17 tips for your COVID-19 quarantine from a sports medicine professional

One of my duties as a healthcare professional is to help keep people healthy, but that’s especially important as we enter a period of massive uncertainty. While I might not be able to follow you around and provide hand washing reminders, I can give you some helpful health recommendations. So what are you to do during your COVID-19 lockdown? 

1. Wash your hands. Don’t touch your face. Don’t pick your nose. Don’t put your hand down your pants. Oh wait, those last two were for my 6 year old. 

2. Keep working out. Keep working out. Keep working out. I suspect most people reading this already have the desire to exercise regularly, but there are a few folks that might become a little more flaky now that their routine is disrupted. You can’t let that be an excuse. You can’t let change stop you. Your spouse might have to tolerate watching the kids for an 20 extra minutes. Big deal. We all have excuses. If you need a routine, make a new one. It’s New Year’s resolutions, part two, baby! Be adaptable and resilient. If you can’t obtain the same amount of time to exercise as you previously did, remember a little exercise goes a long way. Break it up through the day if you can’t get a single bout. If it’s less than 4 hours between, it’s similar to one bout as far as your recovery goes anyway. 

3. But don’t do anything silly if you have some extra time! If you’d been exercising 3-4 hours per week, don’t automatically jump to 8-10 hours of the same thing just because you are bored. Otherwise, you’ll set yourself up for injury, and while I’d love to have you in my office, injury prevention is ideal. I get that the exercise provides a psychological security blanket, but it’s not worth going overboard. If you do have extra time because your commute is gone or you locked your kids in the basement, you can ramp your volume up gradually by about 30 minutes each week for things like very easy running or hiking. You can get away with more time each week if it’s naturally less hard on your body, like cycling or elliptical. 

4. Involve your family. Childcare can be hard to come by so let’s get those kiddos moving right along with you. You’ll all sleep better and maybe you’ll be a little less likely to lock them in the basement. Did I just say that again? 

5. Eat well. Comfort foods? Moderation my friends. Whole foods as best as you can obtain. Don’t raid the junk food cabinet in a moment of weakness because then you’ll not only feel bad but then have to go to the store to get more junk food and you’ll be exposed to more virus carrying people. Coronavirus and Snickers or ration the Kit Kats. Your choice. 

6. Don’t go crazy on the alcohol. Moderation my friends. Again. Do you want your kids' memory of this nonsense to be the time mommy got blotto and tried to teach math but then promptly fell down the stairs and broke her wrist? Didn’t think so. Our situation is not going to be improved by poor sleep and feeling gross either. 

7. Practice good sleep hygiene. Try to stick to your normal sleep habits as best as possible. No screens past whatever o’clock works for you. 

8. Go outside! It’s getting warmer and the days are getting longer. Even a warm rain is pretty tolerable if you have the right equipment. Just try to appreciate your surroundings in whatever conditions Mother Nature conjures up. There are so many articles encouraging us to exercise outside because the likelihood of COVID-19 transmission in the outdoors is very low. I can tell there are fewer vehicles on the roads right now, so let’s hope the air is a little cleaner for breathing. Though I heard a really bizarre thing about people trying to blame runners for spreading the virus throughout the public because they are breathing so deeply during a workout. Seriously? 

9. Use your extra fitness from the buildup to an event that’s been cancelled. I’ve had events rescheduled or cancelled in the next couple months. I don’t like it either, but it’s not about me, it’s about the greater good of the public. Many of us like to have an event goal or we mentally wander, we feel less productive, we get hurt from overdoing, or we lose motivation. Run an FKT or make up an adventure run. Being a map nerd, adventure runs are nearly a weekly occurrence for me. Let me know if you need tips. 

10. Do the maintenance and recovery work you keep putting off. Break out the roller, trigger point release all the muscles you neglect, stretch your terrible hip flexors. Try yoga. Try meditation. Oh, and strength train. Even 5-10 minutes of lifting something you would call heavy is worth it. It doesn’t have to be fancy. For resistance bands, old bike tubes actually work really well. Sand bags or sand in a milk jug makes decent DIY hand weights as will a bag or bucket filled with soup cans. Drag an old tire. Body weight exercises are always a possibility and I’ve seen 20 blog posts on that already. I’ve written about strength training a few times on this blog. 

11. Maybe it’s time to build out that home gym or garage gym. Be realistic though. Don’t buy a bunch of unnecessary equipment you won’t use, especially with financial limitations being a possibility in the next few weeks. A medicine ball and a couple weights can accomplish a lot, especially when you work one arm or one leg at a time. My new favorite toy is a MOBO board. Never underestimate the power of learning to move your body better. 

12. Just move and move often. The less you move, the crappier you’ll feel. Especially if you are accustomed to being really active, I guarantee it. We are built to move. It doesn’t even have to be exercise in the sense that you are most familiar. What sounds like fun? Be creative. What would you have done for fun when you were a kid? Kickball? Soccer? Bike ride? Hula hoop? Hop scotch? Just move. This is one of the most powerful things you can do to prevent illness by using your full lung volume, encouraging lymphatic flow, and maintaining/improving your immune system. You’ll be glad you did it. You won’t stay sane by staying so myopic. 

13. Get a friend or coach to hold you accountable to staying active. 

14. Go camping. Consider it apocalypse preparation practice. It’s pretty good at helping you realize what you need instead of what you want. Just don’t go too far from home in case you absolutely need to bail. 

15. Take up trail running. I seriously have no idea why this one entered my mind. *Writer smiles in a smug and annoying way.* 

16. Don’t get too sucked in by the media. It’s good to stay informed, but it’s too easy to drown in the negativity if you keep checking social media and the news every 10 minutes. 

17. Think beyond your typical coping mechanisms now that your stress level is inevitably higher. Meditation. Writing for pleasure. Reading for pleasure. 

Please share this list with those who would benefit from it! AKA everyone. 

Urban Trail Running: Scenic Opportunities Abound in Morgantown (Plus New Bonus Material)

I recently had the opportunity to write an article for Highland Outdoors magazine that covered a few of the best hidden Morgantown trail running gems. Head on over to https://www.highland-outdoors.com/urban-trail-running-morgantown/ to read the original full article. But while you are here, check out a couple parks that weren’t included in the magazine!

Westover City Park

As the newest addition to our local trail system, Westover just recently completed the construction of these heavily planned, machine-cut trails thanks to a large state grant fund. The total length of the main loop is about 1.5 miles. There are a couple shortcut trails bringing the total up, but only slightly. There’s a little climbing and descending throughout the winding loop but nothing sustained in either of those departments. The trails are designed to be beginner mountain biker friendly, which ultimately means they are smooth and flowy.

• Great for: Beginner trail runners or the trail-curious road runner who gets anxious at the sight of a single piece of gravel. This network is small, non-technical, and easy to follow. Parents, bring the kiddos and have them bike ride the loop with you while you run. Done already? Turn around and do it the other direction. Then the kids can play on the playground afterwards.

• Trail difficulty: 1 out of 5

• Driving time from town center: 6 minutes to the Dupont Road parking lot, the main trailhead entrance

Mason-Dixon Historical Park

Like White Park, Mason-Dixon Park is another Monongalia County park undergoing a recreation transformation in the last couple years thanks to the work of the park superintendent and mountain biker, J.R. Petsko. What began as a handful of short, poorly maintained trails has blossomed into a well-maintained, 5-mile trail network. Although the official park is in WV, the trails flip flop back and forth between PA and WV. Most of the surfaces are less technical packed clay, typical of a flood plain, or mown grass, but with enough rocky and rooty singletrack to keep things interesting. Running along Dunkard Creek might just spot you a beaver or a bald eagle. Fairies live in the woods, so keep your eyes open. Take on a solid 0.6 mile climb that will require power hiking from the creek to the summit of Browns Hill where the Mason-Dixon Line ended when it was initially surveyed. From the west edge of the park, add more miles along Henflint Road, which is more of a wide trail than a public road.

• Great for: Beginner to intermediate runners looking for a nearby change of scenery with options to stay flat or take on some sustained climbing if the mood hits. You can stay busy for 60-90 minutes. Like Westover City Park, the Green Trail (in title photo above) is very kid bike friendly and the young ones can stick around to play on one of the many playgrounds before heading home. That is, if you can get them away from the Fairy Doors Trail.

• Trail difficulty: 3 out of 5

• Driving time from town center: 24 minutes

West Virginia Trilogy Race Report and Tips

How do you succinctly summarize three days of beautiful fall trail running in a remote part of West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest? Unforgettable. That probably sums it up.

Cool. Blog post complete. Man, I am good at this. Why am I not getting paid to write this kind of insightful material?

Fine. Ok. Let me try again.

The West Virginia Trilogy is: 1) a stage race, 2) a trail race, 3) an ultramarathon, 4) unforgettable. So that’s kind of a single orange sugar maple leaf on a twig that connects to a bigger bough on the massive tree of running. It’s a niche event, though remarkably well known.

Alright. You get the idea. Really got you with that tree reference, right? Now I can stop writing.

More? Come on people. I’m still tired from running this thing. Just go do it yourself and save me the trouble! At least try one of the days.

What? You only run on roads but love a good, or even mediocre, story?

Awesome! I’m full of mediocre stories. Watch this.

Once upon a time, in a magical Appalachian forest, not that far away, in a tiny village near the great kingdom of Circleville, there were 36 trail runners that embarked on an unforgettable woodland adventure filled with amazing creatures, treacherous terrain, and furious battles with their own minds and bodies.

Boo ya. Done. I’m outta here.

Oh no, now I can’t quit. Thanks a lot. Here’s a pic then.

courtesy anne foreman

Each adventurer had invested roughly 14,000 rubles ($200 American) during the summer’s most oppressive heat and humidity for a chance at traversing 94 challenging miles with 15,000 feet of ascent, a sunrise summit of Spruce Knob, a Patagonia zip-neck pullover, a cool T-shirt, six hearty and warm meals, pleasing beverages, and the ultimate finisher’s mug to support their bragging rights.

Consider these items critical to their success in completion of their self-inflicted mission/journey/challenge/adventure subscribed to in a moment of unclear thinking.

1) The clothing will be used in desperation to keep warm at 2:00 AM when the temperature drops into the low 30s and they don’t realize exactly how cold it is to sleep in a tent at such temperatures.

2) Food provides the nourishment necessary to run three long days in a row. You probably shouldn’t do that without eating, duh.

3) The beer numbs the painful legs and minds of the Trilogy runner and may provide finish line motivation for many. Or perhaps makes you more tolerant of the runner at dinner who refuses to shower between race stages. It may even help the frigid snoozing of those individuals sleeping in the two shirts just mentioned above. The coffee is a motivator that makes people think they can push themselves to phenomenal limits that they probably shouldn’t. Oh wait, that’s beer too.

4) Finisher’s mugs to sip hot cocoa in the coming winter months while reflecting on their adventure should they survive the mission/journey/challenge all while tortuously contemplating “Should I do that again next year?”

Don’t Do this Race if This looks like too much work

I understand some people stay in the yurts that are on site at Experience Learning but I could never do that, only because “yurt” sounds a little too much like a sound that your stomach makes at mile 40 of 50 before you emergently need to find a large tree to hide your bare ass. Not saying I’ve done that but just saying where my mind goes. I personally slept in the back of my truck curled up like a roly poly pill bug.

Runners are welcome to participate on any single day, but don’t be surprised if a competitive three-day Trilogy runner will do their best to run you and your fresh legs into the ground and make you feel bad about your clearly unwise decision to race only a single day. It’s popular for some people to run the 50K on Friday and the half marathon on Sunday, skipping the 50 miler on Saturday to do more important things, like trimming their toenails or maybe volunteering for the 50 miler, in which case THANK YOU! Also thank you for trimming your hideous toenails. By the way, you might want to see a podiatrist about that one little piggie.

The 50K appetizer

We had great weather for the 50K on Friday, though overnight temperatures dropped enough to leave frost in the lowest dips. I was surprised (yet not surprised) to see the number of runners hammering the first 2 miles of the course after the 7:00 AM start. I’m old and don’t like to experience 5K pain anymore, so I fully endorse a nice, gentle start when it’s going to be such a long weekend. No need to hurt my fragile, little quadriceps earlier than necessary. Although, on second thought, if you are racing me, please do go ahead and floor that accelerator as hard as you can for the initial three or four miles since we all know a 50K is really short, your pace never fades, and you’ll have so much trouble passing the slow conga line of people I’ll be leading in that fourth hour on all of the narrow cliff-lined singletrack.

courtesy anne foreman

I caught Trevor Baine just after the first aid station, which are, by the way, really close together for the 50K. Shortly after, as we descended the Elza Trail, I hooked my right shoe solidly on a sharp root and refused to disengage it, just to make sure Trevor was paying attention behind me. I had enough time to think “that was a dumb idea” and somehow saved myself from creating a crater in the earth with my face, sparing my already titanium teeth. The occasion did provide at least five more minutes of amusement for the two of us. We trotted and chatted along together for the next couple hours, occasionally catching a glimpse of a runner in front of us.

Trevor and I eventually came upon Bob Luther just past Judy Gap on Bear Hunter Trail, but then Bob proceeded to educate us on descending skills while coming back down Horton Trail. I became particularly timid while descending when I rolled my left ankle on a narrow, cambered section. We’d chase Bob up Seneca Creek, freezing our legs a more and more with each crossing. Bob rejoined us on the ascent of Judy Springs Trail. Being the phenomenal runner that she is, Judy Gap caught back up to us as well. If only Judy Gap was a real person and not the name of the aid station. Oh, the dad jokes you must endure to finish this unnecessarily long blog post!

For me, the most mentally difficult part came when running the flat but very rocky Lumberjack Trail from mile 24 to mile 27. After a brief gravel road section and a stop at the Seneca aid station, I didn’t run very long until I came into what appeared to be a beaver dam area and promptly fell flat on my face, just as I was recognizing that there were definitely some deep holes to watch out for amongst the water, sticks, and high grass. And that’s where I’m writing this entire thing from while I await rescue. Do you think they’ll be here soon to get me?

A brushy, briary section of old logging road eventually clears out and leads to quicker logging road travel. Pushing the effort up Cardiac Hill to catch Bob, I cramped at my inner right thigh muscles, briefly stopped to stretch, and somehow managed to catch back onto him in the field next to the Experience Learning facilities. I’m not sure either of us wanted to kick to the finish knowing more than 60 miles remained in the coming days but I picked it up to finish in 5:06:54.

The 50 mile main course

The good weather continued for the 50 miler on Saturday. A slight vehicular position adjustment of precisely 25 degrees in the coronal plane and 13 degrees in the transverse plane dramatically improved my sleep quality. I don’t need your Tempur Pedic mattress. It had warmed slightly in the night as cloud cover moved in, maybe to the mid to upper 40s. Enough to have less condensation inside the truck than the night before. Every degree counts when you are sleeping outside.

The start was an hour earlier at 6:00 AM, and perhaps the resulting fatigue led to a less aggressive pace than the day before, thank goodness. There was a brief confusion (loss of consciousness) at mile 2.2 where I followed a few runners onto an incorrect trail but everyone I could see in front of me quickly realized the mistake. This is a much easier mistake to make in the dark because you tend to focus only on what your headlamp lights, like the giant nocturnal woodrats and whistlepigs. This resulted in needing to pass a few extra folks up the climb but really left me wondering what position I was in for a long time.

Strange creatures on the game Camera courtesy Katie Wolpert

Striding along the only pavement in the entire race climbing up to Spruce Knob, I was in a group of fast moving folks. They must have saved that quick start for that stretch instead of the initial mile. It was still dark amongst the trees atop the mountain so I kept the headlamp. “NO WHISTLEPIGS GONNA EAT ME TODAY!, I yelled. I ran alone, surely talking to myself in increasingly greater quantities, for about a mile heading down Huckleberry Trail, then came upon Bob Luther and did my best to pace with him for the majority of the race. Hopefully he wasn’t counting on quality solo running time.

As we headed up the Allegheny Mountain Trail climb from the mile 25 aid station, the fog and drizzle were rolling into the top of the adjacent ridge. Within the hour, it had reached us, chilling me a little in the process. The aid stations were much further apart than yesterday’s race, which is one of the challenges/mind games you must endure. I was pleased to find warm broth to drink at the mile 33 Horton aid station (though I may have been better off to bathe my aching muscles in it). I also didn’t mind the brief chunk of gravel road after the descent had beaten me down.

Seneca Falls courtesy Anne Foreman

Bob encouraged me to use this last major climb up Spring Ridge Trail to push before descending back to Judy Gap at mile 40. So I did. Maybe he was tired of listening to my heavy breathing or hearing about my obsession with megafauna. Despite all the climbing, I was pretty chilled and anxious to get off of the cold ridge. He had described the portion after Judy Gap as being more quickly runnable and, if I had the legs left, to take advantage of the lack of climbing and lack of technicality.

Check Out these Nice Volunteers Dealing with My Problems. What’s in the Thermos?

I pushed the pace well through mile 44 up Seneca Creek Trail but was definitely getting annoyed with the taller grasses on the former timber road of the Allegheny Mountain Trail until the mile 46 aid where I definitely did not feel like eating anything and just wanted to be done. Of course the paparazzi (aka my wife) showed up to harass me, always in search of that ridiculous eyes crossed, mouth open, and drooling camera shot to sell to the National Enquirer. I caught up to Frank Gonzalez here, and we ran the remainder of the course hard (at least for me), hurdling a couple fences and power hiking the heck out of Cardiac Hill in the process. I passed Frank and pushed through the top of the climb and then proceeded to have Frank outkick me so fast in the final 200 yards that he must have a hidden turbo button. I was pretty cold and frazzled so I took a long, warm shower, and went back to sleep with the baby whistlepig in my truck for about 90 minutes. (Special thanks to the nice couple that felt sorry for the barely conscious idiot that I am and drove me to my truck!) Finish time: 9:03:27.

Courtesy Anne Foreman

The half marathon dessert

For the Sunday finale, the race directors brought in more fantastic weather for the half marathon. The sky was clearer and more chilly again overnight but at least this race doesn’t start until 9:00 AM. I wasn’t sure how my legs would fare on this third day, but why not just see what it feels like to go completely anaerobic for well over an hour after all those longer runs? Coffee! More coffee!

YURTZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Power

The start was faster and reminiscent of Friday, especially since there were 95 total half marathoners and 36 5K runners. Who are these people who lack sunken eyes? The legs felt good after the prologue loop and it felt easy to hit the first real trail descent down Cardiac Hill with intensity. The half course was very runnable, probably because of the gravel road sections, but definitely didn’t have a shortage of climbs, yielding 1800 feet of climb on my watch. I didn’t realize what a test I was in for with the gravel climb up to the Gatewood Firetower. That left a scar. At least you get to bomb back down it, though I felt like I was flailing like a used car dealership’s inflatable windsock man. Back along some gravel, drop down the hill, and once more through the bottom of the cow pasture with fence jumps and crawls to return to Cardiac Hill and the 94 miles of racing is, sadly, about to come to an end. Today’s time to completion: 1:39:26

Total Trilogy time: 15:49:47. Meanwhile some dude broke 2 hours in a laboratory experiment marathon and stole all of my thunder.

Courtesy Katie Wolpert

RESULTS Link

Tips for an aspiring Trilogy stage runner:

Do some back-to-back longer running, perhaps with some higher effort on the second day to mimic running on tired legs.

1. Have an understanding of your typical recovery time for a given type of effort. It takes much less time to recover from 20 miles of aerobic running where you were comfortable the whole time, eating well, and drinking plenty than it does to recover from the same distance where you were anaerobic, breathing heavily, and barely eating and drinking. Do not do that in this race!

2. Eat and drink constantly. Sure, in a typical ultramarathon you still have to eat and drink often to even complete the distances but if you get too far behind in your intake one day, the next day or days will suffer. You have to take more of a preventative attitude and remember you aren’t eating for the current situation as much as eating for the next day.

3. Along those same lines, eat and drink as immediately as you can tolerate after finishing each run. According to something known as science, or better yet, physiology, there’s a “glycogen replacement window” that remains most effective at rebuilding your spent muscle glycogen stores in the couple hours following exercise.

4. Hygiene. Shower as soon as you finish each day, otherwise you won’t make friends. But more importantly, there are just way too many bacteria waiting to flourish on your skin and cause jock itch. The warm showers on site made life so much more pleasant.

5. When it comes to gear, bring it, even if you don’t think you’ll need it. I ended up loaning some clothing items because I had extra. Of course I only loan the sweatiest, dirtiest items that I just took off. You are welcome, Anne!

6. And on a related note, bring extra pairs of shoes. Maybe even models designed for different conditions like super muddy or dry. Or in the case you really damage a shoe, you’ll have spares. I ripped a one inch gash through the top of a new pair on the first day when it hooked on a pointy root. You never know what’s lurking out there that might shred your shoes. Whistlepig teeth are also very sharp and are known to penetrate up to two inches of solid metal so your shoes are no match.

7. Run at least an open 50 miler beforehand. Unless you just love the process of suffering and learning the hard way, I would not suggest your first 50 miler to be in the middle of the Trilogy (unless that’s your open event) because your legs and body will feel like it’s 70 miles instead of 50 by the finish.

8. Don’t let your mind wander too much while running. The 50 mile cutoffs are more aggressive, so you have to stay on task. The rocks under the leaves want to hurt you. I fell down twice and rolled my left ankle once the first day, rolled my right ankle once the second day. Too much of an injury and the entire weekend is ruined!

9. Observe and apply the knowledge and methods of a veteran Trilogy runner. It drives me absolutely nuts when people think they know it all and completely resist the advice and help of their more experienced peers. There’s always something useful to be learned from someone else. For me this was Bob Luther, a previous winner of the Trilogy. He knows the courses well and gave me fantastic advice throughout the 50 miler but especially for the closing 10 miles. I was also able to pace with him for the end of the 50K and his input on the half marathon gave me an idea of when to best push my effort. Without his guidance and presence, my performances in all three races would definitely have been slower than if I had gone in blind.

10. Don’t forget about the climbs and power hiking. FYI: the mountains aren’t going anywhere.

11. If you have a bad day, don’t underestimate the power of good nutrition followed by a good night’s rest for improving the next day’s performance. Just get it in ASAP. This does not mean drink a bunch of beer.

12. If you plan on camping each night at the Trilogy, go camping a couple times before the race to work the kinks out of that process so it’s not another stressor on race weekend.

