A Couple Exciting Things

Thanks to everyone for all the well wishes about my health. This has been an incredibly challenging time, but I'm still moving forward slowly but steadily. I still haven't pieced together a definitive diagnosis, but I have been feeling much better the past few days and I'm definitely moving closer and closer to having an understanding of what's been going on in my body. The good thing is that I've ruled out most of the more sinister things, and I'm beginning to feel confident that this is something that I'm going to be able to bounce back from as strong as ever.

And for this reason I'm super excited to officially open entry for 3 sessions of my Alaska running camps for next summer. These camps have been beyond anything I ever expected in terms of what I've been able to take away from them. I can't wait to do it again next year. Check out the camp website for all the info. Don't wait around if you're wanting to join because they are likely to fill soon.

Waiting Is The Hardest Part

It's been a long time since I've posted on here. Been in middle of moving back to Colorado for the school year, and in the midst of this I've had some bizarre health issues that have taken up virtually all of my emotional and physical energy at times. I'm feeling settled back into Colorado now, but still waiting on lots of test results to try to figure out what's going on in my body. I most definitely won't be able to race Run Rabbit Run or UROC this year, but that's about the farthest thing from my mind right now. Just want to figure out what I'm dealing with, and what I need to do to move forward in a positive and healing way.

In the meantime, here's a link to an interview I did recently:  http://leftcoastrunning.com/article/geoff-roes-interview-with-champion

Also, I plan to finalize the dates for next summer's sessions of Alaska Mountain Ultrarunning Camp sometime in the next couple weeks, so keep an eye here or on the camp website for info. about that. We had four incredible sessions of camp this summer and plan on at least 3 again next summer.

About To Transition, But Not Just Yet

Just finished up my 4th and final camp of the season. Each one of them was a huge success and I look forward to doing a few more again next summer.  Keep an eye here for the exact dates on that sometime in the next few weeks.

It's been an incredible summer of running here in Alaska. I would have hoped for better weather, but despite one of the coldest and wettest summers ever in Juneau I was able to get out in the mountains more this summer than ever before. I'm leaving in a week to head back to Colorado for the Fall/Winter, but not before one last mountain binge up here. As long as the weather cooperates I'm hoping to get in my longest single day run ever in Juneau. I've got a route planned that will be somewhere in the ballpark of 35 or 40 miles with about 20,000 feet of ascent. Looking to "bust it out" in 15 or 16 hours.

It's weird to have run so much this summer, but to have pretty much no idea where I'm at in my running in terms of what kind of actual shape I'm in. I've done a couple mountain runs in the 2-3 hour range in which I've pushed myself pretty hard, and felt pretty good, but otherwise everything has been just about being out in the mountains and enjoying wild and scenic places. Many of the "runs" I've done have had as much stopped time as moving time. I've done almost no runs in which I've actual run the entire time. I did do a 22 or 23 miler last week in which I was running the whole time and that actually felt just fine, but kind of boring.

My plan is to head back to Colorado and begin a little more specificity in my running. I can feel myself wanting to return to a more "typical" running routine in hopes of getting back into some racing soon, but I'm only going to go down that road if it feels right when I start doing it. If things progress rapidly in that direction then I plan to race the Run Rabbit Run 100 in September, and the UROC 100k just 2 weeks later. I am however completely comfortable with the reality that I may also decide that I want to move a lot slower in that direction and maybe put off racing for several more months. Eventually the answer to this will be really obvious to me, but right now this isn't where my mind is. Instead I'm just looking at one day at a time, which means a nice mellow day of rest tomorrow to gear up for the big outing over the weekend. I'll hope to take some photos on this one and get them posted up here sometime next week.

Also, check out this link if you're interested in hearing a bit more about what I've been up to and where I'm headed.

Spaces Remain

I've recently had some folks who have needed to cancel their entry to the August 4-9 session of my Alaska Mountain Ultrarunning Camp so there are now a handful of spaces available for this session which was previously filled. I know many of you probably have your summer plans all in order, but if anyone is interested in doing something a little different next month I'd love to have you up here to Alaska to share these amazing trails with me.

