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

5 Things You Need To Know About Running 100 Miles In A Day

It was Sunday, 10 in the morning, in the vicinity of the finish line of the Stagecoach 100 mile race. I was not functioning well as a human person.

“Hey, I couldn’t find you!” said Geoff after I’d wandered off for another unplanned nap in the back of the enormous tent. An hour prior I’d been wide awake, ringing a cowbell and cheering in other racers in the morning light. Three hours prior I was sitting in a daze after my own finish wondering if that had actually just happened (yes), if I’d feel some exhilaration any moment now (no), and why my ass hurt so much (TMI).

Okay. Wait. Back up just a tiny bit. Let’s go back a little more than a day and start this sizzle reel from the beginning. It was 6 a.m. on Saturday, I was about to run my first sub-24 hour 100 mile ultra marathon, and I felt pretty damn good. But why was I even here, with this particular goal? It all goes back to a “little” horse event called the Tevis Cup.

100 Miles. One Day.

To run 100 miles and not get “lapped” by the sun. It’s the stuff of ultrarunner dreams. Those four iconic words are etched into each coveted silver buckle from Western States—the oldest 100 miler in the country. Originally, 100 miles under 24 hours was the final cutoff for the Tevis Cup, but after Gordy ran it without his horse it was clear humans could do it, too. Now, a sub-24 at the 100 mile distance is a people’s benchmark, attainable and yet still difficult. In other words, it’s the perfect goal.

For me, it took some planning, some specific training, and a lot of base building. This race was chosen specifically; I had run my 100 mile PR here, a 26:15 five years ago. Everything seemed to be in alignment. I didn’t even get injured (more than a niggle) during training. In the end, my race was a success and yet the achievement felt incredibly numbing at the same time. I was left with so many conflicting emotions, from “of course I did it, I knew I could” to “that hurt a lot but I can do it better” to “I’m already sad and I don’t know why” to “goddamn I’m tired” to “maybe I feel a little . . . yay?

I have been doing ultras for a very long time, including 100s, yet I wasn’t sure how I would feel. Maybe I imagined it a little like Zach Miller. If you haven’t seen the end of The North Face 50 mile from 2016, give it a look. Watching that kind of redlining . . . it makes me FEEL stuff. THAT is how sport should be! And feel! And wooooooo! But for me, at 6:28 am on Sunday morning, 23 and a half hours after I started, there was not a lot of fist pumping.

Crossing the finish line I definitely felt relief that I didn’t fuck it up. See, the thing is that I knew I could break 24. My training was right, the day was right, even my cycle was exactly at the right spot. (And yes, that’s important if you are a woman trying to race. Dr. Stacy Sims, y’all.)

Weeks ahead of time, I told everyone I was going to do sub-24. It made the goal more real and more visible. And scary: what if I totally failed? If the result was that I struggled all day and finished in 25 hours, I’d feel surprised and a bit humbled and a lot embarrassed. So I needed some perspective.

Detach From Results

In order to let my legs do what they were ready to do, I put my trust in them. My heart was ready. It was the head that needed some coaching, honestly. The head controls pretty much everything, including legs and heart. It was my head that would tell my legs to slow down if it decided I was a crap runner. It was my head that would allow my legs to reclaim their spunk in the last hours to put the frosting on my race cake.

Days before the race I was in a yoga class and almost lost it when the instructor said to the room, “Your body is ready. You are ready.” She wasn’t talking to me. She was referring to all of us being warmed up and ready to do a deep stretch. But it didn’t matter. My heart heard those words and melted like butter in a skillet. Yes. I was ready.

5 Things Toward Making Sub-24 A Reality

In the end, several things helped me get to my goal. They are what you must remember. They are what I needed to relearn.

1. Running to a timetable is damn stressful.

Nearly every other ultra I have ever ran was “to feel”. Meaning, I ran what felt appropriate for the day, for my training, for the race. Not too hard. Sometimes I was fighting cutoffs. Sometimes I pushed myself harder than usual to finish strong. But almost always, I was running what felt reasonable for that day. And that made me feel unfulfilled as an athlete/animal. WHAT COULD MY BODY REALLY DO? This was a question I’d started to answer 10 years ago when running marathons, but I am just poking into it with ultras.

