Anniversary Fun and Ragnar Trail Snow Basin

First off a little physique comp news - it ain't happening.

Basically the costs (membership, show, fake tans, polygraph) and the pain (ingrown hairs OUCH!) along with the other guy dropping out as well have made it so there really isn't a point for me at this moment. Also I don't think anybody else really cares... so... yeah.

As part of the preparation for that, I have been taking protein after workouts or at night, and I think that has made a big difference, along with actual weights workouts beyond my normal trail runs, BJJ, and Yoga.

I think the workouts and the protein have helped in running, recovery, and BJJ, so I want to try to continue that!

Some Results

We spent a couple of days at the Sundial Lodge at the Canyons Resort in Park City. Beautiful place, and some really nice trails as well. The above picture was from one of the two trail runs we had while we were there. Our first run was a great 7.6 mile run on Friday, then the next morning before check out we had a nice 4.3 mile run.

Here's our video from our trail runs on our Anniversary! (Hi-Def is better!)

We also went swimming for a little bit before the storms chased us away - but I haven't finished that video yet! I wish I had a pool and hot tub after EVERY run - it felt so amazing!

There were some more good morning runs between the Anniversary and the Ragnar Trail Snow Basin - I gotta say I REALLY like the Asics Ard Shorty shorts I have!

Probably the hardest thing about the Ragnar Trail Relay for me - was the two days leading up to it. Every year my company has a HUGE international Convention, so I spent 12 hours on Wednesday and Thursday on my feet on the sole-sucking (ha) floors of the Salt Palace.

I enjoyed my assignment - I got to help people stretch out, work out, and even led a couple of '10 minute' (they turned into 40!!) yoga classes. But it still made for some crazy foot leg and hip soreness!

I was runner number 3, which meant I would be running my first leg on the 'hard' leg, the Red loop. 4.8 miles with a 1200 foot climb in the first 2 miles, then a bombing downhill to the exchange.

Off I go! I love my shorty shorts!

Basically a pretty normal run for me, but just a little bit shorter! Watch tracked me at 4.9 miles in 50:25. Not bad! After that run I felt pretty good, except for some lingering soreness that was the same soreness I had before I ran!

So I tried some tennis ball therapy:

I don't know that it helped too much. My second run was the Yellow loop - 6.3 beautiful night miles that I very much enjoyed. Yellow was my favorite because it was on actual trails more than the dirt access roads. I had a bit of a boost because halfway through somebody caught me. Keeping this guy from catching me sped me up a lot, but he inevitably passed me, and I pushed it to try to catch him, so I had a fast time of 1:02:51. THEN I continued on a second attempt at the red loop when I continued through running with my wife on her late night leg. Total for the night, 11.3 miles in 2 hours and 6 minutes!

Finally the morning came and I ran the Green Loop - the easy leg at Sunrise! My legs were tired and my wife said "So you think you can do this in 30 minutes?" and I said "No way - more like closer to 40!" But once I got moving I decided to push it and see how I could do. 3.6 miles in 32:43... not bad after convention and over 15 miles the night before!

I put together a long video of the relay exchanges - it was a good learning video! Lots of ways to improve.


But here it is

Next up - Experiencing some of the Wasatch 100 course, and my first ascent of Utah's Mount Timpanogos!! (with video)

Ragnar Wasatch Back 2013!

I was not planning on doing Ragnar this year.

It's kind of where I started with running... and I have some really fond memories of it.

But it's expensive, it takes a lot of time, and most of the time I ended up doing a lot of planning/captaining stuff for it!

Last year we had a great time with TWELVE family members all running together and sharing a great, but long experience. It took us over 37 hours to complete the relay.

After the race, when we started discussions of a family team for this year, I didn't feel like I wanted to deal with that, and nobody else did either, so we didn't buy a team.

Fast forward to a while back when a coworker decided to drop out of our Corporate team, and WHAM I was in a team that finished in 29 hours last year, taking 102nd out of almost 1200 teams!

A bit different than the support-your-runner-and-don't-worry-about-pace approach I've been part of before!

This team is STRONG and FAST!

Also in previous Ragnars I have always been in van 2. This year I was assigned leg 6, the last leg of Van 1. First time to the start line!!

Fun to see the actual start and cheer on our runner. Go RevRun!