I’m continuing this already lengthy rhetoric to take time for a public service announcement on thanking your friendly, local race directors. Thank you Adam Casseday and Dan Lehman for mobilizing volunteers, marking and trimming a ridiculous amount of trail, finding sponsors, losing sleep, tolerating stupid questions from racers, stressing, and repeating the same things over and over again that you clearly posted on the event website. Thanks to Katie Wolpert of Experience Learning for inviting us all to your great venue. Thank you mom for watching my kids. Thank you Anne for not publishing those couple terrible drooling photos you took of me.

Eastern States 100 Race Report

With the help of a few good people, I managed to survive a race that is considered by many trail runners to be the toughest 100 miler in the Eastern US. That’s hard to quantify, but there’s a few considerations in support of the argument. First, it’s longer than 100 miles at 103+ miles. Second, there’s about 20,000 feet of climbing matched by an equivalent amount of descending. Third, there are many rocks and roots that want to hurt you (and they will succeed). Fourth, it’s August in PA so there’s bound to be some humidity and heat. Fifth, rattlesnakes. Sixth, Sasquatch. Seventh, the course is closely monitored by a violent drug cartel known as The Fuzzy Friends Club.

I think I executed it well as a 90 miler. Which, according to my Monday-after arithmetic, leaves about 13 miles of tough terrain to suck it up and go into survival mode. Not knowing the course, I knew I was running in a way that was taking a chance, chasing a time goal on terrain I’d never seen, hoping that the elevation profile and talk of the elevation changes being more forgiving in the later stages would pay off. Well that didn’t quite work. I would have been better off trying to run this like it was 115 miles, but it was still memorable and awesome.

It fascinates me how quickly events like this can go by. Anyone crewing or pacing would probably disagree, but for the runner, it’s crazy how such an intense focus allows time to slip past. The whole experience became so robotic that it’s impossible for me to remember the order of some locations and various events. But I was told by crew captain Anne that it’s like childbirth and if I don’t quickly write something down about the events, I’ll really forget what happened. The one and only obvious difference is that after 30 hours of labor I gave birth to a finisher medal and finisher jacket that will never require swaddling, changing, or feedings in the middle of the night.

After getting to bed way too late and struggling to fall asleep on Friday night, I awoke at 3:50 AM to shovel in more of the sweet potato and bacon hash from dinner’s leftovers. Staying at Happy Acres Resort made for an easy one-mile commute to the start line at Little Pine State Park. I basically hopped out of the truck and walked to the start line to hear the pre-race meeting and took off at precisely 5:00 AM.

Starting with a paved road mile, of course people haul ass. I held way back and still ran an 8:30 mile. Eventually we enter the woods within the campground and of course the climbing begins up the Mid-State Trail and didn’t seem to let up until day was breaking atop the first mountain, at around five miles, with a couple hermit thrush performing their daily ritual. Very steep. Unusually steep? Shades of what was to become a theme. I was able to briefly chat with my future pacer, Aaron Watkins, volunteering at the Ramsey Road aid station (mile 5.8).

And the road runners just can’t seem to understand why the paces are so “slow”

I ran a lot of this first section with eventual women’s winner Meg Burke, who seemed to be in great spirits, and I wondered then if she wouldn’t eventually take the win. We bombed one of the next descents where I just about ended my day early by rolling my left ankle slightly on a “sexy because it’s barely-there” strip of off-camber singletrack. That would have been sad. Alas, I carried onward, too dumb to care and too stupid to quit.

At Ramsey aid station (11.3 miles) I could still think straight and chatted with the race director briefly about his champagne-laden aid station at another great race, Rock ‘N The Knob, last year. A brief, two minute jaunt up the rail trail results in access to more trails that go straight up the mountainsides, soon connecting onto the Tiadaghton Trail. Several more minutes of hiking and more lovely, non-technical ridge running followed.

You’ll notice I’m not running. Image courtesy Lugnut Media.

During the next long descent, Meg and I were fooled into thinking we could hear people yelling but realized shortly thereafter that it was just a rooster crowing on the opposite side of Pine Creek. We eventually reached Lower Pine Bottom (mile 17.8), which felt like an accomplishment unto itself. This was the first crew accessible point, so I did a little strip tease for the spectators to make a couple of quick bucks, changed into some fresher clothes, took a couple minutes to eat and headed on back to a nice gravel climb up Lower Pine Bottom Road. That nice climb had to end, of course, as we then traversed the always steep, never flat Wolf Path. Didn’t see any wolves, so I want my money back. Clearly no one has ever taught the local trailbuilders about the concept of switchbacks. This one sucked a little out of me. I didn’t see any Sasquatch in the designated Sasquatch pen at the top of the climb either.

Where were you when I needed you to comfort me the most, at 3 A.M., SMOKEY? It’s a little known fact that Smokey “Da Bear” is the head of the Fuzzy Friends Drug Cartel. There is a fully automatic weapon in Those 80’s denim jeans and that’s why he never wears Jorts, even on hot days like This. Truth. Just look at those Eyes.

I gained a new running partner for a bit, cruised through a couple more ups and downs, and had the unfortunate chance to watch my partner take a hard digger into the dirt on one of the descents. Chunks of this section are ATV trails, though I saw no recent evidence of ATVs. I tried to eat like crazy upon entering the Brown’s Run aid (mile 25.8) because I knew there was a long climb coming. If only I had received lessons in effort dispersal. Browns Run was nice to cross occasionally for a dip of the hat or a splash of the face, but it also became mildly annoying after the fifth or sixth crossing.

Probably shouldn’t have been running here. Image courtesy a nice person on Facebook.

While the Dutchman might have been happy at aid station 5 (mile 31.6), I was not. Because I had the stupidity to believe that the more runnable 5.8 mile climb up the Browns Run creek ravine should actually be run. That’s probably why I was getting annoyed at the creek. I hung at the aid station additional time to make sure I was un-bonking, started walking, and took a couple bites of a pierogi, which immediately and violently came back up with one big heave. Something about that squishy, doughy, jellyfish-body texture really didn’t agree with me at that moment. Welcome to the Vomiting Dutchman, may I take your order, please? On second thought, you can shove your order where the sun doesn’t shine. I hate you. Go away and stop eating fast food because it’s horrible for you...

OK... any who… where was I? So I’m going to need to shift to frequent but tiny amounts of food for a while because I doubt large quantities of anything will sit well. I nursed an energy gel as I shuffled along the grassy snowmobile trails, trying to stay in sight of the eight to ten runners who had come into the aid station just behind me. I was thankful and surprised that this was more of a plateau, because it allowed me to recover but still get in a few miles without taking too many more forceful punches to the stomach.

The Ritchie Road aid (mile 38.5) had some wonderful ramen noodles and grilled cheese, which the volunteers swore wouldn’t make me vomit, and did indeed become safe options the rest of the race, along with my standby bananas. There’s a great view just past the aid station if my memory serves me correctly. I really enjoyed my time in the powerline section, listening to the comforting snaps and crackles that accompany the highest voltages. Race directors put these kinds of sections in to mess with people so now I’ll return the favor. The electrical field must have messed with my brain’s neural connectivity because I had visions of taking a selfie with two Pringles chips perched on my lips to make “ducky lips” but I forgot to take the photo so you’ll have to imagine it or use Photoshop. I soon caught a couple folks as I exited the woods and we chatted about the Oregon Trail video game, rattlesnakes, and deadly jellyfish down the next section of gravel road.

Gliding into Hyner Run (43.2 miles) was really great. There must have been a hundred spectators at the crewing area. What wasn’t great was the climb out of that ravine. Wow. Brutal. Rocky. Technical. Still no Sasquatch sightings in the next Bigfoot pen but that’s okay because I’m getting my money back for the lack of wolves earlier. May have smelled one though, just not sure because this was my first visit into a Bigfoot pen. Very positive I saw one of those giant, interwoven ground nests that Sasquatch fabricate as an indication of their highly intelligent capabilities.

Let me see that 5:00 minute mile

I believe it was prior to Halfway House (mile 54.7) I saw a gun on the ground and had to go back to make sure it wasn’t real. It wasn’t. Then there was an unopened can of beer on a log, and shortly after a terrifying collection of stuffed animals known as the Fuzzy Friends Club. Rumor was a guy was sitting there playing a harpsichord/Autoharp for the folks behind me but I missed that spectacle. Not sure if I should be sad as it was plenty creepy enough?

Some kind of Fuzzy Friends club Trap I didn’t fall for

That perverted smile on the bright green frog’s face is what offends me the most about this group photo of the various criminal members of the Notoriously Evil Fuzzy Friends Club.

You can’t tell that this is ridiculously steep and once you reach the bottom there’s a mirror image of this descent to climb back up.

Another notable, long, and technical climb precedes the unmanned Callahan Run aid station at 59.4 miles. The sun was getting lower now, which looked beautiful through the trees. I was looking forward to Slate Run to pick up my pacer. Before descending I envied the man who had set up camp for the night at this awesome overlook, the Hemlock Mountain Vista.

First up to pace me from Slate Run (mile 63.8) would be Aaron, fresh off his finish at Laurel Highlands Ultra, which also has some steep climbs. I tried to keep things interesting for the volunteers (and myself) by threatening to throw bacon slices at a uniformed Air Force member that was hassling me. Aaron and I couldn’t exactly start out running because the next section begins with a 3-mile uphill grind. We were so close to seeing the sunset at a couple of the overlooks on the way up but our timing was off by maybe 10 minutes. Still daylight but no sun. Nice pics at least, and it was still beautiful to look upstream and across the Slate Run ravine in the orange glow.

Not that it was crazy hot all day, but it was plenty humid and warm enough that I welcomed the cooler temperatures as night fell. Aaron and I ran frequently through the Algerine Wild Area because a lot of it is a plateau. I told him I noticed a theme to the course: 1) crazy steep climb for 30 minutes, 2) go across a plateau that’s surprisingly runnable, 3) descend something that’s half runnable and half steep back down to a road, 4) repeat.

I wanted to get Aaron a new Facebook profile Pic

I lost my bottle of quick pick-me-up Coca-Cola while crawling under a fallen tree. Fortunately, Aaron gave me one of his bottles to fill with Coke at the next aid station. Great pacer move! There did seem to be a few more downed trees on the latter half of the course, or it’s just that I was noticing them because I was getting more tired and it took more work to get over or around them.

Getting blurry cuz i stopped paying attention long ago

During Aaron’s final descent, 20 hours into this adventure, on a narrow cut of mountainside singletrack above Blackwell, we came upon a 2-foot wide, freshly crafted wooden bridge with no handrails spanning a 10-foot eroded gap. I was too curious and peered over the edge to see a good 30-40 foot drop. Without handrails and having questionable legs, it kept things exciting at 1:00 AM. Must have been why the race notes said, “Watch your step or you could make a big splash in Pine Creek.”

Bridge to Blackwell, getting blurrier

Upon rolling into Blackwell, themed in pirate paraphernalia, I chugged about 10 ounces of EHQ Endure Fuel, cold brew, restocked my vest with food, and performed another seductive disposal of my sweat saturated clothing. Next up to pace would be Mark Sutyak, who is apparently a glutton for punishment and I assume came along to sample the aid station cuisine because there sure wasn’t much running going on through the middle of the night.

We spent much of the next 10 hours hiking, and my running was probably still his hiking. My estimation that the final portions of the course would have more runnable sections was about 33% correct. Much of it was still too steep to run, up or down, even on fresh legs, but I really think I had just gotten too far behind on my calorie intake.

Somewhere in here a racer and his pacer passed us up a shallow climb and within the next few seconds I heard them yelling and sticks breaking. I glanced up to see the backend of a large porcupine running up the trail. But then it would stop a few yards away, still on the trail, requiring those guys to throw and bang sticks to scare it, although it clearly wasn’t scared. This went on for about 100 yards. Cocky little thing with all those sharp quills. I’m not sad the other runners came to it before me. I’ve encountered lots of unusual animals in the wild but this was the first porcupine.

I love my Petzl Nao headlamp. It’s like a car’s headlight coming through the woods. I’d left it on the most intense setting, which was fantastic for maybe 5 hours. The headlamp was giving me it’s warning flash and quickly dimmed around mile 84, indicating that it was going into power saving mode (kinda like my brain had done since mile 50). No big deal, that’s why I have the second lamp, although it’s not as awesome at lighting the way.

An older gentleman volunteering at the Skytop aid station (84.8 miles) informed us that the next 8.1 miles would be very runnable. And that if we didn’t think so, we were welcome to run back to call him a liar. Totally reasonable. It’s not nice to play mean tricks on tired runners, sir. But seriously, so many of these folks at the aid stations were super pleasant, experienced, and helpful. It was becoming cold enough on this ridge now that I needed arm warmers and began to shiver from stopping. The heavy dew covered grass rubbing my feet and legs wasn’t helping.

We continued our shuffle toward Barrens aid station (mile 92.8). We scurried down a technical stream with waterfalls and sometimes non-existent trail. I really enjoyed the next long climb on the smooth, grassy forest service road, mostly because I didn’t have to think, just move. You could actually relax a little on the less threatening surface. I decided to take care of some increasingly present lower butt chafing issues as we summited, so I pulled my shorts slightly down to lube those sensitive inferior gluteal regions, trying not to break what little stride I had, now around mile 89. But I had forgotten that I had tucked my phone in my waistband, despite having a perfectly good vestpack on my body. And in that process I apparently dropped said phone. We kept on going until I realized my mistake, at which point we turned around and were promptly greeted by a few different packs of runners. I was amazed that so many people were still so close together at this point. Now I really wished I’d had the brighter light still going to find that phone.

The entire last 40 miles of the course was lit with Christmas tree Lights. Yeah right.

Then an oncoming woman cut me off and threatened to tackle me if I kept going back up the hill because her friend was apparently taking a potty break in the middle of the service road. Here’s a useful tip ladies: if you don’t like even the slightest chance of your butt being spot lit by a random headlamp at 2 AM in the woods, MOVE OFF THE TRAIL WHEN YOU PEE. NEWSFLASH: EVERYBODY PEES IN THE WOODS, EVEN THE SASQUATCH SNEAKING UP BEHIND YOU! I wish I had said that, but I was too tired. So, finally, the pee pee police permitted our passage and we were able to continue on upward, continuing to ask runners if they’ve seen my dropped phone as I spoke mostly in profanities. It didn’t take too long before I encountered a couple of the runners I’d chatted with earlier, Neal and Megan, who’d found the phone. Yay. It’s a damn Eastern States miracle. Oddly enough, I was upset at the potential for losing the pictures I’d taken all day, not the phone itself.

The legs and brain struggled from Barrens to the Hacketts aid station (99.1). Yes, there’s not much change on the elevation profile but it was not an easy walk in the forest, especially when you don’t eat much. I think it was in this section where there was a pine forest trail with an erratic habit of suddenly appearing up or down the hill from where we were standing at any instant. For a while it sorta paralleled the creek and there were helpful blazes on the trees, but without the reflective flags it would have been extra tough. Seemed like a great place for a dirt nap.

Nearly crushed by this falling tree

As we hit the final aid station (mile 99.1), now in the daylight and beyond my initial time goals, I was hoping that most of the beating was over and had long ago stopped caring about the actual finish time. Upon hitting 100 miles on my GPS, I asked Mark where my buckle and finish line was. In the valley that I can’t even see yet, of course. I tried to run more the next couple miles but the hemorrhage of time wouldn’t clot without calories. The most ridiculous downhill greets us around mile 101.5-103. It’s hard because of every reason, ever. It’s steep. When it’s not steep, it’s rock drop-offs so that’s still actually a way of being steep. You have to use your upper body sometimes. Thank goodness for the trekking poles. Midway down there was a family of eastern rattlesnake viewers taking in my shuffle technique, reminding us to keep our distance.

I got your Timber Rattler Meat right here. So hungry for Timber Rattler at this point.

The downhill finally gave up surely because I did not, we popped out next to a field at Little Pine State Park and I was greeted again by Aaron for the final couple hundred meters of walking and chatting. Can I have that Eastern States buckle now, please?

Thank you for holding me upright Anne. Obviously you allowed the person behind you to fall down and fracture their femur.

Thank you Mark and Aaron! These guys made great company and I’m really happy they could share in a substantial piece of the experience of being out there.

You can get a little idea of the course from this video.

Anne’s crewing notes:

One may assume that as someone who is a trained researcher and spends much of the day reading and conducting research studies that I would apply this analytical framework to other aspects of my life. This assumption would be patently false. In preparation for crewing, I think I read (skimmed) two articles of questionable provenance. One may have been from Runner’s World, a somewhat dubious source for accurate information about anything, particularly ultramarathons and trail running. I think I avoided doing any prep work because the task seemed so incredibly complicated and arduous that I preferred not to think about it at all. Given all of this, I don’t think I did too badly. On doing some searches post-crewing, I realize that there are a lot of great resources out there. So to avoid attempting to reinvent the wheel, this list is brief and not at all comprehensive.

1. You are crewing. Therefore, none of the amenities of the race are available to you. You must prepare accordingly. Bring at least one healthy food item that you will haul around for the weekend and then dump, uneaten and likely mashed or broken, into your compost tumbler when you get home. For me, this was a bag of clementines. 

2. Make sure that you have a full tank of gas on race morning. Otherwise you may find yourself with a near empty tank at 9:05 pm, 16 hours into the race. The only gas station within 25 miles closed at 9 pm. You now must speed out of the mountains to get to a Sheetz 40 minutes away and hope you can make it to the next crew spot in time. And you will have to wait until after the race to chastise the runner for leaving you with an insufficient amount of gas in his truck because it would not be fair to unload on them at mile 63. Even though you really want to. (*Note from the editor: The truck had nearly a half tank of gas, thank you very much.)

3. If you are preparing food that requires any preparation, bring your own kitchen tools. Otherwise you will find yourself hacking away at a raw sweet potato with a bent serrated knife on a peeling melamine plate from the cabin’s tiny kitchen. But you will persist because your runner asked you to prepare sweet potato hash the night before his race so he doesn’t get tummy troubles, and you are way too nice of a human being to refuse him.

4. Ask your runner about different scenarios and contingency plans associated with each. The night before the race I thought, “I should ask Derek what to do if he’s barfing.” I realized the next day that I had forgotten to ask him that question. Luckily for me (and Derek), there was no barfing. 

5. Ask your runner what you should not say to them when you see them. For Derek, he does not want me to ask him how he’s feeling. What’s the one question I always want to ask him? Yes. It’s that question. 

6. In one of the two articles I skimmed pre-race, they mentioned that some runners like to have a magic or “safe” word that means, “I actually want to quit now.” I asked Derek what he wanted his to be, and he laughed for a very long time. I guess this makes sense as Derek is a person who Means What He Says And Says What He Means and does not throw around the idea of quitting lightly. But, uh, if ever in a dissociative fugue I decide to run 100 miles, I may need a magic word.

7. Don’t take anything personally. Runners lose their social niceties, like 35 miles in, so you just have to take it in stride. This one is very hard for me. Derek once lightly tossed a bottle to me with a slight frown on his face at an aid station at Highlands Sky several years ago and I’m still recovering. 

8. Bring your dogs and then regret bringing your dogs when you’re trying to do anything. But then be happy the dogs are there at 2 AM in an otherwise empty cabin in the mountains of Pennsylvania. 

9. Prepare for no phone signal or wifi. For me, this meant downloading podcasts and reviving my love of the New York Times crossword app (I was like four clues from a completed Thursday by the end of the weekend! It was an easy Thursday). Avoid anything true crime because you may be spending a lot of time driving alone on windy country roads at night. 

10. Alternate between marveling at the strength and determination occurring all around you and questioning whether it’s all just a time-consuming narcissistic exercise. Settle somewhere in the middle. 

Miner's Lady 8-Hour Endurance Run Race Report

The Miner’s Lady 8-Hour Endurance Run is held in Harpers Ferry, WV. The entirely/100% trail route consists of a 6.2-mile loop that includes a short (but memorable) out-and-back section. You run as many loops as you wish for eight hours. This seemed like the perfect race for me, a full-time working mom with two small children and a husband who likes to go tromping through the woods for hours upon hours on the weekends, because if my training didn’t end up being sufficient for completing a 50k, then no problem, I’ll just do three loops and collect my medal and finisher’s hat.

The day before the race, I drove to Wheeling to drop my darling children off to my very kind mother where I left them screaming at each other over possession of the Kindle Fire. I shot her an apologetic look as I sneaked out the door to haul ass back home, where I picked up Derek so we could make the three-hour drive to Ranson, WV and pick up my packet at Two Rivers Treads. After picking up my packet, we browsed the broad selection of running items available and purchased some new gels to try (not during the race, of course! Although I have about 400 fewer race credits to my name than my husband I am not a TOTAL amateur). I resisted the urge to hop on one of the many True Form treadmills in the front of the store. Although I’d love to give one a try some day (and I keep encouraging Derek to buy one for the clinic), I absolutely would be the person who sustains an embarrassing injury on a running store treadmill the day before a race. We met up with two friends/running buddies, Stephanie and Sara, for a borderline-adequate meal of Italian food and a trip to the grocery store for all of the things we forgot to pack (mostly chocolate). After returning to the hotel and doing typical night-before-the-race prep like agonizing over which clothing items will chafe the least (answer: probably the shorts you chose not to wear), we set the alarms for 4:00 AM.

Everyone’s smiling cuz it’s the first Lap, Photo courtesy Paul Encarnacion

After some typical night-before-the-race restless sleep and some really bad hotel Keurig coffee (I’m edging closer and closer to becoming an Aeropress-toting coffee snob), we hopped in Sara’s car and headed to the race site, which was about a 20-25 minute drive from Ranson. Given the small size of the race location, participants are required to carpool lest they be banished to the “dungeon lot” which requires a one-mile walk to the race start (the race directors do provide a Facebook group to facilitate making carpooling arrangements with other racers). We unloaded our gear and our valiant crew captain, Derek, hauled the 85-pound pink Yeti cooler to the crewing zone. Right before the start, running celebrity Dr. Mark Cuccuzella gave the gathered racers a safety briefing, and the race started a couple minutes after 6:00 AM.

