Blog Archives

9/1/05 S*** storm

Orienteers are by nature a fairly anal lot, so it's no big surprise that the reaction to change is predominantly negative. I must say, though, that the latest news from the IOF does make one wonder what the championships committee is thinking. The inclusion of Micro-O in the Middle Distance finals at world championships has been greeted with universal derision. The discussion on Attack Point is consistent with orienteering message boards around the world.

What really seems to be eating folks is that this was done in order to get a better TV contract. Messing with the sport for the purposes of dubious coverage strikes most as making a deal with the devil. This is particularly true for those outside of Europe since there isn't much upside to extended coverage on Norwegian TV.

A lot of sports wrestle with this. The NFL is constantly tweaking its rules in response to network requests. The Tour de France is several hundred miles shorter than it used to be because shorter stages make better TV. Sometimes the changes improve the sport, sometimes they don't.

Adventure Racing has seen it's limited coverage bulldozed by the more sensationalized Survivor series (and it's many descendents). Fortunately, at least at the grassroots level, race directors have stayed focused on what the participants want rather than what might generate more publicity. I hope that continues. Orienteering and Adventure Racing are never going to be the media draws that the major North American sports are. It's best to accept that and make the sport as good as possible for the people who enjoy it.

9/2/05 Sylamore race report

I got a race report from Carrie which I've posted. From the sound of it, experience took the day. They didn't panic when they fell behind. Instead they just continued to cover ground and when the team ahead ran into trouble, they were there to take advantage of it.

Pro golfers talk about playing the course, not the competition. By this they mean that you need to focus on making your own score as low as possible and not worry about what others are doing. I think that's good advice for adventure racing as well. The races we've done best at are the ones where we've pretty much ignored everybody else.

This is a lot different from some other forms of racing (particularly cycling) where what your opponents are doing can force you to change your strategy. I used to think more about other teams, particularly approaching navigation sections since that's what we're best at and we don't want to be followed. I've come to realize that, while there may be some objective merit to trying to separate, once you start thinking about other teams, you are inviting disaster on your own. Focus counts for a lot.

9/4/05 Flatlander

The Flatlander 12-hour was a great experience. I experienced both some success (50 miles in under 9 hours) and some challenges (overheating in the afternoon). I've posted a report.

9/5/05 Ultra success

We'll get to the lessons learned in a bit, but first I'd like to review the things that went right on Saturday.

First and foremost was raising over $1200 for MDA. That's the reason I entered. Thanks to my generous sponsors who pledged a total of $16/mile plus $250 in "fixed" donations: Paul Heckathorn, Ted & Janet Buckley, Terry & Lea Koesterer, Ed & Beth Skelton, Roy Brammer, Mary & Pat Geldemeier, Rusty Fry, and Kelli Brown.

I was really concerned about my feet. I've had problems with blistering in long races and my right foot has never really been the same since I broke it twice in 2003. I changed my shoes and socks every couple hours and had no trouble at all. I think taking electrolytes throughout the race helped quite a bit as well � my bad blistering problems have been at races where I've let that get out of balance.

I think my pace was really good. The short walks in the shade each lap gave a little recovery without stopping and stiffening up. I did back off at 9 hours, but that was a conscious decision based on the heat. I think I could have kept running that pace for quite a bit longer if I had wanted to. Miles 46-50 were done at the same speed as 1-5, so fading wasn't an issue.

I did a good job of tending to food and water. Coming through the aid station every 1.4 miles certainly helped. I took a small bit of food and water each time. I also stopped at the two water fountains each lap. That meant my stomach never had to deal with a lot at once, but always had something in it. After about six hours, I stopped eating anything with sugar in it as I've found sweet stuff messes me up in the latter part of long races.

Overall it was a very good experience, but there are a few things I'd do differently. I'll write about those tomorrow.