Here's a few photos from where I've been running the last couple weeks:

Summer In Juneau... Finally

It has taken quite some time this year, but summer has finally come to Juneau. I've been back here for just over a month and it has been mostly cloudy, wet, and cool. The snowpack in the mountains is still as deep as would typically be found in early to mid May, but the snow has now set up really nice and firm. This has created near perfect mountain running conditions. Combine this with 3 straight days of 75 degrees (or warmer) and sunny, and this past weekend was about as good as it gets for a mountain running binge. All told I was out running in the mountains for 26 hours in the past 4 days, with about 30,000 feet of ascent. Can't think of anywhere I'd rather be.

And of course, huge congratulations to Tim Olson, Ellie Greenwood, and the hundreds of other runners who had amazing races at Western States this past weekend. Some pretty impressive and inspiring stuff.

Here's a few photos/videos from my past few days:

No Hardrock

Thanks to everyone for the helpful and encouraging comments in response to my last post. Many of you were very dead on in your recommendations and observations. I had my Iron levels retested last week and was pleased to learn that I have been absorbing the supplements quite nicely. My ferritin levels rose from 33 to 97 (the doctor I saw in January suggested I should shoot for getting it up to 100).

I'm back in Alaska now and my plan is to begin the gradual process of getting my strength and fitness back to where I know it can be. I intend to take it fairly easy in the next couple weeks and then begin to incorporate some weight training and some intentional speed work, as my body hopefully starts to feel like it has more energy. It's been so long since I've done any consistent training below 9:00/mile (due to the altitude I've been living at), that even getting out on some mellow 7:30-8:00/mile runs will be a much needed jolt to my system.

I went ahead today and officially pulled myself out of Hardrock! I'm super bummed to have to do this, but I know that I can't be ready to run that race the way I want to run it, and I just don't want to dig myself any deeper into a hole. I think I have a plan in place that could get me back in top racing shape in a 4 or 5 months, but if I tried to run Hardrock in the middle of that it might set things back another several months, and I'm just not willing to do that right now. It's been about a year since I was last able to run fast and feel good doing so. I feel pretty good just plugging along at a mellow pace, but for now I'm not content to only plug along at a slow pace. I want to run fast sometimes too, and I'm quite excited about the challenge of teaching my body to do so again.

Post Transvulcania

Back in the States now after my trip to the Canary Islands for Transvulcania. Certainly my race didn't go as well as I had hoped for. I started out feeling pretty good on the climb up from sea level to over 6,000 ft. In all we did about 7,000 ft. of ascent in the first 12 miles, but when things levelled out and became a lot more runable I began to feel really slow. I basically felt like I was running in several inches of mud, when in reality the trail was quite smooth and runnable. The further I went, the worse it got. Gradually my stomach also started to be less than ideal. It wasn't that I was sick, but I just wasn't processing calories as fast as I knew I needed to. After a couple hours of fading gradually back into the field (was probably running in about 15th place at this point) I linked up with Seb Chagneau who was having very similar struggles. Seb and I ran together for another 90 minutes, but when we reached the aid station at about mile 35 (the high point of the course) we both decided to call it a day. From there it was an 8,000 ft descent back down to sea level before another thousand foot climb up to the finish. Certainly I could have finished, but my body was working so inefficiently most of the day that I was completely worked over at 35 miles. I would have almost certainly been walking most of that descent and struggling just to keep putting one foot in front of the other. In some cases I am happy to push myself to that point, but this race wasn't one of those cases. I wanted to run fast in this race, but I was primarily approaching it as a training run, and continuing on any further than I did would have been a training setback rather than a benefit.

I have now had 3 or 4 races like this in the past year. Races in which I thought I was in pretty good shape and then when I tried to run fast (i.e. race) I felt slow and weak. It's not a fun place to be. No one ever wants to be in a position where they feel like they can't run anywhere near as fast as they could 12 or 18 months previous. More and more I have begun to feel this in my training also. I seem to have plenty of energy and endurance, but my muscles just seem to be weak, slow, and slow to recover. I had some bloodwork done in January and discovered that my iron was quite low, but after 4 months of fairly aggressive iron supplementation my body doesn't seem to have responded. I'll get my iron levels checked again soon to be certain that I'm absorbing some of the iron I'm taking.

