Did the trails just get rockier?

Since the second Monday in June, when I crashed and broke my wrist, I have not been on a bike.  Part of this was doctor's orders, but the last month or so has mostly been due to fear and fitness (lack of) for riding.

However, since cycling is normally a big part of my cross-training regimen, and this week was a down week, I took my mountain bike out for the first time in months.  It was both great to be back out, but also terrifying, as it seemed not just my cycling fitness, but any semblance of handling skills had disappeared over the summer, and the trails; trails I run on (and rode on this spring) daily, seemed suddenly to have sprouted more rocks, bigger rocks, and tighter turns. 

I didn't fall, but I did have to unclip several times on what is really a pretty easy loop, which didn't exactly help with the whole fear thing.  Maybe I should have gone out on the road before I tried mountain biking again.  Ah well.  Based on that performance, reintroducing regular riding will have to wait until after the Bootlegger, I think.

Below enjoy a photo of my beloved Orbea Alma 29er.  No factory build here, I put this together from the ground up this past spring.

Bear Chase media

First, my Bear Chase result got some coverage from RunColo.com.  This is probably the first and last time my name will ever be featured next to a world champion's (J. Simpson) in any sort of discussion of athletic performance:

http://www.runcolo.com/content/charles-hillig-michael-dominguez-jenny-simpson-impress-other-colorado-race-results-9-24-9-25-869/

 Second, pictures from the Bear Chase came in, taken by Running Guru.  

Pretty obviously the start at 6:50am. That meant a 4:00am wake-up.

First 10k.  The guy in the jacket and no shirt hung for 8k, clipping my heels, then disappeared.

The most sedate of the 3 stream crossings.

Another stream crossing on the first lap, with Paul Terranova sitting in second behind me.

At the top of the major climb.  The park was spectacularly beautiful.

Apparently the camera guy knew I was finishing.

Bear Chase Trail Race 50k

I have just returned home from a much needed massage following the Bear Chase Trail Race 50k in Lakewood, CO.  It was a pretty spectacular event; well run and on a great course.  This event was meant to be a psuedo-culmination of my training cycle, with the upcoming Bootlegger 50k in Vegas a potential bonus on the end of a long season, so I was hoping for this to go well, and it did indeed.

The race was a fairly large one, and included a 50 mile, 1/2 Marathon and 10k event as well as the 50k I ran.  All 4 of these races used the same course loops, one a 10k loop around Bear Creek Lake, and one a 20k loop that circled the whole park, both of which shared the same start/finish/crewed aid-station area.  For the 50k, we did one lap of the 10k loop, then 2 of the 20k loop, with 1,950' of climbing, though I'm not sure if that was per lap or overall.

My preparations and pre-race for this went well, and going in, I was, based on the times from last year, aiming for a 3:50.  With this in mind, I left Alice and Anthony at the start line with instructions for what water bottles and nutrition to hand me each lap, and estimated times through of :46.00 for the first 10k, and 2:18 for the 30k.  The race though, went a little differently than my plan.

I'm not about to narrate everything that happened during the race, but I ended up running far more aggressively than I anticipated I would, coming through the first 10k in :40.42, then the 30k mark in 2:06, and feeling pretty good.  At this point, it started getting pretty hot out there (there was a high of 88 on the day according to later news reports), and my shoes hit the end of their supportive lives, so I slowed a bit on that last lap, but ended up coming through the finish line in first in 3:37.40.  Great, right? Not apparently.

To be clear, I'm in no way griping, the following circumstances were just pretty comedic:  I cross the finish line and proceed to stop, and stumble around a bit, expecting someone to say something, seeing as how I just won and all, but nobody does.  No cheering from the crowd, no acknowledgment by the announcer, no sign of Alice or Anthony. It is in fact oddly quiet.  At this point, a race volunteer comes over to me and sweetly instructs me that I'm stumbling in the wrong direction.  The aid-station is over there, to the right.  I'm done, I inform her.  Realization strikes her face, she gives a cheer, and eventually the announcer catches on too.  This kind volunteer gets me a chair, and some other excellent volunteers generously fetch gatorade and water.  However, my wife and buddy are still MIA.

