Patience is a pain in the butt

I'm finally sitting down to write this post, almost 2 months later than I first started thinking about it. The injury that I first acquired in mid-October kept me from running for 7 weeks, and only since the very end of November have I been jogging a few miles a week.

Recap of injury:

Right after a super-sweet 10k race (the Great Race, end of September), I started ramping up for my never-to-be fall marathon, California International in Sacramento. I'd taken a day off, was feeling good and in shape, and was excited to go after a low 2:50's marathon. My workouts the week following went well, despite being alone in a new city (Philadelphia). My hips and glutes were somewhat tight, but I was foam rolling and stretching to try and counteract this. I decided to do some strength (step-ups and downs, lunges, etc etc) since I realized it'd been a good while since I'd done strength (read: a few weeks since I'd done anything other than abs and a 6-9 months since I'd done any regular strength training). I went for an epic workout in the rain, which went really well. I stopped to take a drink, and when I took a step after stopping, my knee shrieked in pain.

I limp-walked home and called around to find a PT appointment for the next morning. I assumed the problem was my IT band, since it's often tight and I had issues with it a few years back, where it made my knee hurt. I took an entire week off all forms of exercise other than PT, which I went to 4 times in 7 days. After that,  I began using the elliptical heavily (as many hours in a week as I usually ran, so on the order of 10), probably to the detriment of the healing process, but I was going nuts. I tried jogging a bit at the end of the week, and the pain was still very much there, on the inside of my knee. That was the point at which I did slightly more internet-searching: the pain from ITBS was on the outside of my knee last time, and this was more medial/on the top/under my patella. My suspicion was that I had patellafemoral pain syndrome, or PFPS. A trip to an orthopedic doctor in Philly confirmed this: he said my PFPS came from a strength imbalance (that my hamstrings were much stronger than my quads). He also said that it might take 6 weeks to clear up, or longer, and that the strength training should help but it'd take a long time to fix the imbalances. I asked about a marathon in December; he said it would probably be ok to run it but I wouldn't have much time to train. I told him I didn't want to run it without training, that that wasn't my goal. He seemed to not understand the idea that I might want to run a time that couldn't be accomplished taking 2 months off of running leading up to the race. Cue crying in public due to injury and the sense that no one other than a serious runner gets it, round 1.

Fortunately, the strength and stretching and whatnot that is prescribed for PFPS is much the same for ITBS: clams, monster walks, leg lifts in all 3 directions, and when the knee is less inflamed, leg press, step ups and downs, lunges, and single leg squats. This is all to strengthen the medial glutes, hips, and quadriceps (at least in my case). I was also told to stretch my glutes, hamstrings, quads, soleus and gastrocnemius, as well as foam roll my quad, IT band, and glutes. I started going to a new PT place in Pittsburgh when I returned, which had me doing all of the above. They gave me a good bit of Graston along my IT band/quad intersection point. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Graston technique, it basically involves taking various metallic tools (shaped like thick cutlery) and scraping the tools along various muscle and tendon groups, aiming to break up scar tissue and promote blood flow. In case you hadn't guessed, that hurts like a bitch, and made my leg look like this:

I still think that I could do this to myself with a butter knife and a stick of Land o Lakes...

After 4 weeks of this stuff, I still wasn't running. My knee still hurt when I went to do step-downs or lunges or single-leg squats. The PTs weren't doing anything differently to me and I was feeling stuck and dejected: not only was I hurt and unable to run, they didn't seem to get how much that bothered me. They didn't know what would make it feel better, or when, or have any new ideas as to how else it could be treated. I also felt like every time I expressed frustration or dismay, they tried to convince me the situation wasn't that bad, and that I'd get my fitness back quickly once I could run, or that I should just take it one day at a time.

 This was the lowest point for me: I was biking and swimming for over an hour a day, doing all my strength and stretching, being the perfect patient, and I wasn't getting any better. I felt completely defeated. I had been in *such good shape*, I kept reminding myself. I had been in shape to run the best marathon I'd ever run, by a long shot. I'd never been injured seriously enough to need to take more than a week or so off from running, and I had no idea how long it would take to come back, to regain my fitness. Moreover, running well had allowed me to keep at bay a whole slough of emotional issues: it is my therapy and my medication, and if my body is able to run as well as it normally does, that means I must be taking good care of it. Without the ability to get a lot of endorphins from running, and without the reinforcement that my body was awesome because of all the awesome stuff it could do, I felt horrible. I was tired, depressed, dejected, and hated my body. Mostly I hated my knee, but I felt pretty horrible towards the rest of my body, too.

I felt my knee all the time, sitting at work, walking around, biking to school, at the gym: even if I were able to put it out of my mind, the pain was always there to remind me that I was broken. My friends were having great workouts leading up to CIM and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to run at all by December. I knew my fitness was slipping, despite my insane amounts of time doing cardio at the gym. I tried to figure out the amount I should exercise by time, by calorie count, by any metric I could get my hands on. I certainly worked harder than I knew I could on a stationary bike, and probably harder than was good for my knee. I had my annual physical where I didn't want to talk much about my knee, but my GP asked me about running, and I broke down and cried in front of health professionals #2 and #3, respectively. She said, "I don't run, but if someone told me I couldn't bike I'd shoot someone in the head." At least she understood how I felt about being injured...

About 5 weeks in, I asked the PTs what they thought I should do differently, since I wasn't seeing any improvement and we'd been doing the same thing for weeks. They weren't sure what to say, and I told them I was worried it would never get better if we kept doing the same things. They told me I was focusing too much on my knee, and that was keeping it from getting better. That was nonsensical, and mean, so I made sure to cry in front of everyone there at UPMC Sports medicine to show my disapproval.

A couple of weeks later, after the PTs decided all of my exercises needed to be isometric (held longer and done more slowly), I decided to try jogging a bit. Much to my surprise, it felt fairly ok; I was out of shape, and my knee wasn't perfect, but it wasn't screaming in pain, either. I jogged a few times that week, mostly with the aid of a small amount of ibuprofen, since that seemed to keep my knee from getting inflamed and staying that way for a day or two.

Since then, I've been running a little. For an average person, I guess 20-35 miles a week is more than a little, but for me, it's just enough to take the edge off as my knee and everything else get stronger. I'm in pretty bad shape: an hour feels like a lot of running and 10 miles is the longest run I've managed so far.
What I've found most helpful, oddly, is stretching (and foam rolling, plus rolling my hips out on a lacrosse ball). I stretch before, during, and after running, every day. It seems to be helping keep my knee in check, though there is definitely still some discomfort.

At this point I am planning on ramping up to a 10k A-race for late spring, and a half marathon some time this summer. I don't think I'd be able to handle the mileage necessary for a full marathon prior to the weather getting horrible for the race (I want 20-24 weeks with high mileage before I run a marathon, and I definitely am not ready for 80 miles a week yet). I'm not sure what my timeline for a fall marathon will be; I might want to go back and run Chicago, or wait around until CIM to really build back my base. I guess we'll see how it all comes together, but for now, I'm glad I can do the little I can do running-wise.

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope to see you out there running in the coming weeks, and be careful on the snow and ice :)

One step forward, Two steps back

It's odd that the first time I feel like I have time to write a blogpost this fall is the time I feel most put-out about running I can ever remember. This all came on the tail of having a good, hard training season during the summer, an awesome 10k at the end of September, which left me with high hopes for the California International Marathon in December, where I've made plans to go with L-sauce, M-dizzle, and the Russian.

My month of training since coming back to Pittsburgh was awesome. Every workout, I hit the paces, the times, the reps-- I felt strong and consistent and confident. I was slightly less stressed about work, which made sleeping easier. I had more time to cook, since I wasn't commuting for an hour each way to the office. I had my awesome training buddies back, to push through the hard workouts and laugh with through the recovery miles. I felt like I was flying during our trackwork, which I normally always hate. My tempo runs were almost effortless. One weekend, I was a little foolhardy; Friday evening, I "jogged" a very hilly 19:40 CS 5k; on Saturday morning,  I ran an 18:00 5k, complete with 7 miles of warm-up and cool-down; and then ran a 19-mile long run that afternoon when I realized I wouldn't have time the next day. A couple of weeks later, I jogged an 18:30 5k for $300 in cold hard cash.

At the end of September, the Hounds always run the Pittsburgh Great Race. This year was no exception; I was excited to race hard, given the consistency of my workouts. I had 2 workouts that week, so I wasn't sure exactly how I'd feel. I was pleasantly surprised with myself. I didn't go out too hard; if anything, I went out too slowly: the first mile was a 5:55, the second slowest mile of the race. I felt controlled as I strode down Forbes Avenue, a steep descent towards CMU, hitting the second mile at 5:30 pace, with M coming to say hello before leaving me in her shoelace's dust. Mile 3 was a bit flatter. I worked on a number of girls through the flat streets of Oakland, putting one woman who beat me the year before behind me, passed another girl who looked like she might be in high school, and striding up next to the woman who would be the first Master's finisher just as I hit the 5k in 18:00 even.

As I made my way towards the Boulevard of the Allies (the notoriously uphill, warm, and desolate part of the race), I buckled down and hit my pace for the 4th mile. I felt really warm as I made my way up the hill in mile 5, and I'd lost all sight of M, and no other women were anywhere ahead of me to chase. I definitely let up a bit in terms of effort, and while it was uphill, my split of 6:15 pissed me off. It angered me enough that my last 1.2 miles down towards Point Park (and the GIANT RUBBER DUCK:

) were 5:40 pace. I was so tired at that point, I remember leaning to turn and not being sure if leaning would make me turn 90 degrees quickly enough. My finishing time was 36:12, for 5th place, which I was very happy about. This was about a 20" PR; I'd been somewhat hoping for 36:00, but my real goal had been to make the podium (top 8) and I felt like I'd run a very strong race throughout.

