Category Archives for "Running"

6 A Very Close Call

I ended up having to back out of the High Cascade 100 Mountain Bike Race on Sunday, as my wife had a very close call late last week and had to go to the hospital. Thursday night I had to rush her to the ER…she had a miscarriage (at 10 weeks) and was hemorrhaging badly. After 7 hours of heavy bleeding, they finally did a D & C (surgery), as she had tissue that would not release from her body and was bleeding heavily to try to flush it.

We had a really close call, as she passed out in the ER during an ultrasound and had lost so much blood (4+ pints…a half gallon!!) …so much that she couldn’t feel her face and extremities. It was really scary, as she almost died the doctor said. Thanks to our friends Heidi and Tyson for grabbing our kids on a moments notice. Tyson met me at the ER to take the kids to his house.

I’m thankful she’s home and recovering, but she needs a lot of prayer and support. She’s extremely anemic right now from the heavy blood loss (as they decided not to do a transfusion). So, it’s up to her body to rebuild her blood levels over the coming weeks. Which means she’s weak, extremely fatigued (can barely walk to the bathroom without her heart beating out of her chest). You athletes…think the equivalent of living at Everest Base Camp after coming from sea level. Her body has 1/4 less oxygen carrying capacity.

I’m playing Mom and Dad right now. Luckily, I work at home. This condition of extreme fatigue, anemia and weakness can last for weeks until her body can rebuild…the doc said she lost 1/4 of her blood volume…which can take about 2 months to fully get that volume built back.

Anyway, just keep her in your thoughts and prayers. And, thanks to all the friends that have stepped up to help or offer help.

4 Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty

Fresh cat tracks on Tumalo Creek Trail this morning.

I headed out for a dawn patrol mountain bike ride to ride part of the High Cascade 100 course coming up next Sunday. It was CHILLY this morning. 34 degrees when I hit the trail at 6:45am. BAM! The first brisk morning ride of the pending fall and I didn’t bring my good, warm gloves. My numb hands quickly reminded me that wind chill factor on a bike is for real. Fall comes early for dawn patrol workouts in the high desert.

I started at Swampy Lakes trailhead and jammed Swede Ridge and then down to Tumalo Creek trail. At the intersection I came across the big ‘ole cat tracks pictured above. 4 inches across and fresh over the top of all the bike tracks from yesterday. A good reminder that we’re not alone out there. It’s either a Lynx or Cougar. My son, Benjamin and I got out his Animal Tracks book and narrowed down the tracks from the photo to those two possibilities.

I’ve seen cat tracks a few times running and riding and every time I see them again after the memory cools from the last sighting, I’m reminded how freakin’ big those suckers are. Dang those tracks are big. I occasionally see a big dog’s on the trail and stop and check them out and realize they’re just a dog. But, when you actually come across a cat track and put your hand up to a track and it’s as big or bigger—cat, no mistake.

Be safe out there y’all—runnin’ with the kitties.

2 2009 White River 50 Miler

Awesome day on stellar trails (Mt. Rainier in the background). Photo by Glenn Tachiyama

It was nice to finally race again. I was looking forward to running this race again. Since it’s the national championship trail race for 50 miles, it always draws a good, strong field. I was looking forward to running hard.

After multiple weird injuries this season, being 100% at a race again was nice. I was in new territory this season with the juggling of cycling and running (a 50 mile MTB race in June), then a 100 Mile MTB race coming up in August. So, my training was not my normal build-up before a race like White River.

I was optimistic though, but a little under-trained for hills. I had a lot of biking volume, but my highest running mileage week was 52 leading up to it. I put in quality, trail specific training though. I was hoping it would be okay.

I got to Seattle to drop of my family at Bainbridge Island to visit family and picked up Hal, Carly, and Tony to head to the race. Tony and I were staying at McCoubrey’s cabin (thanks again, Scott). We checked in, hung out and went back to the cabin, ate, and went to bed.

Saturday morning was great weather. I started out conservatively and ended up running with Kami for a few miles until just after the first aid station. I ran most of the first climb and got to the out and back in 12th place. I reeled in a few dudes, including Hal (thanks to his post-Western States legs) on the descent back to Buck Creek at the halfway.

The final grind before summiting Sun Top (mile 37). Photo by Glenn Tachiyama

There was cloud cover thankfully climbing up to Sun Top and I ran 90% of the climb. I ran smoothly and didn’t full out hammer off Sun Top (mile 37), as I didn’t know how my legs would handle it with their lack of hills and mileage. They were definitely feeling it at the bottom of the descent, but I kept rolling and crossed the line in 7:28, good enough for 8th place with a strong field.

