tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43106024459974723442024-03-18T19:56:36.504-07:00Trails and RocksStories and race reports from ultrarunning, climbing, and the occasional marathon.Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.comBlogger62125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-46637005340935347662020-02-26T05:18:00.000-08:002020-02-26T05:18:53.868-08:00Black Canyon 100k race report<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My road to Black Canyon was not a smooth one. In mid-November, I was busy enjoying some newly-gained fitness (culminating in a big new marathon PR of 2:55!) when I put a minor tear in my hamstring tendon. Apparently hamstrings don't like it when you keep them so tight that you can't even reach in the vague direction of your toes. I was able to start running again on December 21, but since I had taken the previous 6 weeks mostly off, I knew I was looking at a solid 6-12 weeks to regain all of the lost fitness. Black Canyon was exactly 8 weeks away...<br />
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There were other bumps in the road too: a mystery health problem which I discovered after the race to be hypothyroidism, the decision to go back to self-coaching, a tweak to the injured hamstring, and even a freak snowstorm which took over the trails on my last training weekend. When Divesh and I arrived in AZ for the race, I felt like I was showing up for a car race in a battered old wreck that could barely survive the drive to the start line.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spot the Minnesotan!</td></tr>
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There was one benefit to this though, and that was that being super unready made slow but steady pacing my only viable option for running a decent race. Black Canyon is a golden ticket race where there are two entries to Western States to be won, so I knew that plenty of people would start off too fast. I resolved to hang back, run by heart rate at an effort level that I knew I could sustain for 100k, and hope that the race was long enough for me to start catching people before the end.<br />
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That is definitely easier said than done. It took a lot of willpower to settle into the middle of the race pack during those first few miles, especially once we got onto nice singletrack--partly because it's hard not to want to run fast on good singletrack but also because the trail was very crowded and it was almost impossible to run at my ideal pace on both the uphills and the downhills. I think I was 18th at the first aid station! I just kept repeating to myself, "no racing until Black Canyon City [mile 37.4]," even as people passed me left and right.<br />
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By mile 30, I could already tell that starting out slowly was going to pay off. I didn't feel fast, but I did feel solid, in the sort of way where you can tell you're going to be more or less fine for the rest of the race. I started to pass people but still mostly kept to my resolution to maintain my low HR--except for the few hundred meters after I ran past Jamil Coury, who was out on "active spectator duty" with a video camera. I don't think there is any amount of discipline in the world that can keep you running a sensible pace whilst being chased with a video camera on a downhill!<br />
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After passing Black Canyon City, I took the brakes off a little and started pushing on the long gradual uphills. The heat was rough, but I was recovering a little at each river crossing, and I was pleased to find that the uphills were actually feeling pretty good.<br />
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From miles 47-50 I had my only real struggle of the day. I had been getting progressively thirstier for the previous couple of hours, and around mile 47 the thirst started feeling overwhelming--all I could think about was wanting ice water. I was sort of expecting this to lead to a downward spiral in my pace and placing, but I surprised myself by pushing through it. I saw Divesh at the mile 51 aid station and was reunited with another bottle of my sports drink; it wasn't cold, but it was for sure better than the empty bottle I'd been holding for the past few miles. Divesh told me I was only a couple of minutes behind the 5th place woman. We were just starting one of the race's longer climbs at that point, and it happened that that climb was where I had done a tempo portion of my last long run before the race. "I <i>can</i> run this hill faster," I reminded myself, and it was enough to get my feet moving a little more quickly again.<br />
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After maybe a mile, I spotted the 5th place girl less than 30 seconds ahead--but she also spotted me. She sped up and for the next 4 miles or so I would alternately get a little closer to her and then get dropped. I was exhausted and thoroughly ready to be done running for the day, but it was also the most fun section of the whole race: friendly racing with both of us still running strongly enough to be competitive. At the top of the race's last climb, she zoomed off on an initially technical descent, and I figured I no longer had any hope of catching her. But a mile or so into the descent, I came around a bend and suddenly saw her just ahead, with me rapidly gaining ground.<br />
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I contemplated hanging out behind her for a while to make sure that I really was capable of maintaining a faster pace all the way to the finish, but I realized that I actually felt GOOD. As in, the fastest I had been all race. I went past 5th place and shortly thereafter passed the next girl as well. After that it was a fairly easy 3.5 miles to the finish. I felt like I was flying the entire way, with energy to spare. I've never had such a good last section of a longer ultra, and I hope there will be more to come like this one.<br />
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So I ended up 4th in 9:46, which turned out to be only one place away from a golden ticket after one rolled down a place. But given that I figured top 10 would be a stretch based on my fitness going into the race, I am completely thrilled with this. In fact, it's possible that I'm the happiest occupant of the "tough luck spot" in golden ticket history. And since learning about my hypothyroid situation explains the symptoms I've been struggling with when running, I'm optimistic that I can sort those out by the summer and still have a strong season of mountain racing.<br />
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It was a rough post-race evening for me; although my stomach had behaved perfectly the entire race, I promptly threw up after starting my rehydration a little too enthusiastically with the finish line lemonade. Diluted apple juice went down a little better, but I still had to make Divesh pull over a few times on the way back to the Airbnb. It did make me smile remembering my friend Nick and I simul-vomiting over a wall in a layby while my friend Dave drove us home from the Highland Fling. <br />
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Oh, and total calories I consumed during the 100k? 150. And my best miles of the day were the last five. Hurrah for nutrition research!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Divesh had to put up with the most pathetic spotter ever the next day</td></tr>
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Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-79978334432535038092019-07-23T04:30:00.000-07:002019-07-23T04:30:14.549-07:00Eiger Ultra Trail 51km race report<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>Thursday of race week: </b><br />
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Really, Alicia? Months and months of training, careful shoe and gear selection, lots of course studying, and then you forget to bring your race food to Switzerland? Not a great start. Fortunately I was saved by an East Asian market selling sticky rice flour. Big cheer for globalization!<br />
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With the crisis averted, Divesh and I took the tourist train up to Schynige Platte to scope out support zone location and do some sightseeing. Quality relaxation time!<br />
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<b>Friday of race week:</b><br />
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The weather forecast has been confident all week that it will be raining and/or thunderstorming all day on Saturday. Eeep.<br />
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<b>Saturday, race day:</b><br />
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It's intensely sunny and in the high 80s. *Slight* difference to the prediction! The race started off with about a mile uphill on the road. My stretch goal had been to try to win, but when I saw another girl take off up the road at about 6:30 pace whilst looking like she was going for a casual jog, I realized it would be suicide to follow, so I stayed back and did my own thing.<br />
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The first climb is not too steep and it's on very non-technical terrain, so you end up on the undulating section above Grosse Scheidegg (8km) relatively quickly. Shortly thereafter, I ran into a roadblock: cows. There was a mother cow blocking most of the left side of the trail, a calf blocking most of the right, and not much room to go around on either side. I stood around, considering my options and losing time rapidly, until I was saved by two friendly guys who told me to follow them. "He's an animal doctor!" one of them announced, pointing to the other one. It was an ideal little train to get behind, since we soon passed through several more cow sections and these guys definitely had their cow-dispersal technique mastered.<br />
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This whole section was very runnable and absolutely gorgeous.<br />
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The main issue here though was that starting around 14km, we were catching up to the 100k runners and had to overtake maybe half of the 800-person field. This wasn't so bad while we were on the easy wide trails, but around 18km we got onto narrow singletrack that would continue for most of the rest of the race. The options for overtaking were either to lose loads of time waiting for a wide spot in the trail or to leap around the 100k'ers on the rocky edges of the trail. I started off with the latter but after several close calls with my bad ankle, I ended up going more and more for the former. It was demoralizing though, and I fought with myself (mostly unsuccessfully) to keep the negative thoughts from forming. I settled on the strategy of giving myself the goal of saying "good job" to each of the 100k people that I passed, but given the altitude and my effort level, I think all I really said to them was "ggghhhhhh."<br />
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We passed the summit of the Faulhorn, with absolutely amazing views, and went down a much more technical way than we had come up. There were two spots for glissading, though!!<br />
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From about kilometer 30 on, the race became really only about heat survival. It was SO hot. I don't think I thought about anything other than how thirsty I was for maybe 15 kilometers. I ran by Divesh at 35k and got my sports drink refill, which did provide a bit of an energy boost, but shortly after this the trail went into the woods and turned into a steep, technical, and tree rooty affair. The trees were trapping the humidity and it was like being stuck in the jungle. Back to thinking only about how thirsty I was...<br />
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With 6km to go, we finally reached the valley floor and started the easy section back to Grindelwald. This part is a very gradually uphill combination of bike path and road, so my main goal for the race was to put in a solid effort here, and I mostly achieved that. I passed three naked men (not runners!), stuck my head in a cow trough of cold water, and tried to decide if I had heat stroke. Just your average day at an ultra, basically.<br />
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The little mini vertical wall that you have to climb up to get to Grindelwald was especially brutal in the midday sun, but once that was done, it was just a fun downhill 400 meters to the finish. I ended up in 2nd place, about 20 minutes slower than I was hoping to go, but the descent sections had been much more technical than I was expecting, and the heat had a definite impact. It's a beautiful area and I would come back for sure, but for avoidance of traffic jam stress, I think the 100k, not the 50k, is the race to do here!<br />
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Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-43084956656203549392019-03-18T12:41:00.000-07:002019-03-18T12:41:04.256-07:00Coastal Trail Series Sussex 55km race report<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
After every race I make myself notes of what went well and what I should have done differently. Sometimes the should-have-done-differentlys are on the ridiculous side ("don't, on a whim, triple the amount of coffee in your sports drink") and sometimes they're more substantial ("I needed more hill training for this course"). After the Coastal Trail Series Sussex 55km, I am, for the first time, completely at a loss for what I could write in the errors section of the notes. I've spent the better part of the plane ride home thinking about it and the best I could come up with is that I should have taken only half a water bottle instead of a full one at mile 15, since it was only three miles from there to my next support stop. Not exactly a disastrous mistake!!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">prerace sightseeing along the course</td></tr>
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Most of my prerace concerns had to do with weather. The race is over exposed ground right on the coastal cliffs, and it was supposed to be around 30mph winds with gusts up to 50mph. It was freezing cold at packet pickup just before the race start. The guy manning the t-shirt desk wordlessly handed me a size medium. When I asked for a small instead, he gave me an incredulous look and asked if I had seen what the small size was like. I was confused for a second, then realized I was wearing 8 layers of clothing and was not looking particularly small at that moment.</div>
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Actually I guess I spent most of the prerace period looking ridiculous. While every other runner wandered around stretching and jogging and generally looking professional and prepared, I was the one wearing overly short pink children's sweatpants and scraping hard caked mud out of my shoe treads with a hotel room key card. One day I will nail the not-looking-ridiculous part of racing, but that day was not yesterday.</div>
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After the world's longest briefing, we finally started running. The first section of the race is straight into the wind, over the Seven Sisters hills on the coast. It's beautiful but it was like trying to run into a giant hair dryer--there were a lot of runners chasing after lost hats! Fortunately I had been out here for a training run so I knew what I was in for. I took it pretty easy on this section, then sped up to race effort after 5km when we turned inland and briefly got a bit of shelter. And the reward for surviving each headwind section was an amazing tailwind section, or at least amazing until a sudden tailwind gust nearly blew me off a cliff.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">we ran past the Long Man. it was very long.</td></tr>
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People were friendly at this race, and getting to talk to a few people made the first third go by quickly. Divesh, my support crew extraordinare, met me at several places for water bottle exchanges, and never being far from one of those also made the miles fly by. I also had a nice half mile or so with Alice, who won the accompanying half marathon.</div>
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My first 25 miles were basically spent in suspense, wondering if and when I was going to hit a wall or bonk or possibly go insane from the uncomfortably loud roaring of the wind in my ears. But by mile 25, none of those things had happened. I felt oddly... good. Like really good. I was running up hills I would have thought I would have had to walk. I never got nauseated. The math changed from wondering if I had a shot at the course record to knowing that, absent some sudden injury, I was going to get it by a decent margin. </div>
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And that was it really! Nothing dramatic to report, just a nice steady race with possibly my most even splits ever. I feel like a completely different runner from my pre-injury year. So what's different than in the past? First, I've sorted out better training through coaching from David Roche. Second, I've put in hundreds of hours of nutrition research and have finally reached what seems like the right answers. Conclusion: it's definitely still possible to get faster when you're old and missing foot parts! </div>
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Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-58728426881123253202018-08-27T07:07:00.000-07:002018-08-27T07:12:15.156-07:00Peroneal tendon surgery part 3: the end?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I keep waiting for some sort of obvious "finish line" to signify that it's time to write a final wrap-up of the outcome of my injury and surgery. But since I don't have a good idea of what that finish line would look like--running a race? not thinking about how much my foot hurts every time I walk anywhere?--I decided that the triple achievement this week of wearing normal running shoes instead of hiking boots for a run, finishing a hard race, and filling out a weekly training log that wouldn't be too out of place in my pre-injury training would be good enough.<br />
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Sometime in June I got completely fed up with my situation and was saying to a friend that it had gotten to the point where it felt like I would never get back to normal running. He replied with the excellent point that it might well not ever go back to normal, but that it might not be better or worse, just different. And this is exactly what I've found. Unless I get a revision surgery (more on that below), my ankle is always going to be weak. This is just what happens when you're missing a major ankle tendon--you can only train the surrounding muscles so much, and you can't train something that's not there. I may never be fast on technical ground. I may have to wear my heavy, uncomfortable hiking boots in races for the foreseeable future. I may be even more pathetic than I was pre-injury on steep downhills, even though my pre-injury standard is a standard that's difficult to fall below!<br />
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But...I may have been forced into a decision about what types of races to focus on, which might make me faster in those races eventually. Since I can't run downhill very well yet, I've started running some uphill vertical races, which I'm not totally sold on yet but may grow into liking. I am becoming more efficient about making my mileage count, because I can only do a fairly limited amount of miles. And possibly most importantly, I discovered that there's nothing like being unable to run for six months to teach you exactly what kind of running you missed the most, which is very useful for deciding what type of running to do when you are finally able again!<br />
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So, it's different. If I could choose, I would opt to have not lost a foot tendon, along with vast sums of money spent on medical care, not to mention six months of my life. And it certainly grates on my mental well-being every time I think about how the outcome could have been improved had I not picked such a lazy and/or money-hungry surgeon. But given that this is the situation that exists, it's not all bad by any means, just different. <br />
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It's not yet clear whether this is the end of the saga or not. When I saw surgeon #2 in March, he was somewhat appalled at what surgeon #1 did ("Why did he do that?!" was the exact reaction, which definitely made my heart sink a bit...) but he wasn't particularly positive on the idea of a second operation to try to repair the damage. His thought was that he might be able to fix what surgeon #1 did by creating a new peroneus brevis out of my FHL tendon, but he felt there was a good chance I could come out of a second operation in even worse shape than I'm in now. His advice was to only get the second operation done if I were very unhappy with my running ability after 9-12 months of rehab. This was exactly the same advice I got from another good foot surgeon via email, so it's promising having the two opinions coincide. I'm currently at 7 months post-op, and given the massive progress my foot has been making the past few weeks, I think it's unlikely I'll go for the second operation, unless running in the mountains proves to be too much for the current repair and it fails.<br />
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I'm never one for the whole "just be optimistic" outlook--you don't build new tendons out of optimism. But I do have to mention one of the big positives that came out of this injury, and that is the people who were a part of my recovery. That started right from day 1, when two now-friends who I had only known for 12 hours came to rescue me from the hospital on a cold winter night, followed shortly by Divesh rescuing me from my hotel room of doom. Then there was all the help and support from friends and family while I was on crutches, and finally there were the new people I met because of the injury, such as my injury twin Diana, and Jordi, the world's best physical therapist, who is a rehab expert and all-around excellent person rolled into one. If there is at all a good part of being injured, this is it.<br />
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And now? I've made a list of all of the things I missed out on while injured, and I'm going to be making my way through it over the coming months. And if all goes really well...I'm entered in the 110km Ultra Pirineu for September 29. Even 40km is currently a very long way for me, so I'll have to see what my ankle says about the idea of 110km in only a month's time, but if it's possible, I'll be there!<br />
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Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-87444173968925731222018-05-16T03:40:00.000-07:002018-05-16T05:22:56.748-07:00Peroneal tendon rupture, surgery, and rehab, part 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It has only been two months since my post about part 1, and already it feels like several lifetimes have gone by...<br />
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<strong>Lifetime 1: visit with surgeon #2 and improvements</strong><br />
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Surgeon #2 was excellent and it was well worth going. For a start, he gave me 15 minutes of uninterrupted appointment time, practically a miracle compared to my experience with surgeon #1. Surgeon #2 was concerned about the fact that surgeon #1 had placed a tenodesis anchor right on the site of my metatarsal fracture and thought that might be the cause of all the pain. He did an x-ray to check that the anchor hadn't caused the fracture to re-open, which fortunately showed that it hadn't, although it could still have been causing the pain. However, surgeon #2 also did an ultrasound, which did show a large bone fragment stuck right next to the tendon repair, making it a prime candidate as a pain cause. <br />
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The next month was full of slow, steady improvements. Of course, there were plenty of "bad foot" days, and I still suffered from perma-red foot from all the inflammation, but it was definitely an upward trend.<br />
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The mental crux that I hadn't been expecting was the time period where I was able to walk but not yet able to walk far enough or fast enough to get any aerobic exercise. As depressing as it was, I had to resign myself to going out on the crutches or the pegleg for the "exercise" portion of my activities, and then practice walking separately.<br />
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Somewhat ironically, I got less and less fit aerobically as my foot improved, since I started doing more walking and stopped doing my uphill crutching repeats!<br />
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Finally, at 13 weeks post-op, I did my first outing that could, if you were feeling unusually optimistic, be called a run: 5 miles on a vertical k course, mostly walking the steep uphill, running the gradual uphill, and running nearly all of the downhill.<br />
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<strong>Lifetime 2: infection</strong><br />