I was pleasantly surprised to find the 6.2-mile loop exceedingly runnable. Here, Derek, can describe the course because he’s better at it than I am. Pacers were NOT allowed, but he was doing a long run on all the local trails and managed to include the loop so here he goes:

“Well, my first impression of this course is that the loop is tailored to beginner trail runners or an advanced runner looking to PR for whatever distance they could achieve in eight hours. Which, I’m guessing, was the director’s intention. Not to say there isn’t any challenge from the elevation fluctuation. The winner set a new course record of 50 miles and it makes sense. But I’d say the event is more about bringing new people into ultrarunning and an active lifestyle than it is about pure competition. Having run the other trails in the immediate area, including the Appalachian Trail and others in the same greenspace, I couldn’t believe how smooth the race course was by comparison. These trails were heavily maintained and as burned-in as you’ll find. Several portions are on old timber road but there’s enough singletrack to be distracting and keep it mildly interesting as your laps would pass. The loop begins and ends with a tendency toward downhill. I can see where the out-and-back to pass over the Virginia border could be mentally challenging if you were several hours deep into a hard effort. The descent down is just steep enough and just rocky enough that you can’t completely relax to pick up speed and upon the return it’s steep enough in sections that most people can’t run it top to bottom, which contrasts the rest of the course. So the out-and-back portion is likely to be the mind crusher/soul destroyer. If I was racing it, I would push the heck out that last mile or so of each lap once you’ve topped out the climb back from VA. My GPS had just over 800 feet of elevation gain for the entire loop. As a spectator for a timed event, it’s certainly more entertaining to see your runner or runners with great frequency, as it prevents complete boredom and one of my greatest fears: public napping.”

Turnaround Waterfall, Photo courtesy Paul Encarnacion

Here are some of my thoughts during each loop:

Loop 1 (miles 0 - 6.2):

• This course is so runnable!

• Hold yourself back! You didn’t train doing 10-minute mile long runs, you dummy.

• Slower!

• Why do people think it’s okay to play music from a speaker in the woods any time, but especially during a race?

• Someone asked Music Man how long his battery lasts.

• Why am I still near Music Man.

• I want to get away from Music Man.

• Eat something.

Loop 2 (miles 6.2 - 12.4):

• Stop thinking about how much time is left.

• I don’t remember most of this.

• Oh, this climb again.

• These last two miles feel like they go on forever.

• Oh hello again, Music Man.

Loop 3 (miles 12.4 - 18.6) :

• I feel amazing! I could do this forever.

• I love trail running.

• Why doesn’t everyone do this?

• I should sign up for another race when I’m done with this one. Maybe on the car ride home.

Loop 4 (miles 18.6 - 24.8)

• Uh oh, quad cramps.

• (While descending and following the advice of my crew/physical therapist/coach/personal trainer/husband) Tiny steps, tiny steps, tiny steps.

• Do a body scan like Derek always says. Unclench your jaw, woman. Relax your shoulders.

• I may have just peed a little.

• Shut up, legs.

Loop 5 (miles 24.8 - 31)

• This ice in my hat and vest feels amazing (a big thank you to the crew!).

• Stop thinking about how many miles are left.

• Uh oh, quad AND calf cramps.

• Why do we pay to do this to ourselves? (Oh yeah, to get the hat and finisher medal)

• That lady is turning around. Smart lady.

• Last time I have to see that rock. Last time I have to see that twig.

• Do I have enough time left? I’m going to text Derek and ask him even though I know the answer is yes.

• Coca-Cola is AMAZING. MANNA FROM HEAVEN. NECTAR OF GODS. (also a suggestion from the crew)

• I’m going to text my friend Emily. She’ll send me encouraging, all-caps messages. I should choose future races based on the location of the nearest cell towers.

• Try to run this part.

• It’s okay to walk this part. You’ll probably fall on your face otherwise.

• Try to run this part.

And then I finished! In like 7:35, so about 25 minutes under the eight-hour time limit! I sat on the Yeti cooler and watched Stephanie finish her 5 laps. Sara was sidelined with significant knee pain after lap 1, but PT extraordinaire and A+ crew member, Derek Clark, was able to fix her up so she could complete three laps.

All in all, I think this race would be excellent for newer trail runners and seasoned runners chasing PRs, as the course is very runnable. The aid station at the beginning of each loop was well stocked with a variety of items as well as a ton of volunteers. Another aid station was located between miles 3 and 4, and offered water, Tailwind, and pop (or soda or Coke, depending on your regionalism of choice). The course was well marked and the volunteers were friendly and plentiful. As someone who usually hates running loops because, in general, I identify as weak-willed and cowardly, I found it to be a good mental challenge, and the loop is long enough that I didn’t find it too aversive. Thank you to the race directors and volunteers for a great race experience!

Highlands Sky 40 Mile Race Report

Is this the best trail running event in West Virginia? A lot of people think so.

There’s a huge list of things that make the Highlands Sky race experience unique, but one that stands out would be the frequency of ecosystem changes from sphagnum bogs, to red spruce forest, to barren ridges of giant boulder fields. The surfaces are constantly changing, except at some of the mentally toughest sections, when you want a change and nothing does. It’s technical and you’ll spend lots of time battling deep water, sticky mud, relentless nettles, never-ending rocks, slick roots, and maybe oh-so-cuddly black bears.

In my fourth attempt, I had a few goals going into the race this year.

1. Personal record for the course of 6:45-6:55.

2. Negative split the second half of the course.

3. Run from aid station #4 to aid station #7 with some actual energy in my stride (and no pity parties).

4. Top five overall (though I know this depends on who shows up, but I’d done it before in 2016 and made sixth in 2018 so how dare you judge me).

5. Slow the heck down through the first section up to aid station #4.

6. Impress and/or confuse my five year old son who would be attending this event for the first time to observe/cheer/harass me or just play on a Nintendo Switch.
   

The race starts at 6:00 AM. Several folks either start hard from excitement or because they are trying to avoid a pile-up conga line as we enter the woods. We begin with a two-mile gradually descending paved segment along Red Creek from Laneville. In an effort to be patient, I opted to ease along and exited the road some 15 or 20 spots back. Just 39 uphill miles to go my friends. Well, maybe not all uphill, but there’s quite a bit.

Gigantic black bear cub, which this area is known for, chasing me off the early pavement. Photo of this rare moment thanks to Mandy Helms Sullivan.

Several Morgantown trail runners signed up for the race this year. I think I’d spent the last week or two telling as many of them as would listen about the brutal first climb that starts as soon as you leave the road. The final mile of it will make you suffer if you start too hard. It’s about seven total miles of uphill grind that becomes distinctively steeper around 5.5 to 6 miles in. I really tried to take my time up the steepest part, which thankfully meant I felt really good at the top. Good enough to run 33 more miles anyway. And despite taking it easier, I passed a few people on the way up.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a great rock wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Yeah, Humpty Dumpty came tumbling down, to the ground, and with a loud shout: “Ow!” Betcha didn’t know I write nursery rhymes about getting hurt. It takes real talent. Just before mile 8, I managed to catch my left foot on one of the many large, white pieces of sandstone that are strewn across the Roaring Plains. My left hand and left forearm were now bloody, and my right knee hit something (most likely a meteorite, you say?) to make it hurt briefly, but it didn’t have a real wound, fortunately.

At some point before aid station #2, I met up with Ryan Ramsby, first time Highlands runner. I tried to relay some of my course knowledge to him as we ran together. As he ran behind me, he said something like “it’s so funny to watch half your body disappear” as I would step into mud and water filled holes that are ever-present in this section of the course. I ended up losing Ryan around aid station #3 but he hung tough to finish 10th on the day.

SO you really want me to believe there is a baby bear chasing you?

I came into aid station #4 just before mile 20 with Daniel Fogg, who was looking strong. You can have crew access here so Anne tells me someone just dropped, but I still didn’t know what place I was in at that point, and I didn’t ask. Now, in the middle, the longest mental test of Forest Service Road 75, otherwise known as “The Road Across the Sky” begins.

Daniel and I exited the aid close together and at about a mile or so onward a photographer pushing a running stroller (containing a real, living, breathing, baby!) told Daniel that Trevor Baine was 15 minutes up on us. That’s a pretty big ol’ gap, fellers. It’s always interesting to see how different people execute on different courses. I figured out running this before that my varicose-vein-filled-old-man legs can’t quite do that early intense running here, but maybe if I do the race like 10 times I’ll figure it out just in time to be in the grand masters category.

I’ve gained some distance on the giant bear cub who appears smaller in the distance but is actually quite gigantic. Photo Credit: Keith Knipling

Aid station #5, at mile 22.7, was a quick stop for some watermelon and banana, but in the process Daniel went on ahead of me. This was mostly helpful because it gave me someone to chase though not without some occasional negative self talk about the gap between us growing in size. My GPS was messing up early on the road segment but eventually corrected to relay the fact that we were running 8:00ish minutes/mile. It made me happy to be able to push this section a little and it went by so much quicker than the prior years. Even though I did mistake the next-to-last climb on the gravel road for the last climb and really had about another mile to go before the turn and aid station.

Photo courtesy Keith Knipling

Though it may not have created many gorgeous blue sky photos, the weather was more cooperative this year than in the other times I’ve raced. I don’t remember the sun starting to bust through until I was at least 30 miles deep. Usually by the time I get midway through the Road Across the Sky, the temperature and humidity start to dish out a beatdown. There was still fog and pleasant temperatures while heading across the service road.

Aid station #6, mile 27, at Bear Rocks was partially staffed by fellow runner and Physical Therapist Robert Gillanders. I do like seeing people I know at the aid stations, partly because they tend to be more encouraging but mostly because they are more willing to give me a quad massage. Fruit seemed like the only appealing menu choice (especially after an aid #4 trail mix debacle I won’t bother describing) I gathered banana, strawberry, potato, and orange pieces. Yes, a potato is fruit. Duh. Get with the times. I caught back up to Daniel here and he mentioned that he wanted to slow down but having just witnessed him crush the Road Across the Sky I wasn’t too hopeful that he actually would. We ran together for a few minutes, but then as we continued, I drifted away in front of him and we lost contact.

Gapped the giant baby bear. Suspect muscle glycogen depletion is at play.

Getting to aid station #7, at mile 32.9, always seems to take FOREVER. The landscape remains barren and exposed much of the time and it is mostly singletrack. I had just caught Zach Beckett coming into the aid station when I noticed they didn’t even bother putting up a pop-up tent since the chilly wind was gusting so hard. The bundled-up volunteers kindly refilled my bottles with Coke and water, I shoved down some watermelon and proceeded to open a baby-sized Baby Ruth, only to have the real force of Mother Nature reveal herself with a wind burst that ripped the caramel, chocolate, and peanut goodness from my Reynaud’s-afflicted baby hands. No matter, two second rule. Thou shall not waste a perfectly good candy bar. In my fumbly drama, I left the aid forgetting to see if Zach was still there or if he had taken off in front of me.

Downward is the trend of the course at this point, thank goodness, but there is more climbing to do. I caught a glimpse of Zach when I reached the base of the Timberline ski slope. I shuffled on up, through the pines and down the infamous Buttslide section, which feels longer every time I run it. Onto the gravel of upper Freeland Road and I can still see Zach a couple hundred yards away but he’s looking awfully strong. Maybe he’ll crack?

Shortly after leaving aid station #8 at mile 36.9, where I must say I always love their encouragement and Coca-Cola, I spy another runner, Trevor, and realize that Zach is chasing him, hence explaining the obvious renewed fire in his pants. The pavement allows for quick running if you’ve got anything left in the tank, have been slacking on the effort, or if you simply need to get to the finish line to pee. Down through the 8 inch tall grass to the Canaan Resort entryway, on to more pavement for the home stretch and I see in the distance the duel for third and fourth about to take place. I could tell I was probably going to PR at that point, so I was content to stride along steadily and consider that success.

This is/was a top 5 podium photo

Moments later, I was pleased with a new PR of 6:51:32. It amazes me that after 41 miles, third through fifth place were only separated by 3.5 minutes. Of course I didn’t realize that critical fact until there were less than two miles to go, but that’s one of the strategies of trail running: out of sight, out of mind. Maybe I could have drawn a little more effort out of myself from Bear Rocks to Timberline, but I don’t think I could have kicked a final mile much harder. I felt like I had a good settle-in-and-grind gear but not much maximum effort. Might have something to do with racing a tough 100K last month.

This race is so good, so tough, so check it out sometime, unless you don’t like running in the woods or cuddling with black bears.

Thanks for the great event and work you do Adam Casseday, Dan Lehman and volunteers!

Ultra Race of Champions 100K Race Report

The day began with fog and a frog. The frog had jumped onto the hood of my truck during the previous night’s drizzle. Perhaps to show off his skills at hopping several feet from the ground and sticking to smooth surfaces. Perhaps to distract and slow my morning progress as he required a gentle eviction from the hood.

Nice amber glow frogface

The Ultra Race of Champions 100K, otherwise known as UROC, has been held for eight years at various locations around the United States. The trend for the last three years has been to keep it in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia’s George Washington National Forest. It has also been in notoriously awesome and historical trail running locations, such as: Auburn, CA, Breckenridge/Vail, CO, and Copper Mountain, CO. The organizers, Bad to the Bone Sports, offer a large, $21,400 prize purse, so it draws many more elite runners than a typical trail running race.

As nice as it would be, I certainly had no illusions of winning a part of that prize purse but wanted to aim for a solid day characterized by consistency in pace throughout the course. Sure, most folks are slowing at the end of an ultramarathon, but the idea is to keep it to a minimum.

Elite Bib Assignment. Courtesy http://www.territoriotrail.es/ultra-race-champions-uroc-gem-east-coast-elite-prize-purse-central-virginia/

Being on the same weekend, I initially debated between the closer Glacier Ridge Trail 50 Miler in PA and the UROC 100K, but I needed to get in a ton of challenging climbing and more distance in preparation for other upcoming events this summer. I prefer the wilderness setting of a national forest and the climbs were longer in VA, so I decided to go with UROC though I knew I’d be lucky to crack the top 10 overall there.

The more information you have going into long events, the fewer surprises and tough spots you’ll get into (so do some internet research). Google revealed only a few race reports to draw from though.

A partial solution to my ignorance was doing a little course recon after going to the University of Virginia Running Medicine conference in March. That was definitely helpful to get an idea of the typical trail surfaces, climb and descent grades, tree cover, road crossings, and general course design. If only I could have run the entire course because I still ended up surprised by the trail in the final hours of UROC. Another good option would have been to run the Bel Monte 50 Miler in March as it traverses some of the same trails.

Let’s just say the UROC course is demanding, which is partly due to the >11,000 feet of climbing, but also because of the similar quantities of descending. It was the descending that would ultimately be my undoing.

Standing at the start line during this damp morning at Skylark Farm, where the races begin and end, I was greeted by fellow Morgantown trail runner Trevor Wolfe. The thing about ultrarunning is nobody needs to do a warmup run so we just stand around and bask in each other’s nervousness.

I was able to run and chat with Weirton friend Travis Simpson through the Blue Ridge Parkway and onto the Whetstone Ridge Trail, where we would gradually descend 1500’ for the next 11 miles. We were eventually joined by Leadville 100 women’s champion Katie Arnold for much of this section. Katie had never raced trails on the East Coast and being from Sante Fe, it was interesting to get her thoughts on the course as we moved along. I couldn’t tell if she was having more or less fun than the rest of us every time we’d get to a gnarly, steep, rocky section and she’d let out a yelp.

I had drifted away from the pack as I approached a slightly confusing intersection in the trail at mile 14. After gathering about eight runners, we decided on the most likely route downward and thankfully, were correct in our choice. I became a little too caught up in the flow of this part of the descent because I was at the front of that pack. It was narrow but non-technical so I’m sure a couple of us were moving at least 7:00/mile, if not quicker. I’ll never know - my GPS data was quite jacked up on this section. Still, we weren’t as fast as the leaders passing us that were returning from the aid station at the bottom of the climb. No one seemed to linger at that 16-mile aid long but I knew it was a lengthy, 11-mile uphill back to the next aid. Sure enough, on the way back up, the sun busted out, the temperature and humidity came up, and I had to give another runner water, so it was worth the 45 seconds to completely refill my hydration pack.

Even though it felt like less than two hours, now five hours deep, at the mile-28 aid station, I’m briefly humored by the fellow telling me that I’m maintaining a good pace and looking good but then asking me what I have wrapped around my ankles (gaiters) and whether I’ll take a 30-minute break to sit down. Apparently the leaders must have been in and out a little too quick for the interview.

I ran solo on a couple more miles of Parkway, plopping potatoes into the gas tank, as tolerated, then the hit the graveled Spy Run Road, then grassy paths back to Skylark where I was actually hot enough to pack ice under my hat. By the time I made it out to the next section of real trails off the Parkway at Bald Mountain, it was starting to rain, the sun was gone, and the temperature had dropped a few degrees again.

Back off road at mile 35 and happy to be running now on some of the trails that I’d previewed in March. The weather was chilly that day, but it was dry and clear with perfect visibility from the overlooks. Today it was strange to look out from the same vantage points to see nothing more than white, thick fog enveloping me and the trees. It almost felt like the edge of the earth was merely a few feet away, or that’s just weird stuff your brain conjures up 6.5 hours into a hard effort.

Before the Rains

The rain became harder and washed all the Nutella away. From my hands. Not from the earth because, oh my God, no one wants a world without Nutella. I bombed the lovely White Rock Falls Trail in the pouring rain, perhaps with a little too much pep in my step. But it was a ton of fun and flowy. Even after climbing some tremendous steepness back out of that ravine I was getting chilled and switched to a wool long sleeve upon returning to the Slacks Overlook aid station around mile 43. And wouldn’t you know the rain promptly stopped, and I began to overheat a bit again by the time I made it a couple miles away.

Onto the final descent on Torry Ridge Trail, the surface and grade were becoming increasingly brutal, resulting in the first real moment when I really felt “over it” and wanted to be done with a particular section. It was increasingly rocky and steep, so much so that my legs just stunk at controlling speed and keeping me in an upright position. I hadn’t been at an aid station for over an hour, so I probably just needed a hug or a teddy bear. Unfortunately, I’d left teddy in the truck to lighten my pack. I was forced to slow to my pace dramatically (which was clearly not part of the plan). It was intermittently raining, though nothing as heavy as the saturating downpours I’d come through on the Slacks Trail and White Rock Falls Trail. And then I almost stepped on this super bright yellow box turtle to shake things up a bit. “Watch where you are going, jerk!” (I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide which one of us said that). Thank goodness it was just a close call because I didn’t have my license, registration, or proof of insurance with me at the time. Turtle shell repair work is just so expensive these days.

FINALLY, the trail swings a hard left and becomes less damn rocky. Back to 9:00-10:00ish per mile pace for a few minutes. I’d wished I could have run that portion of the course beforehand. Had I known of its difficulty, I would have held back more in the White Rock Falls loop. But that’s all part of the adventure and challenge. I could still run the flattish or slightly uphill parts of the course at a good clip, even after mile 50, but any steep descending made my quads scream loudly enough to deem them untrustworthy.

There was a brief but nice ~2.5 mile total out-and-back dirt road section at mile 51 before the gradual ascending to the base of Bald Mountain on Turkey Pen Ridge Trail. The final mile of Turkey Pen was full of switchbacks and typically just steep enough that I couldn’t talk myself into shuffle running. I hiked it all at a consistent effort and was happy to be on it, though I was definitely starting to bonk a bit, which meant a more sideways wobble than forward hustle from time to time. The fog was insanely thick but helped prevent my grunts from echoing into the next county.

Coming into the final aid station at mile 58, I went for my reliable standard baby potatoes, a couple swigs of Coca-Cola, and a handful of chopped bacon. As I reached for my collapsible bottle from my vest to make a mix of watered down Coke, I realized that it was gone. Why me? Why now? Waaaaaahhhhh! No, I wasn’t actually that dramatic but I sure did like that bottle. Breakups are never easy. So, to whomever found the clear Nathan/Hydrapak bottle on Turkey Pen: enjoy the free gift but remember I kissed her first!

Obligatory watch check photo

Zombie transformation complete in less than one second

The volunteers here chatted back and forth about whether I should take a bottle that somebody had forgotten or dropped earlier. The one young woman said “there’s only four miles to go” and completely distracted by the fact that four miles sounded really small at the time, I took off without actually finding a substitute for what I was going to put in the bottle that I no longer possessed. I did not grab a gel as I had planned to do. Oops. Which means I started to really, really bonk as I headed back up the Parkway. It felt easier to run with my eyes closed, so I did. (FYI I don’t recommend running with your eyes closed, especially on the road. In heavy fog. Duh.) I think I could have taken a nap then pretty easily and I felt like I was kinda floating in the fog. Thanks hypoglycemia. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be caught by anyone else and I wasn’t going to do anymore catching, so it was more about finishing at this point. Hypoglycemia also makes you not care about, well, anything.

Generally, I really liked the course design. I would not have wanted to run all of the paved sections at once but having multiple broken sections of paved Blue Ridge Parkway to run was nice for a 15-20 minute mental break and develop another rhythm. Beyond mile 60, the Parkway eventually peaks out and gives way to the grassy and paved descent back toward the race start. As a I ran past the pond just below the peak of Skylark, I could hear just a couple peeps. Looks like the day ends as it began: with fog and a frog.

In the midst and the mist, I’d hoped to be closer to an 11:30 finish time but ended up in 12:03:12 with the 9th male position. There were about 118 people pre-registered but 69 finishers. If the 100K sounds daunting, there are 50K and 25K options to check out that would also make good precursors to the 100K.

Thanks to the volunteers, Bad to the Bone, and Anne (my solo crew member) for a well-supported and challenging day!

4 Lessons learned at the JFK 50 Mile

This past November I made a late season decision to enter the JFK 50 Mile. I was looking forward to it from a new race perspective, but I was also well aware that it was unlikely to become my favorite event ever. It is typically more of a road runner’s ultramarathon and the course doesn’t lend itself to my strengths (i.e. climbing, technical singletrack, power hiking). But I did it anyway, partly because it’s big for an ultra but more because it’s the oldest existing ultramarathon in the US. I’m not a huge history buff, but being close to home I’ll buy into the novelty. However, if not for the section on the Appalachian Trail, I would have gladly searched for something else.

Instead of me describing the course, I’ll just copy from the JFK50mile.org page:

“The first 5.5 miles (starting on road surface and joining the Appalachian Trail at 2.5 miles) gains 1,172 feet in elevation. The course from 2.5 to 15.5 miles is on the Appalachian Trail (except for two miles of paved road between 3.5 and 5.5 miles). This section of the AT is very rocky in sections as it rolls across the mountain ridge. At approximately 14.5 miles the course drops over 1,000 feet in a series of steep “switchbacks” that then crosses under Rt. 340 and connects with the C & O Canal towpath. The “Canal” section of the JFK 50 Mile is 26.3 miles (from 15.5-41.8 miles) of almost totally flat unpaved dirt/gravel surface that is free of all automotive vehicle traffic. The JFK 50 Mile route leaves the C & O Canal towpath at Dam #4 and proceeds to follow gently rolling paved country roads the last 8.4 miles to the finish. The Boonsboro start is at an elevation of 570 feet. The Williamsport finish is at 452 feet above sea level.”