9/6/05 Lessons learned

Sorry for using management jargon in the title, but at least I don't write things like, "Performance is maximized when teammates leverage their synergies, utilizing a strategy of load shifting where the outstanding performers are tasked with transporting items for members who threaten the critical path" when I could just write "The stronger folks should carry more of the gear."

Anyway, here's some things I might do a bit differently next time I run an ultra:

• Get up on time. I don't really know what went wrong here. I've entered over 1000 races during the last 30 years and while I've had some close calls, this is the first time I've ever been late for a start.
• Get properly set up. I just dropped my stuff and started running. Over the course of the race, this probably set me back another 3 or 4 minutes because every time I needed something, I had to dig through my bag.
• Wear a shirt. I had planned on running with a singlet, but took it off after three hours because it was chaffing. I got a bit of sunburn. I think a loose fitting technical shirt would have worked much better. I've never had a problem with one of those chaffing. They not only protect from burning, but are also a bit cooler in the direct sun.
• Run a little faster and walk more. My early running pace was so slow (about 9:40/mi) it was pretty inefficient. After three hours, I started running faster and walking more. My overall pace (10:20/mi) stayed the same, but it felt easier.
• Back way off if it gets hot. I was surprised that I would overheat when I was well hydrated. Just no arguing with a 90-degree day, I guess. If I had backed off just a couple laps earlier, I'm sure I could have run the full 12 hours (actually, I'm pretty sure I could have, anyway, as my legs were fine at 50 miles, but I didn't want to take any chances with something as serious as heat stroke).

9/7/05 Fill 'er up

Today, I filled my gas tank for the first time since Katrina nuked New Orleans. I was surprised that prices were only $3.18/gal for premium (the WRX doesn't much like regular gas). I had expected prices to go up more than that. Meanwhile, I hear that all our fine public servants in Washington are holding hearings as to why gas prices are so high. Well, duh, maybe because there isn't enough of the stuff?

It drives me nuts that the same folks who just passed the most ridiculously industry-sided energy bill in history are now up there whining about prices and oil company profits. The only way that people are ever going to buy more fuel efficient cars is if prices go up. This isn't really such a bad thing.

Adventure racing makes you a gas hog. I wish that wasn't so, but it is. We haul around a lot of gear and have to drive a fair ways for both racing and training. I'm sure I use more gas than the average person. The fact that I drive a high-performance car doesn't help matters any. I'm thinking about changing that. I like the WRX, but since I don't race cars anymore, I could get by with something a lot more economical.

Actually, all the intake and exhaust mods I did on my old car for racing really helped the mileage - it went from high 20's to low 30's on the highway. I was so surprised by the improvement that I wrote a letter to Honda asking them why they didn't make the cars like that in the first place. I mean, who wouldn't want a car that gets 10% better mileage and goes half a second faster in the quarter? I suppose the fact that you could hear it several blocks away might be viewed as a downside.

The Subaru is turbocharged which makes economy gains a lot more problematic. Fiddling around with boost levels and fuel maps is just as likely to screw things up as improve matters unless you've got some really good diagnostic equipment. I've left the WRX stock and put a rack on the top. The result is mid-20's on the highway, which isn't very good for a small car.

I've tried to drive a lot less the last couple weeks. I have a very short commute (less than 3 miles). I can do my cycling and running training right from my house. I don't have any out of town races until October. Hopefully, things will be a little back to normal by then.

9/8/05 Don't go slow

I never did get around to posting any analysis from the Cliff Cave meet. There were a few interesting legs. This one is particularly deceiving. Take a few seconds to decide which way you would have run it. I'll give you a hint: straight is not an option - the woods are far too thick this time of year. Also, at the point you need to make this decision, you have seen the rough open field - it's pretty tall grass, but it's mown along the edge.

This is one of two legs where David took significant time out of me. In this case, the "no brainer" route taking the trail west and then following the east edge of the field to the control is the quick route. My mistake was not in missing this route, but in missing the significance of the decision.

