to do things that you didn't think possible. Ultramarathon training constantly flirts with overtraining, but it feels like that is a bit of a dirty word, something people don't want to admit to. Because in some ways it feels a bit like failing, either physically or mentally it seems like maybe you just aren't tough enough to handle the training load. If a coach made the training schedule, maybe it feels like you aren't meeting expectations. If you made your own (like I did), it fells like maybe you over estimated what you could handle or maybe that you didn't know what you were doing when you made the schedule.

I tried to deny it at first, but eventually, I just needed a break. Yes, I was "overtrained." I think this was from the race schedule, but I don't at all regret piling American River, Capitol Peak, and MacDonald Forest into a one month period. Those races did so much for my confidence and strengthening my racing ability. Rather, I think my real mistake was not taking enough recovery after each race. I think if I had given myself 2 or even 3 days of rest after each race, I wouldn't have needed the rest right now.

The rest went well, and my body healed. It was hard to give up those days of training, but I don't regret it at all. The training at that point was doing more damage than good. I came back fresh and ready to run this week and that is just what I did!

Last Sunday, I paced a friend in the Iris Festival Half marathon and it was great! Yeah, I PW'd (personal worst, haha) by 8 minutes, but still running felt so easy and light (and I helped my friend PR by over 2.5 minutes! - 1:37:26). Monday easy, Tuesday did a double, Wednesday my training partner Steph and I killed the Titus Van Rijn one hour track time trial, typical Thursday and Friday and 32 at Macdonald forest for a great 98 miles! But better yet, I still feel good! I am ready for the last big week before starting to taper! Motivation should be pretty easy to come by as I leave Friday for a R2R2R run in the Grand Canyon!!

Overtraining is no fun and not something that is easy to accept. But at least I know I was training as hard as I possibly could. I did everything my body could handle and then some. And I feel like I have learned from my mistakes. Those things certainly make the idea more palatable. A top ten finish a Western States would also lessen my grief from this stumble. ;)

So anybody else want to admit to a period where they were overtrained? What did you do to get past it? For me, it was simple - time off. But now I am feeling better than ever and so excited for the next month!