A fall storm had dumped several inches of snow on the area a couple days prior to the race which made for unique conditions. I was initially fearful that the Appalachian Trail section would be an ankle sprain waiting to happen with all of leaves down this time of year but with the snow, water, and mud it mostly just turned out to be messy, cold, and slow. There were plenty of sections of standing, frigid snowmelt midway up my shin.

Here’s what I’ll remember most from this odd race in odd conditions.

1. Getting and staying cold can cause a pretty noticeable decrement in performance, for me at least. I’ve trained plenty and raced several times in colder and even snowy conditions. But the combination of an extra long event paired with deep, cold water chilled me more than I expected it would. My feet were numb as we descended down to the C & O Canal. I figured I would warm up just from getting on the drier towpath and running consistently. And I sorta did. At least my feet weren’t completely numb anymore. The problem was I couldn’t sustain running fast enough to truly become warm enough. The lightbulb moment came when I guzzled a cup of warm chicken broth at an aid station. So that’s what I emphasized at each one. The unfortunate part was I skipped the broth at a couple of aid stations prior because I was initially thinking I’d warm up naturally and just took in cold food instead. Better late than never on figuring it out though.

2. I’ve come to this realization before, but I was reminded that there’s always more effort left to give than you might expect. You really can’t assume that if you have been feeling crappy that it will go on forever. I had garbage legs for 20 miles, which is definitely the longest bad patch I’ve needed to run through, but it eventually came to an end a couple miles before the end of the C & O Canal towpath. I’m certain a huge part of this was psychological - at that point the course only had 10 miles or so to go. It didn’t help that the towpath is just boring and I knew that coming in. I was partly spurred on by another runner that was moving at a pace I could stick to when they caught me. But the point is that my better self was there, waiting. The stars might have to align to draw it out but you can keep trying to find it. It reminds me of when a basketball team is down by double digits and not scoring. The game’s not over and there just has to be a little spark to bring back a big run on points. What can give you momentum?

3. A tough day isn’t really a bad day. Draw from it what you can. I still took away a PR for the 50-mile distance despite feeling rough for a good chunk of the race. That’s largely the nature of the course layout, but if I’d given up more mentally, it would have probably never happened. I know now that I can withstand a 20 mile stretch of suckiness. I didn’t get to do a real taper as if this was my planned “A” race, so my expectations align with the outcome. Bonus race = bonus pain = bonus discoveries.

4. It’s good to try something different purely for the experience. This race is big. Not massive, like a major city marathon, but huge compared to typical trail races where you could end up alone for several minutes or even hours. The size made me curious, but it also wasn’t appealing to me, at least on this day. There wasn’t a time in this entire event that I couldn’t see someone in front of or behind me. If you thrive on pacing off or being social with other racers, this would be a more ideal race. It’s not the most enjoyable if you expect solitude.

Greenbrier River Trail Marathon Race Recap

The Greenbrier River Trail is a rail trail, mostly double track, that extends about 77 miles from Cass, WV to North Caldwell, WV along, you guessed it, the Greenbrier River. Much of its length is contained in the Monongahela National Forest. The Greenbrier River Trail Marathon is a USATF-certified race on the River Trail that starts in Cass, WV. The funds raised by this race benefit the maintenance of this lengthy recreational throughway via the non-profit Greenbrier River Trail Association. West Virginia only has a handful of marathons and this one will certainly put many marathons, even national events, to shame when it comes to beautiful surroundings. The course layout should produce times similar to a road race but those ugly and annoying buildings, cars, and streets are replaced with crushed limestone gravel, trees, fly fisherman, and a meandering river.  

But dang, I’m sore. Quaking quads. Cantankerous calves. Hurtin’ hammies. My severe soreness shall, in no way, bias this race recap. See, flat running is a significant departure from my typical racing and training. I love vertical change. Up, down, up, down, wash, rinse, repeat. This marathon has about as little up and down variation as you will find in this region. It drops approximately 300 feet across its entire length. So yes, it’s averaging a downhill grade but there are definitely short sections where it’s flat or will have just a very slight uptick in grade. But I’m accustomed to climbing and descending 300 foot changes in as little as a half mile!

Years of triathlon training and racing have taught me that you can’t underestimate the toll that flat and downhill courses take on your legs. The movement pattern doesn’t vary much the entire time, making it a unique demand compared to rolling or mountainous courses. Floridians would do well here.

If you have the chance to ride the Cass Scenic Railroad, it’s a great family outing. On the day prior to the race, we rode the train from Cass to Whittaker Station. The leaves weren’t quite at the peak of their color change yet, but it was still very much worth the trip. The lack of running during the taper week made me want to race the train up the mountain as it held a steady distance-run-esque pace.

Bet your marathon doesn’t have a steam locomotive

After the train ride, I was able to get a preview shakeout run on the Greenbrier River Trail, pick up my packet, and enjoy the pre-race pasta dinner. Cass is a small town so everything is within walking distance.

Race morning it’s still nearly dark when we arrive. The fog, forest, and terrain keep this valley darker a few minutes longer than expected. An off-pitch Cass Railroad whistle echoed through the otherwise silent mountains during my warm up as I climbed Back Mountain Road, giving an almost eerie sense to the foggy surroundings. Cue the banjo.

Our weather was almost ideal at the 8:00 AM start. A touch of humidity hung in the air and it would likely have been warmer than the mid-60s already if not for the heavy fog blanketing the hills and hollers. We could tell it would eventually become hotter as the day progressed, much as the day prior had done. And it did.

Though I didn’t warm up as much as I wanted, it wasn’t much of an issue since I like to start easy and build on long races. I don’t need a reminder that a marathon will take hours to complete and I have no issue with delaying the onset of suffering a bit.

At the starting line one of the other racers mentioned going for the 2:40s. I was hoping for 2:50s but all of that prediction stuff is guesswork when no one has raced the course before. We line up at the Cass Community Center,and the train whistle signals the start (a nice touch). We make a quick loop through a gravel street in Cass, and then we are onto the Greenbrier River Trail. I trotted along in 4th place as the first three pulled away. Would be a nice day to get top three though.

I wanted to take in my surroundings but tried not to lose focus. It’s difficult to ride the line of observing nature, working hard, and not falling on your face. The Monongahela National Forest is one of my favorite places, so I hate not to admire the views.

Despite the current beautiful weather, it had unfortunately and abnormally rained much of the prior week. The River Trail generally drains well, but being in a winding, tree covered valley, there were places along the path that were just a smidge wet. There was never any nasty, heavy, sticky, tacky mud but there was definitely squishiness in a few places where the trail becomes more grass and dirt than the primarily crushed limestone surface. A couple of the wooden bridge crossings were slick but not dangerous.

The aid station folks were super supportive. It helps when volunteers give time splits and say things like “you’re looking strong.” I stayed within sight of the second and third runners for several miles but had lost sight of the first runner by mile 5 or 6 because of the curviness of the course. I think it was somewhere around mile 6 when I caught the two guys in front of me in relatively rapid succession. I felt decent and the splits were consistently where I wanted them. The aid station volunteers at mile 10 informed me the time gap to first place was two minutes. Really? After taking off that quickly? That’s not much at that point, depending on how things shake out, but I wondered if that wasn’t a rough estimate and more like four minutes.

At some point, there was a very long straightaway in the trail that allowed me to see the lead cyclist and the first place runner. Perhaps I’ve made up time? Perhaps the gap really is just a couple minutes? Though they were just little specks on the horizon, it was enough information to keep me excited for the possibility of a better finish.

Many of the miles at this point were flying by, which is good for racing but bad for taking in scenery. My legs would actually do what I wanted. Speed up, slow down, square dance, hokey pokey, it didn’t matter. I occasionally had this feeling that my head was just mounted on a set of legs that were not my own. I’M INSIDE A ROBOT!!!! GUYS, I’M INSIDE OF A ROBOT!!!

As I rounded a sharp rightward curve around mile 15 I suspect my blood glucose was dropping and I broke my brain for a second as I glanced upward to the entrance of a giant space portal that was about to transport me into another dimension. Oh crap, that’s Sharp’s Tunnel. Doofus. Entering the portal, I quickly learned the tunnel is curved so you can’t see the other end and it is amazingly dark. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. Don’t trip, space boy. It was actually very smooth soil. Pretty darn cool feature and certainly the first time I’ve raced through such a long tunnel.

An aid station awaits at the end of the tunnel. A volunteer yelled for me to get a banana and told me something like “you’ve got to catch the next guy.” Fantastic idea. I...chomp...will... chomp...win... chomp...this...chomp...eating...chomp...contest!

Falling apart at mile 26.15

More running ensued. (Bet you wouldn’t have guessed that.) By mile 19 I could consistently see first place and could tell I was gaining rapidly. Maybe gradually ease up to him and hit the pace hard? By mile 20 I had drifted up behind Andrew. He knew I was there, probably from my periodic grunting, said he had blown up but was very encouraging to me pushing onward past him. Thank goodness I didn’t have to do a hard surge because those hurt.

Taking the lead becomes a different beast because you are now the chased instead of doing the highly distracting and motivating chasing. I had no idea if there would be someone capable of hitting negative splits in the closing miles. A couple of miles clicked off where I was happy just to see splits under 7:00/mile. I had briefly listened to music for a few miles but now it was just irritating. I gained a new friend in lead cyclist Ray Adams who probably grew tired of my heaving and groaning.

Race director Kellyn Cassell berating me for not running faster

The final couple miles through Marlinton transitioned to pavement. My legs were reminding me with each step that they were indeed my own painful masses of contractile proteins instead of the Terminator’s as they seemed to want to piston more up and down than swinging forward and backward. I couldn’t get up onto my forefoot for any additional robot power because I could sense both calf muscles were one aberrant neuromuscular synapse away from cramping. Going to need an oil change and 15-point inspection after this.

The street crossings in Marlinton were staffed with more great volunteers. They rhythmically chanted “ROBOT SPACE BOY! ROBOT SPACE BOY!” with astonishing volume. (Not true). I spied with my two tired eyes an iron bridge that I recognized from a video of the finishing section. Must...aggggghhh….be...uggggghhhh...close. And then I see my favorite volunteers ever dancing while dressed in neon orange Japanese kimonos (or simply just waving orange flags) indicating a right turn into Stillwell Park. A glance at my watch tells me all I need to know...start kicking. Inflatable finish line arch, I love you. Wow, I’m glad that’s over.

Seltzer, post-race snacks, pizza, sandwiches, finisher medals, pint glass age group awards, and custom pottery overall awards occupy our minds afterward. Great event Kellyn! Now, who wants to run back the other direction?

Results:

https://aptiming.com/race/results/624

The local paper wrote a nice article about the race:

https://pocahontastimes.com/first-ever-grt-marathon-a-big-hit/

Lyme disease: It got me and it's coming for you next!

As of 2017, Lyme disease prevalence is on the rise. And in the summer of 2017, thanks to being bitten by a tick infected with the Lyme bacteria (Borrelia burgdorferi), the disease was prevailing in my bloodstream. And organs. And muscles. And a bunch of other places that you don’t want bacteria hanging out. This article reviews the infectious process, diagnosis, and recovery that I experienced just a few short months ago.

First, here’s a couple not-so-fun facts: According to the Centers for Disease Control, Lyme is the most common vectorborne illness in the United States. In 2016, about 300,000 people were diagnosed with Lyme disease in the US and that number is expected to rise.

If you want to be frightened, watch the rapid progression of the reported Lyme cases move westward from the east coast as you click through the annual maps on the CDC website (https://www.cdc.gov/Lyme/stats/). When I wandered the woods for hours as a child, my parents and I didn’t have to worry about Lyme. We rarely even saw ticks. In the early 2000s, there weren’t many reported cases of Lyme disease in this (western PA and northern WV) region. But by 2015, the same region of the map is heavily covered in cases. I always wanted to be a dot on a CDC map!

My clouded confusion begins

I find ticks on myself every year - after mowing, after weed trimming, after running. I’ve always made it a point to pluck them off ASAP. One must have gone under the radar. If my recollection of the earliest symptoms is accurate, there was initially a period of at least 2-3 weeks in late May to early June where my blood pressure wouldn’t regulate very well, especially if I was feeling the least bit stressed. (Perfect timing for having recently started a business!) This was always worse in the morning. Hopefully few of my patients noticed me awkwardly grabbing the furniture and equipment, but I began to feel a need to cling to nearby objects just in case I would start to crash. My blood pressure would fluctuate noticeably even while simply standing still, which means I was becoming lightheaded several times a day (though I never had true syncope (loss of consciousness)). Being a longtime endurance athlete, my heart rate and blood pressure are low anyhow, so I’m accustomed to occasional positional blood pressure fluctuations. But this seemed more annoying because it was multiple times a day and sometimes took longer to return to baseline. This symptom was sometimes intense but sometimes just a hint. It also had less to do with my hydration level like it normally would after a hotter or harder workout. Overall, it was minor compared to the other symptoms that would follow...

So tiny. So evil. 

More infectious

I began to demonstrate significant symptoms of Lyme disease in the middle of June. But, of course, I didn’t know it was Lyme at the time and did not make a connection. That’s because these symptoms, like fatigue, are still not specific to the disease, just consistent with many viral or bacterial infections.

With a new baby around, I was sleeping less. He had a runny nose and recently started daycare so it would be reasonable to expect that I had just picked up an ordinary bug. Plus, I had just come off a harder run training block to prepare for an ultramarathon, so I thought initially that my body was just a tad more susceptible. This is one reason why some athletes will mistake Lyme symptoms for overtraining.

One Sunday evening, I developed a fever. This was accompanied with the worst night sweats I’ve ever experienced. The fever and sweats continued for the next three days, gradually worsening toward evening, which is common to any ongoing infection. The level of fatigue and demotivation was impressive, beyond typical flu levels in intensity and duration. With my 40-mile race looming, my wife gently (forcefully!) nudged me into an ER visit despite gradual daily improvement in the fever because I was also having a new and simultaneous lower abdominal pain (which I eventually realized was a referred pain from my thigh adductor tendons, but that’s another story). No surprise that they told me I had an infection. And elevated creatine kinase levels in my blood tests. Drink lots of water!

I thought I recovered through this initial phase by the following weekend because the fever seemed to have mostly resolved and the night sweats had slacked off. That was the weekend I ran the gorgeous Highlands Sky ultramarathon, albeit at a much slower pace than I would normally because it was obvious I wasn’t at 100% health yet. It seemed strange that I became very sore partway through the run even though I was running easier than I ever normally compete and I had rested much of the week. Then my quadriceps stayed sore at points deeper in the muscles for many more days after running than they typically would. This is unfortunately still very similar to overtraining symptoms.

running slower in the race let me take a couple of nice photos

Recovery?

After resting for a week, as I always do after a long race, I tried to return to my typical training with some easy running. That went well enough and the muscle soreness had resolved. Then I had a bright idea to take back a couple of Strava KOMs/course records on a local trail (because I hadn’t actually raced hard in the ultra) and I expected that it should be safe to push a little effort.

I really was finally feeling good. Good enough to push. I ran the two hill climb intervals very hard that day and took the Strava segment crowns back. Great. Whoopee. No one cares except for the guy who lost the KOM. But it became apparent after that hard effort that my heart rate was not dropping back to typical levels as rapidly as it typically would.

Cardiovascular consequences

As July began, I noticed my heart rate was still not coming back down to my normal resting levels immediately after running or when waking up in the morning. And I would sometimes feel my heart beating with ridiculous force at rest and while exercising. So I made it a point to avoid pushing the effort, thinking I just wasn’t yet recovered from the combined race, baby stress, business stress, and illness. That was partly correct. Again, I had the same fever and night sweats and fatigue. I stopped running and just started slowly hiking every couple days for only brief periods because I would feel my blood pressure swing wildly with effort.

The heart rate issues would appear to resolve with a day of rest, so I was able to resume running slowly again by the end of the week though it was still abnormally tiring. I’m sure a small part of that was related to our high July heat and humidity, but a 12-minute mile had never felt that hard before.

As each run passed, I caught onto the trend that my normal cardiac function was off drastically enough that my Garmin Fenix 3 repeatedly detected that my “performance condition” was constantly in negative figures. It’s crazy that the watch could detect such a difference with great consistency. This might normally happen for a day or two after a hard effort but not for every run over multiple weeks consecutively.

Another not-so-fun fact: there’s a little something called Lyme pericarditis, which is an inflammation of the pericardial sac that surrounds the heart. And the Lyme bacteria can invade the nerves that supply the heart, leading to issues like atrioventricular block. Suffice it to say, the nerves don’t function normally after that and can contribute to those blood pressure swings.

Respiratory weirdness

It was a strange and alarming experience when I realized that I couldn’t quite take a full deep inspiration or achieve full expiration at rest or with exercise. It felt like my stomach was constantly trying to occupy the space where my lungs must normally reside. A “belly breath” wasn’t happening, which stinks because that’s always been a reliable technique to help me relax or to flush out the sensation of going anaerobic while running. I first noticed this inability to breathe into my stomach during the ultramarathon and was glad to be going easier then because I don’t think I could have eaten and absorbed food in a normal manner otherwise.

Neurologic, muscular, and joint happenings

For weeks I had this ongoing sense of muscle tightness along my thoracic spine and it took very little effort to strain my low back one day with yard work. Much like the earlier run soreness, that strain caused a deep, sore muscle pain that lingered for a couple days longer than I would typically experience.

It was also odd that I would feel a little uncoordinated during my runs. Not-so-fun fact #1358: Along with the nerves of the heart, it’s not unusual that the bacteria invade other parts of the peripheral nervous system and can eventually make their way into the central nervous system, neither of which are going to help coordination. You can even lose your vision.

I felt weak. My attempt at returning to basic strength training in mid-July was rewarded with both wrist joints hurting and even more spine region tightness and pain. On other days my ankle joints took turns aching and at another point one of my knees became painful. It was strange that the various joint pains would come only for part of a single day and then quickly decide to move onto some other place to piss off. They were nothing like an acute pain I might traditionally feel for a day or two after overdoing any form of exercise. That makes me wonder if it wasn’t more of an infectious arthritis, which is also common to Lyme disease. Oh cool. What a not-so-fun fact.

By the middle of July sleep was not counteracting the fatigue. I was taking a nap nearly every day and I usually consider naps a giant waste of time. I don’t even nap with the flu.

Okay, I’ll get it checked out

With my wife’s encouragement, I went to an appointment with a general physician who began to do blood work like checking for low testosterone or thyroid dysfunction. Oh yeah, and they thought it would be good to check for a multitude of sexually transmitted diseases though there weren’t any questions asked on that front. Unfortunately, despite asking about the possibility of Lyme disease, no Lyme tests were performed. The physician didn’t feel it necessary because I had no recollection of a tick being attached to me for a lengthy period or having the classic bullseye rash. (So much for making a potential diagnosis based upon the patient’s subjective reports.)

Now that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a tick attach to me at any point recently, because I most certainly do recall having one attached to me at the end of a recent long run. I promptly removed it. I’m a little skeptical of the CDC reported 36-hour time frames necessary to transmit the bacteria from a tick into the host but perhaps I had an immature tick on my scalp and had no idea it was there. Or perhaps the attached tick regurgitated when I went to remove it.

It was around this time that I noticed the back of my head itching and having a rash for over a week, but maybe that was some kind of psychosomatic thing. Who knows. I don’t care because it stopped.

How many ticks can you count in this photo waiting to jump onto the passing warm blooded mammal?

It just keeps getting better

To add to the symptom list, I developed a new problem: anxiety. Like take-your-breath away-because-your-chest-is-being-smashed-and-throat-squished anxiety. This was also worse in the morning. It lasted several days with varying intensities. Super favorite not-so-fun fact: It’s apparently not uncommon for people with Lyme disease to develop anxiety. I resisted the physician’s offer for medication because I’m too much of an arrogant “tough guy” and was hopeful we would be treating the real cause soon.

So while waiting on blood test results I began experimenting with a powerful drug. No, not the illicit kind, nothing prescribed, and not the over the counter kind either. I’m talking about the endogenously manufactured endorphin: adrenaline. You gotta try that stuff. This was really more of an experiment of exercise intensity but what I realized is that running hard into zone 5 could mimic the sensation of chest tightness and labored breathing that I might have in a competition but also what anxiety could produce. So I could actually make a run feel sorta “normal,” even though it clearly wasn’t. And the longer I would sustain a hard interval, the longer I would feel the weird blood pressure swings when the run ended. It did seem to reduce the anxiety intensity afterward though. I’m just smart enough to know I couldn’t and shouldn’t do this to myself during every run but it was an interesting observation. Perhaps one that I wouldn’t recommend if you suspect overtraining or Lyme disease. But it’s science!

My reward for seeking care

The physician calls me to let me know one of the blood tests came back with a positive finding. Apparently they think I have syphilis, because of a positive RPR test. The RPR (rapid plasma reagin) test is a non-specific test that looks for antibodies in the blood. This leads to a cascade of events. First off, now I’m a public health hazard so the medical clinic is required to report me to the Pennsylvania Health Department, without contacting me first, mind you. Kind of annoying. Then a health department nurse calls to counsel me on how avoid transmission of my STD. Fortunately, the nurse had time to chat. She understood, with some encouragement, that there’s a handful of other microscopic creatures, besides syphilis, that cause a positive RPR test, one of which is Lyme bacteria. She contacted the medical clinic and suggested that they test me for Lyme. By the way, I had no other syphilis signs or symptoms and my wife just gave birth to a perfectly healthy child less than three months ago. Congenital syphilis causes a huge number of birth defects and death in newborns. And I guess we’ll ignore our simultaneously healthy four year old because I’ve been playing the field for years now?

Increasingly irritated, I went back to the clinic that day, gave more blood and, wouldn’t you know it, the Lyme tests turned up positive a few days later. The CDC encourages testing for Lyme be done in two tiers. If the first tier tests (EIA or ELISA) are positive then a Western blot test should be confirmatory. The first tier tests could also be positive with syphilis.

Die Borrelia burgdorferi, die!

