- Just when you think it’s over…I’m taking my first of 12 bar tending classes today. I still can’t believe it. Yes you can learn on the job. And yes, I’m still taking a class.

- What happened to FakeFasterSkier? May 5th?! Are you kidding?

- I think that the Johnny5 write ups on www.johnnyklister.com were awesome. The one about Kikkan really captures some things I personally appreciate about the girl.

- Here’s a quotes from FHM’s review on Transformers (the links are mine):

“What’s good about it? Large parts of New York, Paris, Shanghai and the Egyptian desert all get blown to shit. In particular, a forest scene in which Optimus Prime slugs it out with three Decepticons (and unsheaths his magic swords), is awesome. As is the end sequence: the plot (and therefore the fate of the world) pivots on ‘magic dust’, the US army are shouting ‘Bring the rain!’ and Megan Fox is scrambling around in white trousers while the sun sets on the pyramids, which are topped, tinsel-like, with giant shiny robots. It’s just so poetically retarded.

Verdict: It’s like watching a blender for two hours while someone shouts at you. And then the last half an hour is the same, except it’s more like having your head strapped to a washing machine while you watch a blender and someone shouts at you. And you really need to piss. Still, wicked fun.”

Nice. I’m still going.

Wednesday – Fake out run up Potter Valley. L1, 30 minutes.
Friday – L3/L4 Takillya Run Glenn Alps, Ball Field, up and over O’Malley to return. 2.5 hours.
Saturday – Run/Hike from Flat Top to Potter via McCue Peak. L2/L3 with natural L4, 2.5 Hours.
Sunday – Race up Flat Top, L3/L4 up Peak 2, tempo run every little road on Upper Huffman with L3/L4 uphill bushwack to the radio tower, run/race back up the road to car at Glenn Alps Parking Lot. 2 Hours.

What the heck is up with all the hours?

Dude walks into a bar and says “Gimmie a bottle of tequila and a shot of loneliness.” The next morning he wakes up cursing a huge hangover and bitches about how he’s sick of his job on a no-name blog that’s about nothing but his job.

Later that day afterthe acute pain has left his poor shrinking brain, the guy goes for a 30 minute workout and ends up in the mountains for hours chewing on the uncertainty of the future and the nature of happiness.

The next day he wakes up after 10.5 hours of sleep to an inbox is full of raging positive feedback, and it keeps rolling in. His whippy bitch sesh gets listed on some huge “what’s happening now” website thing and the whole deal explodes into a world-wide discussion about “going out there and gettin’ it.”

Nerd.

Reality must have a finite value. Dreams, on the other hand, are obviously utterly invaluable.

Read it here

Continuous Combustion and More Continuous Combustion

Acute Pain

I rolled the nuts off my ankle last week on Mount Marathon and I haven’t been able to train for like five days (until yesterday). It takes all of my energy just to keep from rolling it when I go on runs and stuff, and I have to walk gingerly like a two year old whenever the slope gets steep. Yesterday on O’Malley I rolled the other ankle twice and both times it scared the [crap] out of me.

That along with having a very tight right patella tending is sending me some very strong signals about the overall strength of my body. If a little rock or something so much as taps the swollen spot it hurts like hell for half an hour. This is BS – your body should not be working like this. It should be resilient and should bounce back laughing in the face of injury.

I can run on flats just fine, but that’s not where my heart is. I can’t even run for five minutes on that bike path out my door cause I’ve been using it for years. Bogus. My season is kind of bunk, I think, but when you can’t do anything about it that’s OK. I think I’m still set to run about as fast as I did last year, which still does NOT suck.

I realized that since January I’ve sort of naturally slid into a state of athletic vacation. Hiatus, I like that. I still have to get outside every day and can hardly go hiking without cranking it up super hard because some things never change. But that doesn’t mean you have to think about racing and schedules and crap.

And now injury feels great. Woah.

Dust

Here’s a scary excerpt from an informational I was reading from my asthma doctor about Dust Mites (I have an allergic reaction to them):

“House dust is a mixture of many kinds of waste materials. A speck of dust may contain fabric fibers, human skin particles, animal dander, microscopic creatures called mites, bacteria, parts of cockroaches, mold spores, food particles and other debris.”

Sweet. I’ll get the duster, dear.

