Low Point in Training Season

My body threw on the brakes this week. I've finally entered that phase of training that feels like mono. Last weekend, when I last felt good, Susie and I went on a gorgeous 17-miler at Miami Whitewater Forest. When we got back to the car, it wouldn't start. "Nothing wrong with the battery", the park ranger confirmed. "It looks like it's in the ignition. Hopefully it's a $14 dollar part." It turns out the fix was $725 plus $150 tow to back to Cincy-- OUCH!

Hanging out by the lake on a beautiful day, waiting ALL DAY for a tow truck. Not a bad predicatment. 

Susie challenged the local yocals to some feats of strength. "I bet y'all can't plank them boats over yonder."

We are rescued! Let the unexpected $pending begin.

Since the long, food-less day at the park, every workout the following week was a challenge to even get out the door. I've become accustomed to every workout feeling like I'm on a muthafriggin rampage. 

Bluh

I'm only three weeks out from my big race of the year, so it's perfectly normal to be feeling burnt out. I've been pushing my body hard all year. Where's my taper?!!! I also mis-timed some trips to the produce store, leaving me without my typical high calorie fruit staples, having to rely too heavily on also-ran foods. With a better fruit ripening process, I could avoid backing myself into these compromising food choice corners.

Ugly, but brilliant banana ripening "tree" in Gambier, Ohio. I'm commissioning my brother-in-law Mike to build me a beautiful version of one of these. Warmer bananas get ripe faster and are found nearest the top, where the warmest air of the room is.

In the absence of ripe fruit in our house, I've been boiling a ton of potatoes. They have been clutch on long training days. Since they have a high glycemic index, they get treated with trepidation by typical diet advice columns. But, since only 5-15% of my total calories per day come from fat, my cells walls aren't coated with fat, and thus the carbohydrates don't get stuck in my bloodstream. Therefore, I don't get that terrible candida coma even when I eat a ton of potatoes. That's the theory, anyway. In fact, they are sometimes called the bananas of the soil and they are miraculous! They are local too, so I've been busy saving the planet and eating like a true Irishman!

On boiled potatoes for breakfast, I got in a solid 60 mile ride yesterday in some really dense fog in Campbell County, KY. It was very Steven King the whole way-- totally surreal. I was going to skip my run that day, but my brother John invited me on a nice and easy trail run through Ault Park. I didn't eat enough after my ride and we had no ripe fruit in the house, so my brilliant 4H-champion-chef brother suggested a vishiswa smoothie. Genius in theory, mediocre in practice.

Put refrigerated boiled pot-ta-tas into the blender, add water, then blend. (No skin means less fiber. There's plenty of nutrition in a skinless potato)

Wait a minute, John--vishiswa smoothie is really just a fancy name for runny mashed potatoes.

Feel the power? No I don't. I'm totally spent, man. I want my taper!

St. John Vianney subsided almost entirely on potatoes when he discovered a grass diet was almost impossible, and he supposedly wrestled with demons with little-to-no mixed martial arts training.

St. John Vianney-- the Cure d'Ars-- the "ground-banana" mamma jamma slamma

John and I endured about 8 miles after that smoothie. But I made him walk half of it. I just felt horrible, from my belly to my head to my legs. It's my first workout of the last two years that I haven't felt good enough to finish. I made us detoured to my parents house, who always keep a stocked fridge, where fortune of fortunes, my dad was making his famous gaspacho and lemonade, and I pigged out like old times.

Today, after a monster night of sleep, a luscious mango + berry mega smoothie for breakfast, I got in a respectable 15 miler at Lunken. Lap two of three was at Boston Pace (7:10/mile), which felt challenging but not desperate like my other runs this week. Laps one and three were just nice and sleazy and in my comfort zone. Remember, Chris, the goal is not to go the fastest, but to slow down the slowest. That taper is going to feel so good.

Race Report: East Fork Olympic Tri (Performance Enhancing Directions)

I had an awesome weekend, despite the asterisk in the record books. I ended up riding a solid 70 miler on Saturday with some good friends and then turned around Sunday and won* my first race ever! (emphasis on "good friends" and the asterisk).

