The God Particle and Short Shorts

It looks like we might be nearing the end of the longest and most extravagant saga in the history of science as a team of physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider announced yesterday that they *may* have discovered the elusive Higgs Boson.  This particle is thought to be responsible for providing mass to the atomic nullities that make up the universe (and us) and has been referred to (with acknowledged grandiosity) as 'the God particle' for just this reason.  While this discovery stands to answer many deep and as-of-yet unanswered questions regarding the physical world it also opens the door to a number of other questions about the nature and fabric of reality: why is there something rather than nothing?  what are the basic constituents of matter?  

In a similar vein I have found myself asking some profound questions regarding the appropriate length of running shorts.  Back in the day when I was focused mainly on shorter distance racing I made it a perverse point of pride to wear the highest cut I could find, the brighter-colored the better.  A testament to how far off the mainstream I generally lie, I would fly down the main drag by the Iowa City Hawkeye football stadium on game weekends at 5:30 min/mile, shirtless and flinging sweat, in the process receiving a number of interesting and generally derogative comments from drunk, college-age passerby.  When I took up trail running a couple years ago I was very conscious about starting a new sport altogether and, as such, adopted a shuffling gait, vast knowledge of electrolyte esoterica, about 30 devices to carry water while running, and long, flowing shorts with pockets to carry crap.  It seemed to work out alright.  

Recently however I have rediscovered my old favorites- worn and stiffened from years of salt and grime accumulation but still nice and short.  Several years of cycling and then prioritization of quadricep-intensive steep trail climbing has changed my anatomy somewhat however: the predominant effect at this point is something along the lines of 10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag.  But it just feels so light and airy and fantastic. 

I ran up Timpanogos on Tuesday from the Timpanooke campground.  I probably finished and left American Fork Canyon about 30 minutes prior to the start of the Quail fire that has now unfortunately burned a significant area around Alpine and the sublime Box Elder Peak.  I ran pretty casually without thinking of going hard (heart rate average of 143 to the summit) but managed to top out at 1:34 and change.   I spent quite a while on the summit chillin' with some new friends (see below) and made it down to the car in 2:45 total trip time.  

Quail Fire later in the afternoon on Tuesday, as seen from the University Hospital.

Brighton Marathon

Another solid week in the books with decent volume and vertical, ending with the informal Brighton Marathon this past Sunday.  While I had run the course before this was my first time doing the actual event which is a yearly occasion thanks to the MRC crew and a number of other volunteers who flag the course and provide water en route (see gps map below).  I carpooled up to Brighton with Peter Adler and Pete Stoughton, arriving about 5 minutes before we all casually sauntered out of the parking lot and up the trail.   I ended up running the whole thing at the front with Greg Norrander which was a blast and also a nice boost to the confidence in being able to keep up with this guy.  Apart from Greg blazing up the first section of climbing from Mill D we kept the pace pretty controlled and conversational.  I think we were at 4:38 total time.  Post race/run festivities were at Jay Aldous' house at Brighton.  Thanks all for a great morning!

Bethany and David Hayes climbing up to Desolation Lake

Ibid.

Grandview summit.

On Grandview, stylized.

Wasatch 100 course from a distance...

Family run in Sugarhouse park right before Bethany left for Ghana.

Mamma's not coming home for a little while Ada...

Red Pine Lake.

San Juans and the Central Governor

Highlights of the past week:

1. Cheering Bethany on to win another epic race, finishing the San Juan Solstice 50m in 9:58, just off the course record.

2. Running above 12,000 feet on a daily basis.

3. Tetherball with Ada.

4. Time with the Eldridges in Montrose and at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

5. Family camping.

Running in the San Juans is humbling.  The sheer vertical relief, the scale, the elevation: all of these combine to make one feel pretty small.  Mountain travel above 12,000 feet is a different beast: grades that are eminently runnable on lower elevation trail become hypoxia-inducing, vision-constricting stumble-fests.   After a week of camping and running in Ouray, Silverton, and Telluride I felt pretty spent- and only partly due to the limited sleep afforded by a 21-month old completely out of her routine.  Spent yes, but also inspired:  It will be exciting to come back out here in only a few weeks to pace Jared Campbell at Hardrock and have a rare inside glimpse of the front end of this epic race.  