I spoke with the physician on the phone and (being a smartass) told her I’ve had more ticks on me so far this year than total sexual partners in my lifetime so statistically the Lyme disease wins. She prescribed doxycycline two times per day. As much as I hated to take an antibiotic, within a couple days the chronic fatigue began lifting and I felt noticeably better. Having been ill for so long, it was at this point that I realized how I had really been functioning almost as another person inside the same shell. Weird. Then I grew wings and flew away to Mars.

A few weeks later

I had finished up the antibiotic and fortunately none of the Lyme symptoms returned. For a couple weeks I did still have remnants of burns on my hands and fingers from taking doxycyline. For a person that tries to be outside nearly everyday of their life, increased sensitivity to sun exposure is an unfortunate side effect of this antibiotic. Did you catch that not-so-fun fact? Although, it was usually the sun exposure from mowing my yard during a two to three hour span that would lead to the burns. Is that a good reason to skip mowing? I could go run in the shade of the woods and not have issues.

An additional side effect of the medication was that part of my hands and fingers had a very frequent paresthesia (abnormal sensation). This occurred on both hands at all of the dorsal index and middle finger joints as well as the muscular part between the index finger and thumb. Those areas were extremely sensitive to hot water and were frequently reddened, almost as if I had a chemical burn. All of these side effects appeared around two weeks after starting the antibiotic and gradually worsened.

Noooooooo

Soon after I was feeling normal again, I encountered one of the smallest ticks I’ve ever seen. It had attached to my son’s back and I noticed it within an hour of him simply helping his mother in the garden for a few minutes. Even scarier when you know you have Lyme disease and you see your kid being bitten. It’s during this juvenile or nymph stage when ticks start to carry the Lyme bacteria. At about one-third adult size, they are much harder to spot and therefore more capable of infecting us. It’s amazing how quickly a tick can attach, too. In late summer I went for an hour run and by the time I made it back home there was an adult tick already attached to my lower leg.

Here’s a fun fact: Chickens and possums eat ticks. Now I just need an army of chickens and possums to trail run with me.

There's gotta be a tick in here Somewhere. 

Remember kids

Lyme disease is a major disruptor of athletic performance and healthy living. It can make you quite miserable and can be mistaken for overtraining and other illnesses. You need to be aware of Lyme’s increasing occurrence and recognize that it may manifest in a number of the body’s structures and cause many different symptoms. It took much perseverance on my part to have the problem appropriately addressed medically. I’m sure the diagnostics have improved, and for that I am thankful because I had a relatively quick diagnosis compared to some people who might go for years feeling awful and ultimately have less chance of proper treatment.

Stay safe out there!

Disclaimer: Several ticks have been harmed since the original writing of this article.

Here’s a nice running-related article on protecting yourself from Lyme disease: http://trailrunnermag.com/training/injuries-and-treatment/dont-get-ticked.html

University of Virginia Running Medicine Conference 2018 Takeaways

Despite the best attempts of March’s winter weather to block travel, I made my way to Charlottesville, VA a few days ago for the Running Medicine conference they have every spring. UVA consistently does a great job of recruiting well known, excellent speakers for this event.

Here was this year’s agenda for the Friday lectures:

• Knee Osteoarthritis: A Case Approach - Robert Wilder, MD, FACSM and Eric Magrum, DPT, OCS, FAAOMPT

• Clinical Decision Making for Footwear - Jay Dicharry, MPT, SCS

• An Update on Hydration Guidelines - David Hryvniak, MD

• Post-Operative Guidelines: Return to Running after Knee Surgery - Bryan Heiderscheidt, PhD, PT (Keynote)

• Gait Retraining: Finding the Right Balance - Bryan Heiderscheidt, PhD, PT (Keynote)

• Regenerative Therapies for Osteoarthritis of the Knee & Hip - Fran O’Connor MD, MPH, FACSM

• Nutrition: Controversies and Guidelines - Patti Deuster , PhD, MPH, FACSM

And the Saturday labs:

• Systematic Video Gait Analysis - Bryan Heiderscheidt, PhD, PT

• Rebuilding the Foot - Jay Dicharry, MPT, SCS

• Dynamic Pre- and Post-Run Exercise - Anne Dunn, MS, CPT & Jason Dunn, MEd

• Running Shoes 2018: Where are we now? - Mark Lorenzoni

Nobody messes with yoda

CPR for foot muscles with Jay Dicharry

There was so much great information presented, I could write for hours, but let’s just go with a few highlights.

1. Runners with known symptomatic knee osteoarthritis may benefit from a 3-4 month trial of one of the following: glucosamine/chondroitin, omega-3 fatty acids, fish oil, krill oil, or avocado/soybean unsaponifiables (ASU). There is a not an abundance of research to support each of these interventions but they do appear useful in some cases and have a low risk. It is not advised to start taking all of them simultaneously.

2. Once again, running does not cause osteoarthritis when performed at reasonable low to moderate mileage and intensity. There may be a potential relationship of higher mileage (>65 miles/week) and high intensities to developing knee OA. Overall though, runners tend to maintain a higher quality of life for more years without limiting knee pain than their non-running counterparts. That’s why running is actually believed to lead to protective cartilage changes, if anything. Let’s crush this myth.

3. Those darn medially posted motion control and stability running shoes (the ones with the harder inner sole material) can contribute to extra load at the medial (inner) knee joint, which is the side where most people with knee osteoarthritis acquire their degenerative issues. In other words, they probably aren’t going to help existing inner knee pain and may even exacerbate it.

4. Speaking of medially posted shoes, the location of the post continues to make no sense. The midfoot (navicular bone) drops maximally into pronation after the heel has lifted from the ground. How is the harder material that is no longer touching the ground going to stop this movement? It can’t. It won’t. Time to move on from your poor science, shoe industry. Let me take a moment to remind everyone that pronation is not necessarily an evil problem that even needs corrected with a shoe in the first place. But that’s not what sells shoes now is it? And one more thing, just because the inner foot arch appears to collapse while standing doesn’t mean that it does that same thing while running. Nor does it move any significantly extra amount beyond the amount every other foot type moves.

5. There are a couple new things coming along in shoe design. You will see a new trend of placing greater densities of foam across the forefoot region of a running shoe while the heel will have a slightly lower density. We need a stable surface to push off. Also, there are now straight lasted cushioned shoe models. The general shape of the shoe is based on the last and can be curved, semi-curved, or straight. Straight lasts were previously found only in the motion control and stability shoes, which, as I just mentioned, tend to further overload the the medial compartment of the knee. That overload is less likely in a cushioned model that doesn’t have the ridiculously hard inner heel material.

6. Following ACL reconstruction, runners and other athletes are returning to running before they have best function of their quadriceps muscle. These deficits, which are neurological in nature, are lingering for huge amounts of time, easily one year and even two years after surgery. While an athlete may demonstrate full strength of the quadriceps in a muscle test, and even good jumping technique, their ability to rapidly activate the quad muscle remains at a deficit, which leads to running gait changes, abnormal loading of knee joint, and potentially ongoing pain. Typical ACL protocols bring running back at 12 to 16 weeks post-surgery. Is that too early or are we just not appropriately getting the quad back online?

7. Though they are far from perfected and minimally researched, regenerative medicine methods such as platelet rich plasma injections and stem cell therapies are showing promise in helping athletes recover from long-standing tendon and joint injury. They aren’t going to create a brand new tissue for you but are probably a worthy treatment option to try prior to surgeries like joint replacement. Research will tell us more in the next few years.

8. Carbohydrate periodization may be beneficial in some runners to enhance fat oxidation and decrease carbohydrate dependence. With this method, which is actually how I personally train, you perform slower runs without any carbohydrate supplementation and maybe even do some of your shorter easy runs in a fasted state. That works great for early morning runs before breakfast. Your faster or harder runs would still have more carbohydrate intake prior and/or during.

9. There are three running gait factors that consistently show the best relationships to injury in the research: overstriding forward of the body’s center of mass, excessive bounce (vertical oscillation), and excessive compliance (body instability) at mid-stance of the running stride.

10. The gluteus medius muscle actually generates more force to stabilize the pelvis during mid-stance than the gluteus maximus when running on a flat surface at endurance speeds. Which is why it’s so important to get it functioning appropriately in endurance runners. The gluteus medius is notoriously weak and underactive in endurance athletes and that is reinforced by the repetition of moving in a single direction. You need to learn what it feels like to keep the pelvis level and stable while running and if you can’t do that, please come see me. I always prefer to teach people how to use their hip muscles in standing because the Jane Fonda leg raises lying on your side are typically performed incorrectly, and the leg raises don’t transfer into the actual way we use these muscles.

11. Any coach or clinician that thinks they are accurately measuring joint angles on a two dimensional video or image is doing their client or patient a disservice. The angle values they are measuring are likely incorrect, especially if they aren’t using body markers.

group run

16 surefire ways to get and stay injured from running

Nobody wants to be injured. Let’s review a few ways in the coming days that runners typically hurt themselves and maybe you won’t have to join that club.

1. Chasing after specific mileages. Yes, for performance gains, you should have objective and defined goals. Certainly those can be related to mileage. But there’s more to healthy and successful running than miles per week. When a runner focuses too heavily on a certain mileage each week it doesn’t take into account many factors: the intensity of those miles, the terrain, the weather, the lack of sleep because you stayed up later than usual on a couple nights, the extra shift you picked up at work, your nutrition, and so on. You must account for all of the various types of stresses you have in order to stay healthy. Don’t be blinded by the numbers. Don’t get greedy. Improvement is a long and gradual process, and there is no equation or sum total of miles that leads to running nirvana. You can’t level up like it’s a video game after collecting mileage coins.

2. Being unwilling to diverge from your cookie-cutter workout plan. How many times have you heard “listen to your body?” If you are sick or noticing the start of a slight niggle of an injury, don’t try to stubborn your way through while hoping the luck gods take pity on you. Weigh your options. Do you have more to gain or lose by completing three more of the Runner’s World website-prescribed 400 meter repeats on an aching calf? How much fitness would you really gain from that day of junk miles? When you are thrown a curveball it doesn’t mean you can’t get in a workout. It doesn’t mean your race in two weeks is now an impossibility. If you remain willing and ready to modify your plan at any time, it isn’t so traumatic to do so. You can become an exercise ninja, ready and able to adapt at any instant. That might mean cross training. It might mean rescheduling a hard day for a couple days later. It might mean taking a full rest day. It might mean completely ditching the plan you found doing a Google search.

3. Doing the same thing over and over. Doing the same thing over and over. Doing the same thing over and over. Doing the same thing over and over. Isn’t that annoying? Guess what? Your body thinks it’s pretty annoying when you run the same pace and distances all the time on the same roads and same sidewalks. Is it that uncomfortable to do something different? Unlikely. But that protective part of your brain will tell you it is a problem to deviate. I don’t personally understand this - I hate running the exact same routes and intensities all the time - but I’m a weird trail runner and road runners don’t associate with us weirdos. The pavement pounders seem more reluctant to purposely and drastically switch things up. Yes, there is some good that comes from a consistent training stimulus because the frequent loads actually helps prevent injury. But that’s better off being an AEROBIC effort in most amateur runners, which means you have to run slowly. No, slower than that. (Thank you not-so-accurate online pace calculator for messing this up.) EVEN slower. More like trotting at times. Especially since we have these things called hills. What most runners do is train a bit too hard, too often, so it becomes a different stimulus. They sit just on the edge of discomfort, drifting past a high aerobic effort and into tempo pace, which is ANAEROBIC metabolism. That’s not something you should do for several runs in a week. You’ll get faster doing that, for a little while, but it’s not sustainable and eventually leads to every runner’s fear: a performance plateau. I’m giving you permission to not make every run hurt.

4. Ignoring overall athleticism and strengthening. I’m going to keep harping on this one until at least the year 2025. If you have no variability in your movement, you are asking for trouble to occur at some point. If you aren’t strength training and doing something to improve and explore the way your body moves as an overall athlete, running itself will not keep you healthy for very long. It might take a few years, but the problems will come. The muscles and nervous system demand frequent challenge, or they gradually begin to lose optimal function. You won’t detect it at first, but it’s no great mystery of physiology that we start to lose strength beyond the age of 30. Running doesn’t keep anyone strong or powerful. (Though it’s certainly better than doing nothing.) Performing strength work even once per week is a potent stimulus if you work hard.

5. Discounting the role of your routine posture and activities. I bet you thought about sitting up taller when you read the word POSTURE. Our daily lifestyle has more to do with getting injured than most people realize. One of the most common and detrimental issues I see in the clinic is that frequent sitting tightens the hip flexors on the front of the body. This keeps you from using the big gluteus maximus muscles that should produce a ton of force to propel a runner forward. So people begin to use the quads and hip flexors even more, the pendulum of the running stride shifts forward from its ideal location, and the cycle continues. It’s not as simple of a fix as just doing a couple hip strengthening items twice a week. The low back, neck, and thoracic regions are also areas that adapt negatively, thus shifting your body into an overall poor alignment. Mobility is lost. Strength is lost. Overall movement changes and there are eventual consequences.

6. Using the workout plan of a runner who is of a higher ability level. You know, because if they got better with this plan then surely you will get better and run just like them in a couple months. Nevermind that they have different genetics, better running technique, and 13 more years of running experience. Plus, they have full hip and ankle joint movement and muscle control that you lost 8 years ago thanks to your desk job. Yes, clearly all of the details are all the same. I always wonder how many people try to mimic the workouts of elite endurance athletes when they end up on a website somewhere. Just because the pro marathoner does back-to-back long runs doesn’t mean you should for your first marathon.

7. Listening to people who have no actual expertise but are ready to use you as their own personal guinea pig and offer plenty of untested advice for your training or injury recovery. I know this is often done in innocence, but that doesn’t make it any less concerning. Perhaps a more advanced athlete invites you to run with them and you decide to follow their workout or are too embarrassed to put forth any effort less than they are performing. The other athlete can mean no harm but may not really analyze the many possible scenarios that will impact your individual health. Them: “This is what my coach had me do.” You: “Oh my god, you have a coach, you must know what you are talking about.” People often do the same thing when they are injured. Them: “When I had plantar fasciitis the personal trainer told me to just do this stretch to my foot every day and not run and then it seemed like it got better in a couple months.” You: “I guess I should do that stretch everyday and not run.” Wait, you are taking secondhand advice about treating an injury from a personal trainer? I hope they have additional credentials!

8. Not having fun. If it’s not fun, you’ll eventually burn out, which is the ultimate injury. Training variation can keep things fresh and interesting. Strength and plyometric training will help your running, so don’t shy away from it if you enjoy that type of exercise. If you are the competitive road racing type, maybe you need to train for an adventure race, triathlon, mountain bike race, or trail running race. Try Crossfit (but don’t get hurt) or play rec league soccer. Or even leave running altogether for a few months, not that I ever would encourage someone to do such a thing. Sometimes people do appreciate their running more and can actually improve performance and decrease injuries when they have been away from running for awhile. If you aren’t having fun, what is the point? To make yourself routinely miserable? Find something you actually enjoy and keeps you healthy. 

9. Thinking an injury is gone just because an initial pain has subsided. Your nervous system is super smart. It can decrease the amount certain muscles work when moving and use an alternative strategy if doing so leads to less pain. It can shift the demand to other muscles to still get the movement done with the same total force output. Most people won’t have any awareness of this change in muscle activity. The initial area of injury may never flare up again, but many times when another pain arrives, the real problem isn’t where the newest pain is occurring. For example, low back or gluteus maximus pain leading to an Achilles tendon pain months to years later. This inhibition of muscle activity is clearly not ideal if those muscles were working just fine prior to the initial injury. Traditionally people (clinicians included) mistakenly try to rehab the area of current pain when they ought to be emphasizing something else. Prior injury matters.

10. Not taking any easy days. Running is supposed to be hard! Running is supposed to hurt! I’m going to do high intensity intervals every time I run! And that’s four days every week right now but I’m going to work my way up to five days! What...the...heck? Why? Can we talk about how much I’m not impressed by Instagram photos of people “crushing it” multiple times each week? I get that there’s a satisfaction in showing off your hard work. But no one with any real longevity in endurance sport trains this way (because it’s unsustainable). Anaerobic efforts, like intervals and tempo work, are super helpful to improve fitness, technique, and speed - but are not necessary for every workout. Easy, slow distance miles just don’t give the sexy social impression that interval work creates. If you want to run for only five, maybe ten years, then go ahead, do crazy intervals for every run. To summarize a phrase from fellow PT Christopher Johnson: runners run at 80% effort 80% of the time which leads to an injury occurrence of up to 80%. Strive to stay in the 20%! Use a heart rate monitor, power meter, or monitor your breathing to truly keep tabs on your intensity. Pace is a poor measure of intensity for many runners but that’s what people rely on because it’s simple.

11. Not recognizing the importance of recovery time and being proactive in your recovery techniques. Yes, I know you are busy. But do you want to run a handful of years or do you want to run for decades? Each day you should have a goal, and that goal doesn’t always have to be increasing speed, fitness, or strength. Recovery time can be broken into active and passive methods. Easy running days should be active recovery days, meaning they aren’t intended to gain you fitness but they are intended to make you feel loosened up and healthy. It’s still exercise. You should be able to finish an easy aerobic run and say “I could easily do that again.” On the passive side, learn a couple techniques to directly work on your muscle, tendon, and fascial tissues. Get yourself a lacrosse ball and a massage stick and use them at least three times a week on your major leg muscle groups to break up those funky tender and hard spots you have inevitably created in your legs. If you aren’t familiar with any muscle self-treatment techniques, check out “The Roll Model” by Jill Miller or “Becoming a Supple Leopard” by Kelly Starrett for ideas. Recovery time requires planning, just like the workouts. We create the muscle fiber adaptations to training gradually, while you aren’t training, so if you don’t allow enough time for that, when are the adaptations supposed to happen?

12. Not being proactive about your recovery from an injury. Instead of actually completing what’s required to recover from an injury, some athletes prefer to do nothing. It’s the wait-and-see approach. Our bodies want to heal, so rest typically decreases pain in the short-term. But it doesn’t address the root of the problem for recurring and long-lasting overuse injuries. Unfortunately, this is a common practice among injured athletes, who routinely take a couple days of rest before trying to resume their typical training without any modification. If the pain just started a couple days prior and is getting better quickly because you did your due diligence, that’s one thing. But it’s an entirely different scenario when you’ve had persistent pain for a couple weeks, a month, maybe longer. Clearly rest isn’t the solution at that point. Some people avoid proper treatment because they are afraid of getting worse or delaying what little progress they’ve made if they attempt something new (like seeing a PT, massage therapist, or chiro). Or maybe a negative experience treating a prior injury leads to reluctance in discovering the best ways to treat a current injury. Some are fearful that nothing can be done to help their injury and they would be wasting their time to try other tactics. More often than not, doing nothing doesn’t get you very far. While adequate rest is oftentimes an integral part of the recovery process, it should never be considered the sole means to addressing an injury.

13. Relying on medications to control symptoms. Medications, whether it be pills or injections, are not a viable long-term solution to a mechanical overuse injury problem. As athletes, when we get injured, we naturally look for the quickest solution that would allow us to return to training without pain. And because you are working hard in training, there’s little energy or time left to devote to active injury recovery techniques. While NSAIDs and corticosteroid injections have their place in orthopedic medicine, they rarely, if ever, provide a long-term relief of symptoms or resolution of an overuse injury. And let’s not forget the well documented side effects that these medications have when used with frequency.

14. Trying to conform too rigidly to a supposedly ideal running technique. We all move differently. There are certainly some good components to things like Chi Running and the Pose Method but on some level you gotta do you to accomplish the task at hand. We were built for movement variation, so why not take advantage of that? You improve and become efficient at the things you work on most, meaning you will get faster if you work on speed specifically. Or you will gain endurance from emphasizing more long aerobic efforts. But there are also running form changes that come with mixing up your speed. Mindless running at the same pace, in a straight line, and on flat terrain doesn’t exactly encourage you to learn what is efficient for a given demand. Good runners are efficient at a variety of running paces. They know exactly how much effort to put into their movement to achieve a specific result. You don’t want the same muscles producing the same force in the same range of mobility with every practice run. Your nervous system, which is ultimately responsible for how your muscles work, will become efficient at running that one pace only. And if your most efficient form can only be performed at one pace, don’t expect that you will have the movement skills to stay uninjured and efficient if there is as need to run at other speeds (faster or slower). This problem becomes obvious in those who say, “I can run 10:00/mile pace but as soon as I go faster I start having pain at my _________.” Performing 5-10 second long strides/striders during or after a run can be helpful in teaching you how to propel your body forward quickly and efficiently but without the fatigue or technique breakdown that occurs with long intervals. They are especially helpful if you have little to no speedwork experience. And it’s okay to sustain a slower, trotting pace at times too. Also, don’t obsess over how your foot is contacting the ground (heel vs. midfoot vs. forefoot). Current research indicates that the location of where your foot contacts the ground relative to your center of mass matters more. We should be able to use any of those types of foot contacts depending on the situation (uphill, downhill, flat, loose rocks, etc.) The more varied your overall training, the more capable you will be of tolerating technique changes and running with your own best stride.

15. Believing you can rely solely on rest once you have signs of injury. Yes, there are times for rest, but they should be kept brief for tendon and muscle overuse injuries.

Runner: I’ll just rest for a week and that will take care of it.

Me: No, it won’t.

Runner: But rest took care of it when I had this injury a couple years ago.

Me: Did it? Apparently it didn’t or it wouldn’t have happened AGAIN. The real problem was never addressed. This thing has just been biding its time, always remaining a weak link, probably in conjunction with other problems of strength and mobility outside the area where you actually have the pain. The moment you have a training error, like running faster or further, it’s the first thing to break.

Runner: Oh. Well, I’ll just rest until the end of the week and then do my long run on Saturday.

Me: Did you hear anything I just said? *Pounds head on table.*

Our bodies adapt most favorably post-injury with controlled, specific stresses on the injured tissue. The best stress to place on a healing tissue isn’t more running either. If running was the cure then it wouldn’t continue to provoke long-term pain. Running places very high loads, thousands of times on the legs, hips, and torso. This requires a certain amount of muscle strength be in place to perform running safely. Strength that many runners don’t actually have when they start a running program. People too often try to gain fitness running but they don’t have the basic strength-based fitness necessary to run safely in the first place. So while you are resting the pain away, the strength isn’t increasing, is it?

16. Not trusting in the process of proper training by becoming impatient. We want it now, at broadband speeds, not dial up! So many runners do all their runs at a high intensity, assuming that strategy is the fastest way to improve. And many newer runners of all ages do find quick success as they make rapid cardiorespiratory gains. But three years into their careers, they start breaking down because the muscles, tendons, joints, and bones just can’t adapt with the rate of improvement the way cardiorespiratory fitness can. People that are hurt frequently aren’t able to train consistently so they stay injured and don’t reach a very high performance level, at least not for very long.

