Brooks Running Camp Day 1.5

Yeah! I finally met up with the rest of the folks...

Before I go any further, let me explain "running" camp.

1) This isn't your masochistic, run-the-whole-day kind of camp like some folks went to when they were little with football, soccer, baseball, etc. camp. When I told people what I where I was heading this week-end, I could see the wheels turning in their head thinking this, and I had to repress my playful sarcastic tendencies by suggesting that I was going to run about 150 miles all-told in 4 days (For the ultra runners out there — I know you are thinking.. what's wrong with that?).

2) The other response I got was... "don't you know how to run already?" Well sure... everybody knows how to run. But not everybody nows how to maximize the potential of running in their life through nutrition, community, fitness, racing... that elusive difference between "running" and "training". Also, running can be a pretty solitary sport if you want it to. Getting together with other runners, we can talk about important topics such as "why do women always role their shorts over?" and learn interesting facts such as phone book pages are useful for stuffing them in your shoes to dry them after a run in the rain (that one was mine).

So, running camp.

Brooks decided to invite IDers up to the foot of Mt. Ranier for a 4-day camp filled with FUN, learning, community, and just plain awesome scenery. I applied almost immediately, but didn't make it in. Then, eight weeks ago I got an email from ID-Steve saying that they had some people pull out and I was next on the list (yippee!). We are getting to meet the employees, learn about upcoming products like the Green Silence, meet famous people like Scott Jurek (!!! I have a picture with him, but sadly it is on my camera for which I did not bring the connection cord), talk with product designers, engage with the media and PR people, and just be runners!

So the best part so far... realizing that I am involved with a running shoe company that embraces everything I love about being a run... Having fun and being happy. Scott Jurek gave a great talk with his 10-steps to being a better runner. I forgot to take notes, but some of them included: Get specific (have a training/racing/living goal), seek balance (don't let running run your life... instead integrate!), seek satisfaction (sometimes it is hard, the goal needs to be worth the process), and (the last one, and therefore most important) keep it fun!

Well, off to breakfast... and hopefully a run later on the Pacific Crest Trail.

Brooks Running Camp Day 1

Today could have been much more awesome than it was... I was headed to Brooks Inspire Daily Running Camp '09. Since it was near Mt. Ranier and it would have taken me longer to drive to Portland, hop on a plane, fly to Seattle... you get the picture, I deigned to drive. It was supposed to be so easy. Grab running shoes, drive car up I-5 to Seattle, and hang out at Brooks Running headquarters.

Alas, I opened my eyes this morning... or more correctly, I opened one eye this morning. The other was swollen up almost closed. It was 5:45 am. I was meant to go to work for one hour and then hit the road in time for a lunchtime arrival. Instead I spent the next four hours sitting on my hands until the urgent care opened at 8:00 am, finally opting for a quick prescription for some powerful antihistamines from my doctor. But then the pharmacy didn't open until 9:00 am, and OF COURSE it takes 15 minutes to actually fill the prescription once they get it off the fax machine. Dude.

This has happened to me one other time before... nine years ago, when whatever IT is hit both eyes at the same time. But, I still wasn't sure I could drive with one eye. However, nothing was keeping me away from running camp. I have been looking forward to it for months (two to be exact)! I decided to hit the road one-eyed and just see how it went.

It went fine, but now I was so late! I was meant to be at Brooks HQ North of Seattle by 1:00 pm and I was worried about holding up (or missing) the group shuttle to Crystal Mountain. Worse, I couldn't figure who to call to tell them what had happened (yikes). So, I went straight to the resort which meant that I missed seeing all the cool production lines, the hall of fame, meeting Karl and Carl (see video below... my favorite one, but there are a ton others), and hanging with other IDers along the beautiful drive through the Mt. Ranier wilderness. Very sad....

Now I am just waiting for everybody to get here... but in the meantime I took a little "walk" to the top of Crystal Mountain. It was less of a walk up/down, than a climb up/scree-slide down. And I didn't make it all the way to the top because it was very muddy and snowy and menacing-cloudy. I'm sure I'll have plenty more opportunities (me thinks).... oh, hope they get here soon!

