The Managed Bonk

Why Brazos Bend 100? After  Bigfoot 200   I wanted to do a faster race where I’d be able to, ya know, actually run!  Rob Goyen’s BB100 is one of the fastest around, and this year it doubled as the 100-mile Trail National Championship. As a bonus to USATF , I thought I’d have a pretty good shot of hitting at least the ‘B’ Standard qualifying time (16:10) for Desert Solstice Invitational next year, a 24-hour race around a track (I know...weird).  While I do love mountains and mountain races, I’m a relatively weak climber so I’m hoping these flat races may be more up my alley.  The ‘A’ Standard for Desert Solstice is 14:00, and I thought maybe I’d have an outside shot at it, although in hindsight seems maybe a tad aggressive. BB100 is 6 equal loops of 16.7 miles, and my plan was to start off at 8:00/mile, see how that felt, then let the pace bleed slower as it got hotter and more miserable.  After the gun I found myself in 10th, and I was tri...

I’m a month early in reviewing 2019’s training, but since I’m now starting a taper for my final race of the year, it’s time! I  ended 2018  having logged the fewest miles I’d ever run in a calendar year, since taking up this sport.  But I’d also just turned 40, and used the milestone birthday to turn the tide. As I prepare to run the Brazos Bend 100 on December 7th, here is my final moving average chart. 2019 The blue line looks back 13 weeks, and is a bit volatile - I think what it best reflects is that, week-to-week, it’s really hard to be consistent and motivated for an entire year!  I don’t think I missed a single run in the first 3 months of 2019, so that’s where it peaks (minus that one time I ran 200 miles in a weekend!).  I’m ending up at only 56.7 miles/week for the most recent 3 months; some of that low number is a slow recovery from Bigfoot, some is time off for a nagging Achilles, and some is just lack of motivation! The green line looks back 26 week...

Recently, for anyone that follows the market, you might’ve noticed the recent  Death Cross  in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It’s where the black line crosses the green line Basically, it means we should all panic and sell all our equities if the average closing value of the last ~3 months becomes worse than the average over the last ~12 months, because the market is about to tank. I like to look at my training the same way - my Death Cross was in November 2017, between the Cactus Rose 100 Miler (win) and Bandera 100k (7th in the national championship) where I ran a decent, but not great, race.  If you bought stock in Joe, November 2017 would’ve been the time to SELL! Death Cross preceding the Joe Bear Market But, much like the current market, I’m trying to correct.  I also have one thing going for me that the market does not.  I just turned 40. On my 40th (actually 3 days prior) a group of us got together and ran at Bandera, which was the beginning of the e...