Andorra

After a brief stint in Barcelona I've been here in Andorra for the last several days with a great crew of folks- Jared, Mindy, Teresa, Steve, Roch, Catherine, and my dad Craig.  We're all getting pretty excited for the 106 mi Ronda dels Cims that starts Friday AM.   The 44k ft of climbing and 44k ft of descending in addition to an unprecedented amount of snow this year will ensure a good long struggle on surely the toughest run I've ever attempted.  With fairly limited internet access I'll limit my post to the following images for now.

Course reconnaissance. Inexplicably right on the GPS track.

 "What the f*%@ was that?" - Roch Horton.  Barkley style.

The Grandalla: the national flower.

Roch and Jared.

Big climb up the other side to Alt de la Capa.

Refugi les Fonts.  Storm rolling in.

The crew.

Craig Lewis, above Soldeu.

Getting excited.

Snowfield at about 147k into the race.

Trans-Zion Female FKT and the BoSho Marathon.

On Sunday, April 21st Bethany ran 8:32:10 for the Trans-Zion route, running from the East entrance to Lee's Pass at the Kolob entrance.  This represents a 37 minute improvement on the previous record of 9:09 set by Krissy Moehl last year.   Above is a video compilation of the adventure with a new iPhone recorded banjo/mandolin composition by yours truly that I think can give you a better sense of the day than a narrative account.  This route is an approx. 48 mile spectacular and varied traverse (my GPS had us at 49.2 total) across the length of Zion National Park that in my experience is rivaled only by the Grand Canyon double crossing in terms of sheer beauty.  Bethany started at 7am at the East Entrance Trailhead.  I met her at the Grotto which she hit in 1:40, then making her way up the West Rim trail.  She hit the West Rim Trailhead at around 4:30 flat where we had stashed some resupplies (water jugs, some gels).  Hop Valley Trailhead at approx. 6:00 flat.  Bethany ran smoothly and controlled throughout without any major lows despite temps reaching 80 degrees mid-day and getting pretty low on fluids over the last 5 miles.  Although I myself only ran the last approx. 38 miles with her I was pretty worked and dehydrated by the end.  Yep, she's pretty tough...

In other (and less exciting) news, I won the BoSho marathon the weekend prior in 3:54, having been back running for 7 weeks.  This is a classic local event on the trails I regularly train on (a robust 6,800ft of elevation gain over the 26.2 miles) and I was psyched to take part and to put down a solid aerobic effort - even the first 30 minutes of which exceeded anything I've done in the past 6 months in terms of intensity - without injury (knock on wood).  Full results here.

CPT

Ardent fans of the blog LEWIS! (1) will clearly recall that April 1st marks A Day For New Beginnings, A Day for Chocolate Peanut Butter Treat.  See this former post for recipe and details.  In sum, Chocolate Peanut Butter Treat (CPT) TM is an amazing product that has taken the sport of trail running to levels heretofore unseen.  The complexity involved in repetitively putting one foot in front of the other in slow, shuffling fashion calls for not only wicking, wind-proof, maximally-minimal, reflective, minimally-maximal, inordinately-expensive gear and footwear but complicated nutritional strategies that are multifaceted, multimodal, and metabolically multidimensional.   CPT's TM  unique and patented formulation of chocolate (any kind), peanut butter (crunchy), and oats (optional) (2) delivers a precise balance of sugar and fat that catapults your aerobic performance to new levels- whether that be ultrarunning or 'shoeing.   It's been 9 years of consuming this game-changing endurance food on a daily to twice daily basis with middling results and I'm happy to announce that I've been selected this year to represent Chocolate Peanut Butter Treat Corporation (CPT) TM as a sponsored athlete.

Testimonials:

Ben- "I've put on 7-8 lbs since I started regularly incorporating CPTTM into my diet and have only gotten slightly slower over this period of time.  Thanks CPTTM !"

Bethany- "It seems like every time I turn around my husband is eating this stuff.  I don't really understand it."

