Silver State Update

After the Black Canyon Double (still no swag!) I started training fairly consistently. I've done six consecutive weeks of 50+ miles of running, and 10 total with at least 45+. I hired a coach for the first time ever. This week, with only 30 miles of running, is my lowest since the first week of March, when everything was covered in snow. Everything is good, except for the fact that I'm a little bit injured.

In more detail, I decided to hire a coach because I really want to break 24 hours at Western States. I delayed more than I should have, but finally pulled the trigger after listening to a podcast with Jeff Browning, who is kicking butt in his early 50's and sounded like a great coach. I was a little leery of his anti-carbohydrate leanings, and it seemed a bit expensive, so I looked around a little more and decided to go with Gary Robbins' Ridgeline Athletics, since I met Gary at Barkley and he seemed like a great guy, and I'd had the idea last year around Tor that I'd try and hire him and do well at Barkley this year. Ridgeline put me with Adam Campbell and it's been going well so far (it's only been about a month). Side note: they're all Canadian so the exchange rate helps.

I've run two sub-3 road marathons, with extensive solo road and track training, but I've never been able to convert that road speed into trail speed. My coach has me paying attention to perceived effort (broken into 5 zones) rather than pace, since it makes little sense to compare pace over variable terrain. I've been doing about 11 hours a week, with three hard workouts, and slightly more vert than I'd normally get. (On my own I'd probably do flat stuff 2-3 days a week, with a coach it's more like just one.) I'm also trying to pay attention to my heart rate a little, and that mostly seems to line up with perceived effort, except for on hills, where my legs and aerobic capacity can seem taxed on uphills but my heartrate is only ~130, but then fast downhills seem easy but my heartrate is 160+. I don't quite know what's going on there.

So I've been training a decent amount. I wanted a  50-miler tuneup race in May, so Amy and I planned a two-week trip to Yucca Valley around the Wild Wild West Marathon in the Alabama Hills outside Lone Pine, CA. I waited and waited to sign up, finally pulled the trigger mid-April, and then five days later the race got cancelled! I'm supposed to get a 50% refund, but haven't yet. To add insult to injury, we still drove down to Lone Pine, camped in and drove all over the Alabama Hills, and did not encounter a single ounce of flooding nor washed out roads.

I got a little bit of heat training in while we were in Yucca Valley, but not that much since it was actually still fairly cool for most of the time we were there. I also took a side-trip to Vegas for a conference. I enjoyed dinners with friends and a pretty drive there through Mojave Preserve, but the conference itself was actually pretty worthless. I also did one track workout at UNLV that may have been ill-advised since it was very hot and it quite possibly was the first time I ever did strides (exaggerated stride length at the same cadence as a way to speed up). 

Heat training run in JTNP, near Eureka Peak

 

Sunset from the UNLV track

We drove home to Reno Friday the 19th and I ran Silver State 50K the 20th. It was supposed to be a hot day, but it mostly felt OK to me. The start was perhaps warm, but not hot. Then we climbed up to near the summit of Peavine at 8,200 feet, so despite the warming weather, it still felt nice. A few people were passing me on the lower parts of the climb, but I didn't mind too much as I was telling myself to save it to go hard in the second half of the race, and I ran harder when I got to the slightly more chill road part of the climb. We dropped off the back side of Peavine and I passed a few people but was still just trying to not overdo it. Around halfway through, we headed back toward the summit, and I tried to run the reasonable climbs and hike faster than others on the steep parts. Around mile 21 we returned to Peavine Summit, and it was almost all downhill from there, so I started letting it rip. I passed around a half-dozen people, and kept up the pace even as it got hotter and hotter with each step of descent. (The start/finish is at around 4,700 feet.) I was definitely feeling it in the last mile or two, and was very glad that none of the people I passed made a serious effort to fend me off (as I would have), since I wasn't sure that I could turn it up any faster than the ~8 min/mile I was already doing. 

 I finished in 16th place in 6:25. That isn't that fast compared to the several 5:02-5:30 50K's that I used to do in the Bay Area, and it didn't have much more vert than those (5,000 to 6,000 feet), but hopefully the elevation (starting at 4,700 rather than sea level) and the heat count for something. 16th place out of ~100 is much better than I typically do. So maybe I'm ready for Western States?

Except I'm injured. 

Aside from that, everything's great!

After the race, I went home and spent the day with Amy and the dogs, and tried to hydrate. I woke up early the next morning to catch a 5AM flight to Denver for a conference in Boulder. The conference was nice, and the host hotel was excellent. But I was supposed to hike or bike a little to get the body going, so I chose to walk a couple miles to the nearest Walgreens to pick up some snacks. I crossed a street and jogged a few steps to get out of the road faster and my hamstring yelled at me. It hurt in the same place as in 2020 when it took me 8 months to get better. Dammit. Some combination of strides, driving 8 hours, running 50K, then immediately getting on a plane aggravated my old injury.

The sharp pain in my hamstring only lasted one day, the day following the race. I got a massage, I used the whirlpool jets in the hotel hottub like another massage, and I've mostly been biking and hiking since then. I was signed up for the Western States training camp (70 miles of the course over the three days of Memorial Day weekend) but all I ended up hiking/shuffling was 25 miles from Robinson Flat to Michigan Bluff on Day 1 before my hamstring, if not exactly hurt, warned me that it was going to hurt. 

I'm headed to DC for work, so if my legs don't lock up on the plane, I'll be biking there, get some dry needling/e-stim work done by a PT there, and hopefully be running slowly
by the weekend.