Western DNS

So, as my friends who read this already must know, I was a saddened DNS for Western States. Outside of the persistent lower back injury, I felt totally ready. However, as one friend put it, discretion is the greater part of valor, or however that saying goes.

For this record, the injury was incurred five weeks ago at the Jemez 50 Miler in New Mexico, likely as icannonballed down a ski slope at 10k, trying (successfully) to make a cutoff on a bad day on a tough course. I expected I'd recover, but there seems to be a major realignment type strain from the lower back, through the gluteal, to the hamstring. For three weeks, there was significant numbness and lack of feeling in my right foot, suggesting nerve damage. I saw the doctor, the chiro three times, and went for massage. I tried to get ready.

But then I did little test runs all the way up until the race, and significant pain was always immediately recognizable. The pain intensified in my lower back, so that after a mile or so I'd end up running cockeyed, leaning back or forwards and jogging off the calves, with a lump like pain growing in the glute and heat pain in the lower back. It just didn't work. If I could've knocked out a semi-pain free 10 miler, I probably would've started. Not to be.

I am content with the decision--it was the right call in pursuing the healthy life. It does suck, but there are worse things, and back surgeries are serious business.

So, i made a weekend of it just the same, checking out Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe, and the race. A good decision. I hung with friends, and the race is exciting to take part in as crew, or just as a fly on the wall. I crewed for friend Charlie and friend Rich, and Charlie did absolutely textbook terrific, probably even exceeding his expectations, or so it would seem from his pre-race chatter.

Thanks to my awesome crew of Rich, Linda, Tanya, Mike, and BJ. I feel like everybody adjusted to my circumstances phenomenally, and the support during the period before Western was filled with care and understanding. Congrats too to all my friends who got down their and participated, either as runners, pacers or crew. Washington State did very well.

I'll get some pictures up soon enough--I've posted them on FB already, but am now on a second. trip, this time to the east coast for business and family. This post in fact is brought to you from the "friendly" skies ($6 for the fruit plate--how friendly is that?) on my new Ipad. Tech is something else--happy to be on the ride.

I'm leaving things open for now--the mountains will be there. I am registered for Waldo and Cutthroat, so I suppose those are good goals to hope for.

Considering Western

Yet another slow weekend for running.  The last couple weeks have included a manic effort to get my back healed for Western, which is next Saturday, as well as a busy time at work. I originally injured my back at the Jemez 50m in New Mexico about a month ago, and it feels like all the muslces in my lower back, right side, and hip and hamstring are all re-finding their place. I've been to the doctor, three times to the chiro, and for massage, and there's been some improvement, but right now WS isn't looking good.  It's been stressful and frustrating, as I've become emotionally invested in the effort.

There's that saying, if the bone ain't showing, keep going. I don't have a snappy rhymie response to that--maybe "if you're hurt, (talk to Bert?)(chirp chirp chirp?)(try to flirt?)(you'll lose your shirt?)--I don't know. Bottom line:  this sucks, because this is Western, because I was ready, because I had an absolutely wonderful team of friends to help, because it'll be years before I get in again, because it does. 

Nonetheless, there's reality. I want to be smart, healthy, and happy, and I want to act like it too. Western is a tough 100 miles. On Saturday, I hung out with my family for Holley's 30th, at Waverly Beach in Kirkland. The obvious became more obvious to me as I talked and hung out with them and their kids. Frankly, my internal debate seemed silly, especially since I don't even know if the whole thing has any room for debate. When I've tested my wheels this week, I've felt sufficient pain to want to stop after running downhill 100 yards. I could run further, but my body clearly was saying walk.

Hanging with the fam, I was reminded of cousin Paul and Terri's back problem histories, my cousin Neal's arm difficulties, cousin Kim's knees. I've been fortunate. A PT friend of Paul's jokingly encouraged me to run, telling me that doctors need patients to pay for their waterfront homes, and he has his own mortgage too--a kind and caring way of urging caution.

I'll keep stretching, and maybe things will turn for the better this week. I hope so, and now I need to leave myself open for that too, since the wind is blowing towards not running. I will definitely go for it if it at all seems realistic. However, right now I foresee myself slowing down, enjoying the summer, hiking in the North Cascades, and giving myself some time to fully heal. There is some comfort to the dissapointment in feeling like I am approaching the whole thing the right way, and I feel like I am.

Dave and Blake

Bryce, Paul and Dan

Aidan and friend, putting rocks in buckets and dropping in the water. Important work.

Neil and proud high school grad Keifer, examining a beer bottle

14 Days

My lucky number is 14. Picked it at age 10 or so, after scoring 14 goals in a soccer season, and 14 was the number on my jersey.  And now, 14 days until the start line for Western. 21 days removed from Jemez, and still hurting in the back. I don't know.  Physically I feel ready, outside of the injury. The rest has probably done me good too. However, the pain is significant.