Nordic Skiing Blogs

Here is a list of blogs from people that like nordic skiing on blogspot: Click here and here.

Ruben Gonzalez

If you like Cuban music, then this guy is for you. The recording environment was very live-room, and I like to turn it up a little with the windows and doors open when I listen to it.

I was talking to a friend the other day about how he woke up and felt weak and out of shape, then blasted a second place in the year’s first mountain race.

Yesterday I talked to another friend that was planning all day at on doing a super intense interval/time trial workout once he got home, then he got out there and decided it was a bad idea in the first five minutes. He has resolved to give it another shot today.

All of you understand where these guys are coming from because it happens with first-timer high schoolers and old-timer professionals. It seems rare that someone wakes up and races the race that they thought they would. If you are the kind of person that want’s to get to the bottom of it, then the evidence would leave you to believe that fitness is magic.

Or rather, you might conclude that you can’t conclude anything. Ever since I jumped to the next level of fitness (more than 12 hours a week and a year-round lifestyle) a couple of years ago, there has been this disconnect between what I assume is the norm and what I can actually do. These days, even when I’m “out of shape,” I still go out and conquer workouts that I never would have imagined possible a couple of years before.

Yesterday I woke up feeling like crap (too much “Takillya” the night before) and by 8:30pm I’d run two mountains over 2.5 hours on a busted ankle. Afterwards I looked back at the ridges and peaks and snow fields that I covered and laughed out loud.

Sometimes I think it’s incredible what we elite athletes can do when high fitness becomes the norm. Before I would look at a glacial valley and just see a trail with some parking, and these days I see a macroscopic terrain park unbound by normalized paths and markers and full of possibilities. I might think I’m headed out for a 45 minute recovery run, but somehow every time I do it ends up being a couple of hours with terrific views and sensations of accomplishment.

Expect the unexpected, I guess.

Man it feels good to be moving out and getting rid of everything. I kicked my excess computer junk, got rid of all the clothes I don’t wear (except a Western State College Cross Country and an East High Cross Country shirt), and have all the furniture gone. It’s really nice to finally have my needs specified so well that they fit into a few small boxes.

That doesn’t include the gigantic ski box on my car, of course

Changin Skiing

This Johhny5 thing is cool. The write-up about Kikkan is the closest I’ve seen to her character yet, and the other one about Caldwell was terrific. But what the hell am I doing on the nomination list? Seriously, who came up with that?

But, I did start thinking a little bit after reading the write-up about Kikkan, and especially after blasting skiers for being rich white kids. If you had 20 hours a week to dedicate towards a project to advance skiing in your area or in the country as a whole, what would it be? As in, what do you think the community needs the most that you would want to offer given the resources?

I was thinking that I would start a club targeted at beginner and intermediate skiers that were interested in skiing for fun. I would start it off by scheduling the usual weekly ski and give free technique help to anyone who came. I see plenty of snow and winter awareness in Anchorage to make that sort of thing happen, and all it needs is someone to offer up free help to allow people to get interested.

The focus would be on fun and learning, and getting as many people into skiing as possible. If you get a 30-year-old into it as a beginner , then their kids will do it early on and become experts.

I wrote this about a month ago, but never posted it.

Oh man, I woke up today tired all over for the first time this season. It’s not a full-on muscle buzz cut like I’d expect in the next month or so, but yesterday was my first huge day of being outside going over the top with workouts, and it was great!!

However, the number one thing I can do to improve my performance is to get outside absolutely as much as possible. While I don’t have any tangible goals for the summer, the more hours that I spend on foot and in the mountains, the faster I’m going to get. The goal is to take every opportunity to pull myself outside and have fun doing something along the lines of hiking, running, and rollerskiing (as long as it doesn’t make my pecks toooo big for running…).

Yesterday was a perfect example of that. The day before I got a call from a friend and planned a sunrise run/hike at 7:30am, then got another call and planned another run at 3:30. On the way to the second run I heard about a relatively fast group doing a substantial hike at 6. Considering I’m coming off a lot of rest and going for endurance races, this whole situation was going to afford me some serious endurance training. It sounds crazy, but let’s have a look at why it’s a good idea.

