7/22 - 7/28

My running lately has been pretty hit-and-miss lately due to the whole getting married, family, and heat things.  So, sorry for the lapse, all you maybe readers out there.  But hopefully I haven't lost too much fitness in the intervening two weeks.

Monday - 3 miles, ~ 00:22, Home

Just a short run to get my body used to moving again.  Perfectly fine run.  Spent the rest of the day switching between computer code debugging and packing up my apartment.

Tuesday - 10 miles, ~ 1:28, Lake Monona Run

Been getting tired of running on the trails lately due to the incessant mosquito population.  Once you start sweating it doesn't seem to matter how much repellent you've got; those mosquitoes will find you and eat you to death.  It doesn't help that I just saw on the news that Dane County recently had it's first reported West Nile case.  So, regardless, I'm trying to limit mosquito exposure, meaning I broke my rules and ran on some roads for a bit.  This was a slightly more difficult run than I'm used to 10 miles being lately, but I got through it just fine.  There were a lot of hecklers on the roads though.  It was kind of disappointing.  One guy made a farting noise at me as I ran past him, and another guy yelled from his passing car something negative about me being shirtless (which I am about 90% of the time when running in summer and usually goes without remark).  It just kind of dampened the spirit of the run.  Why would someone go out of their way just to be mean like that?  But I got home and was welcomed to a room full of mess and moving boxes.  Got to do something about that soon...

Wednesday - Off
Spent the evening preparing for a Washburn public observing night.  Was a good open house, but didn't leave much time for running.

Thursday - 5 miles, 00:41
Casual run.  Still feeling a bit behind the curve on fitness.  But hopefully that'll be back up soon.  Did run into a 7 year-old kid who wanted to race.  He kicked my ass.

Friday - Off
Donated blood for the first time, so the day was obviously off.  Felt fine after giving.  We'll see how subsequent runs go.

Saturday - Off
Kind of spent the day not feeling great.  So, stay in bed is what I did.

Sunday - Arb - 24 miles, ~4:02
I mentally prepared myself to treat this like the most painful run ever.  It's been 3 weeks (I think) since I've run more than like 10 miles, and I'm missing ~10-15% of the red blood cells that used to be in my body.  But I knew I was in deep need of getting some big miles in if I'm going to even hope to finish my 50 miler in a month and a half (whoa!).

With that in mind, I just went as easily as I could make myself, which was good as I found myself getting winded pretty easily.  But eventually I settled into a nice shuffle and ran this 8-ish mile loop I kind of came up with on the fly.  Around mile 12, I noticed my left ankle giving me trouble, so I adjusted how I came down on that foot, and that seemed to help out drastically.  Given this is a recurring feeling, I was pretty stoked to figure that solution out.  About mile 18 was when the pain cave kicked in.  I was proud to have held it off for so long.  From then until the end, it was just a mental gutting it out.  Every mile or two, I'd stop for 10 seconds or so and do a few squats; they seemed to help hamstring pain, as some cramps were trying to creep in there.

But mostly a good run.  My body is noticeably getting better at handling itself when the miles hit the 20s.  Otherwise nutrition was all right.  I think I had 4 gels, a Lara bar, and "super fuel" Pro Bar, along with the electrolyte mix in one of my bottles.

The oft-mentioned turkeys.  This photo turned out terribly blurry, but I feel that somehow accurately conveys the relationship I've developed with these turkeys.

New flowers in the Arb.  I haven't identified them yet, but will soon.  They were showing up almost every where the purple prairie coneflowers were.  So I'm imagining they're somehow related (or not. I know very little botany/biology).

Been digging this song since I heard it on Orange is the New Black (a pretty good show I recommend).  Something about being married has lately made me very fond of dissonant themed songs.  I wouldn't suggest reading too deeply into that...

7/1-7/7

Monday/Tuesday - Softball/Off
Did some light softball on Monday evening.  Time-trialed on my commuter to the bar for some bar trivia after the game.  Tried to beat my friends in their car, but 5 miles proved to be a little too far for me to outpace them by bicycle.  Still, they only beat me by a minute or two, so I did all right.  Tuesday was another off day.  My knee was still feeling a bit bum, and I just was feeling in a funk anyway due to this problem I'm having trouble solving at work.

