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Story Time with GSisler

2010-09-20T09:27:00.001-07:00

4 down, none to go…
Done, 100% done, 400 miles run in 11 weeks and there isn’t another race coming up in 3 weeks. I’m done, and I’m ecstatic to be done. 400 miles is a long way. For a frame of reference, it’s the distance from San Francisco to Tahoe, and then back again. For those of you on the east coast, it’s New York to Boston and then back again. I have never finished a 100 miler and been more relieved to be done than I was at the end of the Wasatch 100. I would have been crushed if I hadn’t finished this one. Having already run 300 miles, to not finish the last of the four would have been a huge, huge blow, both physically and mentally. I would have felt like I hadn’t accomplished the goal that I had set out to do, and that would have sucked. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure at some point I would have looked back on the summer where I ran 3 – 100 milers in 8 weeks, but that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to do the Grand Slam of Ultra Running and that meant finishing Western States, Vermont, Leadville and Wasatch. That’s what was on my mind as I tried, and failed, to fall asleep the night before Wasatch. What if I failed?
I had my A-team of crew/pacers lined up for this one (not that my other groups weren’t the A-team, but this threesome has run more miles with me than anyone else) as Jon, Shibby, and Shawna were all going to be there for the finale. Each year Shibby, Jon and I sign up for a different 100 mile run so that the other two can come and crew and then you don’t have to drag anyone else around for 24 hours (well in this case nearly 28 hours) of sleep deprivation and my complaining. It’s your own little crew/pacing team that knows you well. Shawna was there because she’s married to me, and she kind of had to be there. Plus, our anniversary was the day after the race finished and nothing says happy first anniversary like a 100 mile run! This is also the same crew that was there with me when I ran the Tahoe 100 mile race, I mean the Tahoe 76. That one didn’t end well as I managed to get hyponatremia and I actually have no recollection of the last 10 miles, or 6 hours of that race. I was hoping not to repeat the fun and games of that race.
The Wasatch 100 race is a tough, tough race. The other races of the Grand Slam allow you 30 hours to finish, this race you get 36 hours to finish. It’s not because the volunteers like to hang out for an extra 6 hours, it’s because the race is that much harder. Wasatch has 26,882 ft of climbing and 26,131 ft. of descending over technical terrain at altitudes between 4,880 ft and 10,450 ft. The race that’s the closest to this one of the four is the Western States, and that one “only” has 18,040 ft. of climbing and 21,970 ft. of decent. In other words, Wasatch is a real ass-kicker. Geoff Roes, who set the course record in the Western States 100 in 15:07, also has the course record in this race but it took him 18:30, so using him as a proxy, this race is 20% harder. That meant that I should be finishing the race close to my goal time of 29:20. Why 29:20? I really wanted to finish all 4 races with a total time of fewer than 100 hours. Why 100 hours? I have no idea. It was a total time I had picked before the Western States (and shared with a couple of people who told me I was an idiot) and now that I might actually have a chance to go sub 100 hours, I figured why not. My most important goal was to finish and I was going to run with my heart rate under 150, but at the same time, sub 100 was still bouncing around in the back of my empty head. OK, one page of your life that you can’t get back, on to the race report.
It was cold at the start, really, really cold. The type of cold where you extremities jump into places that they don’t belong to try and stay warm. With my voice a couple of octaves higher than normal, I start of running with John Catts and we begin the trudge up, up and away. We stay together for about 6 miles before he runs off at his pace, as I slowly walk up the hill, keeping my heart-rate below 150. This was the section of the race where I was the most annoyed out of any of the four races. There was a guy in front of me who was running with music. Now I don’t care if you are running with music, I run with music, but I also run with headphones. This guy was basically running with an iPod boom box and had his music blaring for everyone around him to hear. The problem is, his taste in music sucked. He had some Indian chanting song (literally Indians chanting), some country music and God Bless America going for the 15-20 minutes that I was running along behind him. I wished I was faster and could run past him, but I wasn’t, and I wished he was faster and he could run away, but he wasn’t. My thinking is if you’re going to listen to music, WEAR HEADHPHONES. No one cares what songs you like, but I don’t want to have to listen to your music, especially if (in my opinion) you have crappy taste in music. At the very least listen to something that has a fast tempo that will get me to climb faster. Not a country song about a guy raping his dog and shooting his wife. I was tempted to grab his iPod and throw it down the ravine, or if I had an extra pair of headphones, offer them to him. Alas, I did neither and just silently (well not completely) complained that he must have forgotten his headphones. It was also at this point that I realized I was old.
The start of the race is hard. You start at an elevation of 4,880 ft. and for the first 3.58 miles you have more or less rolling hills as you only pick up 400 ft. in elevation. Then, things start to get fun. From 3.58 to 9.60 miles you climb 4,000 ft in 6 miles. There’s a section called Chinscraper that got its name because it’s so steep that you can scrape your chin on the rocks above you as you go! This part of the course description warns you not to dislodge rocks and send them tumbling below onto other runners. How much would that suck? You’re 8 miles into a race and get clocked by a rock from a runner above you? This was also one of many cold points in the race as it started to snow. I don’t do well in snow or the cold. Actually now that I think about it, I also don’t really too well in the heat. I’m kind of a wimp when it comes to temperature extremes, but it also gives me a chance to complain, and I like to complain. From an adventure race in the past, I now have some “issues” in the cold and now when it gets cold, my extremities go numb. I don’t think it’s a bad thing per se; it’s just something that I have to deal with. So, here I am, 9 miles into the race and I can’t feel my feet, or my hands, despite the fact that I’m wearing gloves (and shoes). The good news is that I can kick whatever I want and not feel it, the bad news is that once my feet thaw out; I’m really, going to feel what I kicked. I hit the top of Chinscraper summit and then had a fun, long gradual 9 mile descent into Francis Peak and the fist aid station at mile 18.76. I had managed to catch up to Catts which was fun because now I had someone to run with for the next couple of miles.
Wasatch 100 is a beautiful course. Out of the four race courses that I ran it is the most beautiful. It’s also the most technical, which creates a bit of a problem because every time I tried to look around and see how pretty it was, I would trip and yell at myself for checking out the view. Then, I’d stop running to look at the view, and I’d yell at myself for stopping. It created a bit of a dilemma for me. Nothing really fun or exciting happened as I ran along from Francis Peak to Big Mountain at mile 39.4. The course is relentless, it looks like an EKG monitor where you are either going up, or down, and there isn’t really a time where you can just cruise and let the miles pass by. The sun had come up by now and I was warm, but never hot and at the Big Mountain aid station, I got my first pacer and I also got to change into my Cadillac Shoes as I moved out of the Inov8 x-Talon 212’s and into the Roclite 295s. I was now prepared to kick anything in my way.
SHIBBY!!! The last time I was supposed to run with Shibby, I had more or less passed out on my feet before I had reached him, so he was in charge of the earlier section, just to make sure he got to run. He was going to run with me from 39.4 to Lambs Canyon at 53.13. I had reached Big Mountain faster than I guessed, which meant we were going to get to do this section without a headlamp. I really like having pacers when I’m feeling good because I have someone to talk to, and I like to talk. I don’t get to see Shibby as much as I used to, so the trails is our time to catch up. I don’t know what we talked about, probably the ontological status of mathematical entities, his sex life, or the difference between Chinese and Japanese, but it’s always fun and the mileage flew by. It took me 3:13 to run the 14 miles and before I knew it, I had been handed off to Jon who was in charge of getting me through the next 8.53 miles.
I had only managed to pre-run one section of the course, and it was this section, but I was glad that I had Jon with me. The section from Lambs Canyon to Millcreek has 3,114 of climbing and 1,519 of descending, so just like the rest of the race course, it’s up, up, up, and then down. The climb out of Lamb’s Canyon gains 1,500 ft in 2.1 miles. I had grabbed a headlamp, but we were hopeful that I could get up and over the top and to Millcreek before it was dark saving me from having to run a technical section at night. Setting a good pace, we were able to get up and over the top and back down before it got dark, which was great. We then had a long walk into the aid station. Since the last 3 miles were all cement, and I was walking at a pace just over 4mph, I decided to walk it in. I still had 38 miles to go and it didn’t make sense to me to hammer my quads to run along the cement. Luckily, Jon agreed with me and I cruised into the 62 mile aid station in 15:29, or almost exactly 4mph.
Two things changed at Millcreek, my clothing and my pacer. As it was now 8:30 at night and was cooling down again, I put on a bunch of warmer clothing. I had to keep reminding myself that my goal was to finish. If I got hypothermia and dropped, I would have been pissed at myself because with a crew, there really isn’t an excuse to be too cold in a race. So, warmly bundled up, Shawna and I headed out. I love my wife. I mean seriously, who lets their husband run 100 miles the day before their first anniversary and beyond that, runs 14 of the miles with him? That’s not normal on either front and it’s probably why we’re together. (That and the fact that she has 2 majors in psychology and is able to understand what goes on in my head, scary). Granted, it helps that she runs ultras as well, but still.
We head off for our 14 mile section in the dark from Millcreek to Brighton Lodge. Man, is it cold. Shawna is dressed like we’re heading to the North Pole to tell Santa what we want for Christmas. I’m surprised she was actually able to move with all of the clothing she’s wearing. I have on a short sleeve shirt, arm warmers, a long sleeve shirt, a vest, gloves and a beanie and when the wind blows, I’m still cold. The combination of the cold, darkness and technical terrain is tough enough, but then my old, old friend the sleep monster comes to visit. I hate him, and there’s nothing that you can do to fight him unless you have caffeine, or a bed. I didn’t have any caffeine for his first visit, and I wasn’t going to go to sleep, so all that you can do is lumber along, slapping yourself in the face, pulling out nose hairs (makes your eyes water, hard to fall asleep if your eyes are watering, plus it gets rid of my longer nose hairs) and anything else you can do to stay awake. This section takes about an hour longer (the 14 miles takes 4 hours to complete) than we would have guessed as life turns into a poorly working flip book right before your eyes. You stumble along and then all the sudden, things jump ahead of where they were. Much like the flip book, you skip parts and your vision isn’t running smoothly as you start to fall asleep. The rock that was 10 ft. in front of you is now suddenly right there as you fell asleep for the last two steps. It’s not a fun feeling, but until you hit an aid station, there’s nothing you can do. You can try to talk, but it’s a one sided conversation when the other party is falling asleep, and you’d be amazed at how hard you can slap yourself and not even wake up! I make it to Desolation Lake aid station, down some coke and a Mountain Dew; feel better and continue on until we make it into the Brighton Aid station.
I had been warned about the evil, evil Brighton Aid Station where the warmth of the lodge and the beds scream at you to sit down and relax. “Come on over here, relax, take a nap, we’re friendly” they say to you. Problem is that once you sit down, you can never get up again. Many races have ended in the comfort of the Brighton Aid station. Knowing this, and knowing how sleepy I was, I tried to get in and out of the aid station as fast as I could (plus, Matt had heckled me via e-mail). I still ended up spending 12 minutes in Brighton as I changed shoes, added ANOTHER layer of clothing, ate the world’s most wonderful hash-brown (why they had hash-browns, no idea, but man, that was yummy) drank some Red Bull (it’s a lie, it doesn’t give you wings) and got out of there. Jon had taken over again and we have 25 miles left to run, but nearly 9 hours to finish, if I’m going to make my goal. Once again, stupidly, I think it’s in the bag! Back to my Oprah theory, if she can run 25 miles in 6 hours, so can I.
6 hours later, I’m thinking how much I hate Oprah and her stupid 6 hour marathon. I’ve just finished what in my mind, is the hardest 18 miles of my life and I still have 7 miles left to go. During this time, I got into a fight with the sleep monster again (fixed by a friendly pacer who had a can of Monster Energy Drink. I have no idea what is in it, but I’m pretty sure it’s not legal), lost my appetite (luckily Jon kept yelling at me to eat) and have once again climbed up and over 10,000 ft. before being subjected to the steepest, most technical descent of my life. This section was so steep; I would have felt more comfortable in skis than I did in my running shoes. Jon and I have also discussed several time if this section really sucks as much as I think it does, or, after 375 miles are my legs revolting against me. He puts this section on a par with the last 25 miles of Angeles Crest; I put this section on a par with a trip to the dentist to get a root canal. I’m not sure who is right, but I do know I’m complaining a ton and Jon keeps running further and further ahead of me so he can’t hear me complain. My motto is if I’m in pain, someone should hear about it, I think it’s a good motto, Jon doesn’t. Luckily, despite all my bitching and moaning, I’m still moving fast enough that I can walk the last 7 miles and still finish before my goal time.
Some people like to finish strong... I’m not one of them, at least not in this race. I set out with one goal in mind and that was to finish the Grand Slam of Ultra running. I didn’t care if it took me 120 hours, or 100 hours, as long as I finished. I didn’t care if I got the first, second or no buckle as long as I finished. I certainly didn’t care what place I came in and as I walked the last 7 miles, with my feet hurting, my knees hurting and just about every joint/tendon hurting in my body, I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited and relieved to be done even with people running past me as I slowly meandered to the finish. Thanks to the help of (Shawna, Tony, Michelle, Dr. Callister, Bob (the human), Chip, Cary, Mark, Bob (the dog), Shawna again, Jon, and Shibby) I managed to do something that so far only 209 people have done. It was a little weird to cross the finish line as I expected to be really proud and excited by what I had done (maybe that will come later), but instead I was met with an enormous amount of gratitude for the people that helped me and an enormous amount of relief to be done. 27:53 minutes after this race started and 97:27 after it all began, I was done.

Deep Thoughts by GSisler

2010-08-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

3 down, 1 to go…

Holy crap, that’s nuts. “All” that I have to do is run 100 miles 14 days from now (who’s counting) and I’m going to be done with the Grand Slam. I can’t tell you how excited I’m going to be if I’m able to finish the Wasatch 100, and I also can’t tell you how nervous I am about running the Wasatch. Why they decided that it would be a good idea to end the Grand Slam with a race that climbs 26,882ft. is a mystery to me, but they thought it was a good idea. Western State, VT and Leadville all have 30 hour cut-off times; Wasatch has a 36 hour cut-off. The record holder at Western States, Geoff Roes, ran it in 15:07:04, his record setting time at Wasatch, 18:30:55, or nearly 3.5 hours slower. So, using the same logic, I should be able to finish the Wasatch in 27:30, which would make me ecstatic! OK, on to the Leadville report, writing about Wasatch is scaring me.

I have never been as nervous about a race as I was heading into Leadville. To say that my recovery and training between VT and Leadville was poor would be an understatement. When I finished VT, I couldn’t walk, and it was more than just the normal my legs are sore inability to walk, I had strained a muscle in the back of my knee and it hurt to straighten the leg. I spent a ton of time in my PT’s office (Dr. Alex Callister 415-395-9955, he’s a magic man if you live in the city) stretching, massaging and trying to loosen up not only the knee, but also my calf. After a couple of weeks, I was hoping that I could run and start to stretch things out, when “trail work” bit me in the ass.

For three of the 100 milers, you have to do 8 hours of “volunteer” work on the trail. I put “volunteer” in quotes because it’s not really “volunteer” work if you have to do it. Plus, I like using quotation marks. The trail work that I was doing was clearing out trees so that people who were hiking could have a pretty view (what?!?). I don’t really think that this counts as trail work, since the trees were healthy, but this is what the forest ranger wanted us to do. Anyway, I managed to get some bad; bad poison oak, as did 6 out of the 8 people who were working on the trail. It was so bad that I went to go see my Dr. for the first time EVER (I don’t like Doctors, sorry Geno). He’s a friendly guy and when I left I had some steroids (not the good kind), some cream, and some pills to help me sleep at night. Needless to say, I lost another week of training as I focused on not scratching my skin off. When I finally got out to Colorado it had been 4 weeks since I had taken a running step, and one week later, I was going to try and run 100 miles on a knee/calf combo that I did not have a lot of faith in.

