Beer Mile Practice Run

To put it out there - my best unofficial Beer Mile time is 8:28 (John and I did a practice run a year ago) Beer Mile Practice Run @ Leigh HS.  I am pretty pleased with this actually!

This weekend John and I did a quick run in front of his house marking off about a quarter mile or so.  It didn't go so well for me, my time was about 12 minutes and something.  When I was running I was running fairly fast though so that is my only hope.  My chugging skills are what held me back.  I can only hope that for some reason or another I had a problem with the 3rd and 4th beer that caused me to slow down.  I think I am going to try Bud Light Platinum for my official run, it is slightly higher ABV at 5.9% but I think it is a bit less foamy.

This week we have the real SV Beer Mile at a "secret location and time".  I will put out an update with my official time.  I won't be burning down any records my only hope is to post a good time that I can feel proud of.  I know John will podium, and I should pull out first in the "kilted" division :)

Impromptu beer mile training with Jeff and John.

A photo posted by Amy burton (@amypburton) on Nov 19, 2016 at 5:40pm PST

Rio Del Lago 2016 Edition

Well Hell!  I can't seem to keep up with anything lately.

I thought I would / should start keeping this maybe a bit more up to date if for no other reason than to keep me sane?

So after my failure at Run Rabbit Run because my lack of willpower!  I could have and should have finished that.  The more I think about it the more I realize I should have finished.

Rio Del Lago 2016 Edition

My training going into this had been lackluster at best, I think the highest milage I got in between RRR and RDL was 26 mile week?  I would have to go look it up.  This new job blah blah blah excuse excuse excuse...  I have excuses but they all mean nothing (David and Megan Roche on Time Management.  If I really want to make this a hobby worth pursuing then I need to put in the time my friends (John's Blog for example) do!

So a few weeks before race day I notice that Amy is looking for pacers I thought her hubby would pace her, but with their son maybe they couldn't get time away.  After she found a few volunteers, she messaged me and said John was all mine.  I had already turned down David to pace me because I didn't want to waste anybody's time.

I told John thanks and I would take his help but I turned very schizophrenic about this as the race day got closer and my training waned.  I told him about 2 weeks before not to bother it would be a waste of his time.  He said he was going to go and he would have his running shoes if I needed...

This is a fairly flat not super technical course.


Let's fast forward to race morning - I am actually feeling ok I knew this was going to just be a slow sufferfest, so I was resigned to that.

The start of RDL is 18 / 19 miles of flatish bike trail.  I went slow and tried to stay slow.  I did finish that section a bit faster than I should have in retrospect and that might have been my downfall.  I hadn't been training with any longer runs and my body was going to rebel.

I go through Beal's point (the start / finish) and head out to finally hit some trails, fireroad at first then some single track and the dreaded "meat grinder".  I was still feeling ok, but something was off.  At about mile 30+ I text John and tell him I need him.  He said ok of course!  I will get back to him later, but let me just give you the short version - without him I would never have finished, period and end of story!

Went through the meat grinder and some other parts - got scared to death by a photographer.

At about mile 40 with about 5 more miles to get to Overlook and see John I tell him I am quitting and that I just want a beer.

I also hear from my sister and tell her the same thing.  She said to wait and just give it to the next aid station - in my mind I said no :)

I am tired and I haven't pee'd in the past 40 miles while taking in a lot of fluid and some salt.  I think my body just didn't know what was going on since I have been a lazy f#$.

Of course I am f'ing tired but the pee'ing problem was going to be bad later.

Long story long I get to the next mini aid station before a 2 mile climb (easy climb though).  I am still pissed off tired and not feeling great.

I get into Overlook and I don't see John, the aid station worker gets my drop bag with head lamp and heavier jacket.  I get some food and start packing my stuff as an automatic response.  I finally try to look for john then pull out my phone and text him.

We finally find each other and then I start heading out.  He asked me if I was serious about the beer and I told him yes so he runs back and gets it when I start telling him my woes before it dawns on me I didn't quit and we made it out of the aid station.

He won't let me drink the whole beer, I am sad and still not pee'ing.  I was moving ok up to No Hands Bridge, this is when John said something flipped I stopped moving as well (could have been the big f'ing hill that we had to climb out :) )

We travel along and at one point I stop to try and pee and my right calf cramps up so bad it is a knot, John tries to massage it out and move my foot!  I was yelling so bad that someone came back to see if John was trying to kill me :) (I think he was).  From this point on I am moving slower and slower (20+ minute miles), I am not going to finish :(  I am getting a bit dizzy on the trail and John is keeping me on the trail.  People are passing me left and right.  One happens to be a DR, so John does a quick consult around my headache, lack of urination, cramping, and dizziness.  To me I am finished at the next aid station.  Especially since it is 8+ miles to the next aid station after this.

We finally get into that aid station, John talks to the medic, I don't remember much, just eating a lot of broth and grilled cheese.  I took some of Melanie's pain medication that I had with me, since the medic said it couldn't hurt.  We just left the aid station.  All this time I feel extremely bad for John since this isn't a pacer duty he is used to, he is very fast and his friends are very fast.  :(

After about 5 to 10 minutes out of that aid station, I started running (that might be a bit much but to me I felt like I was flying).  I was actually moving through the course and we made up a lot of time over the next 3 or 4 hours.

It all came crashing down around Overlook, I was still moving but pain medication was wearing off.  I continued to move ok and we were able to get through the last few aid stations.  John kept me moving I passed someone twice my age I think as my last big push ;)

Above is the race analysis you can kind of see what I had described.  

I finished.  I was happy and sad but this was the race I deserved.  Actually a lot more than I deserved.  I wouldn't have finished if John wasn't taking care of me for over half that race! 

