August beatdown

I am trying to "peak" my UTMB training this week — "peak" simply meaning I do a relatively high volume of tough outdoor workouts in an effort to get my mind ready for the long slog ahead. Oh, and to reintroduce the legs to chronic fatigue. Since the week started with Sunday's 50K, this is what I have so far:

Sunday: Trail running, 32 miles, 7,070 feet of climbing
Monday: Road cycling, 18 miles, 2,772 feet of climbing
Tuesday: Trail running, 7 miles, 1,414 feet of climbing
Wednesday: Trail running, 8.5 miles, 1,605 feet of climbing
Thursday: Mountain biking, 57 miles, 7,291 feet of climbing
Five-day total: 47.5 miles trail running, 75 miles cycling, 20,152 feet of climbing

For Friday I'm planning another run of indeterminate length and then on Saturday Beat and I have another 50K trail race. If I finish the race, this week could end up being one of my largest seven-day running totals yet. I love doing these "peak" weeks, but as it turns out, August is not my favorite time of year for a beatdown. After the Steep Ravine 50K, local temperatures shot into the 90s. I generally do my exercising around 5 p.m., of course the hottest time of day. I realize it would be wise to wake up early and try to take advantage of that thin wisp of a marine layer that helps keep morning temperatures more reasonable. But since I'm training to toughen up my head game, I figured I might as well make it tough. So I went out for my afternoon runs with my tired legs, little water bottle, and sweat-drenched sad face. Then, today, two of my crazier bike friends had the time and desire for an all-day mountain bike ride.

Leah, Jan and I met up at Saratoga Gap for an 11 a.m. start. My car dashboard thermometer indicated it was already 89 degrees. Jan has been fighting a sinus infection and I've only been on a bicycle twice in the last three weeks. We set out on the dried-out, loose chunder, steep rolling trails of Skyline Ridge. Leah, who brought her cross bike because I said, "Yeah, this would be a good ride for a cross bike," skidded on several of the descents. We all fought the chundery climbs with what felt like twice the amount of force that I usually need when these trails are tacky. Seriously, August is a mean month.

We spent ninety minutes working hard for the first nine miles, and by then I was nearly out of water. Just like that, seventy ounces, gone. Leah was out, too. We'd spend the entire rest of the ride rationing our way from water stop to water stop, because we only had a finite number of known water stops (all ranger stations and a camp site, so no retail resupply) and limited carrying capacity. It was of course a mistake to bring only a two-liter bladder, but I didn't understand how much water I'd be burning through — significantly more than I'm used to. All of that liquid just evaporated into the hot air, scarcely moving through my system before it disappeared. Mean, mean August.

But we had a fun ride, descending into Portola Redwoods State Park, slicing through the dark woods of Pescadero on an old logging road, chasing a slightly cooling breeze along coastal farm roads, climbing the sandy Butano Ridge, and descending into Big Basin Redwoods before our final climb to Skyline. The whole area is remote — as remote as you can be in the immediate Bay Area. We were never far from civilization, but we were just far enough that we saw few people, heard few engines, and looked across sweeping vistas to see nothing but mountains, ocean, and trees.

We were also far from water, surface or treated. We filled up at every stop, and still we had to accept that amount was less than we wanted. In Big Basin we decided that we would likely need to go off route for four miles and back to ranger station for our last resupply, but then I remembered a backpacker camp on the Skyline to the Sea Trail that was off limits to bikes — but we were in need. That backpacker camp resupply was heavenly, even though the water was lukewarm and the spigot was surrounded by dozens of angry kamikaze bees. But it was there that we could finally drink all we wanted, and not feel too sick, because at that point it was 5:30 p.m. and the hard sun was finally starting to wane.

A combination of the relentless heat, dry air, loose dirt, and water rationing had us all lulling our necks toward the end, exhausted. We agreed our Big Basin Beatdown was quite a bit tougher than a 57-mile ride with 7,200 feet of climbing should be. Oh, August, you sure know how to administer a proper peak week thrashing. I can't wait for my fifty-kilometer run on Saturday.

