I came, I saw, I followed

The Bradbury Whiteout, race #2 in the Bradbury Snow series, welcomed racers with cold temps, bright blue skies, and a gnarly mix of ice, hardpack, and powdah. The course was moved from the mountain side to the bike side of the park in order to find some snow stashes. While the conditions weren't quite what they were for the first race, at least we were racing on snowshoes, unlike many racers in New England.

After 2 days off this week due to the perfect storm of ski-coaching, job, and family, I needed to get some miles in and I new I wouldn't have the will to get those in following the run, so I arrived to the race early enough for a 50 minute (5.6 mile) warmup on the snowmo trail. Other than the access trail, which was really icy, the footing was excellent and no screws or icespikes were needed and none were worn. I finished my warm-up with just enough time (10 minutes) to change into my race top and strap on my new Atlas Run snowshoes, which I had yet to try.

At the gun, I took one step and caught Ian's snowshoe. I grabbed a racer's shoulder on either side of me to keep from falling, was carried a step, landed, and started racing. I heeded Ryan's advice to Jamie from the last race and tried to keep up with Ian and Scott H. but I just cannot start that fast and by about 3/4 mile I was 10-15s back and pretty much stayed there for the rest of the race. George A-C was on my tail for about 2 miles but fell off, I think after I tried to pick up the pace on a downhill (in a failed attempt to catch Ian and Scott). At 2.5 miles I was toast but a rope tied from Scott to me kept pulling me forward and I simply moved my legs to keep from being dragged like Hector behind the victorious Achilles. In the last mile, on the old roadbed and in the Lanzo singletrack, I made my last efforts to surge and catch Scott and Ian but no can do.

The race was followed up by more good soup and goodies and awards and fires and friendly banter and all that.  Kudos to Ryan, race director par excellence, for finding enough snow to remind us that this is winter and trail races are meant to be run with floatation.

Peaked?

Last Spring I ran a 5K PR at the Mother's Day 5K and figured I'd have a long season of PRs given how little running I'd done before that. Indeed, I had already PRed at the Rivah 10 miler and a couple of weeks later I PRed at the Pineland 25K despite a run-stopping side-stitch. But the summer and especially fall races didn't pan out as expected, which really bothered me. How could my fastest running be in the spring with having run so little during the winter?

Fast forward to today. I ran for the first time the mid-winter classic 10 miler. It's a great course, superbly directed (by Chandra and Blaine), and it was fun to race with lots of friends. Still, I was pretty unimpressed with my time. To compare with other races, I'd have to come up with equivalents, so I used McMillan's calculator to compute my marathon equivalent (left axis) and 5K equivalent (right axis) for all of my road races on certified courses. I've color coded each race by distance.

(click image to enlarge)

Today's race is the black dot. The green dot is my one actual marathon race.
Thoughts:
1. I'm clearly fastest at 5Ks and get less fast with increasing distance
2. My poor races are generally because of either heat or side-stitches. That's not an excuse for today's race
3. I seem to have peaked
4. I've never not PRed in a 5K!

One possible cause of the peak is my aging. So I reanalyzed the data using WAVA age graded tables, which gives you a score, which I suppose could be compared among anyone. It's a little harder to see if the current trend is a peak or just a few bad races. Regardless, this plot really shows an amazingly linear progression (until my last few races that is).

(click image to enlarge)

Bradbury Squall race report

100m shy of the finish line and failing to chase down Andy and Chuck. Once a gap opens, it's damn hard to close it. Thanks to Maine Running Photos for this and other great photos. It was an awefully cold day to shoot pics!

The Bradbury Squall, the first race of the Bradbury series, was a 3.5 miler on the Mountain side of Bradbury. After a snowless December and 1st half of January, we were fortunate to get two decent storms in the week before the race to give us enough snow to race it in snowshoes instead of trail shoes. Actually, the snow was quite perfect - that is if you wanted energy sucking packed powder to drive your heart rate up from the start.

Which is what happened. At the start, I positioned myself about where I thought I'd finish but 100m in I thought, "hmm, this is too quick of a start, I cannot sustain this effort, and we haven't even gotten to the climb"! I eased up and JRock passed me, apparently because snowman told him to go out fast because it's easier to sustain in snowshoe racing. More on that later.