6 AM. Time to go to work, baby!

Okay, so it turns out I am only a champion in the same way the Maradona's "hand of God" goal in the 1986 World Cup semi-final against England made him the games' MVP. Many people forget that this most imfamous goal was in the same game where he also scored the century's most famous goal, dribbling the length of the field, past six defenders plus the goalie. So, my weekend was equally awesome and villainous.

HOW IT WENT DOWN
That 70 miler with Russ and Andrew was just what I was looking for to get the legs tired. My goal was to race Sunday's oly triathlon on exhausted legs to see how fast I could go on an empty tank. For dinner the night before the race, I pounded down a about 40 oranges that I juiced and blended with about 15 bananas. I also have to add in here that we went out with some good friends that night to a swanky restaurant where I sneakily ordered two non-alcoholic beers.

I woke up on Sunday about 5:30 am to thunderstorms rolling in after weeks rainless heat wave. "Oh no, not today! I want heat wave." On top of miserable weather, I also didn't leave myself enough time to do my normal race day ritual, but I was able to pound down a 7 banana +10 strawberry smoothie after about 30 oz of water. I accomplished a most-excellent poop, then I loaded the bike on the back of the car and drove 40 minutes east to the state park, jamming out to a Pandora mix that happened to play my favorite pump up song-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PNpIxqqMtQ

In spite of the Killers, Cake, and Weezer, I set up my bike in the pouring rain and was feeling really low. Why was I here, alone, in the rain, in the dark? Luckily I had the optimal transition spot, because no one else was apparently feeling ambitious enough to claim their spots in the bike corral. Then all of a sudden, I needed to go poop again. What what? Sorry to be graphic, but every race day, I end up having an unexpected projectile-like #2 that cleans me out completely. It feels quasi-orgasmic to be so cleansed before a race. I'm just glad it happened before I put on my wetsuit.

Wetsuit?! Are you kidding me?! With water temperature near 85F, it was much too hot for wetsuits, but... I decided to wear mine just for the practice of taking it off in Transition 1. My weakness is swimming, so I usually try to just focus on a clean and rhythmic stroke, not letting my HR spike before the bike. But as always, I got excited and changed the plan on a whim.

It was definitely my hardest swim of the year. I flew without my dials, so to speak, racing by perceived exertion rather than using my heart rate monitor and odometer. I've been meaning to save up for a Garmin GPS gizmo. I know my HR was near 185, because I had a hard time even standing up on the beach when I came out of the water. The swim course consisted of two rectangular laps, amounting to .93 miles. I always find a way to round it off to a good mile by zigzagging and, no joke, ramming my head into a buoy. I had no idea how long it was taking, because I also forgot to start my watch when I was distracted by the announcer telling us to check our goggles. DOH! C'mon, Dwyer, pull yourself together. I ended up completing the swim in 21:04.

Getting out of the park was an immediate uphill climb on the bike, where I decided I would let my heart rate and breathing recover from the swim. I was just glad to be reunited with Hansel Pinarello Funkizeit. I got passed by the one and only dude. He looked familiar. (I actually met him on a local trail two weeks earlier. His name was Rob and he was badass enough to be shirtless and wearing compression socks. I passed him on the Loveland trail two weeks ago and he kinda took it personally and decided to pass me and let it be known that he "never gets passed." He actually turned out to be a really nice guy, unlike most of the cyclist wienies around here). So, there Rob was, passing me...again. I decided rather than play a cat and mouse game, I would just keep him on a close rein of about 50 meters, without drafting, of course. At the turn around point, we climbed a hill and he jumped out of the saddle. As he crested, he tried to shift gears, but he dropped his chain. I felt bad for him for a split second. I almost stopped as I thought about Contador leaving Andy Schleck in the dust in this situation, but I only paused enough to ask if he was ok and hear him say, "dropped the chain". It looked like a quick fix, so I rode by and descended as fast as I could. He wasn't far behind.

The course was very hilly, which I usually excel at, but my legs were noodle-ized from the day before. I've been deliberately trying to hold back on the up hills, maintaining a steady power output both up the hill and down. This strategy seemed to work, because after the race, Rob said that he tried to use the uphills to catch me, but I was always able to distance myself on the descents. This has nothing to do with being a good technical descender because I hold back on down hills ever since my shoulder-separating crash.

