ITI training, week five

Monday: Weight lifting at gym, followed by trail run, 0:55, 4.4 miles, 388 feet climbing. The weight-lifting session went well considering my shoulders and lower back were still a little sore after the 100 MoN. Just my usual 12x12x2 session with the same weights as last week. The trail "run," conversely, was quite bad. I had some digestive issues that necessitated walking uncomfortably to the outhouse, twice, within an hour. That's it — no more high-protein lunches just because I think I'm some sort of body builder now.

Tuesday: Trail run, 0:50, 5.6 miles, 691 feet climbing. Because my Monday "recovery run" went so badly, I decided I was not going to hammer this one out. I managed to run a faster pace anyway — my second fastest on this loop at 8:48-minute-mile average. Running is like that, or isn't it? It still baffles me how so many runners train by pace — I feel like I can't hit a precise pace to save my life. Sometimes I run faster without trying and sometimes I run slower no matter how hard I try, and there's rarely a discernible reason. Note: Maybe light salad lunches make for happier afternoon runs.

Wednesday: Fat bike, 3:14, 29.4 miles, 3,446 feet climbing. Maybe twice a year, I decide to climb the Table Mountain trail out of Stevens Canyon. After I do so, it takes at least six months to forget how horrible that climb is, with its eroded rooty switchbacking singletrack followed by the near-vertical Charcoal fire road. Legally, Table Mountain is uphill only for cyclists, but for obvious reasons it's a coveted downhill trail (I've never ridden Table Mountain downhill. I'm law-abiding to a fault and wouldn't enjoy it anyway.) But I met a couple of mountain bikers who were planning to ride the same loop in the opposite direction. They had a lot of questions about the bike I was riding, which was Beat's YBB soft-tail fat bike. Embarrassingly I could not answer most of them ("what kind of rims are those? How much does it weigh? Is that an Action-tec fork?" Ummmm.) They were nice guys, and although they soon raced ahead, I still managed to reach the top of the loop, Turtle Rock, at the same time as them. Consider Table Mountain conquered, and yeah, I probably won't be back until spring.

Thursday: Morning, weight lifting at gym. Afternoon, road bike, 1:24, 18.6 miles, 1,771 feet climbing. I moved up 5-10 pounds on each of the 12 exercises in my routine. I'm trying to keep it consistently difficult to get through the set each time, and I have this imaginary trainer (Arnold Schwarzenegger type) that says (in more of a Hans and Franz accent): "Pump! Deez are da ones that count!" Anyway, I'm still having fun with the gym routine. Then a quick road bike ride before sunset because it was a beautiful day. I really enjoy this time of year, when the afternoon light is always so rich, and I have to put on a wind jacket and mittens to descend into dark forested canyons before twilight sets in.

Friday: Trail run, 1:40, 8.5 miles, 1,518 feet climbing. Another iffy-stomach trail run with an emergency stop, this time at Fremont Older park. On Monday I cooked all this chicken that I was going to eat for lunch during the week, did so on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, felt off each time, and decided to throw the rest away. At least I rallied for a two-mile spur to the scenic overlook, which is always worth the trip.

Saturday: Mountain bike, 7:55, 76.4 miles, 9,639 feet climbing. I proposed one of our favorite long rides — a loop through Big Basin and Pescadero state parks — and was surprised when Beat expressed interest after a month of recovering from pneumonia. Despite expectations that he lost some degree of fitness, he proceeded to set this blistering pace for the entire day. For as strong as I've been feeling this month, I could barely hang on. I'm still incredulous about this. Strava lets me keep track of these things, and this was my fastest Big Basin loop yet — usually rides on this route fall between 8:30 to 9 hours of ride time. Geez. I don't even want to talk about how I felt when I ventured back into running after emerging from my summer pneumonia fog. Let's just say my fitness base doesn't run nearly as deep. But we had a great ride, and it was fun to get outside with Beat again. My only issue was a knot in my right shoulder, left over from the 100 MoN.