I saw a chiropractor yesterday. The chiropractor was good, and he is very hopeful about getting me whole. I told my Dad I was going, and he was like, oh, I wouldn't do that.  But it seemed good to me, and many have been pushing me to go. And today my foot is not numb, as it previously has been. But the back hurts. I'll return a few times, maybe see a massage therapist, do my due diligence. Due dilgence is legalspeak for my best.

I really wouldn't be too worried about it, except Western is such a hard race to get into. I am frustrated though, and I am bugged about being bugged about it, and this has been going on for a week or two now, and I'm ready to heal or move on. But I've had this event on my calendar all year, and there have been a lot of evenings and weekends in the hills.

It's like finals, or a big event on the calendar. No matter what you do or don't do, the clock just moves forward until you hit that date, ready or not. And then its done.

Makes me think of Whiskeytown's 16 Days, which for some reason I was thinking was 14 Days. It's a good song. "Ghost has got me running..."

Three Owls

Summer has been late to arrive this year, with the furnace still kicking in occasionally in June.  The weather was pretty nice tonight, though, and I decided I'd try to jog/run/move on my feet, on the horse trails behind Padden, despite my injury, or maybe because of it, and out of frustration to get out there. In any case, the run started out ok, but the pain is still localized, and it was frustrating, inasmuch as the rest of the body wanted to go, but there was a quite obvious pain to deal with.

I backed off.  After a mile, I turned to walking the trails. Moving slower, I came upon an owl sitting in a tree, 12 feet above the trail, the tree right next to the trail.  This is by the log that crosses the trail that you go under, after the big mud puddle pit. I started whistling at the owl, and he or she hissed and whistled back, cocking head while doing so. This went on for a while.

Soon, I recognized the same sort of hiss whistle to my left as well, and sought to locate the second owl, which I knew was there. Found the owl. After a while though, I honed in on a third distinct whistle. This one took longer to spot, but eventually I found it higher in a tree fifteen yards off. 

So, if I was a clock, the first owl was at 1:00, the second at 7:00, and the third at 9:00. The furthest away was 15 yards. Surrounded by three owls, in the same spot. That's a record for me.

A Walk In The Woods

Recovery comes slow this month. My Jemez race was two weeks ago today, and I still have a visible limp. I was walking into Starbucks the other day--limping that is, and this scraggly smoker guy sitting outside at the tables--he looked homeless--he jumps up and opens the door for me, with a very kindly smile, after watching me struggle across the parking lot. Now, I was touched by the generous act--it was unusual but completely sincere and not a solicitation or anything--he was just happy in the moment to help me in my disability. The kindness of strangers. But, it also kind of Sucked that my limp spoke so loudly.

I think that was Thursday morning. Thursday night I finally saw a doctor, which is not my thing, but everybody is telling me I need to talk to a pro, and I want to do My Best to heal. Plus, there was that latent concern that maybe I have a broken pelvis or coccyx, or a crusted kidney, or just a lard ass. Two hour wait to get down to the skivvies, and a $30 copay, but on the other hand, I got to see a doctor without an appointment, and see other sad sick people too.

Basically, the doctor thought I should take it easy, suggested maybe 50 miles is a little more than I should do at my age (you dumbass, I'm sure she thought), and gave me a prescription for ibuprofen and some sort of non-narcotic muscle relaxant. I joke, but she did give me some peace of mind too, inasmuch as she said I didn't have a hernia or anything more serious. Also, she was on her game---without me saying anything about it, she caught that all might not be well with my right foot, based on the old reflex test--where they crack you with the mallet below the knee. My foot wasn't responding as well as it should, which is consistent with the numbness I've felt there the last week.

Finally, today, I went out and moved around, hiking a loop around Blanchard in a little more than three hours, while the Blanchard 50k FA was going on. I didn't run much at all, as I would've been faking it and favoring wrong muscle groups. I just looked at ferns and trees and stuff, as I'm apt to do, and tried to remember the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven. Good to say hi and good morning to so many friends. There were probably about 20 runners, all regulars, or irregulars, as the case may be. And very good of Shawna and Alvin to keep the lamp burning on the run--thank you--after DNR blew it with Michael and Tamara's permit. Sorry to hear about the latter.

I actually felt ok this morning, and this afternoon I feel even better. Staying on my duff for a couple weeks, and then just stretching things out may be a good prescription for me. I'm feeling reasonably fit, and I ran a heavy May by my standards. If the muscles heal, I think I'll be ready for Western. If they don't, I can't do it. I couldn't do it this weekend, but as I said, I feel a little better this afternoon, and so I'm more hopeful now than I've been all week. 