HOW THE DIRTY DEED GOT DONE
As is my MO, I had NOT mapped the 25 mile course. The bike course was poorly marked and I ended up taking a left turn where a traffic cop fell asleep and everyone else took a right turn, so it was really a race officials error. I couldn't have known because I had no one close enough to follow. While I'm proud to say that I discovered a more efficient route, it also happened to be 3 miles shorter than everyone else's route. It saved me about 8 minutes, which means that 4 or 5 people would have likely finished before me. But I was oblivious to all of this until much much later.

The run is usually painful as hell. On the double-out-and-back 6 mile course, I implemented the same strategy as with the bike-- start the initial uphill very reserved. Hold back and get my legs used to the new motion. Before I knew it, I felt ALIVE. I probably ran my fastest 5k in a race ever. But come lap two, and that return up the monster hill, I was in a dark and desperate place.

Fresh runners were beginning their first lap as I was beginning my second. You eye-ball these guys and wonder if you've miscalculated where your closest competition is. Could that gazelle-looking-dude feel as good as he looks? Why don't I feel like he looks? Even though I felt kind of demoralized by how fresh they looked, I tried to keep pace and I only got passed by one dude. I even made a special deal with myself, that I would stop at every aid station and walk for 10 seconds or so, just to make sure I kept my HR in check and got some calories in. No date-o-rade miracles to report, I'm afraid. I succumbed to gels and gatorade provided by the aid stations in response to last week's 32 mile run and date-o-rade-fiasco. (The date-o-rade issue is a really a logistical issue rather than a nutritional one. I'd take dates and date-o-rade every time if my usual source were actually had some. Since they're not in season, I can only purchase nasty plasticky ones.)

When I crossed the finish line, I collapsed to my knees. OWWWWWW! Luckily there was no puking as is often the case with my final sprint efforts. In fact, there was no final sprint effort at all. I suppose I was just to taxed from the big week of training.

I congratulated the next 3 guys to cross the line and there was Rob at #4. "Hey brother, what took you so long? I thought you just dropped a chain and got right back on. Did you get lost?"

"No, but YOU did. You went left when we were supposed to go right!"

I didn't believe him till I got home that night and checked the course map. I suddenly realized that I had no recollection of passing through the quaint downtown district of Batavia. HAHA!

I felt like a total idiot. But you know what, human error is a factor in every sport. Think how many basketball games would be different if referees managed to catch every infraction. As my wise and cynical brother, Mike pointed out, baseball would be extinct right now if steroids hadn't snuck in to make it interesting. I'm not saying I agree with him, but I am going to relish in the moment for a day because I'm darn proud of my effort. But of course, I'll be contacting the race officials to let them know some one else deserves the victory and the series' points. And I can guarantee that I was the hairiest man in the top 10.

Still standing, but barely.

After, I got home, Sus invited me on her 12 mile run. How could I say no? It was painful and filled with more coke, but it was a lovely way to celebrate what we call our 16th "Fake Anniversary."

"Happy fake A-day, mamacita!"

Now, I need to figure out how to get this caffeine out of my system. This awake-till-5AM stuff is for the birds.

Couch Surfing on Noah's Ark

"Of course you believe the end of the world is this month-- it validates everything you're doing on this farm!"

Last week, I visited my little brother, Matti, who is WWOOF-ing at 10 acre farm in Lodi, Ohio. WWOOF-ing is not what you do wit de hammeh and de nails on top uh de house. WWOOF-ing stands for world wide opportunities on organic farms. So, Matti learns how to farm the organic, bio-dynamic way and gets all the fresh produce and naps he wants. Talk about having life by the balls!

Maestro, the African Goat is a real sweetheart.

The farm is called Earth Song Farm, and it's run by an interesting and hospitable couple, in their 60s-- Steve and Cindy. They only started farming 5 years ago, but I've never seen a more motivated couple. They have deeply embraced the message of Anastasia from the Ringing Cedars of Russia series and are building their "space of love that will last forever." In fact, they believe they may be the only ones left on the planet, come August 15th or so. Yes, folks, the end of the world is coming! Like Noah, people who meet him call him crazy.

Steve and Cindy take their responsibility seriously...but not too seriously. This picture dons their living room/library. Recognize the scene?

