Once my IT band gave the the checkered flag for the running season I got to say “fine, be that way. I didn’t want to run any more anyway.” Guess that means it’s time to rollerski, and back to the bottom rung. Yeah my lungs feel great, but my technique SUCKS and it doesn’t matter how humungous your tri’s are if you never use your abs. How do you guys do it, seriously!? I classic skied with UAA out Eklutna lake Road and back the other day and got totally worked. Those guys are fit, man, and it’s cool to see. They’ve got a solid men’s team and a friggin army of girls this year. Go Alaska!

On the every-day front, training has lost a ton of it’s excitement now that there’s less people to train with on rollerskis. There are plenty of mountain runner-types around for the warm months, but once it starts getting cold it’s pretty tough to stay pumped if you don’t have a team. On that note, it just started snowing. Woah. This is one of those times when enjoying an obscure sport like nordic skiing is kind of tough, and it passes once the snow falls and the local stokers emerge for the winter, but it’s Still October!! Oh well, this time last year I was in Europe trying to figure out how to train consistently without burning out, and by now I’ve nailed the concepts down in the old brain-cabinet.

These pictures are from a training run/hike up O’Malley peak a few days ago. For those fo you thinking about U.S. Nationals here in January, they should provide some encouragement. I wanted to get up to Eagle Glacier at some point this year but it just never became summer up there! Last weather report I heard in August was 20F and snowing.

Arctic Valley

Snow Cover

Arctic Valley Snow Cover

Arctic Valley Snow Cover

Arctic Valley Snow Cover

O’Malley Peak from the “Ballpark”

Chugach Mega-gnar

Sunset over the Alaska Range from O\’Malley

So keep training, and use October - that most important month for base training - to get as fit as you can, because we’ll be racing soon! Meanwhile, it doesn’t bother one bit to leave this…

Anchorage, right now

For this…

Virgin Gorda

Peace out

thank god

I ran the Municipal Tuesday night race last week and felt like my fitness was sold to the circus. If I was ever in the zone, then that was old news! I had it in my mind to race every weekend this summer, which was part of a plan to make use of more intensity workouts, and also build as much racing experience as possible. Yeah, now I’m throwing away a good 4-5 weeks of traditional training, but that was preceded by superior high quality training and replaced with a well-needed mental break. In the past I’ve freaked out about screwing myself for the winter when I hit a wall of tired, but what I took away from it was some serious knowledge about the upper limit of my body’s capabilities.

I learned that I can push my body 100% for two weeks before a 3 hour mountain race and recover in seven days. I did this once for Crow Pass, and once for Mat Peak a few of weeks later, and it worked very well. I also learned to have more faith in my body and my training while pushing it to the limits during these intense workouts and races. Most importantly, I have a much clearer picture of what the wind-down cycle looks and feels like after a solid peak for over-distance racing. I think I’ll be able to follow up on all of this very well next year.

More obviously, I got a better idea of how many races I can handle in the summer. I have a few more years of excessively frequent racing to improve experience, but I will be able to tone it down the closer I come in tune with the balance over that period of time.

The Klondike/Summer Followup

The Klondike Road Relay from Skagway, AK to Whitehorse, YT always seems to be the event that marks the changing of the summer into the fall, and the drive is absolutely beautiful. The Yukon in the fall (and maybe year round) will always remind me of October 11, 2004 when I uprooted my life and drove away from Alaska in a VW camper for the first time looking for adventure. Haines Junction, Whitehorse, and Liard Hotsprings will always have a special spot in my heart for good memories of new things, especially in the fall.

“The Klondike” is a good race to go do if you are burnt up and want to blow out the carbon. There are around 130 teams of ten people, most riding in a single team RV behind their racer through the night as they approach the 110th mile in downtown Whitehorse. The RV immediately explodes with clothes, gear, food, and the beds change owners more frequently than on your average granny Denali tourist road-trip. Half of the cabinets and amenities provided with the RV break in the first couple of hours, party favors and exhausted racers are strewn about the cabin as gasoline burns at 8 miles per gallon for 1800 miles. It’s a great event with a great party, and always a good idea if you are feeling a little used and abused from your summer racing season. You leave and the leaves are green, while you return and the leaves are yellow and falling. It’s time to ski.

I had the longest leg at 16 miles, with a monster climb of an unknown height in the middle and starting at 3:45am. I’ve found that your body will generally do some discouraging things in the beginning of a race like this, and some or most of them you can get used to or learn to be patient and wait for them to go away. For example, the first five miles are downhill and I got some nearly debilitating side stitches (happens every time). My experience says that if I use short breath and keep my turnover smooth and fast to keep the internal organs as still as possible, side stitches will eventually go away. I also knew that my metabolism was hot enough to burn a lot of that food during the race, which is exactly what happened. Unfortunately I also felt the chunk of food-pain move lower into my pelvis and sit there to cause indigestion. At least it was now resting in the stability of the pelvic bowl.

Next was the possibility of never warming out of my leg lethargy and cardio fatigue, having raced every weekend and resting through subsequent workouts for a month. To work around this I bided my time and ran 7 minute miles in the beginning, and slowly increased the speed and intensity until I was easily running sub-6 for the last several. The curve of the intensity perfectly followed my body’s willingness to part with it’s long-term fatigue, at a rate of about 5 seconds per mile. This was a good race - a very smart race - and I ran exactly as hard as I could given my condition, which I am quite proud of. Success #2.

