back in the saddle again....

I have been sticking to what I said and I am not running, though I have been mighty tempted to a few times over the past week. Wednesday I woke up and rode out Macon to Collierville-Arlington and back to the house for just over 21 miles in about 1:14.....then I commuted to and from work which gave me 27 on the day....

Thursday Lauren came over to my house early and we hit up the farmer's market for some fresh veggies to make our homemade veggie pizza....I rode with Lauren to Fleet Feet then rode to Outdoors from there which put me at 22ish for the day....

I took Friday off from the bike as I'm just getting used to the saddle after not riding very much recently....Today I woke up and headed out from my house on Macon headed East....Stayed on Macon for quite a while until it crossed I think Highway 194 maybe...Hung a left there and headed towards 64....while I was cruising that section of road I was thinking about how much more enjoyable my ride would be if I was with a group because when I run solo I jam out on the ipod but it's just not safe on the bike....then all of the sudden a group of about 35 riders made a left onto the road I was on about 200 yards ahead of me....talk about a wish come true...I sprinted to catch up with them and latched on for the remainder of their ride...It was the R.B.'s Cyclery Saturday morning "B" ride so the pace was decent but not so fast that I was getting winded or anything......Rode with them through the backroads of Lakeland on the way back to R.B.'s shop.....stopped in R.B.'s to holler at a few of the mechanics I know that work there, grabbed some cold water and got back on it.....cruised down 64 to appling....appling to Cordova road to G'town Parkway and back home....total on the day was 63 miles....felt really good...my legs felt strong the entire time....really the only thing bugging me was the backside from being in the saddle for over 3 hours.....

It is definitely much cooler than running when riding 19-20 mph on a road bike...the breeze feels good and it actually feels hotter when you come to a stop....I enjoyed riding the backroads as there was not a lot of traffic out...I also feel a lot safer riding in a group as cars seem to give you more space when passing than if I were riding solo....actually, for the first time in a while I wasn't worried about cars when riding with the group....just more focused on watching the riders in front of me as if one goes down it can be a disaster for everyone....

Not to bash on Memphis but cycling here is just not accepted and as safe as Colorado (or plenty of other places for that matter)....here it seems that people just get pissed off and think that you shouldn't be on their roads rather than giving you space....there is not a single "share the road" sign anywhere in this city....You can't go a quarter mile without seeing one in bike friendly places....its frustrating but you learn to live with it.....

anyways, enough ranting...until next time happy running and share the road....

a fresh new start...

Over the last week or so I have decided that I am not going to move out of my parents house until I finish grad school...I was planning on moving in with a buddy of mine over by U of M but when I sat down and did the math it just didn't make sense to be throwing money away on rent that I could be using to save for moving and for knocking out student loans....plus my parents are incredibly cool and leave me to do my own thing so there is no problem living here...and its 3 miles from work which is very convenient....

so, Sunday Lauren and I redid my room to make it more comfortable since I will be living in it for at least another year and a half...we had a lot of work to do because I have basically been living in my sister's art studio for a while....when I first moved out for undergrad she took over my room and made it in to her art room, complete with lavender walls and all...basically Lauren and I cleaned out her art stuff and went through piles of my old stuff deciding what I needed to keep and what could go....(there were some tough decisions, I have lots of junk that I value).....after a whole day's work, we got the room looking pretty good and definitely feeling more roomy and bedroom like though I still have lavender walls....

Even though I did not leave my parents house my new room makes it feel like a new home...a new lease on life at the rent's house of sorts....

Today also marked the first day I have worked out with weights in at least a year...during the spring of 2006 I was very consistent with my weight workouts...I was lifting with my lower body twice a week and I could definitely tell a difference running and biking....kind of slacked off after the spring semester ended and that slack off has lasted over a year...I'm sure getting back on the weights with my legs is going to help out a lot...especially on quad busting downhills like the ones at Stumpjump.....