After the Great race, I was pretty sore and tight, which is to be expected of the hard race effort, especially given the downhill course. It took me a few days before I felt up to a workout, but I did a nice 3x2 miles at marathon pace the Wednesday following. I did the workout on the track, at 5:30 AM, before I had to leave for the airport. It went really well, being a touch fast (1-2 seconds per mile) on each of the repetitions. As I flew to Philadelphia for the month for work later that day, I was excited for a month of focused research and training, with little else in the way of distraction. I was sad that I had to leave my training buddies so soon after returning to Pittsburgh, but I suspected I'd make up for most of that with ample time to train in a new city where I didn't have an established friend circle.

The first week in Philly went well. My workouts were awesome, I ran with a friend of a friend, and I felt like my summer focus on tempo runs and moderate speed were paying off. I did a 19 mile run with 9 miles sub-7 (averaging about 6:40, I think), which felt really, really good. My hips had been feeling a little tight, but I'd been foam rolling and keeping them in check.

The next week, I had a fun workout on Penn's track, where I was very confused about the distances on it (I knew it was weird, but I didn't know that lane 5 was actually the 400). I just ran for time and by effort since I really didn't know why my splits were all over the place at the "200" and "400". I did a little bit of strength on Thursday, because I remembered I'd been neglecting it as of late, and my hips had been tight. In particular, I did lunges, single leg lifts, clams, and my ab routine, all of which were fairly standard but I hadn't been doing the leg strength stuff with much consistency in the last few months. It was always hard to find a day where I wasn't either tired from just doing a workout or worried about making myself sore for my next workout.

Friday, I had one of my favorite workouts, 20x1:00 at 5k pace, with 1:00 "recovery" where the 1:00 is usually supposed to be somewhere between a jog (if you feel bad) and half marathon effort (if you feel like a badass). It went swimmingly, where most of my 1:00s of recovery were sub 6:15-pace. It was pouring rain with a hard, cold wind that seemed to be a headwind regardless of which direction I ran. I felt like a total badass. I also noticed that, in that weather, the normally hobby-jogger congested Schulkyll path had only the most bad-ass looking runners working out. We all shared in the camaraderie of our bad-assness of working hard in such adverse conditions. My last rep was on a slight downhill, making it easy to hit 5:30 pace for the first time during the workout. I felt like a total champ.

I stopped for a sip of water before beginnning my jog home. As I took a step back towards the path, my IT band twinged and I felt a sharp pain on the top of my kneecap. Shit,  I thought. Shit, shit, shit. I assumed it was just a bit of tightness that would get a little better if I walked around. As I walked around, the pain did not subside. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! I told myself to calm down. I stretched a bit. I jogged a few strides further down the path. My knee kept hurting. Rather than running the rest of the way home, I walked gingerly. I stretched some more, did some step-ups and step-downs (part of my IT band strength set from 4 years ago, the last time I was injured enough to need to take more than a day or two off from running). My knee still hurt, just walking around. I iced it, did some foam rolling, and was pretty nervous. What have I done?

I went to bed that night, hurting and nervous. I woke up early on Saturday and called around to physical therapists in the neighborhood who were open on Saturday. I found an appointment. I went in, was assessed (though I told them I was sure it was ITBS, since I'd had the problem before). They had me do an assortment of exercises (mostly for glute and hip flexor strength, and some IT band stretching). I then had Graston, which, for those of you who are PT noobs, is colloquially known as "scraping". That wince you just had? Yeah, that's the right reaction to have to a procedure known in common parlance as "scraping". This technique involved one person holding my leg at stretch, to make the IT band as elongated and exposed as possible, and another person running down the IT band with pressure on a hard rubber tool, meant to "scrape" the tissue, getting blood flow to the area, aimed to stretch and break up scar tissue, and aid in healing any inflammation currently there. As the PT informed me, the IT band is the most painful place to have Graston, because there is no muscle or adipose tissue to protect it. As I yelped helplessly, I told him I usually have a quite high pain tolerance.

Skip to the next day, where L-sauce was visiting. I was really looking forward to running with her, since we had a long, hard workout to do (20 miles, with 6 of it broken in pieces of 6:30 pace, and the last 3 to max out effort at the end, gradually from 6:30 pace). I was super excited to do this workout in general, and with my main running squeeze L-sauce in particular. I was really, really sore from "scraping"; my leg was really grossly bruised, and my knee still hurt. I knew there would be no running.

Let's just say I went a whole week without running, went to PT 4 times in 5 days, and gingerly (on the PT's allowance) went for an easy 4 miles on Friday. They hurt. Not horrible, gut-wrenching pain, but a dull, persistent ache on my patella, telling me, "You probably shouldn't be doing this", over and over again. It didn't increase in pain during the run, but it didn't feel better as I continued, either. I had done my PT exercises just before the run, which I decided might have been part of the reason my knee hurt during the run; I had fatigued the muscles I needed active when I ran.

Saturday, in Boston, I did an easy 6 while I watched people rowing during the Head of the Charles. I noticed that running sub-7:00 pace hurt less than running 7:50 pace, which I though was weird. But my knee definitely still hurt, whether or not the PT had allowed me to run. Throughout the day, it hurt more and more, mostly when I was sitting with my knee bent, but also walking around and just standing still. I spent an hour foam rolling and a bunch of time doing my strength exercises, to no avail. And so, I decided not to do my 10-12 miler (which, if I felt good, was to be at marathon pace) on Sunday.

Frankly, at this point, I'm pissed. I worked hard all summer, I eat right, get enough sleep, don't add the miles on too quickly, and I'm still hurt. At the first sign of pain, I stopped and went to the PT. I didn't run through symptoms for awhile before seeking advice. I took an entire week without running, 5 of those days without even cross-training! I did all the right things! How am I not better?! I am going to see a sports medicine person tomorrow, who I hope will be able to tell me whether what I have is patellafemoral pain syndrome, or ITBS, or something else entirely. I want to know how long this is going to take to fix. I want to know if I'm supposed to run through pain or not. Mostly, though, I want to have a medical professional tell me precisely what I've already resigned to: that I won't be running a marathon in 7 weeks. Even if I were able to run 26 miles pain-free by then, I am sure I wouldn't be in shape to hit what I'd been hoping for (mid-to-low 2:50s). Ugh. I built this awesome base, I worked so hard, and now I'm totally wrecked.

Anyway, I'm writing this post trying to be somewhat optimistic. I understand that I'll probably be fine to run a spring marathon, maybe even fast. But I already bought a Boston bib, thinking I wouldn't A-race a full this spring, and now I may be stuck eating $175 or running a hot, slow marathon in the spring. That is on top of the money I've spent already for CIM. And, this sets me back another season. I was really hoping this race would go as planned, and that I would end up in the 2:52-2:55 range, putting sub-2:50 on the radar for my next big full. Now, I'll have to regroup and figure out when I'll be able to go for a 10 or even 5 mile run again without pain. I guess, in the long run, these things don't matter to anyone but me. So I have to remember that my life will be equally full of fun, and friends, and all of the other good things, whether or not I get to race in December; whether or not I get to break 2:55 or 2:50 in the next year. It's hard to keep these things in perspective. I'm working on it, but for the moment, you can find me using my frustration to destroy an elliptical in a city near you!

Shall we walk?

 The Big Hike

We embarked on our journey of 93ish miles over a week on Thursday, July 25th. The day before, we'd driven down to Rainier to get our prearranged permit modified (we needed the first day to be shorter; our request had come through with a 20 mile day right off the bat) and then gone back to Seattle to work and finish up getting our things together for the trip. We didn't make it back to Rainier until well after 11 pm (late, given we had 17 miles to hike the first day). Here's a synopsis of our trip:

Day 1: Longmire to Klapatche Park (17 miles)

We walked, a long, long way today. We had lunch in Indian Henry's hunting grounds, which was a beautiful meadow full of wildflowers.  I was surprised how useful I found my hiking poles (new for the trip). 

(Note to hikers who are planning: It seemed as though the South Pullayup camp didn't have much for drinking water; there was the main river which was glacial runoff (and far too silty for drinking), and a tiny creek that seemed very difficult to filter from. We were very thirsty for our last ascent, since we'd assumed the South Pullayup River camp would have water.)

We were worried that we may have stirred up a bear coming up our last mountain: hiking through the brush, we heard two grunts that I can only describe as "sounding like a bear". B agreed that it had sounded suspicious, so we broke our tired/thirsty silence and tried to make as much conversation as possible until we made it out of the brush. There was a surprisingly long way to go between the peak of the mountain and the campsite.

 Klapatche camp itself was at the top of a mountain and rightfully picturesque; one side of the camp, there was a small, clear body of water full of frogs, and on the other, there was a view of the valley below; both sites were nice for watching the sunset. The bugs the whole of this first day were atrocious, though: big black moose flies and mosquitos were ruthlessly biting us even as we hiked. This caused me to wear a long sleeve shirt for a majority of the trip (also probably why I didn't really get sunburned at all).

Day 2: Klapatche to Mowich River (15 miles)

I was kind of grumpy this day and am not sure why. We get to Golden lakes for lunch and I'm hot and uncomfortable (there are a million bugs again) and I don't want lunch. I ate a Snicker's bar instead; I think I was just way too bug-bitten to enjoy sitting and having lunch in the midst of a mosquito orgy/buffet occurring around me. We met a bunch of people today; we started talking to people and asking where they were headed. We hadn't met anyone going anywhere near as far as we were, either the first or the second day. I asked B when we were going to meet the badasses. He looked at me and said, "I think we are the badasses." As I grumpily swatted at the flies, I didn't feel like much of a badass.

We got to camp, which is right along the bank of the Mowich river, we welcomed a reprieve from the bugs. My appetite had returned, and I ate ~1000 calories of freeze-dried mac and cheese, along with another Snicker's bar. I guess I shouldn't skip lunch when hiking this much. We rinsed up in the river (after 2 days of wearing the same clothes, a bit of a rinse was nice).  I notice a blister, and decide it needs to be popped. B suggests I use my new Leatherman. He tells me this is a good first use for such a tool. 

