TI Chronicles: Cr@p

Crap.  It's finally come to this:  6 weeks off. 

Just as I'd started to gain some fitness and log some decent miles in hopes of a late season pairing of White River and Cascade Crest, the knee took a bad turn, and it was nasty about it.  It'd be fine one day.  Ornery the next.  Not only would it not let me get in the miles I needed but it also started to sap my love for running.  I stopped feeling that freedom and release that goes with time on the trail when more often than not I had to be thinking about the state of the knee.  "Is that stiffness?"  "Is that pain?"  "Will the pitch of this section of trail make it feel better or worse?"  "Can I run today?"  "Should I run today?"

Really, it all became too much.  Time to try something new.

Originally, I was scheduled to get a cortisone shot the middle of next week, but decided to cancel.  Even if the needle magically cured whatever is going on with the miasma of scar tissue and IT band where I struck my knee this fall, my time goals for the season would still be compromised. I've just missed too many months, and too many miles. So, despite being an advocate of western medicine and its related corticosteroid injections, I decided I might as well try one last non-medicalized approach to things.   Six weeks of largely inactive rest.  I'll swim a bit.  I'll go on some easy hikes.  I'll stretch and roll and ice.  But it'll all be pretty nominal, with the main goal simply being time to heal. 

If all goes as planned I'll be back to a slow build up at the end of June.  And even though it'll be one halting mile at a time, I'm already looking forward to those short runs on dusty trails.

2010 Titus Van Rijn (TVR) One Hour Distance Classic - Sun Valley Edition

The turnout alone was spectacular, add in sunshine, temps in the 60s, and relatively calm conditions, and it set up to be a great day on the Wood River High School track for the 2010 running of the Titus Van Rijn One Hour Distance Classic - Sun Valley Edition.  Nineteen stalwart runners toed the line in the 60 minute timed test, nearly doubling the combined number for the previous three years.

The early running played out pretty much as it does every year.  Jokes on the line and around the first corner. A little talking over the first mile or so, then just a silent dance with one's aerobic threshold for the remaining fifty minutes.

Brad Mitchell (La Sportiva) took top distance honors making it 15,500 meters (9.63 miles).  Andy Jones-Wilkins took runner up (14,850 meters; 9.23 miles) in his now-storied fish shorts, the wearing of which caused Patagonia and La Sportiva to disavow any sponsorship ties (photos below).

On the women's side, Liv Jensen took top distance with 12,960 meters (8.05 miles), which currently places her third on the all-time TVR list.  Julie Cord took second spot on the day, with a solid 12,429 (7.72). Full results below.

In the end, no dreams were shattered, some PRs were set, and there was much rejoicing with Black Cherry Soda and lite beer.  A great time all around.

(click to enlarge photos) (more photos here)

Verte Libre: Of Roots and Ridges

My first thought was to wish for my camera, but that was wrong.  It could not have captured what I was seeing - the lone ten foot fir whipped by the wind until it rippled and waved and looked as if it'd unearthed its roots and was spinning in place.  It made me think of Orpheus, his music so magical that the trees wrenched themselves from the ground and danced and followed him until he calmed them back into the earth.  Struggling up past the tree, the wind stealing my breath, it felt like it might reach out and touch me, but like the thirty or more times I'd passed along this ridge, that didn't happen.  Still, I was happy to continue on, unearthed and running.  Only now can I hear the music.  


Vert Libre: free-form poetry and observations from the trail

TI Chronicles: The Hope & Change Edition

As the calendar alerts on my computer and phone have been reminding me, I was supposed to be shirking my soccer coaching duties and deserting my family this weekend for a trip down to Michigan Bluff for some big training on the Western States course. That Western isn't happening for me this year is no longer news, though I did finally let the RD officially know last week that I wouldn't be coming, and I'm actually happy not to have to squeeze in my trail work over the next two weeks, since snow is still covering most of the area singletrack.

Apart from the reminder that I'll be missing Western, the past couple weeks and especially the last couple days have been trending in the right direction for my knee and the prospects of actually getting a race in this year.  To honor the fickle gods of injury, I am not saying that things are going great and that I'm out of the woods, because I'm not.  But, the knee has shown some decent improvement lately, and yesterday I actually got in my longest run since Wasatch.  It was slow and it wasn't epic - 21 miles with 4300 feet of vert - but it was something I'd call a real distance, and my knee held up very well and still feels pretty good today - the day after.

A couple months back, I set May 1 as my "reality check" for toeing the line at the Cascade Crest 100 in late August. If I wasn't running consistently by then, I reasoned, it was time to lop it off the calendar. Well, it's May Day, and I'm running consistently (if not horribly far) and if things keep trending as they are, I have an outside shot at that 100 mile tour of the Cascade Mountains.

So, I'm going to take it day by day, keep stretching, rolling, and icing, and set a new reality check date further down the calendar.

This Is Just to Say....It Must Be the Third Sunday in April

Bare trail, spring fever, and good legs seem to bring out the worst in me.  For two years in a row now - on the third Sunday in April - I deserted good sense and ran much longer than I'd told anyone I was going to. I just could not ignore the Siren song of another lap of Vorberg Gulch in 60 degree, sunny weather.