My 24 hour target splits were absolutely perfect for ME. They were based on two people who’d run this race the year before, finished just under 24, and raced like I do: worryingly slow in the first half, then a barely perceptible slowdown in the later miles. Based on previous races I knew this was my kind of plan. But it left little room for error. I wasn’t putting in quick miles early to have some wiggle room later. That ends up disastrously for many people, and besides, I love that feeling of “orange-lining” the whole 2nd half. Not redlining and blowing up. Bad idea. But just below that is the orange line and that is where I twiddle the dials of my Central Governor and go into the pain cave for awhile. Sustainable discomfort. Which leads to . . .

2. Everything is temporary. EVERYTHING.

Feeling bad. Feeling awesome. Being too hot. Needing to “find a tree”. Feeling hungry. Getting talkative. Wanting silence. Being lost. Getting lonely. Those fresh batteries in the super-bright headlamp.

Pretty sure I fertilized a tree somewhere around here. About mile 30.

Nothing lasts. Soon, you feel better. Or worse. Or your batteries die. Deal with it, and wait for the next change.

3. Self-talk can make or break you.

Get ready for this one; it’s not as hippie as you think. Hours and hours of “you got this” and “you are ready” and “what a great day” will tend to produce a different mindset than “oh boy I feel slow” and “this hurts my feet” and “ow ow ow my butt”. And your mindset can turn into differing performance results. It’s true that some folks can rally when faced with criticism or difficulty, but those birds are rare. Many of us do far better with encouragement, from the world around us AND our inner narrative. Even though I wasn’t able to draw my Sharpie mantras all over myself, I still thought about them as if I had.

Corollary concept: positive talk directed to other people is a double shot of goodness. Telling other racers they’re doing well, thanking volunteers, all of it feeds into this big loop of sparkles and unicorns and love. And it works.

4. The finish is what you make of it.

Didn’t have any friends to be there and go WOOOOOOOO and take photos of your grimy face and thousand-yard stare? Suck it up, buttercup. You STILL did the thing and the tiny cactus still believes in you. Pat yourself on the back as much as you damn well want. Mope. Take a micro-nap without really planning on it. EAT something, unless you will literally throw up as a result. And, most importantly, get OUT of your head. You’ve been in it for more than a day. Stand up, walk around, and do the WOOOOOOO for everyone else who is coming in to the finish. Maybe they don’t have their friends around, either. BE their friend. You both did this thing.

5. Aftercare is real and underappreciated.

No, I didn’t just deliver a baby but boy did I put my body through the wringer. For days the muscles are confused and angry, the lower legs inflamed and swollen with impressive cankles. Sleep is challenging, and then sound, and then challenging. Hunger is fickle, rising and falling with no seeming logic. I am given a free pass to eat anything I want as a “reward” for my race, but when I go to the store the day after the race I buy salad and liver and eat them with gusto. More than a week after the race I find myself having a chocolate-bar-and-bag-of-chips dinner. Really. But with more than a solid week of nutritious food already down the hatch, I’m recovering like a boss.

Oh, yeah. Emotional wackness. I get this one, real bad. Half a day of “yay, I did that” followed by a day of random staring into space and thinking, “boy is my life empty and dumb”. Repeat for a week. Or two. Throw in some sudden emotional meltdowns, such as panicking at the grocery store or bursting into tears during a run, and you have a pretty interesting post-race period. It’s sometimes called post-race depression and it can magnify any other clinical depressive symptoms already present. Pay attention and call someone if you’re freaked. Call me. There’s lots of us in this together, and we’re stepping up to be seen.

Salt encrusted shirts are THE BEST.

Ultimately, the biggest secret to aftercare is just tuning in. Need a nap? Take one if you can! Hungry? Eat something, dammit: whatever sounds good. Legs all freaky and tight? Lay on the floor and put your feet on the wall. It’s a lovely feeling. Want to go running? Go, but slow. Don’t want to go running? Don’t! But do walk around and be mobile as much as humanly possible. You might get a cold a week or two later. That’s fine. Sleep more.

