Veteran's day 4 miler

I didn't run it this year. I helped out by directing runners on the course and freezing my butt off while riding my bike around. I didn't know it was only like 30 degrees until I was already out the door. Brrr! Hedgehog hill is one of the prettiest spots in the entire park. I wonder if the maples on the hill are native or if they were planted and spread on their own. Juraj (Euro) won easily in 31 min and change.
My motivation to train has been waning lately. Darkness at 5:30 doesn't help. I need a kick in the ass.

Pawpaw patch!

Pawpaw season is over now, but there was a bumper crop in the woods this year. If you don't know what a pawpaw is, click HERE. I even made some pawpaw and walnut cookies. The pawpaw trees are turning a beautiful yellow right now. I'm going to save the seeds from the fruit I collected and sow them in the spring, so hopefully I'll have some trees to plant and sell next year.

Mt bierstadt

I'm way behind on the blog, but here's a shot of me and Ben on Mt Bierstadt. Cody called me earlier totell me that he just climbed Pike's Peak on the Barr trail. He said he saw Matt Carpenter when he was headed down. MC was running UP the golden staircase. I saw that he won this years Pikes marathon in 3:36. Wow! I think that it's pretty stupid that people thought it was a good idea to cut a road to the summit. I need to post some more pics from this trip as well as from the Leadville 100 run. Soon.

Lunar Trek 20 mile

Here are a couple of pics from the Lunar trek in Scandia KS. I was a pretty cool race actually. Neat farm roads out in the middle of nowhere. I wish the sky would have been clear so we could see the stars, but it was still bright enough that I barely had to use my headlamp. My plan was to try to run it in 3 hrs. The first half went perfect-10 miles in 1:30. Not lon g after the turnaround I began to realize that eating a thickburger with fries a little over two hrs before a long run isn't a good idea. The humidity and the course conditions(mud) made it harder than it should have been as well. I got a bit behind on electrolytes and fluids and really slowed the last 5 miles. Finished in 3:26. Much slower than my goal, but it was a good time regardless. I even got to spend the night in Caleb's hometown before heading to Colorado (pics and story soon).

Psummer Psycho 15 miler

I'm finally getting around to writing a race report after a little over a week. The whole lead up to the race this year was very exhausting. I didn't even try to keep track of how many hours I was out working on the course. Not to complain though, I like it. Anyway, I've had too many irons in the fire lately to do anything resembling a long run so I opted to do the 15 mile instead of the 50k. The first loop is always the most fun, right? One problem was that the day before the race was the 4th of July. I opted to have fun instead of rest and drink water like I should have been doing. That is probably why my 15 mile loop was more like 50k pace. I finished in 2:38. Not what I was hoping for, but Oh well. It was fun hanging out and supporting finishing runners afterwards instead of killing myself on a second loop. Maybe I'm just a wimp, I don't know. One thing that did make me really mad was when a skinny girl with red hair went flying by me at Pat's aid station. For a second I got pissed and was going to chase her ass down. So I stopped to top off my bottle real quick. When I looked up she was already at the top of the paved hill out of the aid station. At that point I forgot what I was thinking about so I just decided to go my own pace to the finish.

Jackson and Josie both ran the 5k along with Jackson's friend Austin. I think it was an awesome race with tons of happy finishers. Lots of cool race reports too. Check some of them out on BadBen's Blog

Also Big Congrats to Tony Clark 50k winner 4:33 (Tony ran Bighorn 100 two weeks previous) ! Close to Wynn Davis' CR. I'm not sure if the course change made it easier or harder. For me I'd have to say that singletrack is easier even if it did add another significant hill.

Next up for me is the Lunar Trek 20 miler on the 18th. It looks like we're getting a gang together to head out to the Leadville 100 . I've never been to the run so it should be cool.

Summer Intro 5k

We had a good race today. It took quite a bit of work to get the course ready for race day and it was a bit short, but I think it's a sweet loop that will be fun to train on as well. I had a decent race . Definitely shoulda started a bit easier. I ran the first mile in 4th and then I blew up. I couldn't smoke the long downhill like I wanted because I was still trying to recover from the hills. I think I finished 8th or 9th in 19:25. Some dude tried to blow by me at the finish, but he got shut down.
Jackson and his friend Austin both ran the race and they were talking about doing the 15 mile Psummer Psycho so they can get a medal.
I had to go to work after, but some of the Nerds went to work on the Psummer Psycho course. I get out there and do some work soon.

Shrooms

Here are a couple of lovely mushroom pics. Morels and oysters. I also recently found a nice batch of suphur shelf(picture soon) mushrooms. All are edible and delicious.For more info on edible mushrooms check out americanmushrooms.com The running and riding is going okay. Next Saturday(6/21) is the summer intro trail race at Wyco lake. We've decided to do a 5k run this year and we've blazed some new trails so it should be an awesome course. Correction: It is an awesome course.

Commute

I didn't have to take Julie to the Mother in Laws yesterday, so I rode my bike to work. I was still a bit under the weather and bascally felt like crap, but commuting by bike is an easy way to get some riding in. You're riding instead of driving. It's like magic, but not. This is a map of my commute. I'll probably start taking some longer routes home as the weather improves and I feel less crappy. Happy trails!

