Korea 50k and the Army 10 Miler

My time in South Korea started out with a real bang as I ran through the second half of 2014 and  most of 2015 with numerous friends and tackled all the mountain peaks I could handle, and quite a few that I should have waited on and taken a day off for instead. Some of my favorites included Dobangsan and Bukhansan National Park that surrounds it, Sapaesan (also located in the Bukhansan park area near Uijeongbu just north of Seoul), Chilbongsan, and Cheonbosan (mostly because it was close to our apartment and has a cool temple at its base). As you've probably already guessed, "san" means mountain in the Korean language. 

With all the running through the mountains, it probably makes sense that 2015 took a turn for the worse toward the end of the year. Besides making transitions through several grueling job positions, I was informed that my ultra marathon days were probably over. Fissures in the cartilage of my left patella (irreparable) and a large chunk of sheared cartilage from my right femur (possibly repairable initially, but not so much now that I look back) took their toll.

Since September of 2015, I ran through the pain, believing it was only an anterior ligament sprain in my right knee (left knee didn't hurt enough to seem significant compared to my right) and sprains have always been better with running. At least it always felt that way to me! 

One of the most rewarding (and grueling) experiences of 2015 was the opportunity to tackle Korea's inaugural 50k ultra marathon, the Korea 50k in May of 2015. And what a brute it was. I have not had the opportunity, or misfortune, to run such a hot, treacherously steep ultramarathon since. May is a rough month to run an ultra in South Korea, and that was coupled with 8,615 ft of up and down madness according to my Strava log, all in just a little over 30 miles! No bueno for the knees, or any other lower extremities.

Fortunately they had good beer at the finish line, which sort of took some of the sting away. I'm not sure who the brewer was, but congrats on making a fine post-race beverage. I may have had several. In the end, my effort was good enough for 7th place overall, but don't ask me how many runners there were altogether because I was barely able to sign up for the race as I fought through the language barrier. I did have to call a nice bilingual Korean friend or two for help. I also finished just 17 minutes back from the overall winner, so that was pretty cool. On a side note, I successfully steered two lost runners back onto the course about 23 miles into the race, which ultimately cost me 5th place. Not sure how I feel about that, since it was obviously the right thing to do, but cost me a darned podium finish!

Of course, this all happened during the year long buildup for eventually making it onto the Army in Korea 10 Mile Team, so there was no way I was going to slow down at this point. After plowing through many weeks of grueling workouts, with no improvements in my speed, I felt like I was getting nowhere, but this was an opportunity I was not going to miss. The training had to go on! Well, the day for the Army 10 Miler finally came, and while I was not able to hold the sub 6 minute mile pace that I so desperately wanted, I did get to hang out with my bro Justin in the DC area and we toured the sites, hung out in some pretty cool pubs, and enjoyed the cool weather.

Ups and Downs

Been a bit of a rough week. On Wednesday I learned that there was the potential that the Greenline (and my primary mode of daily transportation) were possibly going to be shut down until Fall of 2015 thanks to TDOT.

Wednesday, when I went to dismount in the construction zone on the Greenline (under the I40/240 interchange) I slipped on loose construction debris and messed up my leg nicely.

I vowed not to make the same mistake Thursday, which resulted in me being physically acosted by the construction trolls under the overpass.

A notice and some pictures sent to Shelby Farms resulted in more bad news, TDOT and its contractors are banding together to shut down the Greenline and Memphis' aterial bicycle/walking commuting path.

So Friday morning I got up nice and early, determined to avoid the trolls and get in a brick workout to prepare for Memphis in May. After an awesome workout I was abused yet again, this time by a Federal judge who refused to show his ID badge at the door, instead opting to dump his McCafe on me. Might have to call on the Commercial Appeal to air my grievances on this one.

All I have to say is that this weekend had better be good! And it should be with Memphis Velo's Crank It Up mountain bike races at Herb Parsons starting tomorrow afternoon.

SwampStomped!

Morning sunrise over Poplar Tree Lake

It's been a while since my last ultra marathon, partly due to my schedule and partly due to the fact that they seem to fill up a bit faster here in Memphis than they did back in Kansas. Last year I missed out on the SwampStomper 50k at Meeman Shelby Forest, and I almost missed out this year as well due to alarm clock issues and the fact that the race sold out in under an hour. However, the race director was good enough to start a waiting list for the 2014 race and after a couple weeks on the waiting list enough folks dropped out to allow me in. 