To me, this looked like a common course setting error referred to as "caliper-O". This means you have two nearly identical routes and the only way to know which is longer is to get out a set of calipers and measure. This leg isn't quite that bad in that the road route to the right is clearly a bit longer. But I figured that the speed advantage of the road would wash that out. When choosing among seemingly equal routes, I usually take the route that offers the fastest running. Thus, I took the road.

What I missed was that from the road, there is a fairly good stretch through the field. This was slow. Assuming you angle in from the first telephone pole south of the road, you you run about 100 meters in the long grass. Taking the other route, you can get all the way to the edge of the circle and then run the last 30 meters through the tall grass. David got me by about 20 seconds on this leg.

The lesson is that you want to minimize the time you are going slow. Even a little extra distance in the slow section wipes out a lot of fast running.

9/9/05 Addicted to trails

Yesterday, I showed a Cliff Cave route where David got me. Today, I'll turn the tables. This leg came fairly late in the race so there had been plenty of time to get a feel for the vegetation.

Again, there are two fairly obvious routes (indicated by pink dots from the point where they diverge). David took the longer trail route while I went more or less straight. Now, I know the woods are thick, but the trail route is a LOT longer. Also, even the trail route cuts through the woods at the end, so the actual distance of woods running saved is only about 150 meters of light green. That's sure not worth going 200m out of the way.

David knows this, of course, and never would have taken the trail route early in the race. The problem here is something we call being "addicted to trails." When you're running on trails for a while, you get used to the speed. As you look into the woods, particularly if they are thick, you just don't want to go there because you want to keep going fast. Sometimes the symptom of this is that you leave a trail later than you should. Other times, it's taking crazy route choices just to stay on trail.

The only defense I know against this is to convince yourself (not because I told you, but because you actually go out in the woods with a stopwatch and verify it) that the redline is almost always the best route. You need to have a reason not to run straight. Only if there's a problem with the direct route should you consider alternatives that are significantly farther.

9/10/05 Bitten

This is my least favorite time of year. It's still hot and the woods are thick, but I have to train in them to be ready for the fall races. Today, I ran at Rockwoods. It was hot (92 degrees) but the vegetation was OK. Not nearly as fast as it will be in another month, but still fairly fast by most standards.

Last Wednesday was another matter. I did some night training at Lost Valley on the USGS map. The woods were terrible. In places I had to crawl to get through. There were still a lot of bugs, too. I have chiggers all over my feet, ankles, and calves. I have a lot of other bites on my torso as well. I must have picked those up when I was crawling.

9/11/05 Slugs

Today was the SLUG (St. Louis Ultrarunners Group) picnic. Olivia and Kate went along with me. It was a pretty fun outing.

I've drifted in and out of SLUG membership for the last 5 years or so (I think my membership might be currently lapsed). They're a fun bunch to run with and there is considerable experience to draw from. Just about any high-profile ultra in North America has been completed by at least one member. Of course, the best advice often comes from those who have failed to complete a given ultra.

Now that I'm officially an ultrarunner (having raced more than 26.2 miles at Flatlander), I suppose I should renew my membership.

9/12/05 ASX

My latest issue of Adventure Sports magazine came bundled with an issue of a new magazine called ASX. I assume it stands for Adventure Sports eXtreme, but I didn't really look at it carefully enough to find out. The layout and writing are definitely targeting the MTV crowd. I've got nothing against that, but I prefer to get my incoherent news blurbs off the web. I turn to print for a more substantive approach.

It did occur to me as I was flipping through the pages that it would be darn near impossible to do the crazy stuff in that magazine and also have enough time to train for Adventure Racing. Freestyle skydiving sounds fun, but I'm sure it takes a long time to get good at it. I suppose a full-time athlete could shoehorn in some "extreme" activities, but there aren't many full-time Adventure Racers

It is interesting that even though Adventure Racing is seen as an extreme sport, the participants, at least at the elite level, aren't really part of that culture. Adventure Racing was featured in the first X-Games before the ESPN producers realized that it was actually a bunch of old farts who just know how to go forever. Almost without exception, the top adventure racers that I know are pretty traditional athletes coming from one of the three major disciplines (running/orienteering, biking, or paddling). I guess it's Mark Burnett's (Eco-Challenge race director and Survivor producer) influence that got the extreme label applied. I don't think many adventure racers see themselves that way.

