hobos, bees and rain!

what a bizarre, but wonderful week of training. this week has been one for the record books...not only from the perspective of accomplishment, but also for the odd occurrences.

coach had a pretty heavy week in store for me, one with lots of speed and distance, so monday, i dove into the week. in addition to the coach's running, i'm throwing in some decent cross training. so the week included some swimming and cycling as well. things were going quite smooth and i was hitting all my workouts without difficulty until wedneday rolled around.

i had a really challenging 10x1000m interval workout on the schedule and was looking forward to really hammering the workout. i hit the back bay trail, did a two mile warm up to a drinking fountain near uci, dropped a bottle of gatorade endurance and a packet of gu, and head out on the first interval. the plan was to go out 1k, do the recovery and then come back to where i'd dropped my fluids and fuel. as i was returning after the first set, i saw the utility box where i'd placed the bottle and it was vacant. up the trail a bit, i spotted a guy walking away carrying the bottle. so, i finished the interval, jogged up to the guy and said, "hey! that's my bottle!" he spun around and a realized he was a homeless guy. he began yelling at me saying, "you can't just come up on people like that!" and then unloaded on me with a torrent of obscenities that i'd not heard since my years in the military. i asked him where my gu was and he stated that he'd eaten it already.

i wasn't so mad at him as i was that i wouldn't have fuel for the workout. i asked for my bottle back, but saw that he'd already been drinking out of it. and when he took his backpack off and made like he was going to fight me, i decided to get back to the job at hand and declined the offer to participate in the feats of strength. the rest of the workout went as planned, but i was feeling the lack of fuel by the end.

thursday brought another first. the rain of the morning had blown off and i was treated to a beautiful day to do a 10 miler with some 1 min hard/1 min easy speed work. about a mile and a half into the workout, i felt a really sharp sting on the back of my left shoulder. i swatted to knock off whatever was eating me. i slowed down a bit and tried to find out what had caused the pain and could barely see the butt of a bee and it's stinger sticking out of my shoulder. i couldn't quite reach it, so i ran along until i could flag down another runner to get the stinger out. only, instead of flicking the stinger, he pinched it and sent the rest of the juice into my shoulder. i ran the rest of the run with a wonderfully intense reminder that nature is all around us.

thursday night was a planned bike commute home. since the storm had blown off, i headed out not thinking at all that it would rain again. but, no sooner had i left the parking lot at work, when the skies opened up. i spent the next hour riding home in the pouring rain and arrived at the house looking like a drowned rat.

saturday topped the week off with a great finish, though. i'd contacted matt to see he could recommend some trails in the thousand oaks area and turns out we were actually able to meet up and run a couple miles together in one of his local wilderness parks. i did a great loop and some fun zig zagging through the 1,700 acre park and was able to turn in a 19+ mile run over some really rough trails before i ran out of time.

time for what? you may ask. the next joy of the day came in heading out to moorpark to watch the peloton cruise past during stage 6 of the tour of california. i put myself on the inside corner of a turn onto highway 23 and was able to get some great shots of the disco boys, along with michael rodgers, stewart o'grady and a bunch of other great cyclists.

so, a bizarre, yet wonderful week!

matisse & jack's trail blaze energy bars

i was contacted a while back by the folks over at matisse & jack's to give their trail blaze bake-at-home oatmeal energy bars a try. i'm always one for trying out new products and their pitch for the bars sounded great. bake 'em yourself, save some money, no packaging or preservatives and enjoy a home baked flavor instead of the typical packaged bars like clif or powerbar.

the boxes arrived, one cranberry walnut and one chocolate chip. i baked up the first batch and was surprised at how easy and quick it was to get going. they come as a dry mix and require a 'wet ingredient'; either just applesauce for a vegan recipe or applesauce and yogurt. i took the applesauce/yogurt route and within 30 minutes, i had my first batch ready. the batch made 9 bars, which would last me for about a week or two.

