what worked

I wanted to write a bit to let folks know what worked for me......and what didn't

FEET: Hardrock is an extremely wet race with stream crossings and marshlands the entire course. My feet were wet from the river crossing at 2 miles straight thru for 46 hours until the river crossing at 99 miles.

AJW tip to wet your feet before long runs was an excellent one! The two weeks prior to the race I ran with wet feet 5-6 times- spraying them down with a hose (filling my shoes really) then re-wet in a local river 30 minutes in to the runs. I also did 2-3 hour yard work sessions where I wet my feet every 45min. This constant time spent in wet socks/shoes allowed my foot skin to toughen and all the looser/weak callus stuff to peel off prior to race day and thus in the race itself I had ZERO problems. I had one tiny blister on the side of my big toe that I did not feel, drained after, and it was sealed and healed in 24hrs. No other issues at all!!!

Shoes:- I wore my Asics 2110's road shoes that have 800+ miles on them and are a year old. They drained well, gripped decently, were light weight, comfortable, supportive but not restrictive and are lower to the ground than my Montrails. However, they have higher side walls around the ankle and this caused my most severe post race problem......I have swollen ankle bones on the outside (lateral malleolus) bilaterally and the right one was rug burned into a bloody area. Runing straight is no problem, but side hill action caused the side of the shoes to push into my ankle bones. Ouch.

socks: I changed socks 4 times for no good reason other than it FELT GOOD! I used white "jockey" socks that fit my feet well. They are all ruined with stains now but hey.

fluids: I drank plan water 100% of the time and filed my bottles from the streams and with snow probably 60% of the time. I'll let you know if I develop giardia. I also took in up to 12 cups of coke along the way (drunk at aid stations)

Electrolytes: I used maybe 8 or so NUUN tablets and one S! cap, then had GI trouble and for the last 26 hours of the race only ate salty food from the tables. Salt pills are overrated. I eat an extremely low salt diet, and was well heat acclimated prior to the race so my sweat has little salt in it. I wish I had not used the NUUN tabs at all. Pretzels is all you need.

Calories: I took in 2400cals of Cliff shot blocks, 4000+cals of pure granulated sugar (that I carried in a bottle then added water too to make a gel like slurry). I will use maltodextrin in the future as sugar worked great but has a taste to it, that I did get sick off, while maltodextrin is tasteless. I ate a strawberry milkshake (real deal ice cream from an ice cream shop), 1/2 a turkey sandwich, 1/2 a turkey sandwich with cheese grilled, 2 cups of pasta, 6 pop sickles, maybe 12 cups of coke, one zip lock bag of peanuts, M&M's, and one zip lock bag full of pretzels. during the 46:45. Pre-race breakfast was a liter of gatorade and 2 banana Power bars. I'm not sure how many calories this all is but it was ALOT! yet I was still hungry and bonky a few times. The caloric expenditure scaling 40% grade mtns at 14,000ft must be higher than 100 calories per mile.

I also recently read that Krissy Moehl took in 600cals per hour at last years hardrock....this is double the 300cals an hour max the stomach is supposed to be able to process.(according to my masters degree in exercise physiology learnings) Interesting.! Probably why she kicked ass. I watched Karl Meltzer pack his drop bags for the 2005 hardrock were he spent 18 minutes in aid stations total time. He had 60 gels. for 6000cals. And ate nothing else. Trying to run at altitude asks a lot of the old cardio system so much of the bodies blood is diverted away from the viscera (stomach/intestines) and shunted to the working muscles. this makes digestion of anything complex very difficult. This is why I chose to stick closely to simple sugar and away from harder to digest foods. During exercise at a high % max output (like I had at Hardrock) the common phenomonen of "take in sugar---recieve huge insulin spike----resulting in lowered blood sugar and BONK" is attenuated. Huge spikes in insulin output are not seen, so one does not bonk as hard after pure sugar intake as one would say when sitting on a couch. No, I am not as dumb as I may seem.

Due to efficiency of the body being able to utilize stored fat when running at x min/mile pace rather than burning glucose or glycogen, the better shape you are in, the less calories you need to take in. I am not in that kind of shape obviously! so I likily needed more calories taken in during the event than fitter/faster folks.

all in all it was a great experiement and I am glad to be back in better shape. It has been a slow climb out of the 2003-2006 duldrums, but I am getting there.

grindstone 100 in Oct and JFK 50 in Nov on the horizon

where are you at VDOT Boy?

Tuesday- 3miles- 31mins ( a walk/ run mix)

as for recovery....I can now walk normally, go up/down steps, and run for 1-2 minutes at a time. Quads still destroyed. I need to use Alberto Salazar's Anti-G treadmill!!! I actually went to use the pool yesterday for some no impact aqua-jogging, but it was closed for a special function...damn.

I had some thoughts today after reading some other great blogs about the Jack Daniel's training methods and his incredible 45 years of physiology research and the great physiology fitness tables he produced. Others have taken these tables and made performance calculators out of them.

Although many argue (stupidly in my opinion) about these tables being crap and you have to prove your fitness on the track/road/trail. I find them a great tool to gauge my present fitness and then use that to set up appropriate training paces / intensities. Why? Well because I feel like my entire career -6 years of varsity XC and Track in high school, and 4 years of collegiate running (Div I, Junior College, and Div III) I trained above my fitness level and succeeded in little other than beating myself up and on a 2-3-or 4 time a week basis adding stress to my training program that was too much for me to adequately adapt to. Causing me in many many seasons to finish the season running times that I ran the first week of the season or worse.

When you look at my personal records I have achieved much better performances at shorter distances than longer. This despite considering myself a DISTANCE runner and logging 2,000+ miles a year for the last 19 years.

How did this happen? Well, when you pound short repeats quickly on a regular basis you get good at running short distances quickly.. I mean lets not over complicate it. The workouts I never did in high school and rarely did in college that I am trying to do now are not so hard and fast, but are aimed at improving my lactate threshold, and ability to hold a steady pace for a LONG period.

Here is a look at some of my PR's and the fitness level they signify:
400m-53.9 = 78.5 Vdot
800m- 2:02.8 = 70.0Vdot
1500m-4:11.0 = 66.6 Vdot
Mile-4:29.71 = 66.9 Vdot
3000m- 9:15 =64.3 Vdot
5000m-15:57 =64.8 Vdot
8K- 26:22 =64.3 Vdot
10K- 33:37 =63.7 Vdot
10miles- 57:23 =61.4Vdot
1/2 mara- 1:18 =60.0Vdot
Marathon-2:54:31 =55.5Vdot
50 mile- 6:24 = 47.6Vdot

How depressing is that?! Either I was supposed to be a sprinter...... or I have not really trained very smart. That is a pretty blatant example of decline.

If you contrast me to an elite runner (because hey fast guys are fun) like Alan Webb
you can see that depending on the year and what events he was focusing on... his PR's for the 800-1500-mile-2mile-5k, and 10K all fall in the 80Vdot physiology fitness range. Pretty impressive. So can he go out and run a 2:07 marathon today? Of course not. But I bet if he wanted to and trained for it specifically for a good 20 months he could.