I Wear My Sunglasses At Night

It looks like it's going to be another amazing day in Presque Isle.
When training is going well, everything in my life seems that much better.

I took off at 10PM friday night for a little night ride, and ended up putting in almost 50 miles, riding From PI to Fort Fairfield. Fort Fairfield to Limestone, then to Caribou and back to Presque Isle. The average was a little over 16 MPH, which was good considering some of those sustained climbs and the hill workout I did with Von the day before.

That speed is sufficient for a Triple...and may or may not be doable on a flat course for a full day. Actually, in doing the calculations, at 16 MPH, that would land a 21 Hour Bike Split. I would gladly take that. I honestly don't know what to expect when it starts getting ugly out there...which my guess will be somewhere around 15 hours into the bike.

Night training is strange sometimes. You feel really in tune to the world.
Everything is quiet, and it feels natural after the first hour or so.
It amazes me that there's this world that goes on while we sleep, and it's exciting to see it in person. The deer in the fields, the random foxes and skunks. The people driving.
Where are they going at this hour? Are they drunk or just starting their "day" on the night shift?
At any rate, it's a cool feeling to ride directly down the middle of the road of a well-lit ghost town in the middle if the night.

kp

Take That

World, you're suffocating me.
No more obligations
Stop with the bills
Enough petty nonsense
Stop spinning, I'd like to dismount

You're making me Earth-sick
Seems the only way to stick it to you
is to do what they say I can't
I'm going longer
to make you look smaller.
I lace up my shoes
....
and you shrink

Ready To Go

my mind is scrambled
like eggs..sizzling and fizzling
if the computer is what gets us ahead,
why is it facing back at me?
movement is progress
the physical type
with air in your lungs
and sun on your skin
being indoors all day
should be considered a sin

-kp

Raring To Go.

It's mid-April, and finally, things are starting to feel spring-y.

Tomorrow's 2-3 hour training day will cap one of my best training weeks in a long, long time.

Monday: 26.3 miles on the elliptical in 3:20, followed by a 20 minute swim

Tuesday: 1:10 Bike ride with Von and Mike. I had nothing from the previous day's marathon. I got dropped. Hard. I thought I could hang for 20 miles, but it just wasn't in the cards...

Wednesday: Day off.

Thursday:
15 mile bike ride in the morning to work.
32 Miles on the Group Ride at night. I held on until the last 8 Miles or so, but frankly, I think I was just too tired from the volume and intensity at which I'd been training at.

Friday: Off
Saturday:Maybe a 1:00-2 Hour run tonight during the night
Sunday: 2-3 hour training day (roller ski, bike, run?)

Reflection
This week was great, but it must be followed by an easier one. Maybe a similar intensity, but certainly less bike volume if I want to avoid any consequences that may come in the form of injury. I feel this weird ankle/heel thing going on that I had last year, which I've heard may just stem from flexiblility or lack thereof.

I'll be stopping in at Northern Physical Therapy on monday to have an injury prevention tutorial. I hope to get rid of any IT, shoulder, knee, and ankle issues before they start this year.

I am just raring to go. I'm ready for the crazy events to start.
It's just that I feel like I know so much more than I did last year.
Already, I'm in so much better shape than I was last year.
I feel confident, unlike my feeling of dread before both Ironman and the 50 mile run.
Bring it on.

kp

Exploits and My Heroes

There are certain advantages to being an ultra-distance athlete.
You can do random physical challenges on any given day...it's how you keep things fun and interesting. At such low intensity, you've got to find ways to break up the monotony.

I got on the elliptical yesterday morning, planning on an easy day of training.
I felt a little sore from the 5k I did a couple of days prior, but otherwise fine structurally.

So I trained. By the day's end, I had done 26.3 miles on the elliptical and a 1000 yard swim.
I guess technically, that means I did an Ultramarathon yesterday. On a whim.

Exploits like this are the reason I created this blog. I have all of these crazy things I want to accomplish this year. The best ones, I think, won't even be the ones I plan, but the ones I think up while eating breakfast on a random day off.

My heroes don't toss a ball, hit a ball, or run exceptionally fast. They don't tackle or get arrested at the club. On any given day, they can run a marathon, or hop on their bike and be 5 states away within a day.
This is what I aspire to do.