Steep Ravine 50K

 On Sunday I ran this fifty-kilometer trail race. At least, I'm pretty sure I did. I have flickers of memories from the run and a T-shirt that proves I was physically there, but my mind slipped into a gray sort of trance and now I find it difficult to fathom how I was out there, running, for a full seven hours. Thick fog shrouded the mountain and I let my thoughts disappear into it. My body continued on autopilot, rudimentarily aware of my directives to "keep moving," "lift your feet," "watch where you're stepping." I didn't feel much in the way of fatigue and only mild pain in my banged-up knee. I stopped at every aid station to eat exactly two peanut butter sandwich quarters and a swig of pink electrolyte drink, which was the perfect amount of fuel. And I must have been relaxed because I didn't fall on my face or even stumble that many times, despite the technical nature of much of the course. Although there often wasn't much to see, it was a beautiful way to spend a morning — taking meditative steps through a peaceful fog. It was really the perfect kind of mindset for a long haul like UTMB; I hope I can figure out how to put my mind in in that place again.

 Beat and I ran the Steep Ravine 50K because it made for a great training run. The course is set in two twenty-five-kilometer loops; it begins at Stinson Beach and ascends Mount Tam in a thickly forested canyon on the Steep Ravine Trail, drops down the bald side of the mountain on an overgrown strip of singletrack, skirts around the Muir Valley and climbs Mount Tam again on the root-choked Dipsea Trail, then descends Dipsea's mud and slimy wooden stairs. Repeat. You end up with 32 miles and 7,070 feet of climbing, although in my opinion the technical descents are the toughest aspect of Steep Ravine. Due to my clumsy accidents earlier this week, I showed up for the race in heavy armor: Gauze wrapped around my raw right knee, basketball player elbow pads as insurance against a likely slip, and poles strapped to my pack in case my knee or shins bothered me enough to require support. Beat wore a large overnight pack stuffed with food and all the gear he'll need in the 200-mile Petite Trotte a Leon in France later this month. We must have looked fairly neurotic to the other runners lining up for a heavily supported 25K/50K race on well-used trails.

Autopilot survival instincts kept me from "bombing" any of the descents, so all-in-all it was a slow 50K. However, I felt I climbed well, maintaining a consistent pace and working hard enough that I was drenched to the point of saturation for most of the run — although this was probably more fog condensation than sweat. I hit fairly even splits — 3:25 for the first 25K and 3:40 for the last. The main issue that slowed me down in the last half of the race was my right knee, which stiffened up considerably. The pain wasn't terrible but it got to the point that if I didn't think about it, I wouldn't bend it. During the final climb up the steep Dipsea Trail, I'd catch myself stopping before a rooty "step" to lift my right leg sideways and swing it like a peg leg over the obstacle. The gauze on my knee was dirty, slightly blood stained and wrapped haphazardly around my leg like mummy rags thanks to multiple attempts to re-tape it when it loosened in the moist air. A couple of times I caught hikers regarding me with sad eyes, so I must have looked fairly pathetic. But I didn't really feel all that bad, and when when I snapped out of autopilot long enough to remind myself to stop walking like a pirate, I was able to bend my knee just fine.

Beat and his huge backpack finished in 6:28. I took 7:05, which despite injuries is about ten minutes faster than I ran a slightly different Steep Ravine course in better weather back in January. (This is one of the anomalies of San Francisco and the Marin Headlands; the weather is often sunnier and warmer in winter than it is during the summer.) Honestly, I wanted to do a little better than seven hours, but for a relatively pain-free 50K — one in which I did not fall on my face — I'll take it. 

Aptitude

When I was in fifth grade, I remember taking an aptitude test to vie for a spot in my school's "gifted" program. I managed high scores in math and logic games, establishing a track that I assumed I would pursue all the way through college and a career. (When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said "either an animator or an engineer" until halfway through high school, which is humorous to me now as I don't have an engineer's mind at all.)