Blah.

Here are a few pictures that I took the day before Red Bridge Ramble.

map

Just trying this out. This is the ride I did last Sunday. Super windy. First half is hilly and the second half is pretty flat.

Nice weather................NOT!

Nice blizzard this morning and now it's 14 degrees. I thought spring was almost here. Pretty nice run on Thursday night. Had a group of 6. The main trail was a mess so we ran a little road and the Debacle section at Wyco. This section is always in good shape even when the main trail is a quagmire. We ran for a little over an hour so probably a good six miles. Did a little recon for a possible summer 5k trail race while we were out there. The course will most likely be a two loop 5k. Very runnable and faster than the usual Wyco course. Planning on helping mark the Red Bridge Ramble course tomorrow afternoon with Ben. Should be a fun one.

It's Cold again.

Got in a short road ride on Sunday in the wind ( 1 hour- computer batteries died so I don't know the distance, but I'm guessing only 15-16 miles). My legs really burned from my dehydrated long run on Saturday. The headwinds were pretty extreme while going with the wind I could go 30 mph without much effort...then it got cold and rainy and the temp dropped about 30 degrees. Ran for about 50 min today with some hill repeats-now my right shin hurts a little. I hope it's temporary.

I found a pretty funny blog post about how to be popular. It's a biking blog, but it could work for running too with a little modification. Read it HERE. It may seem like a long list, but the reason that I'm so cool today is because of the time that I was carrying an ace wrap in my pack. Ask BadBen about it sometime.

Note: I would consider the Ace wrap to be part of a running "What to Bring" list.

Hot weather?

Ran the Psummer Psycho loop yesterday(15 miles-3 hrs). I have no idea why. It was super muddy and hot. Ran out of water after about 10 miles and the hydrants are still shut off. Slowed way down the last 4-5 miles. It's strange how hot 65 degrees can feel after a winter of frozen runs. It's 70 degrees now. Think I'll go for a ride.

Snow and Solitude

I was lazy and missed the group run this morning, though by the looks of the tracks, it was a small group, so I went out at about 11 a.m. Here are a few pics. Decided to go for a bike ride this evening too. About half of the road around the lake is still snow covered. Tough to stay upright and keep moving in the slushy stuff.

KC Track Club Dinner and the PCT50

Just got home from a nice dinner courtesy of the KC Track Club. I felt honored to be recognized along with the other Trail Nerds for our work on Psycho Wyco 50k as well as our TRAIL SERIES. And I just signed up for the PCT50 -should be an awesome time.

Psycho Wyco Race Report

As far as Psycho Wyco goes, I think it's safe to say that I had a terrible day. I started off at what felt like a mellow pace. The course conditions were better than I had expected them to be early on. I was running with Mark Koester for about the first five miles. I felt a bit off, but I thought I would loosen up a bit as the race progressed. I felt like I wasn't warmed up even after an hour. Like when you start a run and your breathing is a bit labored and you're muscles are still a little tight. Not really what I had in mind. So I dropped my pace a bit to see if I could work it out. I couldn't. My first loop was about a 1:52 and change. That wasn't a horrible time, but I seriously considered dropping at this point because I felt as if I'd already done two loops instead of one.

Brandy was helping at the aid station and told me to just keep going so I started walking across goose flats to begin the second loop. Burger caught up to me here and we started talking about feeling sorry for ourselves because we weren't doing as well as we'd hoped. I decided to just suck it up and do the second loop. So Greg and I ran together and actually passed a few people back. When we got to Fester's Wander I started to feel pretty crappy again and that was the last I saw of Greg. I caught up to Keith Dowell around this time. He was favoring one leg and said he was going to drop after this loop. I had some of James Barker's kickass chicken noodle soup at the shelter 10 aid station and that made me feel a little better. I did realize that this was the first time I'd bothered to stop and eat any soup during the three times that I've done the 50k here. I trudged onward and came in with a lap time of around 2:18? which put me at around 4:10 cumulative time for two loops. A bit depressing because last year I was way ahead of that ime and actually still felt pretty good- with similar training leading up to the race.

I drank a little coffee and ate a bit while at the aid station. I think I was joking at the time because knew what he would say, but I asked BadBen if I should just take a 20 mile finish and call it a day. I'm not sure if I would have quit if he would have told me it was okay.
So on to the third loop. I was actually feeling decent until my IT band in my right leg started to tighten up like a sonovagun. I actually had to walk DOWN a couple of hills. I stopped a couple of times to try and stretch it, which did help a bit. Once I got through Fester's Slip-and-Slide for the third time I could smell the finish and was able to lift my pace a bit for the last few miles and pass a few people, which feels good no matter how bad of a race you've had. The unofficial results have my finish time as 6:40, which gave me a 3rd loop split of around 2:27. Almost an hour slower than last year. Doh! I thought the MUD would slow everyone down, but I guess I was wrong. A bunch of people ran fast times and Caleb's course record was broken so what do I know.