Wednesday - 1:35 - Arb
Finally coerced myself to run again even though I was uncertain about my knee.  Knowing I haven't run in a week and haven't done anything longer than 10 miles in like 2 weeks, I didn't want to get into a mindfuck and opted to put electrical tape over the distance and pace sections of my Garmin screen.  After the first mile, I realized I also had to turn off the one mile auto lap.  But after that, I have no idea how far or fast I ran.  Planning to keep it that way until I feel 100% with my knee again.  Instead my goal is just to make sure I'm out on the trails for at least an hour a day and just run until I start to hurt more than I feel like I should for a recovering body.  Hopefully, I start feeling solid soon enough, and I can go back to cranking out 20+ mile runs again.  Until then, we'll see.

But the knee was sketchy for the first 45 minutes, so I'd stop and walk a section here and there until I felt good again, and then went again.  By the end of the run, my knee was feeling fine, as in I wasn't noticing it anymore.  What happened instead was my ankles from 2 weeks off the trails began crying out from all the varied terrain, and then I opted to head home.  Going to try to do this again tomorrow before 4th celebrations happen in full.  Happy America day, everyone!

Oh, also, saw some new turkey babies today!  As I accidentally snuck up on them, my goal was to appease the situation and get out of their way.  Otherwise, I might've tried to grab some pictures.  My bad.

Thursday - 2:03 - Arb
Knee's feeling even better than yesterday.  It's even stopped doing the weird locking thing when I walk.  So, maybe a dose of trails was all that was needed.  Spent the day just trying to go down different trails that aren't in my brain catalog.  This lead me to having a few stare downs with some turkeys and scaring away a raccoon that was munching on some of the blackberries all over the Grady and Evjue sections of the Arb.  Even had a brief moment with the doe below.  We stared at each other for a good minute or so, long enough for me to pull out my camera and snap a picture.

Also ran with the Ultimate Direction AK vest again.  Been making myself do that lately to get used to the fact that I'll probably have to wear it in actual races.  But made it to two hours today without any problems.  Started to feel the tired legs that I've come to expect to hit around mile 14-15, so I'm feeling like I've probably already bounced back from my brief week-long respite.  Will probably take tomorrow off and then try doing a 4-ish hour run sometime this weekend.

Friday-Saturday - Off

Sunday - 3:30 - Ice Age Trail (IAT)
This turned into a messy day.  I was ambivalent about driving out to the Kettle-Moraine forest and putting in heavy mileage, so I resisted until about 3:00 pm, when I knew I'd run out of daylight if I waited any longer.  The flaw in this was that the heat index had just peaked above 90. Regardless, the first hour or so was pretty good.  There were swarms of mosquitoes, but the bug spray I had invested in with supposed ability to survive sweat was finally keeping bugs off of me for once.  So, I stopped along the way and took some nice photos without fear of bites.  By the time I reached the section of trail where I had planned to veer off onto a horse trail, the wheels had started to come off.  I was pretty certain there was a water fountain in the parking lot off of this trail, but the trail dead-ended like 2 miles into it before I got to the parking lot (I still don't know what the deal was, but I couldn't stop to figure it out due to the mosquitoes now attacking me).  But I knew there was a forest headquarters about a mile further into the IAT, where I had veered off.  I turned around and got back on the IAT, and at this point almost 2 hours in, I was out of water, but was feeling well enough.  By the time I got to the headquarters, I was starting to not feel that great.  The heat and low amount of fluids had started getting to me.  My goal at the headquarters was to chug some water, get as wet as possible, get rid of the buckets of sand that had filled my shoes while I had been on the very sandy horse trail, and then get going.  This turned into a 15 minute ordeal as every time I tried to stop moving, I was instantly attacked by mosquitoes (ie: that so-called sweat resistant bug spray sucked balls)

But I got going, and I was so mad about the sand from before that I refused to take the horse trail back to my car and continued on the IAT the same way I'd come in.  I also figured with decreasing daylight and the foggy head that comes after many hours in the Sun, a new trail wasn't advised.  But any time I tried to stop to check my blood sugar, I was destroyed by mosquitoes, so I couldn't stop to get anything from the back of my vest or really slow down from a run at all.  And the gels I had up front had become unpalatable, probably from the heat+dehydration.  Trying to eat them made me start gagging.  The only nutrition I could do without throwing up was the hydration mix in the bottles.