I think my body feels pretty well recovered from Chattanooga and I am kind of anxious to start running again but I really am going to make myself take some time off, as I want to give myself time to completely recover....I'm waking up in the morning to hit the bike for 2 hours or so to get some cardio in.....should be fun as I have not had a good solid ride in a while

Lessons learned and disappointment

soooo...where to start....I came back from Colorado very well rested and kind of complacent about racing in Chattanooga....not a good thing.....When I first signed up I was really looking forward to going there to race but as the race grew closer, I was kind of having second thoughts about it...and, as I learned in Ouachita, I am a very mental runner, and if I am not all there mentally for a race, I do not fare well....I tried my hardest to get myself psyched for the race but even on the car ride to Chat I was having a hard time convincing myself that I wanted to race....

I arrived in Chattanooga Thursday evening and crashed at our Patagonia rep, Matt, and his wife Natalie's house in a very cool neighborhood on the North side of the river...the race was originally supposed to start at 7 am on Friday, which I though was a bit late considering the heat, but the RD changed the time to 8 am....by 8 am...it was freaking hot....

felt pretty good leading up to the race and lined up with about 16 or 17 other people for the start...we took off and I went out pretty hard holding steady in 5th place for about the first ten miles or so...then all of the sudden everything went downhill....I began to feel an extremely intense pain that was familiar from last fall...it was my IT band and it was causing my right knee to hurt really bad...i slowed down considerably and then it got to the point where I could hardly run at all anymore...I ran when I could and walked when I couldn't....I was never going more than about 100 yards running before I would stop to walk for a minute....the trail was pretty intense as far as rocky footing and elevation change goes and all that together was wreaking havoc on my knee....at his point I was incredibly frustrated and I was not having a good time at all....I kept on with the run\walk until I finished the 22 miles in 4:40....I was extremely angry at the whole situation and I was definitely in pain following the race...

After stretching out really good and icing on and off and Matt's house, I began to feel somewhat better, but I was still really worried about my IT band flaring up again at Saturday's race...woke up Saturday feeling pretty decent and my plan was to just take it easy so that I would maybe be able to get on it pretty hard on Sunday....race began and I took off towards the back of the pack and cruised for about the first 7 miles or so....then all of the sudden, boom! my knee was killing me again....now I was even more frustrated, knowing that I was going to have to slog for another 11 miles....the trail was tamer than Friday's so I was able to kind of push through some of the knee pain and run the flatter sections of the course but I hated every minute of it....finished pretty close to last somewhere around 3:40.....

At this point it was decision time for me....I had given myself an easy day to see how my knee held up and obviously it was not good.....therefore rather than continue to hurt myself and hate every minute of my race on Sunday, I just called it a weekend.....looking back on it now I definitely don't regret my decision...I am still feeling my knee today and I think it's better to just take some time off and completely recover before I get on it hard for Stumpjump....

all in all, I did come away from the weekend having learned some important lessons....first off, I was consistently running decently high mileage in teh weeks leading up to the race...while in Colorado I didn't run too much but I stayed loose, however the week leading up to the race I didn't run at all....I think going from no runs in 11 or 12 days to a 22 miler at race pace kicked my ass...that is completely my fault and I should not have let that happen....

secondly, I know that I have to be more focused in order to do well...being consistent in my training helps me keep my focus and my Colorado trip kind of threw off my consistency, in turn allowing me to loose my focus....

I don't think this weekend was a total waste, as I did still bag some mileage and learned some very important lessons about my running, and now I am definitely focused on redemption at Stumpjump!

I will be taking at least the next week, possibly two weeks off running to completely get my knee and the bottoms of my feet back to normal so that I can start building up for Stumpjump....until next time....

Back in the M-town....

well as always, my time in Colorado flew by all too fast and before I knew it I was back home....however, the rest of the trip was a blast...

Wednesday I borrowed Lauren's cousin's hoss of a mountain bike and Lauren rented a bike and we rode around the paved bike paths that connect the town of Avon to Edwards and Vail...stopped for lunch and a neat place in Avon and then cruised around for another couple of hours before calling it a day....I really wished I had my road bike, as the bike I was on was a 40 pound downhilling machine and wasn't very fun to pedal up the hills....

Thursday Lauren and I rode with her cousin and his buddies to the Fryingpan River, just a short bit outside of Aspen....they all spent the day fishing and lauren and I went hiking on some nearby trails....The elevation gain was not as spectacular as many of other trails we hiked but it was a very cool canyon that had incredibly colorful rock formations....we ended up finishing up our hike about an hour before everyone got back from fishing so we spent the rest of the time laying on our backs checking out the clouds rolling in over surrounding peaks....