Instead, you should trust the training process and limit high intensity workouts to once or twice a week. You should work hard enough on the hard days to promote gains and then let recovery do its job. The performance gains you should expect from a single hard workout will be very small, if not imperceptible. In reality, much of succeeding is slowly and methodically putting in your time and simply remaining consistent at lower intensities. You have to think long-term. Like at least six months. There are no shortcuts to success.

If you like to run fast, you can do it frequently if you keep the durations VERY short with striders, which are great to perfect and maintain your form as often as every run. Most amateurs could improve their running technique anyway, so this will be time well spent. Then transition that better technique into your longer but less frequent (1-2x/week) intervals and tempo runs.

Some questions to think about:

• Are your intensities and volumes during hard days and longest runs sustainable across a several month span of time?

• Can you feel just  about fully recovered from any workout in two days or less?

• Can you add an extra easy run or cross training day during the week and not feel destroyed after it?

• Could you have done one more hard interval at that same pace?

• Could you repeat that entire easy run all over again as soon as you completed it and still feel good?

If you are answering no, you might want to back off your need for crushing it a smidge. You can only go to the well so often in a short period of time. If you want to improve while staying uninjured, over the long haul your goals should be consistently good technique, sustainable and repeatable hard efforts, frequent but brief exposure to fast running, and frequently being active at lower aerobic levels.

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Calf pain in runners: 9 causes and considerations From footwear to form

One of the most common complaints runners have is calf pain, particularly while running. It might initially come in bouts during just a couple runs, but sometimes it will stick around for weeks and months if left unaddressed. Rest usually improves this discomfort at first, but isn’t typically sufficient for long-term, consistent relief if the person continues to run and doesn’t make any other changes. They’ll complain that their calf muscles feel “tight.” And it’s common for both calf muscle groups to start to feel this way around the same time.

Some runners take the “I give up” approach and assume it’s a necessary part of getting older or running too many miles, so they begin to modify their training around it by planning an additional rest day or cross training instead. They take the “a little running is better than no running” approach, which I think is very reasonable for a true injury, but when something can be improved, why not address it the right way?

For the sake of this article let’s assume we are covering muscle-specific pain in the calf that isn’t too bothersome much outside of running. These are more likely to be muscle overuse syndromes or biomechanical overload syndromes. This cause of pain can be treated while you continue to run, if done correctly.

But there are plenty of other things that can cause calf pain and you will need a medical professional, not an internet article, to rule those out.

Possible (and Potentially Serious) Medical Issues to Rule Out

• Blood clots/deep vein thrombosis

• Nerve mobility deficits or irritability of the lumbar, sciatic, and tibial nerves

• Calf muscle tear/rupture

• Popliteal artery entrapment

What can you do?

Seek professional medical guidance if you have had a traumatic injury (often accompanied by a sudden “pop” or a feeling of being kicked in the calf). We are also very concerned if there is a more persistent or severe onset of pain, or additional symptoms like sensation changes (pins, needles, tingling, burning), fever, swelling, and redness of the calf. It’s important to consider your overall history because factors such as being older, having a history of a particular problem, recent immobilization, comorbidities, and certain medications can all have a role. These issues are very different than a mild discomfort, tightness, or fatigue that occurs only while running. It isn’t to say that some of these problems can’t be treated conservatively but you will have the best chance at success with proper diagnosis. We need to keep in mind too, if you have attempted treatment that doesn’t seem to be helping.

Other considerations:

Calf Strength and Endurance Deficits

Logic would tell you that running demands a ton of work from the leg muscles. At some routine level of activity, the muscles adapt to that work and you keep on going from week to week without issues, just as happily as ever. Now what happens if you chronically demand so much from those muscles that they can’t adapt to what you are trying to have them do? They slowly start to...change…like your best friend from junior high school. At first it was cute but two months later you were just annoyed. The muscles don’t have to be painful, at first. Maybe they just feel more tired and tight. But when you keep running on them and don’t make any other changes they become more consistently problematic.

The muscle and fascial connective tissue isn’t able to adapt to your demands in a positive manner when demand outpaces normal repair over a long period of time. Why couldn’t the muscles withstand the demand? Most likely there wasn’t enough strength or endurance (or both) in the muscle group. Given enough time of chronic repetitive stress on under-prepared tissue, the quality of the soft tissue changes.

Running really requires something called “strength endurance” from muscles like the calf. You might even better call it “strength and power endurance,” but I don’t want the top of your head to blow off right now so forget I said that. The point is that the muscles of the calf have to withstand high forces (strength), very rapidly (power), and with high frequency (endurance).

The calf-strength variations that will show up when tested during a single leg calf/heel raise are often interesting. A runner might have tons of gastrocnemius strength during a straight-knee calf raise, but when the calf raise is re-tested while the knee is flexed, they can’t reach the top end of the calf raise anymore. Often this means they have decreased soleus strength, which is a real problem since, while running, we spend a large portion of the running stride with the knee slightly bent. Or maybe they can’t perform the same amount of reps on one side when compared to the other in either position.

Even worse is when the person can’t perform any type of single leg calf raises without relying on their long toe flexing muscles that come from deep in the calf region. My heart hurts when I see this. These people tend to grip with their toes during calf raises and just can’t get their brain to shut those muscles off while completing the raise because the bigger, outer calf muscles are just that weak. It’s not a surprise that people will run with those toe muscles engaged heavily too.

What can you do?

Build the strength of the calf muscles using calf raises, with the knee slightly bent and straight, without gripping with the toes, and with just a single leg at a time. Full ankle range of motion is key. Causing calf muscle fatigue is the goal. That might take five reps or 20. Don’t hammer it to death because you’ll probably become sore for two days. Early strengthening with bodyweight is good but after 2-3 weeks of 3-4x/week, runners should be able to add extra resistance, even beginning with something like 10 pounds. The calf needs to be strong, but...

Other Strength Deficits

I am stating the obvious here, but it takes more than the calf muscles to propel a runner. Lacking hip or thigh strength could lead to a trickle-down of abnormal demand into the calf muscles. The calf could actually be super strong but just have to endure too much stress every time you go running because something else stinks at its job. End result: too much work being done by the calf muscles that leads to stress-induced discomfort.

What can you do?

Ensure you have full strength of the hip and thigh muscles (eg. gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, hamstrings, quadriceps). Strengthening exercises for these areas is beyond the scope of this article, but the point is you need to look outside the area of symptoms if you want to actually fix the problem. Remember to emphasize single-leg strengthening to ensure symmetry. If you can only do eight single leg bridges on one side and 20 on the other then you’ve got some extra work to do on the weaker side.

Neuromuscular control

Your awareness of and ability to modify the way your body moves at any given instant is a good indicator of overall athleticism. Remember, our muscles only know how to function based on what they are told by the nervous system, particularly the spinal cord. If your nervous system can’t figure out how much force to generate from the various muscles at any one moment then your movement isn’t refined. Picture a gymnast on a balance beam. It doesn’t take much error to result in falling off the beam. They really have to own their movements with precision and certainty. Kinda, sorta knowing where their feet are isn’t going to cut it. Or imagine an infant learning to crawl. They are constantly on the edge of failure until their nervous system figures out the best way to coordinate muscle contractions to keep their body stable. Your calf muscles must contract with correct amounts of other muscle contractions in that leg with every footstrike.

What can you do?

Working on drills to improve your balance and proprioception is key. As previously mentioned, single-leg work is a necessity. And I don’t mean sit on a machine to do knee extensions, calf raises or leg presses one leg at a time. When you use machines, there’s no real demand that requires the nervous system to learn how to stabilize your body. Single leg balance that progresses into single leg deadlifts, single leg squats, single leg hops, single leg box jumps, single leg calf raises, the options are many. The point is to emphasize standing on one leg while you move the rest of your body.

Foot, Ankle Structure

An individual with a more flexible foot or ankle type that allows an inward collapse of the heel bone or inner foot arch could be placing more demand on their calf. These people are generically labeled as “flat-footed.” Though the more superficial calf muscles are mainly producing force for the forward/backward sagittal plane, there are additional forces that this outer calf and much deeper calf must withstand in the side-to-side or frontal plane. And then we must consider that the deeper calf muscles, like the posterior tibialis, that help to control the side-to-side ankle and foot motion, are also notorious for being part of the cause of pain.

What can you do?

Build the strength of the muscles that assist in stabilizing the ankle and foot that also come from the lower leg, like the peroneus longus, peroneus brevis, anterior tibialis, and posterior tibialis. One way of doing this is with resistance bands. This is also why I love single leg strengthening exercises like single leg Russian deadlifts that also require a person to balance and stabilize like a circus elephant on top a ball. As discussed below, you should perform routine soft-tissue maintenance on all of the calf muscles, superficial and deep.

TheraBand Professional Non-Latex Resistance Bands For Upper and Lower Body Exercise, Strength Training without Weights, Physical Therapy, Lower Pilates, and Rehab, Yellow & Red & Green, Beginner Set Buy on Amazon

Maintenance Habits

Here’s a big one. So you run for hours at a time or try to run really fast, essentially beating down the calf muscle fibers and their surrounding fascia and tendons, but then you don’t do anything good for those tissues? Resting is supposed to fix it all? It probably would if you weren’t trying to run most days of the week.

What can you do?

Buy and use a massage stick, foam roller, or lacrosse ball to routinely massage the muscles of the legs. Be sure to emphasize routine soft tissue maintenance for every major muscle group. The technique doesn’t matter as much as just doing something positive regularly for the muscles to keep them more supple and loose. Before the pain rules your life. Once the pain is consistently present, I can use techniques to get it to go away quickly and then you need to take over with a maintenance program.

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Calf Muscle Length

In many instances, you can think of calf muscle length as an indicator of something besides true structural muscle fiber, fascia, or tendon length. The chronic abuse of running very often leads your nervous system into thinking a higher level of nerve-dependent activity is needed in the calf when it really isn’t. That keeps the fibers holding a greater tension at all times, which makes the calf muscle appear shorter than it really is structurally. So there’s a big difference between your nervous system telling a muscle to behave as if it is tight and a muscle that truly, structurally is short and tight. Weird, I know.

What can you do?

Calf stretching with the runner’s stretch or dropping your heel off a step is typically what runners choose to do if their calves feel tight. But if you want a change in actual muscle structure and length, be prepared for it to take multiple weeks of frequent and prolonged stretching. Like three 60-second stretches at least three days per week. A deep full squat will more likely max out the ankle joint motion and soleus muscle length while a straight leg heel drop on a step is meant to be a gastrocnemius stretch. But I would rather rely on the other soft tissue techniques mentioned above as maintenance, like self-massage, myofascial release, or dry needling to make the muscles relax, which automatically improves their length in many people. Remember, the goal probably doesn’t need to be improving the muscle fiber lengths, it’s convincing your nervous system to let the darn muscle relax.

Running Technique

Certain techniques tend to stress certain tissues more over time - that is neither bad nor good. If there were ever a predictable running method to stress the calf muscles, it would be a forefoot initial contact style, particularly if the runner doesn’t allow the heel to reach the ground after making contact. With about 2.5x to 3x your bodyweight coming through the limb while running, there are huge lengthening or eccentric forces coming through the calf tissue when the forefoot touches the ground before any other part of the foot. This could be the case with midfoot striking too. Depending on the runner’s individual style though, midfoot contact can decrease calf stress. Heel striking itself doesn’t necessarily tend to load the calf the same way a forefoot contact might, but rest assured those people have their own set of problems at the knees, thighs, and hips. Overstriding, which commonly accompanies heel striking, can be more stressful though.

What can you do?

By choosing to use a forefoot contact you should know the calf area is at risk for injury and perform your due diligence with the maintenance just mentioned to keep the calf muscles loose, relaxed, and happy! You may not immediately need to modify your technique to a heel or midfoot strike but could do so temporarily to maintain running fitness until the calf muscle status has been improved. Overstriding needs addressed in any instance. This is where we often need to address hip strength and control, hip flexor length, and other possible issues throughout the entire leg.

Paces, Distances, Training Program Design

What type of running have you been doing lately? Fast, slow, mixed speed, uphill, downhill, shorter distance, longer distance? Are these methods what you have always done or has your training changed recently to incorporate more speedwork, racing, or hills?

What can you do?

If you changed your distance, terrain, or speeds, and the changes contributed to the symptoms, temporarily remove or decrease those stressors for a week or two. Uphills and running faster are the most potent instigators of calf pain. Know the threshold of when the pain would begin while running and then try to stay just beneath that point for a couple weeks while the strengthening and other soft tissue treatment take hold. Be sure to have a full recovery day without sports or running that doesn’t stress the calf muscles.

Footwear

So you thought the zero drop or minimal shoes were great choice? Well, they are, but not if all this other stuff is off and you suddenly change the shoes too. They cause at least a 10% increase in calf load compared to a traditional shoe. Add that onto your already lackluster muscle tissue quality and we have a recipe for trouble. This is also an issue for runners when they switch suddenly from their base training shoes into their racing flats or spikes for competition.

What can you do?

Work your way into minimal or zero drop shoes gradually if you haven’t used them before. Two or three runs per week of 5-10 minutes is plenty in the first month. Run your warm up with them and then switch into your old training shoes. Gradually add faster workouts with spikes and flats into your training instead of just competing in those shoes. Spend more time barefoot at home and be sure to do the maintenance piece mentioned above to get the muscle tone to decrease. Here’s a nice article on transitioning to minimal footwear.

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7 Takeaways from the Healthy Running WV Conference

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the Healthy Running WV Conference held in Ranson, WV on November 3rd and 4th. There were about 50 attendees from a variety of backgrounds: running coach, MD, PT, DPM, and general runners. I doubt many of them left without having their preconceptions of training, nutrition, or health challenged. And that’s because the two primary presenters, Drs. Mark Cucuzzella and Phil Maffetone, are well known for challenging the status quo. Although both have a long history in exercise performance, lately they are more interested in public health. And for good reason. I wanted to share just a little taste of the information presented.

1. Attempting to peak for endurance events can be unnecessary, injury causing, and downright unhealthy. Dr. Maffetone suggested that we may really only need 2-4 weeks of speedwork in the final preparation for a competition, and we can perform quite well with no speedwork at all if the aerobic metabolism has been well trained over time. This is quite a bit shorter than the 6-8 weeks recommended by coaches like Arthur Lydiard.

2. Runners unnecessarily run too fast most of the time. I tell runners this all the time (some believe me, some don’t), but let’s revisit it. Exercise does not have to be uncomfortable to result in health and fitness gains. Dr. Maffetone recounted working with multiple elite and Olympic level athletes that had measurably deficient levels of aerobic fitness who continued to make significant performance gains when he took away their anaerobic training and ultimately trained them at slower speeds.

3. Food quality is more important to overall health than a specific caloric intake. For everyone, athlete or not, poor quality carbohydrates do an extremely bad job of creating satiety. So guess what? You eat more of them. I’ve hammered my fair share of Oreos and still didn’t feel satisfied. The carbs lead to a dramatic insulin response that can change in magnitude over time. High-quality proteins and fats do a great job of making us feel full sooner and longer after a meal without the dramatic insulin spike. Unprocessed vegetables can even provide a worthy source of carbohydrate. This is not new information to me or many others, but it’s worth repeating for those that are unaware of how prepackaged food, which emphasizes carbs, have made so many things easier to prepare but far less nutritionally valuable.

4. There are performance and health benefits to emphasizing greater protein and fat macronutrient intake over carbohydrate. Commonly accepted information encourages 60-70% daily carbohydrate intake for endurance athletes. We could get away with 30-40% or even less. Routinely de-emphasizing carbohydrate reliance in training forces the body to rely more on stored fat, which is pretty awesome if you want to run in a marathon or ultramarathon. Then you won’t require as much additional fueling during these longer events, delaying or ultimately preventing the dreaded bonk. Dr. Cucuzzella, who recently maintains a low carb intake, but has run for decades, has the physiology lab data to prove his increase of peak fat burning efficiency from 1.18 grams/minute to 1.9 grams/minute in just a year. These same kinds of beneficial metabolic changes were suspected many years ago by Dr. Tim Noakes in his famous text “Lore of Running.” I’m anxious to see where the research is on this in another 5-10 years.

5. Sprinting hard at the end of a long event, like a marathon, is more likely to trigger a cardiac event (heart attack) in someone predisposed to having such a cardiac issue. Don’t know if you are at risk? Talk to your physician about finding out your coronary artery calcium score.

6. A simple glucometer can be an excellent, affordable self-monitoring tool for detecting carbohydrate intolerance and the early onset of insulin resistance that leads to type 2 diabetes. Cucuzzella and Maffetone suggest that people don’t just wake up one day with type 2 diabetes. The changes occur over time because of poor nutritional quality. By the way, a few years back we called type 2 diabetes “adult onset” to differentiate it from the type 1 diabetes that people can have at birth. Unfortunately, that has become a misnomer because young children have begun to acquire type 2 diabetes as the American diet has emphasized low-quality processed carbohydrates since the 1980s.

7. Insulin resistance is a common factor to a variety of diseases. There is growing evidence that issues such as cardiovascular disease follow long term metabolic changes associated with a high carbohydrate diet. Older research focused on cholesterol but the tide is shifting.

If you are interested in attending a future Healthy Running Conference, check out www.healthyrunning.org for more information. 

You can read more about each of this particular conference's primary presenters at the following sites:

• Mark: https://www.drmarksdesk.com
• Phil: https://www.philmaffetone.com

Rock 'N The Knob 20 Miler Race Report

It’s fall, my absolute favorite time to run and compete, particularly in trail running events. And much like the road marathon season, there are far more events to choose from this time of year. I can’t seem to stop myself from signing up for runs even when I am initially planning for a non-competitive weekend.

The challenge and scenery drew me back to Claysburg, PA since I initially had the pleasure of attending Rock ‘N The Knob in 2015. Central PA has developed a large and involved trail running community, partly due to their fantastic selection of trails. As a result, great events like this have continued to grow. And a bonus: this is PA’s highest elevation trail running race.

Directed by Allegheny Trailrunners, the event has had a shorter race of 5-6 miles and a longer 20-22 mile event since 2012. The 10K was clearly quite popular this year with nearly 150 finishers. This may be the 2018 site of the USA Track and Field 10K Trail National Championships next year, which would make it even larger. The longer course was my preference this weekend and it ended up with 66 finishers.

The race typically starts a little later in the morning because the top of Blue Knob Ski Resort tends to be enveloped in thick fog during the cool September mornings. This year was an exception - we had a clear, sunny sky. I didn’t even realize how truly awesome the views were until this year. I had even raced the Lost Turkey Trail Marathon here a few weeks prior but that course didn’t go to the absolute top of the mountain like this one. The drive in certainly had fog and cooler temps but by the start of the race, temperatures were already above 70 degrees.

Photo by Connie Stappello

The long course starts with a short gravel lot section followed by about 1.5 miles of rocky, technical trail. It’s so rocky that I managed to roll my left ankle before even running one mile. Frustrating. It must have been obvious since the runner behind me even asked if I was okay. I needed to be more careful or I was going to have the shortest trail race ever.

Photo by Connie Strappello

The trail does eventually become less technical, on average, which is great because we really started descending. This portion visited the Lost Turkey Trail and the Crist Ridge Trail. I couldn’t believe how much the trail was covered with leaves in the valleys already. A group of four of us formed at the front, the lead occasionally changing between each runner in the first five or so miles. I eventually made it to the front to eat my fair share of low calorie spiderwebs. Three of us arrived closely smooshed together at the Pavia aid station, around mile 7.

Hitting the first major climb here, the legs were feeling good and reliable. That can be a deceptive thing when you have been going downhill for a couple miles, though. I recalled this area as part of a loop from 2015 where I somehow sprinted past a subterranean bee’s nest without being stung while the midpack runners heading up the hill were clearly not so happy. This year I’m carrying an Epi-Pen and Benadryl in case I’m not as fortunate.

Most of this first big climb was runnable, and Lee Strappello and I remained close as we neared the top and were forced to hike on increasingly loose and steep rockiness. Lee had been great to talk to for a few miles but after one hour of running together, I guess the time had come to split up. (AKA, I started feeling anxious.) His mother was taking tons of photos of us, a couple of which I’ve posted here.

Photo by Connie Strappello

The trails become a little more overgrown and technical in the next section, around 10-11 miles. Unfortunately, I started to feel my calf muscles tighten during the steeper hiking of the 500-foot long Chappell climb. I knew I was taking a chance by racing for the third weekend in a row, especially since my calf muscles were more sore than normal after last weekend. Ultimately I wasn’t expecting to have full recovery and a peak performance but the trails here are so challenging, fun, and unique that I took the chance to race anyway.

Upper Ridge Trail was a quick reprieve from the technical parts and heavy climbing. The next tough, yet fun, area occurred around mile 12 at Deep Hallow Notch. Here the trail suddenly climbs the steep mountainside to the left, often using mossy, sandstone rock steps. It’s a climb of about 0.3 miles, far shorter than the upcoming Beaverdam Hollow climb so the threat level is lower. Knowing my calves were already tiring out, I kept trying to make it a point to take a slightly longer hiking step to make the quads take a bigger share of the load. Better in theory than practice.

Arriving at the Raven’s Rest aid station around mile 13 I downed half a water bottle, a few small cups of pickle juice, a gel, gummy worms, and a cookie. Let’s hope all that stays down. I recognized this station from 2015 so I knew there was about to be a really cool, technical section of singletrack up Mountain View Trail but then one of the tougher climbs I’ve ever encountered would begin. But that’s really why I came in the first place.

The Beaverdam Canyon climb crushed me in 2015 because I knew nothing about its difficulty. Even though two years had passed, I knew this time that it was painfully long and basically unrunnable. Over one mile of 99% power hiking at 14:00/mile. This is the part of the course that nearly every long-course runner won’t forget and I’ve not raced anything else comparable around this region.

And so the Battle at Beaverdam begins with repetitious crisscrossing of a half dry stream, switchbacks, and dozens of mossy rock steps. Midway up I see a soldier groundhog climb a few feet up a tree in front of me. I wondered if groundhogs and beavers were genetically similar. It leaps back down into the trail, surely plotting its line of best attack. But then it decides to climb back onto the tree and maneuver to the backside of it, much as a sneaky squirrel would. Clearly a confusion tactic, rodent. As I finally step beside the tree, the groundhog is clinging right at my head level, a couple feet away, staring with its beady eyes, blood dripping from its mouth. Okay, so there was no blood but I had visions of it leaping onto my face in a rabid fit of rage. Thankfully it stayed put.