My first leg went up a little, and then DOWN Avon Pass. Very enjoyable leg, mostly because it was a fairly fast downhill on a DIRT road! I really don't like pavement much!!

Yeah... That was a fun leg. Although I realized with a mile left to go that I had forgotten to wear my race bib/number!! So my final mile was a little slower as I was trying to text and call my team so that we wouldn't get in trouble... luckily nobody cared, so I should have just RUN and had a better total. As it was, 6.9 miles in 52:45, is a time I'm happy with.

Our van blazed through those first legs, cutting 30 minutes out of our estimated time, so Van 2 started ahead of schedule! Luckily they were ready to go!

We hopped in the van and headed along the route to a Subway where most everybody (not me) got a sandwich. I ate HAM and Veggies! YUM!

We then drove up to Snow Basin for Bathroom Breaks and wait for Van2 to complete their first legs. They killed it and added a couple minutes to our lead.

I also was able to do my Mayurasana with the wife of a coworker who HATES when I do Mayurasana. Made my day. :)

We left our first runner and headed down the road to the next exchange because the line of cars heading out down Trapper's Loop was ridiculous. It was a good idea, but we probably could have waited a LITTLE longer. Lots of runners made it to the bottom before their vans and had to wait! This was probably the worst point of congestion I noticed the whole race.

As we waited, the 'nighttime rules' started, so we added reflective gear while we waited.

As it got darker and our team was still totally kicking butt on their legs, it finally REALLY turned to night and it was my turn to run the long 8.2 miles up through Morgan to East Canyon Reservoir.

 

 

8.2 miles in 1:13:34 - I could probably improve on that - but I'm very happy with it. I KNOW that my crazy Tuesday Morning runs of Vertical Ridiculousness made a huge difference. I passed over 75 people on this leg, and was only passed by 2 guys who I dragged along for the first 3 miles of the race before they caught me. Then we stuck together for just over a mile with some nice pacing and conversation! :)

About the time I couldn't keep up with those guys anymore my breathing was having some allergy issues. Grr. I don't know if I can put the blame on that or what... but like I said I'm still happy!

We then drove to Oakley to rest at the next exchange - I kept our driver awake with my crazy ramblings, and ended up not being able to move off the middle bench of our van, where I got almost 2.5 hours of sleep.

Our final legs began at almost 5:00 AM. The moon (above picture) looked very cool 30 minutes before that! Hard to capture with all the runner lights and excitement of the exchange. Amazing that so many people were sleeping.

Our van killed it on their final legs until our last leg, mine, where I felt I did great finishing my 2.1 miles in just over 15 minutes.

Then I had Bacon with Butter. Extra Bacon due to the no pancakes. The butter was a bit much, but SO good!

Bacon and Butter for Breakfast! Yum!

Then we waited at the finish line for our van one to finish.

They were fast and we ran across the finish line just before 11:15 - so our official time was 26 hours and 57 minutes!

Victory Pizza!

Our just-sub-27 hour Results put us at 1st place in our division, 11th in the overall Mixed category, and 35th out of ALL the teams that ran! ( almost 1400!)

Another Ragnar is in the books! It's an interesting thing to think about for me. A lot of the people I run with now absolutely despise Ragnar. I understand where they are coming from, but it's very different from what we do and really targets a different demographic.

I'm thankful that I was able to see my brother run Ragnars and some Marathon's way back in 2006 finally getting on a team for 2010 and training for it - and then just continuing in fitness from there. That first Ragnar was a big turning point in my life because look how important fitness is now! So whether or not I'll do a Ragnar again (and if I'm still here we may try to improve on this years time!!) I am thankful for what it did for me.

It opened my eyes!

Morning Runs

I try to go with a group of Davis County runners early mornings at least once a week.

They meet at 5:30 AM at various places and range around the trails - and it's awesome.

Seriously how often can you run for 2 hours in the morning getting around 10 miles usually and still be to work on time?

Awesome.

Even though they are HARD.

On Tuesday morning we ran up what is affectionately known as 'The Wrong %*$(%* Trail!' to the wrong side of 'Chinscraper' (which is a part of the Wasatch 100 Trail race)

It's the wrong trail because if you continue straight (heading behind Fernwood Castle - yes I would buy that if I had the money!!) you are on the RIGHT trail for the Wasatch 100!

And just like the elevation profile on that chinscraper link, starting around mile 5, that's the type of vertical gain on this trail too!

