Moving Forward

This is what my house looked like this morning. Notice anything odd?

That's right - there's snow everywhere! Winter has arrived here on the Front Range of Colorado and I, for one, am determined to embrace it. To begin, this morning at 6:30 I got up and put on my "3/4 tights" or, as the rest of the world calls them, manpri's. With them and a few other choice pieces of gear I went out into the snowing darkness fully fashionated, and ready for anything. The result was a really cool run on both roads and trails that had nearly a foot of snow on them. My run today was a new adventure on an old route, a new perspective on a run I do bi-weekly. Changing seasons are very cool.

So I have begun training again. I took most of September off and then started running occasionally whenever I felt the urge, and this ended up totaling around 60 miles per week for the past three or four weeks. But now I'm "training", which means I have a somewhat more regimented schedule and basically a compulsory run every day. But I like that! I want to run! I can't express how good I have felt since taking time off. I ran very little during the month of September, and then slowly built my fitness back up over the past few weeks. Now I'm training hard and feeling good. This confirms the fact that you have to lose fitness to gain fitness, inasmuch as you cannot continue to improve forever. Every endeavor has peaks and valleys, and if these are managed consciously they can maximize performance on every level.

My next race is The North Face Endurance Challenge in San Francisco on Dec. 3, where I will run fifty miles as hard as I can and then turn 21 two days later. A friend pointed out that "thank goodness it's in that order!" and I couldn't agree more. Post 21 my focus will move towards skiing and ice climbing for the winter. Then, when the weather gets nice again, Hardrock training will begin, assuming I'm accepted. If not accepted to Hardrock, plan B will be to....rail endlessly against that race's management? Start taking school seriously? Take up an instrument? One thing is for certain: if not accepted to Hardrock, I'll immediately quit the sport and hold a grudge indefinitely. But in the meantime, barring weather anomalies, I'll be headed down to the Grand Canyon in a week or so to give the Double Crossing another shot. I don't want to seem arrogant, but I will say that Dave Mackey's record is slow and he is a B-grade trail runner at best.

The blurry guy in front? Total wuss.

Now.... Let's hope I don't have to eat those words.