The camp was nice and quiet; there was one other group camping there. This family didn't look much like it was one for regular outings of this nature (they were built a lot like your average American family), with the two teenaged kids and two parents. They looked exhausted, but when I chatted with them it sounded like they were having a good time. I was quite impressed that they'd decided hike the trail, given it's difficulty and their lack of experience. In my head, I gave them the badass badge of the day. 

Day 3: Mowich River to Dick Creek (13ish miles)

We headed up and out of the river basin towards our first food cache. Mowich Lake, a drive-in campsite, was about 4 miles from Mowich river, so we made it there well before lunchtime. We took a long break there (~1.5 hours), sorting through food and drying our clothes and whatnot. We were tired and weren't excited to get going quickly. Mowich lake was gorgeous (a dark, vivid blue with turqouise shallows). The campground itself was crowded (it was, after all, a car campsite). 

We made our way out, around Mowich lake and then up to Ipsut pass (more of a climb than we'd realized, and then down a steep, rocky, dusty, plant-overgrown decline towards the basin of a valley. My blister has started to seriously complain, and the knees and feet of my compatriot begin to complain about all the hiking down steep things we've done in the last few days. Morale was poor. We knew we had to climb a good ways out of the basin we were descending into before we made it to camp for the night. 

We didn't really stop for lunch until about 4:30 (we'd had some snacks, but we wanted to make our way up towards the last sharp incline we had before we made it to our campsite). I was suddenly hangry enough that I demanded we stop and share some lasagne before making the last 1-2 mile push up to camp. I'd learned my lesson the day before: don't skip lunch. 

The last climb we made manageable by stopping and taking a bunch of pictures of wildflowers (forthcoming) on the way up. Again, the climb was very steep and rocky. Along the way, we had a view of a glacier, covered in dirt and gravel almost disguised as a part of the mountain it resided on.

This campsite was my favorite, bar none. The site had only 2 tent spots, and we were the sole proprieters of the camp for the night. It was built into the side of a mountain, with a beautiful overlook onto the valley below facing west (this made for a really nice sunset-watching venue). 15 feet from the tent, there was a beautiful, clean, cool stream (Dick Creek), that looked so inviting that I sat down in it for 10 minutes or so before I even washed my face. As I was getting out of the stream (wearing my awesome berry-colored wool bra and underwear), a random hiker walked by, whose face turned roughly the color of my outfit when he saw me (he walked by without saying anything). We went to bed early this night, since we knew the next day was going to start out difficult.

Day 4: Indian Bar to Sunrise (14 miles)  White River (17 miles)

The first few miles of this day were rough, which we anticipated and had woken up early to deal with them before the heat. We hiked straight up a steep section of trail, in the woods. Once we broke out of the woods, we were greeting by a beautiful alpine meadow, still slightly frosty. The flowers here were beautiful. We saw a bunch of marmot-looking creatures scampering about and whistling to each other about our arrival. I ate my first Smores Pop-tart at Mystic Lake campground (and it was delicious). We continued on and up towards Granite Creek; after toiling for several hours, we came across several men hiking in the opposite direction. I was hungry, and so I asked, perhaps a bit too desperately, if we were close to Granite Creek. The men said roughly 1.5 miles more, though they couldn't be sure because they'd been hiking downhill and we were hiking uphill, so it may have been further. After they passed, I told B I was sure we were within about 1/2 a mile of the campsite, based on how long we'd been hiking and the map. Sure enough, 5 minutes later, we reached the campsite. I'm assuming these guys were giving me a hard time, but this was the only time we encountered anyone who wasn't totally friendly on our trip. Again, I ate ~1000 calories of mac and cheese (today was a rock-star day for healthy eating). Our last 5 miles of the day, we walked up another 1000 feet or so and then walked along rocky ridges and glacial meadows, the whole way with beautiful views of flowers and Rainier. We chatted briefly with a man from South Africa. He had a weathered backpack, which had clearly seen a lot of use. He asked us if we were doing the whole trail, and if so, how long we were taking to do it. When we said 7 days, he responded, "Well, we're athletes then, aren't we!" This brought a smile to both of our faces as we trekked into Sunrise, the location of our second food cache and also our camp for the night.

When we got into camp, it was only 3 pm. We got burgers and beer and ice cream (Sunrise has a visitor center). The ice cream was awesome.

Once we'd sorted out our food (note to Jamie; you packed way, way, way too much food for this trip) and left some of it to pick up on our way home, we realized hiking down to White river would make our next day substantially easier (at this point, downhill was hurting both of us more than uphill). So, we stumbled the couple of miles down the hill. I wasn't very hungry, so we made the mistake of just eating snacks for dinner. Some guys wandered by and offered us beer for stories rendered and we obliged; they were starting the trail in a few days. B thought they might have trouble finishing the thing in 8 days (their schedule). I agreed, based on egregious stereotyping. This night, we also met Sandy and Owen (a couple in their 50/60s), who we spent much of the next day with.

Day 5: White River to Indian Bar (11.2 miles)

We got a later start this day, which I'd promised B as penance for lengthening the previous day. We were both pretty grumpy this morning; I'd imagine this had a lot to do with skipping dinner the night before; again, skipping meals is a really bad idea on this sort of trip. Once we got going, we really moved though; we made the 7 miles up to Summerland (another set of alpine meadows with views from the top of a mountain) in less than 2.5 hours. We ate lunch there (well, I ate a few bites of lunch; despite being hungry, I had no appetite for my meal), and then made our way across snow fields and meadows into the last decline of the day towards Indian Bar. This last decline was rough: my blister had blistered over again each of the previous nights, and was pretty unhappy with downhills. Both of our knees were ready to be done with downhill for a good while. When we reached camp, we were very pleasantly surprised: we had the group site, which had a terrific view of Rainier (and other mountains), the river, and the meadows therein. The other sites were a hike up a hill, set into the hill, with much less of a view. The loo (here and at Dick Creek) had no house surrounding it: instead, it had a really nice view of the mountains. We washed up, had supper, and chatted with Megan and Owen and Sandy (and the other couple there). They were all headed to Maple Creek the next day (just 10 miles, mostly downhill), and they offered that we could stay with them rather than hike the couple miles off the trail to Snow Lake.

Day 6: Indian Bar to Snow Lake (14 miles) Longmire (22ish miles)

We were hauling for the first part of this day. We'd realized downhills hurt less if we jogged down them slowly, and so we started off the day working into the valley with several minutes of jogging interspersed with our walking. We were a couple of miles from Maple Creek when we decided that we'd have lunch at Maple Creek and decide if we just wanted to finish the whole thing (we were going to be at Maple creek by about 12:30). Maple creek was, as far as I could tell, the worst campsite I'd ever seen. It was the buggiest, muggiest, area I've ever seen humans choose to vacation in. We didn't even want to sit still for eating lunch, but then, I didn't really want lunch anyway. As of day 4, I'd been having a lot of difficulty making myself eat more freeze-dried food, and today was the epitome of that sickness. No food we had with us sounded remotely appealing. We decided that there was no way we wanted to stay, given the flies and heat and the fact that we were both sick of camping food. At this point, we decided to finish the trail a day early. 

The rest of the day was a bit of a blur; we made a lot of stops and drank a lot of gatorade. I hadn't really eaten lunch, it was hot and buggy, and we were both exhausted. We had our final climb of the trip, up away from Maple creek, the whole of which was heavily vegitated and as such, very very muggy and buggy. When we reached the top of the hill, the trail skirted the road for a bit, where we took a break. The people passing by in their SUVs and Priuses looked concerned for their safety (at this point, I imagine we smelled particularly potent). From the road, we hit Inspiration Point, the peak of the last climb. From here, we staggered down the hill and through the woods back to the car.

Key Learning Points:

- Hiking poles are surprisingly useful

- As was my lightweight windbreaker/rain pants, despite perfect weather: they are anti-mosquito!

- Extra clothing is surprisingly not

- I get sick of backpacking food on the trail. I guess I'll need more variety next time

- Bug Head-net seems like a good idea for parts of this trip

- Don't skip meals; you will (as in normal life) regret this decision.

Summertime

Whew! I looked at the date today, and realized it's been over a month since I last wrote a post. During my most intense training (this spring), I barely missed a week. I don't have training to blame for my absence from my blog. Rather, working like a maniac at my summer internship and commuting for roughly 2 hours a day have killed the free time I normally use for things like blogging, grocery shopping, baking my own bread, or just taking a weekend day where I don't need to accomplish anything (besides running, of course!)

Well, today, I basically intended to accomplish nothing other than going for a run. I set out to spend my day doing fun things, whatever I felt like, after my long run. This day came on the coattails of yesterday, when I spent all day after practice attempting to have great research ideas and failing.  My *least favorite thing in the universe* is spending weekend time working and having nothing productive come of it.

So, at 6:30 yesterday, when I went out with friends for dinner, I decided to call a 36 hour moratorium on thinking about work. Dinner was tasty, we wandered around Fremont and ate pie and ice cream, and I went to bed early. I woke up, and decided I hadn't gone more than 16 miles in several weekends, so I wasn't going to stress out about the distance or pace of the run (that was supposed to be 16-17 miles), but I was going to go meet up with the CNW gang for a big part of the run. It was nice; my GPS died after the first hour of running, so I had no idea how fast/how far we were going. I just followed someone else's directions and talked shop (plantar fasciitis, various new running shoe models, upcoming races) with fellow runners. When everyone else was done, I had 3 hilly miles back home, and I told myself I could walk some if I felt like it (I was rather confident I'd done 16 when everyone else called it quits). But I felt good! So, despite my legs being a bit charred from the tempo run yesterday, I chugged up and down the hills back home. For the rest of today, I've done nothing much worth mentioning (did some clothes shopping, ate some froyo, took a nap when I started to think about work). A nice break.

