For Whom the Dogs Bark

76F, 89%, WSW 4 mph, pretty good running weather for this time of year.  After an easy Saturday my LHR pace was better today, ran 10.12 miles at 10:09 minutes per mile -- not particularly fast, but my heart rate was considerably under normal LHR range for most of the run -- legs feel like they are getting stronger from being on a taper, even though I'm not really tapering from anything, just taking a bit of a break this week.  My older son (Clint) joined me for 6 miles (4 through 9), he is staying at the house because his wife, his sisters and his mother are all partying in Las Vegas.  Hope they all make it home with no arrests.  Clint and I stopped once to talk to my neighbor Todd also out running, so it was a nice relaxing run.

79F, 82%, WSW 5 mph.  Hard to say if today was better than yesterday, but humidity was a bit lower and I think it made up for the higher temperature.  Ran 5 LHR miles at 9:44 per mile, which included one split at 9:19, the fastest I have run at these temperatures.  Then I did 5 x 1000, goal was 7:00 and I got 7:02.  7:16 (159), 7:00 (163), 6:54 (168), 6:57 (172) and 6:59 (175).  MaxHR 183.  This is starting to be my favorite workout.  It is easy and seems like I am getting some good out of it.  I concentrated on trying to keep my strike long and smooth and that added speed.  Probably should be running these at about 6:50 at this point, but need to keep thinking baby steps. 

During August it will be difficult to maintain a consistent running schedule.  We are leaving Friday to go backpacking in Wyoming and won't be back for 10 days, although a lot of that is driving and doing vacation-y things other than backpacking.  Then I have an outpatient procedure, then a quick trip to Peru, then back to Utah to climb King's Peak with Wade.  I should be well rested up by the time September arrives, just not any faster.

80F, 85%, SSW 6 mph.  Pretty warm but not too bad.  Ran 5 at LHR, average pace 10:22, really feeling the repeats from yesterday.  Then ran 5 at GMP, 7:42 (155), 7:28 (162), 7:33 (167), 7:28 (176), 7:25 (179), average pace 7:31 so not too bad.  Amazing how fast my heart rate climbed at that speed and temperature.  Overall 10.30 miles in 1:31:59, 8:56 per mile, maxHR 182.

77F, 90% and calm.  Felt a little cooler despite higher humidity.  Started out with 3 LHR, 9:47 per mile, then 7 x 1000 at tempo pace:  7:12 (152), 6:44 (161), 6:57 (165), 6:40 (171, 6:47 (176), 6:58 (177) and 7:07 (177), average 6:55.  MaxHR was showing 193, but that is not accurate, 182 was the highest I saw.  Overall 10.06 miles in 1:24:32, average pace 8:24.  As usual, finished out each interval by jogging to the end of the mile.  I felt strong through 5, then I was dragging by the time I got to 6 and 7, the sun was out by then and they were probably a little ambitious.  This is 3 fast days in a row, not sure I'll do it again tomorrow.  But it's August now, time to ramp it up for St. George.

80F, 87% and calm, ramping up the heat a little but I can handle it.  Actually, I knew from the beginning that today's run wouldn't be as good, heart rate started out high and it never lies.  Well, sometimes it actually lies, but not today.  Did 5 LHR miles at 10:05, then 5 MP miles at 7:39 average:  7:44 (157), 7:34 (167), 7:38 (172), 7:38 (178) and 7:45 (182).  Sorry folks, that's all I had today.  Funny thing is my legs feel great, not sure why.

Off to the mountains, but it will take two days of driving to get there.  Not much running for a week.

I have been backpacking in the Wind River range in western Wyoming with my sons Clint and Austin and my son-in-law Scott.  We had a good time, but no matter how many miles I have logged this year, it is hard to carry a full pack into the mountains.  Elevation was between 9500 and 11000 for the whole time.  We probably walked 30 miles altogether, and much of the trail was very steep and rough.  But it was an adventure that was worth it.  I got a few pictures.  For anybody who is knowledgeable, we entered at Elkhart Park, hiked to Seneca Lake, camped, day-hiked into Titcomb Basin and some surrounding peaks, then back out.  Short but strenuous.

Here we are at the beginning, hopeful looks in our innocent faces.

This is some of the country we hiked through.  Reminded us of Mordor.

Austin and Scott climbed a mountain, I had my limits and went with Clint back to camp to make a fire.  We were much relieved when they returned before dark.  Even with an almost full moon this is pretty rough country to be hiking in at night..

When we got back to the parking lot at the trailhead, Austin knocked off about 30 pushups before taking his pack off.  I have video of it but don't know how to post it without getting a red X.  But after he finished I had to try.

At the end everybody was accounted for, despite making several "Red Cross" donations to the local mosquito population.

We also toured Jackson Hole, Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, had a great time despite driving nearly 3800 miles.

