Road map

Buried in the comments of a post below is my Colorado Marathon goal of sub-4:00.  There's still a lot of time before that day, nearly six months, and that's probably a good thing.  I have a lot of ground to cover, so to speak.  I punched a 3:59:59 marathon into McMillan to see what my minimum goal times for shorter races should be if I want to achieve a sub-4:00 marathon.  Given the 28 min 5K+ (the race director really should mark the course better) I ran at the Tortoise and Hare series last weekend it's easy to be discouraged.  Being a glass half full kind of guy I like to remember that I ran 1M and 5K distances faster than those paces last April and was within a minute or so at the 8K and 12K distances last spring.  And if I really drink the kool-aid I could take my Pineridge Downhill Mile times and Towers times and convert them to marathon potential using the FCTR correlations.  My PB's on these courses suggest a 3:45 would be possible.  Clearly the correlation falls apart as runners get slower.  3:45?  That's crazy talk.  I'll wait until March to think about that.

I believe I can get to sub-4 though.  It's good to have a road map with some check points on it to track progress and help set goals, so mine is below.  As the Tortoise and Hare series winds down in the spring and as the spring racing season starts I hope to be crossing off all these distances and times.

Distance	Time	Pace
1M	07:06	07:06
4K	19:17	07:46
5K	24:37	07:55
4M	32:12	08:03
8K	40:34	08:10
10K	51:08	08:14
12K	1:02:23	08:22
Half	1:53:47	08:41
Marathon	3:59:59	09:09
PDM	07:20	07:20
Towers	49:28	14:20

Streaking

  I'm streaking.  A little earlier I went for a run for the 18th straight day. I have never thought of streaking before, I always thought it was not for me.  The spark of doing so just happened at the perfect moment, and here I am.  One could make a convincing argument that I am incapable of saying No to things suggested by my crazy running friends (it's true, but at least it's reciprocal), but this goes beyond that.  I'm not doing this as a stunt, or just because I can, but because it is what I need to do.

  Two weeks ago on a social run with the Fort Collins Trail Runners there was a buzz regarding a running streak planned by Ean.  During the run that night I thought about it, at first I had no intention of joining her, but as I continued to run and think I realized it was exactly the thing I needed to snap me out of the running funk I was in.  After that run I read Ean's post about it, read about Ashley's recent streaking, and thought about some things Pete has said about why he streaks.   It didn't take long and I was all in.  I knew this was the way back to the running they way I wanted to.  It's funny how things can click together so quickly, in a couple hours or less I went from not even thinking about a streak to being fully committed.

  I've typically cut back on mileage in August and September, I just get tired of running in the heat.  This year the mileage cutbacks and some weight I've put on left me losing fitness faster than normal.  That led to slower paces out running, slower times up Towers, and that all led to me feeling sorry for myself.  Throw in some kinks in the my normal running schedule and before I knew it I was as slow as I can remember being in a long time and not running much at all.  It's not that running wasn't fun, but thinking about running wasn't fun, and I blew off more than one Sunday run so as not to have to face the facts on how much I had lost.  It's a downward spiral I tell you.  I needed to get my running Mojo back.

  So I decided to start a running streak.  I started the next day, Friday.  Or maybe the Tuesday before, as I'd already run 3 days in a row.  I've been counting the extra 3 days because I'm not (always) a purist.  I wanted to keep things simple and accessible, not set the bar too high.  I was afraid I'd end up saying "fuck it" someday, and then throw away a 30 day streak and end up back on that downward spiral.  The single parameter of my streak is simple, run at least 1 mile every day.  I plan on an average of  at least 4.1 miles a day as that is where I need to be to hit my 2011 total mileage goal but that is really secondary.  I also plan on taking Pete's advice and am not making the streak about training.  I'll celebrate a 65/68 day streak by running the Resolution Run 5K on the evening of December 31st, hopefully with some fellow streakers, and sometime between now and then contemplate what 2012 will bring.

  As I said up top, I'm sitting at 18 days.  I've definitely found some of the same things Pete mentioned, mostly that it takes some planning and discipline to get a run in every day.  I have run at night a couple times because I just didn't make time during the day but have yet to really put it off.  This has been a good thing though, and I find I focus more on everything, not just running.  I've also got a few recruits at work on the streaking bandwagon.  After mentioning it to a couple of my running buddies at work they got on board too and the word spread around.  As of Wednesday this week there were 7 or 8 who had some sort of streak going.  I don't know if they will all keep going until the New Year, but it's still kind of cool to see them get excited about running.

  Long live the streak!

The Track

I went to the track and ran intervals last night.  Honestly I don't remember the last time I went to a track and did that.  I'm pretty certain this was a 2011 first, and I didn't go much last year.  Really I haven't done much fast stuff since I hurt my IT Band in October 2009.  Before that I ran intervals nearly weekly.

The decline in interval work started as a way to not re-injure myself.  I found I kind of liked skipping them though.  I ran hills, because our trails aren't flat, ran hard up Towers every other week, ran tempo runs on the road fairly often, it's not like I totally ignored speed.  Running a lot of miles you can fake it relatively well, as long as you aren't trying to bang out a sub-3 hour marathon or something crazy like that.  I ran a 5K PB last April on no speed work, for example.  But I haven't been running a lot of miles recently.  And faking it is getting tougher.  My T&H 5K last weekend, even without the missed turn, was not a PB.  Was not within 3 minutes of a PB.