The first two runs were with girls that I was significantly faster than, so they were going to be total L1, no L2. But, subconsciously hanging out and training with girls provides a different energy from conversation, and whether you like it or not, guys can take advantage of their testocerone to show off a little to get higher quality intensity if it’s in the plan at all. Sounds shallow, but it’s not and it’s real, dude.

So after the first two you “workouts” you’ll have between 3-4 hours of almost sub-easy activity on your feet, which will totally still prepare your running-specific muscles for long races. The last hike was with a substantially fast male hiker, and I could use the him to pull me through the last couple of hours to cap off a huge day.

If you are on the “get out as much as possible” plan, I think it will only work if you are actually into each of the things you are doing. I can’t imagine how sticking yesterday on a pre-plan would get you anywhere, so the key is to get in touch with your lust for outdoor activity and be ready to take advantage of fun opportunities that may arise.

If you grew up when I did and had any attention span for stationary indoor activities, the Super Nintendo was once the coolest thing in the world.

“Snes9x” is a Super Nintendo emulator that runs on your PC or mac, and loads a copy of those original game cartidges as .smc files. The emulator is free but you have to find your own game files on the internets because using them is illegal unless you also own the original game. I owned F-Zero before it broke, so I went ahead and downloaded F-Zero from one of the shady sites that has them. I love F-Zero.

You can go online and buy a SNES controller that’s been converted to USB for $38 here:
 http://www.retrousb.com/index.php?cPath=…

Or you can make one yourself using these instructions:
 http://www.raphnet.net/electronique/snes…

WARNING: Playing video games slows recovery and otherwise wastes mental energy that could be efficiently used towards resting for your next workout. The body can’t live without the mind. Use with caution.

Skiing is freaking small here in America, and I have some questions for you people.

US Nationals are smaller than the Alaska High School State Championships. We’ve got one distance dude that regularly competes on a world level and smokes the rest of the “sprinters” in the country (not to detract from the one sprinter chick that does the same), and otherwise a mix of professionals amateur college kids that are having a good year and manage to break the top ten.

What gives man??????

Anybody that says that nordic skiing isn’t full of well-off rich white kids is smoking crack. I’m a well off rich white kid, you’re a well-off rich white kid, I have ten pairs of skis and boots, you have ten pairs of skis and boots. We’ve got 2nd or 3rd year juniors running around with $500 GPS heart rate monitors and $5000 worth of clothes and equipment. So we’ve got all these rich people and this super rich country, why the hell aren’t we dominating the world like we do in track and basketball?

NO! NO!! Don’t go and say crap like “Well the Norwegians are doing X.Y.Z, whatever blah blah,” because the answer is right here in the U.S. I want all of you to have a look at international running and soccer, and also basketball in the US.

In basketball, poor people across the country play day and night in the streets with their brother’s huge baggy-ass hand me down clothes, and those rich professional NBA’ers CAN’T TOUCH THEM in a nasty 2-on-2 half-court game. Kids SKIP SCHOOL to play basketball, and there’s HUGE testosterone king of the hill sh1t that goes down on the average ghetto court.

Can you imagine a rich white baller kid from Anchorage playing street ball in harlem? No, they literally don’t even fit into the picture.

The thing is that all you need is a ball and your Sunday best, and then there’s a hoop in every playground across the country. Like the Volkswagen, it’s a people’s sport and as a result there’s millions of incredible players here, and no other country will ever be able to touch us.

It’s the same with running and soccer. Look at how huge those sports are. Poor and rich kids alike ACROSS THE WORLD are playing soccer day and night and totally killing it with over-the-top goal fever EVERY GAME. Why? Because all you need is a crappy ball and a couple of t-shirts for a goal, and presto: you got a cultural phenomenon that you can’t pull the kids away from.

If you want to go running, all you need is a pair of shoes and a small piece of big round planet to run on. The former is a stretch for some people, but those guys started running bare-foot to school at an early age, and they turned out fine.

So seriously, what’s the deal with skiing? Why is it that everyone in the country that trains more than 20 hours a week knows each other? Why is it that skiers are a super small population of rich white kids? Because skiing is too freaking expensive and unbelievably inaccessible to the poor people in northern climates, of which we have plenty in the US.