42F, Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  Ran 10.65 miles from the motel.  Found a route alongside a national wildlife refuge where the elk winter.  Left the heart monitor at home since it was meaningless at this altitude (6200').  Started at 10:30 pace and ended at an 8:22 pace.  Had to get back early for the day's activities or I would have run all day.  This was a beautiful run, but should have brought my gloves.  Here is a cell-phone picture of the Tetons looking west across the refuge, just catching the morning sun.

42F, Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  Ran 4 with Austin and called it a day.  Off to Tetons and Yellowstone, then back to Texas.  We should go on trips like this more often.

79F, 95%, SSW 5 mph.  Wonder why it felt so hot today.  This run was slow from the beginning and only got worse.  LHR miles were 10:12 pace, then couldn't finish off 5 MP miles, had to stop at 3, 7:35, 7:44 and 7:51.  I did the marathon death march for the last 2, mid-9s, but heart rate never came back down, stayed at 170.  Very disconcerting.  Tempted to blame it on backpacking, but I ran twice in Jackson Hole immediately after backpacking and felt better than today.  I am thinking I lost conditioning by basically taking the week off, even though it was an active week.  Just have to wait and see what happens tomorrow.

73F, 95% and calm.  A little cooler than yesterday, and a little better through first 5 miles.  After that it was still very slow, total of 10.06 in 1:43:25, LHR pace of 10:17 per mile.  Trying to be patient.  Met a neighbor out walking her dog, a very athletic German Shepherd.  She wondered where I have been and I told her Wyoming, trying to get used to the heat again.  She had been in Europe for two weeks and boarded her dog at a local air conditioned kennel.  She said her dog was now having trouble getting used to the morning 5-mile walk -- so maybe there is hope for me.

75F, 94% and calm.  Pretty good running weather today, relatively speaking.  Ran 5 LHR miles, average pace 10:14, but it wasn't really that bad, ran them at super low heart rate.  Then 5 x 1K at a fairly relaxed pace:  7:29 (154), 7:24 (159), 7:15 (166), 7:11 (72) and 7:16 (176).  Legs felt better today, but there has definitely been something going on.  Maybe residual fatigue from hiking, maybe I gained too much weight on vacation, maybe it's just too dang hot here.  But I'm gonna be fine.

Inside on TM.  Work prevented getting outside this morning, so did 6 on TM at noon.  Started out at 5.5 mph and ended at 10 mph, uphill and downhill, 3% incline each way.  (Not to worry, the 10 mph was downhill all the way and lasted less than a quarter.)  Legs actually felt pretty good, we'll see if it translates into better running tomorrow.  I didn't try to watch TV on this session and it seemed to actually help the boredom.  Could it be that my brain is more interesting?  Probably not.

80F, 80%, WSW 4 mph.  A little bit better running weather with slightly lower humidity.  I can't do a full long run tomorrow so decided to try today.  The goal was to warm up for 1 mile and run 19 at 8:00 per mile.  Happy to report that the warm-up mile was successful.

I picked out a 3.17 mile loop close to my hosue, set down 3 water bottles and decided to run it 6 times if possible.  I also carried a 6-oz flask of EFS.  Once I started in, I could tell by the feel of things that 8:00 was too ambitious.  So I tried to stick to an 8:20 pace for the duration.  I mostly succeeded, but by the time I finished 4 laps things were lagging.  I had an 8:19 average for 4 but finished 5 (plus a little to get to 16 miles flat) with an 8:22 average.  By then the sun was way up, I was almost out of water, and my sweat rate had diminished, so I called it quits.  Was also gagging on the EFS, but I'm getting better at it.  Despite falling short this was a pretty good run.  No bonk, and no regrets for stoppping early.  I have another high altitude adventure planned for Saturday a week, so my next shot at this run is in two weeks.

If I could get 6 laps at 8:00 per mile in the heat I think that would set me up for a good race in St. George.  The last time I did St. George, 2 years ago, I got about 1:20 per mile boost over my best 20-mile time in the heat.  On the other hand, that was for a 5-hour marathon (11:23 per mile versus 12:40 training) -- I don't expect to improve anywhere close to that much this time around, but 0:30 per mile would be fantastic if it actually happened.

It is now late afternoon and I can still feel the endorphins from this run, even though my legs ache and my right achilles is complaining.  I think it was a good thing to do, although nobody I know recommends doing 20-mile time trials on a regular basis.  Maybe I will feel worse when I hit 19 or 20, but for now I am happy.

77F, 90%, SSW 4 mph.  Pretty normal running weather.  We set an all-time record yesterday with 22 straight 100+ days, 35 in all.  Usually the humidity modulates the temperature to the low 90s but it has gotten away from us this year.

