Tag: weekend

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running

Day391 short news cycle

Lack of news because I did the Stone Mill 50 and then the Devil Dog 50K, and ran my last race of the year, I am relatively free this weekend. I was going to do the WTF 50 (course preview), a new course I found by the Virginia Happy Trail people. They are weird I tell you. Ever since I ran their Vicky’s Death March a few weeks back, I am more into their club things and they have tons of set trail courses to run. Last weekend, I joined a few of their members to do the Buck Hollow/Mary’s Rock run and this week I was going to do their MGM stands for Big Butt in latin or Fat Ass Run on the BRR (Bull Run Trail/Run/Ultra – the last R escapes me). They love accronyms. But there the WTF, that a few of them wanted to do today and I like the name. I read it is a tough course. WTF does not mean I thought it means but it stands for WaTerFall. Cute. I guess it is the name of the local mountain or maybe an actual waterfall or a trail name but I couldn’t find it yet on the map.

I felt a bit lazy and couldn’t will myself to wake up early in time to haul my butt to the trailhead. They were running at 6 AM in the dark and the place is about two hours away. Also I didn’t pack last night so it was not happening. I might try tomorrow morning, which will be another great day.

Last night a guy was running a 100 miler on my, yes my track, the W-OD (Washington/Old Dominion Trail). That is awesome. No I don’t own it. I am just surprised any one would use that trail for a 100 miler since it is ‘boring’. I didn’t know it was that long either. The guy ran from Arlington and out past Leesburg to Purcellville and back. It was not exactly 100 miles so he did some loops in the middle of night at the other end point before coming back. I normally ride my bike there but never occur to me to run it.

That kind of give me an idea. Maybe I could do the same!

Why am I going all over the place? I was or am still trying to find out what I want to do today. I could head to MGM for the Big Butt and see some club members or go to WTF for some waterfall or go see this guy who is doing a 100 mile; he is also a club member. Or doing something completely different on my own.

On other news, I signed up to be a sweeper for the World’s End Ultra for mile 35-50, roughly. Sweepers ensure no one left on the trail. We sweep the runners/or herd them to the Aid Station for pickup. Usually sweepers have a tough job to encourage the desperate few who are about to be cut to hurry up. No one was taking this segment so I took it. It will be from 5PM to 10PM. I think no one took it because of the emotional aspect to “sweep” people off the course after they have been running for 12 or more hours but likely won’t be able to make it to the finish. We are the person to break that news to them. It will be a fight. You know ultra people have the indomitable spirit and I will be the one to break that in the nicest possible way.

There was an application process. They would like the sweeper to have first aids knowledge. Usually runners fell behind because of an injury. So I am thinking on signing up at a local REI to have a refresher. I learned those stuff like 25 years ago, so might need a bit of update.

As for the distance, 14-15 miles shouldn’t be too bad. They asked me what my experiences on trail. The race is billed as the toughest ultra in PA, so ya I got to be able to run the trail. I plan to go to the trail in the spring and run it. I am excited. The race will take place in first weekend of June, a week before my A-race Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail Ultra. I was just looking into that. I told them I should be able to handle the trail by then.

Why I am even a sweeper? My friend is doing the sweeping first 20 mile. He said to come down and join him to spend the day there. I think he is also doing the Laurel Ultra, that how we meet last year.

As for the Rocky Raccoon 100, I said I have to book the campsite couple weeks ago. I didn’t and ended up all camp spots are taken! Anyway it means I have run my 100 and not sleep, since no campsite. I might snooze in the car afterward. I won’t have any pacer coming with me, so not having a campsite to set a base camp is not a problem. As I said, I will be running through the night, so no need a camp. This will be in first week of February. Still about a month out.

Yes, I said after Stone Mill, I have to focus on Rocky Raccoon. I need to get up to speed soon. Very soon. That’s the news for this week.

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life

Day359 random friday?

I will just leave a bunch of stuffs here. Never mind I usually do that any way.

