Another year has come and gone, so it’s time to write a little about it. Last year, I shared that I only had 3 races planned, Uhwarrie 40, Florida Sea to Sea, and Barkley Fall Classic. Well, a couple weeks before Uhwarrie, I got sick, and while a week out I was feeling ok, I thought it wasn’t really wise to push the body as much as a 40 mile race would take. And I knew there was no way I could go to a race and not push. So I ended up racing just two events: Florida Sea to Sea and BFC. S2S was good — 73 hours across Florida on foot, bike, and boat, with lots of navigation, but the navigation can be frustrating due to the quality of the maps. And BFC was a great day for me — started pretty slow, but worked my way up to 28th overall out of 400 starters! I was very happy about that. Very tough course this year, too!

Last year I shared that I was keeping the same goals, so I’ll just share the graphs here which show again that I missed on most of them!

First up, elevation, and this was the lowest in 3 years! I still want to hit 365,000 one day, but that day likely will wait until we live in the mountains full time.

Next up, total time. Pretty close to 500 (though the goal was 550), and more than I’ve done the past couple years, but all in the same ballpark:

Running was basically in the middle of the past couple years, but still not even 1000 miles:

And next biking, my lowest in a while:

And next, strength training, which I had mentioned last year was going to be a focus going forward. And it certainly was this year, as you can see in the graph. I surpassed most of my strength goals (though not all of them) and find myself stronger now than I was back in Weightlifting 101 at NCSU in 1990!

And next just a couple more summaries from Strava:

Next year will be more of the same — running, biking, strength training as the focus, but always looking for outdoor activities like hiking and paddling. As of right now, I only have two races: Uhwarrie 40 and Mt Mitchell Challenge. The latter is a race I’ve tried to get into for years with no luck. This year they’ve changed it, so everyone can run the Black Mountain Marathon (which I did in 2002 or so), but if the Mt Mitchell Summit is open, the 1st 250 runners are allowed to go up. The rangers normally don’t give an indication of whether the summit will be open or not until just a day or two before, and I have to admit, I’m not that interested in running the marathon. So if the summit isn’t open, I may skip this. I am on the waitlist for BFC and do hope to run that again. And apparently I’m joining the Knight Crawlers for the Blue Ridge Relay again this year, but the “mountain goat hard legs,” that I got to run last year, are going to the ladies.

I do have at least one adventure planned — plane tickets and hotel room booked for Rim 2 Rim 2 Rim across the Grand Canyon with a group of friends that I’m really looking forward to in April. (This is something like 48 miles and 10,000’+ of elevation change). I still want to run the Grand Loop of the Linville Gorge (34 miles). Weather permitting, I may do the little loop (23 miles) there in a few weeks, but the Grand Loop is going to have to wait until after the February races.

I still have a couple crazy ideas I’d like to attempt, like an Everesting attempt either on bike or foot (or both!), maybe even a vEveresting attempt on Zwift. On a bike I’m looking at 12-15 hours, and on foot, probably 28-30, so they are serious undertakings. I also saw someone do a marathon (42k’) on a Concept 2, so that would be a challenge.

I’m still extremely focused on strength. While the extra muscle is a pain to carry around the mountain, I think it is much healthier going forward into my mid 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s! I’m intrigued by Peter Attia’s “Centurion Olympics,” where you backcast from goals you have in your marginal decade… Let’s just call that 80-90, or even 90-100, and what you want to be able to do then. (Examples: Load your own luggage on an airplane, hike 3 mph, get down on the floor to play with your great grandkids..) And then you work backwards. Things like VO2Max look good for me (though I need to continue to train both zone 2 and VO2Max!), but some of the strength goals were pretty far off. And I definitely need some mobility work! 🙂

Two benchmarks that he has mentioned are a dead hang for 120s and being able to farmers carry your body weight for 2 minutes. I’m up to 90s on the dead hang, but farmers carry is just at 2×35 and I need to get to 2×75! (I’ve not tried the latter at the start of a weigh training session, only at the end, so it’s a little unfair. I will do one of these at the start with 40 lbs and see how it goes. I have carried 75 for 45-60s but it recked me for the rest of the workout!)

I also created a table of strength benchmarks based on both my weight and age, and looked at what intermediate lifters can do. Then I set my target at the lower of those two numbers. Upper body strength is in-line or very close for pull-ups, bench press, overhead press, and bar row. But lower body strength for squats and dead lifts has some serious work to put in this year. (Note, if I don’t have a measured 1 rep max, I use 120% of my best 5×5. This worked out well for most of the lifts for me where I have both, so I think it’s a decent approximation.)