Friday was probably my absolute favorite day of the trip...we woke up at 4am and headed to Quandary Peak, a 14, 271 ft. peak just south of the town of Breckenridge...We were one of the only cars at the trail head and we were on the trail rolling shortly after 6 am....the first mile or so of the hike brought us out of tree cover to wide open tundra with insane views of distant mountains....as we continued up the trail began to get steeper and steeper and it also began to get very snow covered....fortunately,, we began our hike early enough that the snow was still very solid from freezing over the night before so our feet were not post holing with every step....towards the top of the mountain the trail began to level out somewhat for the last 200 yards or so before the summit and from there it was smooth sailing....

We hung out on the summit for nearly 15 minutes, taking a snack break and taking pictures....the altitude was definitely taking effect on all of us...at 14,000 ft we were all sucking wind pretty bad....I would go as far as to say that my hear trate was just as high as it would be during a mid distance run during the last mile of the hike to the top...the way down was way easier than the way up, as we sort of power slid through the snow field....

Lauren and I stayed true to our trail running roots and rocked the Montrail Hardrocks throughout the the course of the week, even hiking up snow covered mountains...these shoes are nothing short of amazing.....if they could only make them crampon compatible, then they would really be the quiver of one shoe....

It was lauren's first time to climb a 14,000ft mountain and she did so even with 2 huge blisters on her heel...I have never had to contend with blisters but Lauren's were extremely bad this past week and the Band Aid blister pads made all the difference in the world....to keep the blister pads in place, we duct taped her foot which seemed to really help....

We missed our flight on Saturday morning so we got to hang out for 5 or so hours in the Denver airport...as bummed as I was about having to do that, Denver was not a terrible place to have to stay...the airport was actually rather nice and we were able to find a pretty decent and not too terribly overpriced place to eat while we killed time....

Saturday night we got home just in time to head over to the Outdoors Inc. Midnight Bike Ride pre party....this event is incredibly fun...this was my third year to do it and there are not words to describe how cool it is to see nearly 2,000 people cruising the streets of Memphis on bicycles at night...I really wish there was a way to get an event like this happening on a regular basis around town as it seems like there is plenty of interest to keep an event like this going....

Had to get back in the swing of things and work today but it's not a bad deal knowing that I'm only working four days this week before I leave for Chattanooga...I'm pretty excited about racing, though I am going up there solo and I'm going to have quite a bit of downtime during the day after the races to kill....I'll probably take my bike so I can cruise around town and keep my legs loose during the afternoon...until next time.....

Colorado

Got into Denver just after 7:30 on Friday night, just in time to catch the last bit of sunlight fall behind the front range....Lauren's friend from Memphis, Bryn and her boyfriend John picked us up from the airport and we went to the best Mediterranean restaurant I have ever been to....I got the veggie platter which had the most incredible fallafel I have ever eaten....after eating we all decided we were pretty tired and headed back to Bryn's apartment to chill for the rest of the evening...

Saturday morning Lauren and I woke up before Bryn so we decided to go down the road a bit to a park to run....Denver is an incredible city when it comes to active recreation...Nearly every area of town has some sort of trail system within a short distance and many of the trails even interconnect....We hit up a neighborhood trail system called the bluffs which was basically trails of rolling hills about as wide as the trail on the Patriot Lake loop but they were made of a hard packed gravel so it was much easier on the legs....put in just over 5 miles and called it a day....definitely felt the effects of the altitude even though Denver only sits at just over 5000 ft...

After the run Lauren and I went by Panera's Bread (I try and avoid chain food places as much as possible but this place rocks!) and got bagels and coffee for everyone to take back to Bryn's....later in the afternoon we went to Whole Foods to pick up some food to take to Beaver Creek....I have always heard good things about Whole Foods from others but never experienced the Whole Foods goodness myself....it is a store very similar to Wild Oats (actually they just bought out Wild Oats)...however the selection is way better, they have loads of samples throughout the store, and they have their own brand that is actually affordable...being the health food freak that I am, I absolutely loved this store....I could have spent hours (and $$$$) perusing the aisles....