And so it was a 10-ish mile death march of pain, mosquitoes, and dehydration back to my car.  Even better, I had forgotten how technical the last mile to my car would be, and the waning daylight turned that into a nightmare with me tripping on roots and rocks all over the place.  My body was unhappy with that.  But I made it back to the car and headed to the fountain across the street and chugged two bottles of water, ate the PB&J I'd prepared, and drove straight home.  After a few hours I even talked myself into eating a light dinner!

Totals:
~45-50 miles
~7 hours

White-tailed doe in Arb.  We had a brief staring contest.

Some pretty Arb flowers; if I'm identifying them correctly, I think they're purple prairie coneflowers (they were in the prairie).

The iconic yellow blaze of the Ice Age Trail:

A "scenic view" along the IAT:

And this, because why not?

6/25 - 6/30

Tuesday - 9 miles, ~1:16
First run in 4 days.  Probably the longest break I've had since the end of 2012 when a plantar fasciitis flare-up kept me out for a week or so.  Took a little while for the legs and lungs to remember how to work, but after the first mile, everything just rolled together.  With all the storms lately, the Arb trails are flooded all over, and I had to stick to the road, which was super lame.  And the recent uptick in humidity meant that my shorts were completely soaked through by the end.

But I tried out some Skratch Labs raspberry mix to see if I could use it as an S!Cap substitute, but it was hard to tell with a sample size of one.  I might give it another shot, but will stick with S!Caps for the most part as they just work for me.  Also had a go with the peanut butter GU flavor.  It was basically like eating a spoonful of peanut butter that goes down a lot easier than real peanut butter.  It was great.  Probably will mix that in with my current mix of GU flavors.  

Wednesday - 5 miles, 00:39
A meh run for the most part.  Only interesting parts were the humidity and some dude I ran into.  The humidity and heat are terrible right now.  It was only like 82 degrees F, but I was drenched in sweat by the time I was done running.  It's already getting old fast.  Other thing was I ran into some guy who looked like a terrible runner, but turned out to be pretty fast.  I think I've developed this mentality as of late where I need to prove that I'm still fast even though I'm logging the vast majority of my miles between 8-9 minutes.  So, I just book it when I see someone faster than me and turn it into an unspoken race to see if the person will try to keep up with me or not.  This one was bad because the guy just kept up with each steady increase I had.  By the time I was running a 6 minute pace, I was toast, and he was still there.  So, I did a disgraceful pull off the trail like I was turning down a different street and pulled myself together with him out of sight.  I've had prouder moments.  But I got home fine and drank some water.

Today's other fun fact is the entrance I use to go to the Arb is actually closed because Lake Wingra has flooded it.  I don't know when this will fix itself, but if the weather keeps up like it has with the rain, I may not see an Arb trail any time soon.  Not sure what I'll do in the meantime, but I guess I'll figure something out.

Thursday - ~3.7 miles, 00:30
Seemed like I was finally getting the hang of the heat and humidity today.  But this niggle I've been noticing in my left knee for the past week or so (probably last Wednesday if these logs are accurate) was a little worse today than usual.  So, after mile 2, I started slowly pacing myself home.  Relatively certain it's an IT band issue, as I recall this niggle being the first thing to pop up when I really screwed my IT band a while ago.  So, I'll do some massage and exercise for it and rest the next day or two, but hopefully I can treat this before it becomes a real problem. 

Friday-Sunday - Off
Been feeling like a bit of a shut-in, but figured it was better to rest than push on and try doing my 24 mile long run this weekend (duh!).  Going to do softball on Monday, and then try doing the Arb Tuesday afternoon for an easy 7 or something.  If that works, I'll celebrate the almost 4th holiday by trying to do that 24 miler on Wednesday.  But we're playing it all by ear.  Currently, my knee's feeling stronger, and a few, short jogs in front of my apartment felt good.  But who knows?  I barely know what I'm doing.

6/18 - 6/24

Tuesday  – PM – 6 miles: ~00:50

Legs were pretty wasted from yesterday still.  Pretty certain I didn’t eat or sleep enough following that run.  The eating part hit me pretty early on because all I wanted to do was find some food from mile one.  But eventually the legs shook out, and once I hit the dirt trails a mile out from home, I picked up the pace a little bit.  Was wearing the Newtons.  I’ve been running in them since January, and it’s finally looking like they might be near the end of their lives.  We’ll see how many more short distance road miles I can get out of them.  But managed not to get attacked by the blackbird by the Yahara River bridge.  That counts for something.

