Dark Satanic Hills

(with apologies to William Blake for the deliberate misquote)

Character building, that's what it is. Or maybe just stupidity. Whatever you call it, today was my third day in a row of double digit mileage. Still hot as hell too, and muggy to boot. But look on the bright side - posh health clubs will charge you good money for a cleansing sauna, but here all you have to do is run. Good deal, no?

Anyhow, I was still feeling the fast hills from yesterday so I knew it wasn't going to be a great run, but I managed 5 hilly miles on the trails of Bull Creek and then switched to the road shoes and hit the 10 mile monster road hill loop of Ladera Norte/Far West again. Believe me, it took a lot to convince myself to go back out for the road portion. Needless to say, I was a lot slower than yesterday but finished up just as soaked. The temperature gauge read 85F as I drove home at 9:30pm. And it's only May.

So I'm sitting here tired but too juiced to sleep. I don't want to lie there and stare at the ceiling, so I'll browse blogland for a while, listen to some cool jazz on the jukebox and chill out. Actually, a nightcap sounds like the perfect accompaniment to John Coltrane. I'm probably low on salt too, so a Bloody Mary it is. Come to think of it, there's still a piece of fudge brownie cheesecake in the fridge too. As I'm headed that way I think I'll snag it.

But before I do, here's the positive part of tonight's run. At mile 50 or 75 at Cactus Rose, when folks are hurting, throwing in the towel and not wanting to go back out for another loop, I will remember nights like this. And I will get my lazy ass up, get back out there and make sure I finish the damn race.

And the other positive - I get to eat cheesecake.

Update
Ok, the Bloody Mary did the trick - I'm off to bed.

Return of the Back to Back Weekend

I got in a good 30 miles of running this weekend. Hot, steamy, sticky running with good friends.

Saturday morning I met Steve, Clea and Pancake for 12 miles on the greenbelt. I think I'm finally acclimatizing to the humidity because it didn't affect me quite so much. I am just resigned to finishing up runs looking like I've just gotten out of the shower.

Then this morning I had a 2-part run planned. For part 1 I got up super early to do 10 miles of hills around Far West/Ladera Norte. It's a hard course, full of huge hills, but a great workout - it's basically 10 miles of hill repeats. "I knew I would probably pay for it later, but what the hell" I got there a little late and the guys had already left, which turned out to be a great excuse to push myself to catch them. I knew I would probably pay for it later, but what the hell. It took me 7 miles, but I managed to catch them going up Mountainclimb. I said some quick hellos, but by then I was feeling really good so I told them I was going to keep going and took off (I was in a groove, running well, and needed to get downtown for run part 2).

I finished the 10 miles right at 1:30, which is a good 10 minutes faster than I've ever run that route before. Of course, I was also soaked to the skin with all the high humidity. I jumped in the car and headed downtown to meet up with Steve and Clea for part 2 of this morning's run. Turned out to be perfect timing as I got down to Town Lake right at 7am.

We did 8 miles around the Scenic Dr loop, and I started to feel the effects of the earlier hills - I was a lot quieter than usual because I retreated into my head, and by the end of the run I was just about hanging on. Huge thanks to Clea and Steve for slowing down for me, and sorry I wasn't very talkative. It was a tough workout this morning, but one I really needed.

I don't generally use any gels or shot bloks during a training run because I want to train my body to more efficiently use its own resources (plus I get a much bigger hit from using them during races), but I think I need some extra calories during these hot summer runs. A banana or even some animal crackers between runs would have been great - some solid food - but I only had a V8 juice with me (which is nonetheless an incredibly potent ultrarunning weapon). The 10 mile hill loop is a great backbone for my Cactus Rose training, so I'm going to hit it again after my trail run tomorrow evening.

And finally, Pulp were one of my favorite bands of the mid-1990s Britpop era. It's pretty cool to see what their former frontman Jarvis Cocker is up to these days, even if he does now look a little like Charlie Manson.

Embrace the Dark Side

Not all those who wander are lost
- J.R.R. Tolkein

No, I am not about to implement my dastardly plan for world domination (at least, not yet....), but if you keep track of my "upcoming races" menu, you may have noticed a few extra items that appeared in there today. This is because I just mailed off my entry form for all three races in Brad's Darkside series this August. I love the above Tolkein quote which was printed on the race shirt of one of last year's races where I managed to finish 4th overall (not as impressive as it sounds - a storm forced most sensible people to quit after a few loops). This year the format is a little different - they are each 60k distances instead of 12 hour times and are much closer together. Each race is at a different State park, they are each 2 weeks apart and all start at 7pm. I'm excited about this because I love running at night and they should be a good yardstick of where I am.

And where I am right now is very happy with another solid mileage day. I got up early to run 8.5 miles with Clea down at Mueller and met up with Marcia, Henry, Roger, Brandon, Naresh et al after work and got in another 6.5 on the greenbelt to give me 15 for the day. Let me just say that summer is definitely on the way because it was H-U-M-I-D. I drained both handhelds and wished I had more, but on the plus side I managed to find that "zone" for the last few miles where I disappear into my head and switch the running to auto-pilot.