9/13/05 Mega

Last Sunday, a world record was broken for most controls on an orienteering course. The course setter was J-J Cote, one of the more capable setters in North America. His course had 203 controls. A partial map of the course is here.

What impressed me most about this course is that it wasn't just putting out controls for the sake of putting out controls. With very few exceptions, each leg is a legit (albeit short) navigation leg. Having such nice terrain helps, but this is a really fine accomplishment. The feedback from participants was quite positive. I wish I had been able to go.

9/14/05 New teammate

It took some searching, but we finally found a woman for our second team at Raid the Rock (I was getting worried that I might not be able to do this race). Vicki Vojak will join Doug Nishimura and me. Vicki's done a fair bit of adventure racing. She has a regular team so we were lucky to snatch her up for this event.

9/16/05 Thirty seconds for free

Today it was below 70 degrees during my lunchtime run. That's the first day we've had like that since last spring. My pace wasn't particularly fast because I was running the powerline, but on the road sections I was about 30 seconds per mile faster than my normal summer training pace.

This happens every year. My spring pace is a little on the slow side because I don't do much road running in the winter. Through the summer, my fitness improves, but my pace slows slightly as it gets hotter. Then the cool weather comes and all of a sudden the summer fitness presents itself. Even though I've come to expect it, it's always fun when it happens.

9/17/05 Go YaYa!

Olivia got her first win today as we entered the group category at the Kirkwood Night-O. It's held in a Kirkwood City Park and even the woods controls are accessible by trail, so I decided to take her in the jogger. She was up to the task, taking the many bumps and near dumps without a complaint. She was very excited when she was called up to get her first place ribbon.

I was pretty happy that we posted fast time overall (David was meet director; he would have beaten us easily). Shows that clean navigation trumps speed at night.

9/18/05 Test loop

I find it helpful to have some reasonably objective way of measuring where my fitness is at any given time. I could just run some time trials at the track, but I prefer to measure my speed as I will use it in races: through the woods. To this end, I have the Rockwoods Test Loop. It's actually a course that I designed for the Cold Nose meet back in 2000.

Map.

That meet was a memory-O, meaning that you ran it without a map. At each control was a map showing where the next control was. I designed the legs to be fairly easy to remember. This makes it a really good test loop course because you don't have to look at the map very often (especially after you've run it a few times). Since I generally don't lose any time to navigation, this loop does a good job of measuring how fast I can run through the woods.

David Frei won the Cold Nose meet on this course with a time just over 40 minutes. That comes to 8:00/Km which is pretty good in Rockwoods. When I run the loop, I feel that if I'm under 40 minutes, I'm ready for local competition. Before going to an A-meet, I prefer to be under 35 minutes. My PR is 32:20, but that was after running it three times in as many weeks so I didn't really have to look at the map at all.

Every so often, I go out and put some flagging tape at each control location. I haven't done this in a while, so when I ran the loop yesterday, there were very few tapes. I'll re- tape it this fall. I don't really need the tapes since I know all the control locations, but it's good to physically touch the tape just to reinforce the habit of running all the way to the control and not loosing focus in the circle.

9/19/05 Big crowd

I don't envy other sports their popularity. I've always felt that the more obscure activities are more interesting simply because they aren't part of our everyday culture. When I started cycling, there were only 1500 licensed racers in the US. Ten years and Greg Lemond later, there were 85,000. I liked the fact that the level of competition came up, and it certainly made it easier to squeak out a semi-pro existence with so many more races, but I missed the tight-knit community of the late 70's.