An aside: Started reading Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac today.  Found the following pretty true to how I consider things lately: “The whole world is so greedy for more bathtubs that it has lost the stability necessary to build them, or even to turn off the tap.  Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings.”

Wednesday – PM – 4 miles, ~00:33

Geez.  What a surprisingly rough run.  My left knee just felt like it wanted to hyperextend to hell or something.  It kind of felt like that all day even at work.  So, I didn’t feel comfortable putting any speed on, even though I typically would have with a run this short.  I did some browsing through the workout catalog and found I’d managed to skip my hip abductor exercises for like a week and a half.  So, I did those after the run, and the knee is already feeling more secure.  Geez.  Those strength training exercises will come back to bite you if you skip them, apparently.  I’ll probably make sure I stick with those daily for the next week or so till I’m confident everything’s cool.  

But I got my Ultimate Direction AK Vest today.  Going to happily make use of that to more easily cash in on some midweek Arb runs after work.  The vest should allow me to stash the valuables that I’ve rather inconveniently been hiding in obscure pockets of my bike panniers while I ran.  No more!  And hopefully since this will allow me to carry my phone more easily on Arb runs, this log might see some photos from the trails!

I also found myself reading about hydration and hyponatremia today.  I recently found that during even relatively short runs (~8 miles) my feet and hands would swell so much that blistering toes were becoming a legit problem.  That’s when I started taking S!Caps during runs longer than 1.5 hours.  That seemed to work well for me.  So, I went back and did a log of my daily sodium intake and found that with my diet’s emphasis on vegetarian and unprocessed foods I consume about as much sodium as an elderly man with a heart problem (at least I presume), meaning the S!Caps kind of made sense for me given my absence of a sodium backlog.  But presumably, sodium tablets aren’t a hyponatremic necessity for most people on a typical western diet.  Anyways, it’s interesting.  Maybe I’ll take a look at the book at the focus of this discussion: Waterlogged.

Thursday – PM – ~6.5 miles: ~00:55

Rode to the Arb after work. It was a pretty hot day, but I seem to have acclimated to the heat well enough by now and wasn't feeling too bad. Plus I had my new vest on, which gave me two full bottles and all the snacks I wanted for a short 6 mile run. Upon pulling into the lot I typically start from, I discovered the pole behind some bushes I usually lock my bike to had been taken by some snazzy, much shinier looking bikes; the horror! Anyways, so I set out from the visitor's center, where there were bikes racks, for the first time ever. Pretty much all the trails that had been closed so far this year were finally open thanks to the rain finally stopping this week. I got so excited to run trails I haven't been on since last fall that I stupidly dove into the Greene Prairie with its super tall grass and mostly over grown paths and left itching like crazy. When I got home, I instantly jumped in the shower and scrubbed until those legs were clean.

But otherwise, a pretty great day of running at the Arb. The AK vest took some getting used to. I suspect I should have gone down to the S/M size, as all the straps on my M/L were pretty close to as tight as they'd go. For anyone interested in the vest, I'm like a 5'10", 155-160 lb. guy. But then I came across a huge group of runners running opposite of me. I was very surprised to see so many, but I think it was some training group. But they all looked like they were hurting and not enjoying much of their runs, which seemed scandalous on such a lovely day. I tried giving them some smiles and waves, but they were pretty much not having it. Started my bike ride to the Arb with blood sugar ~150 and ate a 14 g carb nut bar; had a GU during the run, and then finished my bike ride back home with blood sugar of 72 and a bowl of cheerios. Boom.

Friday - Monday - Off
Wedding planning, family time, and lot of thunderstorms ended up taking time out of running this weekend. Fortunately the training schedule was for an easy weekend, so it hopefully hasn't done too much damage. I'm considering it as a time off due to illness and know these minor breaks haven't negatively affected me in the past. Regardless, I've got a 50 mile week starting tomorrow and a softball game tonight.

View from inside the Greene Prairie looking onto the Grady Oak Savanna

A sweet painted turtle maybe the size of a foot

The carnival aspect of this video is pretty summer feels.

6/10 - 6/17

Monday – PM – Softball and bike

Got a bike ride to the softball field and subsequent softball game in. As a rest/cross-training day, this was fine. I then rode to the bar after the game and home. Something like 12 miles on the bike. Had a decent game in spite of being defeated again to continue our winless record. We also lost at bar trivia. Meh.