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The improvements came crashing to a halt when my surgical wound got infected at 13.5 weeks post-op. An infection that shows up that late in the game is a very worrying thing, since it makes it highly likely that the infection is a deep one. Cue total rest, elevating my leg, hours of frantic research and quality advice from the most qualified medic I know, and a trip to the doctor, who prescribed antibiotics and never managed to answer my question about when I should come for follow-up care if the infection didn't clear. <br />
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It didn't clear. After 5 days of antibiotics and no improvements, I sent a panicked email to surgeon #2, who was kind enough to look at a few photos of my foot and then told me to get it seen sooner rather than later. Two days later, I was in surgeon #2's office. He did an ultrasound to check if it might be a stitch abscess (it wasn't) and then confirmed what I had already suspected from my reading: the doctor I had seen a week ago had prescribed an incorrect choice of antibiotic. So I moved on to antibiotics round 2, took a deep breath, and talked myself into handling the mental pain of going back on crutches for exercising.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm not wearing the orthopedic boot because I need it for walking, I'm wearing it to <em>prevent</em> walking. It's the runner equivalent of the cone of shame.</td></tr>
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It's funny looking back on my changes in perspective since the injury. When the accident happened on December 2, my first thought was "will I have enough time to train for Transgrancanaria?" TGC is in late February! After finding out I needed surgery and then getting delayed for a couple of months on that, my worry was whether or not I'd be able to race this summer. After finding out I had been robbed of a key foot tendon whilst unconscious during surgery, I was concerned about whether I'd ever run on technical ground again. And by late April, with a late-onset surgical site infection, I was ready to consider it a win if I didn't have to have my foot amputated.<br />
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Luckily for the chances of continued attachment of my foot, the second round of antibiotics worked, but...<br />
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<strong>Lifetime 3: sural nerve issues</strong><br />
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...getting rid of the infection did nothing to change the unbearable level of pain I'd been experiencing. Neither did two weeks of total rest, so it was clear it wasn't a simple case of overdoing it on the newly-repaired tendon. The type of pain--white-hot, coming and going in flashes--didn't feel like tendon pain, either, and I did more reading and starting thinking it could either be an allergic reaction to the biocomposite material in the tenodesis anchor (shows up, if it's going to happen, when the anchor starts to degrade around 3 months post-op, so the timing fit, plus the inflammation seemed to respond a bit to an antihistamine) or damage to the sural nerve. <br />
<br />
I finally deployed the weapon I should have deployed two weeks earlier: a visit to my amazing physio. He was almost sure the problem was with the sural nerve; it runs alongside the peroneal tendons and it's common for it to get damaged or entrapped in scar tissue after peroneal tendon surgery. I left after an hour of serious poking and prodding to try to extricate the nerve, with instructions to perform twice daily exercises and to wait at least 5 days before trying to run.<br />
<br />
And today, 5 days later...I ran! Four repeats of 5 minutes each, on very flat and soft ground. There was still definitely nerve pain going on but at a much more manageable level than before. It's a start...<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjso2d17iKCXPgzNHyAT0Ot3KUVCNZkOXcImDz1W4i8YejKt6b9ANpgJUiqeRUrXnm2t9FQx8VD_Jc0BzBh-tGGH4ad2gEsxJiIY6lmDDz2UDIxz7TQnIH30Zzi4xqkLfN4-4o71F2TEko/s1600/First+run+post-infection.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjso2d17iKCXPgzNHyAT0Ot3KUVCNZkOXcImDz1W4i8YejKt6b9ANpgJUiqeRUrXnm2t9FQx8VD_Jc0BzBh-tGGH4ad2gEsxJiIY6lmDDz2UDIxz7TQnIH30Zzi4xqkLfN4-4o71F2TEko/s320/First+run+post-infection.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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</div>
Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-12932370485396079652018-03-08T02:57:00.000-08:002018-03-08T03:19:15.976-08:00Is it May yet? Peroneal tendon rupture, surgery, and rehab, part 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Opening up my blog to start this post made me notice that my last post was about a medical problem. I guess this is fairly appropriate--my year was largely a sequence of lurching from one problem to the next, with a few nice runs and climbs in between. If things don't improve soon, I'll rename the blog something like aliciasrestingandrehabilitationwoes.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLLtDzXz9g9pHwb0gNvFl0eXe8pNsGt4IEvg1NfhUAQtS7-8r0b6Qv9N4CN_jIl2R8ceTNmfctBnpc6zcnqdaOmvLMy5D-IavuRGnau7Wy38vWA1d_wxRBnUpaNa_qdhnQcsz9P6s7r2s/s1600/Zegama+sign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLLtDzXz9g9pHwb0gNvFl0eXe8pNsGt4IEvg1NfhUAQtS7-8r0b6Qv9N4CN_jIl2R8ceTNmfctBnpc6zcnqdaOmvLMy5D-IavuRGnau7Wy38vWA1d_wxRBnUpaNa_qdhnQcsz9P6s7r2s/s320/Zegama+sign.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The closest I'll get to running Zegama this year</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
At the end of a great long run in the mountains, I was running down a moderately technical descent when I landed badly and injured my foot. I heard a loud cracking noise so was fairly sure there was a broken bone. I limped off the hill, hitchhiked back to my car, and drove straight to the hospital. This was the start of a cascade of comedy errors that leads to my current situation.<br />
<br />
The emergency room doctor took an x-ray and reported that I had a broken 5th metatarsal. She thought it was a Jones fracture and thus might need surgery, so she told me to see a specialist. This was incorrect--it was a fracture to the base of the metatarsal and not a Jones fracture--but her mistake turned out to be lucky for me. The surgeon who I went to see about the fracture was able to tell immediately that it wouldn't need surgery, but fortunately for me, he noticed that I seemed to be missing my peroneus brevis tendon. After multiple errors with the MRIs and an inexplicable order for a second x-ray, and thus plenty of delay, it was determined that I had a complete rupture of the peroneus brevis at the point where it inserts into the 5th metatarsal.<br />
<br />
This could only be fixed with surgery, but there were an endless number of delays to getting a surgery date, and I finally went for the operation 7 weeks later. By that point the metatarsal fracture seemed to be healed and I had been able to walk a little, but I had been on crutches 95% of the previous 7 weeks. That meant my peroneus brevis stump had had 7 weeks to retract and atrophy. Sure enough, my surgeon reported after the surgery that there was hardly any of it left.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgtNCNBF9PfNdYTqB0FJ-RP4wVGUen14WDzE1-w0m-DCFAUNepiJp1_Id_pukQHPvqVjCdowdJPbog4r2eP-dZ8A_AxdWtQjxfqburzUpatBiR4gGX_gBQLUtmGtw36FZDBizO1ZgCnEQ/s1600/Crutching.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="901" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgtNCNBF9PfNdYTqB0FJ-RP4wVGUen14WDzE1-w0m-DCFAUNepiJp1_Id_pukQHPvqVjCdowdJPbog4r2eP-dZ8A_AxdWtQjxfqburzUpatBiR4gGX_gBQLUtmGtw36FZDBizO1ZgCnEQ/s320/Crutching.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
What he didn't report was that he had done an entirely different repair technique than what it appeared he had been planning. I learned from my hospital discharge form that what he did was tenodesis--sewing the peroneus brevis stump to the peroneus longus tendon--whereas I was under the impression he would be doing an allograft (cadaver tendon) repair. It appears that this type of tenodesis is a common way of dealing with a lack of intact tendon to work with, so I can see why he would have done that. However, I had made it abundantly clear to him that I was a competitive runner, that I ran in the mountains and needed maximum ankle stability, and that my priority was getting back to this. Tenodesis is not at all ideal for any of these things (I believe you can read a good article about different repair options here without a paywall, <a href="http://www.foot.theclinics.com/article/S1083-7515(13)00104-6/pdf">http://www.foot.theclinics.com/article/S1083-7515(13)00104-6/pdf</a>) so I was not particularly pleased, to say the least. If my surgeon had been experienced at treating athletes, I could feel confident that he had correctly weighed the pros and cons of each option in deciding what to do. However, it was clear from our pre-surgery conversation that he had little experience with athletes. At the time, I thought this was okay because there was no question of what needed to be done; all I really needed was an experienced surgeon who could do the repair well. It simply never occurred to me that this particular type of problem ("two tendons enter, one tendon leave"...?) might occur. It was also clear from pre-surgery appointments that my surgeon was very interested in seeing the maximum number of patients possible, and this does suggest he may have chosen tenodesis on the basis that it's a much simpler and thus quicker procedure.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc1zg8LeQQRHA7JDice4KHQXcObHEkh74T1DA4u7sUiMq9YpKPYJSHv9QkKqR_5bCkx_a3aj2dJ47N4t8lracXLzTChjC35X9rFr9taPg6cLtHyMT_US6HW97fatrUgKQZV5wofT1WFvI/s1600/Frankenfoot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc1zg8LeQQRHA7JDice4KHQXcObHEkh74T1DA4u7sUiMq9YpKPYJSHv9QkKqR_5bCkx_a3aj2dJ47N4t8lracXLzTChjC35X9rFr9taPg6cLtHyMT_US6HW97fatrUgKQZV5wofT1WFvI/s320/Frankenfoot.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Frankenfoot, about 5 days post-op</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
After the surgery, I wasn't about to waste my time and money on more rushed, interrupted appointments with my surgeon (his appointments are 3 minutes long and mostly involve him talking to his assistants), so I took advantage of a friend's student status and downloaded all the relevant rehab articles listed in this review, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4823352/">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4823352/</a>. It immediately became clear that there is a vast range of opinions from surgeons on the appropriate rehab program for this surgery. Everything from immediate weight bearing to 8 weeks in a cast was on the table! I went with a protocol that fell in the middle of the options, which was:<br />
<br />
--2 weeks in hard splint<br />
--Staples out at 2 weeks<br />
--If you're having this surgery done: ask for stitches rather than staples!! I would say as much<br />
as 50% of my pain in those first two weeks was from the lovely feeling that is 26 bits of metal<br />
digging into the area around a recent stab wound.<br />
--Dorsiflexion/plantar flexion stretching exercises starting at 2 weeks<br />
--Partial weight bearing in a walker boot from 2.5 weeks, starting VERY lightly with just a few toes on the floor and progressing extremely gradually as tolerated<br />
--Full weight bearing when tolerated<br />
--Standard physical therapy range of motion and strengthening exercises starting from 6 weeks<br />
--Running on an alter-G treadmill <br />
--Back to regular running no earlier than 12 weeks but potentially more like 14-16<br />
--Plenty of sleep<br />
--Lots of protein and very little sugar (high glucose diet seems to impair tendon healing in rats, and it certainly won't hurt to try! <a href="https://www.salk.at/DMS/41598_2017_Article_700_1920815.pdf">https://www.salk.at/DMS/41598_2017_Article_700_1920815.pdf</a>)<br />
--Restricted eating window and coconut oil to encourage BHB production, which may have an anti-inflammatory effect: <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25686106/">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25686106/</a>. My hypothesis was that this would give me the benefits of a ketogenic diet without the increase in cortisol I would get if I actually went on a ketogenic diet.<br />
<br />
This all went reasonably well for the first 5 weeks, with plenty of bad days mixed in but overall it was a steady upward trend. I did have a deviation from the plan though: my walker boot, which I had been using for the metatarsal fracture, was very painful for the newly-repaired tendon. I experimented a bit and found that a compression sock + ankle brace + wide-foot running shoe + running insole actually felt much better and more stable than the boot, so I switched to that early in week 3. This may or may not have been a mistake...<br />
<br />
By early in week 4 I was walking with two crutches and with about 50% of normal weight on my injured foot. Later in week 4 I progressed to walking with one crutch and felt strong enough to try a few steps unaided. They felt fine, and I did maybe 20 steps in intervals of 5 at a time, although the next day my foot was quite sore so I went back to two crutches and tried to generally stay off my foot.<br />
<br />
Then things took a turn for the worse. Divesh and I were headed to India for a week, and my foot was not pleased with two days of crutching around airports and the long flight time. When we got to India, I took a day completely off any weight-bearing. On the second day, I went back to walking with two crutches--and it did not go well at all. My foot developed a raw, stabbing pain that evening and it was so painful that I couldn't sleep through it. The next day was about the same. It eventually calmed down to a more manageable pain level, but something is clearly different than it was during the first 5 weeks.<br />
<br />
And that is why this is only part 1...I'm currently booked in to see a different surgeon, one who has just had an impressive result with my runner friend Diana's complex ankle repair surgery, in a few days to discuss my options for where to go from here. I'm interested to hear whether he thinks it's possible and/or worthwhile to reverse the tenodesis and repair with an autograft or allograft instead (so far I've had conflicting information on whether or not this is possible; a 2014 case report says it was done but a very experienced surgeon in this area discussed it with me via email and said he doesn't think it can be done). I'm also obviously keen to hear what he thinks may have happened to the current repair and whether or not there's any way of determining in the near future if the repair failed.<br />
<br />
For now I've bought a different style of walker boot and I'm back to almost zero weight bearing. I'll write part 2 when I've got an idea of where I go from here!</div>
Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-38306453368295736322017-07-14T11:27:00.000-07:002017-07-14T11:29:59.718-07:00And then there were two? Magnesium, cortisol, insomnia, and athletes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have been having trouble sleeping. I first had insomnia for 18 days in April. It was the worst experience of my life with any kind of illness; the mental trauma of being utterly exhausted but unable to sleep, every single night without respite, was worse than anything I've ever experienced with physical injuries, including having to take 9 months off of running for an ankle injury. So when the insomnia reappeared in late June, I knew I had to get it resolved as soon as possible.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZTSsh8OF8ExWdy_s0UhPXYTw4jk5xvj2WWyh6Xp7vUCsLWiSbWY-Zyu2pD7yW9stsYUb_7QjwiMYHRAzTUh-TQHvvu8J5v85ZtzxQXMUmEzFDo-cmPVxU6osYR1ryHFxA5eSJUR3zYQ8/s1600/moon+in+vermont.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="904" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZTSsh8OF8ExWdy_s0UhPXYTw4jk5xvj2WWyh6Xp7vUCsLWiSbWY-Zyu2pD7yW9stsYUb_7QjwiMYHRAzTUh-TQHvvu8J5v85ZtzxQXMUmEzFDo-cmPVxU6osYR1ryHFxA5eSJUR3zYQ8/s320/moon+in+vermont.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Google searches for athletes' personal experiences with insomnia brought me the horror stories of <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/villanova-distance-runner-bobby-curtis-battles-insomnia-hopes-qualify-london-olympics-article-1.141188" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: black;">Bobby Curtis</span></b></a> and <a href="http://www.runnersworld.com/health/marathon-runner-tera-moody-has-insomnia" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: black;">Tera Moody</span></b></a> (don't click on those links if you think your insomnia might be made worse by anxiety about not sleeping!) but other than that, the sum total of anecdotal information was essentially a few forum posts by athletes saying they were having trouble sleeping and wondering if anyone else had had the same issue. There were virtually never any real answers or any follow-up from the athletes themselves. Relevant journal articles are out there, but they took a fair bit of time to collate into anything useful.<br />
<br />
Given the difficulty I had finding information on the subject, I thought I'd provide some details on what happened with my insomnia and what I've learned along the way, in the hopes that this will be useful to someone else going through the same struggle.<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">My insomnia</span></b><br />
<b><br /></b>I had what is apparently termed sleep maintenance insomnia. I could fall asleep easily at bedtime but I would wake up about 4 hours later. As the April period of insomnia wore on, this got worse and I started waking up only 2 to 3 hours after going to sleep. When I woke up I would feel almost instantly wide awake and my heart rate would be racing. If I managed to relax, I would sometimes start feeling sleepy again in about an hour, but absolutely nothing, including the sleeping pills that I eventually tried, would get me to actually fall back asleep.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Timeline</span></b><br />
<b><br /></b>
There is maybe no way to make this part *not* super boring, but I think a few things about the timing of the insomnia may be relevant, so here goes...<br />
<br />
--April: Training block with lots of hillwork in and around Atlanta. Mostly went really well.<br />
<br />
April 4 and 5--training diary says I felt awful and took two days off<br />
<br />
April 8--first night of insomnia, which would continue every night until April 26ish<br />
<br />
April 8 and 9--did two hard runs; felt fine<br />
<br />
April 9 to 21--ran very little as the insomnia got worse and worse<br />
<br />
April 22--raced a hilly 50k<br />
<br />
April 23--overseas flight<br />
<br />
April 24--slept 7 hours (sleeping pill aided...) after being awake for 36 hours<br />
<br />
April 26--first night of truly normal sleep<br />
<br />
Month of May--normal sleep; bits of hard training in cooler climate interspersed with having a sinus infection and not being able to run<br />
<br />
May 26--hard 24 hour run in the mountains<br />
<br />
May 27 to June 23--sinus infection; didn't run at all except for a couple of 10-20 minute jogs<br />
<br />
June 26--started training again with a VERY easy week, although I was in Atlanta and it was about 90 degrees every day.<br />
<br />
June 30--first night of Round 2 insomnia<br />
<br />
July 1 and 2--only managed 4 hours of sleep<br />
<br />
July 3--started taking magnesium supplements (more info below); also stayed up all night to try to force better sleep the night after<br />
<br />
July 4-6--normal sleep but took diphenhydramine at bedtime<br />
<br />
July 7 and onwards (so far!)--basically normal sleep without any diphenhydramine, although I do still tend to wake up once for a couple of minutes in the middle of the night.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Treatments I tried on round 1 (April, 18 days til normal sleep returned)</span></b><br />
<br />
In no particular order:<br />
<br />
-No caffeine the entire period, including cutting out chocolate<br />
-No computer use after dinner<br />
-Blackout curtains for the bedroom<br />
-After waking up in the middle of the night, getting out of bed and doing some mindless task. Only worked once, on day 16.<br />
-After waking up in the middle of the night, staying in bed and trying to relax, including listening to talks or meditation podcasts. Never worked.<br />
-Melatonin, which I had only used about twice in my life previously, both at bedtime and after waking up in the middle of the night. This did actually work on one night--I woke up in the middle of the night, took 3(?) mg melatonin, and got back to sleep and slept for one hour after taking it. It didn't work any of the other times I tried it.<br />
-5-hydroxyryptophan at bedtime<br />
-"Lightweight" sleeping pills with the antihistamine diphenhydramine, which is <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24722664" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: black;">possibly not detrimental to sleep quality</span></b></a>, after waking up in the middle of the night. Made me extremely sleepy but I couldn't fall asleep.<br />
-Days 12 and 13: 600mg of phosphatidyl serine (a phospholipid which <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2503954/" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><b>potentially lowers cortisol</b></span></a>) about an hour before bedtime. Didn't work on either of these two nights.<br />
-Days 14-18 and onward for another week: 300mg of phosphatidyl serine about an hour before bedtime; dosage lowered after I read a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10253890410001728379" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: black;">study suggesting any potential effect wouldn't happen if the dosage were too high</span></b></a>. Didn't help on days 14 to 18 but perhaps the cumulative effect of taking it since day 12 finally kicked in on day 18...??<br />
-Days 14-18 and onward for another week: 200 to 300 mg per day of magnesium supplement in the form of a dimagnesium malate tablet. Didn't help on days 14 to 18 but potential cumulative effect??<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Treatments I tried on round 2 (June/July; 5 to 7 days til normal sleep returned)</span></b><br />
<br />
-Starting on day 2, magnesium supplementation. About 200mg a day of powdered magnesium citrate and another 200mg of dimagnesium malate tablet (hedging my bets!)<br />
-Also starting on day 2, 300mg of phosphatidyl serine one hour before bedtime<br />
<br />
I should also say, I didn't cut back on running at all during round 2. In fact I increased my training load slightly.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">So, what's going on?</span></b><br />
<br />
The fact that I was able to see much more rapid improvement to the insomnia on round 2 while simultaneously maintaining or increasing my training load suggests that overtraining is not the cause.<br />
<br />
It's also looking like psychological stress is not the cause. In April, my insomnia didn't go away once I had run the race I was training for. It also didn't come back when my big May event approached. And in June, when it did come back, I was in a fairly low-stress period with no races at all in the near future.<br />
<br />
Another thing that stands out to me is that this is now two rounds of insomnia which went away 4 to 6 days after I started taking both phosphatidyl serine and magnesium. This could be a total coincidence, or it could be a placebo effect, or it could mean that one or both of these were the cause of the improvement. Without much other information to go on, it has made me move magnesium deficiency or wonky nighttime cortisol (either rising too early in the nighttime or rising too high) into position as the two prime suspects. Magnesium deficiency in particular makes an interesting candidate since it could also explain why it took my body two months to kill off a relatively minor respiratory infection (magnesium deficiency may <a href="http://www.jle.com/fr/revues/mrh/e-docs/update_on_the_relationship_between_magnesium_and_exercise_272229/article.phtml?tab=texte" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: black;">amplify decreased immune responses</span></b></a> induced by strenuous exercise) this May and June. <br />
<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Why it might be magnesium deficiency</span></b><br />
<b><br /></b>
When I first considered magnesium deficiency as a possible cause of my insomnia, I wasn't too convinced. Magnesium deficiency is very common in the US population as a whole, but my diet is full of magnesium-rich foods--I eat a lot of leafy greens, oats, fish, and dark chocolate--and hardly any processed food. I figured that if anyone were going to be deficient in magnesium, it probably wouldn't be me.<br />
<br />
I changed my mind on this after doing some reading. First, there are many reasons why people in general can be deficient despite getting a sufficient amount of dietary magnesium. The <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4455825/" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><b>interaction with other minerals</b></span></a>, such as calcium, can decrease absorption. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4455825/" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><b>Gut inflammation</b></span></a> or other gut problems can also decrease absorption. You, or specifically your kidneys, can also be guilty of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4455825/" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><b>magnesium wasting</b></span></a>.<br />