Orienteering and Adventure Racing have a very small base of athletes. The folks at the top are pretty good, but there are probably fewer than 1000 people taking either sport particularly seriously in the US. I enjoy that.

That said, it was interesting to attend the Lewis & Clark marathon in St. Charles yesterday. This is not a big race by running standards, yet 3200 people were entered. An army of volunteers lined the course. A fairly large arena was used to serve post-race refreshments. It had a "big event" feel that is impossible to duplicate with the field sizes we see. There's a lot to be said for numbers.

9/20/05 Overtraining

I've been doing a bit of reading about training methods in the first half of the 20th century. In the period between 1895 and 1931, the mile record dropped from 4:15 to 4:09. Three more seconds came off in the 30's. From 1940 to 1945, a rivalry between the two great Swedes Arne Anderson and Gunder Haag brought it down to 4:01.4 and it became clear that the "unbreakable" 4-minute barrier would soon fall. It took nearly nine more years to get under 4, but that may have been as much a psychological barrier as a physical one.

Four-minute miles are routinely run in college meets now and the world record for the mile is now down to 3:43. Interestingly, the downward progress of the mile record has been very nearly linear since Bannister's 3:59.4 in 1954, which would indicate that the real limit is still a ways off. The mile is just a convenient event to look at because there is a tremendous amount of data on it. The pattern is similar for all distances.

What happened in 1940 that made this perceived barrier suddenly so fragile? From what I can tell, there were two things. The first was a fundamental shift in attitudes towards what the human body was capable of. The general feeling in the early 1900's was that running hard was very dangerous and that too much of it would leave you seriously disabled if not kill you outright. There's some truth to this, but the fears were clearly out of line with the risk.

The great runners of the middle part of the century were all noted for their "heroic" training plans. The training schedules of runners like Emil Zatopek and John Landy certainly were exceptional for their day, but would not be viewed as excessive by elite runners today. It was the example of such runners that made coaches rethink the amount of training required to reach ones full potential.

The other breakthrough is attributed specifically to Zatopek, although there were certainly other influences as well. That was the idea that workouts could be designed to train the cardiovascular system without putting undue stress on the skeletal muscles. This was the beginning of interval training and it was so effective that in 1952 Zatopek became the first (and still only) man to win the distance running triple crown: 5,000, 10,000, and marathon in the same Olympics.

As I read about these things and then read the multitude of overtraining warnings and "quality over quantity" articles today's fitness magazines, I have to wonder if some of these writers didn't get the memo from the last 50 years. It is nearly impossible for an amateur athlete to overtrain. Pros are constantly looking for ways to jam in more training, not less. Those of us with other responsibilities are in no danger of training too much.

It is surely true that suddenly doubling one's training is a foolish undertaking. Any step up in quantity or intensity needs to be done at a rate the body can adapt to. It's also true that if one misses the second big lesson and does workouts that tax the skeletal muscles every day, it won't be long before the body collapses. But assuming that the training is properly structured, too much of a good thing is the least of your worries.

9/21/05 Emil

Since I brought him up yesterday, here are a few of my favorite quotes from Emil Zatopek whose wit was nearly as quick as his times on the track.

On why he didn't stretch: "You never see racehorses stretching out before a race." and "Why should I have to touch my toes? I never do that during a race."

On interval training: "Everyone said, 'Emil, you are a fool!' But when I first won the European Championship, they said: 'Emil, you are a genius!'"

On his unorthodox gait: "When they start giving points for style, I'll attend to that. Right now they only care about the watch."

On goals: "You can't climb up to the second floor without a ladder... Try for a goal that's reasonable, and then gradually raise it."

On accomplishments: "To boast of a performance which I cannot beat is merely stupid vanity. And if I can beat it that means there is nothing special about it."

This last one makes him out to be humble, which he certainly wasn't. I do think it shows he had a pretty good grasp on the fact that there was nothing superhuman about what he was doing. He simply out-trained everybody and when the race came there was nobody who could dig deeper.