Sunday: Trail run, 2:26, 13.4 miles, 1,896 feet climbing. Rain is the ultimate phantom here in the Bay Area. We can go five months without seeing a drop (I think we actually did this year.) When it does rain, a storm comes and dumps a truckload of moisture in the night, then it's gone by morning. I slept through a storm that deposited three quarters of an inch of moisture in the hills and woke up to sunshine. I probably would have had no idea it rained at all, if I hadn't set out for a morning run only to become mired in peanut butter mud. It was quite windy as well, with a few gusts nearly stopping me in my tracks — probably 35 to 40 mph. Still, I felt great on this run. Just loped along at an easy pace, dodging the worst of the shoe-sucking mud bogs. Everything felt fine. There was no real fatigue from the long ride Saturday. This is my aim with my winter training — to build up tolerance for extended efforts both in the saddle and out, as well as more strength. I think it's going well so far.

Total: 18:26, 124.4 miles ride, 31.9 miles run, 19,350 feet climbing. 

Never-fail getaway

 I felt somber this weekend, for the same reasons many people in the Western world felt somber. It's true I spend an average of an hour each day reading newspapers online, and I'm not blind to the reality that terrible things happen every day, everywhere. Like many people, I harbor deep-set information fatigue, and no longer react viscerally to most of what I read. When information does spark emotions, I question why. What is it about this particular story, and not all the others? It's true that if we all felt equally sad for all the sad events in a world of 7 billion people, we would lose our minds. Yet we do feel sadness for strangers, and sadness for implications for the future. I'm one of those who is constantly fighting to keep my own world view from sinking toward despair.

 This falls back to my love of the outdoors, without which I have no doubt I'd be a much sadder person. There are a number of psychological and philosophical implications that I don't want to delve into for this particular blog post, but I find it endlessly fascinating — and amusing — that simple movement through outdoor spaces is so highly valuable as an experience. I could disappear for hours into an echo chamber of rehashed information and reactive observations, or I could just get on my bike and pedal it to a quiet redwood grove, where sunlight never touches the forest floor in November, and listen to the crush of leaves beneath whirring tires and the almost harmonized burbles from a nearby stream. All I have to do is go there, and I feel happy. These are my two sides — the one that yearns for information with a desire to understand, and the one that yearns for quiet with a desire to simply be.

 The draw of the long ride was particularly deep on Saturday. After being down with pneumonia for more than a month, Beat expressed interest in joining. He still has several physical issues lingering from his illness, including a rib that possibly broke during a coughing fit, but his health has been on a steady rise for a couple of weeks now. I questioned whether he might feel too sore or tired after a month of relative inactivity, but for Beat, "lost fitness" no longer makes much of a difference. He actually can pick right back up where he left off, which quickly became evident as I huffed and gasped to keep up with him on the winding climb out of Stevens Creek Canyon.

Within our busy metro area, we've pieced together a 76-mile loop that is refreshingly remote. We pass no businesses (unless you count the Mr. Mustard hot dog cart at Saratoga Gap, and the forever-under-renovation closed store in Loma Mar.) Trails are never crowded and road traffic is light. After a dozen or so descents along the perimeter of Big Basin Redwoods State Park, I have yet to see another person on the Johansen fire road. The tree canopy over Gazos Creek is so dark in the winter that one could easily mistake noon for dusk. There is much to enjoy, far away from noise.

As evening approached, Beat admitted to feeling knackered but continued to charge up the Bella Vista trail at the same relentless pace. We arrived at Black Mountain just as the sun settled beneath a pink strip of coastal fog. An oncoming cold front had cranked up the wind, and we steeled ourselves with multiple layers as the light faded from coral to crimson, and finally violet.

We descended into the expanding darkness, into a place so ephemeral and yet so easy to locate — my moving tunnel of peace. 

ITI training, week four

Monday: Weight lifting at gym. This session went well. I was able to move up a bar in six out of 12 exercises. I'm thinking about increasing to three sets instead of two on my "gym only" day of the week.