<br />
Second are several athlete-specific factors. There is some evidence that <a href="http://www.jle.com/fr/revues/mrh/e-docs/update_on_the_relationship_between_magnesium_and_exercise_272229/article.phtml?tab=texte" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: black;">prolonged endurance exercise increases the body's magnesium requirement</span></b></a>. This may be due to increased sweat and urinary losses. In particular, large amounts of magnesium may be lost when <a href="http://jn.nutrition.org/content/79/4/407.long" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: black;">exercising in a hot and humid environment</span></b></a>. I live in Atlanta... Second, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/10987001_Magnesium_and_Exercise" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: black;">athletes participating in sports that require weight control often consume less</span></b></a> than even the recommended daily allowance of magnesium, which itself is most likely too low for the general population, not to mention for athletes. So...prolonged endurance exercise, running in a hot and humid environment, and dieting? Sounds a bit familiar!<br />
<br />
But does magnesium deficiency lead to insomnia? It's commonly said that it does, although I don't think the actual evidence of a connection between the two is amazingly strong. However, it is definitely looking possible that one exists.<br />
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In <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3703169/" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: black;">one study</span></b></a>, magnesium supplementation was associated with statistically significant increases in sleep time and with marginal improvement of early morning awakening. One possible mechanism for a connection between magnesium and insomnia is that <a href="http://www.jle.com/fr/revues/mrh/e-docs/platelet_serotonin_and_magnesium_concentrations_in_suicidal_and_non_suicidal_depressed_patients_296635/article.phtml?tab=texte" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: black;">magnesium is an essential cofactor</span></b></a> for the activation of tryptophan hydrolase and for the binding of serotonin to its receptor. In at least <a href="http://www.jle.com/fr/revues/mrh/e-docs/platelet_serotonin_and_magnesium_concentrations_in_suicidal_and_non_suicidal_depressed_patients_296635/article.phtml?tab=texte" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: black;">one study</span></b></a>, in healthy individuals there was a positive correlation between platelet magnesium and serotonin concentrations (this was not the case for patients with depression). There is also the suggestion that magnesium plays a role in sleep regulation through its function as an agonist of gamma-Aminobutyric acid (GABA), which is involved in sleep.<br />
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Unfortunately it's not an easy proposition to simply get tested for magnesium deficiency. The most common version of the test is a serum magnesium test, but since only about 1% of the body's magnesium stores are found in serum and red blood cells, the magnesium content of these is <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1855626/" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><b>often not representative</b></span></a> of total magnesium status. There is a magnesium retention test, which tracks changes in serum magnesium and excretion following oral loading of magnesium, but one researcher notes that this test is <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4455825/" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><b>lacking in standardization</b></span></a>, plus it appears to me that the results would be affected by anything that causes your kidneys to waste magnesium.<br />
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At this point, if I had to place a bet with only the information I have, it would be on magnesium deficiency as the cause of my insomnia. If I were allowed two guesses as to the cause, they would be magnesium deficiency or wonky cortisol. I'm not willing to risk losing any more sleep by taking only the magnesium supplement or only the phosphatidyl serine next time this happens, sorry! If I ever end up with any reason to think that neither of these were the cause and that the real cause was Option C, I'll update this blog. Though I *really* hope I never have the need to investigate any further...</div>
Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-1887727526484092102017-06-05T07:33:00.000-07:002017-06-05T08:13:03.723-07:00Charlie Ramsay Round report<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The Charlie Ramsay Round in a nutshell, for anyone who's not familiar with it: a 56+ mile loop on Scottish mountain terrain with 28,500 feet of ascent and the same amount of descent, with a time limit of 24 hours for an "official" finish. The round takes in 23 Munros (originally 24 but one was demoted following a survey!), which are peaks that are more than 3,000 feet high. Most people have support runners on the various sections, but there aren't many easy access points to the loop so support can be somewhat limited. Compared to England's Bob Graham round, which I did <a href="https://aliciasrunningandracing.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/bob-graham-round-success.html" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: black;">last year</span></b></a>, the terrain is generally rockier and there are more sections of semi-scrambling. And for my American friends, the loop is generally not on "trails" like we think of them; there are some sections with a path but you are mostly running on rock or grass. When I started my round, there were 99 previous finishers, only 5 of them women.</div>
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You can go either clockwise or anticlockwise, and I chose anticlockwise for the aesthetic value of ending on Ben Nevis. The round is essentially four parts: first the Mamores, a difficult section of 10 peaks on mostly rocky terrain, second, a largely flat six miles on the valley floor which nevertheless involves a fair bit of bog and thus isn't as fast as you would think, third, a circumnavigation of Loch Treig and its five Munros, and fourth, the most difficult sections of the round, the Grey Corries, Aonachs, Carn Mor Dearg, and Ben Nevis.</div>
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The crux of this report is no doubt going to be keeping the writing from being as long as the round itself. That is as good a reason as any to gloss over the first few hours of my run, which can be summed up as way too hot, humid, windy, and slow. Despite working much harder than I would have liked to, I was 10 minutes behind schedule by the second peak and only a few minutes better than that by the third. My first thought was to avoid pushing any harder so as not to risk a blowup later on. My second thought was that there was no point carrying on at a pace that wasn't going to get me to the finish in less than 24 hours. I upped the effort level significantly and gained my 10 minutes back, plus a couple to spare, by the seventh peak, An Gearanach.</div>
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I knew I was in dangerous territory, working at what was essentially an effort level that I could reasonably expect to maintain for only about 9 hours. But getting back on schedule was a massive morale boost, which in turn seemed to reduce the amount of effort needed to maintain my pace. A further boost just afterwards was heading up Na Gruagaichean, which is my favorite peak of the whole round, with its impressive views, friendly descent, and the fantastic ridge running that comes after it.</div>
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The rest of the Mamores went reasonably well, at least relative to how my run had been going so far, and I had good company from Jim for part of the time. On top of the last summit in the Mamores, Sgurr Eilde Mor, I even ran into Charlie Ramsay's neighbor! She took a quick photo--I was nervous about time and in a hurry to get going--and then it was off for the big descent.</div>
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From Sgurr Eilde Mor it's a big, steep descent to the valley floor and then there is the easy section to Corrour. It didn't feel very easy on this particular day but I tried to ignore that fact and concentrate on what was coming up next. Which was...</div>
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Carrie and Giles! And Chuck, who was off doing some proper running when this photo was taken. I had been starving when I made it to Corrour, but I tried to spend as little time as possible there and instead ate on the move during the nice gradual walk up Beinn na Lap. It took me all of about two seconds to steal Giles' delicious hummus wrap, an improvement over my previous best of waiting roughly an hour to steal his food during my Bob Graham. </div>
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After some good food and a lot of fun catching up with everyone (Giles had done the Bob Graham just two weeks earlier so it was a great surprise to even get to see him), it was suddenly a completely different day--not a day full of heat, suffering, and difficult running but rather just some enjoyable time out in the hills with friends. We all managed to make it up Chno Dearg, which I thought was the hardest hill of the round and which had apparently been the scene of more than one relationship "incident" in the past, in one piece and ahead of schedule by a solid 10 minutes, a cushion that we maintained coming into the next support point at Fersit.</div>
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I had a longer stop at Fersit in order to try to get some more substantial food and drink down before the night section. Well, maybe slightly more truthfully, I knew there would be two kinds of cake at Fersit and I wanted plenty of time to sample both. Sadly for my weight, my friends Dave and Claire are both expert bakers... And Helen had made me a coffee and Beth had made me pasta; total support stop luxury! </div>
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I left Fersit with Tim and Beth plus their border collies Pip and May. I had first met Tim and the collies while we were supporting Meghan Hicks on her Bob Graham round, and I had watched in amazement then as Pip navigated BG leg 4 without any help. It turned out that Pip knows the Ramsay Round as well, so Tim and Beth may want to start hiring him out... Oh and Meghan, after your BG I found that Oreo that I tried for so long to feed you. As a joke, I brought it on the second half of the Ramsay with me, but I never ended up eating it so it is now one very well-traveled Oreo.</div>
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It doesn't really get any better than this--great company, warm sunny evening, and views in all directions. I had some nausea for the first time that day but other than that I was thoroughly enjoying myself.</div>
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After the Easains you drop right down into a col below the Grey Corries. This marked the end of what I had seen of the route; all of the remainder, except the descent from the Ben, was going to be new to me.</div>
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It was slightly intimidating setting off on the steep climb out of the col with the sun going down and with no idea of what lay ahead. Tim and I had picked up Pete as a second support runner, though, and with both Tim and Pete having finished the Ramsay Round themselves, I knew I was in good hands. Plus Pete brought coffee, which tasted delicious even if I did throw it back up every time...</div>
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I wish I could say that I could have made it to the finish in under 24 hours even without Tim and Pete, but I can't. Pete took care of the navigation while Tim did an impressive job of keeping me fed and hydrated despite my reluctance to accept most food. The nausea was fully set in and all I wanted to do was (a) stop eating, and (b) sleep, neither of which would have been conducive to a sub-24 hour finish. We spent the first part of the night a little bit ahead of schedule but quickly became just behind schedule, which shortly turned into a fair bit behind schedule. </div>
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There was also plenty of pure physical difficulty in the terrain on that last section. The grass slope leading up to the gully on Aonach Beag was so steep that Tim showed me his gorilla crawl technique. I remember finding it vaguely hilarious that it was the middle of the night and I was out there literally crawling up a hill in the dark, but I was too tired to laugh.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Unsuccessfully trying to get Tim and Pete to let me have a nap at the top of the Aonach Beag gully</td></tr>
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Aonach Mor was a much easier ascent ("like running in the Peak District" Tim told me, fighting words for me as a former Sheffield runner!) but the descent down to the col before Carn Mor Dearg was brutal and by the time we made it down, I felt like I had absolutely nothing left. But we were also about 20 to 25 minutes behind schedule and there were only two peaks to go. I knew this was it--if I didn't turn things around immediately, I would have no chance of making up enough time to finish in under 24 hours.</div>
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I would love to be specific here and write about how I managed to go from a semi-zombie state to making fairly good time. Sadly I've got no idea. It certainly wasn't more food, and I didn't have any caffeine. I suppose the lesson is that sometimes even the boring approach of simply trying harder can work. Whatever it was, we arrived at the summit of the last hill, Ben Nevis, more or less on schedule. It was quite a special moment when we topped out in the early morning light of 4:30 a.m.</div>
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At this point Tim and Pete were reasonably convinced that I could make it down to the finish in the remaining 1 hour 15 minutes. I was not so convinced. By UK standards I am terrible at descents, and for me, a rocky/grassy 4+ miles with over 4,000 feet of elevation loss, coming at the end of 24 hours on the go, is a tall order. I was getting more and more stressed by the minute as we started down from the summit. As we went through the only remaining snow patch, disaster struck--Pete took a scary fall and hit his head. The result was alarming:</div>
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But I was relieved to see Pete stand back up and to hear him speak without any obvious signs of concussion. It only took a couple of seconds for Tim and Pete to assure me that they had everything under control and that I should keep running for the finish. Pete quickly decided he could make it down on his own and sent Tim off after me. By this point I had become convinced that I wasn't running fast enough to make the 24-hour cutoff, and I think Tim was starting to share that view. He took the lead and sped up, with my only job to follow behind at the same pace. It's amazing how much better you can become at running over grass and wet rock when the alternative is brutal failure at something you've been wanting to do for a year!</div>
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In the end I needn't have worried quite so much--the youth hostel suddenly came into view sooner than I expected it to. We made it to the end in 23:46. Project for the year = done!</div>
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Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-14659527358621214822017-02-26T12:02:00.000-08:002017-02-26T12:29:10.100-08:00I climbed my project<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On my most recent trip to Margalef, I finally climbed my project. It was a route called Voladerum, and it was my first 7c (5.12d). It was also the result of a multi-year saga. One day back in the winter of 2008, I was on a short trip to Margalef with my friend Lucy. It was a cold week, with some snow and probably a bit of rain, and one day we woke up to find that virtually everything we wanted to climb was wet. There was one roadside 7c at Laboratorio that was dry though, and Lucy suggested I try it. <br />
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I thought the idea of trying a 7c was insanity: I had only climbed one 7b and no 7b+s, and this route in particular was the exact opposite of my style. I liked long endurance routes with no especially hard moves, and this route was short and bouldery, with a difficult crux straight off the ground. It wasn't even short-person friendly, unlike most of the routes in Margalef, which generally favor the short. But I decided I might as well give it a shot. On my first try I could do...none of the hard moves. Zero. I played around on it until I was exhausted and then came back down, assuming that was the beginning and end of my 7c career. <br />
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But the next day, for some reason, I decided to have one more go. Suddenly I was able to do not just one but several of the moves. From then, I was hooked.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Working on the upper half</td></tr>
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I've been back to Margalef many times since 2008. For several of those trips, I wasn't nearly strong enough to even try my route, since after 2008 I mostly stopped climbing and started running instead. On one of the trips, I was able to make some progress on the route but then couldn't replicate any of that success on the next trip. While I was enjoying working on the moves, I wasn't convinced that I'd ever actually climb the route.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sometimes (okay, most of the time) the belayers thought it was hopeless too</td></tr>
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The big breakthrough came in August of 2015. My patience for merely working the route started to wear thin and I started to enter the mindset of wanting to actually do it. My friend Dave and I scheduled a trip to Margalef for November, and I decided it was time to start doing some training. Not just going to the climbing wall once a week like I had been doing for the past few years, but real, focused training. <br />
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This new mindset led me to search for videos of my route on the internet, and I was lucky enough to find something on Vimeo. The climber in the video did the crux in the most bizarre way possible, but I filed the info away in the back of my mind, and when I got to Margalef and decided it was worth at least one try that way, it worked. The crux was still desperate for me, but at least with the new method my success rate was higher than with any other method. The rest of the route started coming together slowly; after the crux there is a steep, burly section followed by an upper half that is only about 7a but a consistent 7a, with no real rest, and the moves didn't always have an obvious method so it took several goes to work out the best sequences.<br />
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My best effort of the November 2015 trip saw me get through the crux and the burly section but run out of gas soon afterwards. It was the same story on the January 2016 trip, although the crux had gotten a bit easier due to some winter bouldering on a burly roof problem. Dave diagnosed me with a lack of upper body strength, as well as fingers that could do with a bit of strengthening, and sent me home with a prescription for pullups and fingerboard work.<br />
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It was an agonizing wait until the next opportunity to go back, which was November 2016. I was determined not to forget my hard-learned sequences, so before I left Margalef in January 2016 I made sure to take photos of all of the hard sections, and when I got home I rehearsed the moves in my head every night before falling asleep.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My phone's gallery is still filled with fine works of photography such as this. This one is the crux--the route is almost fully horizontal here.</td></tr>
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The autumn of 2016 was an even more focused version of the training from 2015. I made myself a written training schedule, complete with several sessions a week of fingerboarding, pullups, core strength work, bouldering, and endurance circuits. I played around with my diet, too, and managed to lose a little weight.<br />
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It all worked. My first day in Margalef, I did the crux first try. I was so surprised that I instantly forgot how to do all of the upcoming moves and fell off. The next time on the route, I got through the crux, through the burly section, and partway through the easier section. I had been having trouble remembering my sequence for the easier section, so I spent a full session on it, working the moves over and over again.<br />
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Then I took a rest day. And bought a bottle of wine, just in case it should be needed for celebrations the next day before the shop opened in the evening.<br />
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My project is in the sun all day until about 5pm, and it was far too hot to climb in the sun that trip, so I had to endure a nerve-wracking wait for my try at the redpoint. I distinctly remember being so nervous that I thought I might throw up, and I told Dave that I was never having another project again, so that I wouldn't have to go through this another time. Just before 5pm I headed to the cave at the far lefthand end of Laboratorio for my usual warmup, and then it was time to climb. By this time of the evening the weather was virtually perfect, crisp and dry with a nice cool breeze.<br />
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I pulled on and redpointed the route first try. It felt unreal--kind of like a dream and kind of like an out-of-body experience. It also felt easy. I was expecting a big fight, especially when trying to clip the chains (a mini-crux for the short), but the fight never came.<br />
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I felt complete happiness sitting at the top of the route, trying to take in what had just happened, and then I felt complete sadness at the realization that it was my last time on the route. <br />
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There was nothing left to do but strip the route, go home, and drink wine...and find the next project. And for the next one, I'll know that if I'm not failing as much as I failed on Voladerum, I'm not trying something hard enough.</div>
Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-77402205153642539922016-08-02T07:06:00.000-07:002016-08-02T11:21:10.776-07:00Long Trail 2, Alicia 0<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I had been eagerly awaiting a return to the Long Trail all year for another unsupported attempt (i.e. carrying all my own gear and food from the start, with no resupplies or accepting food from others). My plan was the same as last year--stay on the same schedule used by Travis Wildeboer, the unsupported record holder, until the last day or two and then try to finish a bit faster.<br />
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<b>Day 1: Canadian border to Spruce Ledge Camp, mile 31.3</b><br />
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This year I had my mom with me for the trip to Vermont. She dropped me off at the start of the approach trail at 5am Saturday. It took a little over half an hour to get to the start of the Long Trail itself, and I spent a few minutes admiring the view into Canada before setting off on my run at 5:42 a.m.<br />
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It only took a few miles before I noticed that something was very different this year compared to last year: I was in much better shape! The first 120 miles of the Long Trail are extremely technical even by UK standards, but doing the Bob Graham just two weeks previously had left me significantly fitter for all the hills, and my first day on the Long Trail this year was a completely different experience because of it. Last year I remember feeling like I might not even make it to the end of day 1, let alone the end of the run; this year I wasn't even particularly tired by the end of day 1. <br />
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I also went much faster this year! In fact, I arrived at the stopping point two and a half hours early and had to decide whether or not to press on to the next shelter. In the end I decided it made more sense to stay and relax at the shelter I had planned to stop at (which was the shelter where the unsupported record holder had also stayed), since it was unlikely that I would be able to go any further than planned on day 2. Although I was somewhat stressed about wasting a few hours of daylight, it was fun to sit at the shelter and talk to the other hikers, who were all northbound thruhikers and so were nearly finished with their hikes. <br />
