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Ice Age training is still pretty spotty but I have still managed to get in a few quality runs. This week I did back to back 12 milers on the trails. Both runs really went well and even though I ran pretty much the same course both days, there was a big difference in the trail conditions. Saturday was dry and dusty, Sunday was rainy and muddy. Good clean fun!

I was a little tired towards the end of my run today but I still managed to finish fairly strong and only about 6 minutes slower than yesterday. With the muddy conditions I am very pleased with my finishing time.

The warmer temperatures make the trails still look like fall.

It's a tough march up that hill, especially when muddy,
but it's really fun bombing back down it!

I was amazed at how bright orange the leaves were today.
This is a really pretty area of the trail

Because it rained all night there was no shortage of standing water or muddy areas

This creek bed was dry most all of last year.
It's not flowing, but it's a start.

There really is sort of a trail here. They did some clearing this fall which
created a big open dirt area / mud pit.

This trail area provides a good combination of mostly flat areas where you can really get some speed going of you choose to do so, and several challenging hills that will leave you gasping for air on the way up and praying not to fall on the way down.

Below is an elevation comparison between my 12 mile run and the first 25 miles of the Ice Age 50K from last year.

12 mile trail run

25 miles of Ice Age 50K

I believe that they are fairly comparable other than not so many flat areas in the Ice Age. 

This weekend was a great test of endurance before I participate in the Psycho Wycho Run Toto Run 20 miler in a couple of weeks. It is one of the toughest courses that I have ever run. It is a 10 mile loop that you choose to run from 1 - 3 laps. I am going to run two laps (20 miles) because I don't think I am ready to run another 50K right now. Especially on this course!

All in all it was a very solid training weekend. I am trying to focus on good recovery habits such as stretching and rolling. We have also started to shorten up our core workouts a little and add in some yoga for the last 15 minutes.

At the end of the day, you can't hardly beat a nice long meditative run on through the rain and mud out on the trails.

Signs of a good time!

Focus

I am putting a focus on fitness again. I have been running very little lately. Partially due to a nagging cold and congestion, and partially due to the work / life balance being out of whack again. Luckily I have started back with my early morning core fitness group on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; and now the gym is offering a boot camp class on Monday and Wednesday evenings. Yeah, I may be a little obsessive at times, but now that I have the first week's soreness behind me, it should all be loads of fun!

Last week I had a couple of short and early road runs just trying to ease back into things, then I hit the trails on Saturday afternoon. I bought some new trail shoes, Mountain Masochist 2, so I had to give them a spin. I ended up doing 6 miles out on the trails and had a great time.

I missed a lot of the colors, but the trails are still beautiful right now...almost picture perfect!

I initially planned to take it easy and avoid the hills, but halfway through I was still feeling good so I took the hilly route on the way back.You cannot see them here, but off to the left out of the picture were a couple of deer that watched me as I took this picture.

I took these pictures with my phone and the zoom isn't real great. The deer was about 100 yards away, I have him circled but it's still pretty tough to see it. He is hiding behind the tree, you can barely make out his head to the right and his rear end the the left.

Some areas of the trail are still calf to knee high with grasses and weeds. This time as I was cruising along and found something a little sharper than the average weed.

That's about the extent of things now. My plan is to run the Ice Age 50 miler in May and maybe  a 50K sometime in the very early spring before that. Beyond that, I really have nothing planned.

How is your training going? Any big races on the horizon?

Building a Strong Foundation

Looking back at last weeks Ice Age Trail 50K I think that there are three key factors that helped me complete this race.

First, I was under trained. It's easy to over-train and be tired going into an event. I was plagued with bouts of painful plantar fasciitis and had to take a couple of full weeks off from training earlier this month. My longest run going into this race was 22 miles. I felt good after the 22 miler which gave me confidence that I could go another 9 miles to complete the race.

Secondly, feeling good after my long runs rather than completely drained was another big part of my strategy. I slowed things down and incorporated a run / walk strategy. I removed the pressure of pace (mostly) from my training regimen and concentrated on building strength and endurance.

Finally and most importantly, I focused on building a strong foundation for core and strength. I know that I have mentioned this before, but I truly believe that this was physically what got me through my first 50K. Not only just finishing , but finishing strong and feeling good.

Since February I have been meeting up with a group three times per week for about an hour of some good core exercises. I try to change it up every few weeks for variety and add or subtract an exercise if it seems too easy, or even too complicated.

Here is our workout plan and I have also included a demonstration video for some of the exercises.

• Warm up by jumping rope for 1 minute. (great cardio jump start, if you have not jumped rope for awhile, give this a shot!)
• Forward lunges, alternating legs for 1 minute. We generally do this with weights in our hands, this is optional, you can work up to it.
• Reverse lunges, alternating legs for 1 minute.
• Squats - 1 minute. We started out using weights originally with the squats, we now do them without weights but hold the squat position for 10 - 15 seconds at times. Sometimes we have a little contest for some fun to see who can hold it the longest. This is awesome work for the quads, great for hilly runs!
• Push ups - nothing fancy, just do your max push ups. I personally can do about 30 on my good days. Some of the others in my group can do a few more.
• Flutter Kicks - 1 minute (it's great if you can do the full minute, if you have to stop a few seconds and continue that's ok too.)
• V-ups - I tell everyone that the goal is to do 30 and more if you can. Here is a quick video on how to do a V-up. Note: My form is not nearly as good as shown in this video.

• Russian Twists - 1 minute. Some members of our group do this with a weight in their hands.
• Reptile Push-ups - No time limit, just do as many as you can. Demonstration video below.

• Full Body Crunch - our goal is to do 30 or more of these.

• Bicycle Crunches - 1 minute
• Standard Plank - 60 - 70 seconds.
• Side Plank Rotation - Our current goal is to do 20 reps on each side. 

