2014 Half Year in Review Pt II

Half Year in Review Pt I.

July

Part two of the best summer of all time started in July. I found myself back in Colorado, this time with a LEGIT base camp in Leadville, thanks to Old Man (Eric Grossman). Grossman & Glove lived in a part of Virginia by Iron Mountain, so our "site" was dubbed "Iron Mountain High Altitude Training Camp," or "I.M. HAT C." All we did was climb 14ers. We were training, but with the sole focus of climbing big, huge, gorgeous mountains with good friends. We never pushed anything and almost exclusively hiked up and ran down. It was pretty hard to not just get up a 14er every day even though Glove and I were still in post-100 recovery mode. Nonetheless, IMHATC was a major success. Evenings were filled with Dale's Pale Ales. We cruised all over the place with no focus. Patrick McGlade, Darren, & Mike Jones were all in the fun too. I believe I tagged Mt. Massive (twice), La Plata, Mt. Sherman, Mt. Elbert, and Long's Peak (just under the summit due to weather). So great. At the end of July I moved into my new apartment in Marin, California. 

August

Like life does, life changed. I started working full time at Bartlett Tree Experts. I kept running and exploring every day, even after my eight hours of manual labor. I was happy learning new stuff at work and exploring after work. Towards the end of August I started to feel a little trapped (as I still vaguely feel that way), like I needed something big, another trip. You can't just cold turkey the dirtbag road lifestyle. I was flipping out and anxious about work all the time, I missed my friends, and I just needed something. So I texted Wyatt to see if he wanted an adventure, and of course he said "explicative, yes." So I signed up for Pine 2 Palm 100 miler. Adventure set, let's go. 

September

I started the month with my birthday and no work on labor day, so of course I ran for five hours. I had enough fitness from the spring and July's 14er expedition that I became stoked on P2P. So the first half of the month was la-la-land of pre-adventure thoughts. I then picked up Wyatt from the airport and we had an extraordinary weekend at P2P 100. The second half of the month was solid, the weather was still nice and I abstained from social media. I took 10 days completely off of running. 

October

The month started with friends visiting! One of my best friends from school and the ultra team and adventure club, Kelly Summers, stayed at my place for a solid ten days with her old roommate. Every day we did something fun right when I got home from work. We ate, drank, and were very merry. I was really happy to have friends from my old life in California and we soaked it up! Not concerned with running, the three of us went hiking a decent bit. We took a fabbbulous weekend trip to the PCT which was SO needed. I concluded I NEED mountains in my life. Marin has Mt. Tam, and sure it's a mountain, but, meh. I like Marin but it is not everything. To be truly happy I need real, proper mountains...Sometime this month I elected to get motivated and run CIM (CA International Marathon). It was nice to have a little bit of purpose in training again, but the training was not intense or full blown by any means. The end of the month was a work trip and a SPECIAL trip to Blacksburg which made my heart just so warm. 

November
I remember starting this month running the roads of Blacksburg, slightly hungover, just like old times. I popped into local delish restaurant, Gillies, and said goodbye to my good friends. The weekend was love. For the rest of the month I don't remember much on the running front. I won the Mt. Tam 30k with a hard effort on a cool course. Staying busy. Rain at the end of the month.

December

Rain, rain, rain, rain. And by rain I mean out of the 19 days so far in December, 17 of them have been filled with rain. Let me tell you that manual labor in the rain is probably one of the worst things. Ever. It is horrible. Terrible. Awful. It's comical for a day or two. But on the 12th day of wearing your never-dry rain gear and slipping up muddy backyards with 100 pound logs in your arms it stops being comical. Needless to say, I currently do not like my job. My mood is almost constantly cranky. I've been off and on sick all month. I tweaked my pelvis from swinging a stupid pulaski all day at work one day, which messed up my stride. I've been going to a chiropractor but it's still not 100%. I honestly couldn't tell you the last time I saw the sun without clouds in front of it. It feels like it was October. I will NOT be moving to the Portland or Seattle office. So I was not motivated to run this month. But I ran CIM in a solid 2:52:07 with room for improvement but happy for where I currently was when I ran it. The rest of this month has been and will continue to be chill, mostly running just every other day. MY FRIENDS COME SOON! Wyatt and Glove and Chrissy and Darren will be here for New Years. We're going to go on awesome runs and get wild. So the end of the month will be about 100x better than the middle of the month. 

Hasty Updates

With my last race of the year completed and no posts since September, I thought I'd write a short little update. I've been running here and there, consistently but certainly nothing crazy. I've been working a lot and am used to being a working man (read: I've become numb to the permanent fact that I'm awake at 6:10 every morning and working a minimum of 40 hours a week at a physically dangerous yet romantic but un-glamorous job that I typically enjoy and other times hate). I've been dabbling in the Bay life (read: city life, mellow Marin life, California girlfriend life [yes! I'm not longer dating running! (big deal friends)]. And I still use too many asides and parenthsis in my haphazard blogging.

After P2P 100 I indeed took the 10 days off that I promised. I proceeded to not really care about running but still did it here and there mainly for vanity and strava. I wrote an angsty blogpost that I didn't publish. I decided I needed to get motivated so I randomly signed up for Mt. Tam 30k, which was a hard effort and fun trail race which I happily won albeit against no competition. I also signed up for the CIM (California International Marathon) with intentions of running at least two workouts a week and throw down a respectible marathon time. I had not run a marathon since Richmond Marathon in November of 2011. 

2011, finishing a 3:05:xx

Of course I did not run at least two workouts a week in November. I've become proud with my manual-labor job, but it doesn't bode well for traditional training. About 75% of times when I decided that "today I'm going to do a workout" I ended up just jogging up a fireroad because that's much more enjoyable than running in circles around a track with a bunch of high school football players staring at you at the end of climbing and brush dragging day. 

I still made it work though, still running and still getting in two good marathon-effort long runs. Long story short, after coming up with a million excuses why I shouldn't run hard at CIM coupled with some pump-up texts from Jordy Chang, I told myself to suck it up and go crush it. Mom is usually right, and mom told me that I'm in better shape than I think I am. My initial plan was to run sub 3 hours, but friends were saying "uhhh, faster" so I thought I'd realistically run a 2:54. If you asked what I could've ran back in April, I would have said 2:45. But it's the end of the year and I'm not dating running. My cousin said I'd run a 2:52:38, so that sounded ok. I didn't fret about pace--it was NOT even, but when I saw anything above 6:42 I picked it up a tad. I ran by heart rate sort of. I wanted to average 160 the whole time, which is hard. I ended up running a 39:33 last 10k and finished in 2:52:07--a time I am definitely satisfied with but is not anything special. About ten mins worth of improvement if I so desire to go down the dreaded marathon path again. I ran a 1:27:11 first half and a 1:24:56 second half. I told myself I'd back half it all day long and I'm stoked that I did. It was kind of fun. I ran 12 or so miles from 13-25 with a couple of dudes who were really encouraging. I was happy to know that comradeship exists in road running occasionally, however fleeting. We vibed well together and they certainly helped my faster-than-expected time. 

I didn't get into the States lottery nor Hardrock, so I'm unsure what's up for 2015. I'll figure it out soon. I hope to run Miwok 100k, and maybe Lake Sonoma. Maybe San Diego 100. Ideally I want a June 100 and a Sept 100. I can see myself going back to P2P to put down a sub 20. For now, I need to sleep as I've been on the verge of sickness for the past couple weeks. December is guaranteed casual and January is guaranteed easy. I wanna go camping and do outdoorsy things without HAVING to run.

Much love folks. Second half year review is coming at some point, as is the numbers blog post.