The first night I was there, we stayed up till 1:30 AM around the dinner table talking about why Steve and Cindy are convinced that time is running out to build the earthship that will transport them to a new era.

I won't go into details about cataclysmic signs are out there, but I will say that I barely slept that night due to nightmares. And when I came home, I bought an armagedon's-worth of peanut butter, rice, and lentils at the Restaurant Depot. Heck, an American AA+ credit downgrade is an excuse enough to buy peanut butter.

Their earthship is a "greenhouse" (with 5 code non-compliant bedrooms) that is modeled after Michael Reynold's earth-bermed Earthships, yet it's made of concrete masonry blocks rather than rammed earth tires.

Here's the non-buried side of the earthship at Earth Song Farm. The "glass" is two layers of thick polyethylene sheeting--easily replaceable in the event of a global meltdown.

Another Earthship. (Not in Lodi, Ohio. ) Gorgeous architecture! These homes support human needs-- food, warmth, protection--zero energy bills!

The inside of the earthship is a work in progress, but in the far corner, you can see the hydroponic lettuce growing system. The sump pump that waters the system is run off of a solar electric panel and the water is harvested off the roof into a cistern.

Matti spends a lot of time in here doing construction work. The backbone is mostly complete, but the coolest features of all have yet to be added-- the THERMAL UMBRELLA, baby-- a low-tech geothermal heating, cooling, and ventilating system.

Cindy liquidated her stocks to buy excavating equipment. She moved 1,000,000 lbs of soil to bury her house. She will use the earth as a heat sink-- a passive geothermal system! This pic was taken from the roof.

These beautiful timbers are HUGE. They're about 6 inches thick and 14 inches tall. They were milled by the Amish neighbors. There must be about 50 of them supporting the buried roof.

Pink sheets of XPS foam board insulation will serve as the thermal umbrella-- a geothermal system with no moving parts.

The soil on the roof will be smoothed over, then three sheets of 2" extruded polystyrene insulation board will cover the house. Then three layers of thick plastic sheeting will cover that. Then 8" of dirt will cover that. This creates a thermal skirt extending 20' around the house, which isolates it from the ambient air. Everything below the umbrella serves as thermal mass, which will take 3 years to reach equilibrium. The three layers are part of the strategy of permaculture-- everything serves multiple functions and every function has built-in redundancy-- everything is a multi-tasking back-up system to something else.

For a typical geothermal system, you could easily pay $30,000. Steve bought a bulldozer for less than half that! He salvaged at least a hundred sheets of insulation for the thermal umbrella. Dirt is free. Matti's labor costs some strawberries and chicken eggs, but it's mostly free. The entire structure (~5000 SF) will cost about $15/SF. Most new homes can't be built for $100/SF! By the time most of us homeowners pay off our biggest expense, our mortgage, our monthly energy bills will have eclipsed our monthly mortgage payments. So if we know how to build homes like this, why are our current home-design/building practices so future-fragile?

In the summer, PVC pipes bring fresh air beneath the umbrella and into the bottom of the greenhouse. As warm summer air passes through the earth, it dumps its heat into the heat sink. All summer long, the PVC makes thermal deposits into their thermal mass bank account. Then, in the winter, the process reverses-- fresh air comes into the PVC pipes, passes below the house, warming up from the soil and enters the greenhouse.

The greenhouse also has a fallout shelter with this gigantic pipe-- an escape tube! Matti, Sam, and I wiggled through it Shawshank Redemption style-- mud and spiders included!

Matti D in the sacred circle

According Matti, Steve and Cindy try to incorporate "sacred geometry" into their garden. I'm not sure what that means, but the medicinal herb garden was laid out in a wheel-like fashion, rather than rows. And the large circle that Matti is standing in points to the East at the edge of their property.

My personal belief-o-meter and BS-detector was having trouble keeping still, but I really just wanted to be open-minded about how these novice gardeners/farmers were growing the farmers market's most amazing produce. They were the only vendor with strawberries. Their tomatoes were orgasmatronic. Their eggs sold out in an hour. Did it really come down to sacred circles? And if geometry was so sacred, then why did their home look like an explosion of chaos?