Tuesday – PM – 7 miles: 00:56

On the road in the Newtons. Blood sugar was in the low 200s when I started due to overcorrecting an earlier low, but I safety-pinned a GU to the inside of my shorts just in case. Went without a bottle figuring I could stop at water fountains around town. For the most part, it wasn't a very interesting run. Quads were either sore from the weekend still or from some softball exertion from yesterday. I tried keeping my pace easy by forcing myself to breathe calmly only through my nose. That worked until at mile 4 my path intersected with a bro of this variety:

His pace was close to mine, so I felt it my duty to speed up and pass him. That turned my casual 8:05 pace into a 7:30 pace for the first time in like two months. Eventually I heard him behind breathing insanely hard trying to keep up. So, that turned the 7:30 pace into a 7:00 pace seeing if he'd keep coming. He did. Eventually he stopped somewhere and was gone. But I felt pretty good about the moment, especially just to run fast again. Training for an ultra kind of eliminates the need for that and increases injury risk, so I usually don't. But I circled back towards home, ran on the dirt paths around the lake to come in right at an 8:00 pace for the whole run. Blood sugar was 72 when I got home, so I downed a few gulps of Coke. The plantar fascias weren't happy, in addition to the already unhappy quads, so I fought with a foam roller before bed.

Wednesday - Off

Keeping with the string of recent storms on Wednesdays, a crazy lightning storm came up in the evening and delayed my plan to do 5 miles.  Moved to a later day.

Thursday - PM - 7 miles: 1:01

Rode bike to the Arboretum after work.  Mosquitos are still pretty bad.  Other than new mud everywhere from Wednesday night’s rain, not too spectacular.  Saw the cranes for the first time.  Ran in my New Balance MT110 ES's

Friday - AM - 5 miles: 00:40

A little over twelve hours after my previous run.  I was a little tired, a little dehydrated, and a little hungry.  Decided not to push it given I knew that I had a heavy run this weekend. Was building some foot strength with my NB MR00's.

Saturday - PM - 5 miles: 00:39

Another mostly unremarkable run.  Similar to Tuesday, I found myself running with someone else at nearly the same pace.  This time it wasn’t a bro, but rather a tall lady who had pretty solid biomechanics.  After about a mile of accidentally running together, I decided I was feeling awkward given the fact that we were like 5 feet away from each other and not talking.  So, I sped up to a 7:30 pace for a mile-ish.  She didn’t fall for the trick, but did ultimately keep up to a degree until I turned towards home.  I should find people to run with more often...intentionally.

Sunday - Off

Was planning to wake up and do my 22 miles at the Arb, but my blood sugar was high, and after eating breakfast, it went higher.  I changed out my infusion site and got it down, but by then it was 4 pm, and if I were to head to the Arb, it’d be dark by the time I finished the run.  So, I opted for a dawn run the following morning.  That itself was almost wrecked when I checked my blood sugar before bed to discover my blood sugar was 400!  Knowing I had not consumed in anyway enough carbs to constitute that blood sugar, I figured I had, yet again, another bad infusion site.  So, I switched that out again and got my blood sugar down to 125 before going to sleep.  Geez.

Monday - AM - 22 miles-ish:  ~3:20

Laced up my glued together NB MT110 AK's.The GPS was all over the place this morning (off by a third of a mile in the first two miles).  I accidentally turned it off for at least a mile.  So, while the GPS says I only ran 20 miles, I’m calling shenanigans and calling it 22.  But made it to the Arb by a little after 6.  Set up the car as an aid station and got running.  At mile 3 in the Noe Woods, I ran into two white-tail does.  Obviously there were turkeys all over the place in the Leopold Pines and around the Greene Prairie.  They were cool with me today, though I did see one sporting all of its tail feathers from a distance while another darted towards him (her?).  I didn’t see the cranes today, unfortunately, but the Arb’s facebook page posted a video of them:

And then in the Teal Wetlands, I spotted a majestic as fuck turtle.  I stopped and admired him for a bit.  And then I ran off.  Otherwise, it was super muddy, and after a few trips down the wrong trails in the first 7 miles, I figured out what trails to hang around to avoid losing my shoes in the mud. Regardless, my shoes and legs were pretty mud-caked by the end of the day.