Bright Ideas with a Latin theme.

It's time for the latest edition of "Wouldn't it be cool..."

I'm going to focus on friends (and a friend of a friend, a foaf if you will) who turned a WITBC into a reality that benefits others (and not just increase the level of coolness in the world... though they certainly do that).

The first shout-out goes to my beloved friends from Boulder, Tate and Paola. Paola is a professional Latin dancer and Tate is a sometimes business/marketing/PR guy with a penchant for professional triathlon (a slashy!). They decided not too long ago to produce a latin dance showcase called En Fuego Evolution. It's an extraordinary array of latin dance performed by talented performers living in and around Boulder. It'll be the best $20 you spend this year. To read more about what Tate and Paola are up to, check out the creators page.

My second shout-out goes to a friend of my friend Molly. I always knew that she surrounded herself with smart, creative and incredibly motivated people (feeling very lucky that she considers me a friend..... Hah!). But she is currently traveling through Latin America with the Central America Foundation (CAF). Her friend, Kelley started the charity to bring educational opportunity and medical resources to Central American kids. Check out the CAF projects page to see how you might help... some of the things they are looking for as simple as stethoscopes. And, if you are feeling a little wonderlust and want to try an alternative vacation, apply to volunteer for one of their trips!

And finally...The "Woudn't it Be Cool..." Award for embracing this motto for your whole life, goes to my friend Lauren in the Peace Corps. Not only for being un-PC in the PC, but also for riding the entire Rim Rock Trail in Moab, UT, competing in Ironman Triathlon, and previously teaching elementary school (no small task). Anywho, for this chica, it wasn't enough to just dedicate three years of her life to charity and poverty... she had to kick it up a notch. She is involved with the Friends of Ecuador charity that is run by Peace Corps volunteers. Their big project right now is GADraffle... at $1.50 a ticket... it is used to send girls to high school. Seems weird to have to pay for something that we just assume happens for us!

So, there you are. I've just had so many people telling me lately about the things they have gotten themselves into that I wanted to share the awesomeness. These folks give new meaning to the term "slashies".

Run in an ellipse...

My inability to manage the elliptical machine is well-documented (see previous post). My legs are just too long to get a meaningful workout. And me on an elliptical probably looks like a giraffe trying to ride a tricycle. It's just wrong.

But, then I spied the Precor AMT off in a corner of the cardio room, facing a concrete pillar, and looking like just another cardio machine. Aside: In order to make indoor training bearable, I jump from machine to machine for 10-15 minutes at a time... and I had not tried/seen this one before. It looked like a cross between a stair-stepper and an elliptical. And when I started up on it, it felt as if I was bounding up stairs. I grasped the hand-poles and as I sped up my cadence, something crazy happened.... my stride switched from a bouncy stair-step to an almost run. The closest an elliptical has ever gotten to mimicking an actual stride!

Now it wasn’t perfect, the “stride” was a shortened, jogging version of my stride, but it was something. And it had me working hard. The only problem... I was working hard on the lowest resistance! I can’t imagine what weaker runners have to do to get full extensions (or maybe I am delusional and also one of the “weaker” runners now). Either way, it felt really great to get my heart rate over 120 and feel the burn in my quads. Runners — tell your gym to get one of these.

Despite all, I couldn’t resist running for 10 minutes on the treadmill. My PF is coming along. I’m not tentative to step on it anymore, so I am not favoring that leg and bollixing my right leg in the process. But, there is still more pain and discomfort than I would like and I am not about to run more than 20 minutes to find out if the pain “goes away”.

This is very instructive for everybody. We all know that we have to take a “rest week”. Or for some, there is an “off season”. And with big races, there comes a time of “taper”. All these have one thing in common with injury... adrenaline junkies, stop your engines. I’m talking about the gapping hole in your schedule that used to be filled with long runs, big bike rides, and hard workouts. So what happens to you during that time? What do you do? I was talking about this with Meghan while she was digging her boney elbows in to my calf muscle. When you take out an intergral part of your life, say like running. Weird things start to happen. Habits, good and bad, take root.