I signed up for a marathon! Not going to say it for fear of jinxing it. But yes there is a real marathon! There will be social distancing and stuff. I signed a waiver saying I won’t sue if I got Covid19 from it. I am excited. Yet just like Rock N the Knob I have to stay quiet! There are spots left…People if you are reading this go sign up. It is a real race except I try not to be too hyped about it.

Did I finish the report for Rock N the Knob?

I had this plan you know – I need a lot of miles and now my workplace has moved closer to where I live, it only takes me 45 mins to get to work instead of 1:20 min, I am thinking of running to work.

I haven’t planned it out yet. This is likely what I want to do. Take the bus in, and then run home at the end of the day. I am looking at a 18-20 mile run. It is doable. I get home before midnight.

My training also is calling for a night run. Someone on a local cycling group posted a 70 mile route in my area. I kind of want to try it. I have done part of it over the summer when I went for a out-and-back 60 miles. This is a loop course, so I want to try it one Friday night. My workplace is nearest to the trail head, so I am thinking of driving to work and leave my car there then head for the trail at the end of the work day and run 70+ miles. I should be done by Sunday and either sleep in my car or attempt to drive home in the wee hours. One of the problems I could think of is will they let me leave my car at work over the weekend? It would be a bummer at the end of my 70 mile run and my car is no longer there and have to run another 20+ miles home.

Laurel Highland race is this weekend (Tonight actually) for those who are doing it. They will get to the bus stop by 3 in the morning. I already defered my entry. Still I wanted to attempt a 70.5 mile run this weekend. I know it won’t be as hard as the Laurel run since there won’t be any elevation here in the city. But this weekend is pretty booked. I got work being spilled over (end of the fiscal year). I really want to do the run though even if it is a local run.

Yes, I need to focus on my rocky raccoon training. Week 1 is over and I have done about 13 miles so far.

remind me – I need to get a training plan in place.

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running

Day357

I did not get into Umstead. Looking for another race to attempt.

I am thinking of Rocky Raccoon or C&O Canal 100. Both races have about the same difficulty. Rocky Raccoon I can register now. Registering for C&O Canal has not opened yet.

C&O is near my house and easy to get crew or pacer support. Rocky is in Texas and hours away from the nearest airport! I have not traveled that far for a big race. Yes for Marathons but this is more than a marathon.

A quiet weekend this week. Woke up late typically. Want to train but many things needed my attention. Feeling guilty if I go out and run the whole weekend. Nice fall weather though. Maybe will go and run.

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life running

Day341 reality

I have to accept the reality that to run back across Tennessee (virtually) within two weeks is out of reach for me in my condition.

I had the ambitious goal of doing 250 miles this week and another 250 miles the next. I have ‘slowly’ trying to bring my miles up from 5 miles to 30 miles. My body still prefers running 5 miles. Beyond the 5 miles it bonkers. So I splitted my run into two. 5 miles during lunch and 15 miles in the evening. Doing 5 miles are great. 15 miles not so great.

After 4 nights of running 15 miles, yesterday, the body relented. I walked most of the 15 miles.

It reminded me back at the time I was in Atlanta when I was trying to run a hundred miles. It came to a point where the body can’t run any more and running is no longer fun. I felt I was 10 miles away from my home and couldn’t get back.

I had blisters on my feet. I don’t mind the pain or the discomfort. It is just all my muscles are so tight. I don’t think I could squeeze any more out of it.

Also I am suspecting my cardio has taken a hit. Last year I had Lyme disease and I know how that feel. I felt something similar. My performance is really poor. At least I am not yet fainting. Last year when I overexerted I fainted. I am also questioning whether I might contracted the corona virus. It is a respitory disease. My breathing is fine, just couldn’t run. Maybe it is really over exertion.

Anyway for the GRVAT. I am at mile 901 and I need to get to mile 1270 to be considered ‘finished’. I have about 10 days left to do it. I could try to get mile 1000, there is an award for that. 10 miles each day is doable. 370 miles is too much to ask of.