Time to get on the mountain bike to get ready for High Cascade 100 August 23rd. Giddyup!

2 Outdoor Retailer Show

Sucking wind on the treadmill at OR Show Uphill Challenge.

I’ve had a busy couple of weeks with no time to blog. Just got back. Since last Monday, I drove over 2000 miles in 8 days and went to Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake and drove back to Bend, then drove to Seattle, then to Crystal Mtn, WA to run White River 50 Miler, back to Seattle and back to Bend. Phew! I’m beat.

OR show was fun and a scene. Got to see Roch, albeit short with so much going on…but, all the same, always a plus, even if it’s short. He got me to jump into the Trail Runner Magazine Uphill Challenge on the treadmill…15 minutes at 10 percent grade. Also was able to get in a couple of good Wasatch runs. One solo run on Monday when I arrived in the evening and one with Larry O’neal, Josh Brimhall, and Karl Meltzer on Thursday before I hit the road back to Bend. I love the Wasatch range and was good to be back on those trails.

Also was good to hang with everyone at Conservation Alliance’s 20th Anniversary party on Wednesday night. Hal and I hooked up with Josh, Tony, Scott, and Karl and ended up at the Brooks party for a while, then over to the Alliance’s party to end the night. I bagged out about midnight so I could get up and run with Karl, Larry, and Josh next morning. All in all, fun, but not enough sleep before White River. Sleep deprevation training, I suppose. I’ll get up a race report tomorrow. Off to bed…

2 Triple Bypass: 116-mile Killer Road Ride

Justin and I nearing the Chinook Pass summit, nearly a 5,000 foot climb.

Me on the long climb up Cayuse Pass, mile 62.

Justin on the last grunt before summit of Chinook Pass. Nice snow melt stream on the right.

Yes, yes another cycling post. Awesome route. One of my Patagonia teammates, Justin Angle and I finally were able to schedule a training road ride near Mt. Rainier. Since we both have been battling running injuries this season…it was nice to hook up for a ride. Not only could we talk about cycling, but ultrarunning too. We have been trying to mesh our schedule for a while and finally nailed down a time that worked. We met up at the intersection of Hwy 12 and WA-410, east of Mt. Rainier for the Triple Bypass loop on Friday, July 3rd at 8am.

Justin suggested it and it was a great loop. The route we did heads west up Hwy 12 to White Pass, then down to 123, which we took north up to Cayuse Pass and the intersection of WA-410. Then climb WA-410 up to Chinook Pass and finally the descent back to where we started. 116 miles, 7100 feet of climbing. Great loop and the weather was nice and warm and sunny. It was a little toasty the last 20 miles heading back down toward Yakima Valley with a hot, dry headwind. Justin and I quit chatting and worked together in a pace line to get through the final miles in the heat and head wind. My car thermometer read 101 when we got back. Hot.

All in all, great day. I highly recommend the route. We did it on Fourth of July weekend (Friday) and probably would have been a bit better, traffic-wise, if it were a “normal” Friday. Lots of people on the road. Most cars were pretty courteous…got buzzed by a few idiots. Always a bit scary when that happens, but we got through unscathed thankfully.

We ended up gettin’er done in 6 hours and 19 minutes (18.5 mph average). We had some great views and climbs and the 123 section was stellar. Giddyup!

0 RIP King of Pop

Michael Jackson died today. We all know he became a freak show in later years, but Michael was the man when I was in Junior High. I had parachute pants and the zipper jacket. Thriller is still the top selling album of all time. Ee-hee. RIP, MJ.

If you haven’t for a long time, check out this video…Thriller…back when MTV was actually Music Television and good.

0 Test of Endurance 50 Mile Mountain Bike Race

Finished and ready for a hose-down. Benjamin thought I was PRETTY muddy.

50 miles done and glad to be standing upright.

My first MTB race in 12 years and it was a blast. Muddy and more muddy. I’ve been on my bike a lot this spring because of an injury that has kept me from running full time and so I decided to enter some races. I entered High Cascade 100 MTB race in August, but felt like I needed a “refresher” course in racing my mountain bike again. Bart Bowen at Rebound Sports Performance put the bug in my ear about TOE 50 held in the Coastal Range 25 miles west of Corvallis, Oregon. It’s a combo of singletrack and doubletrack logging roads. Most of the climbs are double track logging roads with most of the descents being singletrack.

