“Doing a task is usually easy. Thinking about a task makes it hard.” Ajahn Brahm
“Do or do not…there is no try.” Jedi Master Yoda
Well so far this has been a good week. Bought a new car!! Yea for us!! A Toyota Plug in Prius. Never owned a hybrid before. Did not want a fully electric car that was totally dependent on charging stations, but instead something that could run for a distance on battery and at the same time would be able to switch over to gas for extended range. Or run on gas only if needed. The car was for my wife Janet. She had been driving a 12-year-old Chevy Aveo that was starting to get a little worn. So, with that being said and being environmentally conscious. I steered us in the path of a hybrid. Not sure how this will work out but ask me in a year how it goes?! Hopefully it will all be good.
Now you might ask why a hybrid? Why not just get a fully gas vehicle that does not have the battery? It would defiantly be cheaper. I spend a lot of time outdoors and I have become very aware of Colorado’s Air quality. You can look up each day’s air quality in real time. Well I guess it is not fully real time, but usually delayed by an hour or so. I think that this is probably close enough. The air quality link for Colorado is: http://apcd.state.co.us/air_quality.aspx
Luckily, we don’t have the air pollution that China does. And I want to be part of the movement in this country that keeps it this way. But that does not mean our air is clean. The thing with our air quality is something that shows up in your health down the road. It is like smoking or poorly controlled diabetes. The affects might not be immediate but give it years of exposure and you will start to see problems.
Thinking ahead and wondering if this will be something that we will have to worry about. Or as we switch from fossil fuels to electric will it be something we look back on and wonder how we ever let the environment get that dirty? Now the later would be nice. How many cardiovascular deaths and lung cancers would be prevented just on Colorado’s Front Range if the air quality was a lot better? And this does not even include the rest of the world.
Well on a different note, the training for the first Ultra that I am signed up for is going well. It is the Quad Rock and it is a 50 miler. It is two loops though Lory State Park and Horsetooth Mountain Park. Beautiful hilly terrain that is treed with Ponderosa Pine and has great views of Fort Collins and the Colorado Front Range. This race is behind Fort Collins on the west side of Horsetooth Reservoir. There is about 11,000 feet of elevation gain/loss with this run. The group that puts this race on is Gnarrunners.com. Their race management skills combined with a wonderful group of volunteers, has created a great early season Rocky Mountain Ultra. Check out the web site out at: http://gnarrunners.com/quad-rock-50/
Usually I am not at my best running form this time of year but I changed a few things from last season. This year I am training by Heart Rate and what is known by Heart Rate Variability. I am keeping track of each workout using a heart monitor so that I know where my pulse rate is each time I go out for a specific type of run. I have the tendency to think that I am going easy but in reality, I am going too hard and vise versa.
The second part is every morning the first thing I do is take a reading with the heart rate monitor to see where my HRV (Heart Rate Variability) is for the day. I use an app called “Elite HRV” and the chest strap and sensor are by Suunto. It gives me an idea of how hard to go each day. I use this information to formulate a plan for the days training. Sometimes what I think I can run is not what I should run. And so far, this has worked well or seems to in my mind. I guess the proof will be in the pudding so to speak with the test of the first Ultra. The web site for Elite HRV is: https://elitehrv.com/
One more week to go with training and then a few days of rest. THEN SHOWTIME… Always getting a little nervous as the time draws close. Prerace jitters…. This is why I chose the quotes that I did at the first of this blog. The first one is by an Australian Buddhist Monk by the name of Ajahn Brahm. He is a great teacher and I have found many of his talks very insightful. And don’t worry, you don’t have to be Buddhist to understand the message. Check out the website: https://bswa.org/
The second one is by Yoda and always gives me inspiration when trying something hard.
It is so true that we usually can do something once we are doing it so to speak, but the “thinking about it” is what drives us crazy. That is truly the hard part. How many times do we fuss and frit over something but once we are doing it, things that we worried about kind of take care of themselves or don’t and you find you really didn’t have any control over it to begin with. But you keep doing it. So why worry…. Only, if only I could always follow this advice!! LOL.
Well I think that will be if for me this time. I want to do these each week covering different topics as they relate to my life and the lives of others. Let me know how you feel about them, good or bad or indifferent. I appreciate all feedback. Till the next time… Adios amigos!!
I know how I feel after doing a 50 miler in good weather, not sure how I would feel after doing the same distance in challenging weather. It could become an issue of evacuation or rescue? I recall some friends that I made at last year’s Leadville Training Camp, talking about the previous year’s Silver Rush 50 trail race. According to them the race started off in good weather but towards the very end a large thunderstorm rolled in and preceded to drop what appeared to be “Biblical” amounts of rain, falling temperatures and small hail for the last hours of the race. They talked about how it became more of a rescue than a race for a lot of contestants. Or the time talking with a Steamboat Spring resident about the weather issues at the 2012 Run Rabbit Run 50 miler. Again it was during the last part of the race when a weather front moved in and dropped rain, snow, high winds and falling temperatures. Per this individual “the snow was falling sideways” and people were not prepared. Getting everyone off the mountain and accounted for was a huge struggle for race officials. A lot of participants needed to be rescued.
So what do you do when you have all the training in place, you have rested, you got off work, rearranged schedules, and you have put all the pieces in place to get ready for this one big day. And then it gets canceled!! Aggghhhhhhh!! Good question and I do not have the answer at the moment. It is like getting ready for a big wedding but then the bride or the groom backs out? Then what? Have your own party? I think that most trail races go off rain or shine, especially if the weather is good to start with. But when it starts with marginal weather to begin with, and the forecast is for it to get worse? Well then I cannot blame the park and race managers. Looking at the big picture I would make the same decision. I think tomorrow I will have my own party so to speak in Fort Collins. Maybe a 12 or 24 hour run in the city just to see how far I can go.