Left Denver around 4pm and arrived in Beaver Creek around 6....I went out for a quick 40 minute run and got my ass kicked by the altitude...my Garmin never picked up but I estimate it was just over a 3 miler.....

Sunday we woke up and went on a day hike to Beaver Lake...a nice little lake about 3 miles up the mountain from the Beaver Creek ski area....chilled up at the lake for a bit while Lauren's cousin and friends fished....came back into Beaver Creek for lunch and then I decided to go on a trail run from Beaver Creek to the ski village a few miles west....the hardest part of the run was the 1.5 miles out of Beaver Creek (BC)....very steep grade, hardly runnable...at about the 1.5 mile mark the trail forks off to the West and cruises with very little elevation change through a beautiful aspen forest...after cruising through the aspens the trail opens up alpine meadows with scenic views of snow capped peaks in the distance....Eventually the trail makes its way to Batchelor's Gulch...the ski village just to the West of BC...at this point I was at the 6.5 mile mark and I was feeling pretty tired from the day hike earlier in the day...Decided to catch a shuttle back to BC and definitely glad I did as the sky was starting to look pretty nasty....

Monday, Lauren, her cousin Mike and his buddy Matt decided we were going to go backpacking...we picked a trail that Lauren and I had some experience on last summer but we were also planning on adding a new section...we figured we would encounter some snow on the ground but it turns out the route we intended on taking was completely snowed over still...there were actually skiers skinning up it....so needless to say we had to change our plans on the fly and decided to hike to another lake on the map, in hopes that we could camp there...

Hiking to our new destination proved to be a challenge as well...much of the trail was snow covered so it was very hard to follow...it was pretty exhausting too because when crossing the snow your feet would sink in sometimes all the way past your knee or more...we finally arrived at the lake and set up camp for the evening....unfortunately the clouds were pretty thick and we did not get to see a sunset over the mountains....just about the time it was getting dark it began to rain....It rained steadily all night long and I really hoped it would quit by morning...not the case...woke up this morning and it was still coming down pretty good....broke down camp and got back on the trail for a wet and cold slog back to the car.... got in to our room in BC not too long ago and warmed up....the rest of the day is looking pretty bleak...its 48 degrees and raining....but on a good note, the rest of the week's forecast is great!...we are planning on hiking a 14,000 ft. peak on Friday....not sure what tomorrow and thursday will bring...looking forward to some veggie enchiladas tonite...Lauren and I are cheffing it up for everyone in the condo...

I'm surprisingly sore from our 1 day backpacking trip...I guess it comes from trudging through snow with weight on my back....I was thinking about going out for a run this afternoon but I might just lay low...I'm not terribly concerned with racking up mileage this week because I'm tapering for my stage race in Chattanooga that begins a week from Friday....


I love Colorado...it's always soo hard to come home because I know this is where I want to be....one day soon.....

Been a while...

Been a while since I have posted on the blog....it's kind of like running, if you break the habit for a few days its easy to get off the train...

Last week was a rather slack week in the running department....just over 33 miles on the week...on a good note, my forefoot pain has eased off because of taking an easier week...

I have not had any long runs this week but I did get in a tempo\semi interval run on Wednesday evening at Shelby Farms...ran a 10 min warmup, followed by 5 minutes at a hard yet sustainable pace with a 3 minute recovery....repeated 3 times and then followed with a slow cool down.....

I did definitely discover the importance of eating as soon as the workout is over....Since I normally run at least 8 when I run I guess I kind of overlooked how much I exerted myself in my tempo session...I did not eat until over an hour and a half after finishing the workout...This morning I went out for a quick 7 miler and bonked hard at 30 minutes on the dot....The rest of the run was a struggle just to bring it home....I definitely attribute the bonking to not refueling my energy stores after Wednesday evenings run....

I leave for Colorado tomorrow evening....Going to be gone until next Saturday....I am definitely looking forward to it....hoping to get in some quality trail runs....Feb let me borrow his Ultimate Direction Wasp which is a hydration system that fits more like a vest than a pack so I'm excited to try that out on a long run....hopefully the altitude won't kill me....