For example, why is it that every native kid off the road system in Alaska is a killer basketball player and has never stood on skis when they can do it right out their front door? They’re building gyms in the bush like the Dems are making “Got Hope?” bumper stickers, but why don’t they all have a cheap ass one-design fish scale ski to use that 30 feet of snow pack that they get for free? Everyone likes to run like little gerbils in gym class and on Field Day, so why wouldn’t they want to SKI and go wherever they want?!?

As it stands they’d need a bunch of coaches and a million pounds of equipment to enter into the glorious world of skiing, when they already have the two most important requirements: A culture with thousands of years of winter experience and infinite snow.

As an exercise, think about how much money goes into your average race week with planes, hotels, food, and gas the next time you are loading your ninth ski bag into a van to go to the airport. Now try not to glaze over when you add up all the gear that you only categorized as “some thousands of dollars” before, and try to imagine a bloody army of recruits to pull from that has the same resources as you do. It will never happen.

Being a pro athlete in a cultural vacuum and trying to win a fight with big dawgs that regularly walk on water in their home town is impossible. Everyone knows that being a pro skier here means becoming a loner to try to fit in with the cool kids across the pond, while remaining a total anomaly on your own turf. To our credit, I think it’s interesting to add that in that context, we have succeeded in showing the world that we can produce the kinds of people that can commit their entire mortal being to the goals in the face of endless defeat.

In that light, every professional skier I know has said “Yes” to the incredible focus, integrity, and resourcefulness that it takes to hang in that impossible world. Now just imagine what they could do if they’re jobs were a little easier because they’re whole country was behind them. If you think nordic skiing is cool enough to give up your entire young life…in the face of any adversity…to a fault, then you probably would also defend the fact that all those other people would like it too if they only had the tools.

Check it:
 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c…

(Scroll down to the “*ahem*”:)
 http://www.ishkur.com/sports/soccer.php

You Guys Are Weird

“You Guys Are Weird.” That’s what a runner friend of mine said when I told him that Eric Strabel and I ran a 3:13 and a 3:18 in training on Crow Pass today. He’s right.

This was by no means a time trial, but we were very interested in a killer workout and scouting the trail so that we don’t miss any turns on the unmarked course on race day. Right now it’s 7:47pm and I’m still up Crow Creek Road running the day through my head while my calf muscles are twitching in three places and I can see my pulse plain as day in both biceps. I’m so tired that it’s hard to nap. Am I questioning what this means for my body? Nope, not any more!

We were running by 9 am on a beautiful morning. Eric likes running the pass a little slower so I experimented toning it down a little, but still trying to run the entire pass. The trail steadily gains a few thousand feet in the first three miles, then has a gentle but technical down 19 miles to the Eagle River nature center.

About 8 miles from the end we ran into a group of six of our friends, and when we started running again I realized how fast we’d been moving before. Eric started pushing the pace, and I also decided to make the individual and “non-competitive” decision to race myself to the finish. After shattering our estimated 3:45, a dip in the pond below the nature center barely saved my legs from cramping and being totally unusable tomorrow.

So I think I’m actually psyched about this race now. I was 9 minutes off my race time from last year, and beat my time from two years ago by 18 minutes. The funny thing is, I don’t think I need to do any more work on cardio fitness. All that’s really left is working on making my running muscles as durable as possible through hours of technical trail running. I’m not sure how to approach this, but I guess I’l’ just focus on as many hours as possible rock hopping and pushing the speed through rocks, mud, and twisty, turny, grass-covered trail.

Meanwhile, pandora plays on my iPhone up Crow Creek Road and I’m all about my Groundation Reggae station. I’m going to get a part-time coffee job in Girdwood somewhere to keep me out of the van cave. Minimum wage, here we come!

I woke up yesterday and put together the usual breakfast on my EuroVan’s kitchen. It was three scrambled eggs, two pieces of toast with raspberry jam, and black tea with milk and sugar. The last few nights I haven’t slept very well because I haven’t gotten the blankets and ventilation figured out in the pop-top bunk. It’s still an unfamiliar space and the mattress is a little thin so there isn’t much room for other discomfort. The pop-top did hold up to light rain though and standing up easily is a huge comfort inside the van.

I really wanted to do a huge OD run today so I got dressed but passed full-out parked at the Crow Pass Trail head in my running stuff for 20 minutes after breakfast. After I woke up it was on.