I didn’t know what category to enter, as I haven’t raced in over a decade. I was on the fence on whether to enter Cat 1 or Cat 2. So, after consulting with a few mountain bike racers in town, I entered Cat 2. So, after not much warming up and a small drizzle at the start, we rolled out at 9am down a gravel road.

One thing I immediately remembered (albeit too late) about a bike race is to position yourself in the start pack strategically. I made the mistake of starting in the back half of the pack and got caught behind a bunch of slower folks early (and guys doinking their gear shifting on the first climb) and had to do a lot of surging the first half hour to get into a good position where I could settle into a comfortable pace. Exactly why I entered…refresher course.

I ended up riding near a few Pros and lots of Cat 1 riders all day and was wondering if I might be leading Cat 2, but wasn’t sure. I asked a couple of guys and they said there might be one Cat 2 guy ahead of me. I kept looking for him. Turns out there wasn’t. I crossed the finish 26 minutes in front of 2nd place Cat 2. Turns out I did better than anticipated and would have been only 1 minute off a podium finish in my age group for Cat 1 and 9th overall in Cat 1. Actually, to their credit, Bart Bowen and Paul Clarke told me I should probably enter Cat 1 due to fitness level, but my lack of racing was the question mark, which they turned out to be right. I had no idea though, due to my long hiatus from the sport, and took the conservative approach.

All in all, it was a blast. My son was a big help with filling gel flasks at the campsite the night before and was super pumped that Adam Craig showed up and got to stand next to him as we chatted after the race. He thinks it’s a cool fact that both Adam and Chris (Horner) live in the same town as he does.

Giddyup!

8 Through the Looking Glass: The Parallel Careers of Scott Jurek and Lance Armstrong

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.” —Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

With my recent re-kindling of my bike geekdom (during injury rehab), I was thinking about the 2009 Western States 100 this coming weekend on my way to a mountain bike race and how Lance and Scott are oddly similar, career-wise.

Scott Jurek is the obvious favorite at Western States (he’s dominated that race) and it’s his race to lose. In comparision, Scott has been coined at times “the Lance Armstrong of ultrarunning.” And, Lance has dominated the Tour and no matter how “over the hill” folks think he might be for the world’s biggest cycling event, he’s the man to beat come July. Now, I find the following facts interesting…

1) Scott Jurek won Western States 1999-2005 and chose to end with 7 wins…did not return until this year (2009).

2) Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France 1999-2005 and chose to end with 7 wins…AND, this is the year (2009) he has chosen to come back to the event he’s dominated.

A weird parallel? Will Scott’s performance at Western States be the foreshadowing of Lance’s performance at the Tour? Hmm. Are these athletes leading parallel lives? An interesting tidbit no less. What do y’all think?

1 Duathlon Ride & a Broken Frame

The shocked laughing “Oh man, I can’t believe I broke my frame” moment. Note the hairline on the lower swingarm, 2 inches in front of the back drop out.

Today was an interesting day. I went off to meet Paul Clark at Phil’s trailhead, as we were going to ride a 40 mile mountain bike loop. We took off and were chatting as we cruised up Ben’s Trail to the double track that takes you to the top of whoops. Plan was to go down Skyliner Trail up Swede Ridge, down South Fork and up Farewell Trail and catch Mrazek back to down. We arrived at the top of Whoops and took a break to stretch.

There is a funky log bench there and you can ride it and hop on it. Well, before stretching, I started to hop up on the bench (got to try to keep my trials skills in action). I heard a creak which either sounded like my bottom bracket or my chain slapping my chainstay. I even said something about the sound to Paul.

Anyway, not thinking to deeply about it, we stretched, then started to cruise down Skyliner trail. I was leading and the curves felt squirrely and my break was rubbing. I stopped and said to Paul, “I think my back brake pads are dragging.” Paul is a bike mechanic at Bend Bike N Sport and also works for Bart Bowen at Rebound Sports Performance, and he hops off his bike and then exclaims, “Your frame is cracked!” Sure enough, the lower swing arm on the disc brake side of my bike, about 2 inches in front of the dropout, was broken in two. We wiggled it and it appeared to have some carbon fiber strands still attached. Maybe I could gingerly ride it out??!!

The broken lower swing arm. Bummer dude.

We unhooked the back brake, took out the pads and slid up the brake pad housing and re-tightened to get it away from the rotor. So, I only had a front brake to use. Since we were only 1/4 of the way into our ride, I urged Paul to continue his ride, as there wasn’t much he could do.