It is a few minutes before the next finisher comes through.  I greet him, say congrats, but still no Alice or Anthony.  A few minutes more, and I begin to get really curious. I want to change my shoes, and get to some nutrition in my bag, but don't really want to walk myself to the car just yet.  I look around, and eventually see Alice sitting a ways away among some other spectators.  Still seated, I start waving to her, which manages to catch her attention, and draws them rushing over.  The resulting conversation went something like this:

Alice:  "Oh my gosh, did you just finish?!?"
Me:  "I've been done for 15 minutes."
Alice: "What!?!"

As it turns out, Alice and Anthony weren't expecting me for quite some time, as per my instructions and goal time, and the fact they didn't hear the announcer or any cheering, because no one thought I had finished.  This is all made doubly hilarious because last year at Imogene, Alice wandered off from the finish line in Telluride to get my bag from the car, only to miss me finishing.  Both were good races, so maybe I should encourage her to get distracted at the end of races more often.

In any event, the Bear Chase was a great event, and the course was really quite beautiful.  Definitely worth attending/racing.  I will post pictures and media as they become available.

Imogene 2011

Imogene is over.

This race had been a primary objective of mine for this year, so I was understandably a bit nervous before hand.  Lots of variables come into play during an event like this, where one runs from Ouray, CO at 7,000' the 10 miles it takes to get up and over the 13,100' Imogene Pass, and then 7+ more miles down into Telluride at 8,000'.  It's an awesome race, despite the story I am about to relate.

Telluride celebrating the race, with the pass in the background.

Unfortunately, this year I had a less than awesome experience with the race.  After a fine drive from Boulder to Ouray, a normal pre-race day, and sedate evening, I attempted to go to bed around 9 for my planned 4:30 wake-up and 7:30 race start. This didn't work out as planned. Dunno if it was worries about work, nervous stress, or not a long enough run that day, but lying in bed staring at the ceiling worrying about how being awake is going to ruin your race is not a good way to either a) prepare to race, or b) get to sleep. Long story short, I got 2.5-3 hours of intermittent sleep.

Despite this, I managed, with some trepidation, to make it to the start line.  Unlike last year, when I had no clue what the heck I was doing, this year I had some expectations, lined up at the front, and sleep or no, planned to give it a shot.

This attitude worked, sort of.  I started out well, with Mike Smith (the eventual winner) and some other guy taking off ahead in mile one.  No worries, I thought, my climbing tends to get stronger at higher altitude and then I've got the descent.  But 3 miles in, my lack of sleep and prior week of not feeling ideal crept up on me, and things went bad, fast.  My legs started feeling as heavy as concrete, and my muscles were burning like I was in the midst of a set of over-weighted squats.  Add on to that, I was having issues getting my nutrition down, and the remaining 7 miles didn't look like they were going to be pleasant, let alone possible.  It took some serious self-abuse (and an embarrassing amount of walking in the last 2 miles to the top) to get myself to the pass far slower and in worse shape than I had been planning on.  A few people had passed me (I was sitting in 5th position, I think), and 3 people were close on my heels, closing the gap fast on the climb.  Not a good spot to be in.

At this point in the race, however, things can't get worse in an exertion sense, so there was some consolation in that.  Still hoping to make the most of it, I did what I'm good at, and dropped out of the sky on that descent, passing in the first 2 miles of downhill running all but Smith (who was astronomically further ahead).  Things looked good at this point, until I took a wrong turn.  The course basically runs down a jeep road that winds up to the pass, but there are occasional offshoots that, at certain points, may or may not be the right way.  Hitting a particularly confusing fork, I saw port-a-johns off to the right, and so took that way, only to run into a gate, realize it was the other road, and have to run back and get onto the correct path.  Add 3 minutes to my time right there.

Following my wrong turn and correction, it was a pretty straight-forward run into the finish, only to find myself second by....19 minutes, and my time almost the same as from last year, when I was in far less refined shape.  Pretty disappointing.  I had been hoping to run around 2:20, which I think would have been possible (particularly considering my wrong turn adjusted time was 2:26) had I not had sleep and nutrition problems, and better been able to capitalize on my fitness. It was not my best day ever.

Anthony, Cara and Alice, post race in Telluride

Despite all that, Anthony, Cara, Alice and I had a nice weekend, and Telluride and Ouray were once again beautiful and impressive.  Hopefully I'll be able to sleep the night before next year, and have a better go at this tremendously awesome race.