Tuesday: Trail run, 0:49, 5.6 miles, 707 feet climbing. Temperatures had cooled off into the 60s, and I had such a great run that I burst through the long-range goals I set for myself a couple of weeks ago. I ran an 8:43-minute-mile average and managed second position (out of 185) on a Strava segment that I targeted as a way to boost my downhill trail-running confidence: 6:20 pace! Whenever I run this fast, a little bit of vertigo kicks in and I begin to feel wobbly. I'd love to get past that, and "Hill Trail Descent" is a fun place to test my limits. Between that mild vertigo and my tight hamstrings, I have serious reservations about ever training to run "fast," but building up confidence is a good thing. Now I'm not sure where to set my goals for this weekly loop. First place on Hill Trail Descent is probably out of the question because it's held by a pro at 5:48 pace. Whatever speed goals I set, they're certain to fall apart as I increase the hours on weekend rides.

Wednesday: Mountain bike, 4:40, 42.5 miles, 4,795 feet climbing. It was time to take in the Subaru for service. The dealership is super slow and it's also a quick hop over to the Los Gatos Creek Trail, so I love using this chore as an excuse to go mountain biking in Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve. On this day I was determined to take on "Dog Meat," a climb that has been famous among local mountain bikers since the Santa Cruz Klunker days. It ascends 1,000 feet on one mile — *after* you have plodded up 1,500 feet on the steep Limekiln Trail — and averages an 18 percent grade with sections that approach 30 percent. The ultimate goal is "no dabs Dog Meat," and while I didn't think I had this in me, I was still buzzing from my strong run on Tuesday and determined to give it my best shot. It probably will surprise no one that I cracked early. Rain on Monday left the fire road in a strange state — sort of a gummy consistency with loose gravel on top. After I nearly tipped over riding, I struggled to push my bike up that thing. It did occur to me that Dog Meat would be the perfect place for future pushing practice. After I finally reached the crest, I still had many steep rollers to conquer along the ridge to Mount El Sombroso. Then, after several miles of descending, I made a strange decision to climb Barlow fire road toward Mount Umunhum. By the time I was finally coasting down the pavement toward Los Gatos, I was so completely cracked that I feared I'd done irreparable damage to my 100 Miles of Nowhere goal coming up on Saturday. Oh, Sierra Azul. So beautiful, so tempting, so evil.

Thursday: Hike, 3:07, 7.7 miles, 1,419 feet climbing. I had to head out to Lake Sonoma in the morning to meet Ann for some interviews. As such, I skipped the morning gym session, and felt guilty about this. But to be honest, I was quite sore after Sierra Azul — shoulder and calves, probably from pushing up Dogmeat — and reluctant to take any more chances with the long ride coming up on Saturday. Ann and I took a very leisurely stroll above Lake Sonoma, but it was admittedly a long time standing on sore legs, and by the end I felt quite tired. That night I was awakened by an excruciating cramp in my right calf, and the next day the muscle was so tight I could hardly walk.

Friday: Rest. I felt guilty about not going to the gym, massaged my throbbing calf, and nursed a cold dread about 100 miles of Montebello.

Saturday: Road bike, 11:50, 105.1 miles, 20,159 feet climbing. I already wrote a ride report about the 100 Miles of Nowhere on Montebello Road, but as a training ride I think it went exceedingly well. I had few issues outside mild chaffing, still-sore shoulders, and the fact that it was a progressively harder effort as fatigue set in. That calf cramp, which still hurt whenever I stepped off my bike to walk around, didn't bother me at all in the saddle.

Sunday: Rest. I still felt guilty about not going to the gym, but I was sore all over. And yes, a rest day was the plan, but I can already see that my self-induced guilt trips are going to come from slacking on gym sessions. Dog Meat proved that I still have a ways to go in the strength department. But Montebello proved that I am well-situated in the endurance department. All in all, an encouraging week of training.

Total: 20:27, 147.6 miles ride, 13.3 miles run, 27,080 feet climbing.