And take it all in. Smile, even if you still have the thousand yard stare.

The Little “D”: Depression After An Ultramarathon

Two days after my most recent ultramarathon and I was walking down the street wondering whether or not I care if people can tell I’m on the brink of crying. Always the worrier, I think about the outside world’s perceptions rather than how I’m actually feeling. Should I stuff it in? Should I just let it come and forget what people think after all?

Depression after something big in a person’s life is oh-so-common (searches for postpartum depression on Google have been depressingly stable for 14 years), and the post-event kind even has a name: Post Project Depression. Mental health professionals, from what I’ve seen, tend to call it the “blues” rather than use the formal D word, likely to help destigmatize the condition but also perhaps because they’d rather not say anyone is an actual Depressive unless they are diagnosed by—you guessed it—a mental health professional.

Post-project depression is seen sometimes as “subclinical” in nature. It’s something that gets noticed by those suffering but you still don’t check all the psychological boxes needed for a formal diagnosis.

Super weird cover of book on melancholy from the 1500s, from Wikimedia Commons

Post-Ultra Depression and Clinical Depression: Related?

True to my nerd roots, I have wondered if this post-event “blues” has some connection to a propensity for what I’ll call capital-R Real depression, also known as Major Depressive Disorder. Meaning, clinically diagnosed and fitting all the patterns of the American Psychiatric Association’s list of qualities. Those that have clinical depression are often helped, sometimes immensely, by regular exercise like running. (I imagine that has a lot to do with body motion and hormones but also being out in the daylight.) However, what about those that might have mild undiagnosed depression—or no depression at all—and find the post-ultra blues slightly contradictory to getting out and doing yet more exercise?

As is true with many things in the body, the mechanisms are complicated and intertwined. After a long bout with huge spikes in excitable hormones like adrenaline and norepinephrine as you might experience in the 10, 12, 18, 30 hours of an ultra, there has got to be some physiological payback. It’s like taking your favorite t-shirt that you wear gently every day, and sending it through an industrial car wash over and over again. That t-shirt is going to display some obvious signs of wear and stress and fatigue, both visibly in color as well as below the surface in the strength of the fibers and the resilience of the cloth. Your body, after an ultra, has a massive spike in all kinds of “bad” things like cortisol, cytokines, other stress hormones. Those, coupled with a change in training load (like maybe down to zero for many days in a row), are going to have an effect on your general state of wellbeing.

I’m curious about this potential overlap between the symptoms of the “blues” vs. clinical depression in different kinds of people. Little by little, endurance athletes—ultrarunners, too—have come out publicly with their personal major depression stories and how it has affected or been influenced by their athletic careers. But having clinical depression of the Rob Krar or Nikki Kimball variety could be utterly separate, or somewhat related to, the post-event blues that many of us feel. Personally, I’ve felt all my life that I tend towards the melancholy but have not been diagnosed by a psychiatrist. On the other hand, I’ve always been an athlete. Might the lifelong endurance activities be keeping my theoretical clinical depression at bay? Or am I just utterly normal: feeling emotionally destroyed after long races (albeit at a higher intensity that I see in friends) but then eventually getting some mojo back and signing up for the next thing on the calendar?

Melencolia illustration by Durero, from Wikimedia Commons

Clearly I think about this, time and time again. After all, I wrote about this almost exactly three years ago, after the exact same race: https://andreaworks.wordpress.com/2015/02/21/post-ultramarathon-funk-and-how-it-sucks-balls/ And it does not really go away; if anything, this experience seems to become stronger and more obvious after each long event. I take that as a sign that I can learn more and manage it in the future, or at the very least be prepared to go lightly on myself during those days.