9/22/05 Taper

Taper is pretty much taken for granted, now, but it's actually a new concept. Prior to the big upswing in training duration and intensity, there was no particular need to alter training around races. In fact, since racing was about the only quality work that most runners got prior to 1940, the more they raced, the better they tended to be.

Roger Bannister might have been the first guy to really get a taper right, although it was partly by accident. In the spring of 1954, feeling burned out and knowing that he probably had only a few weeks before John Landy broke 4 minutes for the mile, he decided he needed a break to clear his head. He went on a climbing trip with his running buddies for a weekend. When they returned, they went back to the track and found that workouts they were struggling with seemed easy. Since he was about to take the medical board exams, he got in very little training between the trip and the record attempt. Despite terrible conditions, he ran a full two seconds faster than he had ever run and became the first person to break a 4-minute mile.

As expected, Landy answered a month later with a new record of 3:58 and their meeting at the British Empire Games just six weeks ahead was suddenly anticipated as the "Mile of the Century". During the lead up, Landy continued his ferocious training. Bannister, still working on his exams, fit in as much training as he could, focusing on speed work.

Looking at their race records, few doubted that Landy was the fitter of the two. He routinely ran under 4:02 from the front whereas Bannister had only broken that mark once, and that was with pacers. Nonetheless, on race day Bannister hung tough and had the kick to come around on the final straight. He posted the fastest time of his career, knocking nearly a second off his record run two months earlier. Furthermore, it was essentially an unpaced effort because Landy held a commanding lead for most of the race.

It's not clear that Landy (or for that matter, Bannister, who retired shortly after their showdown) ever grasped the importance of taper. Two years later, Landy ran an unofficial world record 3-mile in training three days before the Olympic 1500m final, killing his legs and his chances for victory.

Taper is not simply resting, although that's a big part of it. It also involves some very high quality workouts separated by longer than usual recovery times. In the summer of 1954, Bannister had no choice but to train this way because of his study schedule. The result was performances that are remembered as two of the greatest in history, and by a runner who, while of undisputed talent, didn't have a particularly impressive race record leading up to that point.

9/23/05 Strange signals

Most of the time I'm amazed that the human body (or any other living thing) works at all. Still, some of the functions seem a little screwed up.

Last night, I did some night training at Rockwoods Range. Shortly into the run, I was moving through thigh-high vegetation and couldn't really see where I was stepping. I got tangled up in some dead branches and went down. To avoid getting impaled on one of the branches, I had to twist my hips in a manner that wrenched the right hip just a bit. It didn't hurt much (the gash on my chest from the offending branch was a significantly greater, albeit still superficial, concern). I ran for another 100 minutes without really noticing it.

When I got out of the car after driving home, I noticed my hip was really stiff. It got worse overnight. I could barely walk this morning. At lunch, I limped over to the locker room thinking I might be able to loosen things up a bit with a short jog. The first few steps hurt, but as I got moving it felt better. The farther and faster I went, the better it felt. After 9 miles at a decent pace, I felt fine. By the time I was done with my shower, it had stiffened up again and I was back to limping.

So, does it need rest or not? Who knows? Running makes it feel better, but walking hurts a lot. You'd think if running was good for it, walking would be even better since it's less stress. My nervous system certainly doesn't think so. Oh well, I had an easy weekend planned anyway.

9/25/05 Annie

Annie and Al came to visit for the weekend. It was nice to take a weekend off and just hang out. We did go hiking on Saturday. Mostly we watched Baby-O.

9/26/05 Berryman

I found out today that Carol's Team (David, Jeff, Carrie, and James Fawcett) won the Berryman Adventure. That's not really a surprise, since it's basically the winning team from last year, but certainly good news. I'll try to get a race report out of them.

9/27/05 Nice surprise

Yesterday I ran at Forest Park. I did half the bike path and then ran one of the loops from the relay last spring. My time for the loop was 30:09, which would have been fast time in the A-meet. However, as mapper, course setter, and test runner, I certainly wasn't losing time to navigation.

