Been a while

Uh... It's been a while.
The bursitis seems to have improved, especially if I stretch (stupido, tonto). I've also had a problem with my right ankle where some tendon hurts but that might be on the run - so to speak. It occurred to me that when I'm in shuffle mode, I tend to kick my right ankle with my left foot right around that location.
Ran 2 repeats of Thunder Mountain yesterday (by Mt. Baldy). The picture to the left was taken from the top with a view of Mt Baldy.

At this point, I'm hoping to be able to run Bishop in mid May. The right ankle hanging together is my chief concern. The altitude would be the second concern, hence my workout at altitude.

Injuries / Cross Training

I've been nursing bursitis in my right heel for a while now. I'm not sure what caused it. Maybe wearing minimal shoes or barefoot. Maybe long slow runs on sidewalks. I don't know. I'm trying to work my way back into running now. I've cut most of the right heel out of a couple of pairs of shoes. The leather huaraches work too. No running on pavement right now. I'm just running on trails or on the track, mostly dirt tracks. The SoCal rain is cutting into the dirt track workouts now. I got a 11 mile trail run in this weekend and a solid 8 mile run on the track last weekend.

I went to my physical therapist about this and he gave me three (well maybe 4 now that I think of it) good pieces of advice:

• Rest between workouts.
  
• Intense workouts are what bring improvement.
  
• To paraphrase, "Dance with what brung you to the dance", i.e. check your workouts from when I was setting pr's and go back to those sort of workouts.
  

He also told me to get on the bike.

OK, so I got a stationary bike AND bought a ten speed at the swap meet for $32 and converted it to a fixed gear (fixie). This could turn into a whole other preoccupation. The bike affects my legs in a completely different way. My quads get exhausted and my knees get stressed somewhat from slowing down on the fixie (it's geared really high - 52x16). But I'm not beating up my (lower) legs the way I do when running on pavement. So it seems as though the two forms of exercise complement each other to some extent although running after a hard bike ride is a different sensation. So I'm rationalizing that riding the bike or the stationary bike is resting insofar as running is concerned.

I'm limiting my running workouts to hills OR fast paced track workouts. This addresses his second and third points. Specifically, running hills and running 2 hour track runs brought me improvement in the past so that's what I plan to work on for now. So I've cut back to 3 or 4 running workouts per week for a while. Stay tuned and see how it turns out. I'm anxious to find out.

Southern California Fires - Santiago Canyon

At this point, a lot of people know about the Southern California Fires. Since I live in Orange County, I'm going to comment on the one fire in Orange County, the Santiago Canyon fire and how it relates to ultra runners. This fire started October 21st, 2007 and is 90% contained as of October 31st, 2007.
The Orange County Fire Authority expects that it will be completely contained on November 4th.

Races

First off, the Saddleback Marathon and the first running of the Old Goat 50 miler are scheduled for November 10th. These are put on by Baz Hawley. I'm not sure of what the routes are but the race description says it "traverses the flanks of Silverado and Modjeska peaks, before returning to Blue Jay via the Main Divide road."
Since the fire map looks like the fire has burned within a mile of the Main Divide Truck Trail, it may be that the race course has not been burned but certainly will smell of smoke.

Jessica Deline's Twin Peaks Ultras which are already sold out will certainly be affected since both the 50k and 50 mile start and finish at Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary which is now closed. The buildings at Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary apparently were not damaged but the fire did make it onto the grounds, judging from the fire map and the pictures on the website. Also judging from the burn map, both sides of the first 7 or 8 miles of Harding Truck Trail are burned. Harding Truck Trail is used at both the start and finish of both races. If you check her photos of the course, you'll notice that this forest has/had trees, not just brush. Incidentally, judging from the fire map, I'm guessing that the fire burned up to the road that you see in this picture but maybe was stopped there by the firefighters.

Running

Harding Truck Trail is a favorite run of mine and of other ultra runners. I often see my neighbor Hwa Ja running up there and have seen a number of other ultra runners too. It is also a favorite of the more fit mountain bikers and hikers as well. I think that I'll stay off of it until a few rains have brought down the level of ash. I've also run in Silverado Canyon but HTT is just a little bit better because

• There is a lot of parking available at Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary.
• There is water available at Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary.
• There is less driving once you get off the main road (Santiago Canyon Road).
• HTT is all dirt and rocks whereas Silverado (Maple Springs Truck Trail) has some asphalt.
• HTT is steeper and longer.

However, I have seen a salamander crossing the road in Silverado.

Wildlife

I have seen a mountain lion (once) and deer on HTT, but you really don't see much wildlife because there was so much brush in which to hide. Previously when there were big fires around San Diego, Orange County may have seen an increase in wildlife (mountain lions) which were displaced northwards.This year's fires will also displace some animals. During the fire, a resident in Silverado Canyon remarked that a lot of mice had shown up because of the fires, followed by coyotes. He expected mountain lions next and felt that wildlife were attracted to Silverado Canyon because it hadn't burned for 100 years.

Life in the OC during the fire

Everywhere was smokey during the fires. I work in Irvine and on Monday the 22nd, the fire was burning about 3 miles from work. We have a good view from work of Saddleback (Modjeska and Santiago peaks) and even on Tuesday when the fire was 9 days old, Modjeska peak was obscured because of the smoke rising from the fire. I didn't run hardly at all last week because of the smoke but still got a sore throat and sinus infection from breathing smoke.
In our neighborhood, a large tree was blown down into the main street (Valley View). I had to trim back one of our trees which was hitting our roof because of the winds - which lasted several days. Four of our trees had green leaves ripped off them by the wind.

