Don't Go into the Light!

...or is it "Do not go gentle into that good night" ?

Whichever it is we did not lose Kevin today and managed to coax him back with a trail of harvest crunch crumbs. Although i swear i heard a voice, not unlike my own, screaming hysterically "go! go! i'll look after Linda!" followed by a mysterious figure, again, not unlike my own, scrabbling around in the dirt with a straw (insert sucking noises) in the vicinity of the harvest crumbs....

Our two hour jaunt up and down a large hill on a certain quiet trail captured the beauty of fall with its vibrant colour, soft light, cool temperatures and earthy smells from the decay of summer. A ghost or goblin would not have been out of place in this silent forest.

Anyway... it was a perfect morning with perfect friends followed by perfect coffee. I'll leave it at that and let the pictures tell the rest..




Happy Halloween...

Rocky Mountain High

Well ... we're off to see the Wizard folks! Driving down the yellow brick road to Colorado this morning and taking our sweet time about it so we can enjoy the scenery, get some runs in and because we can!

Trans Rockies starts Aug 22nd and you can follow it through the website and through their tweety bird thingie @TransRockiesRun ...and.... through Craiky's tweety bird thingie on his blog site...

chowder!

"Miracle Mile"

Sort of in keeping with my previous post, the "Miracle Mile" was used to describe the race between John Landy and Roger Bannister, at the Empire Commonwealth Games, back in 1954. They were held here in Vancouver, at Empire Stadium, and it was quite a race with both milers going under 4 minutes, and both battling it out til the final straightaway.




Every year the Lions Gate Road Runners club host their own Miracle Mile race. It takes place on a cinder track at Balaclava Park where Bannister used to go, in the days leading up to his race, to train and escape the spotlight. So last night was the day for this year's event ... a beautiful sunny evening.

I had an invite from Linda Wong, a member of the club featured here in fine form during heat 1 of the race, where she turned in something like a 6:30 mile. Then it was my turn. Although a low-key event it was a little "eek" with all these fast roadies and club singlet wearers, some shaved legs and spikes and a big digital clock timer!

I stepped up to the line with about 10 others (maybe 20 total between 2 heats) and we were off. I think the "miracle" here is that i made it around the track 4 times at the zippy pace set by everyone. I kept forgetting to look at the clock to see my splits for each lap so I had to run by "feel" and it felt wheezerish for sure. I think I paced pretty well though and ended up with the best time I could get out of myself at this juncture. My 5:27 mile got me 4th overall and I'm happy with that.

(Pretty similar lookin' huh?! No? ... shut up.. close enough..)

We finished off with a 4x400 relay so I got to sprint another lap and earn a few more cream puffs from the pot luck table ... remember what i said waaaay back in one of my posts about motivation?!


Thanks again to Linda and LGRR for hosting and welcoming the "outsider." Back to the couch...

Chubby Chook

There were also impromptu lessons after their meals, like the time when Cerutty
lectured them on warming up. A cat was sitting on a ledge outside one of the
huts when their coach snuck over and emptied a bucket of water over it. The cat
leapt away and disappeared in a flash. Cerutty then expounded: "There. Did the
cat do stretches? Did the cat jog around? Did the cat do knee bends? Did the cat
have a track suit on before racing? No, the cat just got up and went. No more
warming up. Forget it!" (Excerpt from Neil Bascomb's The Perfect Mile)

Don't believe him? Get a bucket, find a cat and see for yourself!

Cerutty was an unofficial coach for the Australian olympic team for the 1952 Helsinki olympics. He trained John Landy ... one of the contenders at that time, along with Roger Bannister, for being the first to break the 4 minute mile barrier. Cerutty was big on training mental fortitude by putting athletes through grueling bootcamp style regimens. Daily long runs up and down hills and over sand dunes, through rivers etc were standard fare. The idea was to basically train people to push themselves to their limits. It certainly worked to build endurance and mentally strong athletes but, unfortunately, he neglected speed training and Landy failed to break the mile barrier that year.

Too bad because Cerutty would probably like some newer ideas about training like the 30 second workout where you sprint as hard as you can for 30 seconds, rest then do it again 6 or 7 times. This is supposed to have a better training effect than running for an hour at a steady, easy pace. I haven't tried it yet but I like the idea of being able to get that same benefit in about 5 minutes! But here's the catch: to do that workout you need some fairly serious mental fortitude to push yourself as hard as you can for 30 seconds, several times over ... until you taste blood and/or bile in the back of your throat in other words. Most of us, I think, would rather do an easy hour than a painful 5 minutes. Physical and mental discomfort is ...well... discomforting to us.

For we have become a nation of softies looking for the easy way out. Look at me ... the lazy trail runner. A perfect example. I want to do the least amount possible to get a decent result (or at least beat monsewer Craik). But to do that I have had to become less lazy, eat less chips and push myself. And doing that has yielded some decent results.

