That time I raced some candy-ass bikers

Each summer when I was in college, I’d spend a couple months at home in Bellingham running in the hills, building strength and preparing for the upcoming cross-country season. Galbraith Mountain was my favorite old stomping ground. There were countless miles of “mountain bike” trails and logging roads, giving you the option to hammer up some brutal climbs or just take it easy weaving through single-track dirt trails. I really doubt there’s a better place to run in the entire country.

I ran on Galbraith at least three or four days a week and saw mountain bikers on the trails probably half the time. Mountain bikers are funny because they seem to be much more interested in walking their bikes than actually riding them. Whenever there was anything even remotely resembling an incline, 90% of the bikers I saw would be sucking wind and slowly pushing their bike up the hill. Or they’d be pulled over on the side of the trail smoking pot. Now that a think about it, the two activities probably had something to do with each other. Occasionally I’d blow past a biker who was actually riding his bike, but they were few and far between, rarely did they even attempt to keep up.

Now I know running up hill is way easier than riding a bike up hill. It’s not even close. And while it’s easy for me to poke fun at the candy-ass stoner bikers, they were probably laughing at me too, “What the hell is that idiot trying so hard for? Does he think we give a shit if some scrawny weirdo in short shorts can get to the top of a hill before us?” Maybe they had a point, it does seem sort of ridiculous to care about beating someone when they’re not even aware that they’re in a race. It was more of a way to pass the time than anything else I guess. I never really considered myself to actually be in a race with any of these tool-bags. Until one Sunday...

This is the story of my battle with the mountain bikers.

The story takes place on some random Sunday in August 2006. I was 90 minutes or so into my long run and had just turned up one toward one of my favorite climbs on Galbraith. It was maybe a half-mile stretch of dirt road that get progressively steeper before finally leveling out. If I was feeling good, I’d like to push the pace a little on the climb and then relax and recover at the top before the final ascent to one of the best views on the mountain. This particular day was beautiful. The sun was shining and dozens of runners, bikers, and hikers were out on the trails. Right as I turned and began climbing, I passed a group of three bikers. At first I didn’t think anything of it, I passed packs of struggling mountain bikers daily when the weather was nice (they tended to stay in doors when it rained). But something was a little different about these guys. They looked like there were actually in decent shape and didn’t reek of marijuana. While I was still in ear-shot I heard them talking to each other and realized one of them was getting ready to throw down. It was all I could do to keep from laughing at the thought of a biker trying to beat me up a climb. Then, with a speed unheard of among two-wheeling wusses, one of the bikers shot out from the other two and closed the gap on me in seconds. As he passed me, he threw down the challenge, “Sorry, I can’t some runner beat me.”

Are you serious? This candy-ass mountain biker wants to throw down? And not only that, he’s cocky enough to apologize for winning before the race has even really started?

With that, it was on like Donkey Kong at Comic-Con. Before my brain had even fully processed the fact that I mountain biker had passed me, taunted me, and took off ahead of me, I was in a dead sprint. I tucked in on his wheel like I was Lance Armstrong covering a move in a the Tour de France and kept hammering. When you’re sprinting all out up a mountain, a few seconds feels like an eternity. And after an eternity or two, when it was still all I could do just to stay on the wheel this uppity biker who was almost certainly a ringer flown in from a recent training session at Alp d’Huez, I started to panic. What if I lost to a mountain biker? Even if this dude is a legitimate athlete, an uphill sprint on loose dirt and rocky terrain clearly favors a runner. This can’t happen. It just can’t.

We went around a small bend and the road got just a little bit steeper. I knew that if I was going to beat this guy, and not just sit on his ass and out kick him in the final few meters, but legitimately prove my dominance I had to go now. I took the turn wide and swung up next to him, putting everything I had into a surge that I hoped would break him.

It’s funny how important stupid little competitions like this can seem. When no one else in the world is even aware that some kind of metaphorical fight to the death is going down. And even if they knew about it, they wouldn’t care. The Guinness Book of World Records is a freaking anthology of people trying to be the best at stupid shit no one cares about. These things are pointless and meaningless, but when you’re in the midst of epic race that only you and three mountain bikers on the planet know about, it’s the most important thing in the world.