Last year, this inspired me to write a poem inspired by William Carlos Williams' classic non-apology apology - This is Just to Say (Ultrarunner's edition).  Below it's reprinted verbatim, because, well, it applies as much on this third Sunday in April as the last one.

TI Chronicles: Vorberg Gulch In - Pocatello 50 Out

We've finally hit a stretch of warmer weather here in the Wood River Valley, and however haltingly, more trail is starting to open up - buoying the spirits of even this semi-jaded (read: injured) runner.  This week I was able to do a recon run of the Vorberg Gulch loop, which starts or ends (depending which direction you run it) with the much discussed Carbonate trail (posts).  It's about eight miles with about 1500 vert and for being a stone's throw from town has some truly fabulous and very remote-feeling ridge and singletrack running.  If AJW is to be believed (and those of us who know him, know this is rarely), the counter clockwise Vorberg loop seems to have been cut with spring Western States training in mind.

While I can't speak to that, I can say that it was really great to get out  this week.  The knee held up pretty well, even with some quicker descending and some speed work, and getting first spring tracks on bare trail is like no other feeling (see slideshow below).

With the knee, though, still far from perfect and my mileage totals in the "recreation/fitness" category, I pulled myself out of the Pocatello 50 yesterday.  I'm finally reaching the "acceptance" phase of things, so it wasn't as tough as some previously missed milestones; feelings were more of abstract loss rather than very pointed frustration.  It was a great experience to be part of the inaugural Pocatello 50 last year (my 60-second race report).  It's one of the special ones on the calendar, and if you're looking to run a hard 50 with some big guns, don't miss it.

No update to the Injur-o-Meter today (see previous).  All things in steady state, poised to move soon, I'm sure.

Amy Palmiero-Winters Honored with AAU's Sullivan Award

Capping off what has been already been an amazing year, ultrarunner Amy Palmiero-Winters was honored by the Amateur Athletic Union yesterday with the James E. Sullivan Award "for her outstanding athletic abilities and accomplishments in her sport as well as sportsmanship, leadership and character (on & off the field) in her lifestyle as a whole." (AAU Sullivan site).

Among other impressive results, the 37 year old Palmiero-Winters won the Arizona Road Racers 24 hrs (130 miles), Ultracentric 100M, and Heartland 100M -- and all, it needs to be noted, with a below the knee prosthetic (more results).  

She is slated to be on the line this June in Squaw Valley for the Western States 100.

The Shaft: Dog, SUV, and (Nearly) Person-Swallowing Mine

As is abundantly, and possibly by now irritatingly, clear these days to anyone who follows the blogs or training logs of ultrarunners who call the Sun Valley area home, April running revolves around Carbonate Mountain (Carbo).  Basically, it's the only bare singletrack with decent vert for miles around, so as I said in a previous paean to Carbo (here), we live on its slopes mid March to early May. 

It's a great tester of a climb (3 miles with about 1350 ft), yet, apart from the rocky ridge near the top and the 360 degree views that affords, it's pretty nondescript trail.   However, one feature that draws my attention almost every time I see it and no matter how hard I'm breathing, is the abandoned mineshaft at the summit. 

It's got a diameter of about four yards at the mouth, goes nearly straight down, becoming increasingly narrow, with a perceived but yet no clear bottom in sight. Sitting completely unprotected and unmarked right at ground level - and this time of year hiding under a thinning crust of snow - it begs for visitors.  And has had some over the years.

This morning, one of the runners in our group (not AJW or me, figure it out if you want) nearly took a notable misstep onto the  mine's crusty cover.  And last year, the dog of one of our running buddies had to spend a cold lonely night in the rocky shaft after falling through.  She was rescued the next morning a little cold and hungry but otherwise in good shape. 

Most entertaining is the hapless driver in 1996 who endo-ed his Blazer into the top of the shaft and, in addition to the humiliation, had his cassette tapes stolen from his stranded vehicle by hikers much less kind than my running friends and I.  How he even drove up there is a mystery to me.

(Click image for larger view)

Sound & Singletrack: Audio Imprints on the Trail

Memory and desire, stirring 

Dull roots with spring rain.

-The Waste Land; TS Eliot

I've been thinking about this post for a while now - the way the trail and my iPod leave a deep imprint on my memory.  I don't know why it's taken me so long to write, but now that the premise has fought the test of time, it seemed like it deserved to be written up.  

Like a lot of runners, I do a lot of my solo 3+ hour runs plugged in to my iPod.  It's not so much to dissociate from the intermittent tedium of the run, because I've found that running without the iPod can be just as enjoyable as running with one.  What I really plug in to the iPod for on my solo long runs is to catch up on my  worlds.  The worlds of politics, entertainment, literature, spirituality, and sometimes even music.   As a typical  ultrarunner who juggles work, family, home, runs, and sometimes sleep, it's hard to fit everything in to a week that I'd really like to.  My long runs are one time where I can spend largely guilt-free hours indulging my curiosity.