Mental fortitude is necessary to improving at, I would say, just about anything in life. If we want to get better at something we have to put in the effort and sometimes do things that we don't like or that aren't pleasant or don't make us feel good. It reminds me of something I read in Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers" where a direct correlation was made between student successes in math and the willingness of students to persevere and not give up on math problems. Students who didn't give up or tried for a long time before asking for help were generally more successful than students who gave up quickly and easily.

I'm a teacher, and the empirical evidence is right there in the classroom for me. A lot of our youth lack mental stamina. "Why do we have to run? It's hard! I'm just going to walk and talk" "It's raining, we'll get wet!" "I can't do this work .. it's too hard. Help me!" ... and so on. The slacker culture. How did we get here? Whose fault is it? How the hell do I know. Are kids inherently lazy? Do we have low expectations of them? I dunno .. those are hard questions. I think I'll give up. Ok ... anyway ... a lot of "pushing" these days seems to be external (parents). That's fine .. there's certainly some place for it. But what of the internal drive to overcome problems... to test one's own limits (be they mental, physical or both) for the purpose of self discovery, self esteem and the feeling of accomplishment you get from not giving up? Do I have what it takes to finish that second bag of chips..etc? Have we overcompensated on the external whips at the expense of the internal ones?

I'm not talking very young kids. They haven't developed that yet. But certainly by the time they're 12/13 some interest in pushing one's limits/abilities should be present at least some of the time. And it certainly is .. mostly in girls which may support the premise of an article in Atlantic monthly magazine called "The End of Men" which talks about how women are now far more successful in school, university and work than men and how they are beginning to take up more of the workforce than men, especially in so called information age industries. It's pretty interesting and a bit of a wake up but I think the title is a little sensational. There's no doubt women are really kicking our collective male behind these days but, speaking from my experience in a female dominated profession, I can say that there is a point of diminishing return when a work force is either all or mostly women. It has its issues. So I'm not quite ready to write off men just yet ... but let's not be complacent! Anyway ... I digress... that's a discussion for another time..

Get out there and drive yourself into the ground sometimes folks. It'll do you good! Look at Gary Robbins. He's uglier than a mule! Hell if I looked like him I'd wanna lay down and die too! (..wait a minute... I...) .. Never mind. The point is he's out there whippin' himself and doing some mental fortituding and whatnot and he's had some pretty stellar successes for it all! So don't be a chubby chook. Get out there and give life a good rootin'!

That's two postings in as many days. What the hell is wrong with me?! Ok ... i'm tired and no one's helping me with this so i'm going to bed. Lazy's working for me right now. Night. ... (did someone say chips ..? .. )

Haze - The latest quarterly installment from the lazy blogger

The word describes my return to the Kneeknacker 5 years on.

I woke up in one at 4:59 followed by the sound of a distant but somehow familiar voice "crap!" ... my own. I've been known to oversleep on the odd occassion but have an uncanny knack of waking up just when Tom arrives to pick me up. Surprising myself with my mental agility at this moment, I implemented a diversionary tactic and sent him off to get two other people on his delivery route. That bought me a precious 8 minutes or so ... enough to awkwardly put running gear on a body that still hadn't woken up fully; put contacts in without getting an eyelash with them; stuff pack with gear i had laid out; drink a glass of orange juice (trying not to let the misery set in from not having time to make coffee) and head out the door hoping i had most things i needed.

The start was a press of people anxiously sizing each other up and jitterbugging around with nervous energy. Me? Nothing. Quite comforting really. I didn't care who was there or what was ahead of me ... I just wanted to get under way .. get my legs moving and get to the end.

The memory of the 5hrs:47mins it took to do that is ..you guessed it... a bit of a haze. It was rather surreal and I will just recount it with the random thoughts/images that stick out ... which should help keep it shortish.

1st half - Humid, heavy air. Not a whisper of a breeze in the trees. Thinned out racers. I hiked/ran dripping sweat onto the parched Black Mountain trail. John Foy sighted ahead and Rob Doyle. Slowly gaining and then catching them where we reach the open bluffs and still no damned breeze! Fun and a few laughs as the three of us run together to Cypress.

Cypress - A little faster than I wanted. Foy takes off into the Hollyburn section bitter and cursing ... at what i don't know. It seems pleasant enough out here. The air by the streams is cooling. Foy disappears - i run stride for stride with doyle for a while and talk about the world cup. Hollyburn .. a larabar ... holy those things are dry. I can barely get it down without choking. Down, down to the dam. Sun's heat is coming through now. Feel a little weak but nice to see familiar faces.

Nancy Green - with Mr Green .... walk/run .... walk/run .... chocolate gel all over my hands... bottles... frustrating little inventions. Back into the forest. Energy returns slowly. St George's bench - recovered and running alone.... pretty much from here to the end - kind of like it. I accelerate and it feels good and sustainable. Unlike Black mtn the forest here seems cool and fragrant, holding the light like wine in a glass.