Weekend is here. Originally, I planned to put in 100 miles, 50 on Saturday and 50 on Sunday. Now scratch that plan. The body just couldn’t handle it.

This weekend I will go down to Virginia Border to Buffalo State Park for a family camping trip. I don’t have children of my own, but I will join my brother-in-law and he will bring his wife and kids. My mom will be there too.

Personally this kind of camping is not my kind of thing. I don’t like sitting around at a camp with nothing to do. There are the kids. I rather be hiking all day (or run) and only get to camp when we can’t go on further. Survival kind of camping is what I like.

My mom will like it. It is her kind of camping. We don’t do it often enough. As I was growing up, money was tight and going camping was not our family thing. I really didn’t get on the camping stuff until a few years ago when I started running and discovered this whole world.

My mom and brother-in-law though took the kids out for camping a few times every years. As for me, I think this is the first time joining them.

Any way, it will be like a party. Indeed, my niece I think is turning 5 today, so we will celebrate her birthday at the camp. My mom’s birthday too is over this weekend. Obligatory I have to show up 🙂

I know the kids will enjoy the trip. They are leaving for the camp today. I have work and so will join them tomorrow. Still debating if I should drive down after work…I’m afraid I might fall asleep behind the wheel.

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life

Day304 feeling defeated

I am feeling a bit deflated. Maybe it is just a natural progression after a long weekend trip.

I drove up to PA to meet with couple guys who were running a section of the Laurel Highlands Trail. None of the people in my group was running the whole thing that day but after I got home, I saw on Facebook some other people did do it, the whole 70.5 miles.

The 8 mile section we did was tough. We only did it once when originally we (mostly me) wanted to do it twice and at night with very little of sleep (in a delirious state).

The run was harder than I anticipated. I hiked the trail before and I thought I have improved a lot since then and I could take on running it. How hard can that be? It was hard.

I ran with couple hard core ultra guys. Those guys didn’t even sweat and I was out of breath the first mile. Then came the climb. They could run uphill but I could only run downhill. I got a blister on one of my toes from it. Dang it. Later on at the last three miles I rolled my ankle. Did it twice. Run was over for me. What a disappointing end, as I hobbled back to the car.

One of the guys, he was the fastest in our group, and the guy who invited me to run with him, shared about his DNF (Failed to finish) of his last race at the Black Forest Ultra. He said he tried his best and still could not make it to the last cut off time. He was over by a minute. He shared how he was in a funk since then.

That kind of put things in perspective for me. I don’t want to fail in a race. This guy I thought he is my idol and fast and there is a race out there, and he couldn’t make it. The race he failed was also one I wanted to do.

I am trying to find the motivation in me to run. My past weekend trip helped me to see how much more I must train to get ready for the real thing. The weekend was like a practice run and my wheel came off. The real race will be taken place sometimes in September – the race date hasn’t been set yet due to the coronavirus.

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life

Day302 crawling

The day is crawling by.

I was caught in the rain last night. I got my move back and ran 10 miles. It started raining at mile 5 and I had to head back. I checked the forecast then and it was showing the heaven is going open up. So I took shelter in the bus station and double check how long it would last. It was showing going last until midnight. I told myself, I am not sleeping in a bus station, I am heading home.

So dashed into the rain and ran as fast as I could. Luckily the rain was not as heavy as forecasted. After a mile or two the rain was gone and I arrived home. The heavy downpour didn’t start until midnight.

Thursday and weekend starts tomorrow. My camping trip is canceled. I am itching now to go to PA to do the 70 mile run on Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail (LHHT). Couple runners might do it but no one has committed. I don’t have a crew and it will be tough to take on. 22 hours to get from one end to the next. For me the problem is what to do once I reach the end. There is no signal to hail an uber and I will be 70 miles from my car and no town nearby. Jonestown is a bit away, if I must, then got to hike to the nearest town in the middle of the night.

I haven’t thought it through.

Or I stay local and run my 70 miles here. Or drive down to Tennessee border and do my long run there.