And finally a quick reminder - the Saturday after next (16th) is the second running of the "Sweaty Twenty in the pines". So if you fancy running a few miles taking in beautiful scenery with good company, let me know.

Start of Cactus Rose Training

Tonight I kicked off my Cactus Rose training with 15 miles of hills. After feeling so lethargic yesterday I wasn't sure how it would go, but the two days were like chalk and cheese. I felt good, and the weather was great. I started off doing 5 miles with a mate at Bull Creek, then I switched into my road shoes and hit the hills of Ladera Norte.

I spent the first few hills practicing various techniques of dissociation. My theory is that for short periods of time (such as running up hills) you can compartmentalize the discomfort. And if you can do that, you can choose to ignore it or embrace it.

I have found that a lot of the secret to running hills is mental. It's fascinating to run a race like Decker that is full of rollers. So many people visibly deflate when they see the next hill coming, but if you prepare yourself for them they're really not too bad.

One of the greatest of all principles is that men can do what they think they can do

-Norman Vincent Peale

Mind you, I have also found that it is much easier to do this in a race than it is when you're doing a training run by yourself. Still, it was a decent start and I kept a good pace going until the end.

Onward through the fog.

Where do Weekends go?

Ah, the end of another weekend. How quickly they come, and how quickly they go. I have become a night owl and am feeling the effects of sleep deprivation due to many late nights occupied with one project or another, so the sensible thing to do would be to go to bed. Yes, that's why I'm sitting here with my laptop open updating my blog.

Today was the Maze trail race here in Austin - a 10k and 30k run at Walnut Creek, one of my regular running haunts. I didn't run the race, but I did help out with course marking last night and got to catch up with some folks I haven't seen in a while which was fun. Also rolled my ankle again, which was not so much fun.

As an aside, I have my eye on running a potential new 100 mile race in New Mexico next spring and was glad to get some intel that suggests the race is still very much a possibility.

Anyway, I got back home to find Nancy watching the movie "Twilight". I watched it for a while, and my God it was awful. The main vampire dude had eyebrows like a bushy bandit, and acting skills to match (Nancy swears the books are much better, though I think I'll stick with the Sookie Stackhouse series - now there's some good old redneck "down in the dirt" Southern vampires with a good dose of self deprecating humor). "They were duking it out on the frontage road" So I gave up and checked my email to find a message from some friends about a change of location for this morning's run.

So I got up bright and early and made my way downtown to the Mexican Culture center. As I got off the interstate, I noticed two cars pulled sideways on the frontage road blocking most of the lanes. A few motorists were stuck behind them, and there were three or four guys from said vehicles duking it out right there on the frontage road. I don't know what they were scrapping over, so I just sat in bemusement for a few minutes and watched the fight - it was mildy entertaining. Now when I first moved to the US, this is what I thought Texas was all about - the only thing missing were their horses!!! But then some of the cars discovered they could squeeze through half a lane, and I followed suit.

Got to the Mexican Culture center and there's nobody around. Figured I'd call my friends to see what was going on, but realized I'd left my phone at home. Yeah, it was shaping up to be that kind of day. I drove around for a while, then I just parked by the mulch trail and decided to get a few miles in by myself. It was probably just as well because my ankle was still sore from the night before and my heart really wasn't in it. I managed 8 miles though, and I did feel a lot better in the second half. Just as I got back to the car I spotted my friends finishing up their run, so I sneaked up behind them and surprised them. We all saw the funny side and got a good laugh out of it. And looking back, it really wasn't all that bad a run.

Most of the rest of the weekend was spent playing bowling on the Wii. After hardly touching it since I won it last year, we loaded it up yesterday to discover Gavin loves the 10 pin bowling. And he's pretty good at it - his top score is 152, and he got a streak going in one game where he bowled 3 strikes in a row. I don't know how many games we played, but we had a blast.

Ok, it's time for me to wind this up and head off to bed. I have good intentions to go to bed early most nights, I really do. But it's already gone 11pm and I'm still here.

But not for long - goodnight.

Wind of Change

Welcome to the new-look Welshrunner blog. I hope you like it because I spent a lot of time over the past few evenings designing and creating the layout and template. Yes, I love to tinker and figure out how things work, and it was only a matter of time before I shelved the standard template and made my own. It was great to be "off the leash" creatively, but I also have the type of personality that can't leave a problem unsolved - I was up until 2am this morning fixing a few annoying issues.

The concept behind the design was to replicate a runner's logbook, with a Welsh dragon blended into the header to incorporate my two themes. Practically, I wanted the flexibility of having 3 columns, and a menu system beneath the main header which allowed me to categorize, organize and pull together posts from across the blog (like my recipes and race reports). A big thanks to the guys at Smartmenus for the javascript that drives that menu brilliantly.

I haven't designed a website for a while and it was good to brush up on my CSS skills. Building a blog page out of styles is a lot like piecing a jigsaw together, and I've always enjoyed digital image manipulation. I created the graphics using the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) which is the Linux version of Photoshop - it's an awesomely powerful tool and I'm very happy with the results.

I've tested the template in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera, but if you find any problems in your browser please let me know.