What a Difference a Little Elevation Makes

Last weekend I was in Spokane, Washington for my grandpa's 80th birthday party and didn't want to skip out on my easy run on Saturday. After breakfast and helping my mom get ready for the big event, I put on the shoes and ran over to Bear Lake, which is where my high school's X-C course is. Because I was running the course I ran in competition for four years and because Bear Lake only sits at 1,800 feet above sea level, my easy run was about a minute per mile faster pace than my normal runs around 4,700 foot Idaho Falls.

Contrast that run with yesterday's run. I decided to run up the Sunnyside Road hill east of Idaho Falls. I figured I was ready after all the running I did this summer and wanted a difficult run in preparation for the Zeitgeist Half-Marathon on November 1st. Well, I bit off a bit more than I could chew. That hill is a brutal, soul-crushing sonuvabitch. It just keeps going up. When my phone chimed that I'd hit four miles and I realized I was only 2/3 of the way to the top and it was getting steeper, the voice in my head that had been saying, "I think I can..." started screaming, "Turn back before you die".



I did make it to the top, but I really paid for it going back down. It felt like I couldn't catch my breath and my legs just wouldn't work anymore. I had to stop and walk a lot and pretty much quit even trying to run about a mile from the car. I'm hoping it was just the high elevation (6,900 feet at the top), being somewhat dehydrated and only getting a few hours of sleep the night before. Otherwise, the Zeitgeist isn't going to be pretty. In any case, I'm not going to run that hill again for a while.

That's what I'm talking about.

There's something about running in this place at this time of year at this time of night that just makes me happy.

It's not winter yet, but it's getting close.

"It is odd how a man believes he can think better in a special place. I have such a place, have always had it, but I know it isn't thinking I do there, but feeling and experiencing and remembering. It's a safety place - everyone must have one, although I never heard a man tell of it."
-John Steinbeck, "The Winter of Our Discontent"

For whatever reason (and there are a whole slew of possibles), lately I've been getting home from work frustrated and just plain angry. It generally ruins the rest of my evening and I wake up more worn out than I went to sleep...

...unless I go for a run in the evening. It seems my "Place" lately isn't really one special spot, but it's been running in the foothills east of IF while the sun is setting; especially between miles five and eight. There's something about running that seems to help me work through (or just forget) stupid annoyances. Like Steinbeck's Ethan Allen Hawley, I'm not really thinking about things, but at about mile five, when the western sky over IF is starting to change to a luminescent pink-orange, I start to get a smile on my face and I can actually feel myself relaxing. By the time I get back home, I've fully worked the kinks out, both in my legs and back and between my ears.

Could be it's just the endorphins - but I don't think so because I've had places like Hawley's in other towns. They've helped me deal with the difficulties of life and made me feel a lot like I have recently after running in the hills. But with running it makes me feel even better to be doing something healthy for my body as well as for my mind.

Now if Ethan Hawley were around, he would have heard a man tell of his place.

Another Fishing Trip Gets in the Way of Running

A buddy of mine called me last Friday night to get me to go fishing with him on Saturday morning. We agreed to meet at his house at 7 AM to drive out to a small stream near Palisades Reservoir. Only problem was that I'd skipped my long Friday run and was planning on making it up on Saturday. So I got up at four and ran a quick nine-miler, showered, got my gear together, made some much-needed coffee and picked him up.

The creek we were to be fishing was Big Elk Creek, which flows right down to the highway, but we were meeting up with a couple guys from work who were camping about four miles in from the end of the road. We hiked up a beautiful canyon along the creek, marveling at the gorgeous fall colors and watching the kokanee make their way up the crystal-clear stream to spawn. We were also jabbering on about all manner of things while hiking, so we didn't have any idea of how long it took to hike in. This fact would become important later.





When we got to the campsite, the two guys were still sleeping in their tents because it had been raining that morning and they didn't really want to face the wetness outside. Pansies! But we rousted them out and got started fishing. The creek was really too small for my six weight fly rod, but I made do and picked up some nice cutthroats on mayfly and caddis imitations. It's impressive that such a small stream can support so many large trout. No one caught one smaller than 12 inches and we caught a few bigger than 18.



About the time we figured we needed to quit and get back to the car, a big rainstorm moved into the canyon, so we threw our gear into our packs, said "later" to the two poor souls who were going to camp again that night and started hiking in our waders and felt-soled wading shoes. We kept up a good pace, trying to get back to the car and out of the rain, but that's when the lack of a concept of time bit us in the butt. Both of us kept imagining that the parking lot was just around the next corner or over the next hill as darkness began to set in. When we could just barely see the trail and were hearing rustling in the brush around us, we realized we should have left about an hour earlier.