Josh's Pre-endurance-race Oatmeal

So, on January 19th I got up at 5:30am and did my usual pre-race oatmeal breakfast and 64oz Gatorade/HEED combo. At about 6am I started off for Shelby Forest and arrived at 6:45 with plenty of time to spare. My right quad was a little tight from a few too many miles the week before so popped a couple Endurolytes, stretched for a bit, and had a few more swigs of Gatorade to get things moving. The morning was pretty brisk so I must confess that I may have missed parts of the pre-race meeting due to my moving about, but it's a 50k trail race right? Besides having to go twice out and back what else do I need to know? Without much more than a simple "Go", the race started at 7:30am sharp.

The race start!

With a lot of Garmin bleeps and bloops we ambled off at about an 8 minute pace. With 32.6 miles (yes, this particular 50k is actually 52.5k) to go there isn't a whole lot of need to accelerate quickly. However, after about 1/2 a mile of warming up the rabbits dropped the pace down to about a 7 minute mile and the race was on. I fell into sixth place with the intent of picking off the other runners later on in the race. After dropping down a large set of railroad tie stairs I passed a couple runners and found myself in fourth place.

Afternoon sun warming up the lake

At this point the guy in front of me was clipping along at a decent pace so I fell in behind him for about 4-5 miles. After a mile or so on the steep ascents and descents of the Red Trail I decided to forge ahead at my own pace and started working on reeling in the leaders. I'm not sure if the first checkpoint realized that we'd be arriving as quickly as we did because they seemed a little confused, especially when I grabbed their party cups instead of holding up a handheld bottle for some water. I've never liked running with extra stuff and the day was cool enough that I figured I could rely on the aid stations and go without a bottle or pack.

The second aid station was fun. It had a Hawaiin theme and they were quite a bit more prepared than their aid station #1 counterparts. After this things got a little dicy through the Red Trail and I realized that maybe I should have paid a little more attention to the pre-race meeting info. Nontheless, after a couple pauses I found my way and headed north to the turn around. There's anothing like a double out-and-back to confuse a trail runner! About three minutes from the turn around I saw Kyle, the race leader, coming back down the trail and at two minutes from the turn around I saw another racer. So I was still in third place and about 6 minute behind the leader. Cool, there was still over 30k to go.

25k or so down, 25k to go

Heading back south to complete my forst 25k lap was fairly quick work, except for one frustrating part when I adjusted my heart rate monitor one too many times. Not sure that I even needed a heart rate monitor since the goal in endurance is to reach a sustainable maximum exertion point and stay there. For me that's usually a feeling more than anything else. At any rate, I managed to release my heart rate monitor and it plopped down inside of my shirt. Getting it back on probably took less than 10 seconds, but it felt way longer. Not cool. Now, at the end of the first 25k, I was over ten minutes behind the leader. After fumbling with my too-tight Gatorade bottle lid for what seemed like yet another long waste of time, I finally headed out on my second 25k. Time to catch up!

Now I knew the course (even though I did pre-run part of it the week before with Memphis Velo teamate Phillip Young), I was hydrated, and I had a few more Endurolytes in me. With no one in front and no one behind me I just focusd on covering ground quickly and efficiently, blowing through the first aid station with a brief "No thanks!" The more efficient Luau aid station was nestled ahead in the hills of the Red Trail. Well, it was more efficient until I realized that they had swapped out most of their Gatorade cups with beer. Hmm, I wondered to myself how that would work out. Try anything once right? Well, not in the middle of the catchup leg of an ultra marathon. Gatorade it was.

On my climb to the top of the turn around I saw that Kyle was still ahead of me, but not the ten minutes that he had been ahead back at the start of our second 25k. The folks at the turn around confirmed this and told me to go catch him. Still, by my count he was a solid 8 minutes ahead and that was a lot of time to make up with just a little over 10k left to go. Well, the only good race pace is a suicide pace right?

So I stepped it out with a vengeance and actually started to really close the gap. Runners that I passed kept telling me how close he was, but I still couldn't see him on eth straightaways darnit! Well, I finally did see Kyle as he crossed the finish line 31 seconds ahead of me. I crossed the finish line at 4:37:50. That was about an 8:31 pace and I went a little over a minute negative on the second 25k. The trail had around 3,400 ft of elevation gain and it was a really great race. But, I'm still going to win one of these ultras someday!

117th Boston Marathon

So I had the honor of running in the 117th Boston Marathon last week. During my race I had the pleasure of witnessing how incredible people can be as well as the displeasure of seeing how despicably low people are capable of becoming. For the record, I believe that we can abolish and maintain capital punishment by ratifying two concepts. First, capital punishment lowers us all because we cannot achieve true greatness when we are forced to debase ourselves by murdering murderers.