The last few weeks have been stressful. Here are the things I've found stressful:

1. I'm down on my training. I haven't had bad workouts, per se, but my mileage has been intentionally lower (~70 miles a week for most weeks, a few lower weeks), and I've usually only had 2 quality sessions per week. I haven't felt like I've been really pushing the envelope with the running I've been doing, but I've been too tired to get in a bunch of double days (I often don't get home before 7:30 or 8:00). I've also just not felt particularly fit, despite a bunch of workouts going well.

2. Work has been stressful, both in terms of schedule and in terms of output. I like research, and in particular the projects I'm working on for the summer, I like the job and all of that. It's pretty intense to meet every day to work on a given research project, though, and my most preferred schedule of fairly early to early evening doesn't work as well for summer, both in terms of the commute and in terms of collaboration hours. Plus, I want to get a lot of work done while I'm here! So I definitely let work stress me out more than it usually does.

3. Commuting. Suffices to say that either taking 2 buses or biking 4 miles before taking another bus is a bit overwhelming. I didn't know how long this was taking me until about 2 weeks ago when I noticed that, best-case, the evening commute was taking 1:15 due to traffic. I've decided (against my hippy-dippy tendencies) that I'm going to drive to work for the last month, to try and recover a little bit of this time for myself. Even when don't drive, I find it difficult to enjoy/work during the commute, since there's a lot of traffic and I get carsick if I read/write on the bus. Plus people seem to love striking up conversations with me, even if I'm clearly busy reading a book they've never heard of.

4. Vacation! I know this sounds absurd, but B and I have planned a totally awesome vacation of hiking the Wonderland Trail (starting this Wednesday) for a week, and it's stressed me out. I love backpacking. I love being outside and "off the grid". I've enjoyed making the plans and buying the various new gear and freezedried food and everything else. But it's also stressed me out. It's taken time and energy to make those plans. The week off of work is oddly timed (rather than being one contiguous week, it's W-W). We don't have buffer of an extra weekend, as we would if it were M-F. Our timing is constrained by our permit as well as my work schedule. A week off of running is going to be very weird and I worry about how it'll affect my training. I'm scared one of us will get hurt, or have trouble finishing the trail, or that we won't have enough food, or that we'll forget something important, etc etc. My mind is an infinite generator of worries.

5. I miss my friends from Pittsburgh! I'm very used to having people to hang out with/go running with whenever I feel like it, just outside my door. I've been too tired to do much in the way of socializing here, and coordinating running on weekdays seems nearly impossible due to work schedules. Seattle is nice, and the weather is beautiful for running, and I feel guilty for being stressed about all these little things, especially when the big message (Work is going well, Running is going fine, I'm not injured and I get to spend the summer in the most beautiful part of the world, with an awesome boyfriend) is so positive.

Anyway, I'm writing these down because I want to remind myself it's ok to be tired and stressed, but not to let my stress induce more stress and anxiety. My training is going fine, but I've been too busy to write about it. Long story short is that I've been running ~70 miles a week, doing a tempo run each Saturday, a longish run each Sunday, and either a track workout or a tempo run each Wednesday. I've raced a couple of 5k's (both finishing in the top couple people, both in 18:06-18:07, the second of which was on a rather unfavorable course). I raced a mile and had a bad day.

After I get back from backpacking, my schedule will be a little different. I've noticed easy miles have been harder for me to get in than workouts, so I'm going to shift to doing an optional/choice workout Monday, CNW practice Wednesday, long run Thursday, and tempo on Saturday. If I feel like it, I can make Sunday a medium-long run. This way, I'll have one weekend day that isn't totally eaten by running, and fewer "easy miles" that I feel like I have to log on weekdays. I'm looking forward to it!

Base training FTW

It's been a little while since I last posted. I'll blame this on two things: one, I'm lazy and busy and haven't been bothered to post, and two, base training is boring (to write and read about). That being said, as this marks the end of base training, I figured I'd write a brief highlighting of the last few weeks of training.

0. I've now succesfully run 2 70ish mile weeks in a row. Go me! Last weekend and this weekend both had a medium-long (last weekend, a half marathon, this weekend, 14 miles at 7:10 pace) harder runs on Saturday followed by easy long runs Sunday (17 last week, 20 this week). It kind of feels like I may have forgotten how to run for 3 hours, but I guess I'll get back to it eventually :)

1. I got hit by a CMU golf cart, which impeded my mileage increasing beyond 60something miles 3 weeks ago.
   This is only vaguely related to training. I felt like crap for a couple of days (I was really sore and kind of bruised), but I mostly wanted an excuse to briefly write about the incident (which, in hindsight, is humorous).
   I had just finished a nice run with the Bald One through Schenley park. I was off to have dinner with a friend, and hopped on my bike outside the University Center. I rode along the path between the UC and the parking garage. I was riding slowly, since there are often other bicyclists and pedestrians in the area.  The path intersects with another piece of path at a 90' angle, the inside of which is full of a large, overgrown bush. I entered into the intersection, aiming to turn left, when I was attacked from the side by a vicious motorized cart driven by a red-faced Yinzer.

He hit my left side and my bicycle, which caused me to topple over with some force. I was then somewhat pinned to the cement by my bicycle and the weight of my backpack. The Yinzer immediately jumps off his cart and hears me screaming "Jesus! Holy Shit!" (I am in shock, and didn't at this point intend any blasphemies). His kneejerk response is "It wasn't my fault!" Given the fact that I was freaking the fuck out, and swearing and crying and clearly out of it, but was able to focus on what he'd said well enough to give him a death glare, he decided to shut his trap. It was all I could do to not scream at him "Well, whose fault was it, then? If I'd run into you I wouldn't be blaming you! Also I'm hurt and freaking out; do you think we can wait on making me feel guilty about this until after I calm down a bit?"

The Bald One comes sprinting over as soon as he saw what happened. There were pretty quickly about 6 CMUPD officers standing around, asking me, TBO, and the crazed driver of the souped-up gocart questions. There were pretty quickly EMT or medic-ish people there, checking me out and saying they were going to take me to the hospital. Once I'd figured out that I was banged up but likely had not broken any bones, I requested that they not send me to the hospital. I also asked if I could stand up: everyone was towering over me and it felt super uncomfortable.

 I heard the driver say "There should be a stop sign there!", which caused me to throw another nasty look his way. Is that corner poorly kept and a safety hazard? Yes. Do you get to justify the entire accident on that, rather than going too quickly and not being careful enough? No. He came over towards me and (for the first time, at least 20 minutes after this all happened), said, "I'm sorry. Here, let me give you a backrub" and started rubbing my shoulders for about 1 second. He either got the impression that I was very much not ok with that, or that the police all started looking at him, and stopped. Later, TBO told me that the police officer he was talking to said to him, "If he doesn't stop touching her this second I'm going to fucking tase him." (I would have enjoyed this).

Anyway, long story long, I'm fine. But that guy's kind of a dick and CMU has some real deficiencies in its campus (for safety and aesthetic reasons, that bush should either not be there or be much trimmed back).

2. We ran Decker's Creek again!

Not much to say here, other than that it was at least as fun as last year. We went out, camped, ran, drank, and were merry. A good time was had by all. I ran an ok 1:24:05, which given the 80' heat and humidity, I'll take.

3. Real training starts this week and I'm in Seattle!

Enough said!

Eugene Marathon Recap and Starting over

It's taken me awhile to get to writing this post. For 12 weeks prior to running my most recent race, I poured my heart and time into training harder than I ever have before. Three quality workouts and several days with two workouts each week, ensuring I got at least 7 hours of sleep each night, drinking enough water, and eating wholesome food was satisfying but exhausting. I spent way more time and mental focus on this training cycle than I had ever imagined I'd do. So, when it was all over, I took 5 days off of running entirely and didn't really want to think about training or running at all.

It's now been 2.5 weeks, though, and I figure it's worth writing down how I felt about my race for posterity's sake. I also know there are people who have been following the blog that I haven't talked to since I ran, so they might want to know a bit more about how exactly my A race of the season unfolded. In short, in case you're in a hurry to get back to work, my A race was much more of a B- race in terms of my satisfaction with the run. 

If you're trying to spend a bit more time, though, here's a slightly lengthier version of my race recap.

I headed out to Eugene via train/bus from Seattle, where I'd been to celebrate my two-year anniversary with B. We had a great time for the one day I was in Seattle, as a sidenote: B came up with an awesome Italian restaurant for us to eat at, after we wandered around the city on a bit of a sight-seeing tour. 

Anyway, I had an early-morning train leaving Seattle on Friday: the weather was beautiful and the train station was gorgeous. I read "Once a Runner" in its totality on the train on the ride down and ate 3 Powerbars for food. When I arrived in Eugene, my awesome roommate (from GRC) came and picked me up at the bus station. We checked into the hotel, had some food with another GRC runner and her mom, and went to bed quite early. 

The next day, we went for a quick jog, we grabbed some water bottles for B from Target, had some nice lunch and went to a local brewery before heading to the elite meeting. The elite meeting was really nice and low-key: Ken, the man in charge of the race, was really  nice and responsible and laid-back. He encapsulated the Pacific Northwest attitude in a single personage. We left the meeting, headed to dinner, and back to the hotel. I managed to open my pre-bedtime beer on the door fixture, drank a few swigs, and laid down to go to bed. Unfortunately,  but not surprisingly, my mind was racing for awhile which was making it tough to go to sleep. Even after I'd calmed down a bit, though, some muscles in my back started to spasm which again added difficulty to falling asleep. I did eventually fall asleep, but I slept fitfully and for less time than I had hoped.