What Post-Ultra Depression Actually Feels Like

The best description as I’ve experienced it is that of Mild Despair and Melancholy. The thoughts during those hours and days lean towards the pessimistic, like “what was it that I just did? why, exactly, did I do that? I spent *how* much money on that? does anyone care? do I care?”. Things don’t progress to the point where I can’t get out of bed in the morning (though noon-hour pajamas are not uncommon). And they don’t progress to the point that I cancel upcoming plans or quit running altogether for days or weeks. Even I know that that will make me feel even worse. Not to mention completely mess up my “digestion” (having a post-coffee morning poo is about the best thing ever).

In reality, those sidewalk episodes like mentioned earlier last minutes to hours, and that’s manageable. But they do still come during ebbs and dips in mood that are almost like clockwork in the days and weeks after hard endurance efforts. I felt this way during and after the Colorado Trail, an “event” 26 days long and therefore having plenty of time for ups and downs. I feel this way, sometimes, during training. And I expect that the little black puppy will start stepping on my toes just a few short days after any ultra race, or after any hormonal swing. It’s only natural, after all.

Someone shared with me a video that gets to the heart of the fabled ‘black dog’ of major/clinical depression. It’s a great overview for those who don’t suffer, told from the perspective of someone who is not only affected by depression but they are ashamed of it and fearful of being found out.

With all of the newish and thoughtful writing being done on depression and mental health in general, I think we as a culture are progressing. Even network TV shows are taking on lead characters with psychiatric disorders and treating them like genuine and interesting humans rather than quirky sidekicks just there for a joke. Bravo, Maria Bamford!

I hope that with my post, with earlier writings, and with the help of open and wonderful folks like Rob Krar and Nikki Kimball, I hope the shame aspect is going to fade. These days it seems like the idea of going to a therapist is totally normal, where just a decade or two ago it was an eyebrow-raiser. Same thing with tattoos: used to be “acceptable but a little out-there”, now are completely normal and sometimes in your face. Let’s make depression and mood issues of all kinds be IN. YOUR. FACE. There’s no shame in feeling sad, or feeling nothing, and not knowing why or how to change it. Change toward getting better almost always has to start with open acceptance.

But What Should I Do After My Event?

Other than the usual advice to rest, sleep well, and take a lot of walks, there’s more you can do for your brain. A mental re-framing of the whole situation is valuable here: those “bad” stress hormones that pile up after an event? It’s probably better to think of them as recovery hormones. They are what your body is doing to repair what you just endured. Don’t hate the cast on your broken arm for its weight and inconvenience: treat it gently and respect it for what it is doing for your bone.

Photo By Cameron Parkins, via Wikimedia Commons

[P.S. This post was at least somewhat bolstered by reading Brad Feld’s take on his only ultramarathon and the emotional fallout afterwards. Feld writes often about depression and, in addition to being a good writer with interesting things to say about technology, he is an open advocate for more discourse and less shame about mental illness, particularly depression. Thank you, Brad.]

When You Get to Barstow, Keep Driving (Calico 50K)

rocks near Calico Ghost Town

Near to, but not, the Calico 50K course

Outside of Barstow, California, up the literal hill to the north of town, is a ghost town named Calico. To get there, drive east from Los Angeles. Pass Barstow and keep going on the 15 in a Vegas-ish direction (rather than in an Albuquerque direction on the 40) for another 15 minutes until you reach the Calico Ghost Town exit at Yermo. This is where I was headed, to meander in the hills with 99 other runners on a moderately warm day in early 2015.

Every January (barring flash floods), a collection of able adults line up to run through those hills, over sand and desert scrub, paying for the privilege to pin a number to their shorts and get a little too sunburned for a late winter day. The regular visitors (read: tourists) to Calico pay them minimal mind, barely stepping out of the way as the runners finish their half day out sometime between late morning and mid-afternoon, so intent are those visitors on seeing a staged gunfight or spending far too much money on sweet shop fudge that likely came off a Sysco truck.

But for those runners, this is a relatively crucial day in the year, the day when the post-holiday indulgences are bartered against training miles over the last several months. Those runners might have plans for goal races later in the year, say, a hundred-miler far from home, a new adventure race, a destination 100K. Calico can be the first validation—or harbinger—of what’s to come in the spring.