I got out to Colorado a week early as the Leadville 100 has a LOW elevation of 9,200 feet and climbs up to Hope Pass at 12,620ft. Plus, I got to hang out in Colorado with Cary, Mark, Bob and Amy for a week which is a lot of fun, so why wouldn’t I go out there early? It’s not the hilliest 100 miler as it climbs 15,600 ft over the full 100 miles and the majority of that is in 4 big climbs, but I’m used to being at 0ft, not 10,000 ft. Since the race-course is an out and back, I’d have to climb over Hope Pass at 12,620 ft. 2x and Sugarloaf Pass 2x as well. Just a few days before the race, I put my Heart Rate monitor on, and it was 20 beats higher than where it is if I’m at sea level. I was hoping that the week up at altitude would help me some, but I definitely would not be acclimatized after a week. If you are curious what it feels like, go and walk up a flight of stairs, but breathe through a straw, good time.

On to the race, as I’ve wasted a page of peoples time!

Leadville has its own unique challenges, beyond the fact that it’s at altitude. Probably the biggest issue for me was that there were only 11 aid stations for the entire race AND that going over Hope Pass, the weather can be a big, big issue. Vermont had nearly 30 aid stations and Western States has over 20 so it was going to take me a long time (up to 13.5 miles) between the aid stations. I decided to use my normal 2-20oz water bottles and I was hoping that it would be enough to get me through. Mark and Cary were going to be my crew/pacer and it was AWESOME to have them out there. Cary has run Leadville 2x and Mark has run it once so they both knew what I was in for.

The race started at 4am with a blast from a shot-gun, who does that? Scared the crap out of me, shot my heart rate to 200, and now I had to run 100 miles with crap in my pants. (Just kidding about the crap, but why use a shot-gun? It’s 4am?!? How about just saying go, or something not as loud as a shot gun?) I had worked my way near the front of the field as I knew that after about 5 miles, you get onto single-track and I didn’t want to be stuck behind everyone since the starting field was 647 people, but I still was going to use my Heart Rate as a base and not let it go above 150. Sure enough, about a half mile into the run, I was above 150 and was the ONLY person walking. 647 people and when I looked around (I could look because I was walking) I was the only one. A nice lady came over to me and said that I was smart to be walking, that it would pay off for me in the long term. Of course, she said this as she went running by me, so my thought was if it’s so smart, why aren’t you walking with me? The first 13.5 miles took me 2:33 minutes as I struggled, even on the flat/downhill to keep my Heart Rate below 150. Out of the 647 starters, I was in 486^th place, so once again, I’d be running from the back of the field. I grabbed some more Gu’s and Clif Products from Cary and headed out for the next 10 mile section to the Fish Hatchery.

This is the section that I got mad at Charlie, Jon and Shawna. Now, they weren’t actually there in person, they were there in my head (scary place) and kept popping up on my shoulder, telling me to slow down. At one point, I took a swing at Charlie as he reminded me (much like he did at Silver State) that the goal was to finish, and no one ever wins a race in the first 25 miles, but a lot of people lose them. When he wasn’t yelling at me to listen to my Heart Rate, Jon or Shawna would pop up and remind me. It was good to have them along, but they were annoying. The 10 mile section was my first time up and over Sugarloaf Pass and what I noticed was that while I was moving slowly, I wasn’t getting passed by many people when I was walking. I took this as a good sign, because I can always descend, it’s just the climbing and flat stuff that I suck at. This 10 mile run to the Fish Hatchery took me 2:15, so despite the fact that I thought I was moving slowly, I had covered the first 23.5 miles in 4:49, so I was moving better than I would have guessed. I saw Cary again at the Fish Hatchery and then knew I wouldn’t see her until Twin Lakes, or about 40 miles into the race. She asked me about my legs and I was happy to report, that so far so good. Pre-race I was really, really scared that I was going to run for the first 30 miles and then have to walk the last 70, but up to this point, it was all good.

Fish Hatchery to Half Moon is around 7 miles and predominantly downhill from the Fish Hatchery Aid station which was really nice. I was able to stretch out the legs and run at a decent clip. By now, the weather had started to warm up, and the scenery running in Colorado is just beautiful. The legs were feeling good, and as I hit the Half-moon aid station and continued on to Twin Lakes, everything was going better than I would have ever hoped. Not having run/recovered as I would have liked to since the Vermont 100, if you had told me I would have hit the 40 mile mark in 8:14, I would have been ecstatic. I saw Cary again who once again fueled me up and gave me a jacket to wear up and over Hope Pass, just in case the weather turned bad.

The section from Twin lakes, mile 39.5 to Winfield, mile 50 is brutal. As you leave Twin Lakes, you hit the low point of the race at 9,200 ft. but then, by mile 45 you are at 12,620 ft. Needless to say, it’s steep, really, really steep. This part of the race profile looks like an EKG monitor. When I first came out to Colorado, we had hiked this section, so I would know what was coming for the race, but hiking it for “fun” and hiking it in the race are two different things. I think that this is the steepest, most prolonged climb that I have ever done in an ultra. It was also while climbing up Hope Pass that I saw the race leader, Anton Krupicka, who was just absolutely CRUSHING the race. I’ve never seen anyone with a bigger lead in an ultra than him. Unfortunately, he didn’t finish, but if you want to read a good race report from someone who appears to be very humble while being a great, great runner:

http://wpblogs.runningtimes.com/blogs/antonkrupicka/2010/08/23/leadville-100-race-report/

It was a long, slow climb up to the Hope Pass aid station, and I was very happy to get there. Mainly because it meant I was almost half way done, but also because they have lamas. They use Lamas to get all of the supplies up to the top of the mountain, and lamas are big, friendly furry horses (not like mean horses that scare me). One of them was shaved, like you would do to a poodle and made me laugh, so that was fun. On the way back, I’d tried to get Mark to take a photo of the lamas, but he would only yell at me and threaten to have a lama spit on me if I didn’t get going (more on that later). It’s also BEAUTFIUL at the top of Hope Pass, and that’s part of the reason that I do these runs. I get to see some really, really cool scenery and even though I was in the middle of a race, I paused to look around and take it in.

Once I finally hit Hope Pass, it was time for the descent and I was happy. I probably passed 20-30 people in the 5 mile descent. I have no idea why, but the descents are my friend. Over and over people warn me to slow down, that I’ll burn out my thighs, etc. but I just can’t run downhill slowly. I arrived at Winfield Aid station, half way done in 11:36:28 where I met up with Mark for the first time. The Leadville race is the only race that I have done where the pacers are allowed to carry stuff for you, which is AWESOME. I basically had my own lamas, so if the weather went bad, I was covered. I had made a decision on the way up Hope Pass the first time that I was going to use trekking poles and a backpack on the way back the second time to hopefully help my legs with the climb (this was an awful idea as my triceps haven’t been used since high-school and about 2 miles up the mountain, my arms gave out and I had to give the poles back to Mark). So I had my water-bottles and my cold weather gear in Mark’s pack and off we went, to climb Hope Pass for the second time.

Running with Mark is a lot of fun. He’s similar to me that he likes to make fun of other people and isn’t very good at filtering his thoughts, he’s kind of like British Mark. Once it hits his mind, it then comes out his mouth, which I appreciate, but I’m sure people around us didn’t find us nearly as funny as we thought we were.

Example A: Climbing up Hope Pass for the second time and I’m not feeling very good. My stomach has started to turn (too much sugar from all the Powerade) but I know that I have to keep on eating with 50 miles still left to run. Mark runs through a variety of different Gels that he is carrying for me, and a fellow runner comments that Mark gets an A+ for pacing because of the variety of Gels. Marks reply, was that if he was really a good pacer, he’d have a variety of beers to offer me, which I think is funny because I like beer and now instead of thinking about how much pain I’m in, I’m thinking about yummy beer. Apparently, our running buddy didn’t find it funny because he gave Mark a look that said, why would you have beer with you on a run? Now, most people would realize that this guy doesn’t have a great sense of humor and we should move on, but not Mark, or me, which then prompted the next sequence of events while discussing the Vibram 5 fingers that Mark is running in. No… I’m not making this up, I wish I was, but this is exactly what was said after Mark told him that he liked running in the Vibram 5 fingers.

Random Runner: "They pinch my little guy"

Mark: "did you say 'it pinches your little guy?'"

Me “you aren't supposed to put them on your penis"

Random Runner: "I'll show you how big my little guy is" and he went storming off up the mountain.

Apparently, he didn’t find us funny, which was good because it gave Mark and me something to laugh about for the next hour and even today while writing this I cracked up. Yes, I still have the mentality of a 6 year old, but that’s a good thing when running 100 miles. I mean, who says “they pinch my little guy???” Was he talking about his pinky toe?

We make it up to the top of Hope Pass and now we get to head back down the mountain towards Twin Lakes. This point to me was the crux of the race because the largest and hardest part is now behind me. It’s also when I realize that Mark is going to make sure that I finish the race in less than 25 hours. Whenever I’d slow down, he’d yell “Giddy up!” and I was afraid that he’d beat me with a trekking pole (he never did, but he might have). At one point I asked if I could start running at the next tree, to which he then put the trekking pole in front of me (like a racing gate) and said ready, GO! And then “opened” the gate to signify that no, I had to start running then. I’m not sure why, but for some reason, my legs would always just start running, like a well trained monkey. I came back to Twin Lakes in a time of 3:21:37, which was amazing when I look back at it because the same part going the other way took me 3:21:36. Yeah… that’s consistent.

At Twin Lakes Mark and Cary switch and now I get to run with Cary. I also switch from the Inov8 X-Talon 212’s and into the Inov8 RocLite 295. It’s kind of like going from a Ferrari, to a Cadillac. The first one is a lot faster, but the second one if comfy, safe and in a collision, it would win. That was exactly my thinking as I wasn’t lifting my feet quite high enough and I was kicking a lot of rocks. As I’d kick them, I’d think Cadillac; and also was thankful that having lost most of my nails, it didn’t really matter what I kicked. So with a new dry shirt, a new pair of socks and shoes, I was off and ready to go.

Cary and I have run, walked, stumbled, etc a lot together as we were on the same adventure racing team and she knows how to pace me. She just kind of runs next to me, or ahead of me, and if I slow down too much, asks me if I think it’s a good idea to run. While Mark likes to use a stick, Cary likes to use a carrot and rewards we with walking breaks, but only if I run to a certain point. As we are returning along the same route that I have already run, I know what’s coming up. I also realize that if I can just keep going at 4mph for the rest of the way, I might be able to pull out a 25 hour run. These thoughts are HORRIBLE to have at this point in the race and yet, I’m thinking about them. I quickly try to get it out of my mine because even though I’ve run for 15 hours, I still have 10 hours to go and a lot can happen! I hit Half-moon Aid station in 1:51 or 10 minutes slower than the trip out.

Aid stations are a weird and wonderful place in ultras. I love them. You know that you are going the right direction and you know that your crew is going to be there. Seeing Mark/Cary at the aid stations is such a lift each time, and then you get more food, water, and just the energy from the people is great. Plus, Cary has this great, HUGE smile no matter what is going on, so that always cheers me up. So while I’m happy because I know I’m going the right direction and I get to see my friends, you see your fellow runners and some of them looked bad, really bad, at this point. It’s like a Mash unit out there with people sleeping on cots, vomiting, limping, etc. You’re all excited to be there, but then you see the walking dead and it reminds you that a lot can go wrong in a very short time. Luckily, and probably because I started out so slowly, I’m running nearly identical splits to my times on the way out. After leaving Half-moon I get to Fish Hatchery only 2 minutes slower than my trip out, and for the first time, I start to think that sub 25 can happen (before I thought about sub 25, but now I’m thinking that it can happen. It’s small, but there is a difference). I’m 76.5 miles into the race after 18:35 of running and this is always the point in a race, well, mile 74 is that I remind myself that if Oprah can run a marathon in under 6 hours, so can I, no matter how tired I am.

Mark picks me up at Fish Hatchery and is going to run me back to the Tabor Boat ramp, which is half-way between May Queen and the finish. The problem is that I have to climb up and over Sugar-Loaf again, and after 80 miles or running, my legs don’t really want to do that. Plus, my mind is starting to play tricks on me and I keep thinking that the moon is a headlamp wanting to pass me. The good news is that it’s a beautiful moon; the bad news is that I think it’s a headlamp, apparently on the head of the world’s largest man. I also see a polar bear run across the trail, to which Mark replies, Global Warming. I stumble my way up to the top of Sugar Loaf and as we crest the top, I get a Giddy-up! from Mark and we’re off and running. It’s really a lot of fun running at night (minus the hallucinations) as the weather is cooler and you’re running… well at night. As is the case in most ultras, once I get over the top and can start to run downhill everything is better. I get into May Queen in 2:49 (35 min slower than on the way out) and I now have 13.5 miles to the finish and 3:36 to achieve my goals.

The last 13.5 miles was great, and sucked all at the same time. The first 6.5 was with Mark and by the time he passed me off to Cary for the last 7 miles, I knew that I had sub 25 in the bag. Mark had poked and prodded me just enough to make sure that assuming that I didn’t trip, go off course or just do something dumb (which I could definitely do) I was going to make sub 25. With this knowledge in mind, Cary and I walked, we walked a lot. We actually walked the final 3 miles which was great to do. A couple of local runners were with us and when they told me that I only had 3 miles to go (with and hour left) and I knew that no matter what happened, I would make it. I didn’t care what place I came in, my feet and legs hurt and I just didn’t want to run anymore. Knowing that I could just walk the rest of the way and still finish in less than 25 hours was a very, very nice. Yes, 6-8 people passed me, but I didn’t care, plus I could just tell myself that they didn’t have another 100 miler in a few weeks. I did what I wanted to do, AND since they had all passed me, when I crossed the finish line, I was all alone for the photo, 24:39:53 J

http://www.asiorders.com/view_user_photo.asp?EVENTID=72004&ID=94300753&FROM=photos&BIB=708

Deep Thoughts by GSisler

2010-07-27T11:46:00.000-07:00

2 down, 2 to go… It’s really weird to me that I’ve run 200 miles and I’m only halfway there. I guess the good news is that each step I take from this point on means that it’s shorter to the finish than to go back to the beginning, so, I got that going for me. OK, on to the race (editor’s note; the actual race report starts over a page down from here, so you can skip this part if you want).

I flew out to Boston on Wednesday and was able to catch up with my old friends at Goldman on Thursday and grab the keys from my old boss Charlie. He was very, very, very gracious and was willing to let Chip, me and our crew stay at his AWESOME place in Woodstock. You actually run by his home 2.5 miles into the race, which is cruel and great all at the same time. We (Chip and me) had a place to stay and since I was back in Boston, we went to the Red Sox game on Thursday night. We then headed up to NH to stay with Chip and his kids and then off to VT on Friday to check in and get ready for the race.

Check-in was eventful, but not for me. I used to be the fat cool guy at these races, but with Chip there, I had brought a fatter, cooler guy to the race. Chip was my Shibby for this race. A super nice guy who lets me make fun of him while still staying my friend, why? I have no idea, but I’m just happy that people like him exist or I’d be very lonely.