over the next few weeks, i used the bars on all of my longer runs and as a recovery food after harder workouts. i was incredibly pleased with the taste of the bars. as promised, they tasted just like a home baked treat. the best thing about them, aside from the taste, though, was how well they sat when eaten during a hard workout. i used them extensively while training for and racing the twin peaks 50k/50m. i was able to eat a bar during a hard workout and not have it sit heavy in my stomach and the energy release was always smooth and not accompanied by a sugar spike and drop.

when the initial two boxes ran out, i was quick to order another batch of boxes. via ordering on the matisse & jack's web site, purchasing 5 boxes at a time results in free shipping. that, coupled with the inexpensive price of $4.99 a box, i'm coming out way ahead vs. purchasing the packaged bars at the local stores.

each bar is about 180 calories; 4.5g of fat, 22g of carbs, 9g of protein. from the matisse & jack's web site, they say:

You'll be surprised by the taste, and forget that you're eating an energy bar. This doesn't have the overly tough texture of most energy bars; no sore jaws here. Our Cranberry Walnut is a hearty mix of crunchy chunks of walnut, oats, and plump cranberries-a great option for breakfast, or as a recovery snack. Meanwhile, our Chocolate chip is a guiltless indulgence; made with high quality Guittard chocolate and organic rolled oats.

i whole heartedly agree and matisse & jack's have made a customer for life!

should i be concerned?

i'm not a big user of mp3 players while i run, but on occasion, running with music is a nice diversion. i used to have a nice, tiny one but it died a couple months back due to the excessive perspiration that i experience. so, when the new ipod shuffle came out, i was excited at the prospect of something so tiny and able to clip virtually anywhere.

this past week, smsmh picked one up for my birthday. i was super excited to get music loaded over to it and give it a try out on the roads. i spent saturday night filling it with lots of up-tempo, loud and intense music; perfect for running hard.

the shuffle, if you're not familiar with it, is either in the order that you load the songs, or random. i like the random feature, since it seems like i'm listening to my favorite radio station. up early on sunday morning to head out for a long trail run, i decided to bring it along and give it a shot.

i loaded up the camelback, threw the ipod in it, put in the ear buds, turned it on and pressed play...and was greeted with, "you are an inspiration to me, you are an inspiration on how not to be, you are an inspiration to achieve a better way of life". woah. how RUDE! how DARE my ipod say something like that to me.

the music kicked in, and i headed off on the run. a little disturbed, but not concerned. but then i started paying attention to the songs that IT was playing for me. at one point it was yelling at me, "WAKE UP! WAKE UP!", and then later, it called me a 'loose canon'. i was beginning to think that there was something up with this tiny piece of technology.

and then it dropped the following bombs. in judaic references to God, most of the names used for Him translate to "one". well, the ipod began proclaiming, "i am one". and then with the next song, began shouting, "i am a robot". and the last straw, it said, "i want to put a gun to your head and pull the trigger".

people, my ipod thinks it is a robot god and it wants to kill me.

[edit: no, it wasn't speed metal or gangsta rap and the lyrics were completely taken out of context...well, with the exception of the "i am a robot". because that song is all about the writer being a robot. "the best thing is our lifespan, we live 900 years". at least i don't have to worry about replacing the ipod in my lifetime if that's the case!]

twin peaks 50/50 race report

the crazy thing, really, the craziest thing about this weekend was that i never came close to feeling anxious or stressed about my race. odd, seeing as how it has to measure up there with one of the toughest things i've ever tried. anyway, i'm getting ahead of myself. this weekend was the twin peaks 50/50 race. i had agreed to support jessica's race by running the 50k way back when she announced it. i also agreed to help out in any way that i could, and that support came in the form of marking the course the day before the race.