My GVRAT race has less than 90 miles to go. Then I would finish the 1000k challenge. Hoping for another 10 or 15 miles to knock off some of those miles.

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life

bit of everything

Day 238

I am a bit sleepy so I will try to make this quick. I feel if I don’t write something, I might never get to it.

This weekend is everything I want it to be. I totally exhausted myself. I did a 50K on Saturday (the full report will hopefully available some day). I love it a lot. Challenging and fun.

Then on Sunday I had my normal long run. Let me tell you, I almost did not survive the run. Five miles into it, the temptation was there to call an uber to pick me up. I in the end struggled through. It was one of my slowest long run…finished in 3.5 hrs.

Any way, I also did another race in the morning – a 10 miler. I really want to write a report for this since it was only possible from the tax refund I received earlier last week. I thought I was running fast, but I finished of a time that was’t that impressive. But I had my thrill. It was a hard race though.

Moving on, next weekend I will go back to PA for Laurel #2 run. It has been one month since I went there. Time is moving so fast. I will write more about Laurel #2 in a separate post. I just want my readers to know I am happy and can’t wait to get there for another training run.

More news. I booked my flight for Bolder Boulder Race (in Colorado). The ticket was not cheap at all. Many were saying no one flying any more, so in theory you can get cheap airflight. (I will write more about Boulder Trip).

There you have it.

(some minor post editing)

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life

Random Friday sort-of

Day 233 / weekend

A plug for my friend Isaiah Day who started this blog Player Development for athletes. I am anticipating his interview with an ultra distance runner next Tuesday 3/3 @10:00 ET.

More info about the interview can be found on his group Facebook page. ah…it is hard to link to FB.

Other news: This weekend probably won’t be much different.

Saturday! I will be hiking with my buddy K. No running… otherwise I would intimidate her. Actually I have seen her hiking faster than I can run on the trail. She is a downhill specialist.

We will be going to BuckHollow. It is one of my training destination. I have been lonely training for last five weeks and I have a partner to join me this weekend.

Sunday: Running the Pot of Gold 10K, which I wrote about in the previous entry. I am excited.

Rest of the day, I hope to squeeze in some long run.

There is actually quite a lot of things to do. Weekend is too short.

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running

weekly run summary

Day 231

This starts getting fun and I’m looking forward writing it.

This would be my fifth week. I have 15 more weeks before my Laurel Highlands race.

Total: 56-58 miles

Monday: rest. I didn’t want to rest because the week before I only did 9 miles* (plus 20+ miles of hiking), so I had fresh legs. In the end I rested anyhow because I wanted to put up big number again. Trust the plan, I told myself.

Tuesday: 4 mi. first day back running. It did feel heavy, not tired heavy but heavy from not haven’t run for a long time.

Wednesday: church and rested too because of time constraint. Ah, I know I need to wake up earlier so I could put in a run. Try again next week.

Thursday: 4 mi. second run for the week. Started to feel very good. Didn’t want to stop.

Friday: 13-14 mi. felt great and didn’t want to stop. Started the run early at 6 pm and finished by 8:30 pm. I would have ran some more but I had some work left at work to do and had to head back.

Saturday: 20 miles. I went back out to Buzzard Hill-Ashby Hollow. At first, I thought I wouldn’t able to do the whole thing because I got up late again, but lo, I was much much stronger this time. I could actually run some miles. At least for couple miles I could run under 17 min per mile! That’s the goal. I am still pretty slow though, 18 miles in 6 hours, that’s basically fast hiking (3 mph)!! I need to get that under 5.5 hours (race cut off speed). I double checked, my watch was showing 6k ft of elevation gain, so I had 12k ft of total elevation change. That’s a lot.

Sunday: 16 mi. Arlington/airport loop. The usual. Running on trail embarrasses me (frustrating too). I had to get back on road to feel that I could run. Running on trail now is still more like hiking than running. It was good feeling to know you could run and run fast. What a big different between trail and road!

