Back East

I’m home, well sort of at home, where I grew up anyway. I’ve been back quite a bit this year, most, actually all of my trips back this year have been associated with bad events. The first was for my grandfathers funeral, the second was because my Mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor, the third trip was to hang out with her until she passed away, the fourth trip was to handle some stuff from her estate. I spent that entire trip running a fever and dealing with a sore throat. This trip is to unwind most of the rest of her estate.

I also managed to run today. In the rain. On my favorite trails, in the world. Hyde Park or the 3 park loop in London? Sorry not as good. Parc de Bruxelles? Nope not there either. Antwerp, Amsterdam, Rome, Sydney or the beach in New Zealand. No, no, no, no and again no. Although it was nice being able to jump into the ocean after the beach run in NZ. But it’s still a no.

It’s been over 15 years since I first ran these trails. Little trees that were blazed with a red rectangle marking the trail have grown up twisting as they grew, pointing the blaze off into the brush. Logs that were imbedded to be erosion controls have now decomposed to earthen berms. Branches that used to rip the hat off my head are now out of reach of my vertical jump. Park benches have been replaced, thrice. The muddy areas are still muddy, the clay areas still clay. Things change and they stay the same.

It was very enjoyable to run in the rain. Listening to the rain hit the canopy of leaves that are in the process of turning from green to golden. The occasional huge raindrop dropped from the trees exploding on one spot of my face drenching it. You could feel the mud clumping in the grooves of your shoes then breaking off as you ran down the next few feet of trail. Roots snagging the tips of your shoes as you toed off, reminding you that misplacing your feet could send you failing down the trail to a crash landing. Your feet sliding sideways on wet roots as you surfed around a bend in the trail. The quietness, just you, the rain, squirrels dashing out of the rain. No car noises, no people noises, no plane noises. Only the quietness of nature and you running.

This Sucks Ass

I’m back in NC for a bit. Since I’m a bit on the chunky side for me, but still a slim MFer compared to most people, I was looking forward to getting in some miles around the Piedmont Environmental Center’s trail network. It’s my favorite place in the world to run. London, Brussels, Prague, Antwerp, Venia, Sydney, Melk, Auckland and several other little towns across Europe, while nice to run in, for some reason to me, just don’t quite match up. Maybe it’s the lack of people I see, maybe it’s the wildlife, maybe it’s because they remind me of a time long ago. What ever it is, whenever I’m back, I seem to head straight there first thing every morning to run.

Last time I was home, I didn’t get much running in, seems there were a few more things going on that required my attention. This time though, the first thing I packed in my bag were two pair of running shoes and four days of running clothes. Then I strapped on my Garmin watch and only then did I get dressed and pack the rest of my stuff.
I arrived Saturday evening, hung out with Dad, watch ECU take an early lead to #12 ranked South Carolina, only to forget how to play defense (again) and get outscored by a lot (again). Sigh, some things never change. Head to bed excited to run the next morning.

Sunday I wake up only to feel like crap. Sore throat, small fever. WTF? Really? Unf*cking believable. Maybe it will go away. Wake up today, Monday and guess what? Still feel like shit. In fact I woke up at 8am and by 9am, I had to go take a 90 minute nap. Talked about bummed out. I’ve got post nasal drip dripping on my parade. Totally sucks. On the optimistic side of view, I’m hoping that maybe Tuesday or at worst Wednesday I’ll be able to go log a few miles on the trails.

Where did all the time go?

Whew, a lot has happened in the last few weeks. It’s been crazy, lots of travel, lots of seeing friends, family, lots of thinking, lots of work and some possible change in the works.

I went to Iron Gear Sports up in Mesa, AZ to get fitted on the Specialized Transition by Kevin Risenborough. I thought I was 95% there on the fit by wanted a second opinion by an expert fitter. Kevin slid me forward 1 degree to 80degrees and wedged my right shoe.

The next day he, Jeff, Tim and I went out for a little 4 hour bike ride. All systems go and my right glut was feeling awesome versus being tight after a ride that long.

Then a few days later I boarded a plane for Atlanta. We had a meeting to get our new CRM software and computers. All I can say is wtf was up with the 7:30a-9:30pm work day? Seriously? The computers and our CRM rock though. It’s a BIG improvement over what we had.

