Jan. 31, 2001

Got the final hotel reservations today...I think that was the last big thing that I wanted to get off my mind. It's been hard to get focused with the big mess going on at work, but I expect to be clear of everything by the end of the Feb.

I just figured out that the distance I have to run/walk will be like doing Avalon right after finishing the San Diego 24-hour. Oh. Oh, well, let's go.

Feb. 4, 2001

I think one of the things I like to do when getting ready for a big event is to break things into smaller more "mentally managable" sections. With roughly six months to go until the race, I'm focusing a month at a time. For the month of February, the keyword is "consistency." It's important that I get used to running 5 days a week again, even if it's just short during the week. The difference between 35 and 55 miles a week is really significant, and I'd like to get up into the 50's ASAP and try to hold things there. I don't want a week to go by with a long run less than 15 miles between now and the race.

With the way work is going, I think I've decided to look for some contract work for the next 3-4 months, then take off a month or two before the race to mentally relax and focus. I figure I've earned that much, having worked my butt off for seven years without much of a break. After the race, I'm planning a trip to New Zealand to visit my friend Bay, who's working on the Lord of the Rings movie and just get away for a bit. Then I'll worry about a full-time gig.

Feb. 8, 2001

Updated the equipment list. I don't want to overload, but I don't want to take too much. I think the key is going to have everything broken down into boxes/kits so that we can prep a box and swap it out with another. Some kind of printed list taped to the front of each box, so we can check what's inside at a glance.

Feb. 25, 2001

Well, consistency was the plan, but the real world intruded. I actually ran pretty well this month, but closing down the company has taken a lot of my time and energy. Last week, for instance, I only got out once, but this week I squeezed in 56 miles. Next week I should be around the mid-forties again, so overall I'm where I want to be go up about 10 miles a week average each month, ending at around 70-80/wk.

Mar. 4, 2001

Well, marathon day. Ten in a row for L.A. I ran with John and we kept each other running at a nice easy pace, with the plan that we could just keep on training afterwards. I finished in 4:31:55, but more importantly I wasn't even tired or sore (well, no more than I would be after a regular training run of the same distance). Very smart day.

Mar. 7, 2001

Today I joined the YMCA so I'd have access to a dry sauna. After a short workout, went in and sat down. The temperature gauge said 185 degrees (which I've found out since is a little warm even for this). Well, I also found out that your body really tries to cool you off by sending blood to the surface, including your eyes. I had terribly bloodshot eyes that were very dry the whole next day.

Hotbox time: 11 minutes. Temp: 185

Mar. 9, 2001

Good to get back to the gym, I need the extra edge. Made it a little longer in the sauna today. No exercise yet, I'd like to get my time up over 1/2 hour before I start light exercies (walking in place, light weights). I'm drinking water, and will start gauging my consumption to see if I can build it up.

Hotbox time: 15 minutes. Temp: 170

Mar. 12, 2001

Still feeling good after a good week. I've felt really good lately, and want to be careful not to get tired or burned out. Did 50+ miles last week, and plan to go up about by 10 each month so right before I'm running 80-90/week. I've been running faster on the hill runs, and can definitely see some improvement, but have to remember to keep it easy!

Bad part: I'm still at 193. I absolutely have to get my weight down to at least 180. Time to refocus on the low carbo routine.

I'm now ready to sketch out a schedule for the remainder of my training. I'll add it to the site and record how well I did each week (including my weight).

Hotbox time: 16 minutes. Temp: 175

Mar. 17, 2001

Had a pretty good run today with Steve, Diana, and Joe Nowakowski. I've felt pretty good lately, and weighed in at 188 on Wednesday (yay!). The same day, I didn't even make it to 15 minutes in the sauna, but I think I've figured that even 10 degrees can make a big difference. I finally read the warning sign on the door that warned you not to go past 10 minutes, so I'm doing something right.

First day of spring running today...first grasshoppers, first lizards, first flies and first rattlesnake (a big fellow, climbing up between Caballero turnoff and the Nike base). He must have had seven or eight sets of rattles, and was definitely one of the bigger ones I'd seen in the Santa Monicas. Diana said it was the first she'd seen, and we gave it wide berth. After all, we're on his turf.

Mar. 29, 2001

Well, training is going along pretty well. I'm staying on schedule better than I have in a long time, and the extra pounds are just about gone (I'd say I have 8-10 pounds left to drop, which should happen easily). Having decided to take a break from full-time employment up through the race was definitely the right decision.