Saturday I went to San Marcos to help my daughter move, then celebrated my wife's birthday that night back in Houston, so no running at all.  Monday, well, that was my "procedure", which went off without a hitch.  But that stuff they have you drink will give you nightmares.  Much worse than the procedure itself.  Funny thing, though, the monitor was showing high blood pressure, have never had that before.  It was 106/60 in the dentist's chair only a week ago, but the systolic was over 150 yesterday when I woke up.

So I spent yesterday sleeping and getting the anesthesia out of my system, felt pretty normal when I woke up this morning.  My LHR pace was about right for this temperature/humidity combination, 10:11 per mile.  Then decided there was no reason to take it easy, so I ran 5 at 7:30 per mile:  7:41 (158), 7:35 (166), 7:27 (174), 7:22 (179) and 7:25 (186), average 7:30.  Total 10.13 miles in 1:30:42, average 8:52/mile.  Despite the high heart rate, I felt pretty good while running so I kept the foot on the gas and finished hard.  That is the longest non-injury break I have had in a while.

80F, 85%, SW 3 mph.  I felt no wind out there, felt very humid even though the RH reading was lower than yesterday.  Ran 10.05 miles in 1:32:07, average pace 9:10 per mile.  Started again with 5 LHR, average pace 10:20 (not good), followed by 5 x 1000 at tempo pace:  7:13 (166), 7:05 (172), 6:49 (178), 7:00 (183) and 6:56 (185), average 7:01, maxHR 192 in the last interval, just 1 bpm below the highest I have recorded, which was in a 5-mile race at 77F last Thanksgiving day.  Just went back and read that entry again, conditions and HR readouts were almost identical to this morning, except no sun, no race and no Kate -- so not that identical.  I was running faster today, but they were intervals, not a sustained push.  Off to Peru today for meetings in the morning, then to Utah on Friday for the Kings Peak adventure on Saturday.  Don't know if I will run again before Saturday.

45F, High Uintahs Wilderness Area.  This was our assault on Kings Peak, the highest point in Utah.  Wade is in a club of guys that do this for every state.  Utah is his 24th state or something like that.  He climbed Elbert in Colorado on Monday, and after we were done today he said Kings Peak is more difficult due to the length and condition of the trail, even though it is a thousand feet lower.  I returned from Peru Friday morning at 6:30, got home at 7:30, packed and left for the airport at 9:30.  I stuffed everything I needed for the weekend into my backpack, Wade picked me up at the airport in SLC and we camped at the Henry's Fork trailhead on Friday night after buying some last-minute supplies in Evanston, Wyoming.  We woke up early, broke camp, ate a cold breakfast and hit the trail at 6:17, first light. 

The goal was to do the 28-mile round trip in 10 hours.  Wade had a lunch bet with some work colleagues that he could make it that fast, so I wanted to make sure I wasn't the reason he had to buy lunch.  We didn't see anybody until we got to Dollar Lake, which is about the halfway point, then there were lots of people on the trail after that.  The normal schedule is to hike in, camp and then do the assault as a day hike from a closer distance, then pack out -- a 3-day trip.  No such luxuries for us, but we got lots of compliments for our foolhardiness, especially when they found out we were sea-level rats.

After Dollar Lake is Gunsight Pass, following which you have a choice to climb a ridge and go straight across to Anderson Pass, or do the more sensible thing and drop back down into a basin that eventually goes to Mirror Lake (I think) and then back up to Anderson Pass.  We went into the basin and back up.  Just below Anderson Pass a lone hiker came across the ridge and said the shortcut wasn't too bad at all.  He was Matt, the only guy all day we saw who was faster than us -- more about the girl side of things later.  From Anderson Pass we headed up the ridge to the summit, actually about 5 of them, it stairsteps and each one looks like the top as you are coming up.  Worse, there isn't a trail, it is just a boulder scramble, and it lasts almost a mile.  The view from the top was magnificent, of course, we could see 4 basins surrounding the peak.  Matt was waiting for us up there and had us take his picture because he forgot his camera.  (I would post pictures but I left my camera cord and can't download photos yet.)  I have never been over 13,000 feet before, the summit is over 13,500, so at least one PR this year.  Wade and I were both getting altitude headaches, but they were under control.  I did lose my appetite once we cleared 12,000 feet, though.  Despite it all, we still got to the summit in 5:17, so we figured we would make it up on the way down.