Klondike teams have a lot of spunk.

The party was a lot of fun. We won the mixed-gender race and got second overall, so hopefully that will leave a positive enough influence on our team to be invited back again after the stuff we pulled at the party afterwards. This is a year to beat for good war stories between the hours of 6pm and 3am!

Peebers on the roof

The Challenges

The challenges ahead are many and working through them will be very rewarding. I’m facing working through some family issues, turbulence at work, some tough social dynamics, starting a dark winter without much of a summer to speak of. My choice of moving back to Anchorage is up for grabs as well, which always puts a fun spin on things. One thing that appears to remain a constant is the will to train. It turns out I’ve managed to keep fit for roller skiing during the summer, and I’m looking forward to a lot of it this fall to prepare for the winter. I can’t wait to see how this running base will carry me into skiing to prove my theory about the positivity of quality non-specific training.

UPDATE: There is a really good spread about men who make a full-time training plan work with a full-time job the September 2008 issue of Outside. Check out this link.

The Dilemma

Things get difficult when you want to train more than around 14-16 hours a week while supporting yourself financially. Poles break, skis need waxing, USSA memberships need renewing, entry fees need paying, 6000-8000 calories need replenishing, plane tickets and hotels are expensive, not to mention how unsponsored people don’t even have the resources to find and use important things like fast skis. This is a pretty standard “poor athlete” dilemma, where one trains and goes to the Olympics and kicks butt, then comes home and faces the new challenge of supporting themselves after not making any money or building business relationships to fall back on. A lot of us aren’t training at such a high level, but even trying to rule domestic or local races takes a certain amount of support.

Most younger nordic skiers have the benefit of relatively wealthy families (compare to the average Harlem street baller for example) that can still help with coaching fees, glacier camps, all that stuff. But when you don’t have a coach to hound your crappy technique and correct your spotty training plan, things start to get pretty tough for the aspiring athlete. Regular and effective training requires at the very least a regular shower, a place to sleep well, a place to prepare food, and a place to relax and rest, which rules out the hard-core ski bum thing (At least wherever it gets cold. See my earlier blog entries for a take on that concept.). As a result you’ve got to take the initiative a bit earlier by getting creative and mashing the training lifestyle into a regular work day as best you can. You need to learn training and nutrition philosophies on your own, get to understand your body by feel, and start hanging around people for advice.

I was fortunate enough to have a good friend by the name of Rob Whitney, who offered some attention and assistance by putting together a training plan for last year when I was really floundering. Without him constantly calling me a wuss and correcting my training mistakes, I wouldn’t be close to having as much fun as I am now.

Waking up

Two double days during the work week seem to be possible - until now I was hitting the gym with 30 minutes of running and 45 minutes of strength every Tuesday and Thursday before work. The main goal was to maintain general fitness and keep my knees strong to avoid running injuries. I hate running injuries. Waking up at 6:45am to run to the neighborhood co-op gym by 7:15 was tough, and it took a couple of weeks to adjust. A training partner is key - if Tor hadn’t been there to complain with about how tired we both were, it never would have happened. It also wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t convenient. They gym was a 10 minute run away, and there was a coffee shop on the way home. Smart training isn’t all logged hours and intervals, you know…

Sunrise always my fave over sunset for added workout bonus.

On the positive side, being awake early and getting a workout in before 8 hours at the office was a great energy boost and rest for the conscience. No matter how tired I was when I got to the gym (I could barely see straight some times), I always left feeling fairly balanced and ready to tackle the day after the workout. Gotta hit that convenient coffee shop on the way home though. An unfinished 12oz is plenty until about 1pm.

Work (out?)

A restful desk job is a great advantage, and it helps quite a bit if you are engaged in your work. Actually enjoying your work can both help and hurt you, because rest is important while you are at work as well as at home. If you enjoy your work you won’t mind sitting still for 8 hours, but you may also not take those 15 minute mental breaks to stare out the window and disconnect. Conversely, being uninterested just enough in those TPS reports makes it easier to get up, stretch out a little bit and think about ice cream or that cute new secretary or something. “Conversely” is a great word because it reminds me of cool shoes in the 80’s. Wait**What? At any rate, this is basic balance stuff, and you’ll have to break in even the most desirable jobs for a while before you find if the balance will work for you. If you just can’t ever get the work-rest-work-rest phases figured out, then quit! Find a better job.

This guy spends his time “Gathering The Light”. I’ll bet his OD pickups are pretty money. Vegas, baby, Vegas!

Feed me

The biggest problem for me at work is staying fed. Assuming you’ve gotten over the idea of eating M&M’s all day, it can be difficult to keep enough food around just to keep from getting hungry all the time! And class, what happens when people forget their lunch and get hungry at work? They go out to eat - a lot. If you can afford it, there isn’t anything wrong with going out for lunch as long as you are eating healthy food. In fact, it is great to be able to walk out the door for break in the sun to a shop or deli for a cup of tea and a sandwich. It moves your legs and gives you some external stimuli to stare at instead of your computer screen. Oops! Its Friy-day, better grab a sixer for the other guys at the office. This is how Friday became the rest day…

A typical pattern I fall into during the day is to eat more than I should to avoid getting hungry later. To help with this I always try to spread my meals out over the day with high-quality snacks prepared at home. The pair of trusty PBJ’s is a good choice, and so are bananas, carrots, and whole wheat bagels with cream cheese - stuff like that. If you have a fridge in your office you can bring a carton of orange juice (I like Tropicana) or mix plain yogurt and chopped apples in a bowl for about 45 minutes of relief. It’s cool to get the buffalo burger with pasta side for lunch, but unless you are recovering form last weekend’s adventure race, take the second half with you to the office and eat it as a snack. You don’t have to get it all down at once!