As bad as the Santiago Fire was/is (23,000 acres burned), San Diego county had it much worse. The Witch fire looks like it will be over 200,000 acres with many more houses burned. My daughter and 4 of her friends came from UCSD to our house last week to escape the smoke from the fires. Her house was not evacuated but people were being evacuated as close as one freeway exit away from her. Also, fire season is not over. We are supposed to have another dangerous Santa Ana condition this weekend where hot dry winds blow here from the desert.

AC - DNF

Well - it was inevitable. I woefully underestimated (forgot) the amount of physical and mental preparation necessary for Angeles Crest. Normally, I start hurting when driving past Rancho Cucamonga on the way to Wrightwood in anticipation of running the race or just simply going over Baden Powell and Mt. Williamson (and back). While I was walking from Eagles Roost to Cloudburst where I quit, I started making an inventory of the ways in which I should have been able to tell that I wasn't prepared to run AC. To make something positive of this, I've decided that in the future, I'll base my decision to race on objective criteria, specifically certain workout statistics over the last few months, as follows:

• How many 100 mile weeks? 110 mile? etc
  
• How many 10,000 ft (elevation gain) weeks
  
• How many weekday 3000 ft (elevation gain) workouts? How many 4000 ft workouts?
  
• How many 16 miles in 2 hour workouts
  
• How many miles at a given pace (7:00/7:30/8:00/8:30 per mile)
  
• How many Baldyx2 workouts? How about double double Baldy? (Mt Baldy is a 10,064 ft peak in So Cal. The typical run up is 4,000 ft gain in 8 miles.)
  
• Is my weight at 145? 143?
  
• Can I do 50 Pushups?
  
• How many black or missing toenails do I have?
  
• How many over and back over Baden Powell+
  
• How many mountain 50 milers (Bishop, Leona Divide) in this year.
  

To follow up on a previous post, the USA men captured third place in the 100 km World Cup thanks to another solid top 10 performance from Howard Nippert and PR's from Greg Crowther and Chad Ricklefs. The USA women missed Anne Lundblad and Nikki Kimball but still finished 4th in the team standings. Devon Crosby-Helms seems to have had somewhat of a breakout performance, finishing as 2nd USA woman behind Kami Semick with a fine 8:06.

I would have liked to see the finish. 1 second separated the 2nd man (Japan) and the 3rd man (Russia). I was impressed by the splits of 13th place Takehiro Matsushita. In a race where most slow in the second half, Matsushita San ran mostly descending splits of 43:09 42:55 42:33 42:20 42:04 41:38 40:56 41:05 40:31 41:48. In fact the rate at which he accelerated was very consistent, racking up improvements of 14, 22, 13, 16, 26, 42, -9, 34, and -1:17. My guess is that he "shut it down" the last lap after he knew that he'd break 7:00 and wasn't going to score for his team.

IAU 100 km World Cup - 2007

I'm anxious to see the results of the upcoming 100 km World Cup at Winschoten, Holland. The USA men's team though small has 3 guys (Howard Nippert, Greg Crowther, Bob Sweeney) with sub-7:00 credentials. Keep in mind that other teams like Japan and Russia have up to 6 guys with sub-7:00 PR's. But still, the US men in the past have run (apparently) a smart pace where others haven't had the same success. The other thing that's going on is the World Master's (WMA) 100 km champs. I had hoped to compete but an inability to finish a road 100 km has proven to have been a roadblock for me. The USA women's team has recently won the World Cup. We'll see how they do this year without Anne Lundblad and Nikki Kimball. Check back on Saturday for results.

BTW, Mexico looks like they are fielding a mother/daughter pairing in Silvia and Giselle Andonie.

AC - Oh no!

Some guys who were getting ready to run AC wanted to do an overnight run of the last 42 miles of the course and somehow I got roped into running with them. I hadn't planned to run AC this year because I just didn't think I was in shape, in particular for the altitude. However, the overnight run went well for me and I wasn't very sore or anything so I decided to enter the race. I'm planning to approach this as a) a practice run for a later race and b) as Tracy Bahr says "Playing outside all day long." I think things might go ok if I don't start out at a stupid pace and if I make it to Cloudburst. At least I haven't had any significant injuries this year. Perhaps another quote (from a neighbor girl when I lived in Spain as a kid) is appropriate: "Stupido! Tonto!"

Another step toward running barefoot

OK - first of all, I haven't been posting for a while. I intend to do a certain post then don't then put off other posts until I do the first post. Forget it!

A while back, I did a hard workout one day and then a recovery run the next. Some funny thing was going on with one leg which got more and more sore as the run progressed. At just about the midpoint of the run, I had to stop running. So I tried going barefoot and the pain went away immediately. I had another workout prior to this where I ran a 12 or 14 hour tempo run at 7:30 pace. When I got off the track, something started hurting right away. So I ran home barefoot on that occasion too.

There are several adaptations necessary for those going from shod to unshod running. The first thing is that your heel is going to drop farther and you'll give more work to your Achilles tendon. I think you should not try to run on the balls of your feet (i.e. your heels should come down and you should have a relatively relaxed calf when your foot is resting on the ground. The way to gradually get into this is by wearing flats or by running in grass. Another potential adaptation is to run with a more erect posture so your ankle doesn't need to flex as much.

Impact to your foot without that cushioned sole is also something to be managed. You can't land heel first on a hard surface and not hurt yourself. Landing heel first also seems to me to be a good way to sprain your ankle. So basically, I think you want your lower leg relaxed when it is off the ground, then land on the ball of your foot. This turns out to be close to flat-footed for me when I'm running on pavement. The other adaptation (which works well without the weight of the shoe) is to have faster turnover. This lessens the time that gravity has to accelerate your body toward the earth, thus lessening the impact when your foot does hit.

Finally - blisters. I can run 4 to 8 miles on concrete sidewalks without getting blisters but I will get a hot spot. Wearing moccasins is one good way I've found to avoid this.