So I came out of that turn as if beating this dude would win me a trip to nationals. As if I’d trained my whole life just to crush mountain bikers on Galbraith. I gritted my teeth, leaned into the hill, and charged toward the finish line that I assumed was at the top of the hill. That’s another problem with spontaneous races on some random logging road between two strangers who’ve never spoken to each other... how do you know where the finish is?

Luckily my attack worked and the official (completely unofficial and meaningless) finish line didn’t matter. I took the lead and as I broke away I felt the biker let up, defeated. I maintained my rhythm through the crest of the hill just to insure that my superiority was unquestionable. It was important that I won with a knockout, no leaving it up to the judges for me.

I have to give the random biker dude credit though. That was one hell of a race up a random hill on some Sunday in July between two guys who didn’t know each other and would never see each other again.

Weekly mileage update:
Sunday: 5.29
Monday: 4.93
Tuesday: 0
Wednesday: 4.1
Thursday: 4.1
Friday: 4.1
Saturday: 8.2
Total: 30.72

I’m now only 45.72 miles off paces and continuing to chip away at that number every week. 30 miles is feeling really comfortable so I’m hoping to bump up to 35 in the next couple weeks.

Air-Bud the Golden 10ker

Before my run yesterday, I was listening to Bill Simmon’s podcast with Chuck Klosterman. They were discussing Linsanity and Tebow-mania, the crazy hype that surrounds these athletes when they come out of nowhere to go on impossible winning streaks and single-handedly save their team’s season. Klosterman hypothesized that the reason people get so captivated by these kind of stories is that sports and even our every day lives have become so predictable that it’s refreshing and probably inspiring to see someone defy the statistics and the analysts and succeed where no one believed he could. It’s sort of like sticking it to “the man”.

To some extend he’s right. Unless you’re a fan of one of the dominant teams, you almost always root for the underdog and even that’s not very satisfying most of the time. The Giants caught fire right around week 17 and won the Super Bowl despite finishing the regular season with an 9-7 record. But was anyone really that surprised? If I’d told you a week or two into the season that the Giants were going to hit their stride going into the playoffs and tear everyone apart on both defense and offense, you’d probably say something like, “yeah, I could see that happening.” Maybe it’s not likely, but it’s not unbelievable. However, if I were to tell you a week or two into the NBA season that Jeremy Lin was going to come off the bench and start draining game winning threes in order to save the Knicks seasons, you’d probably ask, “who the hell is Jeremy Lin?” And that’s when it gets fun. When something happens that wasn’t even remotely on your radar.

In 2001 everyone was rooting for the Patriots in the Super Bowl. They were the classic underdog story with an unheard of backup QB who saved a team on the brink of disaster. In 2012 everyone hates the Patriots. Why, what's changed? The second biggest reason is simply that now they’re good (the first biggest reason is that they cheated to win their Super Bowls). They’re supposed to win. Today, that unheard of QB is dating a super model, doing cameos on Entourage, and is destined for the hall of fame. We all liked him a lot more when he was Drew Bledsoe’s backup (go cougs!).

Amazing insight right? We like surprises, root for underdogs and get enthralled by anything resembling the storyline to a Disney movie. So what, isn’t this a Tim Tebow fan site/running blog? Don’t worry, I’m getting there.

Generally speaking, my favorite sport is whatever I’m currently watching. The Broncos and the Sounders are the only teams that I really care about, but I love sports and can appreciate the merits of pretty much anything where one team wins and one team loses. The lack of commercials in soccer is awesome. It’s great knowing that when the game starts, you’re going to have 90 minutes of uninterrupted action with just a quick bathroom break and beer refill in the middle. But I also realize that by having the final two minutes of a football game last 20 minutes, it allows for a lot more suspense to build up, lets us over analyze every play, and gives us more time to refill our beers and take the additional required bathroom breaks that go along with more beers. Both sports are great for different reasons. But if you’re looking for surprises and performances that no one saw coming, running is actually the sport to watch (I told you I'd bring this around).

For most mainstream sports, players and teams can be analyzed by a bunch of statistics and we’ll have a pretty good idea of how well they’re going to do. Sometimes they overachieve and sometimes they underachieve, but it’s extremely rare to have the Jeremy Lin outliers. For runners, you can look at someone’s PRs and have a sense of how well they’re going to do, but not if they haven’t raced recently. Running has a very distinct correlation between input and output. If you train harder, you’ll run faster. That’s not as true with other sports. You can practice to improve yourself during the off season (I’m sure hoping Tebow learns how to throw a football before next season), but it doesn’t necessarily translate to measurable results the way it does in running. That means that when a runner hasn’t raced for a couple months, he or she can seemingly come out of nowhere to shock the running world (all twelve of us!).