When you want to stay fed at work, the most important thing to do plan before hand. Make a list and go to the store regularly to keep your home pantry stocked, and get used to rotating choices every two or three days or more so it doesn’t get old.

Transport

I heard a show on NPR last year about a national poll (what, they didn’t call you?) regarding the top 10 or so things that affect the quality of life. You know what the number one item was? I was eliminating the daily commute, and I totally agree. Driving a car in traffic prevents rest and meditative thought in the same way that T.V. and video games do, but to a greater degree. Unless you have spectacular mental control or abuse recreation drugs, you good defensive drivers will spend the entire trip experiencing a mild form of anxiety watching out for other cars and constantly reacting to the unpredictable environment. You’ll use up valuable rest and relaxation time burning SQUAT for calories. Speaking of fossil fuels, I’ll bet you didn’t know anxiety was that expensive! Anyway, if it’s possible, riding a bike to work is one of the best things you can do for yourself when trying to merge daily workouts into the daily grind. It seems silly to take the bicycle out for a spin every time you take a 15 minute break, but if you can run an errand or two or hit a cafe for lunch you’ll wake up over half of the muscles that tighten up from sitting in a chair all day.

Office Injuries

What? You just ran a backcountry marathon and you are afraid of getting injured in the office? You can’t be serious…

Actually just like those sport-coat wearing nerds on the ten-year-old safety tapes said, the “office is a dangerous place.” Well, I wouldn’t go that far but it is a fact that your body wasn’t made to sit in a chair all day. A few years ago I actually injured both hip flexers by sitting and allowing them to cramp. When I stood up and went running at 5pm the cramp would cause me to pull them, and I spent a summer on the bench. Stretching the hip flexer regularly with the goofy looking lunge stretch will take care of it. 15 minutes of staring into space in a slouch every hour doesn’t hurt either…

Going Home

Ding Ding Ding… Ahhh freedom! I remember at my first indoor job in ‘97; I was 17 and would rip off my shirt in the parking lot on the way to my car. There was another guy that did it too, but he was way more ripper-ed and tanned than I was. It was sunny and warm, and I was really stoked to be outside with nothing but what I thought was an “infinite” amount of time before the next work day. You’ll find that most of your available training buddies - that aren’t otherwise engaged in team-oriented training sessions - also work a typical work day and will want to hit the dirt somewhere around 5:30-6:00. So you gear up and meet your friend at 5:30pm for a long ski, but when you get back suddenly it’s 8:30 - and that was hauling butt to make the meeting time. Herein lies the undying dilemma: when you work out too late you can’t sleep. If it was a solid workout and you do manage to fall asleep, you won’t sleep as deeply. Also, when did you squeeze dinner in? Did you get another take out burrito, or did you have something simple and planned ready to turn on right when you got home?

When you are trying to plan workouts that allow you to reach your potential while working 40 hours a week, you *have* to remember to have down time in the evening. You can say science-this and science-that about what you’re body does when it rests and what is considered good rest, but there are magic things that happen when you truly spend your time in a relaxed meditative state for a period of time during the day. For one, keeping your mind off of work is important, and these two or three hours will be the only chance you get to reflect on, and collect your life in order to be ready rock the next day. Again, don’t stuff yourself if you bonked on that run or rollerski, because going to sleep with a heavy stomach combined with buzzed muscles is a sure thing for bad sleep. A decent dinner within 40 minutes of your workout and a light toast or yogurt snack before bed is a good way to go. Gunde Svan (was it him? I can’t remember) had some outlandish eating schedule because he wanted his body to use it’s energy over the night repairing all the damage he’d done to it during the day instead of breaking down the food he’d crammed into his tiny norsk magen. Without solid sleep, training is worthless. Well, unless you are one of those masochists about which the rest of us joke about being, it’s worthless. If that’s you then I guess “anything goes.”

Bottom Line

Fact is, a lot of this stuff only becomes essential when you realize you don’t have time outside your job to support the overhead associated with training as much as you do. For example, getting groceries, making meals, keeping your house clean, trying to break this endless single streak, all become harder if you don’t nail down the essentials to support your workout plan. The wonderful part about it is that you get to line all those things up together and figure out which are and are not important to you. Want to do that big OD tempo workout after work? Better figure in transport and shower time before the hot date afterwards. Want to use a strength session as an energy boost for that early department meeting you are about to have? Better eat early enough, and sleep well the night before to wake up and make it happen.