Bergen Peak Trail Race

Yesterday was the Bergen Peak Trail Race in Evergreen, CO.  The course, as one might expect from the name, is based around a climb up Bergen Peak, and I chose it largely for this reason as a good tune-up before Imogene: starting at the Evergreen rec. center on the NE end of the Elk Meadow Open Space area (7,500' elev.), the race follows a 10.4 mile loop that rolls for 2 miles across Elk Meadow, then takes a turn and climbs 1,400' in 2.4 miles (estimates based on a park topo are from 7,800' to 9,200') then drops you straight back down over 2.7 miles back to the elevation you started the climb at, then takes you about 3 miles back across the rolling and very open Elk Meadow to the rec. center for the finish.

Dragon sculpture at Evergreen Rec. Center w/ Bergen Peak behind

Now, a month ago, this all sounded good on paper, but last week I was completely slammed with all sorts of meetings scheduled all over the place at times that conveniently chopped up my days to make any block of training time a rush, and was a bit wrecked from the mileage I put in at the Gotta Run XC camp.  So, there's that.

Stretching at my car the morning of the race, I was quite seriously weighing the merits of racing or not racing following a terrible warm-up, but after some sage advice from Alice, I decided to indeed race. I was lucky that as I stood there freaking out on the start line, someone who would later be identified as Dan Goding, was kind enough to ask me a couple of questions and joke around a bit. 

As for the race, it went something like this:
right from the gun, Andy Ames of the La Sportiva Mountain Running Team just shot off, with me in pursuit a fluctuating 15 to 30 meters behind, and a pack of bodies behind that.  We stayed this way over the first little climb in the first half mile, and then all the way across Elk Meadow to the base of the climb up Bergen Peak.  I wasn't feeling great through this part, but was maintaining pace, and as soon as I hit the climbing, my legs started to feel like they were actually underneath me.  Over the course of the climb, I gradually caught Andy, and ran the last mile up Bergen Peak on his shoulder.

Now, at this point in the past, I might have made a move, but this was a relatively sketchy descent, and with my head full of images of my skid down Gregory Canyon, I made the decision to pull up, and ease it through the descent.  At least that was the plan, but 1200m down the descent as Andy and I picked our way down, Dan Goding came blasting by.  Just freaking flying.  Still petrified of falling again, but not wanting to concede this early in the race, I went ahead and took off after him, still a little hesitant, but not letting the separation his descent was capable of creating happen.  After some tight switchbacks, we made it to the base of the descent, he about 20m ahead of me, I decided this was the time to give it a go, so as we turned for home across Elk Meadow, I upped the tempo, took the lead and carried that home to win, with Dan 40 seconds in arrears, and Andy a minute or two back from that.

It was hardly what I would call a good race, and physically it was not my best day ever, but it was good to shake off the rust of earlier in the summer, and I got to meet and chat with Dan and Andy, which was quite enjoyable.  Additionally, the course was spectacular, the race was well run and would have been relaxing and fun were I not neurotic, and Evergreen was beautiful.  Definitely a recommended event.

Back on the trails...sort of

After a week in Virginia/West Virginia at Capon Ridge XC camp, I am back in Boulder, and with a basically mended arm and sea-level refreshed feritin levels, back running my usual trails again.  Except with all the falling and breaking from earlier this summer, I'm feeling a bit like Joseba Beloki, who in the early 2000's fell during the Tour de France and snapped his femur, and never looked quite the same racing his bike again. 
That's maybe an extreme comparison, as snapping a femur would have been a much more serious injury, but I've felt horribly tentative out there.  I ran at Betasso Monday, Chautauqua yesterday, and Walker Ranch today, and during all of those runs, I couldn't quite get past the sensation that I was GOING to fall, and as a result I was slow on the turns and descents, places where I previously would have ripped through at full speed.  And recognize this as I might, shaking that sense of unease was not readily done.

Overall, however, it was good to be back on real trails, and hopefully my skittishness just reflects my lack in some other training areas (i.e. strength and drills), and my confidence will come back as those do.  Otherwise, I'm going to have to schedule some serious fearlessness training sessions.

Today was the day of truth.  An appointment with the orthopedist to find out if my cast had to stay on for another 2 weeks. 
The result:  no more cast.  I was down-graded to a splint that, though I am supposed to only take it off for seated activity, it can also come off for.....running! So so long to a sweaty, gross, and perpetually damp thing constraining my wrist.

The best part of the whole appointment was that through 5 weeks with a cast on, during which time my wrist had locked up and my forearm muscles severely atrophied, my watch tan was still very much intact, as pictured below.  Frankly, I'm not sure whether to be proud, or concerned.