I’m notorious for saying everything was one of the greatest sports moments I’ve ever seen. It’s not that I’m lying, I just get so caught up in the excitement of whatever I’m currently watching that at the time, it feels like one of the greatest sports moments I’ve ever seen. But still, being in Boston last year and watching Desiree Davila come within seconds of being the first America woman to win the Boston Marathon in a gazillion years was one of the greatest sports moments I’ve ever seen. The yo-yoing during the final mile, the three or four times when I was sure she was done only to see her surge back to the lead. It was incredible, and it came out of nowhere. I mean it came out of months of dedication and hundreds of miles of hard work, but to the viewer, it came out of nowhere.

That’s what’s great about running. So much of the race is is already won or lost before anyone even toes to the starting line. It’d be like if the first three quarters of football games were played behind closed doors (how great would Tebow seem if no one saw the first three quarters of ineptitude?). To beat this analogy to death: it’s an Olympic year and the first quarter is winding down with meet, collegiate, and American records all falling last weekend, some more predictably than others. If you like surprises and underdog stories, this summer in London is the time to watch. Odds are, no American will win a gold a medal in any distance event. We never do. But doesn’t that sounds like the start of a Disney movie? Except I guess in Disney’s version Galen Rupp would be played by a golden retriever. “Where in the rule book does it say a dog can’t run the 10k?”

Weekly mileage recap:
Sunday: 5.77
Monday: 4.22
Tuesday: 0
Wednesday: 4.1
Thursday: 4.22
Friday: 4.1
Saturday: 8.2
Total: 30.61

Slightly higher than last week and keeping my ~30 mile per week goal. I’ve finally found a 4.22 and 4.1 mile loop that I don’t mind too much and my Saturday 8.2 mile loop is great. Gonna continue with this same basic plan for another couple week and see how I feel. Only 49.9 mile “in the red” now.

The Story of Estes Road

Going on real runs, more than just a couple laps around the block or a dinky five mile loop out your front door, is cool because of the stories. I mean, it’s cool because it gets you into really good shape and you feel like a badass and win races, but the real reason it’s cool is the stories. The random crazy stuff that happens when you decide to face whatever crap mother nature throws at you and log the 12, 14, 20 or however many miles you need to get in for that particular day. There was the time I passed out and had to go to the emergency room due to severe dehydration after a 12 mile run in 120 degree weather. Or the time a few of us got crop dusted when we were out running during the summer (I thought about putting quotes around “crop dusted”, but figured it wouldn’t make any sense because we literally got crop dusted by a crop dusting plane. If Alex, Williams and I all develop the same weird rare cancer, we know what’s to blame). Those crazy unexpected adventures are among the things I miss most about being a real runner. Racing was fun, making it to nationals was amazing, but there’s something special about you and your teammates suffering through the endless miles together and experiencing the same ridiculous stuff that happens during your normal daily routine. Sometimes you can sort of see it coming. When it’s minus seven outside with the windchill and snow’s continuing to dump down, you can expect some shenanigans. Other times, it’s just an average Monday morning and you get ambushed by a couple of bloodthirsty owls completely out of the blue.

In retrospect, we should have seen this first story coming. It was a cold, snowy Sunday morning in Pullman and the wind was starting to pick up. But when we piled in the vans and drove out to where we’d be running it really didn’t look that bad outside. I was only a freshman and still had that self-conscious high school mindset where I wouldn’t wear running tights (well maybe with shorts over them... always the sign of a running noob) and I hated wearing running pants, especially on long runs where once you warmed up, they just became a nuisance. So both Chris Williams and I made the fatal mistake of stripping down to our running shorts, totally oblivious to the excruciating, mind-numbing, earth-shattering, pelvic-region-freezing pain we’d be experiencing just a few miles later.

This is the story of Estes Road.