the weekend started with an early morning on saturday with us all meeting up at jessica's place and loading, literally, tons of supplies into the trucks for the aid stations on the course. we headed off to ortega highway and began the long drive along the main divide fire road. we spent about six hours up on the divide dropping water, tables, etc at the three aid stations and then marking the course with pink (in honor of angie, i'm sure) ribbon and flour. at the top of the harding truck trail, i handed the keys to the xterra over to angie and i hopped on my bike to mark the last/first 9 miles of the course on my way down to the tucker sanctuary. jessica and angie picked me up at the bottom and we called it a day.

up early on sunday, i headed out to get to the start by 5:45 so that angie could use the xterra as a support vehicle for the day. i rolled in right on time and was excited to see head lamps of all the 50 milers milling about. i chatted w/ angie and anne for a bit and then headed to the start. the 50 milers headed out at 6am and i had the chance to wish greg, michael and nattie well on their runs. shortly after the 50m start, i bumped into matt, standing quietly (that man is a ninja, i swear) off to the side. we got to chat for and get caught up. the guy is amazing, really. if you get a chance to meet this humble man, turn yourself inside out to make it possible to spend some time with him. it's rare that you meet someone as genuine, low key, but at the same time full of life.

matt and i headed to the start just before 7am, listened to jessica give the briefing (aren't you glad we were paying attention, jess? it's a RIGHT at the top of harding! haha) and then we were off. i ran w/ matt for the first mile or two and spent some more time just chit chatting. after a bit, i decided to go ahead and start picking up the pace, so i said goodbye to matt and headed off to catch pete and lisa. about a mile later, i latched onto them and hung w/ lisa for a while. i had figured i'd run the whole thing solo, but lisa was pacing conservatively for me and it felt good on the long nine mile climb up to main divide. before we knew it, we had done the nine miles to the ridge and the first aid station. i stopped for a bit, had a mattisse & jack's energy bar, drank some water and then headed off to catch lisa again. lisa and i ran together up to the top of modjeska and then on the downhill back to main divide, i started stretching the legs out.

the next handful of miles up to the santiago peak were uneventful with the exception of the occasional motorcycle that would come tearing past, gunning it's engine right next to runners to kick up more dirt. out of the 20+ dirt bikes that came by me, only one group of three slowed down when passing. the rest either tore past or actually made a point of kicking up more dirt next the runners. lame.

i paused for a bit at the top of santiago and gave some directions to a handful of people who had missed the modjeska turn off. i had another mattisse & jack's bar, a bottle of the oc energy water and then started the 15 mile descent back to tucker. i was feeling REALLY good at this point and just ran comfortably. just before hitting the summit, though, my big toes had started to bother me. i had noticed that my fingers were really puffy at the start, so i'm assuming that i was retaining a lot of water (i'd been taking in lots of sodium on friday and saturday) and that my toes were bigger too, causing them to get a little smushed in the trail shoes. i cruised comfortably back to the harding aid station and by mile 22 was still feeling really good. no major pains or tiredness, other than my toes, so i was ready to tackle the last nine downhill miles. i was sitting at about 4:35 into the race at that point and figured that if i could run about 9:30ish on the way down, i could roll in under my six hour finishing goal. the guys at the aid station commented on my extremely salty body, so i popped a couple salt tablets before starting back up.

the downhill on harding was fine until around the six mile remaining mark. my toes and joints were really starting to complain, so i wasn't able to keep much more than a 9:45-10:00 pace. i was still feeling really fresh, though, and on all the little up hills that i encountered, i felt really strong. the last three miles of harding were much steeper and i was having to chop my steps because the pounding was really getting difficult to take. but despite that, i felt mentally alert and was still enjoying myself. i just kept saying what angie had told me was rob's mantra, "just smile, take a gu and keep moving". it works!

i jogged across the finish at 6:05 and even though the legs were beat, i was still feeling good. smsmh met me at the recovery area and commented that i didn't even look like i'd run. she's seen me look pretty haggard after some of my races and was amazed that i didn't look like i'd been worked. the race was a really fun experience. from the fun community that turned out, to the low stress of the event, to the company on the run itself and to jessica's organization, the twin peaks 50/50 was a joy to be a part of.