Amy got third place woman!  And finished 6+ hours ahead of me :)  She is amazing, this is coming off of a long term injury!  She is awesome!

I now have my Western States Qualifier.  3 years now so that should be 15% chance or so maybe a little lower.  

That is it, just a free flow of words, I am not going to go back to edit grammar and make it more interesting.

*Addition - I can't stress enough how helpful John was - especially when I remember that I had originally waved him off pacing me.  I know he had his shoes in his car, but I don't think he was completely ready to pull an all nighter with me.

This was to qualify for WS100, but now I feel I have to go back and do it again because I know if I actually train for this I can do it sub-24 I have to believe that.

Strava - Part 1 - What and Why?

Executive Summary: Strava is great for social networking in running, very easy to use and has an iPhone app.  Get out there and create an account then be friends with me :)

In my post yesterday - Veloviewer Usage got me to wonder how many are using Strava  in general and what it is good for, I thought I would share my own experience with it and why / how I started using it.

When I first started running I used Nike Plus because I had some friends and family on it and also it worked on my iPhone, etc...  It did some nice summarizing of data but nothing too impressive.  It did speak a bit to my competitive nature by showing a leader board on miles per week / month.

After the first few months I started playing around with a lot of different tools and that caused me to use an app on my cell called iSmoothRun  (great app and I would still use it but I invested in a Garmin) - it was able to record the run and then upload to all different services.  I used that and signed up for Strava.

As most of you that use Strava know, it is super easy to get sucked into the segments (I will go through that stuff in a bit), and leader boards on a weekly basis.  I think that is around the same time as I met the guy that holds then (May 2013) and still holds most of the Quicksilver KoMs. Now enough history - I started doing my distance running - maybe not very fast but at least further with the help of John and all the friends I have met through Quicksilver Running Club or on Strava.

Why should you get on Strava?  Even if you aren't planning on running long distances or fast, it is motivating to be able to find some routes that you run often and notice the segments that are on your route and work on improving your rankings.  Segments are just like they sound, they are portions of your overall run that have their own leaderboard.  And that drives some competition just internally I think it is neat to go back to run some segments hard and try to climb the leaderboard (knowing at least full well for me I won't get the top place but I can improve at the very least).  (They have hiking / biking / walking / workout / etc... as well)

Here is an example of a run.

A couple of things you can see here obviously - The run overall - Distance / "Moving time" / Pace / Suffer Score (heart rate calculations - I didn't feel like it was that extreme)  

Then under it is elevation (amount of climb) / calculated calorie expenditure / elapsed time (note the 8 min gap - I got lost and had to look at a map on my phone :) ).

You can see the map and the "splits (just mile increments)" and the elevation profile below (seeing where I stopped for a bit to look at the trail markers first time I ran there)..

I have also linked my instagram account to my run so it will pick up any pictures I take and their location (see the little picture on the map).  You can also "kudo" people on their runs as well as comment on them.  Great for a social drive by.

On the next couple of screens (you can click the items under overview on the left hand side);

• Pace Analysis - look of the elevation profile and fastest and slowest times you did.
• Pace Distribution- See how much time you spent in various zones based on your top speed - In my opinion less useful since my fastest I used a half marathon on the road, this has nothing to do with how fast I hit the trails.
• Heart Rate - How much time you spent in various zones that you see some of the more serious runners use (e.g. Zone 2 or z2 is tempo pace / z5 is Anaerobic).

I think the fun part is the segments though;

You will see a list of the segments and you can mouse over them to see which segment is which on your run (it will highlight them blue and also show on the elevation profile to the right).  If you click on them they will show a quick view of the leaderboard and where you stand on it;

As you can see above - I am currently 20 out of 52 people that have run that segment and I would have to run it over 8 minutes faster to get the Course Record (CR) (that isn't happening).  If you start clicking the buttons under you can see the whole leaderboard and your efforts (a good example here is I have done quicksilver now for over a year some of those segments I have attempted 30 or 40 times).  You can compare you against others I will show below because this is a relatively new feature that shows in real time if you both started that segment, graphically where would you be as that run played out.  As you can see I stopped it about 13 minutes into the run and the was 3:43 ahead of me on the map and going about 2 minutes a mile faster than I was...  (sigh)

So much to explore in this tool let alone Veloviewer.  My bottom line as I finish showing this and I will write something up more about joining a club or making friends, also adding some level of security (home zone / locked profile), is just sign up and start using it.  They have a great iPhone app that my friend Scott Dunlap reviewed recently here, and you can download all your runs if you ever want to put them into some other running ecosystem.  Here is my profile so you can add me as a friend as well - Jeff's Strava Profile.

Time to get serious

Well I just finished helping my friend / ultra mentor finish his run around Lake Tahoe - the Tahoe 200. I don't know now if I helped or hurt his chances. He was in a great position but then I may have pushed him to keep going when an hours worth of rest might have helped him reset and hold his position better. I keep second guessing my strategy and I am sure he is as well.

What does this have to do with the title of this post. Well nothing really. Just while I was working with him on this run / hike for 20 hours or so, I had some time to think about my own running work to date. Pretty unimpressive really. I have done pretty well in running with how fast I have jumped to longer distances, but all in all I am below average in speed and endurance. I need to get serious.  

In talking to him while we were hiking up some crazy hills, I mentioned that I have some goals. He told me that for those goals, I would need to loose this extra weight. I have added some since Bryce and the injury. Even with Bryce I should have been a few pounds lighter. 

I think another thing that will help is adding to this blog on a regular basis. My running progress or setbacks. I also buy and use enough items that I could review things from my point of view. I might also do some fun reviews about random things like movies, gadgets and miscellaneous things. 

That is all. More to come hopefully :)