Eggplant pre-Parmesan

Ass-kickin' garden skillz

Soil-less growing and modular irrigation system

Cucumbers

Unfortunately for me, Steve and Cindy don't grow any high calorie fruit, so I'd probably starve, get lethargic, and obsess with conspiracy theories if I tried to eat 100% raw here. (I brought my own cooler of goodies). In fact, after my all-night 32 mile run that Saturday, I was out of bananas and famished, so I asked my bro to cook me potatoes and the freshest eggs that could ever be eaten. They were good and guilty. I used to begin every long workout with eggs and toast. It's been over a year now, and I don't miss it. I'm getting better results with high calorie fruit.

Free range, organic ovulation secretors

Admittedly, I am basically importing the tropics to Cincinnati every time I go to the store. I feel slightly bad about that, and a little worried about how I'll do that once the world ends. I just don't see how it's possible to eat raw and local unless you grow a ton of paw paws and melons. So, I prodded Steve and Cindy about whether they thought local-raw was possible. They actually believe it is possible with their greenhouse and hydroponics and vertical growing systems. But they made it clear that they don't think raw is healthy. That's based off of Cindy's 1-yr experience trying to go raw. Supposedly, her Chinese reflexologist told her she was eating too much raw for someone living far from the equator. I asked her what she was eating; it sounded like predominantly high fat nuts and greens (aka a dangerous"calorie restriction" diet for someone who is trying to live the life of a planetary superhero)-- nothing like the Hunzas, Okinawans, or other cultures who have proven themselves the masters of longevity and health, whom she actually knew about. If she's going to be earth's only dietitian in a few weeks, I wasn't going to let her get away with bogus generalizations about raw food or anti-Darwinism.

While the dinner conversation was too intense, the garden was one of the most peaceful places I've been. I hope to bring some of that back to my little urban postage stamp of a kin's domain. Output-wise, my best bet is to make an alliance with my dad who has much more land. While Steve and Cindy have 10 acres, they only grow food on 1.5 acres, and half of that is hoop greenhouse. I can easily envision us building our first hoop garden and hydroponic system. After seeing what Steve and Cindy have done, I'm convinced that inertia and plumbing are the only obstacles.

Hydroponic gardens don't use soil. Something seems un-natural about that. But, the results speak for themselves. Steve plays Mozarts to the tomatoes, strawberries, and kale. That's something he calls bio-dynamics-- the way birds' songs "wake" the plants.

Lot's more happened, that I hope to write about later, but I've got to prepare for my race tomorrow. It'll be an olympic distance triathlon about 40 minutes east, at East Fork State Park. My plan was to ride hard today so I could race on tired legs tomorrow. It seems to be working because I'm pretty nakkard from today's 70 miler. Stay tuned-- race report to follow.

Burning River 100 Mile Trail Run Race (Support) Report

Despite what Lionel Richie says, very few things in life are actually as fun as your expectations when you have to do them "all night long." Chaffing is just mother nature's limiter to most of those activities. But who knew I'd have so much fun running all night long through the woods in Akron, Ohio? It was kind of a belated birthday present to myself.

I had the good fortune this past weekend of crewing my friend Lee Ann's epic epicness-- the famous Burning River 100. It's a 100 mile foot race amidst the gorgeous Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Lee Ann being rediculously amazing on a bench in Akron. Change those socks, girl.

Lee Ann was amazing! She smashed her former 50 mile PR by an hour! Then she went on to run an additional 50 miles, finishing in about 26 hours with a smile on her face the whole time except for about 3 episodes of mild delirium. My theory is that it was induced by huge vertical ascents after she struggled to put food down through a couple of aid stations. In these rare instances--God bless Coke!

I paced LA from about mile 53 to 63. But I accidentally lost track of the course and we did an extra 2 miles trying to find our way back. I felt so bad. Apparently, we weren't the only ones off course, so I modified the course signage a bit (which was otherwise perfect). Then I took a break while Beth paced LA from about 63-73. Then I was back on duty from mile 73-93. I tallied about 32 miles, which is the farthest I've ever gone in a day! (After reading Ultramarathon Man, I was inspired to run 30 miles on my 30th birthday. That never happened because my training majorly lapsed while helping Susie open our training facility-- which is pretty darn ironic).