Running at elevation is a good test of Noakes' Central Governor Hypothesis of fatigue in endurance sport.  In a nutshell, this is the notion that exercise capacity is limited not by mechanical properties of muscle and tendon, nor by the pure efficiency of aerobic metabolism, but is regulated in top-down fashion by the brain which dictates how much muscle is devoted to the task at hand so as to preserve the integrity of the organism in extremis.  Monitoring my heart rates while climbing I was surprised to see numbers only in the 150s when my perceived effort level was much higher.  Presumably my brain sensed less available oxygen and correspondingly downregulated muscle recruitment patterns so as to avoid the possibility of bodily damage.   The old adage that running is 99% mental is true in more ways than one... 

 

Goblin Valley

Island Lake

Tetherball!

Ice Lake, Fuller Lake

Sleepless camping

The precipitous Bear Creek trail

Engineer Pass

Bethany, mile 16 of SJS en route to a convincing victory. 

Post race, cheesy motel decor.

P50

Over Memorial Day Weekend I travelled to Pocatello for the Pocatello 50: this year as an aid station volunteer rather than a competitor.  This race- put on by Jared Campbell, Ryan McDermott, and this year Luke Nelson- has been on the calendar over the last several years for its combination of spectacular and gnarly terrain, festive and laid back atmosphere, and proximity to SLC.  The four years since its inception have showcased a wide range of conditions, from the hypothermia-inducing white-out of 2 years ago to a record snowfall year last year forcing a course re-route, to the mid 80 degree temps this year.  The Pocatello 50 is truly a classy event- this will surely continue next year as Luke Nelson takes the reins of race-directorship.

I had a great time taking in the scene from the Mink Creek Aid Station (mile 34) where courage and carnage were present in equal measure as the day heated up.  There were some inspiring performances by a crew of local athletes, including but not limited to Greg Norrander's and Matt Hart's impressive runs, Andy Dorais' 50 mile debut, Karl Meltzer and Jay Aldous in a sprint finish, Mindy Campbell taking home 3rd place for women, Jason Berry heading out for leg 3 despite clearly being in the early stages of heat exhaustion (he survived), and Peter Lindgren practicing the tenets of good friendship and good medicine in shepherding in a delirious Christian Johnson.  Nice to be a part of this.

Here's some photos as well as video footage I compiled from the last 6 months of running:

                                                                                             Mink Creek Aid Station, prior to the deluge of  runners.

Intrepid race directors: Ryan and Jared

West Face of Grandeur.

Bowman Fork

Mt. Raymond

Coming off Raymond.

Back in Action

I've continued to ramp up the mountain running which has been good for the soul and, so far, good for the foot as well.  Some nice adventures over this past week, including a trip to Zion.  I was able to hold back and refrain from doing the Trans-Zion route with Bethany but did get out for some nice 2 hour runs of my own.  Still need to be cautious for a couple weeks.

Butler Fork

Butler Fork

Mt. Raymond

On Gobblers

East Rim

Trans-Zion, at Lava Point.  Helfer, Zach, Kate, Meredith, Bethany.  Me doing support.

Angel's Landing

Some Pool Running Tips

I've been trying to get Bethany to write a race report on the Miwok 100k but dammit, she's just not narcissistic enough to comply.  It should be noted that she was 2nd woman overall in the Miwok 100k in 10:49.  Apart from some grotesque poison oak on her legs she looked fresh upon returning home the next day.  Even though I can't give you a gripping race report from the true athlete of the household I can offer you something nearly as captivating: some pool running tips.  


As I now consider myself an elite pool runner, here is some accumulated wisdom in the off-chance that another injured trail runner might be deranged enough to benefit from it:


1) Use a flotation belt and go to the deep end of the pool.  It becomes too difficult to maintain a semblance of a running stride without the belt.  Even so, your legs make more of a piston-ing action then a true running stride.  With the resistance of the water you definitely feel some cumulative fatigue in the hamstrings and hip flexors towards the end of the workout.


2) Intervals are your friend.  Pretty much every workout I've done has been interval based.  This is for several reasons: to break up the monotony as well as to ensure an adequate aerobic stimulus.  You have to work pretty hard to get your heart rate up.  Any given heart rate is 10% lower than an equivalent effort running on land.  For my intervals I would try to be in the 155-165bpm range depending on the length of the interval (max hr on land of 185, lactate threshold heart rate on land around 172).  I've done more high intensity work in the last 5 weeks than I've done since college.  It's because of this ability to maintain the intensity in a relatively specific fashion that studies have shown that runners can maintain VO2 max, lactate threshold, and running economy for 4-6 weeks with just pool running alone.