An easy mistake to make when you’re doing an out-and-back run is not noticing the tailwind on your way out. You don’t feel the tailwind, you just notice that the pace feels a little bit easier than it should. On a cold day it also feels warmer, more comfortable. You’ll sweat more than you would normally and this all makes things even worse when you finally turn around and face the wind that carried you through the first half of the run. Add in some falling snow and an icy road and you have the situation we were facing on Estes that day.

It’s funny, I really don’t remember the first half of the run. When I think back to that day, the first memory I have is of turning around at the halfway point and feeling like a runaway semi from Ice Road Truckers slammed right into my face. Running into a 35 mile per hour headwind is miserable when the weather’s nice. But when it’s nine degrees outside and your feet have no traction, that kind of headwind is soul-crushing. It makes you wonder why the hell you’re out in the middle of nowhere on the border between Washington and Idaho wearing a pair of short shorts while snow and wind eat away at your will to live, instead of being at home sleeping off a hangover and waiting for football to start like any normal college kid. Years later, it still sounds like a dumb idea, but at least I have the story.

Williams and I reached the turnaround at roughly the same time and I think the same Ice Road Trucker that hit me just about leveled him too. We briefly considered face-planting into the ditch on the side of the road and calling it a life, but decided we still had too much to live for. We hadn’t done the Pizza Hut Meat Lover’s Challenge yet and still had several seasons of 24 to catch up on. So instead, our survival instincts kicked in and we started trading leads and hammering into the unrelenting headwind. And I mean seriously hammering. We weren’t checking our mile splits, but it’s possible we PR’d in the two mile during one stretch coming back. We blew past a couple of the guys who had been ahead of us and just kept pushing.

When you’re in shape, running hard doesn’t hurt any less, but your body sort of relishes the suffering. It’s like in the first Rocky movie, how it didn’t matter that Rocky lost. Going toe-to-toe with Apollo Creed for 15 rounds, getting the crap beaten out of him and refusing to throw in the towel, that’s what mattered. Williams and I weren’t hammering in order to beat anyone or break any records. We were hammering just because there’s something cool about surviving a beating like that.

For a while it was fun in a way. It hurt, but it hurt in a lung-burning, leg-aching way. It wasn’t until we had about two miles to go that we realized the true consequences of running into a 35mph headwind in freezing snow and wind wearing just a light pair of running shorts with nothing on underneath. Your. Penis. Freezes. Wow, was it painful. There’s no way to prove it, but I’d bet a million dollars it was worse than childbirth. I tried taking off my hat and stuffing it down there for some protection, but it was too late, the damage was done. The final ten minutes of the run was a battle between trying to keep up the pace so that we finished faster while also figuring out the most efficient way to run with one hand stuffed down your shorts. And the worst part was that there wasn’t any relief when we finally finished. You can’t just shake off something like this.

After the run, I remember sitting in the back of JD’s car next to Williams, both of us with our hands down our shorts trying to protect our junk. It hurt to have anything touch anything down there. The actual freezing of the crotchal region was one thing, but the thawing was almost just as bad. I don’t know the physics or biology behind what was happening, but think of what it’s like to be in a hot tub while it’s snowing, then running and jumping in a icy lake or pool and then back into the hot tub. How your body sort of goes through shock from the sudden change in temperature. Now imagine instead of jumping in cold water and back into warm water, you were dipping your manhood into liquid nitrogen then sticking it into a fire. That’s exactly what we were dealing with. Well that’s what it felt like anyway.

And that wasn’t even as bad as when we got home and tried taking a shower (we didn’t do that part together). I still shudder just thinking about it, it’s a miracle there was no permanent damage. After things had thawed and warmed up the pain went away relatively quickly. My guess is that childbirth might have a little more lasting discomfort than what we experienced, I’ll concede that much.

I like to keep a record of my success against various running routes. You know, how many times I’ve conquered them versus how many times they’ve gotten the better of me. For almost any given road or trail, I have an overwhelming winning record. Against Estes, I’m still 0-1. Maybe if this resolution goes well, I’ll make a pilgrimage out there this December and log my 1,380th mile on that fateful road. Probably I’ll just stay at home, sleep off a hangover and watch football though.

Mileage summary for the week:
Sunday: 5.29
Monday: 0
Tuesday: 4.28
Wednesday: 4.24
Thursday: 4.22
Friday: 4.05
Saturday: 8.2
Total: 30.27

That means I’m 53.97 miles in the red right now. Not bad for taking two weeks off. I’ve stopped the bleed and if I keep my ~30 mile per week up, I should be back on schedule in less than two months.