There is a point around a 12 hour training week where you will notice your 8 hour work day starting to drag on a little bit. From my experience, this is the lowest volume that requires multi-day planning, including meals, social life, and sleep. My belief is that with more of a flexible performance-based job you can get by quite well training hard and working less but harder at work, but not much else. Once you get over 16 hours a week, I found that work becomes more of a burden, and I end up abusing my “flexible” job a bit more than I should. Fortunately, if you are training that much it has become the primary activity of your day, and you will be happy to now that cutting back from a 40 to a 30 hour work week has the biggest gain over any other adjustments you can make. With a 30 hour week you can get out two hours earlier every day and finish a 3 hour workout by 7. Or, you could take Friday completely off and get out an extra 30 minutes early the rest of the weekdays. When you look at the difference in the money you’ll still bring in after taxes, your little creative jinglets will start to rattle a bit.

søvn

I assume that part-time work (20h/w) is a possibility for top athletes. Though once races and traveling begin it’s pretty tough to mentally stay in the game once you are on the road. Last winter I was working 40 hours a week while driving alone to races around the Rocky Mountain Region, but not training at a top level. My workouts were an average of 2 to 2.5 hours per day and they left me thoroughly exhausted to the point were playing tourist sounded like a lot more fun than porting our sampler engine to OpenSoundControl. Plus, it was fun being somewhere else and taking in the atmosphere from somewhere other than my laptop heat exhaust. I don’t know much about what it’s like to train over 20 hours a week and have a sponsor pay for my entry fees and plane rides, but I imagine it is pretty tough to do anything more than to stay in touch to support the people that are doing your work for you back at the office. Job security: -2 points.

But at the end of the day…

Jobs are great because they give you a purpose that is completely unrelated to training and racing. You have strict goals & requirements, generally will have other people guiding your work, and you get PAID every now and again. Your job forces you to forget your training goals and philosophies and do something *else* that matters just as much as all that fun stuff. Imagine the opposite: The independently wealthy athlete who gets to sit at home all day looking for something to do between workouts, like play XBox, watch cable TV, druge the internet, eat microwaved food, enhance laziness. With rounded daily engagements you will do well, and with a harmonious life comes successful and well-deserved athletic experiences as the reward.

All together, now!

- Prepare healthy snacks to spread food out over the day.
- Find a way to avoid traffic madness before and after work.
- Ride a bike to lunch or to a cafe for a healthy break.
- Get up and stretch, walk around, stare out the window. Think about fluffy clouds and mermaids.
- Try to work out as early as possible in the afternoon to promote healthy sleeping.
- Enjoy your job, enjoy your training. Doing one well will improve the other.

There is a race in Palmer, Alaska called “The Matanuska Peak Challenge.” This year I had the fortune/misfortune of competing in the “challenge” (notice I didn’t say race) and it left my body broken and full of remorse. A relatively small field of around 50 masochists hike up Lazy mountain, down Lazy mountain, then up Mat Peak, down Mat Peak, then back up and back down Lazy mountain for a total of 9000 vertical feet over 14 miles. The uphills are long and end in a scratchy lichen-covered bolder field at the top of Matanuska Peak, and the down hills are steep and hard packed. You don’t even get the luxury of a scree field to ease the pain of the pounding your quads start to take.

Finishing up Mat Peak (Courtesy ADN)

Last year, the first time I raced Crow Pass I finished and the race seemed a little out of mental reach for what I had done and knew I could do. Well, this year Mat peak provides yet another angle on the “Anchorage Mountain Torture Grand Prix,” in the form of pain and suffering at the hands of the Kopsak brothers. At least I can say this race has the best tailgate I’ve seen so far. Funny thing though, I mentioned to a few people that the race was the hardest I’d ever done, like it was just pure pain, and Braun and Lance Kopsack laughed. They laughed! That’s some spirit….wouldn’t have it any other way I suppose. Thanks guys, see you next year.

In other news, if you want to see something SERIOUSLY HARCORE, check this out.

Transition

For the most part summer racing is over for me. Well, there are still some races to run but I’ll be training through them and spending more time trying to build some ski strength to go with my solid cardio base. That means it’s back to the gym in the mornings and lots of double poling.

I don’t think that generally speaking your body needs as much of a break but it’s nice to let your brain wander on to something different every few months to change up the mental muscle groups, and get fast at something else. Nordic skiing to back country skiing to hiking to running to roller skiing to nordic skiing - it’s a solid year’s work. The only thing missing in my regiment is more biking and active recovery. Maybe I should buck up and buy one of those fancy road bikes I see the college kids riding around. Does that mean I have to get some yellow shirt and a goofy little italian hat?

Anchorage from a sunny day in Rabbit Valley

Last Friday I decided it was time to chill out and I just threw all of my training gear into the car and drove down to Seward to for some sailing with the fam, choosing my training method of choice on the fly. As a result, I managed a 2 hour skate to Exit glacier and back (one of the best places that I know in South Central) on Friday, then flat out took the rest of the weekend off. Today the evening sun gave Anchorage a glimpse into our usually (yet unusual this year) pleasant summer evenings so I hit the coastal trail with my classic skis. I skied slow, like super slow, and just meditated on the idea of good technique and natural movement across my whole body.

Sailboat Racing in Resurrection Bay

Xan Walsh uses an alaska technique known as "Jerry Riggin"

There were moments where I just sort of stopped and listened to my structural imbalances, and regained a connection to the calmest resting state possible during the workout. Reflecting during this enjoyable evening and others like it will help give me a mental base to work on staying efficient and in tune with the efficiency. I’ll start pushing my hours back up this week and it will be good to be fully engaged and have a focused start on the transition. That stuff prolly doesn’t make any sense to anyone else but it does to me

Westchester Lagoon and the Chugach

Downtown Anchorage from the Coastal Trial

Sleep well, Susitna

Word of the day: Mastadon
Context: “Burley like Mastadon”
Reference: Lats

Crow Pass

The Saturday before last I banged out an awesome 24-miler at The Crow Pass Crossing. I finished second in about 30 seconds behind Eric Strabel in what was one of the most competitive and exciting races I’ve had since the ‘98 state 4×800m relay, where a man by the same name made up all but .003s on our anchor leg in an 8m7s race. For those of you with a little spare time, the following is a verbose recount.