The Illustrious Bob Simmons- "Ben made me try this one time.  It was OK I guess.  It kind of tasted like peanut butter."

Burt Reynolds- "What?"

                                                                                                                             

                                                                                     (1) All 3 of you.

                                                                                     (2) Extra butter and salt formulations available.

Burt Reynolds, ultrarunner, CPT consumer.

Wire descent.

Barkley training: Jared with splinters in his eyeball. CPT deficiency.

Antelope Island.

Descent off Twins (shoreline)

Wire Wednesday with Chad, Bethany, Pete, Matt.

AM on Wire with Erik, Greg, Pete, Jason

On Blogging

A belated thanks to the MRC crew for their recent posts nominating best Utah ultrarunning blogs and including me!  And a thank you as well to those who read this blog from time to time.  (See the MRC post here and my winning 'Aquatic Antisocial' piece here.)

I've found there to be an inverse correlation between the amount of actual running I do and the quantity and quality of the writing I do, blog and otherwise (case in point, the post above was written while rehabilitating a stress fracture).  As such, hoping to capitalize on my strengths I may just devote 2013 entirely to writing about running without actually doing any (1).

With this great fame and fortune I've done some reflecting on my motivations for maintaining a blog, which I plan on writing about here:

Singing my own praises, smarmy remarks, frank provocation, mitigation of death anxiety and braggadocio. 

Blogging about blogging: in today's hyper-self-conscious world of social media and simulacrum this reflexive turn is a requisite (unavoidable?) milestone and one that I will pass through here, albeit with some characteristic struggling.  Because the self-referential bent is not only a partial and ineffective disguise of the primary motivation but, moreover, through its attempt to control its own reception becomes an even more potent emblem of that motivation.

In keeping with the self-referential thematics, here is a former blog post exploring the exploration of these issues and the limitations thereof in Charlie Kaufman's film Synechdoche, New York.

In unrelated but immediately relevant news, this coming weekend marks Jared Campbell's second annual Running Up for Air event on Grandeur Peak.  Unfortunately we are out of town and unable to participate but please consider supporting this worthy cause for more breathable air in the Wasatch Front!



(1) snowshoe running, or 'shoeing excepted.

Soldier's Hollow with Ada in tow.

Nordic goddess, Bethany Strongmansdottir

Bryce.

Ibid.

Slickrock running.

Bryce. 

Pretty easy to get lost...

V7.

in the style of Jackson Pollock.

Achilles injury has me exploring new sports...

'Shoeing

The great thing about snowshoe running is that you get all the aerobic benefits of climbing as you would on backcountry ski gear but then, rather than float effortlessly and aesthetically down a slope making buttery powder turns you can slowly and laboriously trudge backwards in your own plunging steps maintaining a heaving and lactate-inducing aerobic effort.

It seems that even owning a pair of snowshoes in this ski-driven athletic climate provokes scoffs and commentary.

Which is why I've made it my new mission to promote 'shoeing with every forthcoming blog post, regardless of season or snow.  Come summer I plan on adhering some rubber tips onto the teeth of my Atlas running showshoes so as to continue enjoying the multitude of advantages to be had.

 'SHOE!

Red Pine Portrait

Aesthetic Inversion.

Turtleneck.

Neat snow, Lookout Peak.

Foothills.

Mt. Wire descent.

Neat snow.

Frosty.

Above Desolation Lake.

Mill D.

Beautiful day.

Red blob?

Ashokan Farewell.

Zion Traverse 2012

This past weekend I traveled down to Zion NP with Jason Thompson, Pete Stoughton, Matt Hart, Meghan Hicks, and Brian Kamm to run the stunning 48 mile Zion traverse (total was slightly over 50 miles for us given a couple scenic detours).  We ran west to east, from Lee's Pass in Kolob to the East Rim.   There was no rush: the priority for the day was just enjoying the terrain and the company and, as such, we started in the dark and finished in the dark. Thanks to Jay Aldous' generosity we stayed in style in a luxury suite just outside of the park which was a much preferable situation post-run to camping in the cold.  Here's a video of our adventure (soundtrack is another LEWIS! composition: guitar and banjo recorded on my iPhone).