Fifth grade was also the year I remember being tested in the Presidential Fitness Challenge, which establishes children's athletic abilities through activities such as sit-ups, a one-mile run, pull-ups, a shuttle run, and an agony-inducing-if-you-have-tight-hamstrings stretch called the V-sit. I also recall other impossible challenges such as a rope climb and hurdles, although this might just be a mash of memories from the overall humiliation that was my grade school physical education. I was able to crush the academic aptitude test but couldn't even fake my way into passing this one — too slow in the mile, too stiff in the V-sit, and I never managed a single pull-up (I still haven't.) It was a tough pill to swallow as a ten-year-old, but I swallowed it well: "So I'm a math geek who can't run a mile. Fine. I'll just stop placing any of my self-worth in my athletic abilities. Who cares if I can't pull my chin up over a stupid bar? It's a useless ability anyway."

The fact that I used to show aptitude for math and completely abandoned it after eleventh grade doesn't bother me at all, and yet my childhood athletic failures do. I remember tripping over hurdles, dangling helplessly from the bottom of a rope, and struggling mightily for the ten-minute mile I needed just to receive a passing grade in seventh-grade P.E. There are a lot of athletic adults who were bad athletes as children, but I was really bad. Whenever I experience setbacks in my athletic pursuits, I can't help but wonder why I pour so much time and energy into activities in which I never showed the slightest aptitude. Children who don't test well in math aren't expected to excel in advanced placement calculus, and yet fitness culture establishes that anybody can achieve athletic awesomeness if only they work hard enough.

This week, I went running every day but one, because my elbow injury from last weekend kept me off my bike. The daily trail runs ranged from six to ten miles; the first couple I ran with my left arm in a sling at a slightly slower pace than usual. Then I started to feel better, removed my sling, and picked up the pace. On Friday evening, Beat and I went for a steep run up Black Mountain, a trail that gains 3,000 feet in five miles. I felt great after I started the descent and ran hard, until I rounded a tight switchback going a little too fast. My right foot slid on the moon-dust-gravel that dominates Bay-area trails in August, and I went down hard. The impact tore up the skin on my right knee and hip, and if that wasn't enough, I finally took a fall that I rolled out of only to land hard on my injured left elbow. Owwwww.

The two times I've hit the deck hard this week showed me the main mistakes I am making, including running with my shoulders back and legs too far in front of me, so when my feet slip it's almost impossible to recover my balance. Also, I brake too hard during steep descents, which is why I slip in the first place. I know I need to loosen up, lean forward, and resist the urge to lock up my knees. But as I limp-jogged down Black Mountain with an immobilized left arm, a throbbing hip, and blood streaming down my dirt-crusted leg, I wasn't thinking about ways to deprogram my naturally bad running technique. I was thinking about ways to deprogram the part of my brain that wants my poor, awkward body to run.

Three and a half slow miles down Black Mountain was enough to numb the pain a bit and cause me to back-pedal on my decision to quit these body-battering hobbies forever. Tonight Beat and I are preparing for a 50K training race on Sunday in Stinson Beach. Steep Ravine has 7,000 feet of climbing, and is about 95 percent singletrack with a mixture of shaded Redwood forest mud, roots, rocks, and classic Marin Headlands concrete dirt coated in August dust — it's a mean 50K. To get ready I've packed my soft elbow pads, trekking poles (under the guise of "UTMB training," but really because I need the support), a shin brace (because the "splints" are still a bit of a problem), and a roll of gauze to deal with the painfully raw road rash on my right leg. Yeah, that's stiff and bruised, too. I feel like a walking disaster, who can only hope Steep Ravine doesn't become yet another running disaster.

I don't want to talk about UTMB right now. It starts in four weeks. Yeah. Beat says I should start taking yoga classes as one approach to solving my balance issues. I admit when I think of yoga, the first thing I picture is my ten-year-old-self in the Presidential Fitness Challenge, sitting with my legs spread out and reaching, so earnestly, for that ruler between my feet — and not coming remotely close to touching it. Do I really need to go through that humiliation again? Why didn't I just stick with math?

But in case the mild sarcasm isn't apparent in this blog post, I'm not actually going to give up running just because I'm comically bad at it. I am going to keep working on my issues. I'm probably going to get a lot more road rash, bruises, and injuries — hopefully all minor. I might start going to yoga classes although I am serious about pubic humiliation. I am also serious about being terrified of UTMB but ... ah, well. What doesn't kill me can only leave me with more disfiguring scars. If only my fifth-grade gym teacher could see me now.