It was still a pretty hard run, not quite what I'd put out for a 10K, but close. As I finished the loop on the bike path, I felt very relaxed, even though I was conscious of the fact that I was running a bit faster than normal. The last mile of the bike path is completely flat and it felt like I was running it in around 7 minutes. When I checked my watch I was surprised to see I did it in 6:33.

Now, a 6:33 mile, even at the end of a hard 90-minute workout isn't exactly the stuff of legends. What was nice about it was how smooth it felt. My training this summer was targeted at increasing my ability for hard efforts when I'm already fatigued. I think it has been largely successful. I'll look at some of the things I did in that regard over the next few days.

9/28/05 Nadim

I ran with Nadim Ahmed last evening. He lives just outside Washington, DC and was in town on business. Nadim is one of the stronger orienteers in the M40 class.

While I run basically even with Nadim in O meets, he'd trash me in a running race. As we were running along the bike path at Creve Coeur Lake, I asked him (between labored breaths) if this was his normal training pace. He replied that he usually goes a bit faster. So much for confidence about my fitness.

9/29/05 Tuesday night stamina

I mentioned a few days ago that my focus this summer was to improve the ability to go hard at the end of a long workout. This is different from being able to go hard for a long time. The latter simply comes with a general raising of fitness. The former is a combination of mental toughness and some subtle physiological changes.

The mental toughness part is something that most seasoned competitors know how to deal with. In a nutshell, it's your mind winning an argument with your body. The body always errs on the side of caution. This is a protective device that I'm sure was useful when you never knew when you might need a little something in reserve for running away from a tiger. It is possible to work oneself to death, but that is usually a result of dehydration and overheating, not too much effort. If you properly tend to your condition, there's not much real risk in pushing hard, it just requires some fortitude. I'm not really sure how you train this, other than doing workouts and/or races that require it.

This past summer, I've been using Tuesday night's for such workouts. There's nothing magical about that day, it just coincides with some group rides that are particularly well suited to it. The Tuesday evening criteriums are probably the best such ride. Since I'm over 35, I can ride both the "A" and "B" races. If I preface them with a longish warm up (usually by riding there instead of driving), the second race doesn't finish until I'm nearly 3 hours into my workout. Sufficiently depleted from the races, I ride home at a stiff tempo. This requires some focus because I no longer have other riders around to push me.

The whole workout takes between 3 and 4 hours. The important thing isn't the length of the ride as much as the fact that most of the hard stuff comes after 2 hours. Up to around 2 hours, pushing is fairly easy because your blood sugar levels are quite high. While I drink a lot on these rides, I don't eat anything immediately before or during. After two hours my sugar levels are low enough that my body complains quite a bit about the effort.

Naturally, you want to avoid this situation in a race. I wouldn't recommend it too frequently in workouts either. But limited to a few times a month, it does serve nicely for getting your body into a state where it doesn't want to keep going, but can be pushed without any real danger. As an added bonus, there is some evidence that these types of glycogen depletion workouts do have a long-term effect of increasing your body's ability to store glycogen. By increasing such stores, you reduce the amount you need to eat during a race.

9/30/05 Fall fever

Many people get spring fever, I don't. Maybe it's because I grew up further north so the two months of barely freezing temperatures we get in St. Louis don't strike me as excessive. Actually, the winter is a pretty nice time to be running through the woods around here.

I do get fall fever.

Yesterday was about as perfect of a fall day as you could hope for. Today is looking at least as good. After three months of really hot weather and then another month crashing through the woods while the summer vegetation dies down, I'm more than ready for this.

The timing couldn't be better. This weekend we have a training camp and meet at Cuivre River. It's a great map and the vegetation is pretty open year round. With the cool temperatures keeping the bugs in check, conditions should be fantastic. Add the fact that we've got (former National Champ) Michael Eglinski and some other O-Kansas folks coming in and it should be a great start to the fall season.