So, I began the slow ride down going really easy. Within 3/4 of mile the frame was completely separated. So, I got off and ran the remaining 2.2 miles with my bike down to Skyliner Trailhead to see if I could flag a ride back to my car. To top it off, I start getting pelted with hail! Then heavy thunder, puddles running down the trail. But thankfully, the storm passed quickly.

When I arrived at the trailhead, only 3 empty cars were there. So, I continued jogging my bike down Skyliner Road to get to my car. About a mile or two down the road, I watched 3 teenage punks drive by laughing, then back by going back toward town, laughing again and pointing. Thanks for the lift dorks! When I was in high school, I had enough manners to stop and ask someone if they needed help. I don’t mean to sound old, but what are parents doing today…not training up a child, that’s for sure. No respect for adults. Sad. But I digress…

I continued jogging…and let me say SPD shoes are not made for jogging very long in! I was nearing 6 miles running with my bike, when I got to FS Rd 300 and a nice older couple from Washington, who own a 2nd home in Bend, were loading up their mini van with one bike and had an extra slot on their rack. Sure enough, they kindly gave me a lift to my car the final 5 miles to Phil’s trailhead.

I took the bike straight to Bend Bike N Sport and Sean left a message with the Scott Rep. I hope Scott will step up to the plate and get me the replacement swing arm this week so I’ll be ready to race at TOE 50 next Sunday. We’ll see. Otherwise, I may be riding my singlespeed hardtail for 50 miles. Giddyup!

4 Fresh Veggies and 65 miles in the saddle

Halfway up the climb on Farewell trail above Tumalo Falls (Broken Top in the background).

Tomorrow is 2 weeks out from TOE 50 Mile MTB race. So, I thought I should go do a really long ride on Friday. I got up early and ended up spending nearly 6 hours in the saddle—64.8 miles with only 12 miles paved…10 miles double track…the rest sweet Central Oregon singletrack. We just got 3 days of rain, some of which was pretty hard. The trails were primo. Tacky, hard packed.

What a stellar ride. It was my first time up to Swede Ridge this season (only a handful of small snow piles left), down South Fork and up Farewell to Mrazek and back to town. The weather was in the 70s and sunny. Perfect. I felt pretty good all day. Ran out of water about 20 minutes from town, stopped into FootZone, refilled, downed two gels, grabbed a turkey wrap from Strictly Organic drive-thru and pedaled home for the 8-mile cooldown to my house. What’s that have to do with veggies? Recovery.

Well, my recovery meal today consisted of my own home-grown veggies out of the garden, first harvest of the season. The kids and I harvested fresh spinach and radishes from the garden this evening.

Side Note: After fighting my first really large outside garden last season and losing a bunch of stuff to our climate’s anytime-frost-potential, I decided early this year to invest in a 12’x 20′ commercial hoop house for my garden. It has 8-4’x 4′ raised beds, utilizing the highly-intensive square foot gardening method. It’s been awesome (picture below). If you’ve never grown a garden, I highly recommend this method and start with one 4’x 4′ raised bed—easy and low-maintenance.

We had organic steak on the grill, fresh home-grown organic spinach salad with fresh broccoli, mung bean, lentil, and alfalfa sprouts on the top (my wife has really got into sprouting stuff lately). If you haven’t tried sprouting, you should try it. Great article in Mother Earth News on sprouting.

It’s a great way to add some serious nutritional variety to salads, as sprouts are highly digestible and once something sprouts, the nutritional value goes through the roof. Sprouts also contain an abundance of highly active antioxidants that prevent DNA destruction and protect us from free radicals. If you’re an endurance athlete…that means you recover faster…better than some highly processed powder concoction. Money, y’all.

And, as any of you out there that grow a garden…there is nothing mo’betta than eating something 5 minutes after its cut. Mmmm, it was tasty and I had two large salads. Giddyup!

View into my greenhouse (the only way to grow properly in Central Oregon’s 61-day growing season). We live at almost 4,000 feet, lots of cold nights. So, most of my veggies are in here. The cat loves the “micro-climate” of the greenhouse, she hangs in here a lot. The spinach (after cutting a bowl full), is the largest green patch on the far right of the frame. I have 16+ varieties of veggies growing in there right now. I also grow squash, zucchini, and wax bean outside in another garden area…but those are cold tolerant and do okay outside in our climate.