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<b>Day 2: Spruce Ledge Camp to Smuggler's Notch picnic area, mile 64.2</b><br />
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I completely failed to fall asleep during the first night, which was a seriously disappointing setback since I spent nearly seven (!) hours at the shelter. Around 2am I eventually admitted defeat and set off on day 2's miles. Everything again went smoothly despite the lack of sleep, although I did waste 45 minutes getting lost just before the start of the climb up Whiteface (there is a brief section on a gravel road and unfortunately a logging company had just been through and chopped down a tree which had had white blazes on it marking the turn onto the trail--fortunately I had been here before and realized after a while that I had been on the road far too long). Whiteface and then Madonna Peak were every bit as hard and unpleasant as I had remembered them, but this year I had saved up a special treat for myself for after the Whiteface summit--a McDonald's burger! I felt horribly guilty eating it in front of the other hiker who was at the Whiteface shelter, but I had been eagerly awaiting it for several hours and couldn't hold back any longer. <br />
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I again arrived at the end of the day earlier than planned, but I did notice that one of my feet was pretty bloody from some sores that I had gotten the day before, from all the mud and grit that had been constantly getting in my shoes. I washed my feet off in the stream at the Smuggler's Notch picnic area, spent some time taping over the bleeding parts of each foot, and then settled in for a repeat of my luxury accommodation in the composting toilet block. It felt like absolute bliss and I slept soundly for 7 hours.<br />
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<b>Day 3: Smuggler's Notch picnic area to Montclair Glen shelter, mile 96.8</b><br />
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Putting my shoes on in the morning was a painful task. With the humidity being nearly 100% virtually the entire time I was on the trail, my foot wounds weren't healing at all, and neither tape nor bandages would stay in place over them, which meant my socks were constantly sticking to the sores and then tearing them open even more as I moved my foot. However, the first main event on day 3 is the climb up Mt. Mansfield, which is still my favorite part of the entire trail, and that did cheer me up. I stopped more often than I probably should have for photos...<br />
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After Mansfield there is a long runnable section and then several big uphills, which did start to feel like hard work given the high heat and humidity. I stopped for a snack break at the Puffer shelter and turned on my phone to see if I had any reception. I did have a little and was startled to receive a text letting me know that my friend Nicole had died unexpectedly. It was a lot to take in at that moment; at least I knew that she would have enjoyed the view from Puffer:<br />
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After another long runnable section, it was time for a crucial part of the run: I needed to get up and over the Camel's Hump (large rocky peak) before the end of the day in order to stay on pace for the record, and the weather was looking threatening. I climbed up as fast as I could, getting more and more worried as dark clouds moved in. But I got lucky, and the bad weather stayed to each side of the hump rather than on it. The summit itself actually had gorgeous sunshine, quite the change from the dark and mist I got last time I was on it!<br />
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Getting over the hump and down to the Montclair Glen shelter before dark was a big turning point in how I saw my chances of success on the run. This day had been the hardest day of the week in terms of both ascent and terrain, and it required the most luck with weather. From here on, in theory, I had a much better chance of achieving the record...<br />
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<b>Day 4: Montclair Glen shelter to Emily Proctor shelter, mile 129.2</b><br />
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It was another almost sleepless night; I got just a couple of hours before the roasting temperatures and noise level in the shelter drove me out onto the trail. I will admit that I absolutely hated the first five miles of trail on day 4. It was nearly constantly technical, and not in a nice way--lots of squeezing between/under/over large boulders and trying to follow a very faint trail as it wound in between the trees. I was also exhausted from the lack of sleep and the hard day yesterday. When I finally finished the bad five miles, I decided to stop for a quick nap; it was too cold to sleep much but I did feel a little better when I set off again. Not much later I made it to an important milestone: Appalachian Gap, the place where I had had to bail following a hailstorm last year. I tried to quickly power through the big hills on the south side of the gap (they are *quite* big, it turns out!) and by early afternoon I was at Mt. Abraham, the last of the rocky summits.<br />
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When you cross the road on the other side of Mt. Abraham, the trail abruptly changes, so much so that it's like a completely different trail. I imagine the trail builders thinking something along the lines of "Ha, that northern bit of trail was a good joke, right? We can't believe you went along with it for 118 miles! Here's some normal trail now." It was now very similar to the Superior Hiking Trail, with more hills. If I'd been feeling stronger, I could have made much better time here, but I was seriously dragging and had to keep having breaks for foot care adjustments. I did manage to arrive at the Emily Proctor shelter before dark, though, and spent a very nice evening talking with a southbound thruhiker who was staying there.<br />
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<b>Day 5: Emily Proctor shelter to campsite, 165.2</b><br />
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This was one of the easier days in terms of terrain and ascent but not in terms of pain levels; my feet were getting pretty raw and the constant pain was wearing on my mental state. In comparison to all the sections of trail I'd done so far, this entire day was filled with easy trail, so it was just a question of forcing myself to keep moving quickly and to still do some running. Towards the end of the day I did have some improvement, and the last 10 miles went fairly well. I arrived at my campsite just before dark and enjoyed the luxury of a bath in a stream AND a change of clothes--I felt reborn! There was nobody else at the site so it was quiet and peaceful, and I slept well on a comfortable pine needle bed under my bivy bag.<br />
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<b>Day 6: Campsite to mile 201</b><br />
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Day 5 was the first time I had ended the day behind Travis; he had done a further 7 miles that day to get to the shelter at the top of Killington Peak. I was (a) too tired for that and (b) not convinced I'd be able to get any sleep in the colder air at the top of the peak, so I had decided to stop early. But I knew I needed to have a great day on day 6 to make up for it. I set the alarm for 2:15 a.m. and was out on the trail at 2:45. The night section was slow since I'd been having trouble with my headtorch (can that design trend where you have to tap the side of the lights to increase or decrease the output PLEASE stop soon...) and I couldn't see where I was going very well. But by the time I was descending Killington, things were going much better. I was pleased to discover that my legs were able to run just fine, and I had had some more ibuprofen* so my feet were coping relatively well.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tired but happy legs</td></tr>
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I was pleased with my pace throughout the 20 miles south of Killington; at the top of Killington, I was four hours behind Travis, while 20 miles later I was only between half an hour to an hour behind him. By the time I got to mile 185 or so, I was starting to believe for the first time that I was going to at least finish, regardless of whether that was ahead of or behind the record. <br />
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But...I was running out of ibuprofen. I had one left, and it would be at least 24 hours before I could expect to finish. As I approached 8 hours from my last dose, the pain spiked. It was a swift downfall from here. There was no medical reason I couldn't have kept going to the finish; there was only a little bit of green in the pus that was oozing out of my feet, so I wasn't worried about a major infection setting in, and I certainly wasn't doing any longterm damage. I simply couldn't handle another 24 to 30 hours of that level of pain, especially after the previous four days of pain. I left the trail at mile 201. To the nice girl with the Senegal FC shirt who stopped to ask if I was okay, thanks for your help in finding my way off the trail.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The primary culprit in the foot pain stakes</td></tr>
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It's a harsh outcome for something that was actually largely a success--the training, food, and gear all worked perfectly. But even if I personally know that I achieved more last week than I did in, say, completing the Bob Graham, that doesn't show up in the final result of the run. I'm not sure I'll go back; it'll be a tough choice between wanting to polish off unfinished business versus wanting to do an event that I might enjoy a little more (carrying around a heavy pack and camping at night is not really my thing). If I do go back, however, I will definitely bring more ibuprofen!<br />
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*In general, it's true that taking ibuprofen during long runs can be dangerous. But I've got enough experience from running ultras that I know when it's okay to take some ibuprofen and when it's not. </div>
Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-78918736235843852342016-07-11T06:59:00.000-07:002016-07-11T06:59:11.176-07:00Bob Graham Round: Success!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
After a <a href="https://aliciasrunningandracing.blogspot.com/2014/06/bob-graham-round-close-but-no-cigar.html" target="_blank"><b>failed attempt in 2014</b></a> due largely to weather but also to a bad stomach, I went back for a second go at the Bob Graham Round in the UK. The BGR is not a race but a challenge; the goal is to complete a 66-mile circuit of 42 peaks in less than 24 hours. There are five legs to it, in the sense that you cross four roads where you can be met with more supplies. For an "official" completion, you need someone to witness you on the top of each peak, which means having support runners with you the entire way. The difficulty of the BGR lies in the navigation (summits in the Lake District are often in the clouds with little to no visibility, and even if you can see, the navigation isn't obvious), the ascent/descent (roughly 27,000 feet of elevation gain plus the same amount of descent), and the terrain. Very little of it is on what American runners would think of as a trail; the vast majority is grass, bogs, rock, scree, or a combination of the above.<br />
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I was more than a little stressed in the weeks leading up to my attempt this year. While I'm generally fairly relaxed about whether the outcome of a run is getting to the finish or not, preferring to focus on whether or not I've done my best to get ready for it, a BGR attempt is no easy thing to organize, considering the number of support runners and road crew involved. When you've finally managed to get all that into place, you definitely want to take advantage of the lucky opportunity to get it done.<br />
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I was also concerned about my fitness. In early June I was a support runner on Christine Holmes's successful round, and seeing how amazingly strong she was both impressed and worried me. I certainly never went up hills like she did when 8 hours into an event! I wasn't sure how I was going to get to that level in time. Fortunately, although the fitness improvements seemed impossibly slow at first, they came quicker and quicker later on, and with 10 days to go I had a confidence-boosting final long run on legs 3 and 4. I also had the benefit of some nice days out climbing, which made the run-up to the event far more fun.<br />
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If there wasn't enough stress in the few weeks before my start date, I got plenty more when the weather forecasts started coming out. It was pretty clear that a nasty front was moving in and that at some point in the day on my planned date there would be some serious wind (40 to 50mph on the summits was predicted) and rain. The day before, however, was looking pretty reasonable, with just a few hours of windy and rainy conditions in the morning and then an improving forecast throughout the day. I had a good strategy talk with my friend Dave, who was visiting to do some climbing, and we went through the various options. With two days to go, I made the call to move the start up by 24 hours. After help from several friends and about 6 hours on the internet and the phone, I managed to round up enough supporters to go on the earlier day. Several of them were friends who were already planning to support on the planned date and/or who took time off of work or rearranged their schedules to make it, which I can't thank them enough for. Others were people I had never even met before who were kind enough to help out--fantastic.<br />
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I didn't get much sleep the night before the run, not so much because I was too excited or nervous to sleep but because I simply couldn't finish all my packing and preparation in time to get to bed! The alarm clock at 1:45 a.m. came all too early. I ate breakfast and drove off towards the start, stopping at the place where I would cross a road 13 miles into the run, at the end of leg 1, to hide a box of food, water, and spare warm clothes in the woods. With such a minimal support crew, I didn't want to make anyone get up at the crack of dawn to come to that road crossing, so a hidden box seemed like the better option. I sent a text to my leg 2 supporters telling them where to find the box, and if all went well (which it did) they could just have everything ready by the time I got there.<br />
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Rob Allen had kindly agreed to start off with me. He wasn't sure how far he would go and whether he might in fact just do the whole round, so we each carried our own stuff for leg 1. <br />
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We got a nice surprise when we met at the Moot Hall at 3:20 a.m.--Paul Wilson, who I had briefly met during my 2014 attempt, came out to see us off. At 3:30, we departed for the big adventure. Leg 1 passed in a mostly pleasant blur. We had an enjoyable climb up the first peak, which is a long ascent but not very steep. And although we got caught in some serious wind and rain at the top, we came out of the cloud on the descent and had fairly decent conditions the rest of the leg. Well, decent weather conditions that is--the less said about the wet and boggy ground conditions the better! On the descent from Blencathra (leg 1's last peak) we were met by Paul, who took a really nice little video:<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OugtaJFOoKo&feature=share">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OugtaJFOoKo&feature=share</a><br />
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At the road crossing Kim, Rich, and Cat (who had rearranged their schedules and childcare to come out on the Friday instead of the Saturday!) were waiting to run leg 2 with me. I think I stopped for about 30 seconds to empty a few things out of my pack but we essentially took off straight away. The weather took a turn for the worse as we headed up the steep climb on Clough Head, but the wind and rain were just about bearable with heavy-duty waterproofs. Despite the persistently bad conditions and the ultra boggy ground, we made good time on this leg and I was thoroughly enjoying myself. I hadn't seen Kim for at least a year so it was also good just to catch up! I lost some time to clothes changes which were necessitated by the weather, but we still arrived at the end of leg 2 ahead of schedule and I was feeling great with plenty left in the tank, so all was well. <br />
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The Dunmail road crossing was manned by Dave, and although I was really happy to see him, I knew I had to fight the urge to stop and talk and instead had a quick change out of my waterproofs and pressed on up the steep Steel Fell. My support for leg 3 was Caroline and Giles, who I knew from a combination of the West Highland Way race and the Bandera 100k. They had saved me during my last-minute hunt for support crew when I couldn't find anyone for leg 3. I couldn't have been any luckier--I knew they were both super strong runners, plus Giles had been on leg 3 before so could help me with the navigation if needed.<br />
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I had been afraid of leg 3 as it's the hardest leg and also right in the middle of the round, but somehow it nearly all went well. My legs felt strong, my stomach was doing okay, and I was surprisingly hungry. True to Caroline's prediction, I was far more interested in the food they brought than in my own food, and I easily overcame my guilt at stealing their amazing falafel/feta/lettuce wraps. We made reasonably quick work of the lower level peaks and then it was time for the big rocky climb up Bowfell, which I had struggled on last time but which was actually fun this time (the way I had decided to go involves scrambling up a gully, which feels more like playtime than hard work). I did get us briefly lost in the mist coming off the summmit of Great End, but we got back on course with only maybe 10 minutes lost, and the rest of the leg, with some of the harder summits of the round, passed by without any issues. The scree descent to Wasdale was just as fun as I remembered it, and after we managed to cross the somewhat alarmingly high river, Caroline took off ahead to let the road crew know we were on our way.<br />
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The Wasdale road crossing was basically the same as the Dunmail one; I stopped to use the toilets but otherwise forced myself to run straight through with only a quick hug to Julie instead of stopping to chat like I wanted to. For leg 4, I knew I had Janson as an expert support runner (has he supported the most BGs of anyone out there...?) but my happy surprise at Wasdale was that Andy was also coming with. Andy was my secret weapon in 2014 with his fantastic support on leg 3, but this year he had a knee injury and didn't think he'd be able to run. He had also only arrived back in the UK from Japan at 9pm the night before!! <br />
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Janson set us a steady pace up Yewbarrow, one of the hardest climbs on the route, and we were at the top of it 45 minutes later. From there we made steady progress for about two more summits in good conditions.<br />
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Then the wheels started to come off. I had probably become a bit lax about my eating in the past few hours, and the lack of food combined with the hard effort for all those hours began to wear on me. I started feeling dizzy, which I've never had in an ultra before, and I had to work hard to stay upright. Andy and Janson were great and did everything they could, but things deteriorated steadily and by Kirk Fell, about two-thirds of the way through the leg, I was fully into death march mode. Janson demanded the running pack I was wearing, which I had been reluctant to give up because it had the GPS tracker in it, but he was right that I did feel a bit better without the pack on. I spent a fair bit of time whimpering at Andy, who was perfect with his steady support. We have resolved that at some point we're going to manage to go on a run together that doesn't involve brutal levels of pain and suffering...<br />
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Most of the rest of leg 4 was a bit of a blur, but I was at least able to enjoy the views we were getting as the sky cleared and it got to be dusk. Janson gave me a good pep talk about how I could still get a solid finishing time and how all was not lost, and we made reasonably good time between Great Gable and Honister, the last road crossing. It was starting to seem likely that I was going to make it to the finish. <br />
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I saw my excellent crew again at Honister, who had also been enjoying the beautiful evening...<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Julie and Jen. I love this picture.</td></tr>
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...and again with only a short stop, we set off on the fifth and final leg. For this leg I had Jen, a friend who had also supported me in 2014, plus in yet another great surprise, Andy said he would carry on with me on this leg. I also had two people I'd never met, Dougal and Les, generously come out to support the leg, so all in all I was feeling extremely pampered. I was in terrible shape though, throwing up and largely unable to eat or drink. I certainly wasn't the best company at this point, mumbling occasionally or grunting my assent when told to run an easy section. I knew I was lucky though; I was in great hands and we had a perfect night for a run. Dougal and Les seemed like lovely people and I'd love to meet them again sometime when I'm in a slightly better state!<br />
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I did wish I could enjoy the last few summits a bit more, but at least they passed by quickly. Soon enough we were on top of the last one, Robinson, stopping to savor the moment for a few seconds and then heading off for the brutal descent. Fortunately I had the benefit of Jen's navigation and we got to use her amazing descent route, which was far, far better than the regular method. I was being seriously slow and still throwing up, but at least I knew we were rapidly nearing the road. When we finally reached the road, I knew it was around 5 miles (exact distance was subject to debate with Les!) of relatively flat running back to Keswick. I summoned up the last of my energy and managed to start doing more running and less walking. Soon we were actually running much more than I had expected to, and with a couple of miles to go, I finally started to enjoy myself. I know there was a good conversation about scones, with some highly useful tips on quality scone locations, but I can't remember any of what was said so someone will have to remind me! (Though I'm not sure anywhere in the Lakes could beat the Threlkeld village hall cafe's fresh scones...) <br />
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With a mile to go I picked up the pace a bit and we did a proper run in to the finish, arriving for a time of 22 hours and 45 minutes. <br />
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What a fantastic day; for the most part, it just could not have gone any better or been any more fun. As an added bonus, my time beat Scott Jurek's 23:44, and since Scott is the only other American to have completed the BGR, I get the "fastest American" title for now. Since we have no comparable terrain in the US to train on, I am pretty happy about that!<br />
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Ultrarunning doesn't generally come with tangible rewards. This run was an exception. As an early birthday present, my friend Nick made me the most beautiful trophy I've ever seen. He made it all himself, doing the carving with a laser and using the local slate (which he knows I love) as a base.<br />
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Actually that wasn't my only tangible reward. I was touched to receive a card and bottle of champagne from Richard and Jo, the owners of the holiday cottage I was staying in. And I had promised myself two presents if I finished the BG--I bought both of them the day afterwards:<br />
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Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-49867486484566848512016-05-01T04:54:00.000-07:002016-05-15T19:15:04.761-07:00SCAR<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
SCAR is the name for the "Smokies Challenge Adventure Run," a runners' challenge that involves running the entire 72 miles of the Appalachian Trail that go across the Smoky Mountains, all in under 24 hours. I had been itching to try this for several months and finally, this weekend, it was time to give it a go.<br />
