Back to Brighton

I was in Park City this weekend for my wife's Rowmark reunion and one of the events on our schedule took us to the mouth of Cottonwood Canyon, and I couldn't resist driving up to the Brighton ski area to see what it looked like in the daylight after a short drive, rather than in the middle of the night after 75 miles on foot during the Wasatch Front 100. (Enlarged photo).

Given where it comes in the race and what follows, Brighton and its nondescript A-frame is a signal aid station - the venue for much tragedy and triumph.  As my pacer that day, AJW, wrote in one of his blog posts: "Brighton eats runners for dinner!" And it certainly took a bite out of me that night, but thankfully not one so big that I couldn't rally on to the finish.

A couple Brighton-related excerpts from past blog posts:

And the night of Wasatch, I actually did my best-ever washerwoman impression heading out of Brighton at mile 75. If I wasn't the personification of someone slowly turning into a tree, I don't know what I was. Just ask my pacer - and the four people who passed us.

From 100 Miles with James Joyce: My Foos Won't Moos

After the seven mile traverse of the ridge that oscillated between 9,400 and 9,900 feet, we took the long-feeling, but not really that long, descent to the Brighton ski lodge aid station (mile 75).

It was here things came a bit unglued. While Andy was seeing to his energy needs (something like 8 of the renowned Brighton hash brown bars!), I got weighed one last time (down 5 on the day) and Brad loaded up my pack and bottles, knowing more than I did at that point what I needed. I grabbed a cup of soup, and we left the chaos of Brighton for the remote trip up Catherine's Pass to Point Supreme (mile 78; elev 10,400 ft). Still in view of the lodge, the queasiness that started to come on as I gathered my things together, crashed over me and all my energy vanished. It wasn't pretty. Clutching my cup of soup, trying to take in whatever I could, AJW took the lead at what had to seem to him like a sub-glacial pace. For the first time since the early going, I was passed by a couple runners. But, we went with it and just kept moving forward and after about 15 minutes, my stomach settled and the few calories I was able to get in primed the energy pump, and once again we were able to move ahead at a pretty steady pace. It was a true relief.

From Race Report: Wasatch Front 100 Endurance Run

Go-To Run, Proving Ground, First Sign of Spring: Carbonate Mountain

You can have your crocuses, your Easter eggs, your spring solstice.  For me, the real first day of spring is when the snow's cleared enough that I can run the full length of the Carbonate Mountain trail.

Spring officially broke yesterday.

Now, among the small but stalwart ultrarunning community here in the Sun Valley, Idaho area, Carbonate (aka Carbo) holds a special place, so the meaning of its full opening reaches beyond a simple switch of seasons.  It's always the first real climb to clear in our area after a long, snowy winter in the Rockies; and while it holds some decent vert (1300 feet) and OK distance (5 miles roundtrip), it's not on its own the epic outing most ultrarunners need, so we practically live on its hillside late March to early May, doing lap after lap, relishing the bare earth and hard fought miles as we wait for time to clear other trail.

In April of last year alone, I ran to the summit 21 times in 8 different sessions.  And I know friends and training partners AJW and Brad Mitchell closely matched or exceeded that.  With all this time and all these laps, the trail imprints itself on your unconscious and your muscles.  You know by heart nearly every stone, every turn, rise, and sagebrush, every time split.  You know three minutes into it what type of day it's going to be, yet even on those leaden-leg days, you can bank on long experience with the hill to carry you through to your fourth repeat.

And doing so, you'll rarely be alone.  Laps on Carbo mean company.  Part knitting circle; part endurance smackdown, part comedy club, the group sessions are always loud and always fun, even as your eyes cross chasing Brad, AJW, or Mike Stevens up on the eighth climb in two days.  It was during many of these group sessions that I learned what it really took to be an ultrarunner.

In many ways, Carbo's my madeleine. There wasn't a single race last spring or summer where I didn't use it as a major part of my mileage buildup or a timed test of fitness.  So when I'm fighting up the craggy ridge to the mineshaft summit or descending toward the pioneer-days cement foundation, it's hard not to think back to, hard not to feel, the sensations (as European bike racers like to say) of those training days, those races.   And in these early spring days, they can come on in a crush.

Yes, we all have our special trails, our go-to trails.  But there's something about Carbonate that seems to make it a bit more remarkable than a favored, easy-access run.  I want to call it transcendent, but I know that may be over-reaching.  Yet, the way it sits at the nexus of time, community, passion, grit, and memory, it seems to be a distillation of the qualities that draw us all to ultrarunning in the first place.  And if ultrarunning isn't a transcendent experience, I don't know what is.

A Spring Tour of Carbonate - March 23, 2010

--

Looking toward the rocky ridge from the trailhead

Buffed out singletrack 

All runnable, but some steeps

Room to let it run and season the quads

The trail can blur on some repeat days

Rough in the draws

The flag. True summit about three minutes beyond

Coming down from the summit. 

