Lebanon Hills center and Irun Podcast

I decided to get in a quick 4 miler tonight and it felt "ok". Yes, "ok" is an improvement. No achilles pain :-)

I have been running lately in the center section of Lebanon Hills (link to an old post on the park), an often overlooked area of the park since it has the fewest miles of trails and most are horse trails not hiking trails. Total runnable trails in this section with the least amount of overlap is around 8 miles and that includes a couple of spurs that either leave the park, go to the campground or take you into Camp Sacajawea. If you ever run in Lebanon Hills give yourself a treat and check it out.

Here are the elevation and grade maps from tonight's run exported from SportTracks.


On this run, I was listening to a very enjoyable podcast called iRun - The Running Show. It is a Canadian podcast sponsored by the Running Room. The show is hosted by noted Ottawa Citizen running columnist, radio host and marathoner Mark Sutcliffe. He normally has on with him Ray Zahab. Ray is a very accomplished adventure racer and ultramarathoner, check out his website. You can get the podcast on Itunes, they have a link on the Team 1200 website.

On this episode (#44) they interviewed three ultrarunners: Dave McMahon, Ferg Hawke and Marshall Ulrich. Dave is a local Ottawa trail runner who provides a lot of good trail running tips and who video tapes (HD quality) his runs for the Canadian Space Agency. I even followed some of his advice and paid attention to my stride and foot pickup and no surprise my pace picked up and it didn't seem to take anymore effort.

Ferg Hawke and Marshall Ulrich are both accomplished ultra runners both having completed Badwater multiple times. Ferg Hawke is another Canadian and is one of the runners featured in the documentary on Badwater called "the Distance of Truth", it looks like an interesting movie. He has finished 2nd at Badwater a couple of times. Marshall has completed Badwater many times, once solo and he has done a quad Badwater, yes that means he ran it 4 times over 535 miles in 10 days. I believe he is alone in both of these categories. My only complaint is I think each of the interviews could have covered the entire show instead each is no more than 10-15 minutes. Still real interesting.

Shoes, yet again

I have posted before on my shoes and decided it was worth posting yet again. Ok, yes, I admit it, I am a bit more fixated on shoes than most.

I am currently running in 3 pairs of trail shoes and 1 pair of road shoes. The trail shoes are Salomon XA Comp 3, Vasque Velocity VST and North Face Rucky Chucks, did I mention I just bought a fourth pair, more on that later. My road shoes are New Balance 767's which I wear maybe once a month when I know I am running on roads. I do agree with most that road shoes do have better cushioning than trail shoes and when I run in my trails shoes on the road, I do notice the difference after 4 or 5 miles.

I bought the XA's in July after my dnf at Afton, I was struggling with a sore left ankle and a right achilles problem and I commented that maybe my shoes were aggravating my injuries and that maybe new shoes would be the fix. My thinking was that since I had never run in the XA's they couldn't be related to or be the cause of the injures. Yes the injuries were caused by specific events at Chippewa but maybe my shoes were preventing me from healing as I firmly believe that shoes can aggravate injuries and that running in the same model of shoes can cause issues as well.

In the same period of time my wife and I were talking about shoes as she was having forefoot issues and she thought that maybe she should go back to wearing Nimbus's. She used to wear them and her forefoot issue was less of an issue. I commented on how I never run in the same model of shoes and she said maybe that was my problem.

So I put the two together and decided to try something, so for the last few weeks I have run exclusively in the XA's. The experiment has had success, with a caveat, my achilles seems to be getting better and my left ankle is no worse. Now I have generally walked hills or run up them very carefully in order to not re-injure the achilles so maybe that is part of it or maybe it is the shoes. I even went out and bought another pair of XA's from Sierra Trading as I am sucker for a deal. They sent me a coupon for 20% off along with a 25% off special they were offering on the XA's. So their normal $49.95 dropped to $37.46 and then with the 20% off they dropped to $29.97. Since the XA's seemed to be working how could I turn down such a deal. My thinking was that I could try to run in the same exact model of shoe for the first time ever. The closest I had ever gotten to this was Jazz 4000 to 5000 or Grid Omni 3 to 4 to 5 or NB 766 to 767 or Mizuno Alchemy 2 to 3, Asics 2110 to 2120 to 2130, etc... I had always ended up buying the next model as the one I was running had been replaced by the time I went back into the running store along with they probably weren't perfect so I was willing to try the newer model but if I did buy the next model, it meant they weren't too bad either.