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The route certainly lived up to expectations. I started at Davenport Gap, the northern border of the Smokies, at 3:48 a.m. I had decided to go southbound for two reasons--one, it would give me a more gradual descent off the mountain ridge at the end of the run, and two, it would get me past the Charlie's Bunion area before the tourist crowds became too intense. <br />
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I set off to warm, muggy weather and a peaceful, still forest lit up by a pretty sliver of moon. After 8 or 9 miles I popped out on a nice section of ridgeline just in time for the sunrise. From here until mile 31 would be one of my favorite runs ever. There was the perfect morning light on the ridge (my photos do not do it justice), the views off both sides, the many sections of perfect trail for runing... My legs were still feeling heavy and sluggish from Lake Sonoma, but it didn't really matter as I knew I didn't need to run quickly for this day; I just needed to keep moving steadily.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From my short runs in the Smokies, I mostly remembered the rockier sections of trail, but actually a lot of it is smooth, perfect singletrack.</td></tr>
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Around mile 29 I got an exciting surprise: my friend Julien! I knew he was going to be at Newfound Gap to pace me, but I wasn't sure where on the trail I'd find him. I got into Newfound Gap, which is mile 31.5, in 7:55, which was also a surprise as it was 35 minutes ahead of schedule. I was especially pleased as I had taken most of those miles conservatively, pacing myself as if I were doing a 100 miler rather than a 72 miler. After a slightly longer-than-ideal stop at Newfound Gap, Julien and I set off for Clingman's Dome, about 8 miles away.<br />
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Heat is my kryptonite, and it struck with a vengeance at mile 32. After Newfound Gap you drop off the other side of the ridge and run along the hillside below the ridge. This meant I lost my cool breeze and gained direct sunlight. And the hills on this section are surprisingly difficult, even though they're not the biggest on the route--Julien aptly named them the little steep monsters. Ouch! Julien did an impressive job keeping me moving at a good pace after I started to slow. We met Divesh just south of Clingman's Dome and did a quick swap of my food and gear for the final 32.5-mile stretch.<br />
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My original goal for SCAR was to run it in less than 22 hours. But when I left Clingman's Dome with 10:15 elapsed, I realized that if I had a great second half of my run, I could possibly run under 20 hours or even under the women's course record of 18:50. On one hand, I had some significant nausea already starting, and I knew I was behind in my water intake. On the other hand, my legs were still feeling strong, and I actually managed to get ahead of what I needed to run for an 18:50 between miles 40 and 50. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQlwP1u-lswnoUQ4-HQV5lKHnNpTz8k_CJsVJp3yeI7ojs3FIYjgOdN2UHqj1C7T3zMBTjXxGmK2WjMd0hJt1Z7QbpgijSbDIhsMh2RUi2sR_Sc7scuE9H5Cuw-r2nz7YEsgc2MXyn6Ho/s1600/IMG_20160430_150100_748.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQlwP1u-lswnoUQ4-HQV5lKHnNpTz8k_CJsVJp3yeI7ojs3FIYjgOdN2UHqj1C7T3zMBTjXxGmK2WjMd0hJt1Z7QbpgijSbDIhsMh2RUi2sR_Sc7scuE9H5Cuw-r2nz7YEsgc2MXyn6Ho/s320/IMG_20160430_150100_748.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looking back north towards Clingman's Dome</td></tr>
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My stomach didn't do well during those miles, though. I barely drank and I don't think I ate anything until I was able to barter with a hiker for his Snickers bar at mile 50 (I gave him a bag of peanut butter pretzel bites). Then the weather turned. The occasional showers turned into a steady downpour that would last the remaining 22 miles. When you haven't been eating or drinking, you're stopping often to throw up, and it's raining heavily and windy, it's almost impossible to stay warm, even with good rain gear and warm tights on. I shivered my way along, feeling cold and miserable. The trail was flooded and after it got dark it was almost impossible to see, since my headlamp wasn't quite cutting through the dense rain and fog. From miles 55 to 59 I slowly lost my cushion on an 18:50 finish, and at mile 59 the large hill up to the Mollie's Ridge shelter took away any remaining chance I had at the record. <br />
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The one thing I had to look forward to in the final miles was that Divesh was planning to run in 5 miles from the finish and meet me. He actually made it 6 miles in, and I was thrilled to see him and have some company in the cold. Those last 6 miles took so long that I was convinced I must be nearing the 24-hour mark (I hadn't looked at my watch in several hours since it was under several layers of rain jacket and gloves) but I had to laugh when we emerged from the trail for the last mile on the road and I discovered that the clock was at 19:41. I had planned a sprint finish down the last mile, but an attempt at sprinting quickly led to an especially painful bout of throwing up stomach acid, so I decided that a fast walk/shuffle would have to do, and I finished in 19:54.<br />
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Other than the bad weather, my SCAR was basically a summary of everything I love about running: great trails and views, a classic point-to-point route, pushing myself to a time that I wouldn't have thought was possible, and even getting to see friends and family in the process. And, with about 18,000 feet of ascent over 72 miles, it was a great stepping stone between Lake Sonoma and my summer Bob Graham Round plans...</div>
Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-67019550200712106082016-04-14T10:38:00.000-07:002016-04-14T11:00:35.091-07:00Lake Sonoma 2016 race report<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Warning: May contain whining!<br />
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On the surface, all went well with my race. I had a good result place-wise (9th, in a very competitive field) and a decent time (8:37) considering how hilly the course is. Beneath the surface, however, was a disappointing day. My training for Lake Sonoma carried on from the solid base I had built up for Bandera. I recovered quickly from Bandera and started my Lake Sonoma training with some nice endurance weeks. Then it was a couple of speed workouts and two short races. One of these, a 12k on very hilly dirt roads, was possibly my best short race ever, which was definitely encouraging. After that I still had time for a couple more weeks of endurance, and I finished off the training period with 29 miles on an especially hilly section of the Appalachian Trail, feeling strong and fast the whole way. I was ready to race.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gentle jog on the course with Divesh the day before the race</td></tr>
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Race day morning appeared promising, with cool rainy weather, a good night of sleep, and a big breakfast. But just a couple of miles into the race, I began to notice something odd: I seemed to be running unusually slowly. As always, I was pacing myself by heart rate. I wasn't wearing a GPS so I couldn't say for sure how fast I was moving, but it certainly didn't seem to be a particularly quick pace. I was aiming for a heart rate of 155 to 157, compared to the 150 I use for training, but my race day pace felt slower than a training run. When I arrived a full five minutes late to the first aid station at mile 11.6, there was no denying that something was wrong.<br />
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I started up the hill out of the aid station and tried to convince myself that I just needed an extended warmup and that things had to improve. But they didn't. I trucked along at my 155 bpm and arrived at the mile 20 aid station eight minutes behind schedule. My legs still felt completely fine, it just appeared that my lungs had decided to take the day off. At this point my limited supply of patience ran out. I decided that if it was going to take running at 160 to 162 bpm to go the speed I wanted to go, then that was what I was going to do. I turned the pace up a notch and tried not to think about how I was ever going to maintain this effort level for 30 more miles.<br />
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The new pace allowed me to claw back about five minutes on my goal splits, and I arrived at the turnaround in 4:02, only two minutes behind schedule. Things seemed to be looking up; my legs, and more importantly my stomach, were feeling good, and I was starting to pass a few women. My morale got a boost when Meghan Hicks informed me at mile 30 that I was now in 10th place. Maybe this day could still work out okay...<br />
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There is that saying in ultrarunning that it never always gets worse. I would add the caveat that this is true except when it does. By about mile 35, my legs were thoroughly unhappy with the effort level I'd been attempting to put in for the previous few hours. I started walking up a few of the hills, then moved on to walking up most of the hills. I arrived at mile 38 about 12 minutes late and with far too little energy in reserve for that tough last half marathon. As beautiful as the Lake Sonoma trails are, I have to admit that I was sick of them by a few miles into this last section. Everything had become an identical blur of rolling hills and curves, with no real way to know how far we had left. Somewhere in the last two or three miles I asked Loren, a guy who had been alternately in front of and behind me for several miles, whether he thought we would ever get to the finish. He didn't think so either.<br />
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The only thing propelling me along at a pace resembling a run was that I'd seen Anita just a few minutes behind me at mile 45 and I knew it would take a big effort to stay in front of her. Each time I was tempted to walk an uphill, I'd remind myself that Anita was most certainly not going to be walking that hill, and I'd press on. Finally I rounded a bend and could see I was about a quarter of a mile from the finish. I attempted a sprint, which felt suspiciously like the same pace I'd just been running at, but I had nothing left and for a second I actually started walking. Loren, who was just behind me, yelled at me to get going and not let him pass me. It was a very welcome push that got me across the finish in a reasonably respectable manner. Even if, as I suspect, he did let me "win"!<br />
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So what went wrong? It certainly wasn't my stomach, and since my pace was slow right from the start, it can't have been a lack of calories. It also doesn't seem to have been anything about my training, since I felt so good in nearly all my runs the past month and then had a nice taper. I did start to feel a bit of heavy legs the week before the race, but that was gone by race day. My best guess at the culprit for the bad race is either the humidity--I have mild asthma and one of the things that exacerbates it is humidity--or that I was anemic. <br />
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To counterbalance the whining, I will say that it was an incredibly fun experience to run an entire ultra with no nausea. Let's repeat that next time, please! It was also satisfying to stay somewhat mentally in the race even after I was physically done for. And last but very much not least, John, Lisa, and all the volunteers put on an excellent event, complete with top-notch postrace food that I was thrilled to be able to sample for once! I may need to make at least one more trip around that lake in the future.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We got to meet Deirdre and Seth for a postrace dinner--I had to try not to be too jealous of their impending Kalymnos trip!</td></tr>
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Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-63294459188799687582016-01-13T08:04:00.000-08:002016-01-13T08:04:55.563-08:00Bandera 100k race report, by the numbers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
1,423: Miles that my parents drove to come be my support crew at the race<br />
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1: Number of people who purely coincidentally rented the other half of our holiday cottage in Bandera and who I know from Scotland!<br />
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46: Temperature in Fahrenheit at the start. Perfect. It got hot later, but only because of the intense sun.<br />
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10/10: Beauty of the course at sunrise and sunset<br />
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3: Feet in the air that I jumped after something large and brown slithered away from where I had just stepped, around mile 35<br />
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2: Times during the race that I swore I would never run another ultra<br />
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0: Times during the race that I wasn't enjoying the course. It was perfect running the entire way; just the right amount of technical and non-technical sections.<br />
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4: Vomiting sessions during the race. Less coffee for me next race...<br />
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8: Miles of the race that I was struggling<br />
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54: Miles of the race that went well<br />
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3: Square inches of my legs not sliced to pieces by the sotol plants lining the Three Sisters hills<br />
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1: Sotol needles I got stuck in my finger and then proceeded to stab myself with when I put my hands on my legs to walk uphill<br />
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1/2: Radius, in miles, that the World's Most Annoying Dog, who someone had brought to the start/finish area for the entire day, could be heard barking nonstop. This actually helped me out twice during the race. First, it provided great motivation not to linger at the start/finish area when we passed through there at mile 31. And second, near the end of the race, just as I was starting to get frustrated by the fact that there was STILL no finish line in sight, I suddenly heard...yap! yap! yap! and knew it was time to sprint.<br />
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+50: Difference between number of calories I was wearing at the finish, courtesy of a leaky bottle of sports drink earlier in the day, and number of calories I actually consumed during the last 9 miles<br />
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+55: Minutes of positive split on my second of the two 50k laps--ouch! Goal was no more than 30 minutes...<br />
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0: People who passed me on the second lap<br />
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2: Minutes by which I missed my goal time<br />
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11:01: My finishing time<br />
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5: My finishing place<br />
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7/10: Happiness factor for my race. I made a mistake by overdoing the coffee and by not wearing a hat to protect myself from the intense sun, which might have kept me from overheating so badly, but I did have a good first lap without going out too fast and a reasonably strong last ten miles.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">11 hours of crewing is a long time!</td></tr>
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Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-34448558026185726792015-11-16T09:41:00.002-08:002015-11-16T09:42:56.076-08:00Magic Wood and Margalef<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
After spending some quality adventure time on the Long Trail, I moved straight into a few months of getting back to the basics with my training for running. I noticed at the White River 50 this past July that one thing I was severely lacking, compared to runners who finished just ahead of me, was basic speed. For quite a while during that race, I was running in a train with two other girls and it was pretty clear that while we were all temporarily going the same pace, that pace was much easier for them than it was for me. So I took three months to focus on speedwork: sprints and strides, leg and hip strengthening exercises, and plyometrics. Word of advice, go easy on the plyometrics if you haven't been doing them regularly--I was nearly broken after my first, and highly overenthusiastic, session!<br />
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The three months of speedwork were mostly a success. I got a new PR in the mile (5:49 in a road race), and I could see that my stride had improved. But although I truly love going to the track and running short fast repeats, one thing that is missing from a steady diet of speedwork and road racing is variety. So, it was time for a climbing trip.</div>
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I arranged to meet my friend Dave at Magic Wood, in Switzerland, for a few days of bouldering, and then we would drive from Switzerland to Catalunya for about 10 days of sport climbing at Margalef. I'd never been to Magic Wood before but it only took about an hour at the crag before I was telling Dave that we had to come back soon. The climbing is just excellent there. There are a lot of problems with rough landings, which normally isn't my thing because I'm very protective of my ankles, but the amazing rock quality made it completely worth it, plus there were plenty of problems to try that had perfectly good landings. I surprised myself by getting up a 6C called U Boot, and then had a day to spare to go around trying other problems that looked good. This was one of them, although the sit start was a lot harder than it looked and will need a return visit!</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo: Dave MacLeod</td></tr>
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Dave had even more success there, seeing off his 8B project much earlier than planned and then topping that off with another 8B on the same night. We also had another type of success: beautiful weather every day and super scenic running.</div>
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After Magic Wood it was time for some Margalef action. I've got a 7c (5.12d) route there that I've worked on occasionally over the past few years, but this year I had decided it was time to do my best to get it done, and I trained specifically for it for three months before the trip. I arrived in Margalef knowing that I probably hadn't managed to get trained to anywhere near 7c but that it would still be fun to give the route a try. The first day was...not promising, to put it mildly. It was still way too hot for climbing at the crag, my route was far steeper and harder-looking than I remembered it being, and I had forgotten how difficult it can be to block out the noise of the vans, dogs, and climbers at Laboratorio in order to still get some climbing done. I was so discouraged that I told Dave that I might be making this a running holiday instead of a climbing one...which to be fair is no bad thing since Margalef is also home to my very favorite running trails in the world.</div>
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Fortunately, the second day on the route brought a lot of improvement. It sounds a little ridiculous to talk about improvement when I still couldn't actually do any of the first three moves on the route, but I knew there was now a tiny bit of hope. Those first three moves are the crux, and there are several possible methods of doing them, so I spent a long time experimenting with different options and finally found one that looked like it was going to work, courtesy of a video that I found online of someone doing the route in a particularly unlikely-looking way. Unfortunately, by this time, there were only two days left in the trip, and one of them needed to be a rest day. On the last day, I pulled on and did the crux first try. I fell off soon after, came down, and had another go--and made it to the last of the hard moves. I knew my sequence was a bit uncertain here, so I spent a long time trying a section of about ten moves or so, and Dave supplied some key beta that got me a solid chance of getting through that last hard move. But my arms had nothing left, and my day was over. Time to go back ASAP...</div>
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Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-79965147632385395242015-08-07T06:22:00.000-07:002015-08-07T06:22:29.492-07:00My Long Trail attempt<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's hard to believe that I was only on the Long Trail for three and a half days. It feels more like three and a half lifetimes. <br />
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I was trying for the unsupported record, which is 6 days, 17 hours, and 25 minutes. It's held by Travis Wildeboer, someone who I know is a very good runner and hiker, so I knew that trying for the record would be a big challenge. But I was excited, trained, and ready. I had several last-minute changes of mind about what gear to bring, but both Zpacks and Borah Gear were very helpful about getting me what I needed in just a couple of weeks. I ended up with a pack of 6 pounds of gear and 8 pounds of food, far heavier than what I'm used to carrying but the minimum I could expect to get away with on something this long. ("Unsupported" means that you carry all of your gear and food for the entire way with you from the beginning to the end and don't buy anything, or accept trail magic, along the way.)<br />
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The Long Trail is about 273 miles long but very uneven in terms of difficulty. Going southbound, as Travis did and as I would be doing, the first 115 miles or so are mostly extremely rough, rugged, and hilly. Then there are about 30 miles of moderate trail, followed by about 125 miles of much easier trail. When Travis set his record, he did 30 to 35 miles a day on the harder sections and then 45 to 55 on the easier sections, followed by a 60ish mile final push. My plan was to end each day in the same place as he did until day 5, then try to gain an extra 5 to 10 miles on his schedule and come in around 6 days and 15 hours. <br />
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On Saturday, August 1, I got an early morning ride to the approach trail to the northern terminus. The thing about the Long Trail is that you can't just get dropped off and start. First you get dropped off part of the way up a gravel road. Then you hike up the road to the approach trail. Then you hike 1.3 miles to the Canadian border, where the Long Trail starts. In other words, there's a fair bit of extra work that you get no credit for in your first day's mileage!<br />
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The first 4 miles of the trail lull you into a false sense of security. Nothing in those miles was particularly hard; basically just your standard Superior Hiking Trail fare with some slightly bigger hills thrown in. The calm trail went on for long enough that I almost started to wonder if all the reports of it being so rough were from people who had never been on any technical trails.<br />
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Then things changed. First, the mud from the previous few weeks of serious rain got deeper and deeper:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Standard mud for the first 30 miles</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I decided not to step where my trekking pole went in...</td></tr>
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Then the more technical ground started coming thick and fast, beginning with a steep, rocky, and narrow climb up Jay Peak. I was highly disappointed when we didn't get to just walk up the ski hill! There were some good views when we crossed the ski run, though:<br />
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Between the mud and the very technical descents and the steep ups and downs, I was beaten and ready to quit by mile 14. Mile 14!! There were still 259 miles to go. And as I would later discover, I wasn't even at the hard part yet.<br />
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At Tillotson Camp, just short of mile 23, I sat down next to the shelter and tried to regroup. Something was going to have to drastically change in order for me to make it through the day, let alone through the whole trail. I tried to adjust my expectations for the day from what they had been--to do 30 miles slowly and comfortably and arrive at the end of the day feeling fresh and ready to do more the next day--to what they needed to be, which was to be ready to deal with a higher level of pain than planned and to keep slogging through the miles regardless, for the next 6 days. <br />
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It didn't help that just past Tillotson Camp was a beautiful little pond:<br />
