Weekly Run Log - Jan. 23-29, 2011

01/23/2011: Crotched Mt Town Forest, running on snowshoes. Ran Link, Summit to the junction with Lower Link. He running wasn't bad. I only knocked my ankles five or six times and there is no sign of wear or damage to the Tubbs Adventure 21s. I will continue to try them out though I feel I could have run most of that in Microspikes. :45, 3.6 miles, 400' vert.

01/25/2011: Crotched Mt. Town Forest. Link and Bullard Hill Rd to Old Mountain Rd. Ran on the snowmobile trail. It was quite good running with just the Microspikes. Got in the zone and ran some actual vert. One fairly steep hill that took about three minutes to run. 0:51, 4.5 miles, 400' vert.

01/29/2011: Same run as the prior run. Much softer this time and therefore much slower time. Interesting to see what five inches of powder with little packing did. There had only been one sled over the snowmobile trail. 0:51, 4.5 miles, 400' vert.

Weekly Summary: 12.6 miles, 1,200' vert.

Weekly Run Log - Jan. 16-22, 2011

Work was pretty demanding physically this week. We got a good dose of snow and some freezing rain that I kept me banging ice and shoveling. When I wasn't at work I was busy trying to beat down what was there with the skis. Got some great skiing in for cross training but no running. We'll see what the weather does next week but right now it looks as though we are in a pretty good storm cycle.

Weekly Run Log - Jan. 09-15, 2011

The two closest figures in the picture are my parents.

01/09/2011: My first run on the ocean in two years. Parked at the south end of the Hampton Beach strip and ran north on the beach until a residence area. I ran up onto Ocean Blvd. to cut around the residence area and, except for a short stretch where i tried to run on the rocks below the retaining wall, ended up running on the sidewalk the entire way to the end of the public area of Hampton Beach. On the way back I dropped down onto the beach area where there were hundreds of blocks to run. I suppose they were for erosion protection but I felt they provided a great running surface similar to rocks or other technical running challenges found in trail running. Afterward we (parents were there) found one one place to eat sea food called Ray's in Rye up 1A. The place had an ocean view and great fish and chips. 1:05, 6.0 miles, 50' vert. (up and down steps between the blvd and beach).

01/12/2011: A quick run down back to the McCabe Forest parking lot on mah's snowshoes. The running was pretty good as long as I stuck to the ski trail I put down earlier. I could feel it a little in my hips. Good strengthener of the hips. On the future runs I will need a track already beat down or I will want to create one before running it. 0:15, 0.5 miles, 50' vert.

Weekly run summary: 6.0 miles, 100' vert.

This week I didn't get to run much but the amount of cross training in the form of ski touring was pretty great. I have been working to beat down a path to the top of Crotched Mountain that I can run on again. Thursday (the day after an 18 inch dump - of snow that is) I was able to ski up to where Lower Link cuts back on its way to the ridge and Shannon's Trail. Saturday I was able to connect Crotched Mountain Town Forest with some snowshoe tracks on Shannon's and ski on to the summit. In fact I surprised myself by skiing back down to the parking lot. I scraped a large number of rocks but hey that is what it is like to be a backcountry skier in New England. I am surprised I didn't blow out an edge. On the way up I found some open, low-angle glades to get some exploring and some powder runs. Overall I would say that I skied about 8.0 miles today, 3.5 on Thursday, and 2.25 on Wednesday. This mileage, along with several hours of trail work with 4.0 or so miles of walking, two days of work, and six and a half miles of running made it a pretty big week fitness-wise. Overall I am happy with it and hope to get some running done this week once the trails are beat down a little.

A Snowstorm

This afternoon I woke up to a little more than a foot of snow on the ground. A good day to break out the cross country skis that I had missed in Colorado (I had two pairs of Telemark Skis and a pair of 3-pin touring skis but I had missed my backcountry xc skis). I am lucky in that I can ski from the back door when the snow is deep enough to ski in the woods. Today the snow was deep enough! Low density snow like the kind that should have fallen more last year in Leadville, I bogged down on all but one short steep hill as I skied around the McCabe Forest loop (2.25 miles from my back door). The ski was pleasant. I didn't push it at all and just focused on putting the track down to maximize the downhills and cut corners at proper angles beneficial for skiers. The most surprising part was that there were two ice bridges that were formed perfectly so that I was able to ski the entire loop without taking off my skis.

So that was the ski of the afternoon.

This evening I started to ponder what I would do for trail running this week (and every time it snows this much for the the rest of the winter). In Lynette Clemmons' article in December's Ultrarunning she talks about the three forms of traction aids: screws in the shoes, Microspikes, and Snowshoes. I have been stoked that the snow has been deep enough for only the first two. Now I am worried that I will need to shell out money for the snowshoes. I am usually excited to shell out money willynilly but this time I am worried because I have not been able to earn as much at snowmaking as I had planned on.

This got me thinking about what I had for resources. I have a pair of wooden snowshoes that are quite large and I have access to a pair of Tubbs Adventure 21s which are not running snowshoes per se. I am starting to wish that I had not left my MSRs in Colorado.