Leading up to the race I was unusually focused and felt pretty darned good about everything. I feel like the only thing I or anyone else talked about the previous week was that race. There were emails about training, and there were even a rumor bin about who was running. Practically my whole family was coming to watch the finish for the first time, and there were a total of four (1, 2, 3, 4) articles about the race in the ADN. The hype was happening and I had reasons to be focused for the first time in a long time. How cool.

I slept in Das EuroVan at the Goat Mountain trailhead, getting my usual 5-6 hours of pre-race sleep, ambien included. The Chugach had been punished with 4 days of rain, but tonight there was sun on the higher elevations (6-7000ft), and I was imagining how my friends on Eagle Glacier were having some good weather at their ski camp for a change. The next morning I barely got my two egg and peanut butter sandwiches down five minutes before the start. Standing at the start line at the commencement of my biggest training goal to date, I felt pretty much totally awesome, and had a really solid idea of where my training had left me. The race started promptly at 7am and I made some quick introductions with the other top racers during the minutes of the steep 4 mile climb. This race rules. The other racers rule. All nice guys, they’re focused but willing to help if necessary. I knew my hiking has never been that hot, so the fact that the pack puled away fairly quickly didn’t phase me. I knew I was going to unleash the fire-crush-hammer-ball on every technical downhill and glimpse of open trail, so I just let them climb. Karma was high.

Crow Pass is like no other headlining race of the summer. The trail changes all the time, the river crossing is cold and deep, you roll your ankles, plow through devil’s club and cow parsnip (the sun blister plant), and the leaders run into a bear almost every year. I actually managed to dislocate my shoulder in a goofy little snow hole scouting the course three weeks prior. In order to scout the most critical part of the course, I jogged backwards down the trail with Matias Saari from the Eagle River Nature Center just one week before with nothing but a sleeping bag and some peanut butter (the bananas melted), and ran 10 miles of tempo from our camp site to the river and back. The last five miles of the course are go time for me, where I jettison the launch boosters and dump my tempo-based training regiment onto the trail with as much speed as possible. Missing a turn here and there is part of the game, but it can easily send you up the wrong valley if you don’t watch your $h1t.

The buddy system in effect, and me back in sixth.

About 15 minutes into the climb Eric Strabel came up behind me (see above picture), and in his own special way he said “The next fifteen minutes are the most critical. Don’t go over!” That blew my mind. The guy shoots dynamite race strategy like a tank, and I was psyched that it was aimed at me. It appeared that he had the same pacing strategy as I did, so I latched on behind him up the pass and thanked him for the pull once we got there. Thick clouds covered the technical downhill that followed to the valley floor and visibility was down to about 10 meters. Gary Snyder always appears at the perfect spot in every big race and yells his coach-call just like when I was in high school. He said “Conserve your energy here, you’ve got a long way to go. You know you can really work this downhill stuff Pat, let’s…” I stopped listening at “You know you can really” and started striding hard down the rocks and passed everyone but the two distant leaders hammering futher down the decent. The clouds were so thick you couldn’t even see what part of the valley you were in, and which of the snow fields to head down. All these little decisions are made at random and are completely critical at the same time, just like when a 15-foot wrong turn at the valley floor put me back behind the pack and running alone.

Eric Strabel and Me in fifth and sixth at minute 20. We went on to finish first and second.

Lost

For the next 10 miles I ran alone in sixth place with infrequent glimpses of Geoff Roes, last years winner, about a hundred meters down the trail calling for bears and running with some race officials. My body felt good, and I knew my pace was sustainable. I also could hear the bear calls from Geoff’s group slooooowly getting closer, so I decided to try to catch them.

When else do you get a ton of people to chase you over 24 miles of pain?

Nine miles down the valley I was right on top of the group, but then the trail split four or five times and the calls stopped. I yelled “TRAIIILLL!!” every 5 seconds while fumbling with a few random decisions. Crap. This was the middle of the course and the only part I couldn’t scout, and I was pretty sure I was heading backwards up the valley towards eagle glacier. Oh well, too late now. Just keep going, and never mind that gaggle of branches that’s going to wrench your leg into lame-cane butter. There! OUCH. Try not to limp too much, Pat.

As luck would have it I *had* taken the correct trail and hit the river at the right spot. Right then I said out loud “Oh it’s game on now baby,” and I actually grinned. I put down some solid 30 second speed intervals whenever possible to the river, just in time to see Matias crossing in front of me! I had Matias pegged as my favorite for the win, so this was a good sign. The river was really cold, but I was focused on pumping the crusher-grinder-running-furnace for the mad speed sesh that was waiting at the other side of the river. But, this is also where the confusing, and consequently very exciting stuff starts to happen…

Say What?

I never saw Matias again, and I was cooking. By cooking I mean like low 6’s cooking with GAS. I blasted every runnable flat or visible section on that trail. But I was still alone, so where was Matias? Was I on the right trial? Yeah, I was on the right trail and I knew it. Damn, he worked me on this part the week before so it would have been nice to get little pull. My body started to drain, but I still had my head in the game.

