Avoiding Treadmills

I just find treadmills mind numbing. You just keep moving your arms and legs back and forth on them with your surroundings remaining static, your feet landing on an artificially smooth surface, with no wind in your face or anything else to really connect you to the outside world. I understand for many runners where constant heavy winter snow makes it impossible to get any reasonable workout in, they are a necessary evil. But just because treadmills are sometimes necessary does not make them any less evil.

My travels took me Logan, UT this week for business, and I could have run on the treadmills at my hotel. Especially since the temperatures were in the single digit degrees Fahrenheit, which is pretty cold for people who live around here, and really cold for people like me who live in Northern California. But running is about breaking down bariers and that includes barriers put up by the weather. Training for races is more than simply getting into some level of cardiovascular fitness. It's about training the mind, testing yourself either by running over different and difficult terrain, slogging through inhospitable weather, and varying the running distances and paces so that on race day, your prepared for anything the race throws at you. A treadmill just doesn't provide the same spontaneous unpredictable experience of running outside.

And with this in mind, I stepped out of the hotel to start each day. There was a certain peace in those cold, quiet mornings gliding down the empty streets of Logan as the sun, hidden behind the snow covered Wasatch Mountains, slowly brightened the dark morning sky. After a while, the harsh cold provided more than morning stimulation, creating burning sensation and eventually numbness to my hands and face. But I prefer pain and numbness in the hands and feet from the cold outside to numbness in the brain from a painfully monotonous session on a treadmill indoors.

Besides, braving the cold morning makes those surprsingly addictive cinnamon rolls they have at the Holiday Inn Express breakfast bar even sweeter.

Race Tapering and Fermentation: Get Out of the Way

All the planning, hard work, and execution is over. While some things worked out better than expected, some other things didn't. There's nothing left to do but let nature take it's course. I could be talking about tapering for The Santa Cruz Half-Marathon this weekend. Or, I could be talking about the collaborative Biscuits and Honey Amber Ale I brewed up with a friend.

Everything in my limited home brewing experience tells me once the yeast is pitched, best get out of the yeasts' way and let them do their thing. Maybe some subtle additions can be made, but the yeasts are really calling the shots, and as long as you take good care of them, they will reward you.

Tapering in the final days before a half-marathon, the only thing to do now in is allow the muscles heal and get stronger from weeks of training, so the mind has the most strength to call upon on race day. Of course, there is the temptation to get in one last big workout to take things to a higher level a few days before race day. Too often, this backfires into a tired performance on the big day. Trust me, I know.

Successful racing and brewing is a lot about getting out of the way of nature, so it will take the best course.

Learning Patience in Running and Home Brewing

I'm not a patient man.

This has unfortunately worked to my disadvantage in races, where patience is pretty important. Everyone knows it's important to pace themselves, to not go out too fast. And of course, once the gun goes off, there's all the usual chaos at the start, then the adrenaline starts flowing, patience goes out the window, and before you know it, you're at the first mile 20 seconds sooner than you wanted to be, and in big trouble. At least that's the way a lot of my races started out.

One of the ways I learned to developed a better sense of running patience was through tempo runs. These are workouts of about 20 minutes duration, typically run at a "comfortably hard" pace. A simple rule of thumb is to simply add about 15 seconds to your 10 k race pace. This is around the lactic acid threshold, where lactic acid starts accumulating in the muscles because of chemical reactions required to generate enough energy to maintain this comfortably hard pace. Too much lactic acid in the legs makes them feel rubbery, makes harder to keep up the pace, and is often what forces you to slow down if you've gone out too fast.

A track is a good place for a tempo run, because you want to concentrate knocking out the same pace over that 20 minutes. Of course, you could go faster, but a goal of a tempo run is to training the mind to learn pace sense and develop a certain patience to keep knocking out the same time, lap after lap around the track. (If you can't find a track, a reasonably flat running trail with few variations or interruptions due to traffic works pretty well.) Since lactic acid is accumulating in your legs, the body learns to buffer this acid, and so over time, you can run faster without producing as much lactic acid in the legs.

Learning to be more patient in home brewing? Home brewing workouts seem to be an oxymoron. Instead, patience in home brewing seems to simply come from experience. I'm finding I'm way to eager to bottle and drink my finished brews, where an extra week or two in the carboy or bottle conditioning would give it that extra edge. I recently brewed a coffee porter, and while I originally wrote in my blog post that it was flat, found giving it another week in the bottle allowed the carbonation to fully develop. Probably another week of secondary fermentation would give the yeast a little more time to do their thing and give the flavor a little something extra, but I still think it turned out to be a pretty good brew once I gave it time. I suppose the more I brew, the necessary patience will start to develop.

I need to be a more patient man.

Early Spring Optimism

There's something about a sense of optimism surrounding the first race of the year. You have some idea what kind of shape you're in, but until tested by the unforgiving stop watch, you never quite know. If you're faster than you expect, you're off to a good start. If you're slower than you expect, you learned something valuable and there's still plenty of time to catch up in your training if need be. But of course, it's just great to be out there running with lots of other folks again.