I weighed in at 170 lbs. After giving up beer and eating healthy before the WS 100, I weighed in at 171 which had pissed me off. I decided that beer and whatever I wanted to eat were back on the menu. The lesson? Beer and eating crapily (another lesson, crapily is apparently not a word) helps you lose weight. It might not be in any “healthy” journals, but I have now tested it out and I can prove it. I spend 2 months cutting back on beer and eating healthy only to weigh the same as I do when I eat like crap and drink beer. Clearly, beer and Prime Rib is a weight loss program, but back to the weigh in.

Chip crushes it. He looks at my 170lbs. and says HA! I can beat that and steps up onto the scale at a manly 184. The lady goes wow… that scale must be wrong, and makes him step on it again. (That’s not true; I just thought it would be funny if she did say that). Next up for Chip, his Blood Pressure (and this part IS TRUE). Chip has high BP to begin with and tests himself regularly, but he’s healthy according to his Dr. Chip’s problem is that he panics when he sees the blood-pressure cuff coming near his arm. Next thing I know, I hear the nurse say 180/110… uh, you OK? (That’s the truth, not making this up at all). Chip then tries to explain about his high blood pressure, and how he gets nervous, etc. but she tells him that he might want to go for a walk and then come back and take the test again. Well, that doesn’t help anything!!! Now Chip’s worried that he might not even be able to start the race because his BP is so high that in 24 hours he’s going to stroke out.

So, we take a walk. Of course I’m right there to calm his nerves because if there is one thing I’m good at, it’s calming people down and not making them feel worse about the situation. Luckily, he has me there because when he goes back to the Blood Pressure Lady, his BP is all the way down to 170/90, clearly I’m a calming influence. After a lot of talking and an agreement to be careful, they decide to let him race.

Next up is the pre-race briefing where they tell us all about the race and then I get to meet up with my pacer/crew for the weekend. Due to some unlucky court cases (Berk is NOT going to jail) and a pesky thing called school (Shawna) I was left with no crew and no pacer for the race so I signed up online. The last time I signed up online for help in a race was when Scott and I were looking for a teammate for an adventure race in Maine. We ended up with a she-male (“she” had an Adams apple, was 6’2” tall and could palm a basketball). The last words I said to her were “you’re fucking useless” before our race ended shortly after that. Needless to say I was nervous about Bob. As it turns out Bob is a God, not a mythical one, but a real one. Bob has run a ton of ultras, was very similar to me in racing style/needs and basically turned the aid stations into NASCAR pit stops. I’m 100% convinced that without Bob I would not have finished in sub 24. You have now read over a page and the race hasn’t started. My bad.

Race starts and it’s hot. It’s 4am and I’m warm and I’m only wearing my Adidas Hat, Tamalpa shirt, shorts and my Inov8 shoes. That’s not a good sign for things to come. You know how people say records are meant to be broken? Well, I set a new record. Chip and I were going to run together for the beginning of the race and see how things went and if our speeds matched up we’d run together. He and I are next to each other when the gun goes off, and I would say that we were next to each other for about a minute. The last thing I remember of Chip is Chip saying “Hi Bob” (different Bob than my pacer) and when I look for Chip next he’s gone. This made me sad as they don’t allow headphones in the VT100. Why? Because you might get run over by a horse because you can’t hear the horse, or the rider, coming up behind you. Since I have an un-natural fear of horses, I was fine with that but at the same time, I now had to talk to other runners, which I don’t like doing.

My goals for this race were slightly different than the WS – 3 weeks earlier. My most important goal was to finish and be able to run again in 5 weeks. Goal #2 was sub 24, goal #3 was sub 20 and Goal #4 was sub 19:34 (my time 6 years ago). The big difference this time, vs. 6 years ago is that this time my HR couldn’t go above 150 (last time it was 160) and also, I had just run 100 miles 3 weeks earlier.

The first 15.3 miles are great. I really, really like the VT course and it’s actually a lot prettier than I remember it from the first time. There are a TON of aid stations so hydration is super easy as there are 30 aid station (about half of them un-manned) along the way so you never have run more than 5 miles before you get more food/water. 15.3 miles into the race and I’m in 96th place overall and 4:41 into the race. My pace is faster than 5mph (11:12 pace) but I feel good and I’ve obeyed all of my rules so I’m not concerned. The legs are a bit sore/heavy, but nothing out of the ordinary as all the normal trouble spot are talking to me, but not screaming. I like talking, I don’t like screaming.

Nothing exciting happens for the next 35 miles as I just kind of get into a groove and just run from station to station. It is hot, not super hot, but with the humidity, I’m sweating a TON. The heat and humidity took a lot out of people as only 55% finished the race, the second lowest finishing rate ever. I hit the first really big aid station at Camp 10 Bear (47.2 miles) in 9:31, just about at 5mph pace. Unfortunately, my knee has started to yell at me and I’ve already popped some Advil/Tylenol and the yelling has gone down to a murmur, but I have an angry knee. This is also where NASCAR Bob comes in. He has EVERYTHING I could want in the back of his car. A cooler full of ice water to douse me with, a towel, food, snacks, I start asking for random things and he has them all. Why he had a pony in the back of the car, I don’t know and why I asked for one, I also don’t know, but he had it. I left the aid station feeling alive, ready to crank and in 78th place (out of 288 starters).

That feeling lasted for about 10 minutes as the knee and the 100 miles from before really took its toll on me. Bob had said that this loop would be the key and he was right. I couldn’t keep my speed up and the 22.9 mile loop beat me up. At this point I completely forgot about any of the other goals that I had and was now focusing on how to finish and be healthy enough to run again. I could tell by the pain in the back of my knee that I could and would finish (plus, I’m a stubborn fool), but I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take post-race to recover. I have had an injury like this before; I hoped/assumed it was the same thing. My guess was that it was a strain of some sort, or tendonitis since it wasn’t a sudden pop, but a slow gradual pain. (Turns out I was right, I have a strain of my plantaris muscle and some issues with the popliteus, but I can now walk normally and almost pain free 10 days later. I should be good to go in another week). Anyway, the 22.9 miles took me just under 5 hours as my pace had slowed a full mph.

I came back into Camp 10 Bear, 70.1 miles, sleepy, sore and not fired up about the next 30 miles. Two great things happened though. 1. NASCAR Bob was there and ready to go. Having a good crew/pacer is so great in getting you out there and finishing a race. 2. A random fellow racer had a 6 pack of Red-Bull (which gives you wings and would alleviate the pressure on my knee) and some topical cream to rub on the back of my knee. The Red-Bull was a huge help, the topical cream did nothing.
Headlamps on and now in 61st place, Bob and I headed out for the next 30 miles. The 30 miles took us 7:25 minutes to finish, which reflecting back on it, I’m really, really proud of that time. To be able to run close to 4mph for that section is a tribute to my stupidity, stubbornness and Bob. My leg felt crappy, it was like having a giant claw that I couldn’t really straighten or fully bend. It was in a lot of pain whenever I would walk uphill and the only time if felt OK was when I was running flats, or downhill. I guess that’s a good thing though because it made me run more than my body wanted to. That and the second dose of Advil/Tylenol that I took helped out a lot as well. Bob, once again, was great as I just followed him along staring at his feet. I felt like I was back in an adventure race, half delirious and just following Cary/Scott/Berk/Shibby’s feet and putting one step in front of the other, over and over again.

This 30 mile section also reminded me of one of the cooler parts of ultra-marathons, the scenery. There was a HUGE lightning storm a long ways off, but the skies were clear enough that we could see for miles. Bob and I turned off the headlamps and just checked out the stars and then would see these HUGE (did I mention HUGE) lighting storms that would light up the entire sky. Super, super cool to see and luckily, I never tripped while I was walking, so that was an added bonus.

Slowly and steadily we made our way to the finish and after 22:02 and very tired, but very, very happy we finished. Finished in 39th place overall, but more importantly, and more fun, I never got passed. At each location that they take your split, they mention what place you are in, and I never hit an aid station in a worse place than the previous location. Now, this isn’t 100% accurate as people dropped so I “passed” them even though they just stopped running before me, but still kind of cool. That’s the race recap.

So, I now am done with two out of the four and trying to recover from Vermont is a lot harder than the recovery from Western States. 10 days later and the back of my knee still hurts and my toe has just gotten to the point that it’s pain free. The good news is that I have a 5 week break between these races and I should be 100% by Leadville race day. The bad news is that I have no idea how I’m going to finish Leadville and then line up for Wasatch 3 weeks later.

For those of you who care about these things, I wore the same 2 pairs of Inov8 shoes as I did at Western States. The Roclite 285 and the X-Talon 212. I ate (when not at the aid stations) Honey Stingers, Gu Chomps, and Clif Blocks. I used a lot of Nuun Tablets as well for my hydration as I don't like Heed. Stomach was great, hydration was great.

Deep Thoughts by GSisler

2010-07-13T13:45:00.000-07:00

If no one reads a blog, does it even count as a blog?
I started the Blog because Inov8 was sponsoring us and they wanted us to write up our races and talk about the gear that we were using. Well, Inov8 doesn't sponsor us anymore, but much like a crack dealer, they got me hooked on their gear after the first use, so I'm still using it and the blog goes on. My wife asked me the other day why I even write my blog if I don't tell anyone about it and I didn't really have an answer. I guess the simple answer is that at some point down the road, I might want to remember some of the stuff that I did and at least this way, I've got it all written down.

Deep Thoughts by GSisler

2010-06-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

One down, three to go. Man, that's scary. I never thought that after finishing a 100 mile run that I'd only be 25% of the way done? That's even weird to type! I now am resting and recovering as fast as I can in the hopes that by July 17th, the legs have recovered enough for me to run another 100. OK, on to the race-recap:

So, race starts. Running at a HR of 150 was a pain, but I knew if I wanted to finish this race and have any chance of doing three more, I had to be smart. When we were walking up the mountain, Charlie (a buddy of mine) turned around about 3/4 of the way up Squaw and counted 26 people behind us. We were literally in the bottom 30 people of the entire race. I kept remembering what Charlie had told me about how fun it will be to pass them all later, and I knew I had different goals than them, but at the same time, what the hell were they doing going out that fast?!? The race starts at 6,229 ft. and climbs straight up to 8,713 ft. It's a 3.5 mile climb and at the top of it, there were a LOT more people ahead of me than behind me.

Then, once you hit the top there, it's a lot of single track and rolling hills. People are just retarded going downhill in the snow. It's SNOW, it's not going to hurt you. If you fall, you fall in the snow!!! My Inov8 shoes were AWESOME. I bought the X-Talon 212 exactly for this reason and they performed awesome. I know it's dumb and I probably got lucky, but I hadn't run more than 15 miles in these shoes at any one time, but I didn't fall at all, the traction was great and I would just scamper by, people were falling right/left. As a matter of fact, the only person who passed me in the snow, was also wearing Inov8 shoes, which I thought was very funny. I was in 292nd place at Duncan Canyon (23.8 miles) so I was doing a good job of the slow/steady game-plan that I had.

I passed Charlie at Poppy Trailhead (19.6), and then saw him at the next one Duncan (23.8) and then opened up a 14 minute gap in the next 6 miles, which is a lot in that short time. I was doing a really, really good job of keeping the HR below 150. I just kept reminding myself of that. I didn't think I was doing anything too fast, or crazy, but now that I have the numbers in front of me, I was moving. I left Millers defeat (34.4) at 1:08pm and I got to last Chance (43.8) at 2:36pm so I ran those 10 miles in 1:30, or just about a 9:15 pace. Looking at the splits, that really stands out b/c those are the only sub 10min/mile splits that I did the entire race, and that was 34-44.

The next real "test" was the canyons and man... we got lucky. It was warm, but I can't imagine what people went through out there in the hot years. I LOVED all the water and took advantage of doing everything that I could to stay cool. I forget who Charlie had talked to about it, but had told him to take the time to cool off and I did. Right before Devil's thumb after you cross the river there's a creek that runs down to the river. I literally took a bath in it. I lay completely down, to the point that the cold water took my breath away, but it was worth it. I knew things were going well for me in the canyons b/c I didn't get passed by that many people while keeping my HR below 150. That never happens, most of the time it looks like I've pulled into the slow lane and people just go cruising by me, but I held my own going through the canyons. I hit Last Chance in 210th place and Devils Thumb in 215th. It's only 4 miles, but you start at 4,500 ft. drop down to 2,700 ft. and the climb BACK UP again to just over 4,000 ft. in only 4 miles. If you told me I'd go through Devils thumb and only lose 5 places, I'd have been ecstatic. Then from Devils Thumb to Michigan (the last big canyon) I actually moved UP 23 spots, the web-site is so awesome for looking at this stuff post race.

http://ws100.ultralive.net/webcast.php

I knew I was going strong in this section, but to be able to check it out and see all the splits after is fun. Ted deserves a gold star for putting the site together!!! It’s not like I'm racing against people, but I do use getting passed/not passed as a way to gauge how I'm going against other people. I have my goal and my HR, but it's helps mentally when I'm not getting passed by too many people (even though I don't care if I come in 85th, or 220th).

Once you hit Michigan Bluff, it's all downhill from there (I hate it when people say that) and as is the case most of the time, my quads were fine. I don't know why/how I got so lucky, but when things give up on me, it's not my quads, which is why I think I do well in "downhill" courses. This was also a time where I had to be careful on the HR. Several times I was cruising along, feeling good only to have my HR monitor beep at me and I had to slow down. I wasn't happy about it, but I wasn't thinking sub 24, I was thinking VT at this point. Which was good b/c without knowing it, just by keeping my 150 pace, I was starting to cut into the 24 hour time. At Michigan Bluff I was 45 minutes off the 23 hour time, but when I hit Foresthill and picked up Tony, I left the aid station at 7:33 and the 24 hour cut-off time was 7pm. So I was basically a half an hour off. Of course, while I'm looking at these cut off times I kept thinking how dumb they were b/c all I was thinking about was 4mph. The 24 hour cut-offs were amazingly accurate as I ran along, I just didn't know it at the time.

So I left Foresthill and was still feeling good and I knew this section from the training run and this is where I was going to take off. I had on a new pair of Inov8 shoes (went with the Rocklite 285's), dry socks and was ready to go. I still had the HR monitor on, and I was going to keep it below 150, but as I soon realized, it didn't matter. My HR was not going to go above 150 no matter what. So the mind was there, I thought the legs were there, but according to my HR monitor, I was no longer going to be moving fast enough for the HR to crack 150 anymore. Which was good, I could stop looking at my watch.

Running w/ Tony was really fun. It's always fun to run w/ someone, but it was all so new to Tony that it was great to share it with him. He kept commenting how cool it was and that was really refreshing. To be out there w/ someone who was doing his first night run ever, and was running the longest he had ever run reminded me why I run, so that was great to be able to share. Not a whole lot happens in that 18 mile section. I know that people say that the race is in the canyons, but if you're thinking about sub 24, or your times, I think that it happens here. You have 16 miles of cruising and then the 2 miles climb to Green Gate, which seems flat/gradual after the canyons. When I hit Green Gate, all the sudden, 24 hour was right there. The 24 hour pace is 11:40 and I was there at 11:42. Right then I decided to screw the HR (well, assuming my legs could move fast enough). I was going to try and go sub 24.

I had never run these last 20 miles before but they seemed a lot harder then I would have guessed. Of course, a lot of that is because I had just run 80 miles, but when I had looked at the race profile and the map, it seemed rolling, but nothing too brutal. It's partly why I thought I had the sub 24 in the bag at this point. In my mind, I had always thought if I leave Green Gate before midnight, then all I have to do it go 20.4 miles in 5 hours, or just over 4mph. How hard can that be?