Second, evolution is not limited to forward progress. There are aberrations and mutations that are not good for humankind. This is degenerative evolution or devolution and there are those who, though they walk upright among us, have devolved into an animal state. I wholeheartedly support the eradication of these detrimental life forms in the same way we would dispose of rabid animals, harmful bacteria, and noxious viruses. Yes, I believe that you can have your Blueberry Crisp Clif Bar and eat it too.

Now that that's out of the way, let me begin by stating that up to this point I have never run in a race more than about 3,300 people. Yes, that's a lot, but Boston had over 27,000 runners this year! My idea of a race is showing up an hour prior, prepping my gear, getting back in my vehicle to warm back up, and then hopping out about 5-10 minutes prior to the start so I can get my blood flowing. By contrast, on April 15th this year I woke up at 5:15 am so I could start my coffee and oatmeal. At 6:00 am I walked out the door and arrived at the Boston Commons and the transport buses at 6:15 am.

After waiting in line for about 20 minutes I got on a bus and chatted with a guy from New York for the next 45 minutes, arriving at the Athletes' Village in Hopkinton around 7:20 am. Two hours and 45 minutes until race start, what to do? After grabbing a couple Gatorade samples and a banana I quickly realized that I needed to get in the longest line around, the McDonald's coffee line. Differing theories abound, but I'm one runner that needs his caffeine fix before, during, and after running. Next I collected Power Bars, Adidas shoelaces and Body Glide, and another banana. Now time to get in line for the porta-jon. One round complete and it was still only 7:55 am. I repeated this routine three more times, finally dropped off my gear bag, and started trudging the 0.8 miles to my starting corral at 9:40 am. After a last minute porta-jon stop near the start line I hopped into the back of Wave 1 Corral 6 and waited for the horn to sound the start.

After watching a verbal dispute between the corral organizer and a woman who was trying to rearrange the fences we finally started...walking. I crossed the start line at about 10:04 am and finally started to jog. Apparently a lot of guys got to the starting line early because the road was lined with last minute potty-break runners. Glad my timing was spot on, even if I had to slide into the very back of my corral. This did mean that I now needed to pass at least a couple thousand runners since I should have positioned myself closer to the front of Corral 6. This would play out continuously as I passed over five thousand other runners throughout the day.

First, get up to target pace. Since we started at a walk it took 3-4 miles to get on pace and then another five miles to bring my overall average back down to my target of 6:52 minutes per mile. Not too hard since it was a lovely 50 degrees or so with little wind and mostly flat to slightly downhill. Starting to feel better about my time at this point, I even ventured toward the right shoulder of the road to slap some high fiving kids and college students. No one is in school on Patriot's Day in Massachusetts! I stayed on the right side of road, realizing after a time that even though the road was wide open the commuter in me just wouldn't let me veer too far left of the double yellow center line. Not too much camber so I gave up alternating at this point. Besides, strafing back and forth every mile was just a pain since 27,000+ runners is a lot of people and passing was easier for me on the right.

High fiving became a real motivation at this point and looking down at my watch while high fiving my way through the scream tunnel, I quickly realized that my pace wasn't diminished at all. In fact, the inspiration motivated me onward at a 6:30 minute mile. Cool! Next feature of the run, Heather was supposed to meet me at mile 16.8, the last subway stop. At mile 16.5 I started scanning vigorously and by mile 16.9 I was dismayed that I had missed her. Then I heard my name. Looking to my right I saw Heather and I charged over for a good luck kiss, showing all the young single guys that their scream tunnel trysts weren't the only passionate kisses that were going to happen during this race!

At about 17 miles into the race I spotted my first real hill climb. Not too horrible from a trail running perspective, but a hill nonetheless. I got my rhythm and attacked the hill, passing more runners as I went. Then my shoelace came untied at mile 17.6. Bummer. The real question now, do I stop to tie it or forge ahead? The elastic strap in my right Brooks PureDrift seemed to be holding nicely, so I ignored the slapping shoelace and kept on moving. The Memphis Commercial Appeal had published an article on me earlier in the morning and I had vowed to break three hours. No stopping for anything now!

Another small hill and then I was off to Boston's notorious Heart Break Hill, an 88 foot vertical climb over 0.4 miles. Looking back in retrospect, Wilmar Drive in Manhattan, Kansas prepared me for this. With 168 feet of vertical rise in less than a quarter of mile, it has four times the grade. However, Heart Break gets a lot of publicity and so I went into it with some trepidation, realizing halfway up the hill that it wasn't going to be a deal breaker. I plowed onward toward the crest and cheerfully informed the local supporters that I had thoroughly enjoyed their hill.