In the last few weeks my training was solid with plenty of time trials and intensity workouts to stay in touch with my inner beast. One week before I had raced hard and finished second behind Trond Flagstad at the Knoya Peak race. Exploiting my growing race experience, I hammered the running section in the first half of the uphill race before the accomplished mountain hikers like Brad Precosky and Barney Griffith could catch me later on the climb. Trond hung on my heels and we dropped the rest of them to finish a solid first and second. The tune-up paid off and after a week of rest I was ready for Crow Pass.

After another lonely 6 miles I heard foot clomping behind me. The clomping was moving at my relatively fast pace, and sure as sin come the words:

“If we keep this pace we’ve got ‘em.” It’s was Eric. I was totally confused.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“1 and 2″ he said.
All I had was “What?!? No freaking way. *fudge* me. *fudge* me!”

Those of you who know me know I don’t say “fudge” that often. I know for a fact that everyone crossed the river in front of me, and I have no idea how I’d passed the top 5 five runners. I also wasn’t wearing a watch so I had no idea what kind of race I was running. All I knew was how much I had left and how to use it. We came to “The Perch” where Trond would be waiting with my last feed, and I heard dogs.

“Er det noen der?”, I shouted.

Suddenly I could see Trond up on the rock in full-on freak out mode yelling “It’s Patrick! It’s Patrick!” He was jumping up and down and so excited I had to push him and my feed out of the way.

Holy crap was that a boost - the next five miles is still difficult and technical, but with open trail and the finish in sight, this is where the real beef is broiled. With a cheering squad right at my go point, I started to unleash hell on the course with one last 4-mile push. I immediately dropped Eric like rock gaining somewhere between 30 and 40 seconds, in first place and still feeling good. I didn’t even really get it, it was just happening, that’s all.

Then, as if it was written in a book, Big E comes raging down the trail and passed me like I was standing still with one mile to go. With a friendly passing elbo nudge he says “Enjoy the fight, Pat,” again in that special sensitive way, his form looked awesome and I was crushed. I lost 20 seconds on the last hill into the finish having spent all my beans on the 4-mile push. What a race. 24 miles in the backcountry. Third place was 3:40 back, fourth was 8 minutes back. 9th fastest time ever. Man, what a race.

Tillegg

Following up, the last five miles of that race were spectacular. I don’t have a lot of top-end nail biters like that under my belt, so dukeing it out with another athlete with equal strategic strengths and weaknesses makes a race I’m probably going to remember for a while. I knew exactly what my body could do, I trusted my training, and I had a good plan. After everything both Eric and I had executed our strategies very well, and it ended in a close match. You can’t ask for anything better, especially in a 24 mile race.

E, you rock. Thanks for reminding me how to push it. Now we’re 1-2.

Anchorage Daily News: Article and Results

Thanks to Tor for the pictures for the last couple of posts. I’m really glad to have them.

Goals. Everyone has goals. However we choose to word it or decide to avoid this or that question or finally allow ourselves to come to terms with our training, underneath lies our goals. Personally, my goal is officially to train and kick a$$. After years of wanting to be significantly faster than I had been and never understanding how to do it, I’ve found that the best way for me to move forward is to throw the objective goals out the window and just focus on the training. I tried on and off for TEN (ten!) years after my burn out and subsequent ejection from the WSC (Gunnison) running team to achieve something substantial as an athlete, and repeatedly got too stressed out or too injured to get anywhere. Needless to say, that can break a man down and force him to face some truths about his motives.

A couple of years ago local mountain butt kicker Brad Precosky told one of my training buddies that in order to do well in mountain races the training simply had to be part of your lifestyle. That particular statement has had a major impact on the way I look at being an athelete, and loudly rings the bell of truth in my mind. I don’t know if it was the tipping point, but since then I realized that visualizing racing and winning can’t be the only carrot leading you into physical oblivion. However you choose to put it you *need* to be into the process, and you need to *own* the process. It’s yours, it only works for you, and you will spend 95% of your time in it, and 5% of your time racing. Whether he realizes it or not I can thank my dad (who doesn’t ski or run) for that truth.

Last October’s training experience in Norway cemented that concept of for me. Here was this group of over-40’s out there doing bounding intervals in the rain, $h1t talking and and trying to kick each others’ butts on a Sunday double pole just for the heck of it. They met regularly, liked going hard, and anyone could join in. They weren’t burnt out ex-whatever’s, and they weren’t trying to break any records or place in this or that race - they just wanted to break each other, and they were *fast*.

Above: UAA nordic head coach Trond Flagstad winning Mount Marathon last week, Alaska's most prestigious Foot-race. Trond is a great example of someone with a solid outlook on athletic lifestyle.

As I’m writing this I’m sitting in my living room and I can’t believe how tired I am. I just finished up the most intense couple of weeks of the highest quality running and roller skiing training I’ve ever had, and I knew exactly why I was doing every part, how my body would react, and loved every minute of it. Believe it - this is a big deal for a B-team high school skier that’s never had any instructional coaching. Tuesday was 2 hours of running tempo at Kincaid, Thursday was 6 x 5 minutes classic up Potter Hill, Friday was 6 x 1 minute hiking Mount Marathon. The following Tuesday was a 3 hour skate with blow-out sweat-vaporizing rage-face pickups, Thursday was 2 of 3 hours hard tempo on the crux of the Crow Pass race course, today was a perfectly executed second-place finish at Knoya Peak. Feeling tired almost everywhere on my body I know that I have successfully “thrown my body in the sink,” and have never been this worked.

Crow Pass Race venue. *This* is the point.