The legs felt good (well as good as they can) and nothing really major was going on with the rest of me. The weight had been good the entire race (within 2 lbs of pre-race) and I was doing pretty well w/ the food. The only issue was that I couldn't drink any more GuBrew. Each time I took a sip, I felt like I was going to puke. I kept taking it down for as long as I could, but I gave up and decided instead to just stick with water and my salt tabs. If I started to gain any weight, then I was going to go back to the GuBrew, but not until I put on weight.

So I left Green Gate with Shawna and headed out. The next 10 miles were good, but I just couldn't move that fast. In my mind, I felt like I was going 10:00 mile pace, but every time I looked at my watch it was slower. It was definitely a case of my mind thinking one thing and my body saying screw you, but I hit Brown Bar at 2:12am and had an 8 minute gap on the 24 hour pace. Plus, I still thought the 24 hour pace was WAY off, because how the hell could it take me 2:48 to go only 10 miles.

Holy crap. The wheels didn't completely fall off, but there is NO WAY IN HELL, I finish that in sub 24 without Shawna. Who puts all those climbs in the last 10 miles of a race??? There's no need for that, there has to be a better/easier way to get to the finish line then what they make you go through. Shawna's strength is climbing. I think she might walk uphill faster then she runs flats. I told her to go ahead of me, set a pace and we just marched. She was great, and I have no doubt that if she ever wants to, she'll be able to do a 100 miler because of her walking/climbing speed. She "dropped" me a couple of times as I couldn't even walk that fast, and even when I was "running" she was walking. I remember running along, thinking I'm doing OK, and hearing Shawna behind me walking, I thought. So I asked "are you walking???" "No...." was sheepishly replied and the sound immediately changed from a walk to a run :-)

So, the last 10 miles were a battle. My IT band suddenly was giving me a lot of pain to the point that I had to stop and stretch it out and I took my first Advil of the race, hoping that could get me through. It felt like someone was stabbing me in the leg and I just couldn't move at times. The Advil didn't even help, which bummed me out because I wanted to do the full race without any Advil, but still 90 miles in is late enough that I don't think I did any damage!

I hit Highway 49 (93.5) at 3:12am, left at 3:15am and suddenly my 8 minute cushion for the 24 hour pace was gone and replaced by a 5 minute deficit, which had me motivated and confused at the same time. 6.5 miles in 1:45, piece of cake. The only problem now was that I couldn't really run downhill, or uphill so that meant no matter what, I was going slow. Then, you toss in the 2.1 mile climb from No Hands Bridge up to Robbie Point and I knew why they had the 24 hour pace set the way that they did. Again, I just sent Shawna in front, had a great view and we just climbed as fast as I could. I kept telling myself as long as I hit Robbie Point with 20 minutes or less to go that I could do it. Luckily, while the climb was slow, we hit Robbie Point at 4:34 so I had 26 minutes for the last 1.3 miles.

Thankfully, it didn't take that long and I finished it up with a ton of time to spare, a full 7 minutes. I don't like that at the finish they make the pacers run around and not finish with you. I would not have made sub 24 without Tony/Shawna, so I was kind of bummed that she couldn't run across with me. The last mile isn't even all downhill on the road like they promise you, but I managed to go just fast enough to get it all in. Now... 3 weeks of rest/recovery to get ready for VT. I have no idea how I'm going to pull that off, but we'll find out soon enough!

Deep Thoughts by GSisler

2010-05-27T09:05:00.000-07:00

Almost there... Well, not exactly, but at this point, it's close enough to know that there's nothing I can really do at this point to change things. 30 days until the first of the four-100 milers that I'm going to try to do.
The training has finally started to go well, but I'm way behind where I wish I would be. The Sonoma 50 on March 27th (which turned into the Sonoma 12 due to a calf injury) really, really put me behind the 8-ball. Up until then I was knocking out a comfortable 50km every weekend and was feeling good. The shooting pain in my calf that made me pull out of the race put an end to that, and a 6 week rest/recover program by Dr. Callister gradually got me back and ready to go. The Silver State 50 miler on May 15th gave me back some confidence as I felt good and could have run a lot further at the end, but still, a lot can go wrong in the last 50 miles of a race, I was only half way there!
Now, it's really just about getting as strong as I can mentally and physically. I really don't think that I can do a ton to improve my endurance in 5 weeks, but I do think that there's a lot I can do to mess things up. The key will be to remember that it's a lot easier to try and do to much and really screw things up then to do to little. I'd rather be under-trained and healthy, then hurt!
I just got in my shipment of Inov-8 shoes and gaiters. I figure that even if I don't run another step between now and then, 400 miles on a pair of shoes in rough rugged terrain is a lot to handle, might as well have a backup! The gaiters are a no brainer, I'm not even sure why I ran without them before. They weigh nothing, are easy to get on/off and they keep rocks out of my shoes!
This weekend is going to be a weekend to see the course. They have training runs up on the course and it will be 30 miles on Saturday, 20 miles on Sunday, and 20 miles on Monday. I think I'm just going to run the 30 and the 20 so I can avoid the drive back on Monday of Memorial Day from Tahoe. Plus, if I make it 80 miles, I've got a feeling that from that point on, the excitement of the finish line can pull me through (adrenaline can last for 6 hours right???)

Navigation Challenge Book Reviews

2010-04-06T12:45:00.001-07:00

Just a few of the reviews we've received for the Navigation Challenge books.

"Thanks for a great first book. I am using it to help teach my 10 year old about land navigation."

"Having a great time with this. Just got Vol. 2 in the mail. Will be attacking it soon."

"I've been waiting for a book like yours to come out so I can get some armchair as well as good foundational skills in. I practice in the mountains near by as well as the expansive coulees outside of my community but there is always room for improvement."

"Gwen and I started Volume 1 of the desktop challenge. Wow!! It is excellent, fun and educational. You did a lot of work. As team manager, I will have the RWG team members get this"

"Thanks for putting together such a fun winter activity! I navigate primarily in Canada with 1:50k maps, and all my nav supplies (compasses, AR tools, etc) are calibrated metric, so it took a little getting used to, but it is fun."

"Thanks for doing this. I love to keep my nav skills sharp and this is the right thing for it."

"i love the book. i use it to teach new navigators some nav techinques."

"I received the Navigation Challenge book today, wow that was fast. Haven't had a chance to study it yet but at first glance looks like a great tool. "

SF Enduro II events results

2010-03-31T14:18:00.001-07:00

Received this from Strava this week! Great news that I won the first KOM at the recent Enduro II

This was a great event but next year I'll do it on a hardtail MTB. After 5 flats on the CX bike I had to abandon due to lake of tubes, CO2 and patches.

From: Strava Support <support@strava.com>

Date: March 26, 2010 1:09:33 PM PDT

To: Mark Manning <cosworth66@yahoo.com>

Subject: SF Enduro II events results

Hi Mark,

Thank you for participating in the SF Enduro II-event on Strava. The results are in (http://www.strava.com/events/sf-enduro-ii) and we are happy to inform you that you have won the "Old railroad grade"-stage. The prize you will receive for this is 1 year free subscription (starting today), 1 Strava T-shirt and 1 pair of socks.

We have already taken care of the subscription and hope you will enjoy and use it as much as possible. For us to be able to send you your T-shirt and the socks please send us your size, color preference for the T-shirt (blue or orange) and shipping address.

Again, congratulations and keep riding on Strava.

Deep Thoughts by GSisler

2010-03-02T16:32:00.000-08:00

Stop staring at my feet. If you want to know what I'm wearing on my feet (they're Vibram 5-fingers) then ask me, but don't stare at me like a circus animal. Also, yes, I have read Born to Run, I do know about barefoot running and NO, I didn't get the Vibram's after reading the book. I've had my Vibrams for 2-3 years now and I have been injury free since! I train 1x a week in my Vibram's and I do the rest of my running in my Inov-8 shoes. So... if you want to know what I'm wearing on my feet, just ask me, but stop staring, it's rude.

Deep Thoughts by GSisler

2010-02-22T14:08:00.000-08:00

Have I mentioned how much I like rest weeks? Finally, the rest week is here and man did I need it. After three more solid weeks of training the body was starting to break down. Now, granted, it could have a lot to do with the lack of sleep, the cold, the drinking all added into the running, but I needed a break and I'm happy it's here.
Three months into things and 4 months away from the beginning of the Grand Slam and I'm very satisfied with where I am. Starting the first weekend of March I'll be up to running a 50km each Saturday with a 25km on Sunday. I decided to top out at this distance and not keep increasing it by 10% each weekend. The goal is to be able to run/recover well and I think a 50km/25km is a good enough distance to get the body ready without putting too much stress on it. Plus, I have a 50 miler at the end of March, another one in April and a final one in May before the big 4. I SHOULD have plenty of mileage under the legs, now it's just a question of staying healthy.
We'll see how it goes!

Deep Thoughts by GSisler

2010-02-02T21:08:00.000-08:00

Well, the first cycle of the new year is over and I'm tired, but excited. Three weeks of hard work, followed by a week off and now, back to the hard work. Some things that I have learned, aka, some deep thoughts.
Speed comes back a lot faster then endurance. So much easier for me to get running fast then to get out and to the long slow runs.
Running a race at a HR of 150 is very, very humbling. There are just so many times you can hear the words "on your left" before you begin to debate throwing your watch at the next person who says it to you.
Week 3 sucks. You've been going hard for two weeks and now the hardest week is looking right at you.
Week 4 is awesome. Rest is awesome. Rest might be my favorite word.
Thursdays are dirty, dirty days. Lifting the legs and then doing hills sprints is a dirty, dirty day. I used to think that Monday's were the worst day of the week, but not anymore. Monday is a rest day (see my thoughts above on rest) so it can't be a bad day, but Thursday is not.
It's hard to find people who want to come and run with you for four hours at a slow pace. Surprisingly, "Hey, want to come on a 4 hour run" is not normally met w/ a sure, that's a sweet idea.
People look at you funny when you are running on a treadmill wearing vibram 5 fingers. They also look at you funny if you are doing sprints at a 12 % incline on a treadmill (stupid rainy weather). They won't say anything to you, they'll just look at you funny.
When you think that you are going to puke, but you do the exact same thing again (with the same puking feeling) why is it confusing when no one wants to come and run with you.
I love the new Inov8 hat that they made for the rain. I didn't think that you could ever love a hat, but I do. I don't love it enough to want it to rain, but I do love it enough to actually run in the rain.
EVERYONE seems to be talking about pose running, barefoot running, etc. Does this mean that people won't look at me funny when I'm running in my Inov8s? or make comments like how are you going to run an ultra in those? Man, I hope so.
OK, out of deep thoughts, and need to get some rest as the training has begun again.

AR Navigation Supplies at the Giro Epico

2010-01-18T16:03:00.001-08:00

Here is a great video of AR Navigation Supplies at the Giro Epico. It was a great day out with a 2nd place finish in 5 hours and 22 minutes. This was one of the best bike events I've done in recent years with a great group of people and a fantastic course. This is a must do for 2011..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0JnKMpgo7g

www.ARNavSupplies.com

Deep Thoughts

2009-12-18T22:00:00.000-08:00

When you can't find your weight at the gym on the rack because the girl sitting next to you is using it, you know that you haven't been to the gym in way too long.

Deep Thoughts

2009-12-18T21:51:00.000-08:00

When you think that a good way to "kick start" your training is by doing the Quad Dipsea, you know that you have some serious, serious issues. Regardless of my mental state, the good news is that I have friends who have just as many issues as I do and sure enough, the weekend of the Quad Dipsea, Shibby and I lined up for 28.4 miles of what was certain to be a lot of pain.
The best thing about the Quad is when it is held. Every weekend, Thanksgiving weekend. I will never, head into the Quad hungry. Thanks to a seriously good meal provided by my new father in law, I was fat, but happy and ready to run.
The game plan this year was three pronged. 1. Don't get hurt. 2. Finish 3. Be able to move and hopefully continue the training by early next week. In the past the goal was 5:30, or if I was feeling really, really ambitious, 5:00 (which has never happened, but is still a goal).
So, there we were about to embark on my longest run since my failed 12 hour run around Chrissy Field (it lasted 3 hours and a whopping 17 miles before I ended up curled in bed w/ a fever and something resembling a mean flu). That run was in Oct. so if you take that out, my training for a 28.4 mile hilly run was a 1 hour run that I do around the Presidio, which I had done about 4 times in the past 4 months. Not good.
We started off and I'm not going to lie, it was fun. Knowing that I was in horrible shape, and knowing that Shibby was in horrible shape we went slowly, really, really slowly, but it was a ton of fun. I got to talk to people, watch my friends tear it up in the front (Taylor, Jon and Matt) and all in all, I enjoyed the first half. Then, well then a complete lack of training caught up to me and it was painful.
You can't fake 28.4 hilly miles, you just can't do it. Luckily I had my inov8 Roc-Lites on because my feet were the only part of me that was comfortable. Even if I had wanted to drop my buddy Shibby and sprint the last half, it just wasn't going to happen. I was amazed that you could move this slowly and still get cramp and have you legs hurt, but sure enough, I proved that you could.
Good news, I accomplished 2 out of my 3 goals. Bad news, I wasn't doing a lot of training after that. Ouch...

Volume 2 of the Navigation Challenge Book from AR Navigation Supplies.

2009-12-07T16:28:00.001-08:00

Volume 2 of the very popular Table Top Adventure Race and Navigation Challenge Book from AR Navigation Supplies is now available for order. The latest edition is designed as an Expedition Length Race and includes some more difficult challenges involving triangulation, magnetic declination and route choice as well as speed, time and distance calculations. You will also find the traditional UTM and bearing plotting techniques found in the first edition.

Volume 2 contains 12 navigation challenges in an Expedition Race format based in the Lake Tahoe region of Northern California. The goal is to find your way around each map by following the rules of travel, plotting the route and answering the questions presented for each CP. If you get lost there is a help section that will guide you through the common navigation techniques and adventure racing terms to get you back on track.

The book is designed to allow navigators to practice and improve their navigation skills while at home, in the office or traveling. All you need is a compass or protractor, UTM tool, a pencil and you're ready for a table top adventure that will test your skills and improve your navigation regardless of your current expertise.

Challenge your friends to the table top competition and see who should be the team navigator at the next race, it may surprise you.

For all the details on the Navigation Challenges and a preview of the first volume follow the link below.

http://www.arnavsupplies.com/product_pages/nav_challenge/nav_challenge.html

Great news for Adventure Racers in Texas and Colorado

2009-11-23T19:17:00.001-08:00

Great news for Adventure Racers in Texas and Colorado. AR Navigation
Supplies products are now available from MapsCo stores. This includes
the Basic Roamer AR both US and Metric versions, the Rotating Mountain
Bike Map Holder, the Waterproof Pedometer and the new Table Top
Adventure Race and Navigation Challenge book.

MapsCo has stores in Addison TX, Austin TX, Dallas TX, Denver CO, Fort
Worth TX and San Antonio TX. A list of all MapsCo store addresses
and contact information can be found here: http://www.mapsco.com/stores.aspx

Please support MapsCo as they help us bring the tools for adventure
racing to their stores and the local racing community.

MapsCo can be contacted at 1-800-781-4MAP or at www.mapsco.com

Mark Manning
www.ARNavSupplies.com

Team AR Navigation Supplies/ INOV-8 Win Overall at SF Oyster Race

2009-10-07T22:47:00.001-07:00

Team AR Navigation Supplies/INOV-8 took the co-ed division and the
overall win at the 2009 San Francisco Oyster Urban Adventure Race on
September 26th.

