Spiral Drive Race; 1st place, 25:17

Ran a race on Saturday. It was the Spiral Drive 4 mile in Salida (actually 4.08 by my watch). Race goes 540 ft. up to the top of the iconic Tenderfoot Mountain and then back down on a dirt road.

No track meet this weekend with high school prom in Salida, so I figured I’d give it a go. 

In terms of competition, the race was led out by Jaeson Murphy, who is a two-time top-ten Hardrock guy, Leadville top-20, and otherwise rock-solid mountain trail guy. He’s got some decent wheels and he went out super quick. I knew my fitness well, and so just let him go, but he came back to me pretty quickly. Passed him at about a mile and then led the rest of the way. 

The last time I ran this race, I led to the top and then got beaten on the way down, so I ran scared the whole way down. 

I got to the final turn in 23:3x, which is about a quarter mile from the finish. I figured it wasn’t crazy that I could close in under 5:20 pace and get the course record, which is Tom Sobal’s 24:57 from 2003. But there was a gusty east-west wind that put an end to that fantasy, and I let go of the rope the last 200. 

I finished in 25:17, which is nearly 40 seconds faster than I ran six years ago, in worse conditions. Won by about a minute over Jaeson. 6:40, 7:18 up then 5:26, 5:19 down, with a 30-second last .8 where I was toasted. 6:10 pace average for the distance.

I thought it was a fun, well-organized, low-key race. I’ve run with Jaeson before, but I had never raced him, so that was fun, too.

I probably won’t race again for a couple of months with the end of track season, and I will probably transition to some longer mountain stuff over the summer. We’ll see if the fitness I have developed over shorter distances will translate. 

End of Year Musings

• Last week, on December 30th, I snuck in one more time trial on the track. I had never run 10 miles in less than an hour before. And so I decided to give that a go as well. The plan was to do 5:59s through 8k, and then lower it down to 5:55s the last 8k plus a curve. All was going swimmingly through 9k, until two soccer teams showed up at the field for a scrimmage and commandeered lanes 1 and 2, literally putting their gear all throughout the first two lanes of the backstraight. Long story short, I think I had a 59:30 in my legs, but I finished 40 laps and a curve (16100 m, if I had been in lane one), in 59:58.8. Probably got an extra 150m or so with the interruptions. My watch tracks 1600s as miles when it's in track run mode, regardless of whether you're running in lane 1, lane 9, or on the infield. Regardless, I ran 10-plus miles in under an hour. 
• My legs were absolutely thrashed after the effort, which I did 4 days after the 10k. 4 days on, they are still thrashed.
• On December 29th, I hit 3,000 miles in the year, for the first time ever. I’d say this has a lot to do with the first bullet.
• Without question, 2023 was my best year of running in the last 25 years, and high in the running for my best ever. Ran 3 very good time trials and 3 good races. Should have run more races, but the ones I ran all worked out pretty well.
• Back in 2013, when I set the goal of running a sub-17 5k, my logic was simple. When I was a high school and DIII college runner, I had decent speed but wasn’t that great aerobically. At my peak, my shorter-distance times were much stronger than my long-distance times. Then I barely ran for ten years. Then I ran ultras for four years, which made me aerobically fit, but I had no wheels. I thought, if I could reclaim some semblance of my high school speed while maintaining aerobic fitness, then when I returned to running longer distance races, I would be a much more competitive runner. At the time, I thought I’d be there in a year. Instead, it took me 11 years to get back to sub-17 shape. 
• A lot has happened in the last 11 years. I started a business, got married, moved to Salida, had a nasty leg injury, had a kid, and became a track coach. All that stuff changes you, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. 
• So, what now? I am officially burnt out on time trials. There’s a decreasing marginal return on chasing times in time trials as a master’s runner, and now that I’ve been doing it for a while, the big returns are almost certainly done. I’ve been chasing times every time I’ve gone down from low altitude just about every time I’ve gone down since 2018. The appeal has waned. I could chase 5-minute miles every year, but the only reasonable time to do that here is in the summer, and that’s the best time to get out in the mountains. I enjoy the track more than most, but I still prefer the latter to the former. 
• I think the next step for me is to keep doing the same stuff with the training, and then to run more random races, from 5k to marathon, whenever I’m in the mood. It’s time for me to de-emphasize time goals and emphasize life and running experiences. I still want to run sub-80 for a half and sub-2:50 for a marathon, but the impediment to that isn’t lack of speed anymore. It’s aerobic volume.
• My “bucket list” of races is perhaps atypical. Hardrock doesn’t really appeal to me, but I want to run all the big road races, from Bix 7 to Lilac Bloomsday to the 5th Avenue Mile. I’d like to do all the marathon majors. I’ll throw some mountain races in there, too. At some point I’ll need to get revenge at Pikes for the stinker I ran there in 2021, but it won’t happen next year. 
• I love running, even the mundane and boring workouts. And I finally feel like I’ve figured out a training program that works for me and enables me to race to my potential while staying healthy. I have no illusions about being some national-class athlete. Heck, I might only be the 4th or 5th best master’s runner in Salida right now. But regardless, I do genuinely feel that I am maximizing my limited talent given the time and life constraints I’m under. I think that’s all you can ask for.
• My training is very simple, for those who are curious. I run 6-9 hours a week. 75% of it is very easy mileage, at 70% of Max HR (120s, for me). About 23% of my mileage is at “sub-threshold” intensity, broken up into intervals of 1 to 10 minutes. I do about 2% in high intensity work, between races, time trials, hills, and more specific stuff. I think what is unusual about my training is that: 1) the volume of sub-threshold is much higher than what most people do. I’m usually doing over 100 minutes of it a week. And 2) the easy running is much easier than what most people do. 
• The question I have now is whether I’ll be able to apply what I’ve learned to longer distances and different surfaces. Look forward to figuring that out. The 10-mile PR is a good sign that this training will do well at longer distances, but the proof is in the doing.