No way would I want to live in the middle of Atlanta. I thought Tucson had a lot of homeless. My friend and I went running through downtown Atlanta. It was like running the steeple chase. Every 200-300m we were hurdling over a homeless person. There were so many we actually ran in the streets, cars be damned. There is just no where to run in the middle of downtown Atlanta. We ran to the Olympic Park, which everyone said was a great place to run. It seems people there don’t have high expectations for running if that is a primo running spot. We finally said f*ck it, went back to the hotel and hit the treadmills.

Airlines are ridiculous. It was actually less expensive for me to fly from ATL-GSO spend a few days with the parents and grandparents and then fly GSO-ATL-TUS then it would have been for me to fly directly home from the meeting. It seems that if you fly me more miles it should cost more, not less. No wonder the airlines can’t make money. What dumb ass prices tickets so that the more you fly the less total price you pay? No wonder they can’t make a profit. Best of all because the price to GSO and back to TUS was less then my ticket to Atlanta, my company covered the cost of me to fly to see my parents. I get to see my parents, grandparents and a friend, the company gets to save money. It’s a win-win-lose. The loser being Delta.

First thing Friday, I hit the trails for a run. I love running on these trails. The rolling terrain, the zigging and zagging back n forth, the dirt trails oh so soft. It’s running bliss. Through the woods around the lake and nary another person to be seen. Later that weekend I met up with a friend I haven’t seen in ~15 years and we hit the trails at Salem Lake. Nice rolling trail with mile markers. 3 days of running all on trails and close to 30 miles total while I was there.

But back to the change. Met with my boss today and talked more about going into the home office. That would be a radical change. I’ve never really had an office job. I’ve had 2 jobs with offices but I rarely used them. Kind of hard when you are in outside sales to make any money sitting in the office. But during that conversation, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get one of my clients more running volume into his very time limited schedule. Something my boss said about being in a different box if I go into the home office turned on the light bulb for this clients schedule. I figure now is a great time to make that move back across the country if everything is right. Real estate prices are down, I don’t own, there is a relo package. It could be an exciting change. We’ll see how the conversations progress as I start down the path exploring the options that could lay before me. Tune in later to see if I have to move!

Foiled

By a dead battery in my car from going to the pool.  I do have one day of round two completed and am heading back into the pool today after a 3 day layoff.   (Big props to PepBoys for getting me in and taken care of less then a hour before they closed)

But that battery hasn’t foiled my other training.  Over the last 10 days I’m averaging 58-60 miles per rolling 7 days for running and about 2.5hrs cycling.  Yesterday’s ride was a leg crusher, an easy 15 miles rolling from the house up the climbs on Ajo then crushing it along Ajo until Sandario.  Tempo for the next 20 miles including several climbs that range in lenght from .5 miles to 2.5 miles and lots of rollers. Cruised the last 8 miles home.  4:06 for 80 and my average watts climbed from 120 at the top of Ajo up to 185 when I hit the river path some 40 miles later.

Yesterday was a bit surprising for the ride, my wattages where around mid last season watts.  Amazing what happens to your fitness when you only for once take 2 weeks off of riding then two more weeks with only a couple of hours total compared to 2.5 months off the bike.  Typically I start riding again sometime in January after not touching my bike from late October after I finish racing. 

This is the first season since 2002 that I haven’t taken 2-3 months off the bike and 3-4 months out of the water.  I have noticed that my run frequency and volume are down by 1.5x per week and about 8-10 miles per week consistenly over the past month and a half.  In the long run though, staying on my bike and in the pool should bode well overall in triathlon. I’m willing to lose 1 minute on the run to gain 1 minute on the swim and 3-4 minutes on the bike in early season half races.

I love running, especially here in Tucson where we have so many great trails to run.  Just this week I’ve run Starr Pass Loop, Phone line trail out and back,  and one of my favorite runs Pima Community College XC trail loops.  Pima is a 3.25 mile rolling loop with 4 major climbs on it and numerous false flat uphills.  You can run it in either direction but running it in the harder direction takes about 23:XX minutes and running in the opposite direction takes about 21:XX miutes. Amazing what some really long uphill sections will do.

In the past few weeks running we’ve seen numerous deer, some Javelina, road runners, mountain bikers,  rabbits, hikers, hawks, dudes walking around with bows and arrows wearing camo and orange hats (hunting season is bow and arrow only here), and heard a pack of coyotes howling after catching what I’d guess is a rabbit.  It didn’t seem prudent to go chase them down and ask what was for breaskfast. 

Happy New Year everyone!