Follow the link below to the full story and pictures.

http://www.arnavsupplies.com/news.html

INOV-8 by AR Navigation Supplies wins the 2009 Ocean Blue Adventure Race

2009-08-06T15:45:00.001-07:00

Team INOV-8 by AR Navigation Supplies has won the Ocean Blue Adventure Race in Half Moon Bay on July 11th 2009. This win makes it 3 in a row at this classic event.

The full story can be found at http://www.arnavsupplies.com/news.html

Tahoe Rim Trail 100

2009-07-20T18:48:00.000-07:00

Well, it’s official, I now have a DNF (that means Did Not Finish mom) in an ultra, which is sad, but I’m pretty sure I made the right decision. From all of the comments that I've gotten back from friends and family, and after reading about what occurred to me on the web, it's looking like I had hyponatremia. I'd recommend reading about it as I had always associated it w/ fraternity pranks and people running a marathon really slowly while drinking a lot of water in the heat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyponatremia Now, on to the race!

The race started off great, the week up at altitude was a HUGE help. I noticed immediately that my Hear Rate (HR) was nice and low and I was able to keep a good steady pace. The other thing I noticed was that my climbing was much stronger then it normally is. Clearly the training program that Coach Manning had put me on was paying dividends, and I was pretty fired up to be able to see the results in a race. The only issue that I was having was my stomach. Not a side cramp, but a weird sort of feeling in the bottom left of my stomach that something was off. Kind of crampy, kind of bloaty (apparently crampy and bloaty are not real words) but other then that, things were going really well, until I hit the first weigh in of the race. There I realized I had gained 5 pounds, which isn’t good. I started the race at 169 (I just weighed myself and I’m currently at162.5) and now I weighed 174. The normal logic here is to drink more water, take less salt, (or so I thought it was) so that’s what I started to do.

Still, cruising along and way ahead of schedule. I’m just crushing the race at this point, and my legs feel good. I was wearing the Roc-Lite 285's, and very excited about the shoes. I’m drinking a TON of water. We’re talking 40oz between aid station (which were about 1.5-2 hours apart) and I’ve stopped the salt tablets (except for when I feel a tinge from a cramp coming on) but the weird thing is, I’m not sweating a lot (and it was HOT out there) and I’m not peeing as much as I should be, which has me worried, but not super concerned. I hit the 26.3 miles in 5:39 which is about 20 minutes faster then I thought I was going to, and I fell good, minus the stomach.

The next 25 miles are similar to the first 25 miles except faster and I gain more weight. I’m now weighing in at 178 pounds (like I said, my post race weight is now 162.5) so I’ve put on 9lbs in the race, which is starting to draw concern. In races they have you weigh in to protect yourselves. Everyone has a wrist-band on and you have +/- 3%, 5%, and 7%. At 7% weight gain/loss you get pulled from the race and I’m at 5.5% weight gain and with no clue what to do. I’m drinking water, I’m barely taking any salt, but I can’t drop weight to get back to normal. My stomach feels a lot better, my HR is really low for the pace that I’m running, everything feels good. So good in fact that I crush the second 25 miles. I hit the halfway mark so early that Shawna/Shibby aren’t there! I’ve outrun my crew!!! I’m 50 miles into the race in 11:03, but still weighing 178.

The good news is that Shawna and Shibby show up in less then 5 minutes and I now get to run the next 26.3 miles with Shawna, which I’m really excited about. Legs are tired, but nothing that shouldn’t be expected after 50 miles of running. The next 10 miles, everything is still good. At the Tunnel Creek aid station 61 miles, one of the volunteers tells me to take potassium, and that should help things out and I should drop weight, so I knock back a banana and take off running. I’m still moving pretty well, and w/ some bananas in me, I pee 2x in the loop, but definitely starting to slow down. I do the Red House Loop in 2 hours and the volunteers tell me how good of a time that is, but unfortunately, it’s the last thing I really remember.

From 67.3 miles to 76.3 I basically have no recollection of what happened. It’s the same feeling as when you drink too much, wake up the next morning and wonder what happened from 10pm – 1am. Yup, that was me, except none of the benefits that comes with booze! If you really want more details about that part, then ask Shawna as she was there the whole time to make sure I didn’t fall off the course (apparently I wasn’t walking in a straight line) and basically making sure nothing bad happened to me. I hit the 67.3 mile marker in 16:34 minutes. It then took me 3:10 minutes to go 9 miles. I was basically doing a zombie walk for 3 hours, or so I was told.

Hit the 75 mile marker where they have a BIG aid station, tent, cot, etc. and still have no real recollections of things, until waking up from a quick 10 min nap and feeling better. I basically remember everything from that point on. I got up, and Shibby and I were going to head out to finish the course. I still had 14 hours, so no matter how slowly I was moving, I could make the cut-off. Luckily, after about 500 yards down the course, I came to my senses and stopped. It didn’t make sense to me (even in my delirious state) to keep going. I’ve already done 2-100 mile races, and to suffer for a 8+ hour walk just to say I finished this one didn’t make sense, so I stopped the race and earned my first DNF. After hearing back from friends, and much more experienced ultra-runners then me, that decision, probably kept me out of the hospital.

The Tahoe Rim ultra is a really great ultra to run. The course is beautiful for 90% of the race, the Red-Barn loop is just a mean, mean bit to run (but they do call it a taste of hell on the web-site, so you are warned) but the rest of it is really pretty. I don't run with a camera in races, but the views along the trail are breath-taking at time. The race is all on dirt, so no cement to pound the knees and at just under 20k in climbing/descending you can really run a lot of the course. Be warned though, it is surprisingly hard to finish (in all my ultras and adventure races, this is only my second DNF, so I agree!) In 2006 there was a 63% finish rate and in 2008 there was an even lower 58%, so like I said, it's surprisingly hard. The aid stations are all well stocked and as is the case in most ultras, the volunteers were awesome. They had an Irish themed aid station with Darts (and an award for the best score, so practice up) and a Mexican station with Corona! I would definitely recommend the race to anyone looking for an ultra, but I might hold off if it's going to be your first attempt at a 100 miler and start with something a bit easier. The combination of the altitude and heat (it was over 90 this year) seems to create a large number of DNF's, but it's not the fault of the race for that!

HUGE thanks to Shawna, Shibby and Jon for helping out! Great crew, great pacing, and an even bigger thanks to Shawna for walking 26.3 very slow miles with me while watching me deteriorate in front of her AND not yelling at me to stop.

INOV-8 RocLite 285 Review by Grant Sisler.

2009-07-20T17:03:00.001-07:00

RocLite 285.
When I first took these shoes out of the box, my initial thought was no way will these things last, I'm going to blow a hole in these things in my first ultra. There is not a chance that these things are going to last. How can something this light, possibly be durable at all. Then I put them on my feet and I had the same thought. There is no chance that these things are going to last! They have a nice snug fit (might be too snug if you have wide feet) but they have a feel to them that's almost like a plastic/paper combination. Still I had already bought them and I figured I should go out and take them for a run.

Man, was I wrong. After over 200 miles of racing, and who knows how many miles of training, the shoes were finally retired, and not because they had any holes in them, just b/c there were too many miles put on the insoles. I was amazed. The shoes have all the normal trade-marks that people have come to expect from Inov-8 shoes as the grip on them is the best I've ever run in. They also do a great job of draining when you hop into a river, lake, or creek to cool down.

I've run up to 50 miles at a time in them and they do a good job of holding up to all the pounding that I've put on them. The only drawback to the shoes is that they are very light (if that makes any sense). If you do a lot of running on sharp, rocky terrain, your feet will take a beating. If you're looking at a tough 100 miler, or even a really rocky 50, then I would recommend the Roclite 320. Basically the exact same shoes, just 35 grams heavier. All in all, the shoes are great. If you have wide feet, or are running a really rocky ultra, then you might want to look into a heavier/wider shoe, but if you're looking for a light, fast and incredibly grippy shoes, these are the way to go.

Grant.

Deep Thoughts, by GSisler

2009-07-12T17:40:00.000-07:00

Taper should be a 4 letter word. Normally if you told me I got to sit around, watch baseball, tour de france and just about anything else that comes on TV, I'd be really excited. See, I run 100 miles, but I'm also really lazy. I like doing nothing, but that's because when I'm training, I'm doing a lot!
Tapering is different. You're not allowed to do anything. I love running because it relaxes me, it's fun, and I like being outside. When I'm stressed, or busy at work, a good run clears the head and brings me back to normal. Well, with a 100 miler coming down on me in 7 days, I start to get nervous! I'm not sleeping as well (because I'm not exercising) and I'm thinking about the race that's coming up. Normally, I would just go for a run and then everything would be fine, BUT I CAN'T!!! I have to taper. Stupid taper. Like I said, Taper should be a 4 letter word.

Sudoku for Navigators Anyone?? New Navigation Challenge Book from AR Navigation Supplies.

2009-06-29T22:07:00.001-07:00

After many requests from local racers, AR Navigation Supplies has just released the first volume of its Table Top Adventure Race and Navigation Challenge books. Think of this book as Sudoku for navigators.

The book is designed to allow navigators to practice and improve their navigation skills while at home, in the office or traveling. All you need is a Compass, UTM tool and a pencil and you're ready for a table top adventure that will test your skills and improve your navigation regardless of your current expertise. The book contains 12 separate navigation challenges covering 8 different states from New York to California using USGS 1:24,000 scale maps.

The goal is to find your way around each map by following the rules of travel, plotting the route and answering the questions presented for each CP.
If you get lost there is a help section that will guide you through
the common navigation techniques and adventure racing terms to get you back on track.

Challenge your friends to the table top competition and see who should be the team navigator at the next race, it may surprise you.

For all the details on the Navigation Challenges and a preview of the first volume follow the link below.

http://www.arnavsupplies.com/product_pages/nav_challenge/nav_challenge.html

Good luck out there!

Mark Manning
AR Navigation Supplies.

Super Supporter Hailey Curtner takes 1st at San Jose International

2009-06-26T10:11:00.001-07:00

Sunday June 21st was a great day for Gel Ladder rider Hailey Curtner
who took 1st place in her division at the San Jose International
Triathlon and 6th woman overall. This was her first outright win!!
Congratulations to Hailey on a fantastic
race.

AR Navigation Supplies - NorCal Woman's AR Clinic

2009-06-26T10:01:00.001-07:00

Last weekend baarbd.org hosted the first NorCal women's adventure Racing Clinic... AR Babes! We had a cohesive and hearty group of women who have NEVER adventure raced and learned a TON from our amazing partners and sponsors. Team LUNA Chix taught the ladies how to roll down the dirt with colorful bruises to prove it! AR Nav Supplies showed them the ropes to navigation and what all those lines mean. :) Sea Trek took to the seas and brought on proficient paddling... no swimmers - phew. Big Blue Adventures wrapped it up with a practice session to put it all to the test! We had 100% up take... watch out for these women, they're going to take the AR circuit by storm!

The Breast Cancer Fund

Project Athena

Zambrano Coffee

Mikes Bikes

Zanfel

TechNiche

Ellsworth

Brunton

INOV-8

Deep thoughts by GSisler

2009-06-23T14:29:00.000-07:00

Gym should be a 4 letter word. I don't really know why people go to the gym for fun. I can see going to the gym if you want to look better, or to recover from an injury, or if your training for something, but I don't get the idea of going to the gym for a good workout. The gym sucks.
I've started going to the gym this year for the first time in a long time, and all I know is that it hurts. Hurts to the point that doing normal things doesn't feel good after you've gone. I know, I know, it's good for you, it prevents injuries, etc. but if you go to they gym to strengthen running muscles, it just isn't that cool.
There is nothing cool/fun about stepping up and down on a block 20 times while holding a dumb-bell that weighs 5 lbs. Same thing with lunges, people see you walking all over the gym, taking big steps and squatting, they look at you funny. I don't care who you are, it's just hard to take when you're walking around w/ a 5lbs. weigh in your hands while grandpa next to you is hoisting up the 25 lbs dumb-bells and giggling at you.
Same thing for the classes. I went to an ab class on Tuesday of last week, I couldn't cough, or sneeze until Sat. On top of that the big people, the little people, the old and the young were all kicking my ass, definitely hurts the ego when grandma is knocking out more sit ups then you.
Still, I'll be back at the gym later this week, thinking that once I've gone enough times, the pain will go away, and maybe next week, I can use the 7.5lbs. weights.

Deep Thoughts, by GSisler

2009-06-22T13:07:00.000-07:00

People always ask people who trail run why they do it? That answer was made simple for me yesterday in Arches National Park in Utah.
We were out there for a "bachelor party" (is it really a bachelor party if you return in better shape then you left?) of my good buddy and running partner Jon. We parked the car and started down the trail, man was it crowded. Sure enough, just a half mile away from the parking lot, everyone just disappeared. Now it was the 5 of us on a sweet trail run, checking out the arches, running around on the slick rock and seeing just how well the Inov8's really do grip with no one around us (insane is the answer, I think I could walk up a wall in these).
2 Hours later we returned to the parking lot and all the masses, but all that time away from the parking lot, it was just 5 friends out on a sweet trail run with no one around to bother us. That's why I trail run.

New Ride Logging Site - Beta Test Invite

2009-06-18T10:11:00.001-07:00

Hey Guys, Do you have a Garmin 305 or 705?? There is a really cool
new ride logging site that a friend of mine has put together and I
want to invite you to the beta test.. The site allows you to be
competitive with your friends on your favorite rides using the Garmin
devices as the referee :-)

Drop me an e-mail if you're interested and I'll get you set up with an
account. They're also providing screaming discounts on the Garmin
devices. Basically wholesale pricing if you need to get one.

Cheers,

Mark..

Supper Supporter Hailey Wins her Division at District TT

2009-06-16T21:12:00.000-07:00

With the elevation at 5000 feet and the oxygen level low, super
supporter and Gel Ladder rider Hailey won her division at the Northern
California and Nevada District Time Trial with a time of 1:03:45 for
the 40km distance using the Gel Ladder for her nutrition.

Congratulations Hailey!

Super Supporter Hailey's Xterra Race Report

2009-06-16T21:09:00.001-07:00

Yesterday Mark had designed and set the course for an 8 hour adventure
race and had gotten some very favorable feedback. Racers came and
told me of the terrain that I would see the next day for the Xterra-
many of the trails were the same for the two courses.

The sun was shining and transition was set. Off to the water for the
pre-race briefing. Note to self, pre race briefings by guys who put
on adventure races, where the object of the game is to find your way
around, not be guided, are very important! Not to say I wasn't paying
attention but I think I missed a few key "tips".

The gun goes off and we are off to swim 1200 meters, a two lap course
with an ITU style get out and sprint for 100 yds after the first loop
swim! Nothing like a run mid swim to get your heart rate going :)

I think that Stefani was the first gal out of the water, no wonder she
and Erin are pals! I was right behind her and saw her on the bike
after she had taken a fall and "lost some of her oomph" :( The trails
were not technical per se, but very gravely aka slippery and there
were some serious hills! Now if it were an all uphill course, I would
be a champion! Too bad I need some lessons from my pro Mark before I
hit the trails again. Oh well, we will work on that later. The 17
mile bike course takes me 2.5 hours...yes you read correctly, almost
my split for a half ironman! Crazy terrain, but tons of fun and loved
the sunshine!