And as to today, getting outside is so vital to me--I felt like a bit of a grouch at work this week, partly because of the muscle pain, partly because I hadn't been out, partly because of unwarranted  anxiety about WS.

After my walk in the woods, I dropped down to the MV raventment, and checked out the Farmer's Market. All the markets are finally getting going now. The Fairhaven one started this week too. I'd do a CSA, but I have friends who give me produce too. This year maybe I'll get a little more artful in my cooking of all the greens.

And...in the mail this week was my Pearl Jam Philly Spectrum boxset! Very nice! I caught the Halloween show--all 3 3/4 hours of it, and now I have it on cd! Why Go is suddenly a new favorite song of mine--that song aged really well.

Recovery

This long Memorial Day weekend is welcome and unplanned. When I looked at this weekend months ago, I thought I might spend some time in the North Cascades. Instead, I find myself taking it easy, trying to recover from last week's 50 miler in New Mexico. 63% finisher rate, I heard--that makes my crawl in seem a bit more understandable. However, now I have some sort of muscle/bone-and I'm not an MD problem-in my butt/hip/hamstring complex. It sucks--I was limping much earlier this week, and improvement is slower than usual, indicating some kind of more acute injury. Everything in me tells me just to take it easy, and let the body make itself whole, and so that's what I'm doing. Four weeks to Western. So this weekend I'm  working around the house, working on the computer, watching movies, reading, and cooking. And it is nice. Fortunately, bad weather doesn't make it all that desirable to be up in the mountains.

Jemez Mountain 50m

The Jemez 50 miler was last Saturday outside Los Alamos, New Mexico. I came in 98 out of 100 finishers, starting in the dark and finishing in the dark. Over 16 hours on 50 miles of New Mexico "trail", at a starting elevation of over 7000 feet, and periodically topping out over 10,000. Dry country, high country, and 80 degree sun during the day, with winds through burnt trees. It was tough.

I am not happy with my day, but a few days later, I am content. The real story of the day for me was persevering through hardship. I felt horrible. Physically, my stomach never got it together, perhaps a victim of the high altitude, fast travel, or lack of sleep. I just don’t know. It’s troubling, especially with Western States coming next month. This was, btw, imo, the perfect trainer. By afternoon, I hit that point where I wanted to puke, couldn’t, and had no interest in eating or drinking. I just kept moving forward, most of the time. The sun was constant for the middle of the day, reaching 80s with lots of exposure. Not too bad in the moment, but a slow cooker.

My favorite parts of the race—that which I want to remember most—are my out of nowhere spurt of energy from Townsite Lift to Ski Lodge.  I made the 5 PM cutoff by just four minutes--classic. Later, the hot wind blowing strong through the charred forest as the sun set, shaking still standing trees, making a wild pipes organ. I was reminded of T.S. Eliot and Stephen King’s Waste Land writings, as well as old Apache war movies.

Additional pictures of the course can be viewed at this link.

That's the non-scientific abstract. Here’s a bit more of a mile by mile summary of my run, longer than I usually write, but I exercise Blogger’s Prerogative, like Bobby Brown:

The Jemez 50 is in the Jemez Mountains, outside of Los Alamos, New Mexico. Rockets. Many of the good folks of Hardrock family are associated with the event in one way or another, and Bill Geist does a terrific job directing it. There’s a 50 miler, a 50k, and a half marathon. Shirt, a poster, pre and post-race dinners, pottery to finishers, great aid stations—just a blue chip organized event. Thank you to the volunteers and Bill.

So I met my long-time friend BJ in Albuquerque on Friday. A surgical strike--- fly drive park run unpark drive fly. Like an idiot, I scheduled a 6:15 AM flight down, which I later realized meant getting up at 2:45 AM. I was tired on arrival. After a dinner at the event, and a quick hangout with Mike and Fran, it was to bed in anticipation of the 5 AM start. Note:  Mike originally was going to run Jemez too, but bailed when he got into the Massanutten 100, his first 100, which he finished and did quite well in. Mike, here’s a public congrats if you’re reading this. There's always next year for Jemez.

So, 5 AM, Saturday morning: the start. From mile 1, I felt the altitude. It’s an odd effect. You run for a while, not too long—maybe a few hundred yards, and then you want to walk. Little slopes encourage walking. Longer sustained runs on flats encourage walking. I tried to be assertive when I did walk, but running a race at altitude is a different deck of cards, completely.

