The begining of the home stretch

Well I'm neck deep in my first week after getting back from Australia. In case you are wondering, no two weeks lounging around some of the prettiest country on the planet does not make you a faster runner, all it does is make you want to live in Australia in a hundred year old hotel in the middle of nowhere flying crop dusters and driving around in your ute with your trusty blue healer. Aside from getting back to the real world, the other thing that is significant about this week is that it marks exactly one month till the 2010 North Pole Marathon! I have sunk my teeth into training pretty solidly this week so far. I put in two sevens mile runs and did a 9.3 tonight. I'm finding that I'm quite a bit slower than I was before I left. Part of me thinks it is all the muscle mass that quietly dissolved watching the sun set on a sail boat ( I came back from vacation 8 pounds lighter than when I left); another part of me thinks that I just need to wrap my head around running again. All this week I have felt a touch of uncertainty setting out for each run. It is amazing how fast you forget what you are capable of. Most of my training has been on the same stretches of desert around the airport and the path has been continuously marked with my tacks. It must have rained a couple of times while I was away because not only is the desert soft and moist, there is no trace that I was ever there. Its amazing how fast that mean old desert can forget. I guess I never realized how much my own tracks meant to me, they were like a flag stuck in a beach proclaiming that I had already conquered that stretch of ground and that it was therefore safe. It reminds me of the first time I landed a taildragger on a dry lakebed with no windsock, centerline, or edges mowed in the grass. Aside from being forgetful, the desert just seems more hostile this week. The ground is soft and each footstep sinks solidly, the wind hasn't been shy and there have been sprinkles of rain. All of that adds up to seeming kind of hostile after sitting on a warm beach so pure that the harvested its sand to make the Hubble telescope mirror!

Long story short, I've got about three weeks to show that ol desert who's boss before the race (I'm planning to take it pretty easy the week before the race).

Aside from running I'm taking care of a bunch of the other details for the race. I finally booked my flights from LA to the UK. I already had tickets from the UK to Spitsbergen, and Richard has promised me a seat on the plane to the Pole (redeemable as soon as I pay my entry fee). I'm looking at the required equipment list and ordering all the bits I'm missing...including, you guessed it! Racing snow shoes! On top of that I'm still sending out sponsorship letters looking for some corporate bucks. I've put just about every penny I have towards the entry fee for the race and I'm still coming up short. (this is your que to click the sponsorspace link over on the side and send me a few bucks, every little bit helps. Thank you in advance ;)

PS Below is my run from tonight. Nothing to write home about, but it does put me back in the saddle.

Run Down Under

Holy smokes! It has been a month since my last blog, and close to a week since my last run. I'm on vacation in Australia, roadtripping around central NSW. Before that I was burried at work and burried even more by more work on top of that. It has been nice to get all that out of the way and relax for a while. Yesterday I got to sqeeze in a short 4.7 mile run in Warrenbungles National Park in NSW. The run made up for being short by also being slow. I'm not too worried about it, gimme a break I'm on vacation. :) The park is beautiful, the trail is narrow and runs through the woods and winds its way up towards the peaks of jagged rocks. The morning was cool and full of mosquitos. The trail winds back and forth across a deep cut creek with numerous wooden bridges. Almost all of which were closed because of recent flooding and possible damage. This meant that frequently the path was bypassing bridges and diving headlong into the streambed. I couldnt help but smiling over hoping from stone to stone, karate kid style, across a perfect stream in a perfect lush green forest. No people were to be seen on the trail, but there were numerous kangaroo families, which would dart of the trail and sit and watch me pass from the safety of ten feet away. :) it was a good run

In other news. I'm still looking for donations. Every little bit helps. As of yet, I haven't found any big corporate sponsorships and I'm about out of ideas. Aside from spending the bulk of my lifes savings, I'm still coming up short. Please help if you can and send this link to your buddies

G'day and happy tailwinds

Circumnavigation of Mt Soledad!

Its Sunday again, which means that I was due for another long run. Being able to track my run with the GPS freed me up from having to run the same course all the time. Today I chose to run around soledad mountain. It wasn't my longest run or my fastest, but there was some more ups and downs, most notably an overpass within a mile or so of the end of the run. Getting over that guy was rough. Actually the last four miles or so of this run was really hard. My legs and lower back were burning and I felt like I was on the verge of cramping up. On the bright side, the weather was great and I dont have any chaffing. :)

Looks like the Marathon distance is within reach. The next steps are to go run in the snow and finish raising the big pile of money I still need. Please feel free to help out however you can. Every dollar counts. I also could ideas and introductions for corporate sponsors. :)

Cloudy Lunch Run and a Neato iPhone Tracker

Went for a quick run at lunch and used my new iPhone to track my progress. It has used the gps and tracks your pace and elevation. It even logs pictures you take along the way. So Neato!

Thoughts on the Pole

I did an 18.6 mile run today. Two laps around the airport at a 9 min pace. Slower than the 21.7 mile run last week. The difference lies in the fact that I missed breakfast and it was freakn cold, windy, and raining. It is amazing how being uncomfortable eats away at your mental resolve. I have assumed that the cold and the snow at the pole are horrendous and that is why the fastest men's times are four and a half hours. It is a little scary to imagine what wind and snow and 40 below will be like.

Dudeman Sinks the Bismark!!

Went for a 7.1 mile run at lunch today. I spent the morning hobbling around, still sore from Sunday, and was trying to talk myself out of going. Then I got a text from my good buddy Justin 'The Dudeman' Gillen asking if I was going for a run at lunch. Obviously I had to go. Justin recently ran the Santa Barbara Marathon in a near super sonic three hours and change. Damn close to a seven min pace. If he wasn't such a nice guy I would have been intimidated by running with a living, breathing rocket ship. Luckily he was really nice about slowing down to my pace and I did my best to speed up (mostly to impress him). It worked out really well! We did the run in a record 54.8 min. That is a 7.7 min pace! Take that 8 min barrier; who's your daddy now!

21.7 miles !!

Yesterday was a perfect Sunday in Mojave. Warm, no wind, clear sky. A good day for my longest run so far. I did a 21.7 mile run, non stop, at a 8.7 min/mile pace. It was my longest training run by over three miles! I drank 1.6 liters of water and ate a couple of the power bar energy gel packs. Banana Strawberry is disgusting. The route was two laps around the airport and part of a third lap. I took an mp3 player but found I didn't need it and was more comfortable just focusing on my form and breathing... and just enjoying the day. All in all, it was a nice run. The first 18 miles were pretty comfortable. The last bit was hard. I knew that you were more likely to 'hit the wall' after the 18 mile mark and I was mostly stressed for the last three miles that each successive step would be the one where the world came to an end. I didnt find the wall this time around. Aside from being really tired the only squawk that I can report is some sort of fatigue in my lungs or throat. For the last mile or so every breath was accompanied with a buzz or hum that I had no control over.
Also about ten minutes after the run I got really cold. Like teeth chattering REALLY cold.

Today I am sore. But not as bad as on some other runs. I finally feel like the marathon distance is within reach. Yee-Haw!