Still looks like winter

TI Chronicles: The "Knob," the Second Opinion, and Solar Therapy

I've come to call it "The Knob," the Quato-like protuberance on my knee that showed itself a number of weeks after a very hard fall I took in early September, 2009, on the Vorberg Gulch trail.  My immediate concern back then was toeing the line at Wasatch four days later.  And while that went off without a hitch (at least as far as the knee was concerned), Quoto The Knob, seemed to be lying in wait.

The orthopedist I saw today for a second opinion, built on my previous exams, and felt pretty strongly that the genesis of my knee pain came back to the injury from the fall, which was right at the insertion point of the IT band.  The Knob is doing something to string the ITB too tight or to alter how it tracks over the knee or something else altogether.  Makes sense.  Of course, he couldn't reveal any pain no matter how much he twisted and stretched and prodded, which makes things maddening for someone looking for some solid answers.

So it's no real surprise that before I get a definitive plan of action, there needs to be at least one more expensive test and possibly a bout with a long, steroid filled needle (don't tell WADA).  For now, though, I can run a bit as long as I don't anger the knee too much.  And keeping up my IT band stretching and rolling certainly won't hurt.

Then there's solar therapy, which I'm hoping will work wonders.  The extended family is off to warmer climes for a week this Friday, where I plan to get in some easy runs in the soft, warm air and not worry about much of anything, except for tackling one ultra-worthy task:  Richardson's tome, Clarissa.

Little change to the Injur-O-Meters, save a small boost in attitude ahead of vacation week.

Read all of the The Injury Chronicles.

TI Chronicles: Injury and Beyond

In the natural history of running injuries, I've now crossed into phase IV - recurrence - also known as the backslide, or using pyschological metrics - despondency (mostly joking; mostly).

After charting some good rebuilding following a largely run-less winter, things descended quickly last week, with my knee turning to stabbing pain sooner and sooner on each successive run.  And while I can't say I'm surprised, since I hadn't really let myself look too far ahead, it was still a jarring turnaround.

The shock has brought some things to light.

• The knee injury is more serious than I'd considered, and it's time for some heroic measures to figure out what it is and to get it fixed if I want to salvage any part of the 2010 season.  
• Western States is almost assuredly out.  If all the time off this winter didn't fix the issue, and the knee is now worse than it was in November, it seems pretty clear that I won't have time to resolve the problem and then build up enough to toe the line come June 26.  It's hard to even put that down on the screen, and I haven't cancelled my hotel reservation yet, but the writing on the wall seems clear barring an otherworldly turnaround.  
• I need to write regularly about my experiences, observations, and possible insights as I work through this injury.  Hence, The Injury Chronicles.  

The goal is not to validate my whining and sniveling by slapping a label on it.  Rather, it is to explore the injury side of my running life (which may have a little whining and sniveling), much like Run Junkie proper is used to explore the running and racing part of my running life.

Stay tuned for more TIC, or avoid it altogether.  You've been warned.

Bald Mountain II - An Earlier Morning

At the risk of boring my 8.3 regular readers, I thought I'd post another handful of photos from another great session on the Bald Mountain loop in Sun Valley - again with Brad Mitchell and AJW.  With the 6am start, we had the entire mountain pretty much to ourselves top to bottom.  With three inches of new ungroomed snow for most of the climb, it was a tougher affair than last week - as evidenced in some of the images.  

Morning on Bald Mountain: In Pictures

Hungry for some big vert, Brad Mitchell, AJW, and I put on our micro-spikes this morning and took on Bald Mountain (Baldy), the Sun Valley, ID ski hill (elev 9200).  It was a great outing, filled with sunny skies, trash talk, gossip, one ornery skier, and 3,300 feet of climbing and descending over 10 miles.

 

"We're going up there?" - Brad and AJW

 

Two-thirds up; bottom of Upper College

  

Up the last grunt, chasing the skiers skinning up.  

Heart rates: Hank - 175; AJW  - 160; Brad - 95

At the top, ready for the run down

Descending toward the Pioneers

Red Not (Hot) 50k, Injury, and the 2010 Season

Coming up on the eve of the Red Hot 50k+, I'm really starting to feel the sting of lost time.  Red Hot was my  first race of the season last year and with its bare trails and varied terrain was the perfect antidote to a snowy winter that played prelude to a great first half of 2009, which culminated in my inaugural 100 at Bighorn.

I'd hoped for a carbon copy schedule this year.  Red Hot, followed by a trip to Ojai for the mania of Chris Scott's Coyote Two Moon; a final tune up in Pocatello in May, then the big appointment at the end of June, only this time with Western States in place of Bighorn.

Injuries, though, chart other courses.  And although I haven't had Red Hot on my schedule for a while now, the coming and going of the actual race day is a hard thing to confront - partly because it was such a great experience last year, which I wanted to repeat, but also because it makes me wonder what may have to be lopped off the schedule next. 