How my life has changed in the last three weeks since the PF took over my life:

1) Alternative forms of exercise. Elliptical trainer. My stride is not elliptical. I also tried aqua jogging as a last resort. I cannot aqua jog. I am not coordinated enough. Somehow, my legs always get out of sync with my arms. How I stay upright when I run is a mystery. And I don’t float, even with the belt. I need the floaty belt and the floaty shoes.  My answer: more biking and swimming!  I am a triathlete after all.

2) Even before all that stretching, I was already pretty flexible... So, with no running, I picked up my yoga practice again. Should never have stopped. Namaste

3) I’m pretty scatter-brained with out my daily adrenaline. I started replacing it with even more coffee. And that was bad. Now I am on a daily coffee limit, no ifs, ands or buts.

4) Twitter is addictive. When nothing is on TV, and I am standing on my slant board for an hour... I pick up the phone and twitter-tweet to my hearts content. Tweet-tweet.

5) My apartment is dirty. It has not been cleaned in three weeks. I have a mud clump just inside my back door on the kitchen floor that has been there for 2 weeks and 6 days (from working in the garden).

6) I will call this visual entertainment: movies, TV, youtube, grass-growing (more like tomatoes... but similar speed), people. I just stopped and watched. I didn’t do anything else. Scary. I had visions of my future as a couch potato and it wasn’t pretty.

7) I cook a lot. Crazy stuff, too. The emu egg fritatta (I’ll have to blog about that one later), the spaghetti and falafel balls, chocolate chips on my salad, red salad (everything is red, even the lettuce... think strawberries, craisins, tomato, red pepper, raspberry vinagrette). Yum.

Emu egg!

Recap: ix-nay on the aqua-jogging-hay. Yoga, good. Coffee... let’s go with “under control”. Twitter, I’ve got to have one addiction.   Apartment: I am going room-by-room. So the mud clump is still there, but the bathroom is sparkling. Less TV. I’ve kept it to the Colbert Report and reruns of the Ace of Cakes.  Amazing what you can do with fondant.  I love food.  And that is all why it is a good thing I will be back to running soon... did 30-minutes EZ yesterday!

Follow up: Duck Bill Thrill

I told you about limping to the finish line at the Duck Bill Thrill, not following one of my personal rules (stop when it REALLY hurts), bending to my pride, etc. Since that race, I have run very little. I have iced my plantar fascia (PF) at least three-five times a day. I stretch whenever I think of it (and that is a lot because it hurts all the time). I've stood on my slant board for hours. I've done self-massage, massage therapy, sports training, aqua-jogging, PT, and the podiatrist (gasp!). Long and short: It's getting better, thanks to a cortisone shot (my first one ever, ouch!), massage from Meghan, and a new PT torture device called ASTYM.  But, I've dedicated about two hours a day to the act of healing. So the act of blogging wasn't happening (obviously). Be thankful. All I would have talked about was my PF, every gory detail.

But now..... it is getting better! And my spirits are partially restored. I might even get to run at running camp in two weeks (why would you want to run at running camp —ahem?). Running camp, you say?!

Aside: Let me explain. Having run seven (and the most recent) of my 15 years of running in Brooks Adrenaline GTS (all the way back to #5), I applied for and was accepted into their Inspire Daily Program, a collection of athletes that span the running spectrum. A group of people dedicated to spreading the word about the awesomeness of running every day (hope I live up to). Anywho, as a member of the ID program, I entered a lottery to go to the inaugural Brooks Inspire Daily (ID) running camp at Crystal Mountain near the base of Mt. Ranier at the beginning of March (pre-PF). I didn’t get in at the time. But, sometime in between successfully running a half-marathon at Wildflower with minimal pain and the reinjuring at Duck Bill Thrill, there was a second round of lottery-ing in which I got accepted. I think I ran(!) to the mailbox within half an hour with my check — how excited I was.

Well, I’ve been stressing every since the race three weeks ago... but at least now I know I will be able to run a little and hike a lot if needs be (fine by me, as long as I am moving).

With all that sitting and icing time, I had a few minutes to put together a movie of video clips from the Duck Bill Thrill (Check out my crazy limp at the end) that were taken with my new iFlip (and then cut and pasted in iMovie).

Enjoy!