I woke up the next morning feeling surprisingly good. I ate a piece of bagel, drank some gatorade, and we made our way to the race start. The elite tent was awesome: there were a number of port-a-johns we got to use and no other runners had discovered. About 10 minutes to the race, we walked over to the starting line. As we stood on the line, I realized I had to pee, and there were no port-a-potties nearby. So, I jogged 20 yards over to some bushes and joined a few others who found their natural restroom there. I met two CNW runners, who Tom told me would be good to work with during the run. 

After the gun went off, I quickly fell in with these two girls. We were hitting our miles at between 6:30 and 6:35, which felt quite comfortable, almost like jogging, in the first 5k. Mile 4 had a bit of a hill, and while I didn't feel our group pushed a lot up the hill, I was breathing just a bit more than I was at the top of the hill than at the bottom, which worried me very slightly. When we came upon that mile marker, it turned out we'd run more like a 6:25 that mile: definitely too fast. We chilled out again for a few miles and hit more 6:30-6:35 miles. Our 10k time was 40:10. There was another bit of a hill at mile 8, and again, I felt like I was breathing a little harder at the top than the bottom. I felt like I was doing well working with the other women, though, so I decided to continue with them. Our group of 3 became a group of 4 before we made the 9 mile elite fluid station (right by Hayward Field, where we started). I flawlessly grabbed my bottle of maltodextrin, chugged slightly more than half of it (which equated to about a Gu in terms of calories), and tossed the bottle. This whole time, Tom was biking around and cheering us on, which was hugely helpful. 

Around mile 11, I decided to chill the pace a little from the rest of the group. They were really pushing at more like 6:30 than I felt I could hold, so I settled back into 6:40 or so. I hit the half in 1:25:50something. I was in 8th place. At this point, I felt like I was working, but I expected that by the halfway mark. Shortly after the 14 mile mark, however, trouble set in. My quads began to cramp, and hard, with almost no warning. I'd never felt this before, and it was pretty scary to know I was 12 miles away from the finish line and already a pretty serious problem was setting in. I gritted my teeth and kept moving, albeit somewhat slower. 

I kept glancing at my watch for the next couple of mile markers, noticing my 6:30-6:40 pace was becoming 6:50-7:00. The cramping had started to spread up to my abs and down to my calf muscles. Everything hurt. A lot. I am used to fatigue and the burn of lactic acid and muscle breakdown that I've felt during other races, but this was different. I saw another mile go by in 7:15. I thought I was going to break down and cry right then. At this point, I decide to stop looking at my watch, because I'm unable to speed up even for a mile, let alone for another 10, and seeing the numbers my watch showed was only breaking my heart. A few times, my legs began to buckle and I had to walk a few strides to let my legs hold me up again. I decided to not take my fuel after this point (which, admittedly was stupid), but my stomach was upset from the cramping and I didn't want to make that any worse. Each mile marker begot another 7something minute piece of torture, where all I could think about was how much I needed the next mile marker to show up soon. A number of times between 16 and 20 miles I considered dropping out, walking back to the start. I'd never been in more pain. Not when I was 7 and fell down the stairs. Not when I was 8 and needed stitches for cutting my chin on my side of a pool after attempting to jump across a narrow part of the pool and missing the other side, nor the even more painful shot of painkillers they gave me before administering the stitches. Not when I was stuck under a heavy canoe for a couple of minutes with my face pinned underwater. Not when I fell over B and almost blinded myself and cut my eyelid pretty badly on the corner of his filing cabinet. None of these things came to mind at the time because the pain was so much worse that it didn't feel like the same sensation. I noticed women passing me, lots of them, but there was nothing I had to fight with whatsoever. It was disheartening but there was no response I had.

Anyway, I came across a female member of the UofO distance squad who was also having a horrific time of things. She and I went back and forth jogging past one another, briefly taking absolutely necessary 10 second walk breaks, and croaking words of encouragement to one another. This weird interaction was hugely helpful, oddly enough. We managed to make it to 24 or so before I didn't see her again. I swore to myself I wouldn't walk again, and I was pretty sure I'd still break 3:05 unless I fell over before the finish line. My legs had no faster pace in them. 

But I did focus every amount of mental energy I had on putting one foot in front of another until Hayward Field came into sight for the third time that day. When I saw it, that magnificent stadium where so many world-class athletes have trained and raced, I realized I was going to finish the race. Not until I was within two tenths of a mile of the finish line was I sure I'd manage to make the whole race. I shuffled in across the line in 3:02:50something.  I almost fell over 2 steps afterwards. Ken came up to me and congratulated my teary and delirious self, and asked me to come back to race again next year. I was hungry and thirsty (I'd done a horrible job taking care of myself once i realized the race was going so poorly), but I didn't care and didn't want to fix that. I stumbled out of the shoot and ran smack into Tom and Mark, another CNW coach. They told me I'd done a great job. I shook my head and asked how the women I'd been running with had done: 2:52 and 2:53, respectively. I told them to tell them both congratulations, and fell into a chair, where I sat for a good 20 minutes before I got up and Mark helped me find my gear and my friends.

Needless to say, the physical recovery from this race has been pretty rough. I've never been more sore in the few days following a race. I didn't run at all until Friday of the following week, where I jogged a very slow and painful 3 miles and only because I was traveling did I do that rather than cross-train. I didn't get much sleep, eat enough or very well, for about a week after the race, because it felt good to be able to be reckless in my treatment of my body for a little while. I ran a beer mile and didn't puke and was proud of this.

 All of this was somewhat symptomatic of the mental recovery I've been working through, too: I was hugely disappointed with my race. I wasn't sure if things would have gone much different if my first half had been a minute or so slower. I didn't know if I ever wanted to race a marathon again. I was strongly considering swearing a blood oath to not race another one. Even knowing how the race played out, I didn't know what I did wrong. I guess this is the way marathon running works: you train really hard, for a long time, and occasionally, you race. And even more infrequently, the stars align and you have a great race and see the fruits of your labor reflected in that. Unfortunately, the faster you get, the smaller the marginal gains you get from training, and the easier it is for small problems to overshadow big improvements in your fitness and cause a bad race. It's easier for your first few races in any distance to always PR: your fitness gets so much better so quickly when you're new to any sport. And I'm still used to seeing pretty huge improvements in my times between each race. I guess I'll have to get used to the marathon kicking my ass more seriously on a regular basis.

Now, though, I'm back to running a bit. I'm now doing mostly mafatone (MAF) training for a few weeks. Basically, keeping my heart rate relatively low (145-155, while marathon pace is more like 165), for all of my runs, allowing me to get my mileage back up fairly quickly without causing serious muscular damage when my body is still healing and building back. This week, I've got a 60ish mile week, all at a comfortable pace (nothing faster than 7:00 pace, and often slower if I'm tired, poorly recovered, or running up a hill). After a few weeks of this, the plan is to run 10 weeks of high intensity, focusing on 5k/10k and top-end speed leading into the Great Race 10k at the end of September. After the Great Race, another 10 mile cycle, this one focused on marathon-specific work, will lead into the California International Marathon in December (where a bunch of Hounds are racing! Yay! Hounds trip!) I'm excited about this plan: my lack of top-end speed will be improved, and should make 6:30something pace feel slow. Hopefully, I'll come back very fit and strong from a summer of a lot of running. 

In the more short-term, I'll be racing my favorite-ever half marathon, Decker's Creek. This race is awesome: it's a half that is mostly on a gravel trail next to a river, which loses 800 feet gradually over the first 11 miles. It is, as you might imagine, my best half marathon time to date, and was one of the most fun things I did last summer (following it last year was last year's Beer Mile, and prior to it we camped out and drank beer). Anyway, I'm really looking forward to busting out a reasonable time and having fun with some Hounds in Morgantown, WV!

Running... a rather absurd pastime.

I started writing this post on Tuesday, the day after Patriot's day. For many of my readers, this is equivalent to me saying "the day after the Boston Marathon." And for each of you, whether or not you were aware yesterday morning was the Boston Marathon, by yesterday afternoon I'm sure everyone had heard that two explosions had gone off on Boylston Street, in the final stretch of the Boston Marathon. They occurred right around the 4 hour mark, when the largest number of people were streaming past the Citgo sign into the final mile of the race. Current counts have 3 dead and well over 100 injured. I'm not a particularly good or timely news source, but I figure it's worth giving some small amount of context for this post as I write it.

All afternoon and night, my family and friends were calling, emailing, texting, and Facebooking me to make sure I wasn't at the race. Much to their relief, I didn't decide to run Boston this year. But I did know about a dozen people who were. I couldn't believe what had happened. Very few fatal attacks of terror have been executed successfully in the United States since I've been alive, and while this certainly doesn't lessen the horror of attacks in places where violence is more common, it has a particular shocking value if you're not used to it happening so close to home. I managed to track down the people I knew who were running yesterday, but I was lucky. There were all sorts of families who couldn't reach their runners for hours, since the gear-check bags were not available to be retrieved until today. Many people were left without phones or wallets or plane tickets without access to their bags. I  guess I've been freaked out by the closeness of it all. I knew people who were within a few blocks of the explosion. Many of my friends are runners, many of whom have been to Boston. I started the race last year.

That being said, I've decided that if I alter my life in any substantial way, the terrorists win. So, let me only say that my thoughts go out to those affected by the bombings yesterday in Boston, and more generally the people injured by acts of terror worldwide. I've also decided if I don't give the Eugene Marathon my all, the Terrorists Win. So I plan to give it my all (even if the Terrorists don't notice).

Watching the race yesterday was also really exciting. The womens' race was the most exciting race I've seen in a long time. A big pack of women went out quite cautiously, with a pack of 4 women about 15 seconds ahead at the 5k. Their first 10K was in just 35:50, which equates to a 2:31, despite several of the women in the field having PRs about 10 minutes faster. Eventually, the lead pack thinned a bit, and a gang of four went out for it. Portugal's Caballero took the lead at around 11 miles and put 30something seconds between herself and the chase pack. It was super-strange: the weather must have been perfect and windless, or the road must have been very slanted, because the rest of the pack spread all across the road rather than drafting off each other. I've never seen elite runners do that before.... and the men's race (which I admittedly paid less attention to) did the same thing at roughly the same spot in the course.