Here’s why. For an ultrarunner (or any year-round competitive athlete, for that matter), what happens early in the calendar year doesn’t hide in the training log. It sticks with a person moreso than any event in December. In December you can write it off as “oh that was during the holidays”, or “oh that was last year!”. In January, though, it’s on the record.

And that’s why the first big test of the year needs to at least not go horrifically wrong. Anything less than a neutral result can be hard to shake (though there are some good ways to cope and move on, if you find yourself in that position), but good or positive or great results can bolster future training through the summer.

It was mile 6 of Calico 50K and I was struggling to get away from the morning’s OYP (Overly Yappy Person). Now, let’s be clear – I did begin some of the conversation by asking this guy questions about his ultra history. But he continued to talk for many minutes after my responses turned to grunts and finally pure silence. I can chalk it up to cluelessness but I still needed to escape. Ah ha! An aid station was approaching and this would be my chance. But the food table starting calling to me and I grabbed a few jelly beans, chewing while my bottle was getting refilled. Abruptly I changed my mind and jelly bean cud went into the aid station trash can. Problem solved!

(Poor aid station trash can, the brunt of all the fickleness of ultra runners or their moments of extreme despair.)

I picked up a few boiled potato chunks, dredged them in salt, and moseyed on. In that moseying my OYP had leapfrogged me and was several minutes up the trail, a fact I wouldn’t realize until much later. But at least I had some silence for a bit.

After the first bout with gentle downhill miles, we racers were ready to trudge uphill. A seemingly gentle grade of about 3 percent, relentless for the next 7 miles, meant that the truly slow were having a hard time already. I was keeping a steady clip of about 11 minutes per mile, which meant it felt neither too easy nor too hard. Good. This grade, from my course knowledge, was supposed to continue and get gradually steeper until the 17 mile mark. I supposed that when it got too steep to run I’d figure out an alternate plan for moving forward.

Around the 17 mile mark. Photo by Geoff Cordner.

I hadn’t done a 50K in well over a year and had no idea what was in my legs. My last 50K had been a mountainous romp more than 15 months prior, in western New Mexico full of fall colors and frigid temperatures. It was preparation for a 100 miler near the Grand Canyon (the Stagecoach 100) later that same year – more apt than I had even anticipated when Stagecoach’s overnight chill got down into the teens, turning cola into slush and catching aid stations and runners alike perilously off-guard. That New Mexican 50K was relatively slow but faster than one in Flagstaff a month prior where I was truly still recovering after a summer hundred-miler.

What does all of this mean? Every ultra is different, but it does mean I’d not run anything resembling a respectable pace—in any event—in a heck of a long time. My fastest 50K, a pretty decent 5:22, was already 10 years behind me. I had no expectation to get near that time for Calico, given the climbs on the course. But I had a difference race that might have tipped me off to some latent potential, and that race is Pikes Peak Marathon. I ran that bugger in 2009 in 6:02, a fact for which I am still proud. With 8000’ of climb, it is a beast of a course.

Now, how does that mean anything for Calico, many years later? Parallels. Training is all about patterns and periodization. In 2009, my weekly mileage was growing well above previous levels of “the 30s” and “the 40s”, averaging 50 miles or so. Despite the fact that that base was created to support road racing performances, it was having a spillover effect in my trail speed. Pikes Peak was a hard race but it was doable by my training level. Speed is speed and lactate threshold is lactate threshold, apparently.

Prior to Calico I had finally gotten back up to some really strong big mileage weeks, and without injury. From marathon training I know that race success for almost any distance is primarily three things: base mileage, specific speed training, and not getting over-trained. Just before Calico I had logged a good number of 50-60 mile weeks with tons of climbing. Much of that was due to my move to Los Angeles and my newfound trail running partner, Geoff. We ran and ran and ran and enjoyed the company through December and January. Barring acute injury, I was strong and potentially a wee bit fast.