What does that kind of stuff mean? Solid training is an amazing accomplishment, and it feels really, really good. I’ve never trained like this before, and as a consequence I’ve never raced like this before. It’s great to place in this race or beat that guy or max these pull-ups to help you stay focused, but at the end of the day if what you want to do is possess a lifestyle that will make you become the essence of what you are trying to accomplish, then learn to love to train, and *become* every one of the small steps along the way. You will race more consistently, enjoy more of your life, and you will absolutely see the path to reach your potential.

If you really want to know, here’s some numbers:

- Top 3 Crow Pass Crossing
- Top 3 Lost Lake Trail Run
- Win my leg, or sub-6 minute 1/2 marathon miles at the Klondike Road Relay
- Top 3 or 5 in Sven Johanson, Pia’s Classic, or Tour of Anchorage
- Ski at Senior Nationals
- If not this year, then next year, or the year after, or the year after, or the year after….

Lately I’ve been doing loads of mountain running, and really enjoying it. There’s a bumper sticker that says “I (heart) the Chugach”, and man do I love the Chugach now as much as ever. It’s so easy to just pop up to the park if you can get out of work early, and with as much light as there is here in the middle of the summer, the only thing you have to worry about is getting to sleep with jazzed muscles after a late run or hike.

The Potter Rim Route

Wiley, Harlow, Trond, Ian, and Burre

A couple of weeks ago I was trying to squeeze in a 2 hour mountain hike/run between roller skiing and specific strength, and now those running workouts are lasting 2.5 to 3 hours, and I’m covering more ground up there than I’ve ever covered before! Back when I coached high school track I always reassured the athletes that running track gets cool when you get faster and the track seems to shrink a little more every day. Well, now the mountains are shrinking like tracks, and what seemed like an epic journey is now just a side note in a longer route.

Top of the Form

The last couple of weeks I’ve been feeling restless in Anchorage so I headed out of town on Friday to get some R&R south of Anchorage in “das EuroVan” . The van was already stocked and ready since I’d been sleeping and working around town in it (huh?), kind of like I did most of last year. The last few weeks the only thing I’ve been connected with here in Anchorage is running new places in the mountains and trying to tie together good trails for roller skiing. I guess sometimes returning to your home town can slap you right back into your childhood grooves in some ways, but at the same time you’ve got the opportunity to change your ways and bring the excitement you gained from new places back home. Bottom Line - I rent an awesome apartment on the trail system downtown, and I’m defaulting to van life. No clues there.

Going into the weekend I was feeling a little tired from 4 days of 2.5+ hour mountain runs, so I took Friday off after work and drove 40 minutes to my favorite camping spot on Crow Creek Road, just under Eagle Glacier. I’ve heard reports that winter was finally taking a break at 6000 feet and the crust skiing was going to be good soon, so I thought I would take a look at the route and get an idea of what the glacier might be like. The ridge route on Goat Mountain is still nearly white so I bagged an up-hill snow-hell-trudge and headed the rest of the way up to the Forest Service lot to spend five hours cruising over and beyond Crow Pass. Cue (supa-hot! supa-hot-time!) lycra, and sunglasses that are waaaay too cool for Girdwood, or anywhere but Bernie’s Bungalow Lounge in Anchorage.

The weather was really good for this particularly cold summer, Raven Glacier was spectacular as usual, and I was feeling generally tired, but happy to be out when I decided to put my foot in a snow hole and re-dislocate my left shoulder right after the bridge at the gorge. For lack of an uncensored forum, I yelled out something similar to “**CRAP!!!**”. The shoulder went back in on its own with little pain, but those poor little deltoid strands really got thumped. “There goes sports requiring ski poles for a couple of weeks,” I’m thinking. So what do I do, 7 miles and 4000 total vert back to the car? Keep running down the trail to the next bridge, I guess. 5 hours later, I called it all in all a good day, and ended it with a huge pizza and a sympathy Guinness at The Dive, followed by some nice brownies and a semi-secret outdoor live music party in honor of this year’s non-existant Girdwood Forest Fair (complete with ‘08 sweat shirts!). Get better soon, shoulder. Maybe I’ll take up knitting or origami or something.

ouch

I tillegg, near the beginning T-Boy Alsgaards’ new book, he claims that he went out and enjoyed 95% of the training he did as an interesting and fun activity. After that, 5% must have been an easier gap to fill than other numbers I can think of. I suppose that when you’re on, you’re on, and you’re only on when you iconify the image of what you are trying to accomplish. So, “Getting High In the Chugach”, as another popular sticker says, is a great way to train. Have fun, and make it last. And when your hip or shoulder sockets decide they “just want to be friends” with your limb bones, treat them gently and listen to your body’s signals saying “rest me, rest me.”

On my iPod right now: “Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz” on NPR

Best på ski, av Thomas Alsgaard. Hvis du kan norsk, kjøper du den her, eller her, eller her.