At about 15 miles, another Portugese runner, Ana Felix, plays catch-up and takes the lead from Caballero. The rest of the chase group held back at this point. Felix looked really strong, and Caballero let her lead. She put well over a minute between herself and the chase pack between 15 and 20 miles, and while she looked strong in terms of her stride and form, she kept glancing back over her shoulder, wondering when the pack of women were going to catch back up.

And catch back up they did! A pack of 5 women starts to pick at her lead at about 20 miles. Rita Jeptoo, the Boston Champion from 2006,  Shalene Flannigan, Meseret Hailu, and Sharon Cherop come and get her, dropping the hammer with a few 5:10ish miles in a row. They cut a 1+ minute lead in just 3 miles: Rita Jeptoo overtook Felix at 23 miles. The last few miles were gutwrenching: watching these women who had run a much more strategic race than I've ever watched before, vied for place. Kara Goucher and one other female runner are a bit back. Then, the final turn onto Boylston street, and the group of four lead women separates. Rita Jeptoo pulls away from the other women, Hailu keeps her sights on Jeptoo but doesn't have the leg strength to get her back, Cherop follows shortly behind, and Shalene Flannigan comes in fourth. Shortly thereafter, Kara Goucher finishes 6th, with a time of 2:28. The race was won in 2:26 and change, which is about 5:00 slower than Jeptoo's personal best. As I mentioned, it was the most strategically interesting marathon I've ever watched: the race went out very, very slow: the first mile was just 6:01, despite the winning time averaging a 5:38. A bunch of women were freaked out at various points about the pack not cutting the pace down fast enough, and took the lead with a strong pace. That turned out to be an error: that effort left both women too tired to pick up the pace when the pack caught up with them. 

Anyway, I've had 2 weeks without posting, so here have been the workouts:

Mon: Off. Rest day from Cherry Blossom (30 min cardio)
Tues: 4 miles easy
Wed: Dreadmill. 2 mile WU, 4x1 mile at MP, 400 at 7:00, 4x 800 at MP, 400 at 7:00
Thurs: 4 miles easy
Fri: 9 mile progression. 3 easy, 3 at 6:50, 4 at 6:40
Sat: 4 miles easy
Sun: 20 miles. 10 easy, 10 at 6:40-6:55. No real labor allowed, just keep it below 7.

All of the workouts were pretty good... Wednesday was sticky and on the treadmill. As usual, I scared the random people walking and watching E! network on their televisions by running fast on the treadmill. Friday was miserably humid/rainy on the track, where I did 5 miles at marathon pace. I didn't really go 6:50 for the second three; it was more like marathon pace for 6 miles.

Saturday night, L, J2 and myself got together and watched Without Limits. Every time I watch that movie, I get so pumped up by Steve's amazing moustache:

and his insane drive, work ethic, and will to put himself through incredible amounts of pain. I had some trouble falling asleep that night because I was so ready to go running and work my ass off. Sunday, I did 10 miles easy and 8 at marathon-ish pace. I was accompanied by The Russian for a good part of the faster stuff (also S for the first bit of it). I decided to back off a couple of miles early, because I realized I was two weeks out from my race and wanted not to beat myself up too badly. I got a sweet massage later that afternoon, which really seemed to help me recover.

Mon: 4 miles easy
Tues: 0-6 miles easy
Wed: 9 miles easy, 4 miles at marathon pace
Thurs: Rest
Fri: Random Distance run
Sat: 4 miles with 4x20" strides at ~6:00 pace
Sun: 2 mile WU, 2x3 miles at MP. 

Finally, a week that looked like a taper week! I explicitly told my coach that I wanted at least 1 day off this week, and at least 2 days off next week. Throughout this training cycle, I've had the fewest days off I've every had. I used to take a day or two off every week, then eventually that led to one day a week off, then over the summer/fall I was taking a day off every other week, or two out of three weeks. Since Tim started coaching me, I can remember each day I've had off. I had one day off at the end of January after our ridiculous All-Day run, wherein L, The Russian, J2, M, and myself (supported by many awesome teammates along the way) literally ran all day (this entire 40+ mile debacle was my idea, as you might imagine). I had two days off sometime in March, when I explicitly asked for them so I could carry a 30-pound pack 10 miles each day after cramming 60 miles into 4 workdays. The first night of Passover, I ended up with a day off because I flew across the country and my plane left at 5:55 AM MST, and I didn't get in until almost 7 pm and then had Seder that didn't end until almost 11 EST. I took the day off after Cherry Blossom, and I took Thursday off. 

After each of these days, I felt pretty awesome when I went out for my next run. The short-term fatigue from the previous workout was sometimes still there, but I felt like a little bit of the constant monotony and dragginess that came from running 7 days a week with 3 workouts seemed to subside. So, I asked for some days off. Because I'd much rather over-taper than under-taper for a marathon. 

The week in general felt good. Each of the workouts went well, though I tweaked my left ankle on my run today. It feels pretty ok at the moment, though, so I'm not going to worry about it. I also have another massage tomorrow, and a day off of running! 

For all you runners out there, don't let the Terrorists win. Taper enough for your distance, sleep enough, eat well, drink water. After all, "The best pace is a suicide pace, and today is a good day to die."--Pre

But seriously. If you're racing a full you shouldn't feel that way until like 2/3 of the way through the race or you're screwed. In the last 10k, though, if these words don't echo your sentiment, you're doing it wrong.

(Thyroid) Stimulating Conversation

So, two times in the last week, I've come across derivations of this article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323550604578412913149043072.html

which talks about a group of elite athletes who have all been diagnosed with hypothyroidism by one endocrinologist.  This article didn't say the doctor is giving these athletes legal performance enhancing drugs, but definitely alluded to the possibility. The article also states that something like 17% of Nike's elite running team has been diagnosed with hypothyroidism. Based on diagnosis rates within the general public, somewhere between 5% and 10% of Americans are thought to have hypothyroidism. A clear inference can be made! There are differences between these two populations, and perhaps even how careful they are with their health! Of course, I'm being somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Clearly, elite athletes and the general population have a number of different scales on which they are substantially different. Moreover, an elite athlete tends to be much more aware of his/her energy levels, overall health, and tends to be much more proactive about regular physicals and doctor visits. These two things in combination don't inherently suggest that the number of elite runners with hypothyroidism is inflated, but it does say there might be substantial bias in the sampling we have (most elite athletes would go to the doctor with chronic fatigue; most average people might not bother to have a test done at all).

I think it's somewhat dangerous to make inferences about a potential performance enhancement/detriment derived from a drug without formal, scientific, and statistically reasonable studies having been done on said drug. I'm hypothyroidic, as are a number of my non-athletic, young and relatively healthy friends. As the end of the article alludes, the medical community is divided as to (a) what constitutes too little or too much thyroid stimulating hormone, (b) how best to treat those conditions, and (c) what side effects (or intended effects) these treatments have.

It is certainly the case that levothyroxin is somewhat of a stimulant. But that's exactly the point: if you don't have enough of the natural stuff, your body has less natural stimulus than is considered "normal" or "healthy". Thus, the drug is intended to replace the stimulus your body isn't giving itself. The thyroid produces 2 versions of the same hormone, which affect metabolic rate, skin and hair health, digestion, energy levels, etc etc. I was tested and ultimately diagnosed with hypothyroidism not because of my running performance (I was diagnosed many years before I started competing again), or gaining weight (I'd been the same weight between 15 and 19, when I was diagnosed), but because my sleep patterns were super awry, pretty frequent nausea, and I had very dry skin.

The article mentions several athletes who have publicly announced their diagnosis with thyroid disorders, including Ryan Hall, Galen Rupp, Amy Yoder Begley, Bob Kennedy and Patrick Smyth. Individuals less familiar with hypothyroidism might immediately reach two conclusions: first, aren't those runners all really skinny for having hypothyroidism, and two, isn't it suspicious that those names include some of the fastest people in today's distance running scene?

As far as the first point, hypothyroidism has a number of symptoms, including but not limited to weight gain, chronic fatigue, sensitivity to heat and cold, trouble sleeping, skin and hair trouble, and digestive problems. The runners above all train for hours every day. It would not be surprising in the least if their training regiments mask the weight gain that might otherwise come from hypothyroidism. Moreover, even among more "average" people diagnosed with hypothyroidism, not everyone experiences weight gain as a symptom of the disease.

The second point leads me to a somewhat different set of questions. First, is there some reason that heavy training loads suppress thyroid function? Maybe that's why a bunch of serious athletes have been diagnosed. Second, as there is much dissent within the medical community about "normal" ranges of TSH, what sorts of ranges do the elite athletes who are being treated (by this doctor) have? Are they ranges that no one else in the country would call low? Or are they just on the high side of low? Do they exhibit symptoms of hypothyroidism, besides the normal fatigue plaguing other elite athletes under significant training duress? And finally, if an athlete has low iron counts (due, perhaps in part, to training), and takes iron to fix the problem, they will see an improvement in their performance. Does that make iron a performance-enhancing drug? 

Everyone agrees that some drugs are performance-enhancing, but what line must you cross? Healthy diet, too, can improve performance, though the food might not be in pill form. So might taking supplements for other deficiencies  or taking a daily multivitamin out of habit. So too might a male athlete getting testosterone injections. Where do we draw the line? Generally speaking, wherever that line is, most people would agree that food and multivitamins should not be considered performance enhancing drugs, and that EPO and HGH should. In between those two extremes, though, are a host of other "performance enhancers", that might improve the performance of some athletes, but are more or less "natural", and have smaller or larger natural levels within the human body.