3) Limit the workout duration.  I initially had big goals of 2-3 hour pool sessions but the monotony is pretty hard to bear and it is tough to keep up the intensity.  I did a couple sessions of 90 minutes but eventually just focused on 1 hour workouts.  An hour of intervals can tucker you out just fine.


4)  Keep the recovery intervals short.  Your heart rate quickly drops after each work effort.  Recovery intervals shouldn't be longer than 1 minute.


5) If you are in it for the long haul (i.e. at least 6 weeks) it is helpful to have a waterproof ipod or some such device to listen to some tunes. 


6) Avoid the aqua-aerobics ladies.  Trust me on this one.  Get a pool schedule and figure out a way to get there in the hours they aren't there.  


Here are some sample workouts.  Some of these are taken from or adapted from Pete Pfitzinger's pool running schedule. 


1. 8-10 x 5 min intervals with 1 min recovery.


2. 10-16 x 2:30 intervals with :30 recovery.  Can do in sets of 5-6.


3. "The Kevin Sullivan Workout".  This is a workout that Kevin Sullivan- Canadian mile record holder- incorporated into his routine regularly in coming back from a sacral stress fracture in 2002: 
1 x 5 min / 1 min rec. / 2x4 min with 1 min rec. / 3 x 3 min with 30sec recovery / 4 x 2 min with 30 sec recovery / 5 x 1 min with 15 sec- 30 sec recovery / 6 x 30 sec with 15 sec recoveries


4. Ladders: 5/4/3/2/1/2/3/4/5 x 2 with 30 sec to 1 min recoveries


5. Pool lengths: repeats of 25 meters (takes approx. 1 min) all out with 30 sec recoveries.


6. Long Intervals: 2-3 x 15 minute intervals with 2-3 min recoveries.  


7.  Steady run: 1:30-2:00 steady.  Only did this a couple times.

Homo Erectus and the Alter-G

Injury rehab in the modern era is a very different thing than it was in the Pleistocene.  I would guess that 12,000 years ago I would be dead by now: my lame foot and I hapless victims of a cave lion, a woolly rhinoceros, a glyptodon; or less dramatically, fallen prey to starvation or exposure.  In contrast, in the 21st century if I chose to I could live my entire life hardly moving my limbs at all, these very real fears of our evolutionary past completely foreign and abstract.  While this state of affairs wreaks havoc on the coronary arteries, abdominal circumferences, and general existential authenticity of our species one nice side benefit is the availability of Alter-G treadmills.


These $75,000 NASA-designed treadmills use air pressure to allow one to select the percentage of body weight you want to run at.  If you want to feel what it's like running 10 lbs lighter you adjust the machine and let fly.  Or you can do what I've been doing over the past week and dial it down to an airy 25% of body weight to unload a fractured foot.  


Entering the contraption is no small feat.  You first slip on a skirt that looks like a white-water kayak skirt with leggings and then zip yourself into an airtight inflatable chamber, calibrating the machine then adjusting the relative air pressure to your liking.  I imagine running at 80% of body weight would be a relatively comfortable affair.  At 25% however, the vectors of force suspending you concentrate directly on your neoprene-encased groin.  I must have been a funny sight for the other gimpy patrons of the University of Utah Orthopedics Center Physical Therapy Dept: legs spinning wildly underneath me as my face vacillated between expressions of blissed-out gratification and wincing discomfort.


Today I ran for 30 minutes at 6min/mile pace. My heart rate hardly cracked 140.  Add to this an interval workout in the pool, a bike ride up Emigration and Big Mountain, some time with Ada, and an IPA and it was a pretty good day for this modern hominid.  


What does any of this have to do, you ask, with the specific aerobic, muscular, and metabolic demands of moving slowly and consistently over vast amounts of technical vertical terrain with cumulative eccentric muscle damage?  Probably very little.   But it's likely better than doing nothing.


In other news, Bethany races the Miwok 100k tomorrow.  Amazingly, in what must be a first, she actually read up on the course and her competition before the start.  I'll try and convince her to write a race report on this site when she gets home but I can't make any promises.


-Current maximum pullups: 20 (improvement of 4 in a month, weak sauce).
-Estimated total miles 'run' in the pool: 24