I guess I've come to this interesting point in my life where I still want to make a living as an athlete, but I have to go big in order to do it.
If I can ever make a meager living as an athlete, I'm going to have to work hard and do publicity stunts...following the Dean Karnazes template.

What I like about Ultra distance sports is that it's not about talent.
It's about grinding; working hard and tirelessly.
Put the volume in.
Make it hurt, and keep it together mentally.

Maybe it'll come someday...that SuperSponsor, but that won't come until results start rolling in...and I'm really still too young to be good at Ultra distance sports.

So I will continue to do it because I love it, and hopefully things will work the way I want them to.

kp

Blech

I feel like crap.

I just came off two days "off" from work, but somehow I do not feel refreshed.
From previous experience, I know that this is the beginning stage of burnout.

The training, the dog, the work, the club....it's all adding up, and I can really notice it.

I wish I could remember who said it, but, this is a quote I love:
"There is no such thing as burnout, just loss of appetite."

If there is a plus side to this, I still want to train. If it was physical burnout, I wouldn't be interested in training. I feel like I want to take a week off by myself, spend it in a cabin in the woods, and just train for hours a day.

I had all I could do to get out of bed today. I think I need to boost my diet with a little more iron and fresh fruits.

Achieving balance is one of the hardest things for any athlete to do, and I'm no different.
I'm trying to curb my training to my life, even if really, I don't want to. A lot of people struggle with the discipline of getting out to train...I'm struggling with the discipline of enjoying other aspects of life that don't involve training. Is it considered a sickness when the rest of life seems so mundane? I guess this is the first time I've actually admitted it, which I guess is the first step, right?


I don't know.
I have to go to work- I just needed a minute.


kp

Surviving the Elements...Is My Element

I got my first taste of depletion and grit for 2009 on Monday.

We were in the middle of a spring snowstorm that dumped up to a foot of snow on some parts of Aroostook county. Just getting adjusted to having a hyperactive German Shepherd puppy around the house, I hadn't trained in a day or two. Leah was in bed, the dog had finally settled down. It was 11 PM.
Screw it...I thought..I'm going running.

I filled my water bottle with Gatorade, bundled for the snow, and was out the door.

I ran out of town, south on Route 1, hoping to do a nice loop...maybe an hour to an hour and a half.
My MP3 blared. My headlight glared against the snow blowing sideways, driven across the wide open potato fields.
I ran by the State Park, feeling the flow. You get this unexplainable feeling sometimes when you are physically exerting yourself in the middle of nature's fury. You think..this is hard core, but it feels...right. Want to feel alive? Go trail running in a torrential downpour, or in the middle of a snowstorm.

I looked at my phone, and I had already been out 1 Hour, 25 minutes. Why wasn't I at the turn?
I was running past tree farms covered in snow- a winter wonderland. I felt like elves might come out from behind their posts at any moment. If I hadn't started getting so concerned about time and the fact that I only had a little gatorade left, I might have really enjoyed the experience.

Times like these lead to feelings of paranoia and extreme exposure to the elements. In a sense, it becomes like a survival situation. You have to make an effort to calm your mind down in order to think clearly.

My initial reaction was to run faster to get to the turn quicker... I did for a minute, and then realized that I was not being rational. What if I was going the wrong way? I came to the end of a field where the road just ended. Great.

I looked at my bottle and realized I would have to run at least another 1.5 hours home on zero nutrition and zero hydration. I was a little demoralized, and it was hard to pull myself out of that slump for the rest of the night. When you're depleted, you feel more pain because your blood sugar is so low, and it only gets worse until you get something else in your system.

It was 2 AM when I trudged into town, feeling more like an animal than a human. The city lights burned my eyes; I had turned my headlamp off when my batteries ran out before the turnaround an hour and a half ago. Hungry wasn't the word to explain how I felt. I wanted food. Now.

I trudged into the apartment and downed 2 chicken burgers with cheese and ketchup in between chugs of orange juice. Laying down in bed, I wondered...what happened tonight?

The next morning I had to know.
I drove my route and was surprised that the sunny morning had melted the snow on the roads, clearing things up. I turned around only yards from the road that was to take me home. The snow on the roads the night before made the field seem indistinguishable from the pavement.

I'll file this one under lessons learned, as well as a great workout for my mind.
I guess the lesson here is, number one, always prepare for the worst..and number two, don't make rash decisions when you know you aren't thinking clearly.

I love crazy workouts.