Made it to 22 minutes in the sauna...might not seem like much, but I've doubled my threshold inside of a three weeks. They keep it just a little too hot for one to ever get comfortable. In fact, it's unpleasant after about 2-3 minutes, by which time sweat is rolling off every inch of your skin. It's great for cleaning the pores! I've taken to stepping out every 10 minutes to splash my face with cool water before going back in, and monitor my progress by both time and my water consumption rate. I drank an entire liter comfortably in my last session, which puts me at around 3 liters/hour, already a pretty good processing rate, but I'd like to get up to a gallon an hour. It remains to be seen whether these sessions are significant, but if nothing else, it makes me focus intensely on heat (and heat alone) for even that short time.

Signed up for Wild Wild West and Leona Divide today.

Apr. 4, 2001

Ended up running in the Verdugos with John on Sunday; he said it was our fastest time in a year. I was a little tired the last couple days, think it was good that I took a shorter run on Saturday. Less than 4 months away, but I'm ready to boost up to around 60m/week and feel pretty good. Weight's good, speed's up, but I always hold back, trying not to break it. I just wish it would get hot already! Believe me, I've been keeping track...this has been a cool spring.

Apr. 23, 2001

Time for a little catching up. Ran great at Leona Divide (considering how lousy I felt at Avalon). Amazing what a few months of 20+ milers will do for you. I felt very strong through 32, then worked a little for the last part, but overall, was pretty happy. This week, I felt a little tired, but still managed on Saturday to do a PR for Topanga to Nike by 2.5 minutes (1:12:30). Took it easy on Sunday; bypassed Jimmy Stewart to run the Verdugos with John. 56+ miles for an easy week after a 50 miler and I feel pretty good. I have to start focusing now on getting my longer runs up. I'm going to have to review my May schedule, might shuffle a few things around.

Apr. 29, 2001

Late Sunday night. Managed to get up over 70 miles this week (usually a psychological barrier for me) without too much effort. I feel pretty good, and my weight has dropped to its lowest so far, 182. Still waiting for the hot weather to get here, I'm getting a little anxious about that, but it looks like we're about to start the hot days. Will definitely start running middays when it warms up. WWW coming up next week, but still planning on taking it easy. Time to start planning with the crews pretty soon.

I also got my start time: 8:00am. I think it's good that I ended up in the middle wave; if I'd been in either of the others I'd be trying to figure out whether it was good or bad. This way, I'm not too far off from either.

May 17, 2001

Well, a little bit since the last report. The run out at Wild Wild West went extremely well. I ran the first 20 miles at a straight, steady clip and passed lots and lots of people in the second half (including everyone who zoomed past me on the big downhill between miles 7 and 15). It wasn't too hot that day, or at least it didn't seem so to me, even though I got sunburned a bit. I think the sun is just more intense out in the desert, and at altitude you seem to have a little less sun protection.

Since then, I ran very well. Last Saturday I did a very nice 28 mile run starting from the top of Reseda, but I apparently tweaked my ankle at some point; I stopped by my car at mile 23 and felt a twinge at that point, but decided to push on. If that weren't enough, I also ran 14 miles on Sunday and 6 on Tuesday, thinking that it was no real problem. Well, it's stayed a little stiff and sore so I'm taking off this week until Saturday (my long run) and see how it feels. If it's really sore, I'm just going to keep resting it until the days for the BW clinic.

Another interesting thing...my feet have felt great the last few weeks running without my orthotics. Something to think about. I may think of reserving my orthotics for street runs; at the end of 28 last Saturday, I did kind of a mental check and honestly wasn't sore or tired anywhere except for my darned ankle! If I can get that healed back up, I'm starting to think I have a good shot at this!

June 1, 2001

Well, first chance to write since I got back from the clinic last week. Other than the obvious impressions about the heat, which is staggering, I did get a chance to learn a great deal about how I'm going to try to negotiate this race. I think negotiation is a good choice of words; it seems that you have to almost ask permission of the desert to pass through. There's such a thin line between feeling good and feeling bad in any ultra, and I think the heat and the extra distance will make that line even finer.

Fortunately, we learned a great deal this weekend. The first day is going to be primarily walking; in fact, I very likely won't run much of the course until about mile 59. The first part of the course is the lowest, and, therefore, the hottest. Given my proclivity in the past for having difficulty with the heat, I really feel that I did extremely well over the weekend.