Back to the shoe experiments, the caveat I mentioned above is that although my achilles is improving and the ankle is holding up, I did have the groin pull ( seems ok - probably not related to shoes at all) and now over the last few days I have had a soreness in my left IT Band, at least I think it's the IT band (never have had issues with it before, the pain is next to and above the outside of my knee) so yesterday I ran 8 miles in my Rucky Chucks and I had no IT pain and the soreness seems reduced. Did the shoes matter, honestly, I don't know, it will be something I will just keep an eye on.

So my conclusion is that running in the same model of shoe is probably a good idea but having at least one pair that are different is a good thing as well. I kind of a view it as the control in my experiment, something that allows different data if I am having issues. Maybe this is all rationalization to buy different shoes, maybe it's just a defensive mechanism because they change shoes so often that it is very difficult to get the same model and my rationalization makes it a don't care, maybe I just have a problem with an addiction to trying out new shoes, if so, I can think of a lot issues that are probably worse.

So I will continue with the current experiment and will rotate my newer XA's in when the older ones move over 100 miles, sprinkle in either the VST's or Rucky Chucks as needed and see how my body holds up as I ramp the mileage for Surf the Murph.

Wayne's Run

Wayne sent me a TCX file and asked me to import it to SportTracks and Bim Active. It is from his recent run near Whitewater State Park, up to the Elba Fire Tower. Turns out we are camping in Whitewater in September so we may have to check it out as it looks like a good hill repeat to add to the schedule. Screen Capture from SportTracks: Info from Bim Active: Activity Route: -- Elev. Avg: 929 ft Location: Altura, MN Elev. Gain: +20 ft Date: 08/04/09 Up/Downhill: [+2214/-2194] Time: 07:10 PM Difficulty: 3.3 / 5.0 Weather: Fair 70 F temp; 52% humidity 70 F heat index; winds NW 5 Performance Distance: 2.43 miles Time: 1:25:46 Speed: 1.7 mph Pace: 35' 18 /mi Heart Rate: 131 bpm (Avg) Calories: 251 159 bpm (Peak) Map Elevation (ft) Pace (min/mile) Heart Rate (bpm) Splits Mile Pace (min/mile) Speed (mph) Heart Rate Elev Gain actual +/- avg actual +/- avg 1 32' 25 -2' 53 1.9 +0.2 132 +121 ft 2 42' 51 +7' 33 1.4 -0.3 133 +200 ft end 33' 53 -1' 25 1.8 +0.1 123 -301 ft Versus average of 35' 18 min/mile

Posted from bimactive.com

50 mile training plans

I was thinking about my training for my first 50. You know the basic questions, what the heck am I doing? What was I thinking when I signed up for this? How am I going to train? Will I train? Am I crazy? Why?

As to training, am I just going to run 4 or 5 days and work my mileage up like I would for a marathon? Or am I going to get disciplined and commit to a 50 mile training plan? Great questions, should I just think about them or should I do something about it? I went for a run tonight and for the first time in awhile, it went ok, no groin pain, limited right achilles and left ankle pain. The pace was slow which I couldn't explain other than I just spent a weekend eating really good tasting food (but maybe not all of it was good for me :-) at my wife's family celebration at the Northern Bay Resort in Wisconsin (it was like a family reunion except we were celebrating birthdays, graduations, life and more with her parents and siblings, some who live in MN, IL and CT). With regards to my run, heck, I procrastinated most of the day so I was just happy to get out and enjoy the day.

Back to training, I decided I needed another option to look at for training other than the Santa Clarita plan I posted a few weeks back. In that plan, I would work my way up to just 31 miles and add a few mid week longer runs? What about speed, what about diet, what about?????? So I found another plan on UltraMarathonPlanet, no speed, no long mid week runs, just back to back long runs on the weekend with the longest being 22 miles, seems a bit light to me.

So I will continue to look for the perfect plan, but for right now, I will probably merge the two together, which means work on back to back long runs, some midweek longer runs, an occasional speed test and continue to work on getting healthy and avoiding any more injuries. I see by my race countdown clock, I have 89 days to work it all out, plenty of time, right, my guess is I won't freak out until I get to 60 days and then I am not sure what I will do except freak out even more at 30 days. Regardless of my training, I think what I will need to focus on is just enjoying the day in Murphy and let things take care of themselves.