2012 The North Face 50 mile Championships

In her typical reticent and luddite fashion Bethany has resisted writing a race report, again placing me in the odd position of being the sole author of a blog titled with her namesake blabbing about running performances much less deserving of online broadcasting.  This has never seemed to inhibit me before however.

Bethany placed 9th overall in the elite womens' field in 7:20.   I believe her placement was even higher among the field of Elite Women Mothers.  I paced her for the last half of the run.  It was an interesting experience seeing the front end of a competitive female field.   As far as I can tell, this unique microcosm is marked by fierce intensity and complete absence of any form of verbal exchange or eye-contact, even in the face of repeated invitations.  It was also interesting to pace Bethany.  I've paced some bad-ass runners this year, including Jared Campbell at Hardrock and Matt Hart at the Bear and I've been struck in both of these circumstances by the peculiar suggestibility characterized by the exhausted and depleted mind.  In the later stages of Hardrock I would make a soft suggestion to Jared that "why don't we run a little here" and he would emit a low moan and lurch forward in a automatic and reflexive, if delirious, trot- this despite no clear immediate gain to be had in doing so.  I was thus surprised when this tactic appeared to fail me repeatedly in the last half of TNF 50 with Bethany, apparently now an immovable object.  This struck me as eerily similar to the response she sometimes has to other helpful 'suggestions' I periodically offer around the home.  

"Why don't we run a little bit here," I would say as the uphill mellowed to a runnable grade.  No response.  Glancing over there was only clenching of her jaw and periodic involuntary and paralyzing lower extremity cramps.  Despite this, she continued to remain a nice and gentle person throughout- another notable accomplishment.

Equally astounding was Gary Gellin's stellar 9th place finish in the deeply competitive men's field.  Gary is an intense dude.  He would fly through aid stations like a wolverine, spewing used bottles a good 30 feet away from the ferocious blur of his small body.  As if this feat of stamina were not enough he was then able to scamper about apparently unaffected in the rain and muck for hours after the race socializing and generally mixing it up.    

This race gets a fair amount of hype, pays out 10,000 dolla bills  to the winners, and has developed into an internationally competitive event.  Given this context, watching the event unfold was quite surprising.  Granted, last minute course changes due to extreme weather made for a difficult situation and likely trimmed the number of available volunteers.  And certainly, there are organizational challenges involved in running what appeared to be 30 sponsored races simultaneously (clearly raising the question as to whether this ambition makes sense in the first place given the caliber of the 50 mile field.)  But the lack of intelligible course markings and direction was astounding and was directly responsible for a good deal of carnage up front.  See discussions on iRunFar in this regard.  Watching the front runners speed through the first aid station at Tennessee Valley I saw several of the elite competitors ask for their drop bag only to have someone gesture over to a completely disorganized pile of bags sitting outside in the rain and mud, as though it would have been a reasonable thing at that point for the front runner to spend a good 5-10 minutes rooting around in the muck through hundreds of identical appearing drop bags to find their Gu Chomps.  (In fact, Bethany never found her drop bag here.)  

Below are some photos from the weekend, several courtesy of Brett Rivers as well as The Weather Channel.   Thanks to Victor Ballesteros for the hospitality and the eminently functional and aesthetic Victory Bags.  And thanks to Gary and Holly for picking us up and transporting us around.  

 Victory Bag!    4am morning of at Victor's home.

Coffee time.

Courtesy of iRunFar Twitter feed and The Weather Channel, respectively.

Courtesy of Brett Rivers' Facebook album.

Courtesy of Brett Rivers' Facebook Album.

Post Race Festivities: Bethany, Me, Victor, Gary, Holly.