And so it was with Linda and I running the Going Green St. Patrick's Day 10 k Run last Sunday. For a first time race, it was pretty successful and everyone seem to have a good time, even if the mile markers were a bit off. I just hope the course was long, judging by my time. It was a good tune up for the Santa Cruz Half-Marathon next April, and good to know your fitness level four weeks before the race, rather than finding out the hard way at mile seven of a half marathon.

While January is often the traditional time to make plans for the upcoming year, it's people often early spring when people look hard at what they want to accomplish for the year. Whether family, career, money, or fitness and recreational goals, early spring is often when we look at what we want to accomplish for the year with a sense of optimism.

So after battling injuries and dealing with the associated frustration for nearly two years before getting things literally straightened out with a chiropractor, I've set very general goals for the year of to run with less pain and work on needed core strength, balance and flexibility to make this happen. My 42 year old body does not take as pounding around the track for the morning interval workouts, and so will focus less on finishing time and place than in years past. Given that there's a lot I'd like to accomplish outside of running this year that will require time, effort, and mental focus, this seems to be the way to go.

I'll take a similar attitude with home brewing. There was a time late last year I was all gung ho about getting into homebrewing competitions. Then, I began to realize there was this small issue that I barely had the foggiest idea about how to take care of yeast, impart the hop flavors into the brew, get rid of off flavors, and the other "little" things required to make a good brew. So I'm going to take the time to learn some of these things while making enjoying the brewing process and the results. And I'll be homebrewing with a friend of mine I don't see often enough this year who's been looking to get back into home brewing again.

That evening, Linda and I went to our favorite brewpub El Toro, a small celebration of sorts for a job reasonably well done that morning at the races. We have a lot of plans for the year together and there's lots of hard work to be done after a tough 2009, but we're looking forward to the upcoming year. These are good times.

High Altitude Training and Carbo Loading in Yosemite

Sometimes, you just have to break the monotonous routines of life, to refresh by experiencing new things and breaking routines. And so was glad I recently spent a long weekend with some friends at a cabin inside Yosemite National Park. In addition to seeing friends I haven't seen in a while we were also celebrating my girlfriend Linda's birthday.

And while I've found it's important to establish a training routine for running success, breaking this routine once in a while is always helpful. Races often create some unexpected adversity, so dealing with new and different barriers in training from time to time helps to prepare for whatever the race throws at you. So I appreciated getting a couple good high altitude runs in through the trails in and around the town of Wawona inside the park, which seemed to rejuvenate my legs a bit, having gotten into a little running rut.

Of course during the weekend, we spent a day in the Yosemite Valley, taking in the surreal, iconic landscape that's inspired generations. As I stood amongst the majestic pine trees, with the Merced River rushing by, and gazed upwards at the famous cascading waterfalls shooting down the shear cliffs thousands of feet above me, one question immediately jumped into my mind: What's the beer like around here?

Fortunately, I did not have to wait long for an answer, as we took a break at the historic Ahwahnee Hotel and enjoyed an Ahwahnee Amber Ale from Mammoth Brewing. Amber Ale is a often a rather uninspiring style, but maybe that's because few Amber Ales are as good as this one. We all enjoyed the rich, lightly roasted malt flavors that gave way to a slightly, astringent hop bitterness. Well composed, balanced beers like this are a wonderful thing. I honestly can't remember a better amber ale than this. (This beer is normally sold as The Real McCoy Amber Ale.)

Later in the Ahwahnee Hotel gift shop, I picked up a six-pack of Yosemite Falls Pale Ale from Snowshoe Brewing in nearby Arnold, CA. Back in the cabin, I found this to be a rather malt forward pale ale, with lots of bread-like character to go with a light orange peel bitterness. I wasn't blown away by this one, but it did start to grow on me after the third bottle over the course of the weekend. (This beer is usually sold as Snowshoe's Thompson Pale Ale.)

After poking around the Yosemite Village Store, and a little gift shop and grocery store in Wowona, I picked up a few other offerings from Mammoth Brewing. Their Epic IPA could have passed for a slightly hoppy pale ale, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. This brew had the malty backbone of a well done biscuit, which blended well its light citrus and floral hop character. Not what I expected for an IPA, but really nice combination of flavors. And I found Mammoth Brewing's High Country Pilsner to have a minerally character, with a slight tartness, and subdued hop finish. While not the classic pilsner flavor profile, Linda and I found it quite refreshing. Both the Mammoth's IPA and Pilsner were unlike the classic styles, yet both were quite unique, memorable, and enjoyable. Wasn't I talking about virtues of breaking routine and predictability just a few paragraphs ago?

There were some nearby breweries I wanted to visit, but just couldn't find the time. Of course, when your girlfriend is celebrating one of life's milestones with her closest friends, and you're out and about, searching for beer, well, women get emotional about stuff like that. But I'm a pretty lucky guy hanging around a closet hop-head, and we've shared many tender moments that often involve me asking about her feelings as I pointed to a beer, with her responding with a heartfelt "Go for it!".

Babe, here's to celebrating lots more birthdays with you!