Nothing to Complain About

My brain is tired. To coin a great phrase from Bilbo Baggins, "I feel thin. Sort of stretched. Like butter scraped over too much bread." Or something like that.

I have a biology exam tomorrow that I should be studying for right now (instead of writing this) but I needed a break.

This morning I took a fantastic break, here. I ran a stunning 7 mile loop through Doudy Draw in Boulder, CO. It was a little windy, but once in the draw, the wind was silenced by surrounding trees, and it turned out to be a beautifully sunny day.

I've been training for the Leadville Silver Rush for about 4 weeks now. Since I began, time is hard to come by. Studying for school is becoming neglected- and is most likely the main source of my stress.
I realize though, that any stress I experience as a result of being too "busy" is self-induced. I signed up for this race fully aware that it is a large time commitment, and it won't be easy.

The last several days were very stressful,  and I found myself throwing a temper tantrum, accompanied by an all-out pity party. How silly. As I posted my status for the day on Facebook, I realized that I have absolutely nothing to worry or complain about.


This morning I drove 20 minutes and was able to run across a landscape that some would gladly give their first born child, their spouse, their left leg, or all of the above, to have access to. Now I am sitting in a warm home, eating hickory barbeque chips, drinking a New Belgium Snow Day winter ale, and studying, or rather should be studying for an exam. If I fail my exam tomorrow, the world will not cease to exist, and neither will I.

So I will stop complaining, and get back to it...

Too tired to workout?

Life is busy right now. Makes me think of a great Tombstone quote, when the Mayor asks Virgil to get involved in the town's affairs, to which he replies,  "I'm busy. We're all busy." An aside; if you haven't seen this movie, you are missing out on arguably the greatest Western movie ever.

Who isn't busy these days though? It's true, we're all busy.

With school, work, and family, my calendar for the next few months looks pretty intimidating, especially with the holidays quickly approaching.

If I try to maintain too much, I find that I easily become... tired.

Training for a big event (for me it's the Leadville Silver Rush run right now) is difficult to do when you are tired. Training itself is tiring, add to it the normal business of life, and it equates to exhaustion.

It would be so easy for me to look at my responsibilities and justify a statement like, "That's too much," or, "Maybe next year," but the reality is that life is never going to let up for me. You either. Life will never present the optimal conditions to do anything easily.

While on a run with my good friend the other day, I realized that the free time to train will never be there, waiting in my schedule somewhere. I have to TAKE the time to workout. That realistically means that I will have to sacrifice something else in order to get my butt outside and on a run. Taking the time, means that something else will be sacrificed.

Naturally, there is a hierarchy established to the things that fill our calendars. For many people, exercise seems to fall to the bottom of the list first. I, however, have moved exercise to the top of the list, and into the category of must-do.

I believe that exercise, preferably done outside, is something we all must do in order to maintain physical and mental health (which are actually the same thing in my opinion but can be discussed later).

There are still many other responsibilities that I cannot neglect, which means that many days I will run on tired legs and while mentally exhausted, but this is precisely what I will feel like several hours into the Leadville Silver Rush.  At any rate, I suppose what I'm trying to say is that if you've got aspirations to get off the couch and to go exercise in some form or another, but are "too busy" or "too tired," TAKE the time, and get out there!

You're never too busy or tired to workout!

You're better than you think you are...

Today I took some time (between studying for two exams tomorrow) to watch videos of the Leadville 50 mile and 100 mile runs. These are my motivational videos for training.

When I did the Boulder Ironman 70.3 , I easily spent somewhere in the vicinity of 3 hours a month watching videos of previous races (this could even be an understatement). It's amazing the amount of time that can be wasted  watching Youtube videos. I've spent some time thinking it over though, and I actually believe it's not a waste of time at all.

I've found an overwhelming number of videos that highlight mutant human beings popping off 6 minute miles over mountainous terrain, 68 miles into a 100 mile race. However, there are perhaps even more videos of "normal" human beings pouring their guts out, simply trying to finish a race.

A mix of watching winners and... not-winners... gives me a good feel for what I'm getting myself into. Aside from the motivation of seeing others finish, there is a familiarity that I gain from observing the environment of a race (runners, terrain, weather, etc.) and also a mental preparation that helps me relieve pre-race anxieties.

When I was training for the half-Ironman, I learned race strategies from watching videos. It was amazing how those strategies actually played out during my race day. When I arrived at mile 11 of the run, I knew that I only had 2 miles to go, but all I wanted to do was walk. I remembered a video I watched of Chrissie Wellington running, and I decided to adopt her form for the remaining two miles. She is an amazing athlete, but come to think of it now, I should have adopted Craig Alexander's (no offense, but he's a lot faster).
At any rate, what's important, is that while my body was physically done, I was able to tap into the strength of another runner mentally. I feel like this provided a way for me to do something that I felt (at the time) I was incapable of.

Today my legs are sore- and I don't feel like running.
However...
I just watched a video of a runner who did not finish the 2010 Leadville 100 mile run. This year he went back determined to finish, and did so barely under the last cut-off time. His video ends with one of the race organizer's motivational speeches (I think the day before the race). His last words were,

"You're better than you think you are. You can do more than you think you can."

These are the kinds of things I want in my head during a race, especially when I'm considering stopping.

It's been a long time...

Wow, for about a year, I forgot I had a blog here. I suppose I'll write something.

Reality check-

I'll be turning thirty this year, which means I'm practically dead.
While brushing my teeth this morning, I realized that there are a lot of things I want to accomplish - one of them being the completion of an ultra-marathon.


So I'm going to run an ultra marathon this year (which is basically a race of any distance exceeding the conventional 26.2 mile marathon). This is certainly a daunting task, and will require a vast amount of training.



Having completed an Ironman 70.3 race in 2010, I have enough respect for endurance races to know that an ultra marathon will be difficult; extremely difficult. I've been researching races here in Colorado, and the race that intrigues me most is the Leadville Silver Rush 50 miler. Online training plans look time consuming, and I'm not entirely certain that I will have the bandwidth to handle school, family, work, and training. Of course there's only one way to find out.

While I undertake training for the next eight months, I'll attempt to present periodic progress updates amidst life's normal happenings.

I'd like to document the road to completing an ultra...

...or failing.