Wrong, it took longer to get off the summit back to Anderson Pass than to climb up.  Below Anderson Pass I twisted my ankle badly, about 12 miles from the parking lot.  Insult to injury, I twisted it because I stepped wrong on a clump of grass.  I could tell when it happened that it was bad, but no choice, had to keep going or call a helicopter.  Even though I didn't twist it on a rock, I blame it on my jello legs from coming down.  Then to make up time we took the cut-off across the ridge.  It was OK until we had to come off the ridge into Gunsight.  Those rocks are loose, some of them large, and I was not in good enough shape to be coming down a rocky slope.  At one point I started a rockslide and almost went down with it.  Needless to say, I am not recommending the cut-off, frankly I think it is dangerous.  Then weather moved in and we found ourselves in a hailstorm.  After Gunsight the hailstorm turned into a thunderstorm, and the lightning was hitting within a couple of hundred yards of us, a couple of the strikes even closer.  But there was no place to hide, so we kept going and hoped for the best.  Altogether the storm lasted about 2 hours, which in my experience is very uncharacteristic for summer monsoons in western mountains.

Below Dollar Lake Wade started to get very tired, and I wasn't feeling too good either.  We stopped to refill water and he and I both ate, which turned out to be the only thing wrong with him.  About 4 miles from the trailhead a couple of women came jogging past us.  They said they had been all the way to the top, although we couldn't figure out how they had done it since we didn't see them heading up.  We think maybe they started after us and had dropped down into the basin on the way up while we were taking the cutoff on our return trip.  But Wade and I were unable to jog along these rocky trails at this altitude.  We are just flatlanders -- we would need trail shoes, trail skills and trail training to be able to jog this thing.  Apparently the record is in the 5-hour range.

The trip down took almost 7 hours, so about 12 hours total.  Wade graciously didn't blame it on my ankle, he said he wouldn't have been able to make 10 hours anyway.  We were both relieved to be back safely.  I am putting this down as a long run because, believe it or not, we were wearing heart rate monitors and the whole trip was in the LHR range. 

My ankle today is very sore, to the pont it could interrupt SGM preparations.  On the good side, my quads are the sorest they have ever been, including after any downhill marathon,.  That means I got some very good downhill training which hopefully will carry over to October 1.  Honestly, I can't go down stairs today without grasping a handrail.

Back to the heat in the morning.  Houston set an all-time record high on Saturday.  Apparently some weatherman is predicting that the ridge of high pressure is supposed to move off in two weeks.  Two weeks?  That sort of a forecast has no science to it, about as useful as saying temperatures will drop by Christmas.  Hate to say it, but we need a big, slow-moving tropical storm to get us out of this rut.  But I got out of the heat for one memorable day at least.

63F, 94%, ESE 6 mph.  Unfortunately, those are Utah temperatures.  Actually, I was surprised at how warm it is here, but even at 94% humidity the air feels cooler here because at altitude it doesn't hold as much water per unit, if that makes sense.  Got up very early and ran with my brother -- I have been sleeping in his house and eating his food all weekend.  He blogs on here as Stephen.  That's because his name is Stephen.  He needs a tag-line for his blog, right now it says "This message goes at top of blog."  His is probably better than mine, now that I think about it.  Mine makes me sound old, and I am definitely never going to be old.

We ran out to Main Street  from Stephen's house in Orem, up to 1600 North, over to 400 East, down to Center Street, back to State Street, back to 1600 North and home.  Total of 6.39 miles at 9:56 per mile, LHR and old (there's that word again), heavy shoes, still wet from Saturday's adventure.  Pretty good run under the circumstances.

I was just happy to be in the game this morning.  Ankle was very sore when I woke up, but did fine running after I got it warmed up a little bit.  Was talking to my son Clint last night and he said current medical learning for sprains is to work the heck out of it, stay on it as much as you can.  If you don't show bruising it is probably going to be OK, especially if it is on the outside of the foot, which mine is.  I probably did myself a favor on Satuday by walking out on it instead of sitting down and having a good cry, even though it was painful.  Bigger problem right now is my quads, glutes and calves.  It is two days later and I still hurt everywhere, still can't go down a flight of stairs even though I can run, worse than any marathon I can recall.  But I am actually happy about that, it means I probably did myself some good.  Back to Houston today, might get in some TM miles tonight.

76F, 82%, calm.  Ran OK again today, 10.20 miles at overall 9:04 pace, including 4 at 7:40:  7:41 (158), 7:38 (167), 7:40 (174) and 7:42 (179), maxHR 179.  Legs are still tired though.

73F, 97%, WSW 2 mph, essentially calm.  Should be some rain in a couple of days, but not much cooling predicted, still hitting triple digits every day.  We'll take what we can get.  I feel overtrained right now, which is strange because I have done several weeks in a row at less than 70 miles.  Getting slower instead of faster, not a good time for this to happen.  But trying not to worry, and at least I am progressing well this week in recovering from Saturday.  Ran 4 LHR miles at about 10:10 per mile, then 6 x 1000 at HM pace:  7:12 (154), 7:16 (161), 7:18 (165), 7:16 (168), 7:11 (174) and 7:12 (174), maxHR 184, overall pace 8:57 for 10.08 miles (1:30:14).

Here are some photos from Saturday's frolic.  Kings Peak is a stark place.