More light becomes apparent through the trees and soon enough I can kinda, sorta run, here and there, at least. Even though the major climbing is done, the course rolls through the woods on the Lookout Loop to the next aid station around mile 18 where they tell me I had a six-minute lead at the prior aid station. I lean on the table and prophylactically down more pickle juice. So close to the finish yet still so far when my muscles are not agreeing with my brain about their assigned task.

I’m greeted with a bit more climbing up a brushy power line and then a huge descent begins down the ski slopes. That was a nice change until I came to the part that had a sign that said something like, “Are you an expert?” Here the slope really narrows amongst the trees and becomes ridiculously steep. This would be sketchy to walk on fresh legs. I seriously can’t comprehend people safely skiing that stuff. Despite having my shoes pretty snug at the start, my big toes and forefeet are noticeably unhappy hotspots while trying to limit speed.

Photo by connie strappello

Cutting on into the woods again, it wasn’t long before I arrive at the next gut punch: a scramble climb known as “I Need A Sherpa.” A tow rope would have been sufficient. Because I had been descending for a handful of minutes, the moment I started to climb this entirely unrunnable section, both calf muscles and my left inner thigh locked into a cramp. Oh no. No. No.

There was a moment of doubt as to whether I could actually get my legs to work well enough to get up that hill. I began to move as if I was wearing downhill skis and trying to go uphill, rocking side-to-side. Maybe more like a gingerbread man would walk. The loose, flat rocks slip and slide underfoot, making traction unpredictable. Fortunately, the hill was covered in enough small birch saplings that I could use my upper body for assistance. There was a single random glove stuck in one of the saplings. Yes, please, give me a hand.

Cresting onto a service road, I started seeing folks from the 10K just down the hill. They were a nice distraction. Then up another less intense climb and then there’s another where two spectators at the top asked, “What do you want to hear? Pop? Rock?” My initial thought was that they must have a boombox or instruments. I yell, “Rock!” They immediately begin serenading me with their accapella version of Crazy Train. It was unfortunate for them that I had no money to leave a tip. Thanks fellas.

The course flattens and both calf muscles retaliate once more, making my ankles useless. For some reason I’m now running like a cowboy that just jumped off a horse. Dory from Finding Nemo enters my mind. “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.” Because the calf cramps were from fatigue-related muscle failure, no amount of pickle juice was going to stop them but I’m certainly glad it didn’t start any sooner. The cramping gradually eased again with each step and I’m sure my grunting helped bring it under control. The 10K folks were encouraging me onward.

The course nears its finish as I pop out onto a road with spectators claiming the finish is just up the paved road. I guessed it shouldn’t be more than a mile with this many people around. And it wasn’t too many more steps before I saw that lovely timing clock and kicked a tiny bit.

Good enough for first place in 3:12:44 and an REI folding camp chair. Race director Ben Mazur greeted me with a cool medal/bottle opener. The local beer distributor was stationed a mere 12 feet from the finish line, making that Goose Island IPA a very reasonable distance away.

Being an odd distance under an ultramarathon or a marathon, I wasn’t quite sure of whether I should wear my hydration vest, carry a bottle, or just take water at the aid stations. In 2015, I didn’t carry anything but gels. But it was a heckofalot cooler then. By the end of this day, I drained a 50-ounce hydration bladder and was glad I went with that choice. And I still drank more water at several of the aid stations. It was hot and humid.

I was impressed by the number of 10K finishers hanging out at the finish line to cheer on the long course finishers. And maybe it was the beer but they were super nice and encouraging too. Fun day out there!

Nutrition:

• 3 Gu gels
• 4 Gu chews
• 2 bananas
• 10 oz. or more pickle juice
• 1 cookie
• 2 gummy worms

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/1187257503/overview

Results: http://ultrasignup.com/results_event.aspx?did=47941

Iron Mountain 50 Miler Race Report

Absolutely the best race that $25 can buy. 

Damascus, a small town in southwestern Virginia, has been the host of the Iron Mountain 50 Miler for several years now. As trail running has become more popular, the event grows, and the level of racing becomes progressively more competitive. The event’s popularity isn’t likely to stop anytime soon.

The 50 mile start is at 7:00 AM so you can actually sleep in compared to many ultramarathons that would start at 5:00 or 6:00. We stayed just 15 minutes away in Abingdon, VA and arrived just after 6:00. Damascus itself is filled with a ton of bed and breakfast establishments, which might be more appealing if you were staying more than one night. For me, the $89 Quality Inn was sufficient for 10 hours of use.

A Unique setup for the toilet paper dispenser

Parking was stress free right at the start/finish area for the 50 milers arriving early but I’m not sure if the 30 and 16 mile racers feel quite the same ease when that reaches max capacity. There is nearby overflow parking for entrants to use, regardless. Packet pickup goes off without a hitch. The shirts looked pretty cool though I didn’t buy one (because I’ve been informed via an unnamed source that I have about 30 too many).

With hurricane Harvey pushing moisture up the interior of the US, the chance of precipitation heading into Labor Day weekend was going to be high. So it wasn’t a surprise that it rained at the start of the race, then intermittently rained throughout the first half, and then progressed into a persistent heavy rain by the final two hours. Very reminiscent of the trail marathon I did a few weeks ago. I’m getting really good at ignoring rain. Historically, the race is more hot and humid.

Prepare for launch

We start the race exactly on time - a testament to the consistent management of the event for several years now. The cloud cover makes it darker than typical for this time. The start for all distances is a five-mile stretch of crushed gravel rail trail known as the Virginia Creeper Trail. Damascus is a unique intersection of the Iron Mountain Trail, Creeper Trail, and Appalachian Trail. The Iron Mountain Trail was a part of the AT until the AT was relocated in the 1970’s.

Pretty quickly I felt like I was running too fast, my heart rate already in zone 5. Ummm….just 49 miles to go people. Can we at least keep it over 8:00/mile? I’d seen the prior results of my fellow competitors and had no intentions of vying for a win on this day as I watched three guys gradually drift away.

A couple more runners passed me as I tried to slow slightly and get my heart rate into zone 4. I struck up a conversation with a runner from NC who told me she was moving fast while she could. Long climbs and technical sections apparently weren’t her strong suit. If I recall correctly, she said she had competed there a total of seven times among the various distances. The conversation helped those early miles pass more quickly, but that section will still occupy your mind with its rhododendron and numerous bridge crossings over Laurel Creek or Whitetop Laurel Creek.

Leaving the rail trail and entering the real trails, I started the first climb in 7th place overall. I couldn’t believe how dark it seemed. The trees and undergrowth were so thick that a headlamp would have been useful for a couple hundred yards. That climb is particularly steep, but often wide, and occasionally rocky singletrack in its first mile. The course continues to ascend on more packed and smooth singletrack trails until close to mile 7. Then there’s still plenty of climbing to be had all the way to mile 20.

My left foot had been nagging me a little during the past week, so I broke down and dry needled it the day prior. I felt it kick in a couple times from mile 9-13, while traversing the ridgeline along the Iron Mountain Trail. The pain just intense enough and lengthy enough to scare me. Fortunately, it ended up stopping. I’m not sure it would have stopped had I not sucked it up and done the dry needling.

After the 16 mile aid station, the 50-mile course crosses Whitetop Road and becomes gravel road that eventually gives way to grassy forest service road. Good. I particularly love running gravel road. Despite another four miles of climbing, this six-mile section goes by fast, partly because it also contains a quick, mountainous descent surrounded by a bit of fog as it tops our second highest point. I caught one runner on the descent, almost too easily, which makes me think I need to slow down. I was actually having more fun following him because it made me feel like I was moving faster.

A long gravel descent on Hurricane Road follows the aid station at mile 22 but I am finally met again with true trails a couple miles later that force a little more climbing out of my legs. Around mile 25 you should return to gravel road but I mistakenly crossed that road and followed a trail that was not on the course for just a couple hundred yards. I suspected that it was incorrect whenever the trail narrowed and I acquired several spider webs on my face. I would not have been the first person to come through if this was the course.

After coming back up the hill to the intersection where I lost the course, I am greeted by a long descent with tons of switchbacks. There are a few rollers but it finally arrives to an aid station at mile 29 where they tell me the climbing begins. Three miles to the next aid station, the volunteers say as they are refilling my hydration pack. By this point I’m annoyed with both gravel roads and descending and say, “Good, I’m tired of going downhill” in between mouthfuls of pizza. They confirm that I’m in fourth place. Not bad. Maybe number three will crack a bit?

Well, after 2.5 miles of that climb to the next aid station, I was the one starting to crack, struggling on the upper half-mile because it’s stinking steep. Everything looks and feels steeper when you are tired at mile 31. Additionally, that section of trail is used by horses and has more mud, ruts, and poo than the rest of the course.

Eventually, painfully, stubbornly I reach that next aid station at Hurricane Gap. This is the same aid station as mile 22 and completes this lollipop loop of the course for mile 32. Beef jerky looks to be the most appealing item. The climb had left me pretty drained. Leaving there I thought that I’d completed the main climb. Boy, that was COMPLETELY wrong. I guess the previous volunteers said three miles to the aid, not to the top of the climb.

I pop out onto a gravel road that seemed to climb for the next half hour. I was beyond halfway up but couldn’t seem to regain the running legs. Unfortunately, I’m not sure of the exact time spent continuing the climb because my GPS data was all jacked up after the fact, but I do know there were a whole heck of a lot of switchback turns up the rest of that mountainside, each one resembling the one prior. My love of gravel roads left a few miles ago. It was the mental low point of the day. I had to count steps or pick targets in order to run even brief periods.

Finally! I summit the highest point of the course around 4200 feet and drop back onto the Iron Mountain Trail from the gravel. At this point the rain is heavier and I’m becoming cold but at least I can run at a decent clip on the singletrack. I start to put on my jacket but just as I’m ready to slip into the sleeve, the jacket is mysteriously ripped from my hands and disappears behind me as it’s grabbed by the surrounding thorny brush. My coordination is apparently declining.

I’ve never been so happy to get back onto singletrack, which tends to be the emphasis until you get back to Damascus. The major climbing was over. Just 15 miles or so to go. Now, the wet weather was adding a whole extra element of challenge as parts of the trail gradually became a streambed. But it was awesome. The ridge was already surrounded by fog and most areas remained very runnable. It is at this point that I seem to become robotic and is the point of running that I find to be a little addictive. I’ve entered “the zone.” Sure, the legs are a little uncomfortable but the descending on a rhododendron covered, tunnel-like trail feels like that warp speed they use in Star Wars as the periphery becomes a blur.

The next aid station is mile 37, Skulls Gap. I never did get to ask anyone about that peculiar and creepy name. In my haze I asked the volunteers if this was mile 38. A volunteer says “No, 37.” I said, “It’s okay if you just lie to me at this point.” The volunteer says something like, “In that case, you have 7 miles to the next aid.” Hey.... wait a minute! That’s not fair. My brain doesn’t work.

My wife surprised me at the mile 43 aid station, which was also mile 9. The volunteers tell her after I leave that they were worried about me because I apparently looked a little disoriented. What is orientation, really? There’s up, down, left, right. Good enough. But really I just wanted to be running again. It’s not weather I like to stand around in and I just wanted to finish up. At that point you’ve already proven to yourself that the major task could be done so let’s just hammer it home.

Around mile 46 the course splits back apart, so it was “new to me” trail once more. Here, I am running on motivation more than calories. My ignorance led me to believe it’s pure descending to the finish but actually I’ve encountered a challenging climb of maybe two-thirds of a mile. I surprised myself and ran nearly all of it. This is not the time to lose a placing because it would be a huge ego killer. It’s not looking good for seeing third place but I am catching a lot more 30-miler folks who were always encouraging me onward.

The final descent begins. It’s rumored to be unliked and technical. It actually wasn’t as technical as I was picturing but I did manage to briefly roll my left ankle once on those loose rocks. That portion went on forever, became quite dark, and then suddenly spit me out onto a paved street in Damascus. Gotta be close now though I don’t know where I specifically have to go.

This last section is the only real paved road running in the entire circuit. Arriving at the next main road intersection I had to stop to wait on vehicle traffic. My legs were so weird and wobbly at that point that I began to lose my balance, having to take a big step to the right in order to not fall down. Whoopsie. Good thing I don’t need need to pass a sobriety test.

Back onto the Creeper Trail, over a final bridge, and there’s the finish line at Damascus Town Park. I actually had enough energy to kick hard and felt good. Though I had wanted to come in under eight hours, I’ll take the 8:05:58 without complaint. I know where I lost the time and perhaps I’ll get another jab at this race one day.

I literally became a mountain goat on the climb

I’m positive there were burgers and hotdogs and other snacks awaiting my arrival but my memory was a smidge fuzzy right then. I do know I ate something. And my wife was kind enough to find my favorite recovery drink at the local grocery: chocolate milk. Every finisher received a nice package of freshly baked cookies.

Such a great, adventurous course and memorable day! Thanks to everyone volunteering many hours of their time to help us challenge ourselves!

Results: https://sites.google.com/site/ironmountaintrailrun/results-race/2017-results

Big ol’ nutrition list:

• 4 Gu gels
• 1 Carb-Boom gel
• 3 bananas
• 2 Oreo cookies
• 3 vanilla wafer cookies
• 1 mini Snickers bar
• 6 Clif Shot Bloks chews
• 8 oz. Coca-Cola
• 16 oz. ginger ale
• 2 small handfuls gummy bears
• 2 small handfuls M & M’s
• 2 small handfuls beef jerky
• 2 oz. pickle juice
• 4 dill pickle spears
• 2 small cooked potatoes
• ½ peanut butter and jelly sandwich
• 1½ large handfuls of grapes
• ½ slice of cheese pizza

New River Gorgeous Trail Half Marathon Race Report

If you wanted to run perfect trail conditions, the ACE Adventure Center outside Oak Hill, WV was the place to be this weekend. It was plenty sunny, hot, and humid, so there was no shortage of sweat dripping from the brim of my hat and a higher than average forecast for nipple chaffage, but that’s what you expect for August, isn't it?

When I had last attended this event two years ago, packet pickup took a very long time and as a result, the race start was delayed. Things were much improved this year. My packet pick up was completed in about 10% of the time it took me in 2015, which was a ton less stressful.

Despite driving nearly 3 hours, it was easy to make the trip to Oak Hill on race morning because the race didn’t start until 10:00. I know this bothers some runners, but I think it’s favorable if you like the additional challenge of running in the heat or maybe have an upcoming event approaching that will be in the heat. As we started, the temperature was around 70 degrees. Most of the course is tree shaded so the temperature in the woods likely stayed under 80 degrees for another hour or two.

How many people are touching their watches and why is everyone afraid of the timing mat? Photo by Appalachian Timing Group

Charleston runner Clay Evans started out hard from the gun. And then I realized I hadn’t started my music. Fortunately we started on a short stretch of gravel road before entering singletrack so there was a moment to get those favorite jams going. I train with music about 25% of the time but in short competitive events such as this, I thrive on incremental doses of upbeat and occasionally vulgar rap and alternative rock. Music is a legal ergogenic aid. Just use only one headphone so you can hear folks coming, okay?

Clay and I separated from the other runners quickly, switching the lead back and forth from time to time. Then he told me he was running the other simultaneous event - the 8.5-mile run. I briefly considered letting him drift away from me as we headed uphill but figured any amount of hanging at the quicker pace could help me get closer to my goal of breaking 1:30:00 in the half marathon. As we neared mile 2, still climbing, he began pulling away from me at a pace I wasn’t willing to attempt, regardless of event. I wasn’t expecting to be just a couple beats away from my maximum heart rate. Sure hope he wasn’t kidding about being in the other race. Seemed like a good time to take in a glimpse of this view:

photo by Anne Foreman

After hitting the high point of that first and longest climb, I started recovering a bit and gradually came back up to Clay and coasted on by him. I could tell it was going to be a good day by the brief amount of time it took to recover from that hard effort and by the impressive number of birds cheering for me.

The best course description here would be “rolling.” It was actually really fun to hit some of the rollers out there, which reminded me of a rollercoaster on several occasions. Gain enough speed on the downhills and you can coast part of the way up the next climb before it feels too effortful.

Photo by Anne Foreman

Most of the course is double track the width of an ATV (or four-wheeler, if you prefer). Some of it is wider forest road double track. There’s probably just a couple total miles of singletrack. For the most part it is non-technical as there aren’t many roots or rocks. Some sections are wide mown grassy paths. Overall this makes it a road runner’s trail race. Many of the trails would be a good introduction to trail running.

Much of the time I was paranoid of rolling my left ankle to the point of spraining as I had done in 2015. With the trails typically maintaining a clockwise direction around the mountain, there is a frequent camber to the trail that keeps your left side on the lower side of the hill. I remembered the exact point where I rolled it previously so I did what any sane person would do at that section: I slowed down.

The footing on the trail was typically firm and predictable as it hadn’t rained recently. The course circumnavigates the mountain top, never descending or climbing for long periods, so I’m sure that helps keep them dry as well. Trail maintenance had cleared out a couple of recently fallen trees. But somehow they didn’t clear out the snakes. I’m not asking much, am I?

Much of the course is wider trail

After topping the highest point on the course, and passing heavy equipment that you don't normally see on a trail run, there’s a fast grassy forest road descent. Nearly to the bottom, I caught a glimpse of a shiny black tubular creature in the grass and reflexively jumped away like an Appalachian kangaroo. I heard the snake jerk, probably because I scared it as much as it scared me but I didn’t bother stopping to ask it. I doubt it would have suddenly struck at a kangaroo because they can't eat kangaroos. I told the next aid station worker about it but I don’t think she was impressed.

The left hip flexors tightened a bit by mile 8, the climbs hurt more, and my general form deteriorated as the thigh muscles became heavier. I thought the course was a little short based on my old GPS data so I tried to remind myself that it was really only 20 more minutes of pushing. Rounding is always a useful tactic for time and distance mid-competition. It’s a great way to lie to yourself about the distance remaining because you’ll forget about it in 30 seconds anyway. And there is a ton of descending in the final 1/3 of the race so I just needed to quit whining. Although you don’t want to underestimate the final climb to the finish.

Bombing the final grassy section of double track descent I spied yet another shiny black tubular creature less than a squirrel’s length from my feet. Is there a reptile convention here this weekend? Where can I get my tickets? This one was stretched across the major width of Erskine Trail. There was no option to change direction at that very moment because: 1.) there was a giant drop off to the left, 2.) a steep embankment to the right, and 3.) my pace was roughly 6:30/mile. Good thing the kangaroo legs were warmed up by the earlier snake. Definitely the first time I knowingly jumped over a fully outstretched snake! It’s really okay if I make it another 23 years of running before that happens again.

I became a little panicked near the finish as I popped out onto the final road climb because I thought the next course marking I was to follow pointed toward some newly built trails on the opposite side of the road. I lost time wandering around in the woods there for over a minute while trying to find the next marking only to realize the course really did just climb up the road, just as it did in 2015. Wah wah wah. No race ever goes perfectly but I was bummed to not achieve my goal of breaking 1:30, coming in at 1:31:11.

Apologies to the young woman finishing her 8.5 miler that didn’t see me sprinting to the finish line and probably had her life flash before her eyes as I grabbed her to keep us both from going down in a burning heap of human shrapnel.

Course summary: Minimal climbing (average 100 feet/mile, 1300 feet total), generally non-technical with occasional loose rocky sections but no rooty sections, slight but frequent off-camber, minimal singletrack at approximately 1.5 miles total, no more than a couple hundred yards of pavement, minimal muddy sections and no crazy swampy sections, primarily wide and maintained ATV width trail, about 0.5 mile of gravel road, no drop-offs, 100% runnable, generally well marked, fun course overall

Results: https://www.aptiming.com/race/results/543

Lost Turkey Trail Marathon Race Report: Lunging to Victory

Somehow I managed to enter an event before the largest rain soaking of Summer 2017. There’s crazy flooding all over this region and I thought it was a great idea to drive 140 miles in the pouring rain and sleep in my truck in the pouring rain and then do a long trail running race in the pouring rain. Needless to say, the drive that should have taken 2.5 hours was almost 3.5 hours. I slept in my truck bed but my camper top leaked so that was kinda damp and I woke up about every hour. Poor me. I’d do it all again.

It’s interesting that the entry price for the marathon and 50 miler were the same, but due to the timing of an upcoming 50 miler that I am training for, the marathon worked better in my training plan because it could replace a long run and push my effort. After being sick for the past several weeks with lyme disease, I wanted to race again now that I had begun the lovely antibiotics last week and was actually feeling a ton better. I hate ticks.

When I awoke for the fourth time at 3:00ish I considered that I could have just run the 50 miler because they were going to start at 4:00. The marathon went off at 8:00. The marathoners had to be shuttled from the Blue Knob State Park to the start of the Lost Turkey Trail whereas the 50 milers do an out-and-back on the same trails.

The bus was a little late picking us up, which I expect was from the insane fog on top of that mountain. And it was still raining. At first I could not even find the tent to pick up my packet at 5:30 even though I was only a hundred yards from it. The roads were barely visible and several us missed the turn into the parking area. It was the craziest, thickest fog I had ever seen.

I had raced from Blue Knob State Park before at an event called Rock n’ the Knob. The climbs were a little more epic than western PA and northern WV offer so I wanted to come back to have that extra challenge. The last time it was super foggy and a little drizzly but nothing like the drenching of the prior 24 hours.

6:00 AM, fog's actually thinning out

1:00 PM, what a difference

Exiting the shuttle bus we had about 30 minutes until race start time. The rain slowed and seemingly stopped. I removed my Gore-Tex jacket, stuffed it in my pack, and put on a lighter shell. Normally I don’t carry two jackets but I don’t normally run in a hurricane either. But with just a moment to go before starting, the sky decided to begin another downpour. The race director fired a starting pistol. Only it didn’t fire, it… clicked. Fitting for the past few hours.

The first couple miles of the course were full of standing water. Being on a plateau, the water just sits and doesn’t drain anywhere. Plus it was still raining pretty heavily. My inner ankle began aching a little from the increased demand on my tibialis posterior tendon that comes with rock hopping and trying to run a little more gingerly on the slick or unpredictable deeper grass. I actually started to welcome the deep puddles as they would briefly override the ache.