Go Cougs.

$99 Aqua-socks

I finally bought a new pair of running shoes. Since college, I’ve been running almost exclusively in an old pair of Nike racing flats. I’m sure they’re called some combination of the words: air, zoom, streak, and racer… maybe there’s a vapor in there too… but whatever, they’re five years old and I can’t remember exactly what snazzy name Nike came up with for them. The point is that even though my yearly mileage has been comparable to that of a high school girl’s softball player, five years is a long time for a pair of racing flats and since I’m kinda-sorta running again, I should probably reward myself with a new pair of shoes.

Before I get into the shoes that I bought, I want to set the record straight on a couple popular running shoe myths.

1) “You need to replace your shoes every X miles.”
I think most people are told that they should replace their shoes something crazy like every 200-300 miles. That’s is a great plan if you’re a recreational jogger who only runs three days a week or if you’re a running store who makes money by selling shoes to recreational joggers who only run three days a week. But in college, that would have meant replacing our shoes every fortnight, which was impossible even with the handful of free pairs we were given.

Modern running shoes are incredibly durable. Unless you’re in something like the five-finger whatchamacallit (which we’ll address in a minute), your shoes were built to survive some heavy pounding. Replace them when you can tell they’re getting worn out, or when you want a snazzy new pair that looks cool. Don’t feel compelled to buy new shoes just because they passed some made-up mileage barrier.

2) “The human body was meant to run barefoot.”
I’ll be honest, I haven’t read Christopher McDougall’s book. I’m sure it’s really good and that he makes some excellent points. But the new hipster craze over barefoot running is ridiculous. It just is. I’d consider myself a “minimalist” when it comes to running shoes. In college, I frequently trained in racing flats and generally wore the least amount of shoe I could get away with. I did a lot of secondary runs barefoot on grass and even product tested the Nike Free. So I completely agree that for a lot of people, less is more when it comes to running shoes. We probably don’t need the three pounds of rubber and foam that shoe companies are super-gluing to the bottom of our feet nowadays. But running barefoot isn’t some magical solution that will take away your injuries and make you a 2:15 marathoner. And that’s what I have a problem with -- that and how hideous the five-finger fuglies are.

Modern day Americans are obsessed with the quick fix. Whether it’s some new diet that will allow them to drop 30 pounds in two weeks while still eating half a pizza and a case of beer a night, or whether it’s these amazing new shoes that have separate slots for each of your toes and will somehow take away all your running problems. First of all, having all those separate slots for each toe is idiotic. Go run barefoot in the grass and tell me if your toes ever act individually. They don’t, they’re just a big clump of ugly co-dependant stubs. Never, in the thousands of miles that I’ve run have I ever thought “Boy, if only my second pinky toe was a little bit stronger”. We’re not monkeys, we don’t need our toes to be spread apart like that. Why can’t the makers of the five-finger shoes put all our toes in the same pouch and call the shoe what it really is, a $99 aqua-sock.

Again, my beef isn’t with minimalist/barefoot running movement/cult -- except I do think those shoes are ugly and overpriced. I agree with them on most things. My problem is that people think running without wearing shoes is a short-cut, when in reality, it’s a very small part of the bigger picture. The key to getting in shape and avoiding injuries, and the reason some random tribes in Africa can run a gajillion miles is slowly but surely building your fitness and running lots and lots of miles. Those African tribes have been doing nothing but running since they were old enough to walk. That’s the real reason that they never get hurt and can seemingly run forever. They have the greatest aerobic base on the planet. If you want to improve your running form, lose some weight, and break your PRs, the best way to do that is to stop thinking so much and just run more. Period.

As for me, I decided on a new pair of shoes the same way any logical person would. I went to eastbay.com, searched for size 9 Nike running shoes and sorted by price. I bought the cheapest pair I could find, a $39.99 pair of Luna Racers... in bright orange. My color selection was limited, but at least orange will go with my Tim Tebow jersey.

As for mileage this week:
Sunday: 0
Monday: 3.03
Tuesday: 3.64
Wednesday: 3
Thursday: 4.22
Friday: 4.22
Saturday: 9.2
Total: 27.31