Onto the run, where we were in for a serious treat. Although I think
Jeri's sister, Xterra queen Barbara would debate the word "treat".
The course was marked with ties in trees which weren't that easy to
spot and there was about a half mile in a creek- which was AMAZING on
this hot day. Then we head straight up some hills and hit an aid
station where I hear tons of talk of lost soldiers, I myself had
stopped at one point not knowing where to go and saw no one to guide
me. But this is what Xterra is, an adventure in the woods. I picked
my pace up on the down hills and the flat heading to the finish and
was done is 3:44- wowza what a day!

I also finished 2nd in the 25-29 age group which was cool- i think
it's been the only race where I knew that I could make up ground on
the run and not the bike :) That being said, the bike was like
floating on air as I was riding Mark's team-issued swanky Magura
equipped Ellsworth Truth- what a bike!

Hailey

Too Cool Sprint Winners and their Basic Roamer AR's

2009-06-16T21:01:00.001-07:00

The 'perseverance' winners at the last Too Cool Racing sprint with their Basic Roamer AR.

AR Navigation Supplies is a sponsor of the Too Cool Racing Series.

Deep Thoughts, by GSisler

2009-06-16T15:54:00.000-07:00

I think deep thoughts might be a bit strong, but I always was a fan of Jack Handy, he did make me laugh on the Saturday Night Live skits, so I figured that was a good name. If you have no clue, what I'm talking about, then go to:
http://www.deepthoughtsbyjackhandey.com/ It's a fun read when you should be doing work.
So Coach Mark Manning told me that I was allowed to blog. It's a bit scary for him, and for me b/c I'm not very good at filtering my thoughts and sarcasm doesn't come over a piece of paper that well, so there's a good chance that people think I'm a jerk. Mark figures that excluding family and friends, no one will really read this, so it doesn't matter that much. Well, we will see.
For now, I don't really have a ton to say, but as things pop up as I'm running they will. The main focus for the next month is going to be the Tahoe Rim 100 miler. I just got my new Inov8's today, so I've got a month to get them ready to take on 100 miles of Tahoe's best trail. I've done several 50 milers and a 100km in the Roclite 285's, but now it's time to see if they can last the full 100 miles. The first pairs already have a couple hundred miles each on them, and so far, so good!
I've got a hill repeat workout with Coach Manning tomorrow, so hopefully I'll have something articulate (is cursing articulate) to say after that!

AR Navigation Supplies Mari Chandler is now National Long Course Duathlon Champion

2009-06-15T13:10:00.001-07:00

Team AR Navigation Supplies/Inov-8 would like to congratulate Mari Chandler on becoming the women's 2009 Long Course Dualtlon Champion with a time of 4:48:59.6 to beat the existing course record by 10 minutes.

Here is a quote from Mari when I asked how the race went. "The first 3k was an easy trail run, and then we hopped on the bikes for 56 miles of decent rolling hills with a few steep climbs. Supposedly there was 6000' of climbing, but I don't believe it. The 1/2 marathon was a very slow coarse with lots of turns and a few hills with a mix of fire road, single track, and pavement. I ran the first 10k at a good clip, and then when I was comfortable that no one could catch me, I settled in for a comfortable pace to the finish."

Congratulations Mari!

Next up for Team AR Navigation Supplies will be the Ocean Blue Adventure Race in Half Moon Bay, CA on July 11th.

AR Navigation Supplies Teams with Pacific Bikes for Berkeley TTT

2009-03-10T08:50:00.001-07:00

Adventure Racing Navigation Supplies teamed up with Team Pacific
Bicycles for the CoEd division of Berkeley Team Time Trial on March
7th 2009. In a hotly contested race with 30 CoEd teams the duo of
Hailey Curtner and Mark Manning were starting near the end of the
field. After catching their minute man team in the first 2 miles they
would overtake 7 other teams before the finish. With a strong run on
their first Team Time Trial they placed 4th CoEd team with a time of
0:47:38

Full Race Story from the ARNavSupplies INOV-8 win at the NORCAL-AR #4

2008-10-23T09:55:00.001-07:00

Here is the link to the full story on our win at the NORCAl-AR #4 in
Whiskeytown, CA. This was our last major race for 2008. See you all
again in 2009!

http://www.arnavsupplies.com/news_articles/NORCAL_AR0101208_001.htm

Mark Manning
www.ARNavSupplies.com
1-408-420-3883

Race Report From NORCAL-AR #4 Whiskeytown, CA 10/11/08

2008-10-18T18:50:00.000-07:00

NORCAL-AR #4 Whiskeytown Lake, Redding, CA October 11^h 2008

Team Brunton by AR Navigation Supplies

As Whiskeytown is about 4 hours away from the Bay Area we decided to drive up on Friday afternoon and camp at the lake ready for the 9 AM race start. We had 4 of us in the truck, the whole team, Andy Tubbs, Mari Chandler, Mark Manning and super supporter Hailey. This meant that we had camping gear for 4 as well as 3 bikes, a triple kayak and a mountain of food and drink to sustain us during the race and keep the crew happy. I have no idea how it all fit in the Xterra but it did with some room to spare.

We found a great camping spot about a mile from the start, had a small fire going in about 10 minutes so the team could relax while eating the burritos we had picked up on the way.

Another racer, Michael Miller arrived around 8PM and joined us by the fire looking for safety in numbers, as he had seen a couple of bears in the road less than a mile away. Mike would be volunteering this weekend as he had broken his kneecap into 5 pieces on a fall a few months before and was not ready to be running on it just yet. Michael spent some time trying to tease training secrets out of Andy and Mari but neither of them were giving much away. You know what these Pro's are like. "Yeah, we just go running when we feel like it". Which translates to, "we run all day every day".

When we woke up in the morning it was freezing cold and Mike had already left for the start. We quickly loaded the truck and made our way to the start to register and get breakfast. Loads of teams were getting their gear ready and staging their boats for the kayak section. As always this was a great time to catch up with friends and see who was racing the last event of the Norcal-AR series. We had high hopes for a good finish as we'd already won the 2 previous editions.

When we looked at the maps our worst fears were realized. CP 1 was at the very top of the 6209' Shasta Bally Mountain, followed by 42 other CP's placed all over the map. This course was going to be long and epic. We were already cold at the start and it was going to get much colder for us and everyone else before the race was over.

We all lined up at the start to listen to the pre race briefing and get the details on the course. We were told that there would be a 10 minute time bonus for the first team to reach CP 1. Mari immediately turned to me and told me that I had to take things easy for the first few miles to give her a chance to warm up. She said it was a long race and we needed to ease into it. I told her of course I'd take it easy.

The race started and we rode as a group to the main road on the way to Shasta Bally Road, which would take us straight up 5000' of the dirt road. We were at the front of the pack just rolling along as we made the turn onto the dirt road. This is where we started to pull away from the main group. We were riding with a 2 man team called Barry Fast. Roy on this team had recently beaten Mari for 3^rd place at Primal Quest Montana so Mari wasn't about to let them beat her at this event. The five of us were riding together and putting a big gap on the rest of the field while Mari and Roy chatted and caught up on the latest team news.

After a couple of miles the talking stopped and we got into race mode. Andy was dropping back a little while Barry Fast surged a little on some of the steeper sections. I knew Andy could handle the pace and would dig deep to stay with the group so I started to up the pace on them a little at a time. I could tell from his riding style that Roy from Barry Fast was starting to suffer a little as the pace increased. Mari and I kept riding at the front and I kept upping the pace just a little bit more and pushed it over the brow of some of the steep little grades. We came to a very steep section that Mari and I were able to ride but Andy hopped off his bike and started to push it up hill. At that time both Roy and his teammate hopped off their bikes and started to walk as well. Now Andy was in his element and back on his feet, he upped the pace on foot dropping Barry Fast. At the top of the grade he was back on his bike and we were all riding together again. This was just the push we needed to drop Barry Fast and continue on to the top in the lead.

About half way up the climb we were mobbed by a bunch of motorcycles having a blast riding on the dirt. Shortly after, I looked back and saw my truck coming up the hill with super supporter Hailey at the wheel and our camping buddy Mike in the passenger seat. Hailey was cheering, yelling and taking pictures while off-roading up the mountain.

Some of the sections of the climb were so steep we all had to walk but we always kept things moving forward. As we reached the top of the mountain I was surprised at the number of people who were up there to support us. We were the first to arrive and get CP 1 so we had an immediate 10 minute bonus.

We quickly grabbed our jackets from our packs ready for the descent, as it was really cold at this elevation with the wind blowing. After a quick bite to eat we set off down the hill just as Barry Fast were reaching the top with Scott Porter a few minutes behind them.

We had a long descent with many sections that we couldn't ride as the rocks and drops were just too difficult. After we reached the Coggins Park area we were on a fantastic fire road descent that would take us on a really cool downhill roller coaster ride all the way to the trailhead at Crystal Creek and CP 2.

About half way down we were doing well when I looked back and out of the corner of my eye I saw Andy going over his handlebars. He had hit a rock on some sand and lost it. He got up and said he was fine but we would later find out that this crash would have a big impact.

We arrived at the trailhead and the parking lot where CP 2 was supposed to be but there was nothing there. We were asking people if they had seen a orange flag and widening our search looking for the CP flag but it just wasn't there. After looking around for somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes a car drove up with a bike on the back. The driver was holding the flag out of the window for us. Apparently the flag had been in the wrong parking lot about half a mile back down the road. We punched the passport and jumped onto the single track in an attempt to make up the lost time. The volunteer had promised us that we would get a time credit but that was no reason to slow down and let Barry Fast catch us again.

We found CP 3 without much trouble and were on the downhill to CP 4 when we went through a riverbed and a few hundred yards later Mari called out saying she had a flat tire. We all worked together to change the flat and just as we were getting the tire back on Barry Fast came by us. The chase was on again and I put Andy on the towline as we chased them back to the TA. After a mile or two I could see them a hundred yards ahead and we were closing the gap.

We came around a corner and found them stopped in the trail looking at the map. We flew past and came into TA 1 two minutes ahead.

We picked up the boat and grabbed some food while we ran to the water ready for the 18+ mile paddle on Whiskeytown Lake. Andy was really struggling at this point. The crash had injured his hip and back, he couldn't even bend down and pick up his paddle or lace up his shoes.

We managed to squeeze him into the boat but it looked painful. As always, Andy was putting on a brave face. We were paddling into the wind on our way to CP 6 and I was hoping that the wind would pick up a little more for the paddle back so as we could put up our new WindPaddle sail. We were not so lucky, the wind was dying down as the afternoon went by but we were all getting very cold as there was enough of a breeze to create a serious wind chill with our wet clothes.

It took us a few minutes to find CP 7 as we ran up to the road and dropped into the trail from above but we were soon on our way back across the lake for CP 8. We arrived at the location for CP 8 but it wasn't where it was supposed to be. We continued paddling along the shore hoping it was just in the wrong spot and not stolen but we reached the dam still without seeing the flag. I even measured the distance back from the dam with the Speedcoach kayak computer but still couldn't see the flag.

We moved in closer to the shore and paddled slowly in case we had just missed it. After a few minutes I spotted a corner of the flag sticking up from the sand behind some rocks. It had come untied in the wind overnight and fallen down. It was impossible to spot from the initial approach. Mari jumped out of the boat, punched the passport and retied the flag to the tree it was supposed to be on. We had lost another 5 to 10 minutes messing around with this CP and could see Barry Fast in the distance as we paddled away. They wouldn't have any trouble finding it now that it was back in the tree.

We arrived back at the TA freezing cold and wet but ready for the long night ahead. The organizers had hot soup and coffee waiting for everyone as well as baked potatoes. It was now just after 6 PM and the sun was starting to go down. Andy was still having trouble as we were getting on the bikes. He still couldn't bend down and was visibly hurting. We had loaded up our packs with hiking shoes, warm clothes and loads of food and they were bulging under the strain.

We rode back out to the road and onto the dirt again. We passed a hunter with a loaded rifle hanging out on the fire road. Mari asked what she was hunting and she said deer and bear. She asked us if we'd seen any bears…like we'd tell her if we had. I told her that a whole bunch of people would be riding through here, hoping she would give up shooting stuff and go home.

We know where the Bears are!! This is the mother of 2 that Hailey and Mike saw on Shasta Bally Road.

CP's 10 and 11 involved a lot of climbing and we pushed our bikes for a while. Andy was in a lot of pain and dragging behind us. It was now completely dark and getting colder. At CP 11 we made a poor decision. We chose a trail that seemed to be going in the direction we need to go but after following it downhill in the dark for a while we hit the river. This was really bad. We weren't supposed to be any where near the river. I heard it before I saw it and knew we were really in the wrong spot. We looked around for a while trying to see if there was a way to get to were we needed to be without climbing back up 800' to CP 11 but there was no other way. The trail appeared to dead end right there and we were cliffed out with nowhere to go but back the way we came. We started pushing our bikes 800' back up the hill and this is where Andy's sprits began to drop. It was obvious that we would lose the lead by the time we got back on track. We had spent over an hour doing the drop down to the river and climbing back up.

The next 2 CP's went fine and we arrived at TA 3 to find out that we were now almost 2 hours behind Barry Fast and Scott Porter. We made a quick transition to our running shoes and set out to chase down the leaders.

We passed CP 15 when we saw Scott Porter coming up the hill towards us. He was on his way to CP 20 but he told us that Barry Fast had got lost on the way to CP 17 and he hadn't seen them for a while. Our spirits rose when we heard this. We thought that Scott was about an hour ahead of us and he would have more trouble keeping a fast pace on his own as the night dragged on. We might be able to catch him if we kept pushing each other through the night.

We arrived at CP 17 to a warm welcome of clean bathrooms and a big cooler of soda. I threw down a couple of Pepsi's and found out from the CP staff that Barry Fast hadn't arrived yet. They had lost 2 hours out there and we were now second on the road. After some cold sodas and good news our spirits were high and even Andy was feeling better. Just as we were leaving the CP we could see a couple of headlamps up on the ridge trying to bushwhack down to the CP. We turned our lights off and sneaked away into the dark of the road.

We had a really cool section with a steep climb up a rope after CP 19 that took us back to the ridge and on our way to CP 20. Just after CP 21 Mari spotted something called a Ringtail Cat hiding in a tree next to the trail. These are apparently very rare and only come out at night. I'd never even heard of one before but it was cool to see it. We had a little trouble finding the right trail that would take us down to CP 26 but only lost a couple of minutes before we were on the right path. This is where the Waterproof Pedometer came into its own.

We arrived back at TA 4 to find we had pulled back 45 minutes on Scott but he had missed CP 24 thinking it was misplaced. We had found it without any problems so he was now down 1 mandatory CP as well as one of the optional kayak CP's. We were 2^nd team on the road but we were ahead of Scott in CP points, which put us in the lead overall. All we needed to do was stay on course and get all of the remaining CP's and we could still win.

The next bike leg was the hardest part of the race for us. As we rode away from the TA wearing all the clothing we had with us, we had a downhill section on the road to the bridge. The wind chill was so bad that by the time we reached the river we were all shaking uncontrollably and our hands could hardly move to pull the brake levers. As we arrived at CP 29 we were all very tired from the earlier chase and it was that really dark time a couple of hours before dawn when everyone struggles to keep going. Everyone that is, except Mari, who was absolutely flying and pushing the pace on every climb and descent. Both Andy and I couldn't believe how much power she still had after 20 hours of flat out racing. We found CP 30 at Brandy Creek Falls and saw Scott again on his way out of the loop. After a very nasty bike push on the way to CP 31 we hit the highly rated single track that we had been told about at the start of the race. They weren't kidding, it was a fantastic trail that was fast and smooth as it swooped down the side of the mountain. I was wishing I wasn't so tired as I would have really enjoyed it had I been more awake.