My best guess about all of this is that I have been living too high since moving to Colorado. Not so much that i have been living too high, but that I have been training too high. I live at 8,600 ft. and virtually all the training I do is up from there. My body has felt somewhat flat ever since moving to Colorado and over time it has become steadily worse. What I think has happened is that I have been running so high all the time that I consistently train quite a bit slower than I would if I were down lower. Over the short term this isn't a big deal, and can even be a benefit due to the improvement in heart/lungs from high altitude. Over the long term though, I think my muscles have weakened from always running slower. There is also the possibility that my appetite has been suppressed enough due to the altitude that my body has been forced on occasion to use my muscle protein for fuel without me even feeling unusually hungry. The result over time is that my muscles are essential just a fraction of what they once were. The crazy thing is that I can even see it and feel it in my legs. The muscles in my quads are soft, small, feel very weak when I use them, and just don't seem to have the capacity to run hard at all.

The good thing is that I am going to Alaska and will be living/training below 5,000 ft. for most of the summer. Also, when I return to Colorado in August I am going to be moving down from 8,600 ft to about 5,400 ft. If my conditioning over the past 21 months has been negatively effected by living so high, then my upcoming living situation should naturally work things out in time.

Going to Alaska always feels very restorative to me, but this time around it might be a lot more tangible of a restoration than ever before. Not sure how long the whole process will take to rebuild the muscle that I have depleted over the past 21 months, but it feels good to know that the process has now begun.

Transvulcania

It's been a hectic few weeks getting packed up to move out of my place in Colorado and back to Alaska for the summer. That's all finally done with and now I'm off tomorrow morning for the Canary Islands to race the Transvulcania 50 miler. I have had just enough time to get back into good enough shape to go give a hard effort. I'd feel a lot more confident if I had 2 or 3 more weeks of solid training behind me, but I'll make the best of what I have. No matter how it plays out it should be really fun to go to a tropical island and race against many of the best trail runners in the world. In reality I'm approaching this as nothing more than a "training race" for Hardrock, but I've run plenty of really good training races in the past so, who knows, maybe I can pop a good one on Saturday. It's certainly going to take one of the best races of my life to be anywhere near the front of the pack in this one.

June Camp

Wanted to post a quick Alaska Mountain Ultrarunning Camp update.

I had reported a few months ago that the June 8th-14th session was full, but since then I decided to add a 4th session in August. I have recently had a few people switch from the June session to the August session so I now have 2 spaces open in this June session that I was turning people away from most of the winter. I don't think there is a bad time for running in Juneau in the summer, but if there is a best time it might just be mid June. The days are longest this time of year, and the weather tends to be really nice. If you've got this camp in the back of your mind, but not totally certain you want to go for it, I highly recommend grabbing one of these remaining spaces in the June session. There's a reason why this session was the first to fill up in the fall, and now  there are two spaces waiting for a couple lucky folks. Check out the camp website for more info:  http://www.akultracamp.blogspot.com/

The Slow Return To Shape

Not once since I began trail racing in 2006 have I taken as much time off, and been as out of shape as I was this winter. I know it sounds crazy to say that I took the winter off as I was preparing for and "running" the Iditarod Invitational, but in terms of having my body in shape to run, and run hard, this is the lowest point I have gone to in 6 years.

I have now been back at consistent running for just over 3 weeks and I'd be lying if I said the process of getting back in shape hasn't been very gradual. Any other times in the past few years that I've taken time "off" it's been less than a month and I could pretty much start back up and be back in the swing of things in two weeks or less. This time though, I didn't do any typical running for about 3 full months. All of the running that I did in preparation for the ITI was in deep snow, mostly with snowshoes, and mostly hiking. Even during the 350 mile race I probably only ran 80 miles. And so now, 3 weeks into everyday running, I am beginning to feel a little bit back in shape, but I'm also aware that I have a long ways to go.

This past Friday, Joe and I decided to tag South Arapahoe Peak. Typically, even when I'm "out of shape", I can bust out a run like this, and feel fine as long as I don't push it too hard. Not this time though. The combination of the altitude (we topped out over 13,000 ft.) and the vertical gain (a bit over 5k) had me completely wiped out from this sub 4 hour outing. I felt like I had been racing for 4 hours (even though our pace was VERY SLOW), and several muscles in my legs were sore for a couple days after. A nice little reminder that I am still very much out of shape. 

I'm still hoping to be in decent shape by May 12th to put in a good effort at the Transvulcania 50, but certainly Hardrock is the ultimate goal for the next several months. I'm very glad that I still have almost 3 full months before that beast. In some ways it even feels kind of nice to be where I'm at right now, and have so far to go to be where I want to be. Not that I would need any more motivation than simply preparing for Hardrock, but knowing that I have so far to go, somehow makes the whole process feel more exciting, and more likely to be a positive experience. 

