The Managed Bonk

🎶  I’m only happy when it rains  🎶 Before long races, Julie and I scroll through the Sirius channels to make sure the last song we hear before getting out of the car isn’t a crappy one, because you risk getting it stuck in your head for the next several hours.  Sometimes you can replace it in your head, sometimes not.  For the 3-loop Hells Hills 50 miler, I had a nice R.E.M. song for loop 1, but it was replaced by a song from Garbage -  Only Happy when it Rains  - in loop 2. Loop 1 started in the 5am darkness, in some nasty, humid, stale air (dew point was about 70 - yuck).  Steve Moore, Matt Smith, and I took off together, with me in front as the singletrack started.  As one might expect, it was a slow start, but after a few miles their headlamps started drifting back.  By the time I hit the first aid station after mile 6, I couldn’t even see them.  I usually run better races going my own pace versus pack-pace anyway, especially in ul...

A little over a year since I finished my last ultra, Tarawera 102k, I’ve finally finished another - Tinajas 50k. Julie and I both love Colorado Bend state park - they have some of the more technical and challenging trails you can find in Texas, deep in the heart of the hill country.  I ran this race 2 years ago in its inaugural year there, and won it with a 4:15.  Yesterday, I pulled off the win again. With a 4:15. This year I was a lot less confident in my fitness level. I took it out responsibly and easy, but found myself in first place pretty quickly.  In general, I was still pretty gun shy about actually racing.  I let myself stretch out the legs on some of the wide-open downhills but mostly kept it at what I’d call an anti-bonk effort level. I did get passed by a relay team around mile 13, but other than that, my biggest challenge was GI-related.  Despite several fruitful trips to the toilet before the race, I had a sneaky fart that I should not have truste...

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...

30, 0, 21, 25, 25, 2. Those aren’t my lucky lotto numbers, that’s my weekly mileage for the 6 weeks leading up to our Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim trip (R2R2R: Grand Canyon’s South Rim to North Rim, then back to the South Rim - 45-50 miles).  So with a whopping 17 miles/week under my belt, and Julie doing marginally better, we set off anyway on this adventure with our beloved Rockhopper crew. I couldn’t believe how many of us converged together at the Grand Canyon.  I’d estimate 30 Rockhoppers (my counting skills have atrophied) from 4-5 cities around the country, as many friends have moved from San Antonio recently.  On Friday, a group of us did some light sightseeing around the Rim trail. I like how GC doesn’t coddle people with a bunch of railings Sheila, Michelle, Tom, Chris, and Julie Saturday was the big day.  Around 4:20am, about 10 cars drove around the Do Not Enter gates to drop most of us off at the South Kaibab trailhead.  When we opened the door, we heard a ran...

On Saturday 6/2/18, I ran a trail half-marathon as past of the Tejas Trail Running Festival.  I had no business running any kind of race, but it was free since I’d won it the previous year, so, meh... I ran it.  Most of the fun in attending the festival is hanging out with the trail running community and swimming at Krause Springs anyway. Krause Springs Kids Run Our Favorite Hammock Julie participating in a panel of experts  As far as my Half, it took 2:00; it’s a tough course in the heat but my full marathon last year on the same course took about 3:50, so, notsogood this year..  I still have obviously not gotten back into real training since Boston.  Actually, this was my longest run since Boston. But this made me put an analytical eye on my training.  Part of what I get paid for in my day job is analytics, so I did some quick analysis on myself.  To me there are 5 major drivers of success in distance running: 1. Mileage 2. Mileage 3. Mileage 4. Spe...

As much as I love trail racing and the ultra marathon distances, I’ve always felt like I had unfinished business with the road marathon.  I just never could put it all together and run a time I was happy with.  So in May of last year I ran “one last marathon” near the Koepke’s home town in Minnesota.  The plan was to run a 2:49 and then retire from road marathons forever, but once again, I had a few mishaps, some unseasonable warmth, and ran 2:54.  So I signed up for Boston 2018 to get my 2:49 at the legendary race, and retire with a bang. However, as chronicled within the race reports on this blog, my training took a nosedive somewhere around last fall and hasn’t recovered.  I thought I’d come back from New Zealand in February and get back to my dedicated ways, so as to have a decent Boston, but somehow I trained even less!  So the 3:10 finishing time I churned out today (halfs of 1:30, 1:40) was definitely no worse than I deserved. Happy to see my family ...

Part 3 of this memorable vacation took place in Australia.  We departed from Queenstown on Thursday, February 15 and arrived in Sydney in the evening.  With only one night there, we went straight to the Opera House (via the botanical gardens), which was on Julie’s bucket list to see. Sydney Opera House We ate a nice dinner downtown and crossed the harbor to our Airbnb.  In the morning we woke up to this view from our balcony. From across the Harbor At the Tarawera Ultra the previous weekend, we met a lot of people from all over the place; two of those people happened to be from Sydney.  I asked what they would do if they only had 24 hours in town - luckily, both guys independently said to take the ferry to Manly Beach, so we had our to-do item set.  We woke up early on Friday and ran across the bridge t o the wharf. ( VIDEO ) I promise we weren’t the only ones doing this From there we took the “fast ferry” to Manly and enjoyed a couple hours there befor...