When we arrived back at TA 5 it had just got light and we heard that Scott Porter had pulled out of the race and gone home. He had also missed CP 29 on the bike section and was now down two mandatory CP's and 25 points. We also found out that after getting badly lost on the trek section Barry Fast had pulled out with a cut sidewall on one of the bike tires. They were in a solid 2^nd place and our nearest competition. We were told that the next closest team was a couple of hours behind us and a few had skipped the whole 3^rd bike section and just rode back from the previous TA.

After some warm food and more Pepsi all we had to do was get the final trek CP's and get back to the finish before 2PM.

We had about 4 ½ hours to do around 5 miles on foot, which didn't seem too bad. I really enjoyed the next section as it was rogaine style and all the CP's were off trail requiring some serious bushwhacking to find. This was fun but Andy and I were dragging while Mari was still on top running form. She kept trying to make us run to the finish but we were resisting every attempt. We still had the lead and plenty of time in hand. After a lot of persuasion Mari coaxed us into running the last ½ mile down to the finish and Andy started coughing so bad we joked about having to drag him across the line by the straps on his backpack.

We finished the race and race director Rich told us that we had won the event as the only team to get every CP and take maximum points. Everyone else had either skipped sections or missed optional CP points.

Everyone was relived to have finished. It had been a long race with a huge amount of climbing. We had taken 27 hours and 12 minutes to cover the whole course. My Suunto had switched off after 20 hours of racing with its memory full. Up to that point we had climbed over 17,000 feet with 7 hours of racing still to go. I wish I had the whole download as I have the feeling it would have been over 25,0000' of climbing in the 27 hours.

This was a fantastic event with epic terrain, scenery and competition. The organizers had done an excellent job in putting everything together including a wonderful post race meal with burritos and cake. For their first 24 hour course Tom Thomas and his family had set a very high bar for other events to follow. I'm looking forward to more events from this team in 2009.

As always Mari and Andy were perfect teammates and I hope we can all race together again in 2009 after such a successful season.

Suunto Download

Thanks to Brunton, INOV-8, Ritchey, Magura, Ellsworth and BooCoo Gear for providing Team AR Nav Supplies with the best gear for Adventure Racing.

Our CP Order for NORCAL-AR #4 for the final trek section

Trek: 42, 41, 40, 39, 36, 37, 38, 43

Team AR Navigation Supplies Sponsors Sites

AR Navigation Supplies Wins the Final 2008 Norcal-AR 24 Hour Race

2008-10-14T20:43:00.001-07:00

Team AR Navigation Supplies won this weekends Norcal-AR 24 hour race with a time of 27 hours and 30 minutes in Whiskeytown, CA. As the only team to complete the whole course and collect maximum points within the time limit it was a strong finish to the 2008 racing season. A full race report with photos will be posted soon.

Thanks again to Inov-8, Brunton, Ritchey, Ellsworth, Magura and BooCoo Gear

AR Navigation Supplies takes 2nd place at Presidio 2008 Long Course

2008-09-15T10:07:00.001-07:00

Team AR Navigation Supplies to 2nd place to a flying Steve Gregg by less than a minute at the 2008 Presidio National Orienteering Day event this past weekend. Thanks to INOV-8 and Brunton for providing the best gear for the event and helping us post our highest place finish at an orienteering event in 2008.

Full results can be found at the following link.

http://baoc.org/wiki/Results/2008/Presidio

Long Orange Course  (7.6 km, 300 ft climb, 13 controls)     1  Steve Gregg                           1:03:50    2  Mark Manning                          1:04:42    3  Manfred Kopisch                       1:07:22    4  Devin Prouty, Matt Stimson            1:10:34    5  Brett Carter                          1:11:20    6  Bill Papendick                        1:14:54    7  Steve Harnoui                         1:15:05    8  Juha Koskenwo                         1:15:21    9  Alex Finch                            1:16:35   10  Philipp Kopisch                       1:18:30

New Navigation Aid by Nature

2008-09-05T11:31:00.001-07:00

Here is a new navigation aid provided by nature...

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12001823

Morgan Fletcher's Trans Rockies Race Report

2008-09-04T15:24:00.001-07:00

Follow the link below to see Morgan's race report from the Trans
Rockies mountain bike hike..

http://www.hahaha.org/blog/morgan/?p=29

2008-08-29T12:15:00.001-07:00

Team AR Nav Supplies/Inov-8 runners Grant Sisler and Jon De St Paer are clawing their way up the leader board at the Trans Rockies Run. Stage 4 results show them in 15th place in the Open Mens division with a 13 minute advantage over 16th place. They've been running an 11:37 pace for for the 4 stages up to and including Thursday. Only 3 more days of running left!

You can see todays CG results at the following link..

http://transrockies.com/transrockiesrun/news/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/2008trr-stage-4-gc-results.pdf

Go get em boys!!!

Craig's TransRockies 2008 race report

2008-08-26T14:48:00.001-07:00

TransRockies 2008 Mountain Bike Stage Race

It is quite difficult to find the words to describe the Transrockies experience so many come to mind. Beauty, Joy, Misery, Agony, Suffering, Sore, Sick, Wet, Dirty, Elated, Dejected and on and on.

To put this race in terms that might resonate with some of you. 7 Stages, 58,000 feet climbing, 342 miles of technical off road riding. Imagine the camping situation of Wildflower, but you have to break camp before you race the long course at 8 am every day - now do that 7 days in a row with 20x the elevation gain. 300 teams of 2 riders from dozens of different countries.

Other than the notions that this was going to be 'hard', I didn't have many expectations for the race. I wanted to ride to the limits of my ability and face challenging terrain. Little did I know that those boundaries would be stretched farther than I thought possible.

Stage 1; Panorama to K2 Ranch
Distance; 55 km (34 mi)
Elevation; 2200 m (7217 ft)

Mark and I lined up with much enthusiasm for Stage 1 after the long trip to Panorama and the many bike building, bag sorting chores the night before. The sun was shinning and riders from dozens of nations waited anxiously to get going. The gun went off for the parade lap and we set off to gradually, patiently pick our way through the teams ahead of us. Knowing a massive climb leading to singletrack was ahead, we set the goal of moving up as much as possible without breaking my legs in the process. We did well to clear the 'riff raff' during the hour + of climbing that ensued. I was struggling on the climb as was to be expected, but felt OK once we started traversing the singletrack ridge. Our fine weather quickly deteriorated as we crossed steep shale fields. Within minutes we were riding in hail and snow! At the sunny start line, we had elected to travel a bit light on gear (just jackets). As if that wasn't bad enough, Mark sliced a 2.5 hole in his tire requiring a careful, fingers crossed repair job in the snow! We took about 20 minutes to get back sorted out before we continued traversing and descending the mountain. We road well throughout the stage, but realized if this was a 'easy stage' we were in for one hell of a week. We arrived at K2 Ranch to get our first look at tent city. Each evening tents would be erected and available on a first come first serve basis, along with showers and bike washing. We settled in to what would become our daily choirs, tent arrangement, unpacking, bike wash, bike repair, shower followed by evening dinner and next days stage review.

Stage 2; K2 Ranch to Nipika Resort
Distance; 74 km (46 mi)
Elevation; 3000 m (9842 ft)

Waking up crusty and damp in a tent at 6 am knowing that we were soon to be climbing nearly 10k feet was quite difficult. Still in the 'excited to be here' phase, we packed our bags and headed to the start line. Due to our mechanical on stage 1, we were in start group 2 which put us behind 1/3 of the pack at the gun. With a longish jeep road to road section ahead of us, Mark and I drilled it from the gun working our way through the pack like a road race. We managed to bridge to the lead group just in time to start climbing. I was a bit cooked from the chase so I had to insist on a casual pace even though Mark's legs were telling him otherwise. We proceed to climb and/or traverse forever. After aid station 1 we started to see people pushing there bikes up the trail and eventually we were relegated to the same strategy. I started to suffer as the trail got steeper and steeper as unlike Mark as an adventure racer, I haven't spent much time pushing my bike. Just when I thought things couldn't get worse we reached a plateau and saw an ant line of riders with bikes on their shoulders hiking up the steepest rock field you can imagine. We resigned ourselves to getting it done and took our place in line. After about 30 minutes, we started to hear people call down the hill asking if anyone could see a trail marker. Apparently the entire top 1/3 of the race is off course! We discovered with the help of other racers that we had climbed passed the turn off and were torturing ourselves for no good reason (the pros had probably gone an entire hour up the hike-a-bike hill!). We bushwacked through the woods to rediscover the trail amongst the chaos of 100s of confused racers. We then hit some gnarly steep singletrack which I enjoyed which lead to an even gnarlier section of sloppy, wet, creek crossing singletrack. We emerged from the woods to learn the extent of the race chaos....we discovered that we were in the top 30 teams. We decided to keep hitting it in the hopes that we could make up some time from the day before. The pro teams eventually caught us on the run into Nipika. It was actually quite surreal getting passed by the pro who looked effortless as they danced by us. We felt we road a great stage and would easily make up the deficit we created on stage 1. Unfortunately we would later learn that this stage would not count on the General Classification b/c of all the lost riders. While I appreciated the situation, I was a little disappointed as we road very efficiently and had in this tough stage (not too mention that we wasted time lost as well!). Nipika was to be our home for two nights. It is a great eco-lodge built entirely of products found on the property.

Stage 3; Nipika Resort to Nipika Resort
Distance; 44.2 km (27 mi)
Elevation; 1514 m (4967 ft)

Stage 3 was a first for TR: a time trial. Rider were set off at 30 second increments on a shorter course (I should note that this short course still contained more climbing than almost all of our normal training rides). Mark and I both felt good on this stage so we really pushed our limits. We managed to catch all the riders ahead of us which gave us a clear look at the amazing singletrack course. We road the ridgeline of a gorgeous river most of the day descending and climbing through the rocks and trees. I think we were both enjoying ourselves despite the quick pace. We've learned that Mark and I are one of the better singletracking teams in our division so this course suited us well. One of the most memorable moments of the day was coming upon a motocross rider on a steep singletrack descent. We were totally committed to a shoot, when we discovered the Moto rider, we yelled, he crashed and we rifled by him. We finished the day in 9th in our division which was very satisfying. Our morning start afforded us a leisurely afternoon in Nipika and some well earned 'ease' in our daily schedule. Later in the day we learned that our friend Greg had broken his frame. Ever the solution oriented thinker, Greg bought a new Rocky Mountain bicycle to continue the race the next day (more on that later).

Stage 4; Nipika Resort to Whiteswan Lake
Distance; 109.7 km (68 mi)
Elevation; 2567 m (8421 ft)

Stage 4 was the longest stage in KM so we knew we were in for a rough one after our efforts in the TT. We had another very fast start which left Mark feeling a little winded, while I on the other hand was feeling quite spunky. Today's stage was a bit less steep which suited me well and I quite enjoyed the long climbs and river crossings. The team aspect of TransRockies adds and interesting dynamic to each day as it is as important for your partner to feel good as it is for you. While I was struggling to stay with Mark on the first days he was now struggling to stay with me. As good teammates and friends, we just did our best to keep moving and cover this long stage. We cleared the toughest climbs and started a long single/double track descent. At one of the last checkpoints we heard of a bad crash a couple of KM behind us. A little investigation (and the arrival of his teammate, Carrie) led us to learn it was our friend Greg and most likely a broken collarbone. We were totally bummed, but knew he was being as well taken care of as possible (he ended up with a helicopter ride home). We push on through the stage and hit a long road section to the finish. I was pulling hard, but honestly as cracked as Mark was with the long hours of riding. We pulled into a beautiful field and headed for tent city. We discovered a creek behind some trees and decided to soak our weary bodies, before tackling the chores of the day. Whiteswan lake brought a welcome addition to tent city....a local MTB club cooking burgers. Now we could have dinner #1 at 3 pm in prep for dinner #2 at 6 pm! We continued to meet riders from all of the world and developed a crew of bay area riders that we spent most of our time with.

Stage 5; Whiteswan Lake to Elkford
Distance; 88.5 km (56 mi)
Elevation; 2147 m (7043 ft)

We knew from the course overview the night before that Stage 5 would be rough. Almost the same amount of climbing as the day before in 12 less miles. We've learned at this point that what that really means is 'get ready for a big hike-a-bike section. Mark was still feeling a bit dodgy but as always he remained up for the challenge. We hit the course and again for unknown reasons, my legs we magic (despite having picked up a sore throat). I found myself riding many of the sections people were walking which felt great. I think Mark recognized that I was probably going to pay a heavy price for this exuberance, but he let me go anyway. Sure enough we hit the final aid station and got reports of a heavy duty hike-a-bike section in front of us. We shouldered our bikes and got started with the frustrating task at hand. After a LONG time, we finally crested the pass only to be greeted by the 'rock garden'. The rock garden is essentially a descent that is 100% on 6-12 inch rock. There is no possible way to ride other than picking your way on top of 1000s of rocks. While not my idea of a good time, I relished the technical challenge of the section and pointed my Niner downhill. The combination of gravity, big wheel and a little prayer helped me navigate the 5k of rocks. Mark, with a look of shear terror, decided this wasn't his cup of tea and proceed to dismount and run/walk the section. If poor Mark hadn't been tortured enough already after the rock garden we had 10k of technical dirt/rock descending to do. I'm glad I was ahead of Mark as I'm sure he was cursing my name for a good 20 minutes as he picked his way through. We finally hit a fire road into town and knocked out the remaining 10k. It was so hot today that we were both totally fried. Arriving in our first official town, the finish line spread was filled with treats that we hadn't seen all week (gold fish, chips, lemonade, muffins). It was a little bit of a shock to the system to see buildings etc, but the comfort of tent city was just around the corner. As a big bonus we learned we were next to the town pool and we were given free access for a bit of a swim (after finding the requisite mtn. stream to soak in first). We ate dinner in a hockey rink and we greeted by the town mayor. Mark discovered while inspecting my bike that my bottom bracket had frozen and looked at me questioningly as to how I made it all day with cranks that barely turned (I told you I had good legs). I dropped the bike off at the bike shop that traveled with the race to have a new BB install over night.

Stage 6; Elkford to Blairmore
Distance; 102.4 km (64 mi)
Elevation; 2998 m (9835 ft)

Suffice it to say that another long stage was not what the doctor ordered for our weary crew. My sore throat had gotten so bad that I could barely talk to Mark. For some reason my legs were still good, but the voice was gone. I felt bad because I couldn't communicate well with Mark to offer any words of encouragement along the way. It was another hot and long day on the race course. We did our best to keep moving efficiently, but I think we both new this was going to be a rough one. We were greeted with some spectacular views and some amazing river crossing which took the sting off a little bit. We crested one of the longer climbs and started a very fast ridgeline descent. The film helicopter was off to our right with a camera man leaning out of the cockpit. I felt like I was in an MTB video as the copter paralleled our fast descent down the ridge. We hit the final aid station and knew we had another 2000ft of climbing and purportedly hike-a-bike ahead of us. I was feeling pretty good in the legs, but I knew Mark was hating this stage. We continued on as Mark comically stated he needed to soak his feet in the river (I had to admit I had a little of the Canadian hot foot myself!). We found some water for Mark to soak it, but it didn't change the fact that we had a bunch of annoying hike-a-bike to get on with. We slowly made our way through and crossed the finishline with our weakest performance of the week. Despite all the good singletrack in the race, most of our conversations with fellow races was about the unnecessary hike-a-bike sections that seemed to always be present. Its a shame b/c I think the organizers wanted it to be the toughest bike race in the world which took away from the racing aspect and made some stages more like survival stages. Fortunately Blairmore had two things going for it that day. A great soaking river and a pizzeria. Mark made a b-line for the pizzeria after the race and ordered us a cheese pizza. We did a 15 minute soak in the river, then sat on main street eating a pizza! Somehow that Pizza started to change things for the better for Mark.