Government Peak

The Government Peak Hill climb is the first local hill climb of the year last Saturday. It runs slightly up hill for a little less than a mile, then covers 3700′ of unforgiving vert over a total of about 4 miles. In other words, it’s friggin brutal with friggin lazer beams. Going into the race I had no idea how my relatively strong cardio vascular fitness was going to carry me in this race. I knew I was OK for skinning quite fast, but was curious how everything would balance out. As it turns out cardio will carry you well up higher in the climb, but to get into the zone without first having to recover from a lactate meltdown you are going to need some specific hill work. Sam Hill was the obvious winner from step 1, and I led the pack for the beginning with Trond Flagstad knowing that if I had any chance to make up some time on everyone it was going to be in the flatter part. Sure enough, about 2 or 3 minutes into the climb my legs felt heavy and nearly started squirting non-pasteurized death milk. It was so bad that I was convinced that I was going to have to stop and rest at some point in the race, and I just mellowed out for a while and recovered. Luckily they came back around and I managed ninth. Looking back it was pretty darned good for my second hill climb and without any specific training. Thank goodness for hindsight!!! (that’s three !’s)

Me in fifth

Tor

Don’t mess with Holly Brooks

Anyway, the race is pretty sweet. The Strabels put it on and there’s some fun tailgating while Ed’s over there yelling “More burgers, dogs are already done!” the whole time. If you are in the area, come along next year!

On a somewhat unrelated note, I had a good talk with Trond Flagstad after the race about training for skiing, running, and hiking as it relates to intervals. To try to get a feel for how I was feeling with technique and power for skiing, I decided to go out and do some 45-90 second skate intervals with my usual preschool-like focus on being smooth instead of fast. Man was I surprised! I’ve never skied hard like I skied during that session! my core was solid and my balance was right on, and I kept my tempo and strength through to the 9th 90 second interval, with my legs juuuuust starting to get heavy in the last five seconds or so of the last few. I guess if you spend all your time rollerskiing you are going to be better at that than hill climbing. Ain’t that a relief…

Oceans Fest / Roll For The Waves

Later that day was the Roll For the Waves rollerski race. Rollerski races are largely fielded by juniors in the Anchorage area unless you get lucky and the *entire* APU team comes or something. The cool thing about the event was that it runs around the park strip while the Oceans Fest is going on, which means you get live music, a beer garden, and you get to get all pumped from the music and beer and then yell technique at the juniors from the beer garden. Oh, and Jan Buron and Ben Arians were in there too - sorry I didn’t get a chance to comment on your torso twist, Ben!

You can just see the roller skiers in the upper left.

I’ve got to add that there were something like 6 or 7 different races happening in Anchorage last weekend, three of which occurred on that very same block that the roller ski race was on. There was a 12K run, the Gov’t Peak hill climb, the Roller ski race, and the Arctic valley hill climb to name a few. What a pleasant surprise to see Anchorage continuing to grow it’s competitive side!

Getting High in the Chugach

Yesterday was an awesome day for training. I hooked up with friend Patrick Conway and headed for Bear Valley to get some good hiking and OD running in. Thursdays are one of my hard days, and considering I’m tossing in The Crow Pass Crossing as a summer training goal, I was ready to run pretty much anywhere. The other Patrick had to turn at about an hour, but I managed to get All the way to McHugh Peak and down the ridge a ways, then cover a couple of miles on Rabbit Creek road to stretch the legs a little before heading back to the car. All in all it was three hours, and after blasting warm Coke all over the driver’s side of my car, it was pretty much a no-brainer to jump in the creek. man. man o man. That felt really really good. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it till I’ve got zero blood circulation left, jumping in an ice cold creek after a workout is by FAR the best sensation I’ve ever experienced. E-V-E-R.

That run in the front range ended up being a pretty special one. It was like a time in the mountains can only be up north when it’s early summer and everything is really green, and you’ve still got that high but mellow northern evening sun coming down, and you’re in good enough shape to look back and be impressed with the ground you covered. I was standing all alone up there at McHugh looking at Peaks 1-4, Ptarmigan, the Suicides, The Kenais, and the rest of the Chugach, it was around 55F at 4000′, and there was no bloody wind. Beat that.

Almost everyone I know spends Sunday recreating outside, but I’ll be da*ned if spirituality isn’t as much as part of our lives as anyone else’s…

Happy trails!

Being a computer programmer, I’ve worked with office environments for ten years. But every time I walk into one I still can’t help but laugh at all those funny little office things that shows like “Office Space” and “The Office” (The British version is by far superior, thank you very much) make fun of. I can safely say that I have a conversation with a fellow skier about this stuff *every* day. You all know what I’m talking about, and it’s called “major culture clash”. When all you think about during the work day is running stairs, rollerskiing, lifting weights, and impromptu time trials (next time, Trond :)), it’s really hard to integrate with a McDonald’s eating, couch surfing, huge car driving, Dilbert worshipping, obscenely overweight professional culture.

What do you have to do about it? Shine as brightly as you can! Come to work well rested, bring a fresh perspective to the grind and by all means necessary lube it up! I say ride your bike to work and sneak tons of emails about your ripped lats to your friends spending the day in some other generic cubie-wart hell hole office building with slanted windows over the entry. Don’t forget the posters of the 2002 one ski Alsgaard ovation so you can have something to model your 5:30-8pm workout after.

The nice thing about all this is that when you get rich and start your own company complete with “Premium Office Space”, you can make it super boring however you want! Considering a team performance metric based on cooperative output and relying heavily on motivation among the individuals, I would:

- remove all cubical walls
- face desks toward each other, utilizing the “buddy system”
- add a shower and quiet room
- place an emphasis on outside windows
- banish outlook express and rely on gmail
- ignore requests for double handicapped spaces
- adjust bonuses inversely to monthly health coverage premium
- encourage work in the office, rest at home
- encourage color
- encourage decoration

While it’s hard to do anything when money’s on the line, a hungry mob is an angry mob, ya dig?

PC Load letter? What the #*$% does that mean?!?