Raw Food Experiments Gone Wrong
I'm a firm believer that it's better to run between poops than walk between barfs. The Thursday before the race, I went over to Lee Ann's house to deliver the my special needs bag, filled with all my raw diva nutrition needs.  I blended about 3000 calories of date-o-rade. As a backup, I also gave her some Larabars, which are basically date bars with nuts or coconut. They're a pretty pure backup, but the high nut content can bother my belly when running (not so much when cycling). So as a backup-backup, I packed a bunch of PowerBar Gels. These are the only gels that I haven't barfed on. Still, date-o-rade was my first choice despite the high fiber content. I figured it's what I'm used to and it's been amazing for training.

Each water bottle has about 500 calories of date-o-rade-- blended dates + water. Eating cat meat is a last result on race day.

Larabars are my backup nutrition plan. Gels are backup-backup. The bottle in front has SaltStix, which I'm still experimenting with as a source of electrolytes.

Lee Ann looking good at the ~60 mile aid station in the middle of the woods. The volunteers were so awesome-- their tent was decorated in Mardi Gras spirit. Luckily they had every food option under the sun.

Once the sun set, it got dark, difficult, and even cold. But that's where the conversations got juicy!

Sunset was rockin' at this giant hill into and out of the woods. Families gathered and s'mored as they cheered on their loved ones. The pictures sucks because my water bottle spilled all over my camera phone. Sorry.

Here's an award winning pic I took in the deep woods. It was that scary without head lamps. I brought extra batteries for this very reason, which luckily weren't used. As you can imagine, the stars were beautiful company.

The forest was sooo peaceful...but also pretty terrifying. I don't know how any of those runners made it through the course alone. We passed a ton of lonely, hobbling dudes. Lee Ann didn't get passed once during the night, except maybe at aid stations where she would change her socks and shirt every time and shower her fans with graciousness and enthusiasm. Is this woman fo' real?!

When we came to the first aid station with one of my date-o-rade bottles waiting, I was so excited. Apparently, leaving raw fruity drinks unrefrigerated or in the sun for a few days is an excellent way to make alcohol. Wow! I wish I would have known about this in high school. My dates turned to pungent fermented sludge. I almost barfed when I tried it.

So, that's when I had a minor panic attack. I needed dinner(s), man, not just a mid-race snack. Thank goodness the aid stations supported pacers just as if they were racers. They had EVERYTHING-- oranges and grapes, which I ate a billion of, bananas, which were not ripe so I didn't eat. They had boiled potatoes, which were absolute money. I had about 30 oz of Coke. They also had vegan mashed potatoes and vegan mac & cheese, which I deep throated like I was a Cracker Barrel-regular. God knows what was in the "mac & cheese"-- in the moment, it was bliss, but for the rest of the night, I had terrible heart burn. From then on, I could only put down boiled potatoes, cola, and gel.

The run took most of the night and included a lot of walking because, as you can imagine, people don't run that fast over roots and rocks in the dark after 75 miles. Still, Lee Ann ran every single flat section without hazards. We had to walk most uphills, all muddy spots, all creek crossings, all trecherous downhills, and any section where we were eating.

For the first time in my running career, I chaffed and I chaffed hard. I always expected it to happen on my nipples, like those "wounded soldiers" you see in marathons, but I wasn't so lucky. It was down south.

Lori, was a sweetheart-- Lee Ann's one-woman medical department. She concocted a soothing balm of Preparation H, hydro-cortizone, and vaseline (if I remember correctly). I call it the H-bomb and felt like my butt swallowed a Red Hot and a sleeping pill at the same time. It totally took the pain away and added a bit of lubricated efficiency. YUM!

Unfortunately, I was not able to see Lee Ann cross the finish line. That honor belonged to Lee Ann's dear Friend Jen, who I met just briefly at mile 93 at 5am. I was toast, anyway.

Before I passed out, I drove south 30 miles to Lodi, Ohio, where I was barely able to greet the rising sun and then crash on the couch where I was surfing. It was easily one of the best nights of my life. When I woke up, I was happy to see that I made it safely to my brother's organic, bio-dynamic, off-the-grid farm...but that's another story for another blog for another day.

The morning of the race, I worked with my brother Matt selling the fruits and veggies he's been growing at Earthsong Farm, where he is WWOOF-ing.