I decided to try out the new batteries in my headlamp and try the Adventure 21s out in a run down back on the trail I groomed out with skis earlier. The running was actually not all that bad as long as I stayed on the track. I ran all the way down the the parking lot (about .25 miles) and took a short excursion into the woods to try them out off trail. No bueno in snow that knee deep. Too much work. I think the way to go will be to hike a trail first with either the larger snowshoes or the Tubbs to stomp down a track. Then it will be much more appropriate to run in the smaller snowshoes until the trail is so packed down that I am able to use Microspikes again. We shall see how this goes in the future.

The weather forecast is looking to remain cold for a while so there will be no warmup to reduce the snowpack. Looks like I will be doing some backcountry skiing in the near future. Maybe a trip to the Mt. Washington area is in order. I bet they have much more snow up there.

Weekly Run Log - Jan. 02-08, 2011

01/05/2011: Skatutakee/Thumb loop. Gray ice and bare ground where people have walked on the trail. Several inches of crusty ice in the surrounding woods. Overcast but great views nonetheless. I think the strenuous run up Crotched was good training. The uphills seemed to fly by today! 1:08, 4.5 miles, 850' vert.

01/08/2011: Crotched by Link/Summit/L Link/Shannon's. The running was actually really good. Snowed a little bit while running. The trail itself was uneven, icy, and beat down but the Microspikes ate it up. He snow off the side of the beat down path was about four inches of breakable styrofoam which, besides a slick glissade surface, was the best downhill running surface I have ever run. Took the spikes off for the last mile and a half and it felt a little more squirrely underfoot but I still was able to do a Kenyan impression for a short while on the Link and felt good. A very fast day! 1:27, 6.8 miles, 1,300' vert.

Weekly Summary: 11.3 miles, 2,150' vert.

Though there is less variation in where I choose to run these days I am still finding adventure in the changes that I make to my equipment systems and the conditions that are changing frequently. With my equipment I feel that this week seemed to go better than previous weeks. I epoxied the screws into my shoes with Loctite plastic epoxy. I have done two runs now without losing a screw (though one seems to be backing out). I exchanged my medium size Kahtoola Microspikes for size small and they stayed on for the entire Crotched run. Both the screws and the Microspikes are on probation still.

This week I have discovered that I need to stretch more and drink more water. This will be the goal of the week. To stretch more before I get an injury. Should be easy to accomplish.

The New Year

I created this blog back in September (I think) as a way of documenting my adventures. I am not so sure that I have done that to the fullest extent that I could have. I have realized that this has become a weekly run log and nothing else despite having skied a few times. I had imagined this blog as a place to write about discoveries and rediscoveries. A place where I could process my learnings on skills, gear and on philosophical ideas. I called this blog "The Focus" because it is focus that I have and I had thought that this focus would manifest itself in hours of writing about my latest discoveries. I think it is time that I tried to get back on track. So I am going to pontificate a bit about a realization this week.

This week at the end of one of my shifts (around 7 am) I decided that I was not going to stay at the resort and ski and that I was going to drive home and run instead. The reason being that my knee could not handle the abuse of work followed by skiing and running with little recovery time before work started back up in the evening. I realized that for the first time in seven years I chose something over skiing!

For the last year or so I have been telling people that I am married to my skis and my running shoes are my mistresses. It would appear that for the moment my mistresses have more of my focus than do my skis. This was a big event in my life, chosing running over skiing. Is this a permanent change in my life or is this just temporary? I honestly don't know. I guess we will need to wait and see.

Happy New Year!

Weekly Run Log - Dec. 26, 2010 - January 01, 2011

12/26/2010: Crotched Mt. Town Forest. Link, Summit West, Lower Link to Shannon's and retraced. Overcast. Getting one last run while the snow is only a couple of inches deep. Before the "Big" storm. 1:01, 4.8 miles, 800' vert.

01/01/2011: The longest run I have run in a while. Summit Trail to Lower Link to Shannon's to the Summit and retraced. Made more difficult by the wet, ankle deep or greater snow. The snow was stomped down a little on The Link, Scot's Trail, and Shannon's Trail but not elsewhere. The running was surprisingly good though I had to slow to a walk pace a couple of time on the uphill. I don't know if that was from the extra exertion of the deep snow, the fact that I am running only two times a week for cardio, or that I was dehydrated from New Year's Eve. Either way it was nice to be out again and be able to extend the run until I hit the top. My right foot had some issues with the snow. I think I just need to strengthen the feet for running on the weirdness of snow.

I purchased a pair of Katoola Microspikes and was disappointed that the toes on the microspikes kept coming off the toes of my shoes. I think that they are not tight enough. I will go back and exchange them for smaller sized Microspikes tomorrow morning. 1:40, 6.8 miles, 1300' vert.

Weekly Summary: 11.6 miles, 2,100' vert.

Alright mileage. At least I got out and maintained enthusiasm for running. It was a big week for natural snow. We got a foot of good old New England high density powder in the woods and mountains around here. This created the next stage of challenge in my quest to run through the winter. Now I need to think about which trails are snowshoed the most frequently around here, which trails I will need to snowshoe myself to pack and which trails I will need to avoid. Also, I am looking at which dirt roads around here have the most vertical gain and length so that I can run around snow storms. It is a somewhat pivotal moment in my winter running. I am going to look at running snowshoes tomorrow. At least I am enjoying the new challenge of finding ways to run in snow.

The "screws in the shoes" experiment continues. I lose 4 to five screws each time out so I am thinking of epoxying them in there. Next time I am at home depot I will look at the epoxies they have.