• Oblique Crunches - 1 minute on each side
• Plank with leg lifts - we raise each leg for a 10 second count and have worked up to 5 reps on each side.

• Stability Ball Leg Raises - goal is 30 + reps.

• Stability Ball Bridges - I don't have a completely accurate video of this one, we actually add a step where we roll the ball out to an reverse plank type position after the bridge. We do 30 reps of this exercise.

• Stability Ball Jacknife - 30 reps.

That's the end of round one, we do this entire routine twice. We do shorten up the second round for sake of time by reducing the Russian Twists, flutter kicks, and bicycles to 30 seconds rather than a full minute. This workout generally takes us about an hour and 10 minutes. This includes a water break here and there. Sometimes I try to push it and decrease the intervals between exercises. Sometimes we are a little slow transitioning to the the next exercise, speeding it up definitely increases the difficulty of the entire workout.

Disclaimer : Completing these exercises is difficult and certainly not for everyone. This workout is simply a conglomeration of exercises that I have put together from previous workouts and research over the last few months.

Coregasm!?

Back at the end of February I mentioned that I was doing some core strength training with a group of friends and posted what we were doing. The nice thing is that we are still meeting three times a week and getting stronger. I have also been looking at changing things up a bit.

One of our goals is to get better at pushups. Unfortunately none of us has really seen much growth in this area. Last week we changed up the order of our exercised a bit and instead of the second set of push ups being "traditional style", they are "reptile push ups". We also have a lot of planks in our workout, the first video is a variation on a side plank that requires some extra balance.

I will offer a video demonstration below, but before I do, I wanted to give you a little background.

I couple of months ago I stumbled across bodyrock.tv. They have some interesting workout titles, but they are serious about being in shape.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but their videos may leave you speechless.

They do so many different variations on core work that I couldn't find the original "reptile push up", so here is a different video offering you a slightly more subdued idea of what it is.

In all seriousness, if you are looking for some quick, intense workouts, check out bodyrock.tv. These workouts certainly are not for everyone, but maybe it can get you going in the right direction.

Getting Old?

We are half way through March and I am already dealing with injuries. I started the year off with the plantar fasciitis, and I am still dealing with it off and on. I haven't done anything more than some extra stretching up until now. Today I purchased a night wrap that is supposed to help treat mild cases, hopefully this will take care of it.

I believe that the pain in my heel has caused me to change the way I run. This has resulted in some hip problems on the left side. The pain kept me from running this past weekend so I made a visit to the local chiropractor. 

I am not a believer in chiropractic medicine but I am trying it with an open mind. I live in a small town so I know the chiropractor fairly well, he is a nice guy,  hopefully he will heal me. He spent just enough time to give me some electroshock treatment, twist and pull me a little and put me into his torture device.

This looks like something right out of one of the Hostel movies!

Oh yes...lastly, I was working out with our morning core group and must not have been warmed up and stretched out enough. I went down into a lunge and felt and heard my hip flexor pop. So I really couldn't do much for lunges or our plank leg lifts on that side for the rest of the workout.

All of these little nagging injuries seem to be adding up lately. Maybe I should back off a little but running and working out are my stress relievers and really elevate my attitude to a new level.

I did manage to go on my first bike ride of the year today. We rode 17 miles and it felt great to get out there. We didn't ride very fast but it's early in the year, the speed will come with time.

Training Notes

A little late on this post but I wrapped up a good week last week so I thought I would share some training notes.

First and possibly most importantly I have been lucky enough to find some training partners with my strength and core work. The first couple of weeks it was just me and one other person but now I have convinced (notice the word con in convinced?) two others to join us. Now 4 may even become 5, not bad for meeting up at 5:20am 3 days a week. The core workouts have been lasting about an hour, depending on how much slacking between exercises we do. I have been trying to change things up a bit every couple of weeks to keep us challenged, here is our current workout.

Each exercise is done for one full minute unless otherwise noted, we go through two rounds of this series.

1. Forward weighted lunges - alternating legs
2. Reverse weighted lunges - alternating legs
3. Squats - with a couple of 5-10 second holds and at time some jumps.
4. Flutter kicks
5. V- ups (30 reps)
6. Russian Twists
7. Push ups (good form until you can't do any more)
8. Full Body Crunches (30 reps)
9. Push ups (yes again, and at least half what you did the first time)
10. Bicycle crunches
11. Plank
12. Side Plank
13. Side Plank
14. Oblique Crunch
15. Oblique Crunch
16. Plank with leg lifts (10 count on each leg) x 4
17. Bridge on the ball (hip thrusts)
18. Bridge on the ball (rolling ball towards and away)
19. Ball lifts with ankles (30 reps)
20. Crunches on the ball

The great thing about our group is that we are each stronger in some areas than others and can push each other when things get tough. I have already noticed that my running endurance and posture have improved since I started consistently doing this for the last 3 weeks.

I was also able put in some solid miles last week. Although I was only able to run 3 times I still managed to finish the week up with just over 37 miles including 11 on  Saturday and 13 on Sunday. 

I have been practicing a run / walk strategy for the ultra, I think it will be good. Also working on getting my nutrition dialed in. This weekend I tried a PowerBar as fuel for each run. I had the cookies and cream and the peanut butter flavors, they are both pretty decent and pack over 200 calories per bar. 

Speaking of nutrition, I just received my order of the new Strawberry-Vanilla Hammer Perpetuem. Can't wait to give it a try!

Perpetuem has worked well for me in the past

That's about the extent of things for now. On my Sunday run I had the pleasure of scaring up 9 turkeys and 2 deer. I have been very blessed with the places I have been able to run. You may be tired of looking at these but I love running through this area and continue to explore new areas.