Still it's a beautiful trail - and we had a lot of fun. Took us 2.5 hours to got 6.2 miles!

One of my hiker friends was amazed we were able to do it that fast.

Sunrise!

Tiptoe through the Tulips!

The Cabin!

Almost lost my hat to the wind!

Heading back down

As a result of this ... my quads are STILL killing me. They hurt to touch! Tomorrow I'm going to run again even though it hurts because I need to work it out.

I've done Yoga and BJJ and weights and bodyweight stuff - my legs still work fine, they just hurt!

BJJ is going great. I can't believe I've been doing it for over a year now! My elbow is still a bit funky from an armbar a month or so ago - and I keep slightly re-tweaking it, so I'm trying to be careful with it. We are also getting some new people out to do BJJ - today we had 6 people!

Next week is Ragnar. The Week after that is Spartan Beast.

I need to take a vacation - but even without one planned I'm very much looking forward to the rest of this summer!

I AM going to have to be shaving everything throughout the summer to make sure I don't have any ingrown hairs on my chest and arms and legs... I'm NOT looking forward to that very much.

But who knows - maybe we'll like it!

A Look Back - 2012 In Review!

It really is amazing to look back a year ago and think "WOW... that really wasn't that long ago!"

But so much happened last year - it was a great year!

In January we started our expedition into PRIMAL living - a slightly modified version of the Paleo or Caveman lifestyle - and we have loved it! Not much happened in January other than that... I didn't even keep the blog updated or anything! Total Running miles tracked that month - 5.02!

In February I did a bunch of Crossfit along with Primal living - and much to the annoyance of pretty much everybody due to the freakin number of pictures I took in it... I accomplished the Peacock pose!
Here's the first ever - in me underwears!

Total running mileage increased (which isn't hard from 5 sheesh!) to 14.4.

In March I again increased my running miles to a Marathon for the month (26.3) including a 2nd place finish in a St. Patty's day 10k. I think I can do better!

I tell ya I do this everywhere now!

 

In April I turned 33 year old,

We got Giant Tires for workouts;

The family trail runs started to pick up momentum and frequency,

AND my wife and I finally got a picture of us doing Astavakrasana together!

While the frequency had increased, the total mileage for April only went up a little, to 26.9

May was a fantastic month. I went to BJJ for the first time with Micah, and that has been one of the experiences I'm most glad I started this year!
The Running with Ed Relay was a disaster, we were not the slowest team at all - but they had us scheduled late, so we were the very last one on the course, and they took down most of the exchanges before we even got there! Still had fun running with the family, but I kind of don't think we'll be doing that one again!

 After RWE we had a GREAT vacation up in Park City where we were reminded of the awesomeness of Ninja Warrior - with nonstop American Ninja Warrior. I even got some Devil Staircase in after a trip to the swimming pool:

I still need to find a good place to train that more! Total running in May - 48.3 miles!

June had two big events that were a TON of fun this year.
First up was our first Dirty Dash - Such a blast to do this with my beautiful wife and these pictures even won us an entry into the Fall Dirty Dash!


Our 'official' pics were so awesome that we had to buy them too... we look great!

Next up in June was the Ragnar! Clan McRagnar was a lot of fun! (I still like pirate themes more!)

 

I like my Hulihee Beard! It's great!
Total running miles for June - 54.6!

July was another busy month. I FINALLY finished my pullup bar in my backyard (and look forward to using it more when it gets warmer again!)

I ran up to Flag Rock for the first time AND got top ten in the Flag Rock Run 7 mile trail race

 The family trail runs got even MORE frequent, even though the reason for them (Ragnar) was done

We even got my family to do some crazy HIIT workouts with our new tires and sledgehammers and pull up bar!

 Dang this is making me miss summer!

July was a fantastic month. It was my record month for monthly distance so far with just one more mile than June - 55.7 miles. A big part was preparing for the Flag Rock run, and then a run my brothers and my dad and I did at the end of the month after witness amazing performances at the finish of the Speedgoat 50k. That was a beautiful 11 mile run along the peaks of the mountains past some way cool lakes. I need to do that trail again this year!

At the beginning of August I realized how awesome the influence of constant fitness has been - I mean I am shocked at the differences from 2007 (left) to 2012 (right)

 We thought we were in shape!
Also in August we got dirty again with Cahoots! GO MUD PIRATES!! We were awesome super-heroes.