Overall my hope/plan is to just keep building and feel a little stronger each week. I've done that for the past 3 weeks, and if I can continue to do that for the next 12 then I think I might just be where I want to be by July 13th. 

Irunfar Column

Many of you are probably aware that I've begun writing a column on Irunfar. My first piece was published on March 28th and I will have a bi-weekly column that will be published every other Wednesday. Watch for the next one on April 11th. Also, for those of you that are interested, everyone who comments on the article from March 28th will have a chance to win a huge lot of great running gear from Montrail, Mountain Hardwear, Clif Bar, Ryders, Drymax, and Udo's Oil. Check out that column for all the info.

I intend to continue publishing regularly on this blog, with more or less the same style I have for the past few years. I'm even hoping that this bi-weekly writing assignment will increase the creative thoughts running through my mind, such that I may even end up writing more stuff here as a result. 

At any rate, thanks so much for reading, and stay tuned for more.

A Home In The Desert

I've spent the last 10 days in Southern Utah with Corle and Elle. Nothing like some desert sun to get my mind and body back into the swing of everyday running after 3 full weeks off in the wake of the ITI. We got snowed on the last day of our trip, but otherwise it was perfect weather everyday.

I've now run 9 of the last 10 days and am beginning to feel really good (although I haven't done anything over 10 miles yet - I intend to increase the mileage in this next week). Despite running a 350 mile race just over a month ago, I really feel like I took most of the past 4 months off. I've got a freshness in my body that I haven't had in a long time.

Also, if you've never taken a small child on their first backpacking trip you are missing out on one of the great pleasures in life.

Here are some photos from our travels to Goblin Valley, Capitol Reef, Escalante, The Needles, and many places in between:

A Couple Fun Links

Back in Colorado after an Awesome weekend up in Bellingham at the Chuckanut 50k. Congrats to Adam Campbell and Ellie Greenwood for their wins up there in some pretty crappy conditions. It's hard to think of two nicer and more deserving people in the sport, even if they are Canadian :-) Also a huge congratulations to everyone who ran on Saturday. I've never seen so many people come across a finish line with blood on their legs, but just about everyone seemed to be in a great mood. It was really cool to see so many friends out doing what they love.

Wanted to post a couple quick links to some new things floating around the internet since last week:

http://www.skyrunning.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=146:transvulcania-running-legends-announced&catid=37:article-slider-content&Itemid=134

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaKdd4Y6RZY

Big News For Alaska Mountain Ultrarunning Camps

Due to high demand, and to some changes in some of my other plans for this Summer, I have decided to add a 4th session to the Alaska Mountain Ultrarunning Camps this Summer! The new session will take place on August 4-9th, and enrollment is currently open for this session. This will be a 4 day / 5 night session so the cost will be $200 less than the June and July sessions which are 5 day / 6 night. Other than this, everything will be the same as the other Summer sessions. Click here for all the info.

Also, it is worth mentioning that a few folks are opting to transfer from the other sessions into this new session. Most of these spaces in the other sessions are being filled by wait listed applicants, but after the dust settles in the next few days there are likely to be a few unexpected spaces available in the other sessions as well. The good news here is that for a very short time, there may be a small amount of space available in each of the 4 sessions. I don't expect this to last long at all though, so if you are interested I highly recommend signing up ASAP as I expect I will be back to wait listing entrants very soon.

One Last ITI Post

I promise this will be my last Iditarod Invitational related post (at least until next year), but I have a few more ITI related loose ends to mention:

First of all here are links to a couple good articles about the race:

• Juneau Empire article
• Capital City Weekly article

And then one last thing I want to include is a HUGE rave about Drymax socks. I've been using these socks for over a year now, and you've heard me rave about them before, but this time they shocked me yet again. I ran pretty much all day for a full week, almost entirely in one pair of Drymax socks, and I didn't get a single blister! I didn't even change my socks once for the last 5 days of the race! I know I've said this on this blog already, but if you haven't yet tried Drymax socks, you're missing out on BY FAR the best running socks money can buy.

Heading up to Chuckanut this weekend to hangout, help with the race, and see lots of friends - old and new. Should be a really exciting race and a great weekend among so many great people. Looking forward to seeing many of you there.