My Back Is Back

Some of you may know from my Facebook post that my back went out on me last week.  I had the most painful, swollen knot right under my right shoulder blade.  It popped up out of nowhere and put me down for the count.  It was painful to walk, much less move my head side to side.  I've never had anything like that happen before and still have no idea what would have caused it.  I ended up taking the Monday after Western States off and this mysterious knot popped up Tuesday, in turn sidelining me that day plus Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  I had a couple big runs planned for over the weekend, but for some reason just lost all motivation to get out the door.  So my little back flare up ended up turning into 8 straight days of no running.  Easily the longest streak since I broke my toe back in September of last year.  Not a big deal though.  If my body doesn't want to run, then I am not going to force it out the door, especially when I am not really training for anything in particular.

Good news is I righted the ship today, but boy did I feel out of shape for the first 6 or so miles.  Ended up getting in 14.3 miles at Wilder Ranch, as well as a little sunburn my shoulders.  It was an absolutely beautiful day to be on the trails.  It definitely felt a little harder than it should have, but I suppose that is sort of expected after an 8 day lay off.  I guess that is a good sign that it is time to get my ass in gear.  Sometimes I just need a good wake up call like today.  It happened back in November for Boston, so hopefully this is the spark I need under my butt to get back to crushing a couple workouts per week.

A few pics from the last 6 or so miles from today's run.  Pretty flat compared to the first 8 miles, but the views are unparalleled.

The Baldwin Loop single track down to the ocean.

A small stint of beach running.

Up on the bluff over looking the beach.

Hidden little beaches all up and down the coast.

As flat as it is, it really is tough to beat the Ohlone Bluff Trail.

These guys were just chilling and were gracious enough to let me snap a quick pic.

Love these rock formations.

Five miles of bluff running.

These guys didn't even budge when I saw them on the way back to my truck.

And I received some even better news upon returning from my run...I came in second place in the irunfar.com 2011 Western States prediction contest, just one point behind the king and know all of WS100 (and of course my good friend Chad Silker's coach), Andy Jones Wilkins.  I predicted both of the winners correctly, as well as nailing my picks for Clark, Semick, and Kimball.  Looks like that nets me a free pair of Montrail shoes, as well as a pair of Mountain Hardwear shorts.  Heck yeah!  Certainly made my day.

With that said I leave you with a song that has been stuck in my head all day.  Till next time....

So I Finally Broke Down

After much persistence from a friend that I should be blogging about my running, I am finally breaking down and starting this site up.  I have been messing around with it here and there, and it is in no way finalized, so consider this an ongoing work in progress.  It will basically cover my everyday running, from weekly training to various adventure runs to race reports, and who knows, maybe even a bit of (gasp!) non-running stuff.  I will try and update it as frequently as possible, but will certainly at least have a weekly post summarizing my training.

So since getting that sub-2:30 in Boston, my focus has sort of shifted back to the trails.  Coming off that huge PR I was all hell bent on focusing on 5k/10k stuff this summer, then hitting it hard in the fall for CIM, and hopefully turning that into another big chunk of the road marathon PR (deep in the back on my mind there was a 2:25 flashing).  Well, that wasn't quite how it turned out.  The hard Boston training cycle sort of left me a little burnt out on the roads, so I decided to change it up a bit and run some trails for the time being.  Little did I know that I would catch the trail bug again.  Now all I can think about is trail running.  I'm constantly searching out new trails in the area, vacation destinations I can run (i.e. Grand Canyon, Zion, Yosemite, etc.), new trail gear, and of course my list of ultras I want to run is getting longer and longer by the day.  As of right now I sort of have a rough guideline of how I hope the next 15 months will pan out, but of course that is all liable to change at the drop of a hat, so I will keep it on the DL until plans are finalized.  I do have a few races that I believe I will be targeting, and of course there is the Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim trip planned for next May, so that is where I sort of am at for the time being.

As some of you know I just got back from a long weekend up in the Tahoe area where I was able to pace my good friend Chad Silker to his first 100 mile finish.  And what an impressive finish it was.  The man dug down deep and absolutely smoked those last 20 miles.  A 19:48 and 38th overall coming from the "flatlands" of Missouri is a remarkable accomplishment.  I've said it before and I will say it again, I feel very honored and privileged to share the experience with him, and I only hope that he will be able to return the favor at my first Western States.  With that said, I plan on writing up some sort of pacer report that I will post here in the coming days.  Of course it won't come close to the epic report that Chad is sure to write up, but I will try and do my best at recreating the experience of the last 40 miles.

All in all it was a great 6 days spent up in the mountains.  Birthday celebrations, boating, running in the mountains, hanging with old friends, meeting new ones, and the epic race was just the icing on the cake.  So now it is time to get my butt back in training mode.  I've been in somewhat of a run whenever I want, wherever I want, however long I want mode for the past two months, so I think it is time to get back on some sort of schedule.  I can count the number of workouts I've done since Boston on one hand...and the number of pounds gained on two.  I've been logging decent mileage (60-80 miles/week), but I'm ready to step it up a notch, and get back to a little fast running as well.  I will look to get back to the consistency of my Boston cycle (everyday running), while continuing the long trail runs on the weekends (25, 40, 30, and 42 the past four weekends).  I'm beginning to get real excited to see what lies ahead in the next year or so.  I have some large goals that I believe I am perfectly capable of attaining.  All I can say is, bring it on!

Unfortunately the training has already been sidetracked briefly.  I woke up with the worst knot in my back this morning.  It hurts to move/walk, so there was obviously no running today.  Hopefully it will work itself out by tomorrow.  In the meantime, I am self medicating with ice cream and a couple Pliny the Elders that I picked up on the way home last night (not at the same time). :-)

Testing one, two, three, four...testing one, two, three....

A little mid-run carbo loading at Big Basin Headquarters on the Skyline to Sea Trail.