The first 17 miles include a climb up Guaje Ridge, an out and back to the top of Caballo Mountain (10k+), and another slog in the warming up of the day to Pipeline. I frequently ran near friend Thomas in these early miles. Good to see him out there. My stomach felt awful, and there were some retreats into the woods. I hoped to weather my difficulty and press on, which pretty much ended up being the theme of the day for me.

Racers need to make Mile 17 by 11:00, or a 50m finish is unlikely, we were told beforehand. That’s 6 hours. I didn’t think it’d be a problem--I'm in decent shape by my usual standards right now--but I didn’t get there until 10:20 or so. Struggles here, struggles there.  On arrival, an aid station worker told me I really ought to consider switching to the 50k, as I was close to the cutoff. I didn’t want to believe that, as I knew 11:00 was the pre-race adivsed mark. Mainly though, I was in New Mexico, and the Valle Caldera National Preserve was only available via the 50m route, and so off I went.

Out of Pipeline AS, there is an immediate screamer-slider of a descent into the Valle Caldera, which was formerly a sea of molten hot lava. Sort of fun. In the Caldera, the air is large, still air where you can hear insects and see runners far in the distance, doing their best. The road looks easy to run, and maybe it is for some, but I found after a couple hundred yards I’d want to walk. Unbelievable that the next aid station was only 21 miles into the race, and I’d been on trail roughly 6.5 hours. The math seemed strange, but others were right there with me. Already quite tired, with 29 to go.

The hardest section of the course was the 7.7 miles between the Valle Grande AS and the Pajarito Canyon AS. Right out of VG AS, the course off all trail across the grassy caldera, marked only by small red flags here and there. Again, runners far in the distance, before and behind. The last picture below is of this section. From there, it's up and through a fun boulder field, with tippy rocks and lichen on lava to roughen the hands. The climb afterwards was a killer, up to the summit of Cerro Grande Mountain at 10,200 feet. A similar descent, with more bouldering. This turns into a beautiful creekside run. It just took forever.

I remember ending up at Pajarito Canyon at about 2:15 PM, beat. Two hours and forty-five minutes to make the Ski Lodge should be enough I thought, but I wasn’t sure, and so I got as aggressive as I could, just in case. Turns out that was a good move, and from here to the lodge was my best section of the event. I did get off trail once, missing a turn, and losing five or ten minutes. Still, I finally made the aid station at the bottom of the ski lifts at 3:37.

Mike and Fran were there, and so great to see. I wanted to talk, but I was in the moment of hurry, and thought I probably ought to stay focused, even though I only needed to go 3.6 miles by 5 PM. Again, turns out I was right.

The next climb is up to Pajarito Mountain, which I have renamed Venti Mountain, since it is taller than Cerro Grande at 10,400. I thought we’d just go directly up the ski slopes—tough, but over and done. Wrong--instead, the trail switchbacks all over the place, hitting a number of false and deflating summits. Time was running out—I was looking at my watch. I crested at 4:40, with only 20 minutes to get all the way back down, and the ski lodge was nowhere in sight.

The hill was straight down, and I “booked it like a mug,” as I used to say in third grade. First you go over slippery glass, then you bounce on mountain bike ramps and logs, and then you cut through rocks. Double diamonds with skulls and crossbones. I injured my back, and I can’t walk that well right now. I also lost my sunglasses, which fell off my hat. But I made it in with four minutes to spare, and sort of felt like Al Bundy in one of his finest hour moments, with everyone cheering and me reaching for the finish. I was really happy.

Make the cutoff and you can take however long you need to finish. Since I was a wreck, and my back was hurt, I pretty much took forever. Unfortunate, because even at the altitude, I think I could've ran the last sections well, and I had sort of been planning on doing it that way all day. But that's the way it is, I suppose.

Those final fourteen miles took me four tired hours of patient suffering, winding back to Pipeline AS, over a spectacular mesa, through a canyon on cliffs of orange rock, and to the finish line in the dark. Gorgeous rock formations and hot rogue winds through charred trees made the experience memorable, as did the pain.

The finish line was terrific, as I heard cheers through the trees for the runner before me, and then my own turn came with a turn of a corner, and there were Mike, Fran, and BJ, giving up a shout. Thank you friends!

I was an absolute mess--I wasn't sure what hurt and what didn't---all I knew was I wanted a seat. Also, with the finish, I didn’t know whether to be happy or not, since I came in so late and it was only a fifty miler and I'd been running well this year....but in that moment, I was just glad to be done. Sometimes the fight is just to make it through a bad day, and I know this--it wasn't my first bad day, but I have been running well lately. As BJ noted though, I've done three ultras in four weeks. A few days later, I feel pretty fine with it all. I now hope to return some year soon, just to take another crack at it and see those sights again.

Incredible life experience.