Scott Jurek - Appalachian Trail day 22

I took a chance on finding Scott Jurek on his AT trail adventure today, and had the best of luck.  I parked in Washington Monument State Park, and after a quick trip to the top of the monument for a look-around I got on the Appalachian trail heading south.  I passed the South Mountain Inn (which marks the top of the Alt-40 hill climb at the start of the JFK 50 Miler) and continued south down the trail.  In less than an hour, I ran into him running down the hill from that antenna farm at the top of the hill.

Scott seems to genuinely enjoy people coming out to run with him - although I have to wonder if he's not losing some real time over the period of his record attempt giving time for selfie photos with fans!  I heard several people ask about what he was missing, and he seemed to be craving Thai food and vegan ice cream (never had that ...).  And any vegan deserts - but nobody had any of that.  There are lots of pictures of Scott running - but here is one of him eating (it is eat and run after all)

Scott has great supporters in his wife and ultra community.  I met Karl Meltzer during his AT attempt last year and saw him momentarily again in Washington Monument Park today,  And I wasted some of his time with a selfie (thank you Speedgoat!).  I didn't get one with Scott - that's  30 seconds saved.

If you bring nice gear out on the trail, it can get a bit trail-worn before you know it.  If it's really good gear though, that's OK.  Scott has taken a couple of weeks of hard wear on the trail.  I think I heard him say this is the hardest thing he'e ever done.  But I was impressed with how well he's moving and how strong he's climbing.

Good luck Scott!

links:
Scott Jurek's Facebook page
Frederick News Post article

Go Hard or Go Home

If you had a chance meeting with Mo Farah while in Portland wouldn't you have done the same thing?  He's a great guy, happy to talk about his training.

Mike and Mo Farah

That's me doing the Mo bot.

fall in (the C&O canal)

Some friends who ran in "Tom's Run Relay" told me that one of their members fell into the C&O canal during the night,  I tried to be sympathetic but a part of me wondered how that could happen ...

Well a few days ago I headed down to try to find the end of the canal in Georgetown (called the watergate it turns out) and see how much of the canal I could cover in a day - more on that some other time.  You may have heard a slow pace described as a 'conversational' pace, a pace at which the level of effort is easy enough to carry on a conversation.  I can tell you I have developed an even easier pace, a 'daydreaming' pace, a pace where sometimes you look around yourself a little bit surprised and wonder how you got there ...

Now let's talk about falling down.  There are different ways you can fall.  Take running down a rocky trail.  Some people call that technical running, You might wonder how fast you should be running downhill - I like to think the answer is in the form of another question "How fast do you want to be going when you fall?"  You sort of expect that a fall is going to happen, and you wear some gloves and try to protect the palms of your hands and just go have fun.  Unexpected falls might be a sudden and a total surprise - bam, you're on the ground trying to figure out how that happened.  Or, you might have a slow motion fall - you trip, then take one or two stagger steps, fully realizing that you're falling, and you're down.

Now about falling in the canal.  I'm moving along the edge of the trail, a pretty smooth dirt path, at 'daydream' speed.  I trip over basically nothing at all, just enough to get my weight too far forward to recover despite a couple of cartoon-fast strides.  I'm looking at where I'm going to fall, and I manage a pancake front slide off the dirt and into some green.  Some kind of green prickly weed.  But it turns out those weeds are growing up the side of canal bank, and my pancake slide takes me just over the edge, And I roll just a bit down the bank and one leg goes into the canal calve deep.  I'm grabbing for anything and there is nothing to really push on ... I got out easy enough so really not a big deal, but I'm glad no one was around to see that.  I ran into the freaking canal!

A while later I realized I lost my hat.  I'm sure it's in the canal.

Karl Meltzer Appalachian Trail 2014

This morning I had the great fortune of seeing Karl Meltzer (aka Speedgoat) working his way southbound on the Appalachian trail. Karl is going after the record for the end-to-end hike currently held by Jennifer Pharr Davis, who completed the feat in 46 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes.

Here he is descending into Gathland State Park ...

... and this one of us just before he disappeared into the woods.

I have a hard time coming to grips with the challenge he's undertaking.  I've run over this section of trail quite a few times - it's part of the JFK50 Mile course.  I always think that getting out there and running that trail makes for a 'hard' training day.  I'm just gob-smacked by the notion that he did way more than that after he disappeared on the trail today, and that he's been doing this every day since July 27th.

Keep your feet under you Karl, and God speed!

today's comic

This was today's "Non Sequiter" comic.

Moses was an older guy who knew how hard it could be to go the distance.

vertical

Vertical ascent is one of my new favorite training metrics.  You don't get much vertical running in the suburbs!  The streets in my neighborhood do roll up and down, but my new Garmin reports I get just 400 feet of vertical climb on a typical 5.5 mile loop I run a lot.  The biggest hill near my house - Powhatan Hill - rises 110 feet over .4 miles and seems like a grind every time I run up it.

Looking at the elevation profile of the JFK50, there is a vertical climb of 1200 feet in the first 5 miles.  That's a bit daunting if I equate it to running up my own Powhatan Hill ten times in a row, and then still having 45 mile run to go.  Last weekend I took my water bottle to the base of Powhatan Hill and ran it ten times just for the vertical.  I now track my total vertical ascent, and plan to add more climbing to my workouts every where I can.

So with my new interest in tracking vertical, the list of things I watch or try to include week-to-week to manage my training includes:

- my total mileage as a sliding 7-day sum

- long runs

- intervals (long intervals up grade or on hills, but I still enjoy running 400's on the treadmill)

- vertical ascent

- heart rate data, to track TRIMP / ATL / CTL as used in SportTracks Training Load software

Punxy progress report

In my last post I wrote a bit about my 'crash' training plan to get ready for the Punxsutawney 50K. Here's an update now that the race is just four weeks and a handful of days away.  The good news is that I've trained hard and made a lot of progress. I haven't hurt myself (though I did run with inadequate recovery time in my drive to rapidly build my weekly mileage).   I've had some hard, strongly-improving workouts, but I'm lacking in the long runs needed to really be ready  Punxsy will be a struggle  - I really started late...