Obviously, we made it back to the car, but we're both pretty sore now from hiking in wading shoes which aren't made for such activity. Turns out that it was about four miles from their camp to the parking lot, so I did nine miles of running followed by eight miles of hiking and lots of tricky wading on Saturday. I picked up some pretty smashed toes and blisters on my heels. The upshot is that it gives me a great excuse to skip running for a couple days while the stupid wind is blowing hard again.

You know you have an addiction when...

...your pile of dirty running clothes is twice as big as your street clothes laundry for the same time period.

Sawtooth Relay Pics

Triple Threat

The hills would have been hard enough without the extra altitude. The extra altitude would have been hard enough without the wind. The wind would have been hard enough without the hills. I don't know what made me think that loop would be a fun run. I guess whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? That almost killed me, so...

By the way, my good computer died a couple weeks ago, so I'm now limping along with my old Linux box until next Tuesday when my new RAM should get here. I've never heard of all four sticks of RAM going out at the same time. I hope that's really the problem.

My Team Is Falling Apart Already!

I'm once again getting addicted to this running thing. I spent most of today talking to one person or another about training or the Sawtooth Relay or injuries. I figure that's a good thing, but I also figure that my friends are going to get pretty tired of me if I don't knock it off.

I'm also at the stage that I get pretty angry at myself if I miss a scheduled run. See, I have to schedule them or I just go ahead and skip them if I'm tired or if I had a long day at work or the wind's blowing or the couch feels comfy or... Sooo, I skipped my scheduled run for Friday. It was supposed to be a seven-miler at 10.5 minute/mile pace - nice and slow. See, I had a headache that wouldn't go away from the long week of work and besides the wind was blowing. You know how easy it is to convince yourself to stay on the couch.

So I had to run on Saturday. I chose to run 3.5 miles up the Sunnyside hill, which is a big hill east of IF. It climbs about 1,400 feet over six miles to top out at about 6,200 feet. It was hard, although the run back down was actually harder, I think because I was running into the wind and going down made my feet and hips hurt. Not the knees though, which is good.

At about the turnaround point, I ran into one of my Sawtooth teammates who was driving down from his run at the top of the hill. He had run into one of the other team members on his drive up and had to drive him back down because his Achilles tendon was bothering him. Uh oh, one down. But one's easy to replace if need be.

Then, today at work, I talked to another of the team members and he told me he'd strained a quad playing soccer in the powerful wind we had Sunday. Ah crap, that's two. Then, a third runner told me he was exhausted from the 35-mile bike ride he did, also in the mighty wind on Sunday. I hope these guys aren't trying to train too hard too fast. I don't want to have a whole team on the injured reserve come June 14th.

So, it looks like I was the smart one who avoided exercising outdoors in that punishing wind on Sunday. I was scheduled for an easy two miles, but I knew that there would be nothing easy about running in that awful gale. Which meant that I'd skipped another run. Today, I made it a point to leave work a little early and hit the road with the intention of doing a little extra because I'd been "lazy". Well, that nasty wind was still blowing and the little extra became one of those runs where you go faster than you want just to get it over with. If I was looking to punish myself, I accomplished that goal. Should make tomorrow's run interesting - a four-mile tempo run at nine minute pace.

Today was NOT a beautiful day!

Ahhh April... Spring has sprung... the grass is getting greener, the flowers are starting to come up, the birds are singing, the snow is blowing sideways at 30 mph... Wait, what?! Oh yeah, this is Eastern Idaho. Winter's not really over until Memorial Day. The high temp yesterday was 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Today, the high was 40. That's a difference of 35 degrees for those of you who aren't mathematics subject matter experts. It snowed off and on and the wind blew more than 20 mph all day today - April 15th!

Kinda stinks to have a five-mile tempo run planned for a crappy weather day like today. I know myself - if I save it until tomorrow, I'll start to take my training plan for the Sawtooth Relay less seriously and probably skip more workouts. So I hit the road after work. Notice that the Weather says "Mostly Cloudy and Breezy". Twenty-three mile per hour sustained winds with thirty-three mile per hour gusts is just a breeze around here. That wind was brutal any time I was running West, which was a good portion of the run. The plan was a mile warm-up followed by three miles at ~9:00/mi pace and a mile cool-down. The first tempo mile pretty much sucked with the wind and freezing rain/snow in my face, the second was way better with the wind at my back and the third hurt, I think because I was worn out from the first. My cool-down was slower than I have run for a long time. Probably a good thing. I hope Friday is more like last Sunday than today. Seven miles in this crap might just kill me (at least all my motivation).

That water's cold. I wouldn't recommend swimming right now.

Man, do I suck at updating a blog. It's just that I can't find that much good to write about.

March was a really bad month for me. I sprained or broke or something in my wrist on that skiing trip back in February and thought I would wait until it healed before lifting weights again. Well, it still hasn't healed so I'm going to have to see a doctor about it. Then, I got the flu and it of course moved right to my lungs, so that kept me from running for a few weeks and made it really hurt when I did start back.