My Tuesday evening runs have me starting 1/2 mile from the CSU track, and I got a little push by Alex mentioning he was doing some 800s yesterday, so I did it.  I went to the track.  And it wasn't as bad as I remembered.  I started small, 2x400, 4x800, and 2x400 last night.  Faster than I normally run for sure, but I probably can take off 15-20 seconds from my 800s with a little more focus and grit.  I plan on keeping the Tues night intervals on the schedule, hopefully the speed comes back as fast as I remember it does.  Someday next May I'll be running down the Poudre Canyon and I'll look back on last night and think, "that was a good idea".  Right?

When life gives you lemons

Or 

Sometimes it's nice to find the lucky horseshoe up your own butt

So this afternoon I was kicking myself for not getting my streak run in earlier in the day.  (Yeah I said streak run -- my long, rambling, and potentially profound post on this hasn't been published yet -- because it's not done)  Anyway, I didn't run before work even though I knew it was unlikely I'd find time during work with a long staff meeting this morning.  I knew this was going to push the run off until after Sandis' soccer practice unless I convinced Stella to go along, which was unlikely with a cold front coming in.  I realized this meant I was going to be running right about when the rain was forecast to start -- should have looked closer at the weather forecast for today .  I figured this would be a lesson in the planning that goes into a successful running streak.


And then it started snowing.  The run I thought was going to be in the rain turned into a fun run in the snow.  Big fat beautiful snowflakes.  Lemons -> Lemonade.  Awesome.  I'll let you know in a few weeks if I learned that lesson.  I like to think so but ...


Streaking, this was day 5 of purposeful streaking, 8th day in a row going for a run.  Someday I'll get that other post done but for now I'll just thank my friend Ean for the inspiration.

There is no "only"

Wow!

What started as a crazy, laughable idea became reality last Saturday.  24 Hours of running up and down our big hill, the hill that makes the Fort Collins Trail Runners stronger, Towers, the antenna farm, big sucky mountain, or whatever else you may call it.  I was simply blown away by the participation.  I expected a total of about 25 runners, maybe 20 to start the morning and a core group of 10-12 throughout the day.  Instead I witnessed the Soderberg lot fill and a mass of 56 runners descend on the campsite / starting line Saturday monring.

It got hot fast, temps were above 90 from roughly 10 AM until 6 PM.  The Lory weather station reported a high of 92, but it sure felt hotter than that on the exposed trail, especially with zero cloud cover.  Most runners seemed to adapt and maintain good spirits.  There were some slower than anticipated laps, some adjustments made to the amount of water carried, some trips home for hydration packs, some extra rest, and yes there were some lessons learned about running in such heat.  I spent a lot of that 10-6 window in the shade drinking water and enjoying the company of FCTR.  As temps cooled there was a fresh assault on the hill, culminating in a group of 12 or so heading up for a lap at 10:30 pm.  After that the number on the hill dwindled to 3 and then a solo runner for an hour or so before morning hit and numbers grew for a final lap.

The best view of the rock can be snagged from Towers

Great views of Meeker and Longs if you poke through the trees

A nighttime view of the Fort through the trees from the Westridge junction.

The family lap was also a bigger hit than I expected.  I didn't get an exact count but there were 6 or 8 groups that went out as couples, runners with children, or both, maybe 20+ of us?  Some made it all the way up, some turned back sooner.  I hope everyone else enjoyed sharing this hill with their family as much as I did.  Several husband/wives made it to the top with runners and 4 children of runners.  Sara Speights, Micah May, and my kids Sandis and Stella.  Sara may be hooked, I hear.  Micah did admirably well for a teenager.  Sandis and Stella complained until they had some canine companionship then marched the last 2 miles to the top without a complaint.  Stella was youngest to summit that day and at 7 years old she hiked her age in miles!  She sings and dances and burps and likes to get dirty, I think she's a trail runner in the making.

The families spread out at the beginning of the family lap and my kids on their trip up during the family lap.   

Back to that idea of 24HoT being crazy and laughable. Few, if any, of us would have set out to run laps on Towers in 90+ F heat on our own.  Had this been our plan for the day we likely would have altered the route to hit some shade on Timber or Howard or the Lory Westridge.  As a group we not only worked through a bunch of vert and bunch of hot miles, but we had fun doing it, building on a group mileage total with each lap complete.  Working together, supporting each other, sharing water, accomplishing huge things, and having fun; these are things that make the Fort Collins Trail Runners so awesome.  One great thing about the day was that it was not a competition.  There was not a lot of trying to out do that other guy, but there was a lot of supporting each other.  In the afternoon when many were taking a break a common question was "how many have you run?".  The responses started to come out as "only 3" or "just 2" but soon the group dynamic had numerous people responding to that with "There is no 'only', 3 is a lot of a work", etc.  That was one of my take home moments from the weekend, "There is no only".  It's easy to find someone in our community who has done more than you, and it's easy to lose sight of how great our own accomplishments are.  It is wonderful that the FCTRs create an environment to remind us all of that important point, "There is no only".

The final statistics:

• 78 different runners
• 210 laps completed
• 1502 miles
• 367,500 feet of ascent (69.6 miles)
• Average per runner:
• 2.69 laps
• 19.25 miles!
• 4712 ft. vert. 
• 25 runners with an "ultradistance" day, 4+ laps

Yeah, that's right, 78 people averaged a 19 mile day on Towers in that heat.  That seems incredible, and awesome!  (I am a child of the 80's, I'm allowed to say awesome)

And though it was not a competition, congrats to Cat for completing a 24HoT best 8 laps and Celese, Alex, and Pete right behind her with 7 each.