Cheery Blossom

Hey, all! Sorry I didn't post last week: between Passover and getting ready for Cherry Blossom, last week was nuts. So, here is a brief description of my last 2 weeks of training:

Monday: Off, traveling and the first night of Passover
Tuesday: 1200s at ~4:20-4:25 (7 of them)
Wednesday: 7.2 easy AM, 9.7 easy PM
Thursday: 6 miles easy
Friday: 10 mile progression run. 2 mile warmup, 6 miles starting at 6:45, cutting 5 seconds/mile. 2 mile cooldown
Saturday: 7 miles easy
Sunday: 17 miles with 5x800 at roughly Cherry Blossom Pace (~3:10 or so?)
========
Monday: Massage AM, 3 miles PM
Tuesday: 6x600 at ~1:58, with full (like 3:30 or so) rest
Wednesday: 7 miles easy
Thursday: 3 mile warmup, 3x2 at MP, 3 mile cooldown
Friday: 4 miles easy
Saturday: 4 miles easy with 6 easy strides (20")
Sunday: 4 mile warmup with 4x1:00 hard, 10 mile Cherry Blossom!

So my running has been pretty good; mileage is coming down (67 miles and then 53), which is good, given I now have 3 weeks to marathon. My 1200s were fast, the slowest was 4:21. I was pretty tired the next day, but by Friday, I was ready to go again. Steph and I went out and did the progression run in beautiful weather on the river trails. Each of my miles was a few seconds fast for that run, too. Sunday was a miserable run: between rain, shoes causing my heels to crack and bleed, dehydration and general fatigue, I was very happy to be done with that run. I guess the Hounds seder at my house Saturday night didn't really help that. The whole week was somewhat weird for nutrition: Passover means I eat nothing but dairy, produce, and matzot (no grains or legumes). Surprisingly, I didn't have much of a problem digestively despite these restrictions. I ate a bunch of sweet potatoes and matzot to supplement my carbohydrate reserves.

The next day, I had a nice sports massage to try and work out some of the tightness in my calves and glutes. I don't usually have massages that involve my legs, because (a) my legs are  quite ticklish, (b) I don't like the idea of my legs being messed up by massage, and (c) buying new shoes seems like a better investment of the money for my general leg health. But I'd been feeling like my muscles were rather bound up so I gave it a go. I'm really happy I did! While I felt a little weird for a couple of days, a week out, my legs definitely feel better than they did before. I have all these tight spots in my calves and hamstrings and glutes, and I've noticed an increased range of motion and a smoother stride since last week. I've decided that I'm going to get another massage this Sunday upcoming, to try and have this effect last until Eugene (which, as I just mentioned is only 3 weeks away now!)

L and I had 600s to do the next day, which we did with K and N. It was really fun to run fast... we were doing not too much slower than our mile pace, which meant we were passing the men (who were doing their 5k pace), when we were all synced up for start times. My legs really didn't remember how to run that fast, but I managed to be quite on pace each time we ran those, even on the first 200. Our splits were, roughly 78 or 79 at the 400. After doing 6 of them, I decided I didn't need to do any more, given my race coming up that weekend. We broke Passover at Stack'd, which was a lot of fun! I ate a veggie bean burger, on bread, with fried mac and cheese and a beer. Nothing like going off a dietary restriction by stuffing yourself with all that you couldn't eat before... my stomach was not happy with me later that night.

I woke up to do Thursday's workout, only to find it was about 20 degrees colder than I'd expected (it was 18 when I went out... brrr!) I ran down to the river trails from my place to do the 3x2. Unfortunately for me, I ran the miles a bit faster than I was supposed to... the slowest was 6:40 or so (and that was supposed to be the fastest I was to run). I promise, the remaining of my marathon paced workouts will be more consistently 6:40, because I need to know how that pace feels.

L and I made it out to DC by the evening of Friday, and had quite a good time staying with her friends L and T. Friday night, we went to a delicious and unassuming Ethiopian restaurant. On Saturday, we went through the Portrait Gallery, which was having a portrait competition, and wandered around the part of the city which was inundated with tourists and cherry trees about to bloom. We then went to the elite technical meeting and realized just how crazy our decision to start with the elites in the USATF National 10 mile championships really was. There were virtually no other sub-elite athletes who chose to start with the elite wave: everyone else seemed to know one another, and everyone looked like they were sponsored by various athletic companies (Adidas was well-represented, as was Nike and Mizuno; there were also people who were wearing shirts from some of the well-known distance teams from around the country, from Flagstaff, Boulder, and the like). This group of women were going to start 12 minutes before the elite men or the rest of the seeded runners. After the meeting, L and I stalked the list of competitors to try and figure out if any of the other early start women were going to be anywhere near our pace. We found 3 or 4 women who definitely were going to run 60 or slower, so we relaxed a little bit but were definitely nervous about running 10 miles alone, without watches or competition (Tim told us we should race, and not care about pacing). After some whole wheat pasta and delicious homemade sauce, we watched the first half of Without Limits to get Pumped UP. Any movie that has an actor depicting Steve Prefontaine being a total douche (but racing with serious guts) is enough to make me want to run hard. After all, "The best pace is a suicide pace, and today is a good day to die."

Morning of the race, I woke up feeling much more refreshed by 6 hours of sleep than I expected to feel. I ate a few pieces of white bread with some jam, and a banana. I drank a little gatorade while listening to some Pump Up music on my nifty little iPod, and waited for L to wake up and get ready. I was mentally ready. I could tell, though, that I'd overeaten the night before: I was feeling kind of bloated and heavy in my stomach region. I used the bathroom before leaving for our warmup jog/transportation to the start of the race, but the feeling didn't really go away.

We jogged to the mall and down it towards the GW memorial. We went into the elite tent and sat, nervously, for about 20 minutes. All the women seemed nervous, probably at least as much as we were, because they depend on their results for financial wellbeing and their notoriety. They all stretched and sat and guzzled water and waited to use the elite port-a-potties, just like we mere sub-elites did. They made the occasional joke to one another, changed clothes, and went back and forth between doing warmups and sitting, conserving their energy for the race ahead. The number of 6+ packs in that tent was truly amazing, on women and men alike. In fact, I actually think the most impressive set of abs I saw were female.

Eventually, after another couple of strides, it was time for them to lead us to the start line. We all jogged along to the line, did a few strides, and lined up. Without a warning, the horn was blown and we were off. L and I tucked in to the second group, the one that looked like sub-60 was their goal, rather than the first group, who wanted to win money and set records. The weather was beautiful, 45 and sunny, but windy. We came through the first mile in 5:55, the second at 11:55, the third at about 17:55 or 18:00. I felt good. My legs felt pretty ok, but not perfect, as I'd done 2 hard workouts that week before the race. I hit the 5k at about 18:35.

Somewhere between the 5k and the 4 mile mark, my stomach started cramping up in a signal of imminent intenstinal distress. I dropped back from the group, fairly sure that slowing by a few seconds a mile would allow me to avoid some of my stomach problems. I kept them in eyesight for the next mile (hit 5 miles at 31:00 and the 10k around 38:40). I worried that, as is easy to do when something goes awry physically, I'd give up mentally. After I let the group go a bit, I was totally and completely alone, and around the 5 mile mark, I found myself running into a strong headwind. At this point, my legs started complaining in earnest, and my stomach was more unhappy rather than less. I decided that I still really wanted to keep in the race, though, so I kept my eyes on the group and tried to focus on not losing more ground to them.

The course, at this point, was totally gorgeous. There were all the cherry trees with their blossoms, and the river surrounding the peninsula that we ran along looked really nice in the early morning light. This was also the windiest part of the course. At about 7 miles, I heard footsteps from behind me, and I knew they were the footsteps of 2 people running substantially sub-5:00 miles, so the first 2 men had caught me, even with my 12 minute head start. As they passed, I noticed the ease with which they seemed to take each stride, even 70% into their race distance, into the wind, leaving their future battle to later. They ran side-by-side, in lock-step. Neither one was drafting off the other (I'm not sure if one would allow the other to draft).

As I watched them run along ahead of me, I realized both they and I had only 3 more miles to go, and while I'd lost a bunch of time in that mile (I think I ran a 6:40ish 7th mile), I didn't want to give up completely. I picked up my legs a bit and tried to see what they had left in them. I hit 8 miles in 50:30. 2 more men passed me. I knew that running under 63 (the time I had needed to qualify for running in the elite heat) was going to be difficult at best. But I decided to push anyway. I didn't see the 9th mile marker, but the first 3 American runners passed me roughly where it probably was. I saw the 800m to go sign, and tried to put my legs in top gear. It seemed as though they were more or less maxed out, and while I was pushing with all my might, I don't think my pace actually increased too much. L and T (our hosts for the weekend), were at the 500 meter mark, when I tried again to push my legs up a notch. They obliged, slightly, but my stomach screamed with the increased speed. I buckled a bit and pulled back, deciding 5 seconds wasn't worth the continual abdominal agony. I saw the clock just as it read 62:55, when I still had the better part of 100 meters left. I ran through the finish in 63:11, not as fast as I'd wanted, but not horrendously off, either.

Given the circumstances, I was quite happy with my time, and knew a number of things I'd do differently next year. First, I think it would have been better to start with the normal seeded runners, rather than having a 12 minute head start. That way, I'd have had a bunch of people to draft off of and run with for the duration of the course, which probably cost me a good minute in the second half. Next,  and this is made more clear each time I race with stomach problems, I need to figure out what is bothering my stomach for racing, because I'm sick of my stomach holding me back from running at my potential. Finally, next year, I'm going to tell my coach it's really important to me that I race this more recovered than I was this year. I guess it's hard to balance mid-cycle racing with marathon training, but I think that avoiding Thursday's workout would have left me much fresher for Sunday.