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The sun had come out, it was a beautiful afternoon, and there were some guys fishing and relaxing by the pond. They looked to be having the perfect day and I suddenly wanted to relax and enjoy myself too. Why was I out here working myself so hard? I couldn't quite answer that but pressed on. I was rewarded with a lucky break--after the top of the next peak, the trail eased off a bit and the descent to mile 27 was really quite pleasant. The easier trail continued all the way to mile 30 and the Devil's Gulch:<br />
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Devil's Gulch was not what I wanted to deal with at the end of my first day on the trail, but it's only a third of a mile long and passed by quickly. Then it was just a quick jog from the end of the gulch to Spruce Ledge Camp, my shelter for the night. I had done 30.5 miles with over 10,200 feet of ascent. In other words, it was as hilly as the Hardrock course but with much more technical ground and mud--though fortunately no altitude to deal with!<br />
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I had a nice stay at the shelter and met some very friendly people, but it was too cold for me to sleep much and I eventually got up and got back on the trail around 3am. The nighttime was fantastic; there was a bright moon, I was on a fairly easy section of trail, and I was feeling stronger than the day before. When the sun came up I stopped for a relaxing breakfast on the climb up Butternut Mountain:<br />
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In fact nearly all of this day went well. For one, the forecasted thunderstorms never materialized. And although Laramay Mountain was tough, with all the mud and wet rock, the entire way from mile 40 to mile 55 was largely easy to moderate, and it would have all been runnable had I not still had 6 days' worth of food in my pack. <br />
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Then I reached mile 55, and things went wrong quickly. There are no less than 1400 feet of elevation gain between mile 55 and mile 56 as you go up Whiteface Mountain. As in, 1400 feet of ascent in one mile. Then there's the "descent" from Whiteface, which somehow seemed to have more climbing than descending in it. (As a motto for the trail, I propose "The Long Trail: Where Even the Downhills Are Uphill.") It's all technical and steep, too, and the next peak was no better. After the next peak there's another 5-mile "descent" full of tree roots, ledges, and boulders. <br />
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Out of all the miles I did on this trip, I thought miles 55 to 63 were by far the hardest. It's difficult to explain exactly how hard I was working here; basically I was putting in the effort level you'd use for a road marathon, except I was moving at 1 to 2 miles an hour. And this section was relentless--I don't think there was anything that wasn't desperately hard in the entire 8 miles. I arrived at the picnic area at Smuggler's Notch, my end point for the day, in a huge amount of pain and ready to quit this run. I convinced myself to at least spend the night on the trail and see how I felt in the morning, but I had low hopes for actually continuing on. The only good part of my situation was that it was the night where I got to stay in the cement outhouse in the picnic area. It has two toilets in separate cinderblock rooms, so I set up camp in one, locked the door, laughed at my own joke about this putting a new meaning to the phrase "en-suite accommodation," and went straight to sleep. I couldn't decide whether I found it hilarious or depressing that I was spending my hard-earned vacation time from work sleeping in a toilet block--not to mention that it actually seemed luxurious.<br />
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When I woke up everything hurt just as much as it had the night before. I hadn't set an alarm so it was already around 5:30 a.m. and it was time to either get going or decide that I was done. I still wanted to quit but made myself pack up all my gear as if I were going to go on, and then once everything was packed, it seemed like I might as well carry on. Once again I was lucky with the weather; it had been forecast to rain and thunderstorm all morning, which would have been a huge problem since I had to immediately climb up Mt. Mansfield. Mansfield is Vermont's highest peak and has an exposed rocky summit, definitely not somewhere you'd want to be in a storm. But somehow I got beautiful sunny weather, and I absolutely loved this part of the trail.<br />
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At the visitors' center, I saw my first other person of the day, a woman who was up on the summit to do some type of biology research. I asked if she could take a picture of me, and as I was walking in front of the rock above for a photo, I stumbled a little and nearly stepped on some grass. "Except don't step on the vegetation," the woman said to me, sounding as if I had just dropped a bucketful of litter on the ground. Apparently having legs that were slightly tired from the previous 67 miles was enough to make me an environmental criminal. At least I got a photo out of the incident, and I'm fairly sure I didn't actually step on the vegetation.<br />
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A lot of people had told me that Mt. Mansfield is one of the hardest parts of the trail, which makes sense because it has a lot of scrambling and it's quite a big ascent, but I thought it was one of the easier parts since it was more straightforward--less jumping over tree roots and small boulders and more just powerhiking up a big hill and then (after the scrambling) running down. After the scrambling and ladder section on the way, down, the trail opened up into some of the easiest trail I had seen so far:<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This was a huge morale boost and I made good time for most of the afternoon. It was hot, there was rain, then it was hot again, and I had to end the day with a super steep section up the Camel's Hump, but I was moving forward steadily.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Climbs up tree roots was a common theme on the Long Trail </span></td></tr>
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Just before dark I finally arrived, exhausted and dripping with sweat, at the shelter just north of the top of Camel's Hump (mile 92). I was five miles short of where Travis had stopped on his Day 3, but there had been signs saying that the mile 97 shelter (where Travis stayed) was closed due to bear problems, and I wasn't keen to try to make it all the way to mile 102 without sleep.<br />
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My shelter was full of kids from a summer camp, and while there were lots of them, there could have easily been room for me to stay in the shelter as well had everyone moved over a bit. But when I asked the group leader if they could make some room for me, he replied "No! We walked a long way today." A variety of possible responses went through my head but I managed to just say that I had also walked a long way too, then headed off to the back of the shelter to set up my bivy bag on a wooden gear shelf that was at least mostly covered by the back of the roof. I did however set my alarm to go off at max volume at 5am! It was cold and uncomfortable trying to sleep on the shelf, though, and I wasn't able to sleep more than a couple of hours. Hopefully I at least woke up the group leader as I packed my things to start hiking around 2am.<br />
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I had a surprisingly enjoyable steep hike up to the summit of the Camel's Hump in the dark, but once on top the weather had changed to a thick, cold fog, and I hurried to get off the scrambling section in case rain was about to start. I was getting sleepy and made depressingly slow progress on the descent, stopping a couple of times for a quick rest in the middle of the trail. It was too cold to sleep, though, so I had to continue on at my glacially slow pace. Finally I got to the next shelter and had a brief snooze on a chair in front of it, waking up when two hikers came through and made me feel guilty for my lack of forward progress.<br />
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There were gorgeous views from the top of the next peak:<br />
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By about 8am, somewhere around mile 100, I again wanted to quit. Well, not quit entirely, but quit trying to go fast. I was ready to give up on the record attempt and "jog it in" which ironically on this trail would involve not doing any jogging at all. After using every mental trick I could think of, I finally managed to get myself back in the right mindset and moving forward at a pace that was maybe not stellar but good enough to keep me in a position to keep trying for the record. "It doesn't have to be fast, it just has to be steady," I kept repeating to myself. I tackled the steep climb up Molly Stark's Balcony more steadily than I thought I would have been able to and was pleased to make it to the top ahead of schedule. I was so proud of myself for having gotten myself back together and having overcome the desire to quit for at least the fifth time on this run. And, I had only about 8 more miles before the terrain got significantly easier.<br />
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Which is why I was that much more depressed when I got to the top of Molly Stark's Balcony and saw this:<br />
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I had survived a few thunderstorms already this trip, but I knew this one was going to be a problem. For a start, I was at fairly high elevation, and I wasn't going to be coming down from high elevation until tomorrow. I had to somehow stay warm all night. I didn't have enough warm clothes to warm up in a high elevation shelter after getting soaked, and I knew I was way too sleepy to be able to stay up all of the coming night. I had plenty of waterproof gear--waterproof pants, jacket, and mittens--but even they tend to get soaked through in heavy rain. I get cold quickly at the best of times and in particular now, having not eaten nearly enough food for the past four days and having barely slept, I knew I was about to get very cold.<br />
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And sure enough, the storm started, it hailed like crazy, the trail turned into a river of icy cold water, and I froze.<br />
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Just as the storm was starting, I realized I had phone reception since I was on top of a hill, and figured it was my big chance to call for a bailout ride if I wanted one. My mom had been planning to pick me up at the end of the trail, so I called to check if she would be able to come get me now instead. She said yes. I hung up and tried to think through my options, feeling more than a bit pressed for time since lightning was now all around me and I was standing on a tall, exposed chunk of rock. I finally decided it was time to bail. As the hail built up, the weather turn seemed funny at first, then got scary as I realized it was 1.5 miles of scrambling up and down wet rock, in the middle of a thunderstorm, to get to the road. The rock was completely flooded with water and the hail kept raining down, getting me scarily cold within minutes.<br />
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When I finally made it to the road, I felt like I had made the right decision, since I was so desperately cold that I couldn't imagine carrying on into even higher ground and somehow trying to stay warm the rest of the day and upcoming night. In hindsight, of course, I keep questioning whether it was the right call. I could always have walked up to the next shelter and then turned around and gone back to the road if necessary, or I could have cannibalized my sleeping clothes as an extra layer of warmth to make it through the day, then quit the next day if the storm continued.<br />
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So after managing to convince myself to keep going through all of the hardest parts of the trail, I somehow managed to quit 8 miles before easier ground. I'm not too thrilled about how this worked out. In fact I'd say I'm the most depressed that I've been about a run since Arrowhead 2011. Part of me is tempted to use the fitness I gained over the past few days to try the trail again ASAP. Part of me wants to use that fitness for something else, like a mountainous 100 miler or a sneaky late summer Bob Graham Round. Most of me, though, remembers that the Long Trail was only supposed to be a little adventure during my recovery from the White River 50, something fun that I could as a sort of active recovery before taking a couple of weeks off and then starting training for some fast, short autumn races. While I can't quite believe I ever thought the Long Trail could fall into the category of active recovery, I still might be better off sticking to the original plan of having a rest period now and getting back to organized training in September. I'll have to think about it...<br />
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Final mileage tally:<br />
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Day 1: 30.5 miles<br />
Day 2: 32.8 miles<br />
Day 3: 29 miles<br />
Day 4: 15 miles before bailing at mile 107, Appalachian Gap. About 3 hours behind Travis at this point.<br />
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Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-25888940841584166602015-07-09T04:52:00.003-07:002015-07-09T13:25:13.009-07:00Bouldering in Valbonë, Albania<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Bouldering near Valbona Pass / Ngjitjes</span></b><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> n</span>ë shkëmbinj në qafa e Valbones</b><br />
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June 2014: Maria and I hike the long, steep hill out of Okol to Valbona pass in northeastern Albania. We take in the spectacular views from the top, then start down the other side towards Rragam. About 10 minutes later, we spot...boulders. Lots of boulders. Perfect limestone boulders with clean rock and flat landings.<br />
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July 2014: Extensive Googling, no sign of established problems on the boulders. For non-climbers: this basically means that the hardest routes up the boulders have likely never been climbed.<br />
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June 2015: Divesh and I head back to Valbona pass, this time armed with climbing shoes and a mat...<br />
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This post is about our trip in general; more specific information for climbers about the bouldering is <a href="http://aliciasrunningandracing.blogspot.com/2015/07/boulder-problems-and-topo-for-valbona.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><b>here</b></span></a>.<br />
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We opted to fly into Pristina, Kosovo and make the three-hour drive to Valbona village. There were a few harrowing moments but overall it was an easy drive; there's even a brand-new road replacing the previous semi-driveable dirt road between Bajram Curri and Valbona. We were a little nervous about how the border crossing guards would react to an Indian citizen, an American citizen, and a rental car, but we had no problems (at least on the way in. On the way back, we had to stop for a bit while, we assume, they checked the Interpol database...). <br />
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Valbona is a village and tourist destination, but it's no hub of services or activity. Don't expect to be able to buy groceries there, or really anything else from a store. There are, however, several guesthouses and hotels, along with a few restaurants. Our home for the week was the very nice <a href="http://hotelmargjeka.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><b>Hotel Margjeka</b></span></a>, about a mile or two up the valley from Valbona. The view from the hotel is a good introduction to why I couldn't wait to come back to this place:<br />
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The hotel was also home to one of the most insanely comfortable beds I've ever slept in. With the bed plus the large amount of walking we did evey day, I got some of the best sleep I've had in years on this trip. It normally takes me about 2 hours to fall asleep; in Albania it was 5 minutes max. <br />
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From the hotel it's "only" a 5k walk to the boulders. Sadly that 5k involves walking nearly all the way up Valbona pass. We generally did it in about an hour and a half, though the brutality of the walk-in is tempered by the fact that there are no less than three little cafes on the way up. Still, each day at the crag started off with a rest under a boulder.<br />
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There is no shortage of fantastic scenery on the walk:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is actually above the crag, at the top of the pass</td></tr>
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About a kilometer below the top of the pass, you get to the crag, which basically looks like this:<br />
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It was really hard to get an overall shot of the crag just because of the way the boulders were spread out across the hillside, but the photo above shows some of the main boulders. Divesh is the figure in the middle of the photo, for scale.<br />
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And, the bouldering! Climbers, see <a href="http://aliciasrunningandracing.blogspot.com/2015/07/boulder-problems-and-topo-for-valbona.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><b>here</b></span></a> for a mini topo and information about the problems we climbed. A couple of representative photos of the climbing:<br />
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We had four solid days of bouldering (plus one day of walking in to the crag only to get rained out when we were five minutes away...), enough that I felt pretty strong by the end of the trip. It was exciting having a blank slate of a crag for putting up new routes; I think I've only ever done one new boulder problem before and suddenly here I was, faced with loads of them. Most of what we did ended up being low-grade stuff, in part because that's what the majority of the problems were, in part because we only had one small mat so falling off from high up wasn't a great option, and in part because it's hard to decide on a new problem, clean it, work on it, and actually top it out in just a few days. But things worked out pretty much perfectly, as on our last day, Divesh climbed his project and I climbed mine.<br />
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This trip was very different from the trip I had with Maria last year--this year, we had a definite schedule, stayed in a hotel the entire time, and basically saw only one small area. We met fewer new people than last year, and the trip overall was less adventurous. But this wasn't a bad thing. We still met a few new people, and I got to practice my Albanian a reasonable amount (though I never did make it to learning the past tense. The only verb I can say in the past tense is the verb "to be", so "it was" became my all-purpose expression to talk about anything in the past!) And even better, we got to see a friend who I met last year, Nexhdet, and also meet his friend Islam, aka the Dalai Lama (a very entertaining Dalai Lama):<br />
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Nexhdet is a good cook and cooked us a fantastic campfire dinner! We were generally always hungry after dinners at our hotel, so having a delicious, huge meal cooked for us was a big deal. <br />
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We also ran into my 80ish-year-old shepherd friend from last year, who seemed to be living a fantastic life involving taking the sheep up the hill in the morning, and then visiting friends, drinking coffee, and relaxing in the high meadows in the afternoon.<br />
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In the middle of the trip, we went on a half-day trip to Gjakove, in Kosovo, with Nexhdet and Islam. Gjakove was an interesting little city with a great medieval town center, full of well-preserved buildings from the 16th century:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM9q8eJwwUHUnMA7IRfk37QDzZ2rimRlpd3XKxxDDx_Kk4t4RTD3YqK0AnXYhDHixedyIzcHeji-yxPQiueCMj6OKMzn_NAr1a1rcCc0TeQ1I_lWR5J5ZTMNvwujvz2_S2qGGOgY1vdGg/s1600/Gjakove+bridge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM9q8eJwwUHUnMA7IRfk37QDzZ2rimRlpd3XKxxDDx_Kk4t4RTD3YqK0AnXYhDHixedyIzcHeji-yxPQiueCMj6OKMzn_NAr1a1rcCc0TeQ1I_lWR5J5ZTMNvwujvz2_S2qGGOgY1vdGg/s320/Gjakove+bridge.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Crazy bridge, but still standing</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL4xYPZbK4lDROGQzOJ_y-lOJmTPqLl8C-KHyJiK_7fmAZYaDdZos0IMDyJ-466LV2cM7aE0sbNKcMg7sti7r4PtZBG0fed7AqQ02GKefzCPgT_gyfri0gq2w9jCvuERnx2EAlqQC_t24/s1600/IMG_20150624_120243_652.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL4xYPZbK4lDROGQzOJ_y-lOJmTPqLl8C-KHyJiK_7fmAZYaDdZos0IMDyJ-466LV2cM7aE0sbNKcMg7sti7r4PtZBG0fed7AqQ02GKefzCPgT_gyfri0gq2w9jCvuERnx2EAlqQC_t24/s320/IMG_20150624_120243_652.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We had lunch at this very beautiful old restaurant</td></tr>
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On our last full day, we went for a run towards Doberdol, on the route that Maria and I took last year on our Peaks of the Balkans run. It turned out that 21 miles was a bit much after doing that mammoth walk-in to the boulders every day. We lurched our way back to the car and collapsed into bed extra early that night. But, the run was enough for Divesh to start some murmurings about how he'd like to come back and do the whole Peaks of the Balkans trail sometime... Return date TBD but definitely in the cards.<br />
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Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-4603627225262245102015-07-07T18:24:00.000-07:002015-07-09T04:51:09.326-07:00Boulder problems and topo for Valbona Pass, Albania<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b>Bouldering near Valbona Pass / Ngjitjes</b><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> n</span>ë shkëmbinj në qafa e Valbones</b><br />
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This June, my husband Divesh and I went to climb what appear to be previously-unclimbed boulder problems up near Valbona Pass, in Albania. I had seen the boulders a year earlier during a run and had played around on them in my running shoes enough to know that it was worth coming back with climbing shoes! For a start, the area is gorgeous:<br />
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The crag consists of about 20 to 30 boulders spread out in a meadow, roughly a kilometer below Valbona Pass, on the Valbona side of the pass. It was difficult to take a photo of the crag as a whole because the boulders are fairly spread out, but this is one of the main sections of the crag, with Divesh in the center of the photo for scale:<br />
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<b>What the climbing's like:</b><br />
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The rock is limestone, which makes the crag interesting because you don't often get free-standing limestone boulders. The boulders all tended to have a couple of slabby sides with easy to very easy problems, and then an overhanging side with (much) harder problems.<br />
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For the most part, the rock quality is extremely good, especially considering the boulders were unclimbed and are at the top of a mountain pass. The slabs and vertical problems needed very little, if any, cleaning. On slabs, the rock was generally 100% solid. Vertical problems generally had one or two snappy holds on them. The overhanging problems tended to have several loose and/or dirty holds that needed cleaning before climbing. In comparison to most unclimbed rock, however, the amount of cleaning even on the overhanging problems was minimal.<br />
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There are two downsides to the crag, though. First, the boulders tend to be either very lowball or very highball. There was enough in between to keep us busy for a week, but we would have started to run low on options after that. Because of airline luggage fees, we only had one small mat with us, which made the highballs unappealing; if we had had more/bigger mats, we probably would have had another week's worth of climbing to try.<br />
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The second downside is the grade spread. We found absolutely loads of easy problems, in the Font 4 to Font 5+ range. Don't get me wrong, those easy problems were almost all fantastic climbing, but they also weren't projects to work on. After the easy problems, there were relatively few moderate problems, and then there was a fair bit of scope for very hard (7C and up?) problems. Again, there were just enough moderates to keep us going for a week, but after that it would have become slim pickings. (For reference, I climb 6C at my best and Divesh climbs 7A+)<br />
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I made a *very* rudimentary topo of the crag using an aerial shot from Google Earth:<br />
