Skip to main content

Bring on the Mountains


I can’t believe the week is finally here. The calendar flies by so quick at times you wonder where it all goes. The past few weeks I’ve done my best to ramp up my running mileage. Most importantly the vertical trail mileage. I know that the sections of Leadville I’ll be pacing are steep and sustained efforts. I don’t know the total elevation, but it’ll be a lot. Not much compared to the amazing feat the ‘true’ athlete will accomplish on Saturday though. I can’t even fathom running or hiking 100 miles over that terrain. My friends say that I’ll want to sign up after pacing. I doubt that. Just the fact that I’ll be running a trail marathon and that is barely over ¼ of the course is enough for me to think I don’t have the ambition to do the full hundred. We will see. There was a time when I swore that I'd never do an Ironman too.
I’ve researched as much as I can. Both about the course and about pacing. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to my athlete a few times. I’ve got my gear pretty much packed and my plan in place. Our goal times and pace are set. Now we wait….

I’ve blogged before about past races about how I hate the taper. This week I’ve done a couple of shorter runs, but mostly I’ve been drinking tons of water and eating complex carbs. I’ve cut out alcohol and coffee. No wonder I’m a bit on edge.
I sit and wait. I have a plan. Variables I can’t control: the weather, how my athlete is feeling, the distance. Variables I can control: my attitude, my nutrition. Just. Keep. Moving….

I’ve got butterflies ready to begin this journey. Most people reading this know that I’m a Christian guy. This means that I believe that God always has a plan for us. He doesn’t always give us an easy path to travel, but he always gets us home. It’s all about the journey, not necessarily the destination. If I can keep that in mind, hopefully I can make my leg of the journey a part of her bigger story. I hope I can help her reach her goal.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tall Trees and Tough Trails. The 2024 Cascade Crest 100

Welcome to Easton! The welcome sign that we stopped to take a picture of just about summed up our experience here. On the hour or so drive up from Seattle, Julie and I couldn't stop taking about the amazing trees and dense forest that lined the highway. The trees were so tall that you couldn't even catch a view of the entire towns that laid just behind them. Definitely a contrast to Colorado where the main attraction are the 14ers that line our skylines. I'm so happy that Cascade Crest 100 found me. The idea to travel to Washington for a 100 mile race started when I looked into doing a race close to a good college friend of mine that moved to Washington several years ago. I hadn't seen him or his family in years, and it would be an excuse to both see them and have an epic adventure at the same time. I had heard about the Cascade Crest 100 from a couple of friends that had raced it previously. As a Hard Rock 100 Qualifier, the race had a reputation of both difficul...
Post a Comment
Read more

An Excited Heart

It’s no big secret that I was not feeling super great heading into my last race. It was the perfect storm in many ways. I had a stressful week at work two weeks prior working on a massive deadline followed by a heavy training volume week where I nearly doubled my weekly mileage and then fell behind in sleep the week leading into Quad Rock. I was super stressed out heading into Quad Rock due to the distance and vertical gain. I felt comfortably trained up to the 35 mile distance, but I had failed to put in the back-to-back days in training that would have given me confidence to make the jump to 50. The night leading into my race I had some significant arrhythmia while I was lying in bed. The feeling was not new to me. 10-years ago I was diagnosed with benign PVC’s. The condition takes place when nodes in the ventricles fire off signals that interfere with the main SA pace-making node in the heart. The result is a feeling of a skipped heartbeat followed by a hard thud in your chest ...
2 comments
Read more

Quad Rock 50 and the Highway to Hell

I was standing in the midday sun staring into my car. Sweat was dripping down my face and my eyes were heavy when a little devil popped up on my shoulder. “Just stop Tim. You are tired, beat up and it’s hotter than hell out here. Just get a 25 mile finisher time and take a nap in the shade. This was not an “A” race for you anyway” ------------- Rewinding the clock 5 hours, I was ironically shivering from the cold awaiting sunrise as I stood next to 200 other ultrarunners. The sun was just beginning to light up the sky as the race director made his final announcements about the race. Early morning view The Quad Rock 50 would consist of a clockwise, 25-mile loop followed by a reverse run of the same loop. Each lap has three major climbs and about 5,500 feet of vertical gain per lap for a grand total of 50ish miles and 11,000 feet of elevation gain. “Follow the pink flags,” the race director said. This piece of advice would come in handy later in the day as I slogge...
Post a Comment
Read more