Elevating the ankle post-race

Acute injury, you say? Yep! After weeks of high mileage and lots of climbing, I followed that with some accidental low-mileage weeks with a stomach flu and some travel-related sleep deprivation and holiday disrupted training time. Just one week before Calico I put together a devastating combination: I ran a flat 8 miles on worn-out shoes, AND changed the seat position in my car to make my clutch leg extend in a new way. Sounds minor, but no. BOOM. Anterior Tibialis Tendonitis. I’ve had this injury before and it’s not fun. Since then I have increased my recovery knowledge in a big way, so immediately I went with icing and anti-inflammatories. I did not cancel the race, trusting the recovery.

I went into Calico with a lot to lose but much to gain.

I slowly chugged up the slope to the half-way mark around mile 16 in three hours flat. Not bad. Jogging all the way up a hill was not my idea of fun, but I got it done and now it was time for some moderately flat stuff and then a whole lot of rolling downhill. I saw my boyfriend Geoff somewhere around here, leaving the aid station as I arrived. Or the other way around.

As I meandered down the next section I remember someone saying there is a scrambling chute kind of thing and OH YES there it is! It’s actually a bit of a rock slide and I waste a little bit of time picking gingerly down it, babying my foot and my sense of balance. When finally at the bottom I take off again, now in mile 20+ feeling a bit of a surge. There’s a long and gentle downhill that I feel like a luge sled, gently swooping through curves and trying to pick off runners. I get a few, and make my way to the scariest part of the course (to me): the jeep trails.

Jeep trails scary? Yeah, just wait until you see these things. Up and down and up and down at crazy angles with ball bearing pebbles on hard dirt. It’s a recipe for slips and butt slides, but somehow I keep it under control and my ass intact.

Woot! Here’s the final aid station with less than 4 miles to go; they are amazed that I am jabbering and in good spirits. My mood in ultras is often the opposite of everyone around me: slow and morose in the beginning, neutral and apprehensive in the middle, and giddy and “get ‘er done” at the end. It confounds aid stations but makes the end of races a huge morale booster for me when I pass people who have run out of mojo.

The last few miles drag on, and on, despite what I just said. At one point you get within a few hundred yards of the ghost town and the finish, only to loop around again through a distant parking lot and up a steep hill to gain the finish chute (thankfully downhill). I’m happy even if my leg is complaining, and cross the line in 5:44 with a slight negative split and a 1st place master’s female. Sweet.

Finisher’s awards are gorgeous: hand-painted rocks!

What happened with the tendonitis? Proper anti-inflammatories kept it tamped down, but I did have to gimp around a little in the next month and yes, it did play a dampening role on my Black Canyon 100K in mid February. But all in good training, good learning, and a good January out in the middle of nowhere, somewhere east of Barstow, that strangely large little roadside town.

It seems unlikely that folks truly intend to stop in Barstow, whether for a night or for a lifetime. I could be wrong about that. Perhaps Barstow has a bit of hidden charm. Or perhaps it is just not all that much different, for better or for worse, than any other place. When I stop in Barstow, it is for one of two reasons: a pit stop for gas and/or coffee and/or sugar, or staying at a hotel for the Calico 50K.

See you there: January 21, 2018!

Hey, Me: Shit or Get Off The Pot! Love, Me

This blog post is part of the Week of Self-Love hosted by Anne-Sophie Reinhardt of annesophie.us. (Even though the week is technically over, I still want to give her link-love for the great idea!)

Decisions-images

Today marks just 5 days before I am scheduled to venture up into the scrubby hills between Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon for an inaugural 100 mile race. Problem is, my body isn’t excited about this prospect, AND there is a much closer, locally-organized shorter event the same weekend. So, as is usual for me, I am torn.

Normally my course of action is to wait until a decision foments on its own, but that is not how I’d like to BE as a participant in this life. Deciding is not a bad thing, not a scary thing, not to be avoided at all costs. So, to make this be an effective behavioral change, I think I should set a hard deadline for the choice (24 or 48 hours from now), and make the choice and deal with it. Lovingly, without regret or self-recrimination, or even too many “but, if….”s in the mix.

Self-assuredness is a quality I could use a bazillion percentage points more of. Here’s my pledge to make that happen, little by little, with care and compassion for my own flip-floppy mental state.