Mountain hwy .. two blue shirts ... Mr Green and Tom .. dependable and efficient as always. He made it easy for me to run on auto pilot while i noodled with a different kind of race ... the kind where you don't know where the finish is! Bummer..

Lynn Canyon, tourist slalom .... girl hill ... john foy .. yes! gotcha. Hyannis, Seymour grind and it's down to the finish... relief, satisfaction, cherubs in the grass and hot water on the legs...

Good night from Seattle..

First Peak - First Blood

It's no secret that Mr. Craik and I have a healthy and amicable rivalry between us when it comes to racing. Pretty much all of our training is done together (except for a 2month secret training stint this time last year by Mr. Craik). Our training is intense, but full of laughs and we keep each other motivated.

But when the gun goes off so go the gloves, and not one inch is given up ... not for pity nor friendship. We wouldn't have it any other way.

And so it was without the slightest concern this last Saturday, that I beat him over the head with a chair and shoved a hornet's nest down his shorts, before delivering the coup de grace by sticking a knife in him and giving it a little twist for good measure.

Oh don't worry ... he's ok. I'm speaking in metaphors. It was the first of the 5Peaks series at Golden Ears Park in Maple Ridge. Since the area has a bit of a wild west reputation I decided to go with the theme and call it our "dust up in the Ridge!" So the seemingly violent preceding paragraph just means that I beat him. ; )

When the young, spring chickens are givin' us old coots a can of whoop-ass, we have to get wiley and devious. So all that stuff about the chairs and knives, is just me saying that I used the element of surprise to lay him out on the saloon floor by blasting off the start line, and holding a pretty hard pace down the opening 3 or 4km stretch. As expected he did the smart thing and didn't follow - holding to his own pace and strategy and reasonably thinking that i'd probably blow up.

However, this wiley old coot was firing on all 3 brain cells this day and I knew i could hold that pace for a while and still only have to back off the pace a little to recover... instead of die. Which is what I did: after opening a good gap I just eased the pace a bit and started my recovery up the lake access road while maintaining a good clip.

The rest of the race went to plan as I dashed through the deluge and mud, feeling good all the way through to the finish in just under an hour, for a 9th place finish overall and 1st in age group!

Four more peaks to go in the series and the problem with surprises is that they tend to only work once before the other person wises up and shuts that avenue down. Since Craiky is a pretty wise ass with a newer and zippier set of wheels than me, I know that eating humble pie in the next few races is a very real prospect ..... which is why i'm gonna be a cocky little bastard today while I can be! =D

Shoes For the Day: Salomon Speed Cross
These shoes were perfect for the wet, muddy conditions. The Speed Cross are essentially racing shoes for the trails. They're extremely light with a heavily lugged sole to grip the trail. Like a well-built German car, the faster you go the more stable they become because you get up off the soft heels and on to your forefoot.

Shout out? How 'bout Shut up!

Apparently there is a list of the most tiresome, overused phrases as compiled by a group of researchers at Oxford University. The top 10 for 2008 are shown here: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2008/11/oxford-research/

It seems a little geographically/culturally limited as I could think of quite a few others that I'd put above those ones. According to a U.S. survey from last year, "whatever" topped the list in that country.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here (hmm.. is that overused..? .."go out on a limb"?) ...[and what kind of limb is it that i'm going out on ..? a tree limb? or an appendage ... like a leg or an arm or something ... should i really be saying "i'm gonna go out on an arm here..] .. i'd be just as apprehensive about going out on an arm as i would going out on a tree limb ... both seem pretty risky...

.. anyway .. so back to my train of thought ..(that could be overused too.. train of thought) .. but i'd like to add another phrase to the list of tedious and downright annoying phrases out there right now, and it seems to be "cropping up" all over the sports world "at this moment in time," especially the ultra world. That phrase is "SHOUT OUT"

Apparently a lot of people feel the need to "shout out" ...a lot! They shout out for people (as in "i'd like to give a big shout out for dumbass here!..."), products ("i'd like to give a shout out for.. oh, i don't know.. apples!), sponsors, fans, weather, girlfriends, hamsters, ... you name it and people seem to be "shouting out" for it.

With all this shouting it's gotten awfully noisy! "Absolutely" it has. And "at the end of the day," "I personally," "at this moment in time," "with all due respect," think "it's a nightmare!" I mean "like," "whatever!" it's like this shouting out has become "24/7" and "I for one" think we need to exercise some moderation in its use. Surely there are other creative, less annoying and less noisy ways to do all this shouting ... "it's not rocket science!"

But for now i'd like to introduce an old, "time-honoured" and to-the-point phrase for all you "hipsters" and "gangstas" out there who are for ever "shouting out" for everything and anything: ..."Shut up!!"

You sensitive folks who don't know me .. i'm all about the "tongue in cheek" .. although it's only half a tongue in cheek this time because, really, this phrase ranks right up there with "rockin' the" this, that or the other as one of the finger nails on blackboard phrases bouncing around the "blogosphere" right now... sheesh! And please ... don't "holla back, y'all!"