How to hide your [running] addiction from your mother

So last week I was home for the weekend, during which time I was to run about 45 miles in 3 days. My mother and I have very different views on what constitutes an appropriate amount of exercise (or, more specifically, running). She's a big yoga freak, which, most of you know, is my least-favorite form of exercise of all time. As a general rule, she thinks I run too much. Which maybe I do. But mostly I think this judgment is unfounded on her part: she doesn't have any idea how many miles/hours I actually run, nor how healthy I am as a function of that running (mentally and physically). Anyway, here was the week's schedule:

M:  8 miles. Run uphill 4:00 at marathon HR; downhill at marathon pace
T: 8 AM/ 4 PM
W: 5 easy AM/ 3 mile progression + 3 x 1 mile @~6:20 pace (plus a warmup + cooldown)
Thursday: 6.5 easy
Friday: 12 mile progression. Not allowed to look at watch. Supposed to feel like MP towards the end
Saturday: 24 miles
Sunday: Skiing AM/ 8 miles PM


So there were several good things about this week. Running with Club NW on Wednesday was fun, even though I slightly modified my workout (6x1 mile) and theirs (4 mile progression) so I could run with them for awhile.

Steps to keeping your mother from thinking you run too much:

1. Surround the time you are home with all the running you can
-Thursday I left for home, so I just ran a few miles in the morning before catching my flight.

2. Make sure to leave after she's seen you in the morning, if you're going for a short run, so she doesn't overestimate an easy run
- On Friday, for example, I had some cereal and water and read the paper with her before she left for work and I went running with Brooke, a HS buddy. This allowed her to know that I didn't start running at 5 am and continue running all day.

3. On a long run day, maybe it's just best to leave before she gets up
-While this seems to contradict the previous bit of advice, if you actually are going running for 3+ hours, it may be best for her to not see you leave. Then she will have a very inaccurate estimate of how long you went running, so (if she doesn't assume 3 hours is even a conceivable amount of running) she definitely wouldn't think you could have possibly run for that long.

 4. Get a ride home from a friend (again, Brooke, thanks!) so you can excuse a bunch of the time you were gone as chit-chat and drive time. Better yet, get brunch!

The week was good: I made it through my highest mileage week ever (87 miles!) and was successful in all of my workouts. Running with Brooke on Friday and Saturday was nice: it was fun to run fast with someone fast and run far with someone who doesn't like running far :).

Also, some bad news. I have a broken sesamoid in my right foot. But, I have the official approval to run through it from Dr. MD (actually her initials), so I've bought some sesamoid pads and I'll ice the crap out of it for the next month and hope it feels better. I don't really know how I broke it, but I do know the pain isn't severe (it has been stiff and achy on and off since my fall marathon), so if it doesn't get worse I'll be fine to race in a month. Ugh. I'll post when I have more info/any useful updates.

Who knew it could snow in the rainforest?

This week was rather compressed for training, as B and I decided to go backpacking in the Hoh rainforest Saturday and Sunday. So, in a feat I wouldn't have thought possible, I packed 65 miles into 5 weekdays, and 59 miles into 4 in a row. My week:

Monday: 6 miles easy
Tuesday: 3 mile warmup, 7 miles at marathon pace by HR
Wednesday: 5 miles AM/ 3 mile warmup, 3.5 mile tempo, 15 minute jog, 5 x 45'' hill sprints, 2 mile cd
Thursday: 5 miles easy AM/ 5 miles easy PM
Friday: 21 miles. 13 easy, 3 fartleck marathon pace/7:30, 4 at MP effort (without looking at watch), CD
Saturday: 10 miles backpacking
Sunday: 10 miles backpacking

So, as you might imagine, this week beat me up a little bit. Tuesday's marathon heart-rate workout went really well, after I took off my tech tee (apparently, the combination of wind and tech material makes the heart-rate monitor freak out). I was to keep my HR between 155 and 165 for 5-7 miles, including a back-off on the pace as I tired. I felt really good! My splits were pretty consistently clustered around 6:40, which is goal marathon pace. It looks like 2:55 is going to be within reach at Eugene!

Wednesday, I went to work out with Club Northwest, The group to run with if you're a fast runner in Seattle. I had a nice tempo, where we ran 3.5 miles at about 6:08 pace on average (we were supposed to be more like 6:15, whoops!). After 15 minutes of jogging around, we headed over to do some hill sprints. Most of the hill workouts I've done this season have been at least 1:30 in length, so these all-out sprints were very tough for me. By the last one, I knew I'd be pretty busted for Thursday. It was fun to have some fun and fast people to run with; since I've been out on the West Coast, I've been hitting the Burke Gilman trail all alone.

On Friday, I was rather worried about my long run because my legs were still heavy and sore from Wednesday. For the first 12 miles, I ran out to Green Lake (a hilly 3 miles). Green Lake is a nice place to do some of a long run; there's a water fountain that's on year-round (unlike the water fountains in the rest of the city, that seem to be off for 9/12 of the year, even though it is never very cold here). Along the loop, there are at least 2 (maybe 3?) restrooms which seem to be open every time I go running. There are two paths, a paved one and a gravel one, around the lake, about 3 miles in length. Both are pretty flat. So, I often find myself making a couple of laps there so as to have easy water access (when I need to take a Gu). I ran 2 laps there on Friday, taking a Gu after the first, along with some water each time I passed the fountain. I ran back to the Burke Gilman trail after those two laps for the harder stuff; at that point I started doing roughly 1/2 mile pieces at marathon pace, with about a minute of 7:30 pace in between. After 3 miles of that, I turned around and did 4 miles of marathon effort work. I wasn't supposed to look at my watch much, but instead let the running flow. It was actually pretty fun. My first mile was 6:30, the next two were 6:40ish (there was some wind and they were slightly uphill, so 6:44 or something), and the last one was 6:18. I shuffled back home for one mile, showered, and rushed in to work for several highly unproductive meetings.

After work, B and I headed out to the Hoh Rainforest. We took a sweet ferry across the Puget Sound on our way. Saturday morning, we grabbed our backcountry permits and headed into the Hoh. The trail was beautiful; everything was covered in a thick blanket of green moss:

Here's a photo of me:

It rained on us for the first 5 or so miles. After that, the weather suddenly turned much colder, and the rain turned to snow. It didn't stick: everything was too wet to be frozen. I was grumgry (grumpy/hungry) around 6 miles, so we took a break to warm up and make some awesome freeze-dried food and warm up a bit. We found a sweet shelter:

called the "Happy Four Emergency Shelter". A plaque on it told us it was erected because a group of forest workers one summer got into a bit of a spat and wouldn't talk to one another and someone needed some "me time" so they built this shelter as a get-away. There were four of these workers, thus "Happy Four" became the name of the shelter.

I was in substantially better spirits after we did this, so we continued on past this shelter up to the Olympic Ranger station. On the way, B found a sweet newt that had a fluorescent orange belly. He picked it up even though he was pretty sure it was poisonous.


By the time we made it to the Ranger Station, we were pretty cold and wet. There was another shelter there, and since we hadn't really planned on the temperatures dropping into the 30s, we decided to pitch our tent inside that shelter rather than trying to find a piece of ground that wouldn't collect a large puddle under our tent if it rained/snowed all night. We made some dinner, and decided to hang out in our tent starting at about 5 pm, since it was much warmer than staying outside in the rain/snow.

 At around 7, we wandered out to find several inches of snow had managed to accumulate on the very wet ground. This was somewhat worrying: first, that meant it was way colder than we thought, given how wet and muddy the ground was, and second, the snow was still falling, and the trail was unblazed and unmarked, meaning that if everything was covered in snow, it might be hard to find our way back the next morning. But at that point, it was getting dark, so we decided there wasn't much to do other than hope the trail would still be visible in the morning, or at least that the Park Rangers would come looking for people when they realized how much snow had fallen later on Sunday.

So we went to sleep. About an hour later, B claims he told me that "There was someone outside. With a light" to which I responded "I love you, too", and rolled over in my sleeping bag to fall back asleep. A few minutes later, Byron said loudly, "Hello?", and another voice responded, "Hi." I sat straight up when I heard a voice I didn't recognize, and said, "Is everything ok? Do you need help?" I was rather freaked out about someone random showing up in our shelter unannounced, albeit I was still quite groggy and somewhat confused about the whole situation. He responded, "No." I continued to babble another couple of silly questions at the man to which he responded monosyllabically. I was definitely worried he might either steal our stuff or slit our throats while we were sleeping. B was clearly also concerned; he asked if I wanted him to go out and talk to the guy. I said he didn't have to, right before the random guy said "Is it ok if I sleep in here?" I was much less freaked out once he finally offered us some information as to what he was doing. We told him that was fine, and while he was out dealing with his bear bag, B looked out and saw the man did have a sleeping bag and some other camping equipment, so he at least looked like he had a legitimate reason for being there. We eventually fell back asleep.

The next morning, we got up after almost 13 hours in the tent, made some disgusting rehydrated eggs for breakfast, and headed out into the rain/snow. The trail had been so wet, the snow didn't bury it completely and we were able to follow it on the way out. There was a huge herd of Roosevelt Elk we ran into on the way out; we tried taking a picture but my camera was way too soggy to be of any real use. Our hike home was seriously fast: it took us about 3 hours to cover 9 miles. In the last quarter of a mile, the sky opened up and there was sun! I guess we picked the wrong day to be out in the afternoon, because the weather was much nicer as we drove home than it was at any point during our hike.

All in all, it was a fun week. I didn't run Sunday night when we got home; my legs were pretty heavy and I knew the week to come was going to be intense so I wanted to be well-rested. This is definitely the most I've run in such a short block (4 miles and almost 60 miles, that is).

I've also realized I only have 6 more weeks until Eugene, and only 3 until Cherry Blossom. I guess that means I only have a few more weeks of intense training before the taper... hopefully I'll be ready!