Stage 7; Blairmore to Fernie
Distance; 78.8 km (49 mi)
Elevation; 2101 m (6893 ft)

Knowing we were on our last stage (and having the boost of yesterday's pizza party), I think both Mark and I was in good spirits despite the growing all over body fatigue (and my cold which had now progressed to a cough). We hit the start line determined to race again. The race started with a climb up a ski resort hill which we fought valiantly up to maintain our position going into the singletrack. We hit a bunch of traffic, but patiently worked our way through the slower singletrackers ahead of us until we had clear trail. We worked well together making sure we were pushing each other as hard as we could in each section. The day had some mentally draining climbs in the middle. At one point I think we were both head down and silent begging for the second aid station to appear. We knew once we hit that section we were blessed with a downhill ride (for the most part) to the finish. We went ballistic down the fire road to find the singletrack and kept the gas on through the first of many sections of 'Fernie' singletrack. For me, hitting the singletrack is like putting gas in the tank so I was ready to rip. We emerged onto another fire road with a group of riders and took a right turn up a hill. Now it is worth noting that when you study the course profile you tend to forget about certain things --- like this damn hill. We started on this hot climb thinking we were almost done not knowing that TR had one more tough as hell climb for us. Probably inconsequential compared to early climbs this one just seemed particularly nasty. We finally made it to the top where local told us that we only had 6k to go and it was all singletrack. Boy they weren't kidding, we hit one of the best, technical singletrack descents I've ridden. It took everything I had to navigate the turns, trees, roots and drop offs they were throwing at me. I finally washed out and crashed lightly which gave Mark a good laugh since I'd stayed upright all week previously. We made it through the track and rolled into downtown Fernie to a heros welcome. We had just finished the TransRockies! We had a good stage and placed 16 in our category and moved up 6 spots on the GC to finish 24th overall. We enjoyed snacks, drinks and a basket of fries Mark bought before landing a ride with all our gear to our hotel. Again, we found a great river for a soak then enjoyed a late afternoon of Olympics viewing on our first beds in a week!

It was an incredible experience with many highs and lows. I enjoyed the race format and organization, but felt they should have made better choices on the route to avoid some of the hike-a-bike. I'd recommend the race format, but would advice looking into TransAlsp or BC bike race as you stay in hotel and you actually ride the course!

Craig

PICS:

http://www.me.com/gallery/#100024

http://www.flickr.com/photos/91469892@N00/sets/72157606824302599/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dolface/sets/72157606800987689/

Day 5 Update

2008-08-14T19:48:00.001-07:00

Hi Everyone, here is the update for day 5.
We finished the stage in 26th place after I had another really tough day. Craig was super strong even though he had seized bearings in his cranks. They're being changed by the mechanics right now.

Todays stage was sick. The first half was a super fast dirt road. Craig and I stayed with the pro's until the first control at about 10 miles. After that the climb started and everything broke up. We rode a great race until the final climb where I cracked again. Craig dragged me a good way until we hit a section where we had to carry our bikes up about 800 feet.

After that was a totally stupid downhill section down a dry riverbed full of rocks. Apart from the amount of bike carting we have to do, this was the most retarded part of the race. Some people liked it but it seemed most hated it.

I have no idea where we are in the general clasification but I think we mush have slipped a few places.

They're telling us about tomorows stage which will be about 60 miles with at least an hour of bike pushing and about 9000' of elevation gain.

Only 2 more stages to go!

I'll let you know how it goes.

Cheers,

Craig and Mark

Fwd: Day 3

2008-08-14T19:29:00.001-07:00

Subject: Day 3

After a HUGE effort on day 2, we were happy to learn day 3 would be a time trial format allowing for a little extra sleep. We were slotted at the beginning of the first start wave.

We hit the start line determined to put in a good effort. 47km and 1500m of Nipka single track lied ahead of us!

The track was, in a word, awesome. We enjoyed fast singletrack, technical shoots and spectacular views of one of the most beuatiful rivers I have ever seen.

We passed many teams in the first 10k which gave us a clean look at the singletrack the whole day.

On one technical descent we managed to scare the support motocross rider who promptly crashed and barely left us room to pass.

We finished in 3:45 which netted us 18th place on the day and moved us into the top 20 in our division.

We were both pretty sore after 3 days of racing so I was able to convince Mark to take a 15 min ice bath in the river.

Tomorrow is another long one. We are sad to leave Nipika, our comfortable home for 2 days, but are eager to see more of this beautiful country.

Cheers,

Craig and Mark

Team ARNavsupplies/Boo Coo Gear

End of day 2!

2008-08-14T19:27:00.001-07:00

Subject: End of day 2!

Well they didn't lie, today was so much harder than yesterday. More carrying the bikes and a lot more difficult trails. We finished in 7 hours 34 minutes and 9th place. This fantastic placing was due to half the field getting lost and climbing an additional 1000' with their bikes on their backs. We were the lucky ones and only added about 100' before we did a bushwhack through the woods to find the right trail. Both Craig and I had bad moments today where we were suffering way more than the other. Me on a really long technical downhill that I really hated, Craig loved it. And Craig on the endless climbs with little oxygen. But as a team we pulled each other through and finished strong.

Getting back with a high placing really had it's benefits today. No line for the bike wash or the shower.

We're camping at a fantastic location for the next 2 nights as tomorrow start and finish are both here in Nipkta.

Tomorrow we have a 40 km TT which looks fairly flat but I'm sure will be technical.

We've had dinner an squirreled away extra food for the late night snack. Now it's time to relax and watch the sun go down before we fall asleep.

No cell service out here so you be recieving a bunch of updates all at once.

Talk to you all soon.

Mark & Craig

Sent from my iPhone

Fwd: End of 1st Day

2008-08-14T19:26:00.001-07:00

Subject: End of 1st Day

We survived day 1 but what a day. I have thrown away one tire after it suffered a 1 inch gash in the side. We lost about 15 minutes while we changed it in the middle of a snow and hail storm at about 8000 feet.

We finished 29th in the 80 plus group in 5 hours 22 minutes. Probably pushed and carried our bikes for 2 hours cos it was too wet and muddy to ride.

So many people missed the cutoff but I guess they'll still be racing tomorrow.

The bikes survived the day without any major problems.

Tomorrow will be a big day with 3 times the climbing and probably a bunch more bike pushing.

The views are spectacular when the sky clears and we haven't seen any bears on the trails yet.

Now we're in tent city with bags of gear to keep us warm. The tents are quite large so it's not too bad.

Craig is about to give himself a little massage so no pictures right now.

Hopefully we'll send another update tomorrow but it's an early morning so it will have to wait.

Cheers,

Mark and Craig.

Sent from my iPhone

Day 4 update

2008-08-14T19:24:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone, Day 4 was a total nightmare for me. I cracked so badly I could barely peddle, Craig was pushing me along but we still managed to finish 24th on the day and only dropped 1 place on the general clasification. Aparently the scenary was fantastic but all I saw for 6 hours was the trail in front of me or Craigs cogset.

This race has so much climbing and big chunks where you have to sholder your bike and carry it for hundreds of feet up the hillside.

A number of people crashed yesterday including our friend greg Kidd who was taken off the stage via helicopter with a broken collor bone.
He broke his bike the day before and had to buy a new one from the guys at the race.

Tomorrow we have another huge day with about 8000' of climbing over 60 miles.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Mark & Craig

Sent from my iPhone

Day 3

2008-08-12T20:50:00.000-07:00

After a HUGE effort on day 2, we were happy to learn day 3 would be a
time trial format allowing for a little extra sleep. We were slotted
at the beginning of the first start wave.

We hit the start line determined to put in a good effort. 47km and
1500m of Nipka single track lied ahead of us!

The track was, in a word, awesome. We enjoyed fast singletrack,
technical shoots and spectacular views of one of the most beuatiful
rivers I have ever seen.

We passed many teams in the first 10k which gave us a clean look at
the singletrack the whole day.

On one technical descent we managed to scare the support motocross
rider who promptly crashed and barely left us room to pass.

We finished in 3:45 which netted us 18th place on the day and moved us
into the top 20 in our division.

We were both pretty sore after 3 days of racing so I was able to
convince Mark to take a 15 min ice bath in the river.

Tomorrow is another long one. We are sad to leave Nipika, our
comfortable home for 2 days, but are eager to see more of this
beautiful country.

Cheers,

Craig and Mark

Team ARNavsupplies/Boo Coo Gear

End of day 2!

2008-08-11T18:41:00.000-07:00

Well they didn't lie, today was so much harder than yesterday. More
carrying the bikes and a lot more difficult trails. We finished in 7
hours 34 minutes and 9th place. This fantastic placing was due to
half the field getting lost and climbing an additional 1000' with
their bikes on their backs. We were the lucky ones and only added
about 100' before we did a bushwhack through the woods to find the
right trail. Both Craig and I had bad moments today where we were
suffering way more than the other. Me on a really long technical
downhill that I really hated, Craig loved it. And Craig on the
endless climbs with little oxygen. But as a team we pulled each other
through and finished strong.

Getting back with a high placing really had it's benefits today. No
line for the bike wash or the shower.

We're camping at a fantastic location for the next 2 nights as
tomorrow start and finish are both here in Nipkta.

Tomorrow we have a 40 km TT which looks fairly flat but I'm sure will
be technical.

We've had dinner an squirreled away extra food for the late night
snack. Now it's time to relax and watch the sun go down before we
fall asleep.

No cell service out here so you be recieving a bunch of updates all at
once.

Talk to you all soon.

Mark & Craig

Sent from my iPhone

End of 1st Day

2008-08-10T20:05:00.000-07:00

We survived day 1 but what a day. I have thrown away one tire after
it suffered a 1 inch gash in the side. We lost about 15 minutes while
we changed it in the middle of a snow and hail storm at about 8000 feet.

We finished 29th in the 80 plus group in 5 hours 22 minutes. Probably
pushed and carried our bikes for 2 hours cos it was too wet and muddy
to ride.

So many people missed the cutoff but I guess they'll still be racing
tomorrow.

The bikes survived the day without any major problems.

Tomorrow will be a big day with 3 times the climbing and probably a
bunch more bike pushing.

The views are spectacular when the sky clears and we haven't seen any
bears on the trails yet.

Now we're in tent city with bags of gear to keep us warm. The tents
are quite large so it's not too bad.

Craig is about to give himself a little massage so no pictures right
now.

Hopefully we'll send another update tomorrow but it's an early morning
so it will have to wait.

Cheers,

Mark and Craig.

Sent from my iPhone

Day 1 Start

2008-08-10T07:45:00.001-07:00

Hi Everyone! We've had breakfast and now we're just packing up our
final bits and pieces before the start at 11:00AM. Everything arrived
ok and the bikes are all ready. There are over 350 teams from 27
different countries. This race is huge!

The course starts today with a 3000 foot climb straight out of the
parking lot and finishes with a 20k downhill.

We've already seen a black bear on the way to the resort so they're
really out there.

Hopefully we'll be able to send a report out this evening as the
finish is close to town. talk to you all soon.

Cheers,

Mark & Craig

Sent from my iPhone

We made it to Calgary

2008-08-08T23:24:00.001-07:00

We're in Canada and just getting ready to crash out for the night. We have a 1pm shuttle to Panorama tomorrow. Catch you later. Mark & Craig

Sent from my iPhone

We're off to Canada and the Trans Rockies!

2008-08-08T09:09:00.001-07:00

Today is the day we're leaving for Canada and the Trans Rockies stage
race. We'll be racing for 7 days over 342 miles and climbing 58,000
feet. Thats twice the height of Everest!! The bags are packed and
all the last preparations have been done. Check out the blog over the
next few days to follow our progress. The following link should also
have daily results and race reports from the organizers.

http://www.transrockies.com/trc/race/index.htm

Cheers, Mark.

AR Navigation Supplies/RWG Wins Overall at Ocean Blue AR

2008-07-30T23:00:00.001-07:00

AR Navigation Supplies/RWG wins the Ocean Blue Adventure Race on July
26th 2008 at Half Moon Bay. Follow the link below to read the race
story.

http://www.arnavsupplies.com/news.html

Cheers,

Mark Manning
www.ARNavSupplies.com

AR Navigation Supplies Wins the NORCAL-AR #3

2008-06-09T21:56:00.001-07:00

Link below has the full story from the NORCAL-AR event #3 in Henry W
Coe State Park.

http://www.arnavsupplies.com/news.html

Mark Manning
www.ARNavSupplies.com

Team AR Navigation Supplies Receives Support From Ellsworth Handcrafted Bicycles

2008-05-30T11:51:00.001-07:00

Team AR Navigation Supplies would like to thank team Dirty Avocados
for helping secure 2008 support from Ellsworth Handcrafted Bicycles.
It is great to be finally riding one of the premier mountain bikes for
adventure racing that is both light and strong enough to survive the
punishment of the sport. Check them out at http://www.ellsworthbikes.com/

You can also find links to other great supporters of adventure racing,
Ritchey, Brunton, BooCoo Gear and INOV-8 on our team page at http://www.arnavsupplies.com/team.html

See you at the NORCAL-AR #3 event this weekend.

Cheers,

Mark Manning
www.ARNavSupplies.com

AR Nav Supplies Teams up With BAARBD.org for Norcal-AR #3

2008-05-30T11:38:00.001-07:00

Team AR Navigation Supplies will be teaming up this weekend with
BAARBD

www.BAARBD.org to race the 3rd event in the Norcal-AR series
at Henry Coe State Park. The team this weekend will be Mari Chandler,
Galen Pewtherer and Mark Manning. This will be an interesting event
as a number of high profile team will be using it as their last tuneup
before next months Primal Quest.

See you out there!

Brunton by AR Nav Supplies Wins the Norcal-AR #2 Event

2008-05-07T23:03:00.001-07:00

Here is the full story of the Norcal-AR #2 Race at Almaden Quicksilver
in San Jose. I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as we did.

http://www.ARNavSupplies.com/news_articles/NORCALAR_042608.htm

Cheers,

Mark.

AR Navigation Supplies wins NORCAL-AR #2 at Almaden Quicksilver, San Jose, CA

2008-04-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

Well the results are out and they show that we won the Norcal-AR #2 as
the only team to clean the whole course in 6 hours of suffering.
After a very fast 1st section where we were trailing Kent by 1 minute
we came back to win when Kent missed CP 7 on his way to the bike
transition. The last 2 CP's were a real struggle as we had ran out
of water and still has about an hour of hard riding to do. As always
Mari was super tough and kept us all moving along while Andy provided
the horsepower to tow me around the whole run at an insane pace.

Thanks to Brunton, INOV-8 and Ritchey for providing us with the best
gear. With the bike loaded with Ritchey carbon components the hills
were much easier and running the descents were super safe in the
INOV-8 shoes. I have to be honest I didnt break out the compass once
in this all trail event but Brunton were there if we needed them.

Look out for the complete story later this week.

Cheers, Mark.

AR Navigation Supplies Racing NORCAL-AR Sprint

2008-04-23T22:56:00.000-07:00

AR Navigation Supplies will be racing this weekend at the NORCAL-AR Sprint at Quick Silver Park in San Jose. Come see Andy, Mari and Mark race in their new team kit. I'll post pictures and a race report next week.