Nutrition and diabetes wise, I started off with my blood sugar ~250.  I didn’t bother with a correction bolus because I was still carrying around insulin from my oatmeal breakfast, but did go with a 50% basal rate for the day.  Not doing a correction bolus turned out to be a good idea, as I was bonking by mile 3.  Ate two GU’s in rapid succession and made it back to the car at mile 8 after refilling my bottle midway through that section.  Blood sugar was ~110.  Ate a Larabar, gave myself 0.5 units and an S!Cap and headed back out.  Ate another GU, finished a bottle and a half, gave myself 1.0 units, made it back to the car at mile 17.25.  Blood sugar was 106.  Ate a banana and S!Cap, ran off, felt a bonk coming on and had a GU.  The legs were starting to feel shaky, and I was beginning to hallucinate logs as animals.  This was when I accidentally turned off my GPS and didn’t turn it back on for a while.  Eventually, I opted to just run back home and call it a day at mile 20 according to the GPS given my legs felt like 22 miles had happened.  Blood sugar was 156.  Turned my basal back to full and had some chocolate milk when I got home.

Monday - PM - Bike and Softball

Pretty good game. I can't throw the ball accurately from 3rd to 1st, but otherwise, it was a fun game. Now I can finally sleep.

Cumulative running: ~46 miles, ~7 hours

A Not-Quite-Valient Return

This is meant to serve as some resurrection of this blog. I managed to let it fall by the wayside once I got injured a bit over a year ago. I don't know if this means it will stay this time. But I do know that in the intervening year, I've developed as a runner, vegetarian, and diabetic. That doesn't necessarily make any of this more fun to read, but we'll see how it goes.

My plan is to begin updating once a week with summaries of my previous training week. I'm not even going to speculate whether that will be interesting in any way. But hopefully, it will include some photos here and there from the many hours I spend running and maybe some other interesting items.

But I guess I should begin with where I've been in the past year and kind of reintroduce myself.

I'm Nick. Of interest to this blog, I've been a type 1 diabetic since the age of 10. Since that diagnosis, I grew up. I started running distance events in track in middle school and briefly into high school. There was a brief spell of football in the mix, followed by several years of sedentary laziness until I graduated high school, at which point I discovered road cycling. I rarely raced, except for a wildly mediocre stint in college, but did complete a coast-to-coast ride the summer after I graduated college. After college, where I earned a physics degree, I moved to Madison, WI, in order to obtain advanced degrees in astronomy, where I am now as a Ph.D. candidate. While I've been here, I've discovered bicycle commuting and the bicycle as a tool for travel. Coincident with this, I've begun to eschew the racing culture of bicycles I so wholeheartedly embraced in college. A byproduct of this shift away from cycling as a sport was taking up running as a sport again – the first sport I really cared about.

I don't run on the track anymore, though. I tried running on roads for a while but found it disagreeable for a variety of reasons. That's when I discovered trail running. It fit much more easily into what I want to achieve with my running, which isn't a whole lot specifically. But it allows me to run in the absence of cars, on surfaces soft enough that my body can handle heavy mileage, and to just enjoy the aesthetic nature of the experience.

As I've done this, I've developed a set of rules for running that work extremely well for me. But I've also learned that much of running and what works for you is an experiment of one. Rarely, do I expect what works for me to work for others. But I've taken a lot of others' advice to develop the rules that work for me. If this works like it actually should, those rules should become evident over time.

Now, for the pressing concern of the immediate future, I should explain that with my failed attempt to complete a marathon a year (see every previous post), I took a month or two off from running, traveled around the world a bit, and slowly built my body back up which resulted in my shift to trail running. Granted, I still run a fair amount of mileage on the road, but I try to limit that to runs less than 8-ish miles, as I've found my body just doesn't handle the repetitive stresses of the road well.

But as I built my body back up, it got stronger, and I like to think I did it in a smarter way than previously. And at some I got faster. That culminated in a top 10 performance in a small (heavy emphasis on the small) 10K trail race last fall. Then, I decided to just start running longer and longer on the trails, just to see how far I could run. After a base building period in the (very long) winter, I started beefing up my mileage to where I'm all of a sudden running 40-50 miles a week with long runs regularly coming in at the 20 mile range.

And now I've decided to skip the marathon thing and go straight to a 50 mile ultra. This is usually met with incredulity. But it's happening. And my immediately forthcoming training summaries will center on building for that race in the fall. We'll see how it goes and see if I manage to develop a style. I find it highly unlikely, but someone other than my fiancé should probably have to put up this. At least you have the option to read or not. I don't really expect you to though.