I suppose at this point in the summer I should be running almost all of the 3000′ up the pass, but I’m having too much fun playing with my lactate threshold. This stuff is tough to explain because it’s so personal, but I ran while paying attention to the exact moment that the lactic acid would start to burn then backed off into a hike until the exact moment that I noticed the acid had gone away. In this way I ended up running around 2 minutes, and hiking around 15 seconds. As a result, I believe that I was staying as close as possible to my lactic threshold without really going over, which is really hard to do on this kind of steep terrain. The fitter I get the less I will be hiking and the more I will be running. After the pass I ran all the flats at just under race pace, and as always raced all the steep downhills as hard as I could.

The run was terrific. Last year, I ran half as far about 5 weeks later in the season, turning around at the second bridge. This time I ran until I could see the river which ends up being around 24 miles in four hours. I also managed to completely learn the two places I lost the trail and before the river last year.

This is what intensity is for the marathon trail runner. Your body needs to be strong and durable, able to handle constant random movements for hours on end instead of the train-track predictable motions that happen on the road or track. In traditional L4/5 intervals you stress your heart and acid tolerance, but in this kind of intensity, the stress is transferred to the joints and mechanical systems to be as efficient as possible while your heart takes a back seat.

Skate roller skiing is the best cross training for this stuff because it strengthens your shins, ankles knees, and core, which is important for preventing ankle rolls, leg stability, knee injuries, and for sudden and for retro-blasting your body in all the sudden jarring movements you will make as you work with the trail. Skate roller skiing also keeps working your heart while providing active recovery for your poor widdle running muscles.

Science, science, blah blah blah. Puff puff give, bruva.

Bottom line: close your eyes and throw yourself in the lions den, forcing yourself to crawl out screaming and kicking. Get Burly and take it like a man.

Also, while you can physically handle it, four hours of straight running on a plan TOTALLY SUCKS. I take it easy and am sure not to miss opportunities like stopping and listening to the natural sounds of the environment, or laying down in a warm sunny grassy spot. The mountains have some kind of magic voodoo power that you can use to keep your ticker tickin’ harder and longer if you aren’t racing through the day worrying about your hours or race performance. At my turn around point I was so intensely taken aback by the waterfalls and Eagle Glacier’s beautiful valley that I actually said a prayer to them. Dude, talk about existential ecstasy.

I came back drooling for anything edible that I could get my hands on. You know you’re well into it when you develop a new relationship with living things that you might be able to eat, like tree bark, grass, maybe even bugs. Your body is covered in mud, rain, spruce needles and creek funk, so it doesn’t seem strange that you’ve stopped using your fingers altogether to blow snot rockets. All along the return trail trees and bushes are grabbing out like fingers trying to hold you back, and when you lean into the next turn your shins hit them as if you were wearing those shin guards for alpine ski racing.

After an Alaska White Ale, a family sized Annie’s macaroni and two Alaska Sausage Company “British Style Bangers,” I passed out in my bunk for an hour before meeting a friend for beer. There would be no second workout today.

Dude and dudettes I am loving the little club-USA internet thing that’s going on. Johnny Klister and FakeFasterSkier on twitter and others never cease to make me laugh! I haven’t read much since Fairbanks, but check this one out:
 http://www.johnnyklister.com/post/100468…

At this very moment I’m sitting in my van up Crow Creek in Girdwood enjoying some much needed time off from work. The top is popped, I’m parked at my favorite place on the Iditarod Trail, and all I can hear is the chirping of birds and running water. The van’s all cleaned up and all stocked up with food, water, and propane, and I have some spare books, a guitar, and a drawing pad. I even have my laptop and hacked my iPhone to get internet service along with a small Honda generator standing by. This is flippin’ sweet. Good move, Pat.

I’m planning on spending a lot of time in the van starting July 1 (till late October??), and so it’s nice to take some time to work out the bugs, which also allows me to get out of town for a bit. So, I’m just hanging around doing whatever comes natural each day. Today I met up with the APU Juniors at the “Death Camp” revival for a hike up Max’s and along the headwall to Mount Alyeska. It took about four hours and they even made me dinner, which is nice for a van dude. Otherwise, this is my daily routine:

- Wake up
- Eat
- Read
- Run or Hike
- Eat
- Nap
- Roller ski or bike
- Eat
- Read or write or play guitar
- Eat
- Sleep

Look familiar?