And doing this, I lean toward great public radio and the full-breadth of its shows, like:  On the Media; Left, Right, and Center; Car Talk; Fresh Air; Slate Daily Podcast; Frontline.  Occasionally, I'll throw an audiobook into the playlist and maybe even some music.

What I've found strange over the years, is the mnemonic effect this audio has had on my runs.  There are certain sections of trail that I can no longer run these days without thinking about a particular bit of audio that I was listening to when I ran it on one particular day.  I have no idea why these linkages occur and why they seem so permanent.  I can only guess that long runs have become so much of who I am, and are also times where my senses are so alert and wide-open, that it's only natural that there will be moments when things come together and flash themselves into the psyche.

There are probably a score of examples I could come up with - even more once the northern singletrack opens up and I get back on them after a long winter -  but these few are most rich in my mind and seem interesting enough to share.

Carbonate Mountain and The Iliad - Book VIII.  I was running a triple eight mile loop that began with a climb up Carbonate Mountain in first light. Looking for something different to listen to in my big build up to the Bighorn 100, I bought the audiobook of The Iliad and came to the beginning of Book VIII with the opening line:  "Dawn.  Saffron light over all the earth."  The line was so beautiful and the timing with the first light of day so perfect, I can't run that opening section of trail in the early morning without thinking of it.

Bullion Gulch and On the Media (Oct 30, 2009). This instance put a huge lump in my throat even as my heart raced at 160 bpm on a steep climb out of Bullion Gulch, one of the first times I'd been on that new cut trail.  The story on On the Media (story) deconstructed the decision by a Chicago TV station to air the horrible beating death of 16 year old honors student Derrion Albert who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The huge imprint this story left on that trail reminds me every time I'm climbing out of Bullion Gulch of  both the tragedy and the transcendence of life.

Adams Gulch Big Loop and Car Talk (July, 2009).  While I can't remember the specific episode, whether it was the one with the professor whose students peed in the air vents on his hood, or the one where the mechanic fixed a guy's nagging car seat problem in 12 seconds (for 50 bucks), I can't run one of the short ridge sections on the second half of the Adams Gulch big loop (cw) without channeling Tom and Ray.  I have no good explanation.

Harpers Trail and Ray of Light (Madonna).  In case it seems I'm only moved by the spoken word, Madonna's title track from 1998's Ray of Light is an inescapable companion every time I run the Harpers descent into Lake Creek.  One summer day a few years back, the dance-track rhythm synched so perfectly with my stride that I haven't been able to escape it since, and that's actually been a good thing.

Of course, I could go on:  The Big Bag of Money episode of This American Life and Democrat Gulch; a World Economic Forum episode of Planet Money and Lane's Trail heading back to the trailhead; the interview with True Blood actress, Anna Paquin, on Fresh Air and the trip up the valley on a clockwise Adams Gulch big loop; and my strange encounter with a strange little dog near Independence Creek while listening to Furr by Blitzen Trapper, and which I previously chronicled, here.

They are memories so ripe sometimes it's hard to describe, and I suspect they'll just keep piling up as long as I'm lucky enough and fit enough to hit the trails for hours on end.  Like messages from the collective unconscience, I just accept that these memories will be there and that they may actually be there to teach me something I don't quite understand.  Whether I'll ever stop long enough to figure out what that is, is an open question.


(Photo by Andrew* under Creative Commons)

TI Chronicles: M-R-I Have No Idea What's Going On With My Knee (Updated)

Editor's note: Snivel filters alerted my good sense and had me revise my original version of this post, which went to press last night for a few short moments, but is here revised with, one hopes, a more digestible tone.  "Really?," you might say.

Well, I had the long-anticipated MRI of my right knee last week, and I have to say that the past seven days have generally been positive.  The MRI showed no serious issue with my knee - like a meniscus tear or fracture.  I've been able to run one of my go-to training routes, which also inspired me to write a reflection of its larger meaning (see post); and I've been running free of major pain, if only with mid-20 mile weeks.  So, all-in-all, not too bad.  

Still, there have been some downsides to the past week, and they have some of the same qualities as the positive side.  I'm still mired in 20 mile weeks with a knee that's on a hair trigger, and the MRI, while negative, also didn't show anything that was readily fixable, so from a prognosis standpoint, I'm pretty much where I was three months ago.

This means the 2010 season is heading very very quickly toward a complete loss, which is pretty disappointing - to put it more lightly than I'm actually feeling it.  Yet, it's not the end of the world. If it comes to it, it's just one season, and my MD has a plan.  I'm supposed to slowly ramp up my miles until the knee starts hurting regularly again, which we both agreed wouldn't take too long, then inject some numbing agent and cortisone in the base of the knob on my knee to see if that helps isolate the problem and maybe even arrest things enough so they start to heal.  Given the negative findings on everything else, it's a sensible approach.  

Of course, the midst of an issue is no place for context. So this is just a snapshot of my feelings at this particular time.  It'll be interesting to look back and see what course things actually took from this point on.

With negative findings and little progress the past three weeks, all measures in the Injur-O-Meters have taken a hit, most notably in attitude and prospects for CCC.  Rock-O-Meter still high.