I had three runners in front of me through this several miles of new squishy swampland. Even though the initial mile section is rocky and more technical, many of the early miles are wide, nontechnical grassy paths. There are a ton of intersections with other trails and roads throughout this course, so you really have to pay attention to avoid missing the turns. Finally, after much hoping, the trails started to feel a little more technical and that helped me pick off a runner.

I began passing the suffering runners from the 50 miler who were running the opposite direction. They were actually a really nice indicator from afar on whether I was still on the right trails. It looked like only about half of them even started and I know several people bailed from the marathon too.

At the first manned aid station, Buffalo Road, mile 9, the race director tells me the next runners are two and five minutes up. Being of the opinion that the first guy went out way too hard and the second guy probably did too, I figure there’s a good chance of closing that gap down. I was counting on the later steeper inclines I saw on the elevation profile to work in my favor.

Not my pic

Eventually we get to a really long section of old pea gravel covered access road. I suppose it is still part of the Lost Turkey Trail but it is not technical at all and lasted nearly two miles. It felt like a road race because it was ever so slightly downhill and I felt like I could really open up. Being so flattened, it reminded me of running across an old coal strip mine, only without the acid mine drainage.

As I approach the next aid station, I see the runner who was previously two minutes ahead of me. Fantastic. I felt decent and spent just a few seconds in the King’s Field aid station so I could monitor his position. I tried to use the descent to my advantage but I couldn’t seem to see or catch that runner. Strange. Well that’s because he took a brief wrong turn just past the aid and I just didn’t know it until the next aid station.

I told those aid station volunteers that was the longest descent I had ever run and they thought it was funny, apparently because the race is known for crushing people. Beef jerky in hand I started up the really steep section of trail from Burnt House around mile 17. Lunge. Lunge. Lunge. Work it. Work it. Feel the burn in that booty. Uh huh. Uh huh. These are all things I say to myself on these climbs and are clearly one of my biggest and best performance enhancing secrets. Actually, I was thinking “who the hell puts a trail straight up the side of these steep ass hills without switchbacks.”

I notice my low back aching a little more than usual. I blame my inability to strength train for the past several weeks because the stinking lyme disease did something to my muscles that made them really easy to strain and become sore for days, which I had to learn the hard way multiple times. I hate ticks.

Perhaps it is somewhere in here where I recall running a ¼ mile section of the softest moss covered trail ever. I felt like I was committing a crime but I’m guessing it must be pretty resilient or it wouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Then, if I remember correctly, after getting to the top, a section of trail begins that seemed a little like someone just hung some ribbons along the hillside and figured running a group of people over it would eventually make a trail. It was super narrow and sometimes not benched at all so the mud on the off camber would just make you slide sideways down the hill toward what would surely be instant death. On one of steepest sections I had to climb through the limbs of this downed tree. I fell down there a little thanks to those pesky 50 mile runners who had come through and torn up the wet trail and smeared the tree in mud.

You won’t believe what happened next! Through some miracle of the human spirit, I kept on running. Because this is a running race, dammit. There’s no time to lie on the ground and bemoan the existence of mud. I realized this course becomes increasingly technical as it progresses.

Around mile 21, I approached Bob’s Creek, which I had seen in photos because of it’s unique overhanging cable “bridge.” It looked serious in the picture. But in real life I looked at the water and thought “that doesn’t look very deep.” Yeah, the muddy liquid was moving a little quick but I just stepped down into it and walked across, the water never going any deeper than my mid-thigh. I suddenly felt a little cheated, because I was imagining on the bus ride that this thing would have to be deep and fast today. I would surely have to cling to the cables above raging rapids. And if I fell in I would have to swim while being swept downstream for at least 50 yards. Other runners on the bus were even talking it up. If only I could have texted some frowny faces to someone who cared.  

also not my pic and clearly from winter but there's disappointment creek

Just after I crossed “Disappointment Creek,” another serious climb begins. Real serious. Welcome to the final part of the event: the uphill lunging contest. About ¼ mile up the climb I spotted the runner in first place. Time for the arm warmers to come off (because I wasn’t wearing boxing gloves - this is a running race). And they were just going to slow me down anyway because of their poor aerodynamics. Past experience has taught me that uphill lunging contests are all about aerodynamics.

He caught a glimpse of me and I could tell he was probably more interested in just finishing at that point. Mostly because he said, “I’m just going to move at a snail’s pace” and immediately started screaming “Why me! Why me!” Well you can never really trust these trail runner folk because many of them are actors so I lit the afterburners and lunged my way up that climb at record lunge pace.

My lateral calves began cramping a smidge on the next descent and my left big toe was not happy but lucky for me there was soon an aid station known as “Lost Children” at mile 24 where I guzzled a bottle of miracle pickle juice. Here the race director provided her encouragement because she knew I had worked my way up to the front. Despite less than ideal conditions she was doing a really thoughtful thing by bouncing from one station to the next to encourage us. The volunteers were super encouraging too.

"stairs"

At this point the sun is coming out and it’s suddenly a beautiful day. Too little, too late Mother Nature. Don’t even try to talk to me right now, I have a race to finish. Here begins the final uphill lunging contest challenge of going from 1800 feet to 3100 feet of elevation just so that you end up back at the Blue Knob Ski Lodge to eat a hamburger. Nearer to the top, the trail has a long section of rock stairs placed for your enjoyment. No longer can you define your step length because the steps do it for you. One less thing to worry about. For some reason I began grunting and snarling more than usual during this final piece, perhaps to demonstrate my manly dominance over the puny and weak mountain.

The race director cheated and drove her car up the much shorter and smoothly paved road to the top of the climb but she did greet me at the finish line after 4:15 of running with a sweet custom turkey call so that I can find that darned lost turkey.

Loads of swag

I'm getting out of here

Results are here.

Nutrition:

• 4 Gu gels
• 4 bananas
• 1 bottle pickle juice
• 4 Gu chews
• 2 pieces beef jerky
• 1 Rice Krispies Treat
• 2 electrolyte tablets

Highlands Sky 40 Mile Trail Race Report

A couple days have passed and my quads still haven’t let me forget about this race. My quads aren’t normally this sore, but then again I don’t normally have such unusual circumstances leading up to a race.

I started feeling a tad funky on June 11, and I developed a 101-degree fever by the end of the next day. An accumulation of infant-induced sleep loss, disease carrying children, general life stress, recently increased training load, and a lovable personality made me the perfect host for Virus 349XY.

The fever persisted, fluctuating in intensity throughout each day - my intracellular fluids apparently being too tasty and nutritious for Virus 349XY to throw up a white flag. Every time I thought I had won the battle, I’d start to become super fatigued and fevered again.

Did I mention I went to the ER? Because apparently I had also strained a deep abdominal muscle in the weeks prior and just in case there was an off chance I had actually formed a strangulated hernia, I wanted to know prior to an ultramarathon. But there was no hernia and they thought I was crazy. Not sad about that lack of findings.

But it wasn’t good enough to just be sick. That little punk, Virus 349XY, also sucked out my motivation, threw it on the floor, and stepped on it repeatedly with its tiny little virus boots. All 47 of them. Jerk. So I’d stress about all the stuff I should have been getting done while lying on the floor with my squashed motivation.

I certainly wasn’t eating or drinking like I normally would leading up to an event. The one good thing is I would have been tapering and resting anyway. With this increased rest, as each day passed, I could feel myself growing stronger, like the stench on a pair of sweaty socks in the laundry basket, but the week is only so long and the laundry is eventually all washed up.

sunrise at the race start

After reluctantly making the trip south on Friday, we ended up getting to the pre-race dinner a little late. We joined the other racers to help ourselves to a good meal at the Canaan Valley Resort. I still didn’t have a huge appetite. Perhaps it was the (low) altitude. Probably not. I began to prophylactically guzzle Pedialyte and juice. Carbs and electrolytes, you mean everything to me. Please don’t let me bonk.

Off to bed before 9:00 PM under some decent fatigue. Mr. Virus gave his one last war cry by awakening me with a low grade fever again at midnight. We spoke briefly and I told him to get the hell out, I’d had enough of his misguided ways.

Race morning I awoke at 4:15 feeling pretty normal. But I knew there was no point in trying to hammer. Mostly because my wife coach told me so. My goal had to be modified from racing hard to simply completing the event. I’d come to terms with that possibility a couple days prior. Mostly because wife coach told me. Not ideal for something I had been building up to for 6 months but slow running is better than no running, right?

Wife coach wanted to see the start (and to ensure I wasn’t faking “normal”) so I skipped the shuttle bus and we drove down to the starting line at Red Creek. I was less excitable than usual but still just wanted to get moving. One of the race directors remained unwilling to allow me to race under a pseudonym in order to protect my fragile ego. I don’t want to mention any names but thanks Adam. My ultrasignup.com ranking has plummeted and my sponsors won’t return my calls. My lawyer will be in touch.

nobody seems to go slowly the first 2 miles of pavement

Anyway, I hiked so much more of the first half of the course this year than last. I went way too fast on that section last year. That definitely helped me to feel pretty decent at the mile 20 aid station. Wife coach met me there, I think mostly to grab the ripcord from my pack and provide a de-motivational speech if I would happen to look the least bit like a dying squirrel left by the side of the road. Boy was she surprised. And yet so proud. So proud.

It hadn’t rained much lately so the course was drier overall than last year. I was surprised to be in the top 10 at that point because I was really trying to hold back and many people were passing me.

switchback hidden amongst Stinging nettles

more stinging nettles

traded nettles and slight climb for ferns and steeper climbing

trading up to pine trees

topped out and we can see the sky again

Then as I began to run the “Road Across the Sky” there was no doubt that I just didn’t have any of my usual oomph to give. The legs were heavy, the strides were short, and the quads were already sore. Not good that early. But it didn’t come as a surprise, so I didn’t stress too much about it. I just tried to be consistent and enjoyed the sights and sounds of the birds, flowers, trees, and elusive wild pugs that have roamed this region for centuries. I stopped multiple times, which is atypical for me in a race, to take pictures and to listen for the faint snort of a wild pug.

wild pugs should be appreciated from a distance. The WV DNR denied their existence for decades but frequent sightings led to their ultimate acceptance into the local animal identification texts by 1974. The WV DNR suggests that you do not attempt to make contact with a wild pug as they are typically disease carrying scoundrels. 

pretty high up here

Road across the sky is about to end

Compared to last year, there were better conditions this year while coming across the wide open Bear Rocks segment of the course as the temperature was only in the 70’s and it was partly cloudy. I found Travis Simpson at the next aid station. He wasn’t having a great race either. Claimed he was mostly walking but for some reason I never saw him again after that aid station. A federal Strava investigation using judicious amounts of taxpayer dollars revealed that “walking” at that point must have meant a 8:00/mile pace.

There's a Lot of this

overlooking the canaan valley from Rocky Ridge before descending 

more overlooking

I could not get down that mountain quickly enough. My quads had passed “GO” 10 miles earlier, taken the $100, and spent it on comic books and booze. Worthless. Get a job loser(s). After all I’ve done to/for you!

The final section of road where I was able to give a good push last year seemed to take forever. I reached the final aid station at mile 37.6 a full 10 minutes after my 2016 finish time. And I still had a few miles to go despite my begging and pleading to the aid volunteers. Still, no tears were shed. At least not by me, in public, at that moment. I knew others around me were not having stellar days. Wife coach would want me to continue onward knowing that another race is always on the horizon. I held my chest high and shuffled down Freeland Road as quickly as three fully functioning quadriceps muscle fibers could move a person.

somewhere in canaan

and somewhere else

An hour slower than last year, I finally arrived to the lovely sights of a finish line. I’m really happy with that, considering the circumstances. It certainly made for another level of challenge. One that I do not need to replicate again.

Thanks for a great event again this year Dan, Adam, and Highlands Sky volunteer army.

This article has been dedicated to the memory of Virus 349XY who passed in the early morning hours in Davis, WV while doing what he loved to do most. He is survived by his cousin, the mutated form 349XZ, currently residing in 127 different humans, mostly ultrarunners, across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina.

Map: https://www.strava.com/activities/1041547950

Stuff I ate: ½ Gu Stroopwafel, 6 Gu gels, 6 Clif Bloks, couple handfuls Pringles chips, at least 16 oz. cola, 9 oz. ginger ale, 2.5 bananas, 8 dill pickle spears, handful of grapes, several mini Snickers bars, 3 handfuls of watermelon, 2 strawberries, my pride

Stuff I wanted to eat: freeze pops, more pickles, elk burger

Brain Training For Capturing Your Next PR

Do you ever wonder why some athletes are so consistent in their performance while others are all over the map? If factors like nutrition, training, and physiological capacity are similar between two people, especially at elite levels, there must be a hidden difference or two in why one person consistently outperforms another.

A huge piece of that difference is psychological. One athlete might catastrophize when things don’t go as planned. Prior experience may lead that athlete to experience negative emotions, increased stress, and increased self-doubt. Once a moment of negativity is allowed to creep in, it leads to a steady performance decline. But somehow, another athlete faced with the same issues might continue to excel despite encountering a hiccup. Just how can they do that? Are we born with these skills or is it the result of dedicated practice?

Brain-Body Connection

There is no denying a connection between your psychological state and physiological outcomes. All you need is to feel a little stressed and you can watch your heart rate and blood pressure rise. What if you could reverse engineer this brain-body connection and use it to work for you instead of against you?

Through dedicated practice, focusing consistently on a single task and being aware of that present moment, you encourage control of your emotions and enhance your self-awareness. Perhaps you can decrease the more intense physiological responses that accompany stress. Even though endurance sports, like running, are fatiguing and sometimes uncomfortable, the brain can be diverted to a single focus of operation: to get the primary task done.

I have a theory that the most successful athletes (e.g. happy, consistent) use their sport as a form of meditation. Some have suggested that we naturally seek out altered states of consciousness and exercise is just another gateway to this state. Perhaps this ability to refine and control thought is a key to enjoying exercise instead of dreading it. Sure, there are people that still look at meditation as being a 1970s hippie phenomenon, so they automatically won’t like the idea. But consider it just another skill within a toolbox of physical and mental skills. No psychedelic drugs necessary. By exercising in this semi-meditative state, the brain learns to function and focus in a precise way during that activity.

What is Mindfulness Meditation?

Practitioners of mindfulness meditation emphasize remaining observational and non-reactive to what you might sense during meditation (see footnote below). One result of remaining mindful is improved decision making simply because you have greater knowledge. You then respond to your findings without excess reaction, without judgment. It’s similar to someone telling you, “don’t overthink it.” Who doesn’t want or benefit from improved decision making?

A search of the NCBI database reveals that using mindfulness techniques during exercise is a relatively new research area. Mindfulness concepts are commonly utilized in research on yoga and martial arts. It is also more common to see meditative techniques used in addition to exercise for treatment purposes (e.g., chronic pain, depression, etc.). Mindfulness and meditation are becoming more popular topics, so you can expect more research will begin to pop up.

Using a Body Scan to Control Pain

Endurance sports involve cyclical movements (e.g., steps while running, pedal strokes while cycling, etc.)  that provide ongoing feedback from the body. That feedback is useful, if you are listening. You might refer to this listening as a “body scan.” It’s a technique used in mindfulness-based meditation and has been studied for treatment of depression, anxiety, stress, obsessive-compulsive disorder, insomnia, various cancers, chronic diseases, and chronic pain.

Athlete or not, one of the biggest goals of a body scan is to increase your awareness of your body’s signals, top to bottom. During constant activity, the best athletes are able to continuously monitor and adjust their status at any given moment, much as a person would in mindfulness meditation. The athlete is monitoring the important factors as they encounter them, responding with only the absolute necessary changes so that, over time, physical and mental energy are conserved.

While scanning, I frequently discover that I will shrug my shoulders when running harder or becoming fatigued, so I immediately know to drop my shoulders. Or I notice my breathing becomes too rapid and shallow, which reminds me to take a cleansing breath. No surprise, there’s always an immediate improvement in mood, performance, and comfort.

Within an event or training day, one key is to continuously perform the body scan to the point that any small problem is detected and corrected before it becomes a big problem. Maybe some people would consider this a waste of mental energy, and maybe it would be for the unacquainted. Instead, with practice, I would expect it to decrease mental fatigue because it’s far easier to address a small problem intermittently than to become stuck obsessing over a more catastrophic and constant state of stress that causes a flood of negativity.

Other Mindfulness Techniques

Bringing your attention to the present, with something like basic step counting, can push out negative thoughts. You might initially just count four steps before your focus diminishes but with practice it could be 50 steps or 100 steps. Count steps until the next maple tree comes along or the next aid station.

Some athletes are better able to apply meditative techniques if they have a mantra to rely on. Much like step counting, the job of the mantra is to hold your attention. It is a word or phrase that you return to when you find your attention has drifted. It can be something like “long and strong” or “I can, I will.” And still others are able to focus on their breathing count and pattern with great success.

The cyclical nature of an endurance sport also lends itself well to this internal or mindfulness approach because you can become completely lost in the total movement, the breathing pattern, or even the individual footsteps. I’m so stuck in this mode from running that I struggle with counting repetitions while strength training. I become so internally focused on the technique and how the movement feels with each rep (the way I would with running) that I don’t care about the number.

Regardless of your choice, focusing on any of these patterns requires attention to factors other than your fatigue-induced discomfort. They all provide a rhythmic pattern, a consistent place to focus after a distraction, a point of fixation.

Being Stubborn Isn’t Enough

This isn’t simply about being stubborn. Stubborn can get most people only so far. When you finally break at your point of maximal stubbornness, there must be some other tactic to fall back on to hold yourself together mentally.

An experienced ultramarathoner isn’t going to rely on being stubborn through an entire race, though it may appear that way on the surface. They are likely getting to the point that simply feeling their breathing or arm and leg movements can provide a point of focus as the distance gradually ticks away. It’s more about executing at that very moment while turning off emotional and judgmental tendencies.

Application to Training and Competition

In training, try to maintain a body scan or an intrinsic technique focus during short, hard intervals of 30-60 seconds. The goal can be to move quickly and feel discomfort while focusing only on one or two technique trouble areas. You can make the intervals increasingly longer (eg. 5-10 minutes) as you have more success sustaining a focus during the shorter lengths.

Use your miserable days as a primer. Gross weather? Feeling generally crappy? Don’t bail. I hate to spoil this for you but 99.9% of competition days are not going to go as planned. To truly be prepared, you need to experience less than ideal conditions in advance. The rough days are an opportunity to see if you can bring yourself together mentally and maybe even surprise yourself.

Started out a race too hard? Don’t panic. Accept the situation and move on, responding only to your requirements at that very moment. You can’t change the past so stop getting caught up in it. Feeling inefficient? Focus on a component of movement, like arm swing, that you can control. Continuously thinking “this hurts” or “I’m getting slower” is harmful to performance and enjoyment. Once those initial thoughts begin, you will almost certainly begin to slow down and have even more negative thoughts.

You aren’t going to wish an opponent into slowing down and you aren’t going to wish yourself into going faster. Focus on factors that you can control and you just might go faster. But that’s not going to happen without maintaining an internal locus of control - meaning you become solely responsible for and controlling of the outcome.

In longer events, like a marathon, it is wise to not only avoid deep analysis and judgment of your overall condition but to address the basics of what you can at that very moment and reassess after a mile or a few minutes later. Just because you are beginning to feel miserable one minute does not mean you are destined to feel that way 10 minutes later.

According to the book “Running With the Mind of Meditation: Lessons for Training Body and Mind” by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche: “Ignoring the pain takes enormous mental effort. The first step is to acknowledge the pain. The pain is one thing, and the mind reacting to the pain is another, so the second step is not to overreact. Becoming startled by the pain only exacerbates the pain, like throwing gasoline on a fire: our reaction to the pain makes it even worse. Therefore we acknowledge the pain, but we avoid having the immediate reactionary response.”

Your preferred method of mindfulness may also change with the intensity or duration of exercise. Through most of an endurance competition I’m doing a body scan. Late in a competition I might begin to use a mantra, often rhythmically with the movement. I also like to create a mental picture of how I am moving as a whole, as if I’m watching myself in a mirror.

Find What Works For You

If you have never tried any of these mindfulness techniques before, don’t expect it to be easy and automatic the first time. There is no wrong way to do it; try a few methods and see what sticks.

Some people have the perception that meditating while exercising would require you to completely shut off the outside world. But you have the choice to turn off and to turn on those inputs. If you have to be on high alert for a moment to make sure you don’t miss a turn of the trail in the woods, then stay on high alert. Go back to whatever technique you like once you make the turn. You don’t become a zombie while doing a body scan.

The bonus of these techniques is that you can transfer this behavioral control to other sports and aspects of life like school or work. After developing the mental skills necessary to get through a tough training or competition day, taking that college exam or giving that presentation to your boss might not seem so tough.

It’s worth looking at the various mental skills you can develop while exercising so it isn’t all just a frustrating slog. Certainly, exercise can provide a fantastic time to step away from our stress and problems. And not every moment of exercise needs to be a test of will or focus. Just don’t be afraid to consider the importance of mental skills training if you are seeking performance gains.

Main points:

• A body scan, mantras, step counting, and breath counting can all be useful methods to improve performance.
• A body scan can be used to continually monitor movement and discomfort levels. It allows you to attend to small running technique flaws or areas of excess muscle tension before they become large and painful problems that will undoubtedly be mentally fatiguing and detract from performance and enjoyment.
• Practice the mental focus in training with hard and short efforts initially and then progress to longer and harder efforts.
• Bringing your attention to the present, with step counting, breath counting, or a mantra can push out negative thoughts.
• Realize no competition is going to proceed 100% as planned. Use your most unpleasant training days as an opportunity for preparing your mental state.

Please share this article with your running friends! To receive updates as each blog comes out, complete the form below. And if you have any questions, please email me at derek@mountainridgept.com.

Sources:

1 According to a 2010 article from Birrer and Morgan: “Mindfulness techniques emphasize the non-judging awareness and acceptance of present cognitive, affective and sensory experiences, including external stimuli and internal processes. Stimuli that enter awareness are observed but not judged, and internal experiences (thoughts, feelings and sensations occurring through internal or external stimulation) are instead accepted as natural, transient facets of human existence.”

http://www.atrailrunnersblog.com/2017/06/stealing-fire-ultrarunning-and-pursuit.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26406766

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0838.2010.01188.x/full

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aphw.12063/full

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/22/meditation-in-action-running-mindfulness_n_3625110.html

http://www.runnersworld.com/meditation/why-you-should-try-meditating-while-running-and-how-to-do-it