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This was the max that Google Maps would let me zoom in, so there are several boulders that we climbed on that are missing from the topo. But, the 8 boulders on the topo are the primary ones we established problems on. <br />
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We didn't do any earth-shattering climbs that would demand a detailed description. This is a general idea of what we climbed:<br />
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<b>1. Kuzhinier boulder:</b><br />
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A. On the face directly in front of you as you come up the path from Valbona, a Font 5+ going up the bulge on the righthand side of the boulder, about 3 feet from the arete. The crux is the first two moves, then excellent climbing to the top, with a slightly worrying topout onto a slab. See photo:<br />
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B. Another Font 5+ going up the twin cracks on the arete, just to the right of problem A.<br />
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The downclimb for the Kuzhinier boulder is on the west corner of the boulder, past a small hole. <br />
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There is scope for an enormous amount of new problems on this boulder, including easy, moderate, and hard problems!<br />
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<b>2. Franxhollë boulder:</b><br />
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We didn't climb any problems on this boulder because it got a bit high for our little mat, but I've marked it on the topo as it looked like it should have some good moderates on the north and west sides.<br />
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<b>3. Unnamed boulder just south of the Franxhollë boulder:</b><br />
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A. On the northeast arete, an excellent Font 5 jug haul going up the scoop in the arete, traversing slightly right along the break:<br />
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B. About ten feet to the right of problem A, a 6A to 6A+ mantle problem, also very nice climbing.<br />
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<b>4. Shqip boulder:</b><br />
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This boulder is a minute or two across the hillside (south) of the other boulders.<br />
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A. Shqip Prow, 6C. Rising traverse up the prow, from the prow's left side as you're facing it, and top out at highest point of prow:<br />
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B. Font 5 up the groove to the right of Shqip Prow:<br />
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There would be a nice moderate problem up and over the right side of the prow.<br />
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<b>5. Triangle boulder:</b><br />
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When looking downhill (east) from the Franxhollë boulder, you'll see an obvious boulder with a huge triangle-shaped sloping hold. The boulder is fairly short but the Font 4+ problem going straight up from the triangle (not using the other triangle hold on the arete or any of the other holds on the arete) is my favorite problem of the whole crag:<br />
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(I'm actually covering up the triangle hold in the photo)<br />
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<b>6. Secret boulder:</b><br />
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This boulder may be hard to find, but it was worth it. It stays shaded when the rest of the crag is in the sun, and it had three nice problems, with scope for another quality 6Cish problem.<br />
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To find the boulder, look for the very tall boulder with trees growing out of the top (the Tall Trees boulder). The Secret boulder is immediately downhill from the Tall Trees boulder, almost touching the Tall Trees boulder. The visible side of the Secret boulder is a large slab, but on the other side is a short overhanging face with three problems:<br />
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A. Font 6A? Sit start on the left (as you face the overhanging side of the boulder) arete. Rising traverse to the prow in the middle of the boulder, then top out. <br />
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B. Font 5, directly up the prow.<br />
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C. Font 5+, up the groove to the right of the prow:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr0ZEibNygFKlkUDxBmlBNjj278DtwJu2gT77kpQI0XFPFRyxL5d8RnDZDX3pzJZs-oqrNjK12fCLu_EFPEBG-jB-m9bmgSfpm_Bi-BKZWdJZ1rwGmYAZCc_HCPLsszg0lBniNS7YyYwg/s1600/secret+boulder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr0ZEibNygFKlkUDxBmlBNjj278DtwJu2gT77kpQI0XFPFRyxL5d8RnDZDX3pzJZs-oqrNjK12fCLu_EFPEBG-jB-m9bmgSfpm_Bi-BKZWdJZ1rwGmYAZCc_HCPLsszg0lBniNS7YyYwg/s320/secret+boulder.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The prow is just out of shot on the left side of this photo. Starting in the groove and traversing the lip left to the prow, on the slopey lip where Divesh's head is in the above photo, would make an excellent problem, 6Cish or maybe a bit harder?<br />
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<b>7. Tall Trees boulder:</b><br />
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The very large boulder with trees growing out of the top. There are two boulders big enough to have trees growing out of them but this was the bigger of the two. We didn't climb anything on this, but with enough pads, there would be some nice hard problems here:<br />
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<b>8. The Egg:</b><br />
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The somewhat egg-shaped boulder in the southern of the two scree gullies running through the crag.<br />
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A. There are so many possible starting holds that it's difficult to describe the problem that Divesh did (I managed the crux once but without the first move!). Essentially, the most difficult route up to the small ledge halfway up the boulder. We jumped down from the ledge; the rock above was loose:<br />
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<b>Getting here:</b><br />
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The easiest travel option is to fly into Pristina in Kosovo, then rent a car and drive the approximately 3 hours to Valbona. Valbona has several places to stay; we stayed in the <a href="http://hotelmargjeka.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><b>Hotel Margjeka</b></span></a> and it was very nice (not to mention cheap!!).<br />
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It is definitely a hike from Valbona to the crag! It's about 5km but all uphill, and when you're down in the valley, the sun can make the walk-in uncomfortably hot. Fortunately the temperature difference between the valley and the crag is huge, and it was never very hot at the crag. I wore my down jacket for a fair bit of the time when I wasn't climbing, and this was in June!<br />
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To get to the crag from Valbona, you take the paved road (there is only one paved road...) west out of Valbona. In about 2 miles, the road ends in front of the Fusha e Gjes hotel. Park there and follow the path marked with red and white stripes up the scree road. This is technically a road, though nothing other than a Jeep/heavy duty 4x4 would get up it. The "road" goes to a small village called Rragam. Continue to follow the red and white markings and signs for Theth, which is the town on the other side of Valbona Pass. Rragam has two tiny little outdoor cafes, and I would recommend making use of at least one of them to rest before the big uphill! When you leave Rragam there are two trails, one going to the waterfall (ujevara), which you don't want to take, and one that is marked with red and white stripes, which you do want to take. The trail steepens and about 2km later ends up at another small outdoor cafe, the Simoni cafe, which is also a fine place for a rest. It also has a stream where you can get water. From the Simoni cafe you continue to follow the red and white striped markings for about half a km, after which you'll emerge in a field of boulders. The large boulder directly in front of you, with the red and white striped marking on it, is the Kuzhinier boulder.<br />
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If you have a GPS, you can follow <a href="http://www.peaksofthebalkans.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&layout=item&id=34&Itemid=218&lang=en" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><b>this description</b></span></a> <b>in reverse</b> from the Fusha e Gjes hotel to just before Valbona Pass to find the boulders.<br />
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Valbona has restaurants but food is not exactly plentiful. Restaurants don't necessarily serve even half the food that's on the menu, and a lot of the cuisine revolves around tomatoes, cucumbers, bread, cheese, and milk. There are no stores in Valbona that sell food, other than bars that sell basic snacks like potato chips and nuts. Bring crag food with you from home.<br />
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In short, considering the fairly involved travel and the long walk-in, this isn't likely to make a good destination crag. What it is perfect for, however, is a trip that's about seeing a beautiful place as much as it is about climbing. Or, a trip to snag some of those very hard but very good lines we had no chance at!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from the top of Valbona Pass</td></tr>
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Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-74054645722645464582015-05-11T12:40:00.000-07:002015-05-11T12:40:07.056-07:00Being halfway SMART in the Smokies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There is a popular challenge in the Southeast called SCAR--the Smokies Challenge Adventure Run. The goal is to run all 72 miles of the Appalachian Trail that goes through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in less than 24 hours. My husband Divesh accomplished this just a few weeks ago, and I was tempted to try as well but didn't like the idea of such a long run while training for other races. <br />
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Fortunately, there is another good ultramarathon option in the Smokies: SMART, the Smokies Adventure Run Two-Day. SMART was created by my friend Janice after she watched runner after runner fail at SCAR. To be SMART, you take two days for the run, staying overnight in luxury at a hotel in Gatlinburg, which you can get to from the road that splits the park in half. Two days also leaves you free to run whichever direction you want on each section, and in particular lets you run the easiest direction on both days! <br />
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So on Saturday, we started at Newfound Gap (the road that splits the park roughly in half) and headed north for 31 miles to Davenport Gap. We were mostly incredibly lucky with the weather; we had a cool breeze and shade much of the time, and we avoided all but about 20 minutes of the rain that was falling on both sides of us in the afternoon. And it was a beautiful day:<br />
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Sadly, we were only half SMART. At the end of day 1, we were met by Divesh, who had had his own exhausting day. While he was driving my car to pick us up, my car broke down and he had to find a rental car in rural Tennessee, not an easy task. The entire next day was spent getting the car to a mechanic (who couldn't do anything because everywhere that sold parts was closed on Sundays) and finding a way to get us all home in time for work on Monday. So the second half of the Smokies will have to wait...but hopefully not for long.</div>
Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-57682688970188465852015-04-14T09:10:00.001-07:002015-04-14T09:10:47.268-07:00Lake Sonoma 50 mile 2015 race report<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
You know those nightmares where you show up at the starting line of a race and realize you've forgotten all your running gear? That was Lake Sonoma for me in real life. Except it wasn't that I had forgotten anything, it was just that I hadn't managed to start properly training for the race yet. And somehow race day had arrived.<br />
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Every runner always complains that they're not trained, not ready, etc. before a race, but here's what happened in the three months prior to Lake Sonoma;<br />
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-I had bronchitis (or something that appeared to be bronchitis; asthma/some type of reactive airway problem has also been suggested) for 8 weeks from mid-January to mid-March. I still have some lingering lung issues;<br />
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-I had a nasty case of tendinitis in my left knee for two weeks before the race;<br />
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-I failed to complete my weekly training goals in all but 1 of the 12 weeks of "training" and generally didn't even come near the weekly mileage goal. Since I'm a low-mileage runner anyway, this is bad!<br />
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-My training pace, as dictated by my heart rate monitor, in the month before Lake Sonoma was the slowest it had been in about 6 months; and<br />
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-I missed out on all the shorter races I had signed up for as training for Lake Sonoma because of the bronchitis.<br />
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What I'm saying is that it's not exaggerating when I say that I was in no way ready for this race. The only things I had going for me were that I'd had a solid long run in training two weeks before the race, I had been doing a good job on my knee and hip strengthening exercises over the past two months, and I'd done my sauna training to prepare for the heat. I decided to keep the goal time of 8:45 that I had set for myself in January, but it seemed an unlikely prospect.<br />
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With a deserved lack of confidence, I headed out to California on the Thursday before the race. My friend Jaclyn, also from Atlanta, was running the race too and had gone out a few days earlier with her boyfriend Connell, so the two of them plus Divesh and I all spent a reasonably relaxing day on Friday eating real Italian pizza (sorry Molly!!) and checking out the course.<br />
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The showing-up-without-preparing nightmare didn't magically go away at the start of the race. By about 7 miles in, I was already feeling like it was mile 40. My knee hurt, my lungs felt constricted, the pace felt uncomfortably fast, and 50 miles seemed like a very, very long way.<br />
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Part of the problem at this point was that we were on (gorgeous!) singletrack trail and the pack hadn't yet spread out. Since I run by heart rate, I go pretty slowly uphill and then speed up a lot on the downhills. The other 10 to 15 people around me, however, were doing the exact opposite, and so we were constantly passing and re-passing each other. There are no flat parts at Lake Sonoma--while the hills aren't big, you are always going either uphill or downhill. I kept having to decide between wasting energy overtaking, or losing time by going too slowly on the downhills, or putting in extra effort to stay ahead of the pack on the uphills. I alternated between all three options before eventually sticking with the third, which in hindsight was probably the right choice and one I should have made sooner. I arrived at the aid station at mile 11.5 at my goal time, but I had run at a much higher effort level to get that time than I would have liked. <br />
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Fortunately the crowd thinned out dramatically after the aid station. I started to feel a little more comfortable and in less pain, and my overall pace actually improved while my heart rate dropped. Somewhere around mile 13 or 14, two guys passed me looking particularly smooth and comfortable, and I resolved to try to stay not too far behind them for a while. That ended up working out perfectly for the 6 miles or so til the next main aid station, as their pace kept me from dawdling too much on the uphills but they also went just a bit faster than me on the downhills.<br />
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Everything kept improving for me, to the point where, during the stretch between mile 23 and mile 30, the unprepared-bad-dream sensation gave way to an equally dreamlike feeling, but this time a good dream. <i>"Am I really still feeling this strong 30 miles in? Was that Pam Smith I just passed?! I </i>am <i>actually awake right now, yes?" </i>(The Pam Smith incident, while technically real, had a lot more to do with the kind of day she must have been having than the kind of day I was having, but let's gloss over that for now...) It wasn't so much that I felt good, it was that somehow my legs were continuing to carry me forward at the same pace I'd been going the whole day despite my fairly poor efforts at getting them trained to do that. I steadily worked my way up from 16th place to what I think was 11th place by mile 30. The whole race was probably my most consistent ever--I think I only got passed by two people in the entire second half, and both of them were people I had just passed myself.<br />
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I had been eagerly awaiting getting to the mile 30 aid station since the weather was very hot by this point and when we passed that same aid station at mile 20 (Lake Sonoma is an out-and-back course), there had been a solar shower set up for the runners. During miles 25 to 30, the thought of returning to the shower had become a beacon of hope in my overheated mind. Alas, when I arrived at the aid station, I discovered that the shower was gone. Which led to me loudly exclaiming to Connell as I arrived, "They took away the shower!!" causing more than a few spectators to look at me with concern for my mental state; we were just out in the middle of the woods at this point, not exactly a typical locale to expect a shower.<br />
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The main sensation I had over that entire first 30 miles was one of being right on the very edge of blowing up; I constantly felt like I pushing so close to my limit that it could have gone horribly wrong at any time. I was especially dreading miles 30 to 35, which I knew would be largely in the hot sun and had plenty of uphill. But a big turning point came at mile 32. I saw a woman in front of me who I was fairly sure was in 10th place, and I suddenly wanted to go for the top 10. I decided to hang back for a bit, take a gel, and then try to power past once the gel kicked in. This didn't quite work out for me as taking the gel made me suddenly throw up a few seconds later...and then I immediately felt fine. No lingering nausea like I've had in so many races, no reduction in pace, nothing. I kept running, feeling better and better, and after a few miles I knew that I had turned a corner. If I felt this good at mile 35, there wasn't going to be a goal-ending blowup. I might yet have a bad patch or two to endure, but I had enough energy in my legs and calories taken in that I knew I wasn't going to lose drastic amounts of time if or when those bad patches came.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk-Bit3Pyu_06e3KM9SIZv8Srxji8CwBJIonJ57W-0b6x9_IMw_ifY4pdwtiWUHO0h7NQSaLh1T8vG-AXLMRSL37lQK6EXi8Zs0tzw-GV2BYiDvPoUvd9ZIbcN0prpfxfVRy3DmZ0JO64/s1600/lake+sonoma+mile+38.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk-Bit3Pyu_06e3KM9SIZv8Srxji8CwBJIonJ57W-0b6x9_IMw_ifY4pdwtiWUHO0h7NQSaLh1T8vG-AXLMRSL37lQK6EXi8Zs0tzw-GV2BYiDvPoUvd9ZIbcN0prpfxfVRy3DmZ0JO64/s1600/lake+sonoma+mile+38.jpg" height="400" width="225" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coming into the mile 38 aid station</td></tr>
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And I did have a rough few miles between mile 41 and 45, but it wasn't a huge blowup like, say, the one I suffered around mile 45 of the Highland Fling, where it took me about half an hour to go one mile and I had to beg for food from strangers. This time there was admittedly some drinking out of a puddle, but I didn't slow too much, and in a complete reversal of the begging from strangers thing, I arrived at the mile 45 aid station and promptly attempted to use their cutting board and knife to cut up a whole cantaloupe. (A volunteer gently took the knife away and pointed me at the giant tray of pre-cut fruit.) After getting some food in me at that aid station, I felt much better and picked the pace back up, though not enough to stay with Denise, who I had leapfrogged with a mile or two earlier and who ended up finishing about five minutes in front of me. Denise seemed really nice and I wished I could have stayed with her, not to try to pick up another place but to get to talk to her a little more! In retrospect my big mistake was not taking the time at the mile 38 aid station to get some more food, even though I knew I was getting pretty hungry by that point.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Finish! Photo: irunfar.com</td></tr>
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<br />
I came in at 8:29, under my goal of 8:45 and much faster than I initially thought was possible, but slower than I think I could have run if I had done a better job of fueling in those last 12 miles. Also, minus the one incident of throwing up, it was another overall win on the stomach front, making me 3 for 3 in my most recent races. I'm almost tempted to say that I've solved my nausea problem. Next race I just need a few more calories in the later miles and a lot more training...</div>
Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-17074976450986381332015-02-24T08:05:00.001-08:002015-02-24T08:05:46.948-08:00Myths and a Long Trail<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This weekend I watched Finding Traction, a film about Nikki Kimball's record-setting run of the Long Trail in Vermont, Nikki came across as a fantastic person--passionate, competitive, and with plenty of interesting things to say. She's someone who I would love to meet at a race or out on the trails someday. The run depicted by the film was very impressive of course, and I'd imagine that Nikki's record will last for quite a while. Two things about the film, however, bothered me enough to make me want to write something. More accurately, one thing bothered me enough to want to write something, and while I'm at it, I might as well bring up the other...<br />
<br />
First of all, I should explain a bit more about the subject of Finding Traction. In part, it was a day-by-day account of Nikki's time on the Long Trail. It was also, however, about Nikki's past experiences and in particular her experiences with sexism in the sports world and what she hoped to change about attitudes towards women in sport. I thought her message was excellent and I agreed completely with everything she said. <br />
<br />
So while I came away feeling 90 percent positive about the film, the two issues I had with it were:<br />
<br />
<b>Issue 1: A myth.</b><br />
<br />
Near the middle of the film, at 24:18 in, there's a short clip showing a biologist named David Carrier. He confidently states the oft-repeated line that as race distances get longer, the gap between men's and women's performance lessens, and that at distances such as 100 miles, the differences between males and females "more or less disappear."<br />
<br />
The problem is, there's no factual basis for this claim. It's a myth born out of just a few anecdotes involving women winning long races outright and some speculation, <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16336006" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: black;">which turned out to be incorrect</span></b></a>, extrapolating future female finish times from past improvements in women's records. You can see the myth debunked in <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945434/" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: black;">this paper</span></b></a>, or, for a less dense explanation, you can see from an Ian Sharman <a href="http://sharmanian.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-other-10-rule.html#comment-form" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: black;">blog post</span></b></a> (making the same points as <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15064423" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: black;">this paper</span></b></a>) exactly how far the best men remain ahead of the best women at all distances. Spoiler alert: they remain far ahead. In fact, as things currently stand, the performance gap actually <i>increases </i>at 100+ miles, though that's likely down to a relative lack of female participation in some of the longer events. There are several reasons why a woman might win an ultramarathon outright, but, based on all the available facts, there's no reason to think that those reasons include a decrease in the performance gap at longer distances.<br />
<br />