My shoelace still flopped lazily about and I was borderline on my target of breaking three hours, so I had to make a decision: to tie my shoe or not to tie my shoe. As I passed another runner, he looked down at my right shoe and said, "Hey, your shoelace is untied." Glancing back over my shoulder I replied, "Yep, been like that for three miles!" Now it was a badge of sorts, perhaps a badge of luck, but at any rate I knew that as long as it wasn't bothering me too much I couldn't spare the few seconds it would take to retie it.

The final descent into Boston started to wear on my knees so I popped my second ibuprofen of the day. There was no way I was going to let a little pain slow me down now. Pain is only temporary, three hours is forever! Particularly when you're in pain. I pounded down the hills and started ticking off the final miles signs. Mile 23, only a 5k to go. I ratcheted it down to a 6:40 pace. The massive crowd was screaming for us to go faster and my eardrums went to static. Awesome! Mile 24, not quite an Army physical fitness test. Keep it below 6:45. Mile 25, make the turn, pass through the tunnels, stay below a 6:50 pace. Home stretch, go sub 6:40 and pick off a few more runners. Slow down and stop!

So I guess I was in ultra mode because for some foolish reason I wanted to keep going. There were runners depositing their Gatorade and gel on the sides of Boylston, flopping on the ground, limping along. Maybe I should have been going a little harder the last five miles. On the other hand, my new minimalist shoes were taking their toll on my calves. I walked along, shaking hands with other runners as we congratulated each other. After a fifth of a mile we exited the procession and parted ways to get to out race bags. Shortly after finding my bag I ran into a Vietnam Vet selling roses. Bonus! I bought a nice red one for Heather and, sneaking around the side of a building, I surprised her with a sweaty hug and kiss.

After taking some pictures and congratulating other runners, we eventually moved down a side street, headed towards the Old North Church. After about 3/4 of a mile of walking, limping, and occasionally stopping to stretch, we heard a loud thud and police sirens commenced. You know the rest of the story and if you don't then it's not hard to find on the internet. The events that unfolded were both tragic and altogether damming of humans as flawed beings. Regardless, the Boston Marathon is a spectacular event that will survive and we will be back to run another year and sample the very best that Boston has to offer.

Almost 12 Hours of Stanky-ness

Walking the kids to the

bus stop up the street

Having lunch with Eric at his school

          Last weekend I had the pleasure of visiting my family for four whole days. Better yet, there are less than two weeks remaining of my temporary assignment to Georgia. And as for the title of this post, Heather was kind enough to allow me to enter a 12 hour mountain bike race! So I arrived home late Thursday night and kissed all the kids goodnight without waking any of them. Which means that I was able to surprise them on Friday morning with pancakes, one of our favorite family traditions! Well, usually it's a weekend tradition, but I figured that with my race being in Saturday I'd better get in a slightly less healthy breakfast while I could. After seeing the kids all off to school, Heather dropped me off for a preride of Stanky Creek Bike Trail and then we met the kids for lunch at school. However, our real lunch was much more satisfying as Heather and I spent it at the Flying Saucer, a place that I'm surprised that I'm only just now finding out about!

Heather enjoying elementary school
lunch were our two Tauruses

          So I got to bed kind of early since I knew it was going to be a long race. Little did I know how long it was going to be. It rained practically all night! And no, the race wasn't cancelled. My Saturday morning it was predicted that it would rain two more times throughout the day. Not a good omen. After lugging all our gear to the starting line and with the kids looking like the world's shortest band of gypsies (except Emma, she's a stinkin' tall kid!), I began my race prep. This included preventing Eric from tearing into my Hostess Crumb Donettes, a favorite mid-race binge food that's covered in "crunchy flakes of real coconut"!

Trying to figure out why my disc rotor
no longer fits inside its brake caliper

          At 8:45 am we all started lining up and at 9:00 am we did a mass start. If I'd been paying more attention to the race start directions and spending less time using Heather's van keys to pry open my frozen front brake that Eli managed to compress during the short car ride to the trail, then I might have realized that it was a mass start and not staggered by category. So I got stuck behind some slower riders than I would have chosen, but quickly fought my way into the front ten or so. That wound up being the prudent choice because when I did manage to break free it only resulted in my crashing hard about five times in the first two laps. Only eight more to go... Fortunately, my various lumps and bruises enlightened me to the fact that a trail that's been rained on all night might not be the best place to go all out. By lap four the trail was getting pretty dry though and I decided to starting ratcheting things back up.

Last minute hydration
before the start of the race

You should have seen the
other guy...