The race quickly split into the lead group of Judson Cake, Matt Lunt rocking the old school long johns, and Jeremy WTF-are-you-doing-with-those-guys Bonnet, the 1st chase group of gIant, Andy K, and Chuck I'm-not-50-yet Hazzard, and the 2nd chase pack which included JRock, me, Zak, David Roberts and maybe Darren. The first climb is up twisty-turny Krista's singletrack so you not only have to accelerate up you have to keep accelerating side to side. This is where I blew the engine last year (my first snowshoe race) and its not even 1 mile in so I was very happy to sit behind JRock on the ride up and wasn't too worried about a gap opening between him and chase group 1. Pretty far into the climb jrock stepped aside to let me by so now I had the pressure of trying to move across the gap to catch chase pack 1. I picked up the pace slightly and pretty quickly closed the gap by 1/2 maybe (20-40m?) but it was really hard to know where I was because of the twistiness of the trail and the constant up (slow) and down (fast) which would shrink and swell the gap.  I was in no man's land between chase packs, or, said differently, I was the entirety of chase pack 2. Finally we were done with Krista's and chase pack 1 began to fall apart. Not entirely but they weren't running in a tight bunch. With about 1 mile left, it looked like gIant dropped Andy and Chuck and I was catching Chuck. On the last little steep climb I pushed hard to catch Chuck which was probably a dumb move because after that I had redlined. Chuck kept calling back to me but I couldn't really understand him because no oxygen was going to the language part of my brain as it was all being used in the part that keeps my lungs ventillating and my muscles firing. I tried hard to pick up the pace but Chuck wouldn't let me catch him. I finished a few meters behind Chuck who finished a few meters behind Andy. gIant really did drop us because he was about 30s ahead of Andy.

The most humbling part of the race by far was seeing Jeremy cheering not at the finish line, which is where he'd be if he had just finished, but several hundred meters before the finish line, which is where he'd be if he had finished, rested, high fived the volunteers, showered, changed clothes, and lightly jogged back to cheer. Yeh Jeremy, let's go kick some acid-robotic ass!

So back to my strategy. Clearly last year highlighted that redlining by the top of Krista's (about a mile into a 3.5 mile race) was a poor strategy because I could hardly breathe for the rest of the race. On the other hand, once you let a gap open between you and whomever you're chasing, it's damn hard to close that gap unless they run out of gas and come back to you. Snowshoe racing is hard - it's not pacing yourself like an automaton running a flat road marathon. It's a fine balance between not redlining too early and not falling off the pace.

Big shout out to Jeremy Litchfield and Atayne performance wear who donated two cutting edge shirts to the raffle, one of which I scored. SWEEEET! Chuck says they are the bomb so I'm thrilled to win it and pumped to perform in it!

Till we meet in hell race report

The 4th annual TMR end-of-the-season race was held at Thorncrag bird sanctuary and directed by Val, who marked out a sweet 1.4 mi loop with four segments:

1) steep climb on easily runnable singletrack

2) a technicalish singletrack descent

3) a longer climb with a couple very small walls that were run only because they were short

4) a fun, extremely fast run-out on wide doubletrack

I enjoyed the conversation on the first lap with David Roberts but he tired of my conversation or pace and passed me, which ignited my mojo and reminded me that we were racing. Other than lap one, my pacing was surprisingly even. I misread my watch on the final descent and turned up the gear knob to 11 so as to finish the lap before the 1:30:00 time limit, but then was told by all the runners pooled at the bottom/start that I still had 0:03:30 left. Ouch. I struggled through .3 miles of steep climbing.

Following the race all the TMs partook in some hearty drinking, eating, and awarding. I won some barefoot champagne for my racing efforts (Thanks Val!) and was voted biggest geek by my peers. Next post I will put something up worthy of that award!

