Tomorrow I begin the longest race of my life.
At midnight tonight the run focus portion of the USAT Club Challenge will begin and I'll attempt to run 400 miles over the next 28 days. That's an average of just under 14.3 miles per day.
Naturally Mother Nature has decided to make this as interesting as possible. This morning she threw a nice layer of black ice on everythin before rolling in a snowstorm. Tomorrow's high is expected to be -3. That's the high.
Why would I do this? Well, last year I found at the end of February that I had managed to take 13th overall in the run focus without consciously trying to win it. I was putting in a lot of miles as I started my early prep for Leadville (which ended up not happening that year). So this year, for the first time ever I think, I'm entering a solo athletic competition with the intention of winning it.
How will I get in that many miles while still working full time and trying to maintain my sanity? Currently my commute to work includes three to five miles each way of running. So a five mile run in the morning, then a five mile run home in the evening gives me a pretty automatic fifty miles a week, that's half my weekly quota right there. Getting another couple miles in at lunch and the occasional late night right will bring me along further and contribute to spreading out the load. Saturday will be a long run and finally Sunday will be my mopup day, I'll evaluate how I feel and how many miles I need to get to 100 for the week. Getting Sunday as an off day would be the ideal, but a short run to polish off the mileage wouldn't be a problem.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
An Ultra Dinner
Last night I was able to attend an event hosted by the Boulder Trail Runners at Sherpa's in downtown Boulder. The event was a roundtable question and answer session with four of the best trail ultra-runners in the world, Scott Jurek, Tony Krupicka, Dave Mackey and Geoff Roes.
I won't get into everything they said, I wouldn't be able to do it justice, but I'll cover a few highlights. The nature of the sport seems to keep these guys very grounded and human. They're still very competitive and have healthy egos but the lack of big money in ultrarunning seems to keep them more normal and approachable than you might expect.
One of the best questions of the evening could be summed up in a single word... "Why?" The answers they gave for why they do what they do were simple and fairly straight forward yet still bore a lot of meaning. The endorphin rush, love of nature, ego, because it's there. One of them, Jurek I believe, observed that he had never come back from a run and thought afterwards "I wish I hadn't done that." There were a lot of heads nodding in the room to that comment, mine among them.
At the end of the evening as people dribbled out of the restaurant, the foursome continued chatting with the attendees who had packed the upstairs area almost to bursting, and by the time I left my mind was abuzz with ideas and thoughts so that when I went to bed I lay there almost ninety minutes before finally finding sleep. Those ideas are still churning in my mind, we'll see where they lead to.
I won't get into everything they said, I wouldn't be able to do it justice, but I'll cover a few highlights. The nature of the sport seems to keep these guys very grounded and human. They're still very competitive and have healthy egos but the lack of big money in ultrarunning seems to keep them more normal and approachable than you might expect.
One of the best questions of the evening could be summed up in a single word... "Why?" The answers they gave for why they do what they do were simple and fairly straight forward yet still bore a lot of meaning. The endorphin rush, love of nature, ego, because it's there. One of them, Jurek I believe, observed that he had never come back from a run and thought afterwards "I wish I hadn't done that." There were a lot of heads nodding in the room to that comment, mine among them.
At the end of the evening as people dribbled out of the restaurant, the foursome continued chatting with the attendees who had packed the upstairs area almost to bursting, and by the time I left my mind was abuzz with ideas and thoughts so that when I went to bed I lay there almost ninety minutes before finally finding sleep. Those ideas are still churning in my mind, we'll see where they lead to.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Bottling & Mead Update
Between the holidays and having the flu I haven't had a chance to fiddle with any of my mead in a while. Until this weekend, that is.
This weekend I bottled two meads, my traditional and bacon mead #2. The traditional isquite tasty at this point, albeit strong. The bacon mead is interesting, it's extremely dry (SG of 0.986) and the bacon flavor is interesting. I'm curious how some aging will affect it.
I also took the oportunity to transfer the chocolate mead to secondary. Like the bacon mead it's fairly dry, but unlike the bacon mead, which is crystal clear, it's very cloudy. It's going to need to settle and age for a good long time.
Bacon mead #1 should also be ready for bottling and the pumpkin and apricot meads should be ready to transfer to secondary. The fudge mead is still fermenting actively and I haven't checked on the third bacon mead in a while. Perhaps I'll do a bacon mead tasting this weekend before starting my next batch of meads.
This weekend I bottled two meads, my traditional and bacon mead #2. The traditional isquite tasty at this point, albeit strong. The bacon mead is interesting, it's extremely dry (SG of 0.986) and the bacon flavor is interesting. I'm curious how some aging will affect it.
I also took the oportunity to transfer the chocolate mead to secondary. Like the bacon mead it's fairly dry, but unlike the bacon mead, which is crystal clear, it's very cloudy. It's going to need to settle and age for a good long time.
Bacon mead #1 should also be ready for bottling and the pumpkin and apricot meads should be ready to transfer to secondary. The fudge mead is still fermenting actively and I haven't checked on the third bacon mead in a while. Perhaps I'll do a bacon mead tasting this weekend before starting my next batch of meads.
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