The Managed Bonk

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...

After a stressful experience in the Auckland (Madhouse) Airport on Monday, we were relieved to make our flight to Queenstown and get there before lunch.  I fed an ugly dog some of my Bangers and Mash. One of their only failings: NZ does not make good sausage A 2-hour drive and we were in Te Anau where we had an Airbnb for 3 nights.  We didn’t have a ton of time to hike but we walked along the beach at Doubtful Sound. Doubtful Sound - I don’t know what either word means in this context  Then we did a short walk on a random loop we found by a river. Balloon Loop, I think We knew the big fun would come in the next two days anyway.  Before leaving for the South Island, we didn’t know which trails we’d choose yet, but I ran with a couple guys in the Tarawera 102k that both highly recommended the Kepler Track.  With the weather looking much more ideal on Wednesday, we opted for the Routeburn Track on Tuesday.  It was socked in with clouds but still a great experi...