Splits (each lap ~ 1.4 mi)

1      11:42

2      10:40

3      10:41

4      10:36

5  10:40

6      10:38

7      10:49

8      10:46

0.3mi   03:13.3

Bond Brook 10 mi trail race

Bond Brook is the new set of xc ski trails and singletrack mt. bike trails in Augusta. Overlay the east side of Bradbury on top of Pineland and multiply the elevation by 1.5 and voila! Bond Brook. This race was not on my radar until yesterday when I opted out of Mayor's Cup 5K for something closer. I'm not sure why as my weekly mileage is now half of what it was this summer and I haven't run more than 9 miles in one run in over 6 weeks. Moving from a flat 5K to 10 miles of extremely undulating terrain was probably an unwise decision.

The course is two loops of repeated alternating between wide ski trails and narrow single track. The ski trails were a roller coaster - there was rarely any length of something flattish. It was bone-jarring descents or lung-bursting climbs. Like Pineland, most of these were short-lived but some of each were quite extended. By contrast the singletrack seemed flattish, like the east side of Bradbury, but I think that was an illusion as the map shows these too had large (usually) ascents, it just took lots of tight twisty turns to complete the climb.  The singletrack was in sweet shape. I had both my nike spikes and my Inov8 195s and unwisely chose the 195s. The last mile of singletrack had lots of slimey turns on a cambered trail bed and it took some tip toeing to not slide down.

Some stats:

Bond Brook 10 mile: Garmin 305 reads: 9.46 mi, 1739' elevation = 183 feet/mi

Pineland 25K: Garmin 305 reads: 15.3 mi, 1772' elevation = 116 feet/mi

Bradbury Breaker: Garmin 305 reads 8.78 mi, 1537' elevation = 175 feet/mi

None of the climbs are as steep as the Breaker but there is very little flat.

My race:

I actually felt pretty good given that I lost my running mojo sometime in August. The first 2 miles of my 2nd loop was noticeably slower but I was slowly reeling in a young guy in front. On a long descent during the 3rd mile of loop 2 I nearly caught him and there was a short flat section before turning off the ski trail and onto the slimey mile of singletrack. I decided this was my move and I accelerated and just beat him to the trail. He hung onto me for maybe 0.5-0.75 miles which pushed me some but then he fell back when the singletrack started to climb. Had I not made my earlier move I probably would have been complacent to just sit behind him on the singletrack and run his pace. As a result of passing him, the 4th mile of loop 2 was only slightly slower than in loop 1 and my last mile of loop 2 was nearly 30s faster. So all in all I had about a 34s positive split, which doesn't seem too bad given no prior knowledge of the course

Mile Loop1 Loop2 Diff

1      7:24     7:52    +28

2      7:23     7:43    +20

3      7:46     8:00    +14

4      8:24     8:30    +6

5      5:57     5:23    -34

___________________

     36:54     37:28    +34

I think I came in 5th place, 2-4 minutes behind 1-4, and 1st master. Unfortunately I googled places 1-4 and noticed that I beat them all in summer road races so not sure what this says about my current fitness. I Want to do the NE XC in two weeks. The positive is, Franklin Park is a fast course and only 5 miles. The negative is my fitness is plummeting precipitously.

Tapers and Cognitive Biases

Back in the spring, I asked Kevin Tilton about tapers and specifically mentioned Jim Johnson who races every weekend and I wondered what he could do if he, you know, tapered. Kevin thought tapers were overrated and mentioned that his best races were with little to no taper. I had heard this before from posters on the famous LRC message board but had discounted it as anecdotal evidence (which it is). I haven't really researched the ex phys literature but I do recall that Rob Sleamaker briefly reviewed evidence from the literature that claims a proper taper increases performance by 1-3% or something like that. I was thinking about this recently because of two races this year compared to last year. Compared to this year, I ran a faster pace at the Bradbury Breaker and the Craig Cup last year despite having run the Beach to Beacon the day before the Breaker and the Maine Marathon 6 days before the Craig Cup. This year I was fresh for both (The B2B was 8 days earlier and I ran no marathon this year). I am now questioning the value of tapers. It's these sort of experiences that are very powerful in forming/re-inforcing (probably erroneous) beliefs that contradict conclusions based on more reliable evidence (i.e. science).

2nd Thoughts on cross training

Ass hurts. Going out for a roller ski. Running downhill fast sucks.