          Key the first scheduled rain of the day (yeah, that one that the cursed weatherman had mentioned earlier).  Also, key my sixth crash of the day. Good thing I didn't decide to make the jump to a carbon fiber frame this year. This time it only took me one crash to realize that slow is smooth and smooth is fast, as least when racing in the mud. I continued to drive on and by the end of lap seven I caught the race leader. This gave me  the impetus to shorten my pit stop and we continued to jockey back and forth for the rest of the race. Fortunately for everyone the race was ended at nine hours rather than the prescribed 12 due to the horrible weather. The second "light rain" that we were supposed to get had turned into an Ark-worthy event and no rainbow was in sight. If it was out there somewhere then the falling darkness quickly extinguished it. Fortunately more me, the ever depending mud starting clogging up everyone's drive trains and I was able to scoop up a last minute win, literally in the last 100 yards of what became a grueling 105 mile controlled (and often uncontrolled) slide through slimy Memphis mud.

Emma, Erin, Eric, and Eli enjoying
the awesome Fall weather. So much
better than the hot Memphis summer!

          My fantastic pit crew met me at the finish line and we got everything as clean as possible so we could evacuate the misery of the mud as soon as the awards ceremony ended. Fortunately for me, the fantastic crew at Stanky Creek Cycling had a garden hose to clean my gear off, canopies to shelter under, and some awesome BBQ chicken sandwiches to chow down on. No sooner had the last award been handed out than the rain started coming down for a third time. So thanks to my awesome wife Heather for her support and to the Stanky Creek crew for putting on a great race and knowing when to shorten it a little.

Georgia, Nashville, Georgia, Memphis, Georgia...

Leading the charge up Texaco Hill
during the 2012 Dirty Kanza 200 gravel
road race in Emporia, KS (on the left)

My first encounter with a

timber rattler, glad I got the

drop and struck first

Recently I've been bouncing back and forth between Georgia and Memphis as I go through yet another school and also try to get time with family on the weekends. I've still managed to enter some races though and the trails out here in Georgia and just across the border into South Carolina are awesome. So far I've managed to enter three Category 1 mountain bike races. The Legend of Stanky Creek in Memphis, the Georgia State Championship Series in Helen, GA, and the Sizzler in Greensboro, NC. Including the Dirty Kanza 200 gravel grinder and two marathon XC races in Kansas earlier this year my racing season has been all over the map!

Getting schooled in the fine art of
running by Eric, looks like his
running form is shaping up nicely

Most of my training rides have been in the awesome Fork Area Trail System (FATS) just across the Savanna river into South Carolina. It features six sweet professionally built trails that span over 25 miles and flow like no other. There's also some great riding up at Modoc (aka Stevens Creek) and Wine-Turkey Creek, but I can honestly tell you that I'm anxious to get home to Memphis and start pushing down the Strava times on my local trails there. Next up I'm planning on doing my first ever 12 hour XC mountain bike race, hopefully on a new Salsa Spearfish. That should dampen the grueling mileage a little...I hope. It'll be back home at Stanky Creek, which should be good since I achieved my highest Cat 1 finish there to date.

Getting ready to ride with Heather

on the Wolf River blue trail

Also, there's a BMX course near us in Memphis and, as you can see, Eric is getting into the swing of things. Hopefully he'll be up for some BMX training when I get home so we can hit the races on Saturday at Shelby Farms! Heather's also getting in some riding and we recently took on the blue trail (aka WRT North) at the Wolf River Trail system just east of Memphis at Shelby Farms. Now we need to get the girls out there on their bikes and this might just turn into a family affair yet!

Mountain bike season is here!

Emma, Erin, Eric and Eli getting ready for their first taste of a

Smithsonian Institute at the Museum of National History

 I haven't been much for posting recently, but since my last update I managed to qualify for Boston and finish second in my first mountain bike race of the year. At the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach I posted a 3:06:43 marathon time with a 7:08 pace. Things were going really well up until about 18 miles when I started to fade a bit. They kept talking about the tailwind on the return loop, but the trees and buildings put a stop to that ever materializing! The next day we were able to have a fantastic time in downtown Washington D.C. and although we tried to do it all, there is still a lot left to do for follow on trips to the capital!

Minutes after finishing up

my first official marathon,

felt good to be done and

was over much quicker than

your standard ultra!

Next, I was able to scoop up a 2nd place finish at the Wilson Lake Fat Tire Festival in the Marathon category. After five laps and and well over three hours of cranking through the red rock and sand I missed first place by under a minute! That's alright, it was a good start to my mountain bike racing season and next up is Dirty Little Secret at Fancy Creek. Congratulations to the guys at Big Poppi Bicycle Company for winning their bid to host the state championship this year! I hope that I'm successful in defending my title this year in the twisty switchback cedar forests and many rock gardens.