Why do I care so much if the film got one bit of factual information wrong? Because I think this myth is extremely harmful to women's ultrarunning. (Dredging up the myth in the middle of a film which takes aim at sexism in the ultrarunning world made it even worse. I couldn't help yelling at the TV when I heard what Carrier was saying.) <br />
<br />
Think this through: if we subscribe to the belief that sex doesn't matter when the distances get up into the 100 mile range, then what happens when, back in the real world, the best women don't actually perform as well as the best men at 100 milers? If we incorrectly believe that the worse performance had nothing to do with biology, then we're left to conclude that the worse performance had to stem from some other factor--a lack of training, a lack of effort on the day, poor nutrition strategy...i.e., something that the women could have fixed had they simply tried harder or used better tactics. But in reality, nothing other than a few male hormones is going to lessen that performance gap when comparing the best to the best. In terms of sporting performance, men are just heavily-doped women. Acknowledging this is, in my view, the first step towards recognizing that the outcome of the women's portion of a race is just as noteworthy as the men's portion, regardless of whether the finishing times are slower on the women's side, because that acknowledgment allows us to recognize that the amount of talent, training, and effort on display is equal.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Issue 2: A reminder.</b><br />
<br />
In one scene of the film, Nikki discusses the poor treatment that women get in the ultrarunning press. She mentions that when she won the UTMB, there was extensive media coverage the next day of the top men, going several places deep into the field, and then, as she puts it, a little blurb saying essentially "oh, and some women ran too." This will no doubt be a familiar story to anyone who has ever read an issue of an ultrarunning magazine cover to cover; there's generally at least one race report taking the common format of a three-paragraph, blow-by-blow account of the progress of the men's race, followed by a terse sentence or two stating that "X took first for the women in 00:00, with Y coming in second in 00:23." So I loved that Nikki made that point and that she made it well. <br />
<br />
What struck me, though, is that there were two Long Trail speed records at issue in the film: the men's record and the women's record. Both record times were mentioned frequently and were an integral part of the drama. However, while the film gave the name of the holder of the men's record, it never once named the holder of the women's record. This may sound like a very minor gripe, and in a way it is. On its own, it's not a particularly big deal. But when juxtaposed with Nikki's observations about lopsided press coverage, it served as an unfortunate reminder that the attitudes towards women in sport, the attitudes which Nikki is doing an excellent job at trying to change, are maybe even more deeply ingrained than we realize. There's a long, long way to go. It's a good thing we're ultrarunners.<br />
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Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-41948311252501902232015-01-09T08:22:00.002-08:002015-01-09T08:22:34.661-08:00Changing PlansOver the past few months, I've been dealing with a dilemma: my two main goals for 2015 conflicted with each other. One was to run the Appalachian Trail and try for the unsupported women's record, while the other was to try to improve my speed at the marathon to 50 mile distance. Unfortunately 75ish days of plodding along with a backpack on the AT is not conducive to getting faster, not to mention the potential for a long recovery time afterwards where I might not be able to run properly. After going back and forth on the issue for what seemed like ages, I finally came up with a plan: to do the AT but to do it just after my summer goal race, when I'd need to take some time off proper training anyway, and to do it as comfortably as possible to minimize recovery time.<br />
<br />
That sounded like the perfect solution...until my boss said no to the idea of unpaid leave, on the basis that the office is currently too understaffed to lose someone for that long. Since I'm a person who likes to find a way to solve problems, the obvious course of action would have been to think about changing jobs, leaving a gap between the jobs as the time for the AT. I'm not ready to do that though, for two reasons--one, I love my job, and two, with the doubts I had about whether or not to even do the AT, it's not worth it, at least not yet. If I still want to do the AT in a few years and still haven't been able to get unpaid time off, maybe it will be time to think about other job options. <br />
<br />
For now though, I'm happy to switch focus to the "getting faster" goal and try to get in another solid year of uninterrupted training. I've never had a full year of uninterrupted training, let alone two--there have always been months off for Arrowhead training, climbing, illness, or injury. My 2015 race calendar is looking pretty exciting so far: I've got a half marathon in March, the Lake Sonoma 50 mile in April, the Quest for the Crest 50k in late May, and the White River 50 mile in late July. After that my schedule is wide open; I just need to figure out what the best use of all that time is...Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-74554999571139734892015-01-02T07:15:00.002-08:002015-01-02T07:15:54.713-08:0020142014 has quite possibly been the best year of my life so I'm a bit loathe to see the year end. <br />
<br />
Before this past year, it had been virtually impossible for any year to live up to the gold standard of the 2005-2006 school year: during that year I lived in Leeds, a place which fit me so well that it still feels like home, I shared a house with a good friend and had many other good friends living nearby, and almost every day I took advantage of the perfect climbing and running that was on my doorstep. Since then I've had many good things happen to me but no continuously excellent year like that one.<br />
<br />
Until 2014. All of the following happened over the past 12 months:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Divesh and I were able to spend the entire year in our new house in Georgia, free from weekly commuting, the long harsh Midwestern winter (mostly...), and the intense DIY period of the first few months after we bought the house</li>
<li>All but one of my races went well, with Arrowhead especially being one of the best races I've ever had</li>
<li>I was able to make longer visits to the UK and Duluth, keeping the visits to friends and family from being quite as rushed as they normally are (though I was admittedly still guilty of trying to pack too much in on several occasions)</li>
<li>Maria and I had a fantastic trip to the Balkans, which became one of my favorite places I've ever visited</li>
<li>My running fitness steadily progressed throughout the year, ending with a "growth spurt" of improvement just before JFK</li>
</ul>
and finally...<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>in the last two months of the year I've been on a sudden climbing upswing, thoroughly enjoying it and finally getting back to the level I was at before I quit climbing on any kind of regular basis back in 2009. </li>
</ul>
<br />
The only real hitch to the year was a potentially serious Achilles/calf injury back in April, but with the help of a radiologist friend, I got on the path to rehab quickly and was only out for about 4 weeks. <br />
<br />
I'll start 2015 remembering how lucky I've been the past 12 months and do what I can to continue everything that was good about 2014. <br />
<br />
Divesh and I watched the last sunset of 2014 from the top of Coosa Bald, then camped and started off 2015 with a run on the Duncan Ridge Trail. So far I'm liking this new year...<br />
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<br />Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-54713998870978839342014-11-24T08:34:00.001-08:002014-11-24T08:34:47.887-08:00JFK 50 mile 2014 race report<br />
The start of this year's JFK was bitterly cold, nearly a record low for this race. It was 16 degrees F when Divesh dropped me off at the starting area, and I told him that if it got colder than the starting temps for Arrowhead, including the warm year, we were turning around and going home. Fortunately at JFK you're able to wait inside a school gymnasium for part of the pre-race morning. Twenty minutes before the race start, all the runners have to leave the school and walk about five or ten minutes to the start line. It was a strange, slightly somber procession. I tried to jog to warm up but it was hopeless since we were only going to freeze again standing at the start for the ten minutes left before the 7am start. <br />
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At 7am on the dot, we were off. The first 2.5 miles are on a road, up a big hill, which normally probably wouldn't feel very good, but on this day I just wanted to warm up, so it was actually pleasant to be going uphill. Because it was cold and windy, my heart rate monitor was on the fritz and kept showing numbers in the mid 180s, which I knew was way higher than whatever my actual heart rate was. Without the monitor to keep me in check, I probably ran too fast on those first couple of miles, but it felt so good to be finally on my way that I didn't care.<br />
<br />
At mile 2.5 we turned onto the Appalachian Trail. There was the usual trail race traffic jam as some people slowed heavily from their road pace, but the first mile of the trail is wide enough to pass so it wasn't much of a problem. The trees blocked the wind and my heart rate monitor came back to life. My goal was to keep my heart rate in the 155-158 range, though it can be tricky to stick to a particular heart rate on a crowded trail, when you don't want to be the annoying person who passes someone on a downhill only to immediately slow on the next uphill! The pack thinned out by mile 6 or so and from there until the final descent off the AT, you could run without worrying about other racers. <br />
<br />
The entire AT section was just excellent running. The sun had come up and it was a beautiful day, still cold but perfect running weather. The trail is a good mix of difficult, rocky sections (made more difficult by the leaves covering a lot of the rocks) and some easier, less technical sections; there are just enough non-technical parts to keep you from getting mentally exhausted by all the rock-hopping. My pace felt conservative and comfortable, and my homemade sports drink, being used in its second race, was going down excellently. I had high hopes for a good stomach day, and those hopes would end up coming true!<br />
<br />
Before the race I had gone back and forth in my head many times over shoe choice for this race. I know...but it's a complicated choice! You've got the mostly-but-not-entirely rocky trail section, the crushed gravel towpath, and the road. Trail shoes, for the rocks? Super light racing flats for the towpath? Cushy shoes for the pavement?? In the end, I decided to settle the issue with some math: I timed how long it would take to change my shoes. The answer was 37 seconds, which made the solution clear: wear trail shoes for the AT and change into super light Hokas (my Hoka Cliftons are lighter than my road racing shoes!) for the rest of the race. I knew I would save far more than 37 seconds, not to mention my ankle ligaments, by wearing trail shoes on 13 miles of rocks. My one disappointment with this strategy was that although it left me all set to save some time by running quickly down the steep mile and a half descent at the end of the AT section, I wasn't able to put my trail shoes to use there because the trail congestion came back and the trains of people were too long to be able to pass. It was a shame not only for the wasted time but also because the descent looked like it would be great fun to speed down. Still, on the whole, I definitely appreciated having the trail shoes and I would probably go with the same shoe strategy if I ever do the race again.<br />
<br />
I think I came into the aid station at the bottom of the switchbacks, which is mile 15.5, in about 12th place, but because I stopped to change my shoes (and also ended up changing out of three-quarter length tights and into shorts), I wasn't really sure where I was place-wise when I started running again. All I knew was that I felt fantastic and was ready to speed up. Just after this aid station you go back onto the AT briefly for a very enjoyable half mile of smooth trail and then you're dumped out onto the canal towpath. The towpath section of the race is almost exactly a marathon--26.3 miles. It took all the self-restraint I could manage not to set off too quickly in this section, but I knew I had to be patient. Anyone who knows my patience level knows why this was the most difficult part of the entire race...<br />
<br />
It was also the most boring. I did enjoy the first few miles of the towpath, with the absolutely perfect weather and the nice light feeling of getting out of my tights and into shorts. But I had seriously underestimated just how hard it is to run an entire marathon on pancake-flat ground. I had done plenty of flat training runs, but never more than 16 miles at a time, since I tried to end all my long runs with 4 or 5 miles of hills in order to simulate the towpath-to-road transition at the end of JFK. This was definitely a mistake and next time I would do at least one 23-25 mile run of pure flatness. After 17 or 18 miles of towpath I was struggling to force my legs to keep moving at the right speed, even though I knew I wasn't too tired because I was still running almost exactly the same pace for the same heart rate (155ish beats per minute and 8:15 or so minute miles). I also got sick and threw up once, though like in Flagstaff, it was only the one time and I felt immediately better afterwards, and more importantly stayed better for the rest of the race. Overall it was a total win on the stomach front.<br />
<br />
The towpath boredom was sometimes relieved by briefly talking with a few other runners, but I was on my own 99% of the time. I did manage to catch up to a nice guy named Keith and talk with him for a while, but he was just a little too fast for me and I reluctantly had to slow down. Fortunately he was using a run-walk strategy so we ended up leapfrogging each other most of the rest of the race, at least until he left me in the dust the last couple of miles.<br />
<br />
The only other excitement during the towpath section came from finally starting to pass some women. I think I had made it into 10th by mile 27, then 7th by mile 38, where Divesh pointed out that there were two more women only three minutes in front of me. I was feeling rough at that point and thought I had no chance of catching them, but amazingly enough, one caffeinated gel later, I bounced back and made it into 6th. The girl I caught stayed right behind me though and I knew it was time to try to find a faster gear.<br />
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I came off the towpath having done 3:38 for the slightly long marathon, which happily was seven minutes faster than I'd been hoping for. I passed one more girl early in the final 8.5 mile road section, and from then on it was just pure pain, misery, and waiting for the end. I was doing okay on the flats and downhills but every single uphill on that section felt like it was going to do me in. It was only the desperation to hang onto my 5th place that kept me going. At 3 miles to go there's a fairly large uphill and I stopped to walk the second half of it. A guy from Alabama who I had passed a little earlier re-passed me here and said something like "Why did you slow down?" He was sort of joking but sort of not, and he was exactly right--slowing down wasn't doing me any good. It only slightly reduced the pain and it was just going to prolong the amount of time until I could stop running. I tried my best to get it together and was also spurred on by a guy in a red shirt who flew by, looking like he was hardly working despite being almost 48 miles in. At 2 miles to go there's another uphill and at the top I looked back--no women in sight. I finally believed, for the first time, that I was actually going to hold on. I relaxed a little, sped up for the downhill into Williamsport, and made the final turn towards the finish line, crossing the line for an official time of 7:32.<br />
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It was finally over! Though I couldn't fully enjoy the finish because I was in so much pain, I was definitely happy. My goals had been sub 8 hours and top 10 women, and both of those were "stretch" goals--I thought 8:15 was a more likely outcome. From miles 30 to 50 I pushed myself as hard as I ever have, and, with the help of that Alabama guy, I didn't give up at the end like I often do. <br />
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Now I'm ready for a good long rest, during which I will hopefully finally figure out what I want to do with my next year running-wise...Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4310602445997472344.post-78008923961924997992014-11-13T11:09:00.001-08:002014-11-13T19:53:13.959-08:00JFK 50 Training: A wise man, my mother-in-law, and a mystery foot pain Starting out this blog post has made me realize that I never finished my Balkans trip report. I'll just sum it up by saying that our final days consisted of being invited to a party in a ten-house village in Kosovo (we sadly had to decline), Maria being hit on by a drunk singer over a morning picnic, getting lost approximately 10,495 times, fighting our way through the trees and rocks on a steep Barkley-style descent, Maria using her previously-unknown-to-me tracking skills to lead us out of our lostness to within 50 feet of a hotel and bar (she's like a homing pigeon when it comes to wine), and both of us coming down with salmonella/e coli/vicious gut bug of death, though at least on our last day in Montenegro. We lost a lot of weight during the following week!<br />
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Somewhere in the midst of all the stomach pain was a trip to Scotland to be support crew for Michael and Kenny in their Celtman triathlon (though fortunately for me, and also for Kenny who would have had to put up with me, Liam bailed me out of my pacing duties) and squeezing in a quick climb with Dave. </div>
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This is why my JFK training began with three weeks of rest...</div>
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With such a large, uninterrupted block of time to train before the race, nearly three and a half months, I was excited to construct the ultimate training plan. I gave myself a solid six weeks of base building with zero speedwork days, then six more weeks with intervals and tempo runs in the mix, then another two weeks to do a final weekend of back-to-back long runs and start easing off for the two weeks before the race. In theory, this was going to be perfect.</div>
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In reality, it was <i>almost </i>perfect. It certainly didn't start out perfectly. Halfway through my basebuilding period, I felt awful. My legs were sluggish and my pace for my regular training run heart rate was slower than it had been in about a year. I was also visiting Duluth at this point and struggled with the humidity--and this is coming from summer in Georgia! On one of the days in Duluth I ran with <a href="http://runningdoctor2.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><b>Rasmus</b></a> at Lester Park and we mixed in a few speed intervals into a ten-mile run. As I wheezed and gasped my way along behind Rasmus, he turned to me and asked, "Do you have asthma??" No, Rasmus, no I don't. Fortunately, being the wise man that he is, he reminded me to trust the training and not to panic and head off to the track for some 800m repeats, which would likely do nothing other than ruin my nicely-planned out basebuilding phase. I repeated this to myself several times over the next few weeks and managed to finish out the phase without abandoning my training plan.</div>
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Then, my in-laws came to visit for two weeks. I may or may not owe my mother-in-law a significant amount of credit for how everything quickly turned around for me fitness-wise. My in-laws are Indian and my mother-in-law is not only a great cook but also seems to genuinely enjoy cooking for us when she visits. Virtually everything she cooks is extremely healthy, and since this was at the same time that I started doing twice-weekly speedwork, it turned into an impromptu crash diet. It's hard to say whether the speedwork or the diet had more of an impact, but one day I went for a run on a flat road as a bit of a fitness test--I do this once in a while, run at a heart rate of 150 beats per minute on a flat, straight road and see what pace that gives me. When I'm in shape it's generally around 8:25 minute miles. On this particular day, it was 8:00. I figured it was a GPS malfunction and forgot about it. Two days later I won a trail 10k and felt nice and strong. The day after that, I tried the heart rate/pace test again, this time in a different location. Same result. Hmmm...!</div>
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There was one small interruption to my "perfect" training plan after this--the Flagstaff 55k. It was the last race in the US Skyrunning series and since I had done the first race, I felt like I should really give Flagstaff a try to see if I could scrape together a few more series points. The race was entirely at altitude (8,000 to 11,500 feet) and very hilly, so since I had been training on mostly flat-ish ground to get ready for JFK, I had pretty low expectations. And while the results don't show it (my time was super slow because I took forever in the last 5k, even longer than such a hard 5k demanded), the race actually went really well for me. I was running much faster on the flats and downhills than I normally would, all for the same race pace heart rate I would usually use. My new homemade sports drink was working well; my legs felt strong pretty much the whole race and I only threw up once, which by my standards is a 10 out of 10 on stomach quality. And even with the altitude and the lack of hill training I was still mostly passing people on the second-to-last big climb. In that last 5k, though, I was seriously sunburned and overheated and was getting paranoid about heat stroke, so I took it easy and spent lots of time standing in little patches of shade trying to cool down. So while my finish time wasn't very good, I was really excited about having felt so good in the first 50k. I also got to meet some <a href="http://www.montanatrailcrew.com/2014/09/the-2014-rut-50k-experience.html" target="_blank"><b>way faster</b> <b>yet friendly new runner friends</b></a>. And I feel fairly confident that I won't have to worry about heat or sunburn at JFK! For anyone who's interested, Flagstaff was a great course with beautiful views and nice singletrack trail; there's a video summarizing it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgc-60SCgN4&app=desktop" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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For added satisfaction, I recovered quickly from Flagstaff, partly through spending four days on the Appalachian Trail with my friend Nick. We were treated to a great show of leaf color, and there's nothing better than doing a totally different type of running to get fully recovered and revived.</div>
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After that it was back to JFK work. I had some sections of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia that I wanted to see, and it's only a short hop from Virginia to Maryland, so I managed to get in two long runs on the actual JFK course. These went fairly well although I was somewhat dismayed to learn that the hills on the Appalachian Trail part of the JFK course are nothing to sneeze at, and with a lot of that section being rocky, it's not going to be quite as fast of a 50 miler as I thought it would be. Still, all in all, with 26 miles of towpath and 8.5 miles of road, it's definitely about running fast rather than getting up and down big hills, which is what I wanted.</div>
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If the race had been a week ago, it might really have been the perfect training period. But then, the "almost" part of "almost perfect" set in. Two days ago I started having a strange pain in the arch of my right foot. I'm trying to avoid mentioning the possibility of it being the-injury-that-shall-not-be-named, the one that can take months to recover from, but so far that appears to be the most likely culprit. Since JFK is my goal race for the entire season, I'll have no qualms about shutting the pain up with ibuprofen on race day and dealing with the aftermath later, but at the moment even a quadruple dose of vitamin I doesn't sound like enough to do the trick. Fingers crossed. Until then, if you have any thoughts on how to cure the-injury-that-shall-not-be-named in less than 8 days, please let me know...</div>
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Alicia Hudelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920162593427542080noreply@blogger.com3