Here’s the chart as of today, a little small but this is the best way to share it.

I don’t know if I can make all those green by the end of the year, but I’m going to work towards it!

See you on the mountain!

When I 1st started training for the ATT marathon, I had a goal of 3:15.  (ATT = American Tobacco Trail, which is what I tend to call the marathon, even though that’s not its name!)

I knew 3:15 would be a big stretch for me, but I thought with Lucho coaching me, I might have a chance.  However, throughout training, it seemed like 3:20 was going to be more realistic.  But I never fully gave up on the 1st goal.  Even when, about two weeks out, my legs felt a bit achy and tired on every run, especially when I bumped the speed to under 8:00/mile pace.  And even when, a week out, my lungs started feeling congested and wheezy.  Two days out, and one day out, I was definitely on the upswing.  So what was in store?

I’ve not got a lot of pictures — only the ones Kelly and the kids took of me at mile 19 or so, and at the finish.  But here I am at 19, still looking happy!

I came up on Tom, who has an amazing story as a brain cancer survivor.  I was really surprised to see him, as I figured he’d be under 3:15, but there he was.  We didn’t run together long as he was struggling a bit with too fast of a start, but still finished in a BQ time of 3:22.

So, what happened to me?  The splits tell the story…  I put the mile splits from my GPS next to the perfectly even splits of a 3:15, and show the time difference…

Now this isn’t quite fair — the mile splits are from my GPS, which was slightly off.  It showed a total of 26.44 at the end, not 26.2.  But this shows I had a conservative start (negative difference for the 1st few miles).  In fact, I jumped in behind the 1:40 half marathon pace group for the 1st couple of miles — until they split off south on the ATT and the marathoners headed north.    And then the differences pick up, where I’m fairly far ahead of a 3:15 as much as 2.5 minutes!

At the point the half marathoners turn south and the marathoners turn north, it’s a slight downhill — if you can call any rise or fall on the ATT a hill!  As an old railroad bed, it’s never more than 1 or 2% grade max.  But I let gravity pull me along, and even tried to hold back a bit.  I wasn’t wearing a heart rate monitor, but just ran by feel.  And the pace felt solid, but good.  I know come mile 18 or 19 or 20, that pace would no longer feel so good, but it’s at that point when you have to rise and hold it..

I did have the GPS on so I could use that as a pacer, and I steadily saw my average pace go down, down, down.  All the way until about mile 21, when it was 7:18/mile.  And I thought “I’ve got 3:15!  Unless I have an epic collapse!”

I even thought briefly at that time that 3:10 was within reach, but I wisely decided not to push it at all.  In fact, I thought I’d back off a touch, to preserve the 3:15.  But little did I know that the “climb” at mile 22 – 25 would do me in…  It got really hard to hold the pace, but I was doing it!

And then we left the ATT and hit the roads.  And there was this little hill, but this killer head wind. And I had to walk.  Twice!  You can see it in the elevation profile and pace graph below the splits.  And you can see in my splits… I began to really suffer, and the buffer I had built faded oh so quickly…

That last line shows the unfairness of using the Garmin mile splits, which were steadily increasing past exact mileage.  Otherwise it would imply I lost 90s on the last 0.2 miles!

See those two jumps on the blue line?  Just a few seconds of walking…  You can see after I stopped kicking myself for walking I did pick up the pace back to sub 7:30, at least on the downhill, but it was too late…

Ah, it was so good to be done.  The last 2-3 miles, I was hurting.  Not a bonk — nutrition was solid, but I was so tired.

So, was I mentally weak?  Or was the body really done?  I feel I’m strong mentally — when it’s just about keeping going.  Paddle for 38 hours straight?  Sure.  Run 24 hours around a 5k loop? Sure.  But hitting that last 800 on an 10×800 interval session?  That is hard!   Or fighting through the pain and fatigue on mile 25 of a marathon at sub 7:30?  Ugh.  So I will be working on that aspect of my running!

Here are the official numbers.  I’m quite happy with all the placings!

And official splits:

Now I am in no way disappointed with a 3:17.  3:15 was always a big stretch for me.  And yeah, to almost get it, only to fade so quickly — bummer.  But I am happy with 3:17!  An 11 minute PR!  And such a great run for the 1st 2:50 or so.  🙂

(I really did want the cool BQ shirt, though!)