On Saturday, I ran a lot of the first 24-25 miles. At a slow pace, given, but still, the difference in exertion level was there, and the fall from feeling good to feeling bad came quite quickly, even more so than it had in other races where I've had to work through heat. After throwing up a couple times around 3:00 in the afternoon, I took a couple short breaks in the cars, once in Ben Jones, and once in Larry & Nancy's truck. Nancy worked me through the rough patch, getting me back on my feet after my normal grousing (what, me complain?), but I think the running had been too much for my ankle, which stiffened up noticably in the afternoon. By the time we decided to call it, after around 9 hours running in the hottest weather I'd ever been in (let alone run in), I was actually feeling better, and believe I could have made it into Stovepipe at a gentle pace. What can I say, my crew was great. When I returned, I found that only 5 or so people had made it all the way back to the hotel; others had picked up rides along the way. Having initially been a little disappointed at not completing the entire maximum distance for the day, I was suddenly happy again, confident once more that my training had, in fact, been progressing appropriately.

By Sunday morning, my ankle was feeling much better. It was stiff at first, but with today's run being a 17-18 mile climb up Towne's Pass, with an elevation gain of roughly 5,000 ft., it was a good chance to test out the walking speed. I was still pretty dehydrated from Saturday. When I recounted, Saturday night I drank only a couple of sodas, far too little to replenish what I had lost on Saturday. We switched to gatorade and salt instead of the endurolyte/cytomax/metabolol mix and I seemed to fare much better. I'm going to try the other combo again at the second clinic, but my fallback is the old reliable gatorade/salt route. I climbed steadily the entire way, never really getting tired. I had a rough patch around mile 6-7, but pouring in water and gatorade was bringing my fluid levels back up, and I felt great by the time I reached the top. When we turned around to head back down, Steve and I ran as if we were starting first thing in the morning, and I felt really good when we stopped at a rest area around mile 25 for the day. I could have easily ran all the way back into Stovepipe, but with not much point to it, and anxious to get home, we wrapped it up for the day (as did most of the other still out there). Just as we were leaving, a bus full of German tourists pulled up at the rest area, and I was thrown into a little impromptu German conversation, explaining what we were all doing out here in our white suits.

I now plan to return for the second clinic, maybe with Mark Gilmour to crew, and will continue to experiment. This weekend was invaluable, I believe. It made me think about how I'll work through a rough patch when it's really hot out, what to eat, what to wear, how to stay cool, and gave me a good feel for what to expect at different points from the course itself. I didn't see one living creature in the desert for the entire first day--no bug, no bird, no lizard or snake--and it's that level of punishment that I have to prepare for.

June 5, 2001

Back from Holcomb Valley. I ran extremely well, very easily, had one little tough spot climbing the last climb (mile 27-30), I think because I'd eaten a couple chocolate chip cookies very fast. Ugh! But by the time I reached the top, I was good to go again, and ran down the last 3-4 miles. I drank an ABNORMALLY high amount, just to see if that made a significant difference, and it seemed to prevent fatigue from really setting in at any point. I wasn't sore after the run, my feet were fine, and the ankle did pretty well considering the rocky course.

July 21, 2001

Wow! Didn't realize it had been quite so long since my last entry. I ended up writing a pretty big commentary about the last clinic (6/30 - 7/1) and that kind of pushed off my update here. Nancy and Larry threw a big pre-run party for me last weekend, which was a lot of fun. There must have been 30 people there. While I was a little bit self-conscious, I knew that everyone was there with good wishes and just focused on soaking up the good wishes. Lynn & Duffy gave me a copy of Kirk Johnson's book "To the Edge," which I've just about devoured. It was about a reporter from the N.Y. Times who first covered, then found himself consumed by and participating in Badwater having completed only one marathon before signing up. He hits some things right on the head, while with others he's a little dramatic, but for the most part, he really shot a bullseye.

This week I was unexpectedly sent up to Seattle for a couple days, and I picked up a little bit of a sore throat. Doesn't seem serious, but it's just at that point where I want everything to be 100%

I've felt absolutely amazing on my last two runs. Last Sunday I ran with Larry out around Malibu Lake and told him it was a sin how good I felt. This morning (probably my last training run) I went with Steve, Diana, and Paul from the top of Reseda and did the Eagle loop (down, then up), again, running almost effortlessly, just cruising up hills that usually make me walk.

I think one of the best things about training for a race like this is that it makes you stop and take stock of what's important in your life. Good friends and good health, but most importantly, time well spent. I have at least 11 people coming with me to crew and support me...I guess there are all kinds of wealth.

Pound the drums and let out a yell!

Let's go!