Wednesday, January 04, 2017

Looking back into 2016

Running and Outdoor adventure wise, it was a quite a year. To start of the year I had this 5 day winter mountaineering seminar organized by AAI. Rashmi suggested as part of turning 40 I should go ahead with a week's adventure of my own.

That was interesting 5 days learning lot of new skills and managing to get my first frost nip in the winters of Eastern Sierra. That trip got me lot of fun memories and some good stories to tell. Apart from that it brought me a good 4 weeks downtime due to injured Toe which got complicated due to a blood blister.

During Feb, I got to know I got into Cascades 100 in August and from that point on that was my main focus for the year, also I wanted to run a much better race at Quicksilver 100k. So I managed to cram in lot of hill runs between the month of Feb-Apr with 2 really good weekend runs at mission peak.

As part of prep for Quicksilver did a rampup race MUC 50M, a classic 50m course which was in my radar for quite sometime. I chose to stick with that race for 2017 as well.

Come May I was ready for Quicksilver, I paced quite well and ran within myself for most of the 40miles.  When I got back to mockingbird AS I was slowly hitting the wall, but managed to hang in there for next 10 miles, once I hit Tina's den AS it was home ground and much familiar territory, ended up finishing in 14:15, was planning on a sub 14, but something to strive for in 2017.

Apart from Quicksilver 100, another fun run we(Bipul and Siva) planned was a 100k run from White wolf to Toulemne meadows and back. It was a very ambitious run, it didn't go as planned Bipul got hurt due to a root and rolled his ankle and abandoned early, I was falling behind on water and started cramping and slowing so cut short my run to 50M in 20hrs and Siva managed to do 42M in 14hrs and did his first adventure run in style. It's surely a place to go back again. I am glad got a chance to try that atleast and run as much as we could.

From that point on it was all focussed training for Cascades 100m, training went really well, I had a great time and managed to finish in 33:51hrs.

Apart from this R did a 2 day walk with her friends Avon Breast Cancer walk covering 39 miles.

As a bonus ran some unplanned events as well SJ Rock N Roll surprising myself with a 1:35 and Bangalore ultra running about 75K in 10 odd hrs, (a 24hr event). Finally capped the year with a 4:10hr marathon at CIM #8 accomplished.

Overall a pretty solid year logging about 2000+ miles, including a 5 week trip with India with A and Rush. A had great year of learning at School and with her ST.


Tuesday, January 03, 2017

Anchor race for 2017

As I was writing this blog on race acting as a anchor for life, I cam across this excerpt by Ultrarunning magazine's publisher Karl Hoagland in Jan/Feb's edition.

"When selected at an ultra lottery your whole life gets a new focus – you are alive in a new way and something essential deep inside of you is turned on."

In same magazine issue Errol "Rocket" Jones has nice distinction between training and running

"Training is a discipline; running is an act. If you want to achieve your ultra goals in 2017, go out and do some training, not just some running."

This aptly captures my sentiments.

Anchor race: a race one which anchors your life, it keeps your honest in your training and life. Its a goal which nudges you when going gets tough, goal which encourages you to train hard during your weakest of times, clarifies priorities and focusses attention to what matters most.

Last year Cascades 100m worked very well as anchor race and kept me honest with my training, this year so far I have two main goals finish sub 30hrs at TRT 100 in July 10 years after I started running 100s in 2007  and finish Fatdog 120 in August, and I know Fatdog 120 will turnout to be my anchor for the year both running wise and in life in general.

I hope to make sincere efforts to train hard and get to start line in best possible shape.  Lets see how life shapes up in 2017.

Races 2017


Jan  14th: Skyline 50k (Sat, Fatass Training run)  (8-4pm)

Feb 12th(Sun, Fatass Training run): Los gatos 50k (8-3pm)

Mar: 11th Race MUC 50m (FULL Day)

Apr Weekend 23rd, RA (RD), 29th Charleston Marathon (1 Day)

May: 13th QS 100k (FULL Day)

Jun: 10th Nuts 100khttps://gobeyondracing.com/races/nut-100k/ Oregon Trip?  (1.5 Weekend)

Jul: 15th-16th TRT 100m 10th anniv (Weekend Trip)

Aug: 11th Fat Dog 120m , Canada Trip??  4 Day Trip.

Dec: CIM