I hope that company continues improving - they have a good idea going - required team cooperation! The lines were a bit silly. (Okay... they were ridiculous!)
August marked the beginning of more constant BJJ exposure for me - I finally overcame more of my trepidation at just grappling - getting in there and LOSING! (99% of the time anyway... that's starting to change a little!)
Family trail runs continued, but with vacations and general end-of-summer busyness, they tapered off some, so I ended up with 32.7 miles for the month. Lots of other fit activities though, so it was a fantastic month.

We started September off good by getting people to join us for more HIIT workouts in our backyard and others' back yards as well!

We also ramped up on Tough Mudder training - usually it was just me and my buddy Justin who came to these - and in the end it really helped us out!

There was still a decent amount of trails run, and we felt (and looked) fantastic!

September also added the 3rd mud run of the year to my resume - Dirty Dash take TWO. This time they turned the course around and it was a great time. Next time we do it we'll make sure to get a big group - THAT one is a fun group run.

 

We recorded a few videos during BJJ in September which were very useful - but after those the guy who was doing it had to stop so we lost our camera man.
The very end of September had one of my absolute favorite adventures of the year. The Narrows in ZIONS!! I want to go back there very badly!

 14.7 miles total for the month - but almost half of that was technically hiking the Narrows. SO COOL.

October bumped the mileage up again mostly from TWO events alone.
The first was TOUGH MUDDER. I mentioned before that some of my HIIT trainings and workouts I'd done were in preparation for this event. I did NOT want to fall on Funky Monkey (I didn't) and I wanted to make it up Everest (I did!). Honestly the workouts were definitely useful - Justin and I were a LOT more prepared than the other guys.

It was a lot of fun - but we could have done it in half the time. I also was not a fan of the last obstacle - ElectroShock Therapy. I'm not currently planning on doing a Mudder again for a while!

One week after Tough Mudder - the other event happened. My brother ran the Pony Express 50 miler, we were his crew and his pacers. I ended up running 19 miles straight and definitely had over 20 miles total running back and forth that day! It was a lot of fun to crew for him - and we probably will again this year!

Finally - for Halloween I was Wolverine. That's always a fun costume. I didn't go to work like this:

Although that might have been fun! October Total Mileage: 43.3


In November Micah gave me my first BJJ Gi (older used one,s sure, but I still almost cried!)
The weather stayed fantastic, and we were able to still keep heading up into the mountains, and it was hot!

We ran in the annual Thanksgiving Turkey Leg - I improved my time a little bit to 21:33 and achieved my goal of beating my younger brother!

The day after Thanksgiving was my first run (since the Half Pregnant Half Marathon in 2011!) with the (now called) Wasatch Mountain Wranglers! The name was actually decided on during this run, which came to be known as the Black Friday Bushwhack! Somehow the trail got lost! We still had fun.

November finished with 27.2 miles - still more than March and April!


That Black Friday run kind of set the tone for December - I actually made it to the tops of some peaks running with those crazy fellas. Grandeur Peak, View Benchmark, Mount Olympus, Lake Mountain - all were a lot of fun, and the first 4 summits possibly ever for me! Crazy fun and you can scroll down a bit if you want to see pics and the entries!
I finished out December with a few more wintery runs up to Elephant Rock in Mueller Park

and along the BST to Fernwood Castle on New Years Eve:

Total Mileage for December - 4th Highest month with 48.7 miles! It was a LOT more fun than I thought could be had running around in the snow as well. It's amazing how beautiful it is!

I just realized that I didn't mention yoga much in this recap... which is a shame because without Yoga I don't think I could have made it through this year. I have been able to very consistently attend Yoga 2 to 3 times a week almost the entire year and it has made a HUGE difference. I don't know that I 'progressed' too much, or as much as I thought I wanted to with specific poses or anything - but that's not really the point of yoga! I am still a little disappointed that I didn't spend as much time learning handstands as I thought I would!

2012 was a fantastic year. Runkeeper shows me at 402 miles for the year - and that's just what I tracked - I know there were a few runs I didn't track, and I'm okay with that. I think 2012 was a great springboard into this year and I am SUPER excited for what is to come this year.

In some ways I'm still figuring out what I WANT, but I'll share my plans and thoughts in the next entry!

Onward Two Thousand Thirteen!!!