Injuries are part of the game, of course, and my current one, as with most, has a rich and boring history to it.  The short story is that it's bad knee pain likely caused by IT band issues.  But it's been going on since early November, and for the last two months, I've been breaking out the calendar and training schedules to plot those dreaded fail-safe dates, the day after which I have to drop a race if I'm not up to a certain training volume. Red Hot - gone.  Coyote - gone.  Antelope Island - possible. And so on.

Thankfully, my knee seems to be showing a bit of halting progress.  And even if it comes in fits and starts, I'll take what I can get.  After all the miles and hours and vertical of last season, where anything under 5 miles hardly seemed worth the time, I'm getting reaquainted with the pure joy of running, however short the distance.

Of course, each successful outing makes me hungry for more, much more - especially as the start at Squaw seems so close - but right now the best thing I can do is push away from the table and           just          be         patient.

(Photo: Greg Norrander)

RJ Review: La Sportiva Wildcat GTX

The day was dark; the charcoal clouds were dropping snow, and the temperature hovered around 33 degrees.  In short, it was not the day for a run in my summer go-to trail shoe - the standard La Sportiva Wildcat - and I paid for it with painfully cold feet that slowed me to a crawl.  The breezy ventilation of the standard Wildcats that helped keep my feet cool and blister-free through August and September racing left an open door to the bone-chilling elements of fall and winter.  It wasn't pretty. 

The good folks at La Sportiva, though, seem to have felt my pain and developed a Gore-Tex version of the shoe, the Wildcat GTX, which I've finally been able to put through the winter paces here in the Rockies.  (Full disclosure: shoes complimentary from La Sportiva).

Overall, the GTXs are a near carbon-copy of the standard Wildcats, and nearly everything I said about the standards in my recent review (here) also apply to the Wildcat GTX.

The biggest difference between the two is comfort in wintry conditions.  Where my toes in the standard Wildcats could go numb running at near 40 degrees, in the GTXs my toes have felt comfortable running in windy single digits and in deep soft snow. 

As expected, the Gore-Tex barrier adds a bit of weight and structure to the shoe.  The forefoot seems to have more volume than in the standards, and the GTXs top the scales at 13.7 ounces, about 1.7 ounces more than its leaner brethren.  It's a decent absolute difference that takes something away from the nimbleness of the shoe, but in relative terms, it's not that significant since a lot of winter running is a slog no matter what a shoe's weight.  In the heat of summer singletrack season, the difference would be much more noticeable.

Overall, though, if you're looking for a solid, responsive trail shoe that can dish it out to winter as well take it, it'd be hard to go wrong with the La Sportiva Wildcat GTX.  As I concluded my December review of the standard version:

"While the Wildcats have a couple drawbacks, they're a standout on nearly all the points that really matter."

More shoe reviews on Run Junkie (shoe reviews).

What Cost Ultrarunning?

For a supposedly ascetic pursuit built of little more than earth, air and motivation, ultrarunning can be a surprisingly expensive sport.  Shoes, gels, drinks, travel, lodging and entrance fees - even for the sponsored - can total into the thousands.  Last season, I spent over $800 on entrance fees alone, and I didn't even race that much.  For the costs beyond that, I prefer to stick to the "ignorance is bliss" approach.

Recent Bandera 100k and Ghost Town 38.5m winner, Nick Clark, however, has no such head-in-the-sand ethos and actually seems to spend nearly as much time logging the fiscal costs of his running as his miles and vertical feet.  If you haven't seen his blog posts on the topic, they're revealing reading, which can really help you find places to whittle down costs.

In his year-end summary post, "2009 Spending/Miles," he calculated that he spent just under $3,000 for the season with just under 3,500 miles of racing and training - a cost per mile of 0.85 cents. Now, $3,000 may seem like a lot, but a quick look at the outlays, and it's clear he runs a very lean program, especially given how much he races.

What this means for my numbers, I care not to guess.

Robbins and Garneau Take 2010 HURT 100 in Record Times

Team Montrail runner, Gary Robbins, took the men's crown at the 2010 HURT 100 in Honolulu, Hawaii in a record time of 20:12, beating Geoff Roes' 2009 record of 20:28.  Tracy Garneau took the women's race (and third overall) also in record time.  Her 24:06 bested Krissy Moehl's 2007 record of 26:15.

It was a big day in paradise for Canada.  Canucks took the top three spots in the women's race, and the top spot in the men's

Top 3 Men
1. Gary Robbins                        20:12
2. Nathan Yanko                       22:30
3. Brett Rivers                           24:40

Top 3 Women
1. Tracy Garneau (3rd oa)    24:06
2. Monica Scholz                      32:02
3. Charlotte Vasarhelyi         32:28

Full results here.


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