I am happy that I finished though. It was a real mental struggle because I knew during the first hour of the race that I was definitely OFF and was going to have a crappy time, but I stuck it out and I have to give Greg a lot of credit for the company and encouragement on that second loop.

As far as nutrition I ate gels and Clif BLoks. The bloks always seem to taste good. I used Endurolytes on a time schedule and took a couple of S-caps late in the race when I started to feel a little cramping coming on. Also the soup was good!

I'm also very proud of my son Jackson, who ran the 10 mile event, my high school football teammate Steve King, who ran 20 miles and all of the Trail Nerds who ran their first ultra. You know who you are.

A final thanks goes out to RD Bad Ben, everyone who helped with course work, all of the race day volunteers and everyone else who came out to run in the MUD!

Psycho course marking

I went out yesterday and got about 3 more miles of the course marked for Psycho Wyco. There was one spot near the bottom of what is known as speed demon ridge where some flags and ribbon had been moved. The offenders also left about 4 or 5 beer cans ( Note to flag movers: Karma's gonna get ya) Anyway, I moved them back and finished marking through Fester's Wander. After that, I went out to Ted's Montana grill with the family for Fat Tuesday.
After a little sledding this afternoon I went up to Tiffany Springs tonight to run a few easy miles. Nobody else showed and since I forgot my light and my dog I just went home. Oh well.
Congrats to all who finished Rocky Raccoon. Check out Gabe's Blog for a detailed race report. Now I wish I would have ran the 50 down there so I could skip the mud this weekend. Waaaah!

Psycho Pstuff

Well, I got in 16 days of running in January along with a few hikes doing course cleanup and marking. I also got out on the bike a few times when the weather was decent. Mark K., Emily and Beth showed up this morning and we got in around 6 easy miles while marking the course for next Saturdays race. I feel like I'm definitely lacking in the long run dept. , but I'm better off than I was for Psummer Psycho so I should be fine for the 50k. If the course conditions are good I think I might be able to improve my on my time of 5:48 from last year. It's supposed to be warm this week so hopefully the course will dry out a bit. The rain today sure didn't help.
Rocky Raccoon: I know Kyle and Tony Clark finished RR100 in 18:14?!!!, but I haven't heard about anyone else. Kyle did say that everyone was still on the course so hopefully everyone's races went well. We'll find out soon.
Gear: I recently bought a spray skirt for my kayak at kcpaddler. It's a Seal skirt tropical tour model. I also got a bilge pump and paddle float so I can practice my self rescue techniques when the water warms up.

World Record

This is good stuff. I remember buying the Guinness Book of World Records at the book fair in elementary school and I most definitely remember THIS.

Cyclocross Worlds and other stuff

Lars Boom won the cyclocross world championships today in Treviso, Italy. The Americans didn't do great, but they didn't do bad either. Jonathan Page was the highest placed American in 23rd.

I went out to the KC ice bowl disc golf tourney with my brother and two cousins. It turned out to be a real clusterfrig. It was way too crowded and there was a big logjam on hole one so we got in behind a couple groups at hole 5. When we were getting set to throw some asshole said there was no jumping in and that we had to start a hole 1. I told him that we'd been waiting for like 20 minutes already and we were going to throw. He didn't say anything else, but I was already kinda mad. There's just no reason to act like a dick about stuff like that. When we got back around to hole 2 there were like 10 groups in line. I didn't even want to finish the first round, let alone the second round of nine holes. Luckily Kyle came to the rescue. He and Caleb were going to work on marking the Psycho Wyco course so he stopped by Rosedale park and picked me up. I think we got about three miles worth of the loop marked.

MLK day

Last Monday was MLK day. I'm reading the book Bowerman and the Men of Oregon right now and just read a chapter about the issues black athletes faced in the late 60's when he was assassinated. This year was the 40th anniversary of his death.
Anyway I had the day off and the weather was decent so I got in a good long run at Wyco - long for me any way (4hours). So after that I showered, ate, and drank a pot of coffee before hopping in BadBen's Element, along with Kyle and Caleb, for the jaunt out to Willie Lambert's Great Plains Running Co. in Topeka. If you need trailrunning gear it's worth the trip from KC to check out his store. I even won the raffle for a pair of new Montrail Streaks. I hope they come in Brown.
This MLK day also marked the 2nd anniversary of the construction of the infamous Wyandotte Triangle trail section on the Psycho Wyco race course.
I got in a good 7 mile run in the slush today. Even ran into Stuart Johnson, who was finishing up his run.
One more thing. On Thursday I cut my run short so I could go see No Country for Old Men. Definitely worth going to see. I think I'll read the book as well when I get the chance.

Cool Bikes.

Check out this blog from endurance cyclist Mike Curiak. He rides some sweet machines. Click HERE.

How to prune trees

This is some good material to read before doing trail work. You don't want to leave mutilated wounds on trees that won't heal over and invite disease. When you prune a limb off of a tree you want to cut it off at the branch collar. In other words, not completely flush, but nearly so. Pruning a limb extremely close to the trunk creates a larger wound than necessary. Leaving a big stub, in addition to looking stupid, won't heal over correctly and will probably cause disease and wood rot. Check out this link for a photo and more detail.