Now, the good news. I have started training in earnest now for the Sawtooth Relay, which is in the middle of June. I've gotten a team together from guys at work who are or have been runners. I'm the captain, which is something I've never done before, always preferring to let someone else do all the organizing. There's a lot more to this than I ever would have realized. So far, I've gotten half of the $330 entry fee from the project we all work for (The AMWTP), which is surprising in and of itself. We've got about two months before the race, and I'm looking forward to bugging the crap out of my team to get them all to train since they're all older than I am and have wives and kids. I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

I went fly fishing last Friday, a pastime that always reminds me why I like living in this area. It was a gorgeous day (a little windy, but that's normal) and we floated the South Fork of the Snake River from Shelley to Firth, ID.


We didn't catch a lot of fish, but it was good to just get out and be on and in the river, and we did each catch at least one fish.


The best fish of the day was a 17-inch brown caught by the owner of the drift boat, which is as it should be, but he caught it on a spin-casting set-up, bouncing a big night crawler off the bottom of the river. That'll break the heart of any fly-fisherman. Yes, that is snow at the back right of the picture.

After we got done floating, I decided to go wade a spot we call "The Demon Fish Hole". Last fall we went fishing there several times and got to watch a whole bunch of giant trout jumping out of the water after some kind of flies. We could never get them to take anything we were casting. It was very frustrating. So, I hike out to the spot and get in the water, which is lower and slower right now than it is in the fall. That's a good thing. As I'm wading to a promising-looking riffle, my foot slips on a rock, then slips a bit more and I'm putting my left hand down and bending my knees to keep from going over backward. That's never a good thing when you're standing in three feet of river. I was soaked with cold water and had small streams of it running down the back of my legs. Fortunately, it was a fairly warm day and I kept fishing for about 20 minutes, until I started to feel really cold and I figured it would be a good idea to head back to the car and change into the warm, dry extra set of clothes I always bring with me when I go fishing. Now I know why I do that.

OK...

Now I have been a slacker. However, it was a planned slackerhood. Well, most of it. Last week was a "transition" week in my weight training cycle where the goal is to take it easy and recuperate from the last couple of high intensity weeks. I took it a little easier than I intended to, but I somehow tweaked my neck at the beginning of the week and didn't feel like making it worse. I ran a tough four miles on Friday for about the only exercise I got the entire week. It was really only tough because we've had a lot of melting around here lately, but it still gets really cold at night and re-freezes all the roadways. I was slipping and sliding all over the place because I didn't want to wear my YakTrax on all the clear pavement. That and the fact that no one clears the sidewalks and in fact the city plows the snow/slush/sand right up on them. I ended up running down the driving part of a very busy street. This is not something I would ever recommend doing, especially since these days everyone seems to need to be talking on their cell phones while driving. I didn't make an exact count, but I must have seen at least 30 people yakking away during the less-than-a-mile I ran along Sunnyside. Scary!

I spent all day yesterday snowboarding at Pomerelle Mountain Resort with a couple friends from work. Pomerelle is a nice little family-style ski hill that gets lots of snow and has some pretty good terrain. Nothing too challenging, but since I hadn't been boarding in a couple years, it was perfect for a tune-up. I wish I'd brought my camera because it was an absolutely gorgeous day and I'd have some great pictures to post. At about lunch time we were actually almost too hot and had to start peeling off layers. In the past, I've had a hard time skiing all day because of fatigue and I've been really sore and tired for the next couple days, but not this year, because I've made and effort to regularly exercise throughout the winter. I blew away the guys I was skiing with (admittedly, they are both 20 years older than I am) and wasn't the least bit tired at the end of the day. My calves are a little sore today, but not enough to keep me from running another slippery three-miler after work tonight. It's great to see even little improvements.

I'm not a slacker, I swear...

I haven't posted a thing for more than a month. That doesn't mean that I haven't been exercising, although the weather has been colder than I like to run in around here. I'm really glad I spent all that money on warm clothing last fall because if I hadn't, I'd be really fat and lazy right about now.

My little bro got me some Yak Trax for Christmas this year (I asked for them). Here in the frozen desert of Idaho Falls, Idaho, we tend to get only a little snow in the winter, but with the low temperatures, it sticks around for three months. I don't know how I ever ran in the snow without these traction devices. Oh yeah, I didn't. They're great on solid packed snow or ice, but I can hardly feel them through the soles of my shoes. They seem sturdily built and the traction coils cover pretty much any part of your feet that you would want to run on so they would work well no matter what type of gait you have. The only problem I've had is that they don't give any improvement on loose, thick or slushy snow, although I can't imagine anything that really would. It still feels like I'm running in sand. I would wholeheartedly recommend Yak Trax to anyone who lives in a snowy climate that wants to continue to run outside in the winter. It's not supposed to hit 30 degrees Fahrenheit until at least February around here, so I'll definitely be getting plenty of use out of them.