Momentum: How Getting Faster Happens

I am a fast runner right now, and I love it.

How did that happen? Consistency. Luck. Momentum.

Newton’s first law of motion is that bodies tend to stay in the situation they are in. If moving, they stay moving. If still, they stay still. Momentum works both as actual motion as well as inertia. It is the driving force in the universe. Entropy also is a contributing factor: physics isn’t always clean and simple.

Translated from the original Latin, it reads thusly: “Law I: Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed.”

What that means for my running right now is that I am riding a wave of fast. I say this without braggadocio or swagger. I’ve amassed nearly a year of good training without injury (dear gawd let this not be a jinx) and slowly built up a good racing season. Joe Uhan calls this “marble in the groove“. It’s when you take that momentum and build something phenomenal, whether that’s over the course of one race, or a whole season.

After my first “A” race in June did not go entirely as planned—San Diego 100 in heat and meltdown—I focused on a sub-24 100 in September and nailed that without major issue, adoring nearly every mile of that high Arizona course. No unexpected downtime in the lead up, no missed weeks, no stressing. Just flow.

VFuel showing off their athletes, including yours truly. Wheee!

 

And then. After recovering from that race (which didn’t seem to take much time or effort, either), I broke my 50K PR set more than a decade ago. When I was 30 I ran a 5:22 over in Phoenix, and I thought that was a decent time, at the time. 2004 was a good racing year for me, with my 50 mile PR also set, and my first Hardrock finish yet to be claimed.

But last week outside of Salt Lake City, at an elevation where I do not live, I shaved 6 minutes off that PR at age 44, a full 14 years after the first one. And it was hard but not ridiculous. I was cruising, grinning, and on a goddam high pretty much all 5 hours of that magical race. I’d slept 9 hours the night before the race, but that was to make up for the 2 hours I’d gotten the previous night (umm), so it’s not like I’m some saint of sleep.

And since that race, I’ve continued to train hard. Or, hard-ish, given that I do not have another race on the horizon. I go out for “normal” runs on courses I’ve done dozens of times and set Strava segment PRs. It’s really kind of magical.

Marble, meet groove. Set last night.

 

And it has to end.

When? Dunno. Why? Because my body will hit some kind of combo of tired and unlucky. Some bug will hit me. My wackadoodle sleep habits the last month could catch up to me. The stress of moving to a new city and social engagements also adds to the physiological bill.

And, on December 1, I will know if my next 6 months of training will be as important as any I have ever undertaken. It is then that I will know if I get into Western States 100. When I run that race, it could be my only shot for years. That means I will run the race of my up-to-now life. That is the goal. There are performance goals that I will have in mind, but the main goal is to run The Best Race. Period.

If I don’t get in (and odds are still greatly not in my favor, with a 6.7% chance of getting in), I will look to a late spring or early summer “A” race again. Perhaps San Diego because that’s a stellar event. And then, there’s still the possibility of getting in to UTMB. Everything will shake out as it needs, but in the meantime I know that my volume of training is what is propelling me along now.

I will do my best to protect it and keep it sustainable. I owe that to myself and to my idea of racing well. Wish me luck.

If you want to have a go at ultra racing, I can coach you. This stuff runs in my blood and in my neurons, for three whole decades. Let’s make some awesome happen.

Brandishing my Antelope Island 50K schwag at top of Wire Mountain, Salt Lake City

Griffith Park: My Backyard Trail

“Ugh. Griffith? I am so over Griffith.”

So sayeth hundreds of trail runners, all over Los Angeles.

And I get it, to a point. The horse trails dotted with grassy chunks of poo and, on drier days, the dusty aroma of said chunks. The throngs of families out for strolls up and down the roads leading to the Hollywood sign. The groups of hikers walking four abreast on a fire road. Walkers bearing external speakers to broadcast their choice of audible distraction to the world. The dry dust. The post-storm sogginess. The flatness. The hilliness. The hotness. And so, to many metro area runners, running on the trails in Griffith Park is judged as The. Worst.

Except that it’s not, not if you don’t let it.

christmas tree in Griffith Park

In a city that never gets snow, the holidays never end.

1896: Griffith Park is Born

“I consider it my obligation to make Los Angeles a happier, cleaner, and finer city. I wish to pay my debt of duty in this way to the community in which I have prospered.” – Griffith J. Griffith, 1896

Griffith Park started out as a bequeathed expanse of 3015 acres—nearly 5 square miles—and currently stands at a whopping 4035 acres for all of the metropolitan area to enjoy and sometimes literally get lost. Sometimes compared to Central Park in Manhattan, Griffith serves a similar function for the city but boasts far more in the way of wilderness-like experiences and rugged areas. Many acres were scorched by a fire in 2007 but is rebounding in fits and starts and with the help of several local park charities, thankfully.

For a Burbankian like myself, the closest ingress point to Griffith Park is about 4 miles from home in a little gravel parking lot south of the Travel Town train attractions. Four miles might sound like a bit much just to go for a run, but it’s doable by bike or car. Other trails I can and do run sometimes (and all still “nearby”, relatively speaking) are 10, 12, and 17 miles away, respectively.

Trail Running Travel Town 101

For all the commonly-heard complaints about crowds and horse poo, Griffith has a treasure trove of trails just waiting to be strung together, looped, discovered, out-and-backed, lollipopped, and flat out enjoyed. My get ‘er done run is a loop starts from that Travel Town parking lot with a lung busting climb, then some lovely rollers, then a screamer downhill, and then a nice stretch to get some speed and put down a fast mile and a half. Total distance? 3.8 miles. I can pop over to the park and get that bad boy done in not much more time than it takes the sun to set and full darkness to set in.

You can lead a horse to water…. (up on the Travel Town loop)

Bonus: add 300 feet of climbing (complete with another steep up and stretch-out down) with one extra spur tacked on in the middle to land at 6-ish miles. Another good “go to” run. And from there we get to some extra deviations. Different looping middle sections to tack on even more miles. There’s a lot of satisfying daily routines to be built and enjoyed here.

Tour of Golf Course and Beacon Hill

On the other side of the park are my other “marble in the groove” runs, often done in the opposite style by starting out with a flat segment before transitioning into solid up and down with some fantastic downtown scenery to boot. Best done near sunset to capture those western beams hitting the skyscrapers and the lights coming on over the expansive urban buildup to the south.

DTLA sunset from Mineral Wells trails, Griffith Park

Runners can get their jollies by looking down over the 5 around dusk to see taillights starting to stack up; here you are up on a freakin’ trail in a near-wilderness inside the largest sprawling metropolitan area in the entire country. Make 2 hours out of that run with some really steep uphill on the Hogback and wind up with closer to a lovely 10 miles, also fantastic just before (or even into the) dark. Tacos at Guisado’s afterwards is a bonus.

Of course you can go a lot farther with these linkups, too. String together those two routine runs with some connector trail/roads for 15 miles. Get ambitious and throw in some a bit of sightseeing (either of the Hollywood sign, or of the people hiking to the Hollywood sign with terribly inappropriate footwear) and you can wind up with twenty miles, no problem.

Travel Town’s immediate trails are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Griffith, but it is my Backyard Trail: it’s going to be a part of my training for a very long time. Happily so. Horse poo or no.

clouds over glendale

Lovely clouds make even Glendale look kinda nice.

[this post inspired by Brendan’s homage over at Semi-Rad.com more than a year ago. Fruition!]