I don’t hate long run now. Sunday has always been my best day. I do want to do Ashby Hollow again this weekend but also want to go somewhere else. Thinking about doing the Peak! Also The Little Devil’s Stair is cool too.

This post is already long enough, but while out on the trail, I met a volunteer who helped out at my last big race, the JFK50, he recommended me to try running up the Priest. This place is a bit far away, but it peeks my interest. I haven’t been there though (I was at the foot of it last time) could have gone up last year if not for the lyme desease.

Sunday Arlington Run – I love this route. Miles 7-11 have some big hills. My hill training out in the woods helped me finally able to run up on them
Buzzard Hill & Ashby Hollow. My training ground. 2nd attempt. Hope some day able to run the whole thing in 5 hours, even 6 hours is good enough for me (currently took me 7.25 hrs to do)
Friday run, Rock Creek to around Haine’s Point. I haven’t gone this far south for a long time. Very quiet place, but popular for cyclists during warmer time. My watch ran out of battery after mile 9 (I added our club run normal square route then to make it a 13 mile run). Haine’s Point is also part of the route for our local marathons and big races (DC RnR, Marine Corps, Air Force Half, and Cherry Blossom 10 miler)
Categories
running

weekly run summary

Day 225

I ran 56 miles last week

Monday: usually rest day, I rested

Tuesday: 4-ish miles with the group. I showed up in three layer shirt and did not realize it was 60 (15 C). Hot night.

Wednesday: rest night

Thursday: group run canceled because of rain and no one showed up. I ran 4-5 miles at least I think. I forgot. Cold and wet night.

Friday: 9 miles. cold and windy night. 37 F (3 C) when I started and tried to finish as fast as possible to avoid being out in the 20s.

Sat. 14+6. beautiful day, nippy in the morning. I finally went out on the trail. Woke up late and got to the trail by 11 am (I was 3 hrs late). I did 14 miles in about 5 hrs. So ended up mostly hiking. I was supposed to do more; Buzzard Hill + Ashby Hollow. This place was where I planned to do two weekends ago. Better late than never. By the time I got to Ashby Hollow, it was 2 pm. I decided to turn around, otherwise I might not get out of the woods until 9 or 10 pm. I only ‘ran’ 7 miles then and it took me 3 hours. I decided to hold off Ashby Hollow segment for another weekend. That should be only 5 more miles / 10 miles for out-and-back. I saw a couple at that point, who was probably doing the whole thing that day (24-25 miles for them). We passed each other when I started out and we were passing again at Ashby Hollow – well they could have been tailing me the whole time. They went on ahead into Ashby Hollow.

I got 2000+ ft of climbing in that stetch of about 7 miles (4000 ish at the end of my out and back). They don’t call the section the roller coaster for no reason. It was a lot of ups and downs.

I got home by 5 pm and decided I need some real running and did 6 miles in the neighborhood. It was so different to run on flat pavement. I could actually run and breath. Trail running really took my heart out of me. I thought I could run, but out on the trail, I was just like everybody else.

Sunday: 3.1 (5K) in the morning. 16 more miles in the afternoon. I did the airport/Arlington loop again.

How do I feel? I feel the miles started to get to me. Even with two days of rest in the week, I started out with tired legs on most of the runs. You know the feeling. Legs were heavy. This is my third week of putting up 50+ miles of training.

But I got 3rd place in my age group on my 5K race “Run Your Heart Out 5K”. My 2nd time being on the podium! I ran mine out. I was not fast (26:30) at all but the people who usually beat me were not there. I had run a 24 min time before and still not get a 3rd place, so I was glad to be on the podium this time!

Arlington Loop. Glad I have been doing it for third staight week. I won’t be running it next weekend because I will be out of town.
About two miles north of Ashby Hollow Trail Head, near a campsite (behind me). All of AT in Virginia looks the same: browish color. But can you believe it? This is only 45 mins from my home! Lucky me to have such good training ground. Still, I wouldn’t want to run out there in the dark if I don’t have to!