The Bybee Boys

I managed to get out on the bike yesterday after a week of sitting around doing nothing.  It might have been better to continue a week of doing nothing.  Anyway, as I was heading out to Golden I wiped out crossing the bike path bridge close to REI.  Unfortunately, that was on the way out (mile 4 of a 33 mile run).  The thumb got the worst of it, but I the left side of my body endured a number of scrapes.  As for the thumb, you be the judge as wo what happened, but for now it is pretty tender and I can’t move – a tad bit swollen.

I was running a couple of weeks ago and felt a snap in the plantar fascia.  Yikes!!  That ain’t good and it certainly did not feel good.  It hurt like hell immediately after I felt the snap.  I went to see the doctor and he confirmed that I did not rupture the plantar but instead snapped a portion of it.  Now I am on bed rest.  Ok, really I just can’t run until the end of October, but it seems like bed rest.  I have been doing some biking (without clipless pedals), but it is hard to find time for that and difficult o get in enough hours of exercise on the bike.  Hoping that the plantar will feel better by the end of October and that I will be back to running in November.

“Perhaps the genius of ultrarunning is its supreme lack of utility.  It makes no sense in a world of space ships and supercomputers to run vast distances on foot.  There is no money in it and no fame, frequently not even the approval of peers.  But as poets, apostles and philosophers have insisted from the dawn of time, there is more to life than logic and common sense.  The ultra runners know this instinctively.  And they know something else that is lost on the sedentary.  They understand, perhaps better than anyone, that the doors to the spirit will swing open with physical effort.  In running such long and taxing distances they answer a call from the deepest realms of their being – a call that asks who they are …”

~ David Blaikie

Much has happened since the HATC posting.  Apparently I was too busy training to post any updates to our blog.  But, the training paid off and on Sunday (8/22) I finished the Leadville 100 (run) and with that, another year of Leadman events.  That makes me the only 4-time Leadman finisher.  The Leadman series is a huge undertaking so I feel very lucky to have finished it again, plus I had PR times for both the 100 mile mountain bike (10:33) and the 100 mile run (26:26) which was a nice outcome.

Our annual High Altitude Training Camp (HATC – pronounced Hot-ka) began on Sunday and Charles and boys relocated to Breck for the week.  Sunday was a good kickoff to the annual week of running and biking excessses.  I managed to get in an 11m trail run in the AM and then got on the mountain bike in the PM and did a 19m loop with lots of climbing.

Holy Crap!!  The SJS50 is one seriously hard run.  PLEASE!!  If I ever say, suggest, insinuate, hint, contemplate or consider doing this run again STOP ME.  All that being said, this year’s run when about as expected – the plantar fascia was killing me, the second major climb sucked my will to live and the third major climb induced nausea and vomit – but I finished the damn thing and have another hat (??) to show for it.  It took me 14 hours and 37 minutes and I am sure that there was some part of that time that I enjoyed it, but for now I am maintaining that the entire course it brutal and to allow anyone to attempt it (much less charge them for the doing so) is cruel and unusual punishment.

The elevation profile for the course goes something like this:

The May numbers are in and it turned out to be a reasonable exercise month.  213 miles of running, 90 of those on trail.  226 miles of biking – all road bike mileage at the moment and all crammed in to the last 10 days of the month.  Roughly 55.5 hours of exercise for the month.  That is a reasonable kick-off schedule to the summer nonsense.  Perhaps even more surprising is that I have been getting up early to get on the bike – 6 of the last 10 days.  I doubt that will continue, but it is nice to get on the bike before the work day starts.

Well . . . the first bike ride of the season is in the books.  I managed to get up early and headed out towards Lookout Mountain from the house.  The closer I got to the foothills/Golden, the windier it got.  Although the orginal plan was to go up Lookout Mountain, I made a mid-ride modification and turned at Golden to head back the way I had come.  Too much wind to be fighting on the uphill.  So, not the best ride I have ever had, but it was good to get on the bike and I was home before the boys stirred from their slumber, so all was good.

Tuesday I headed out for a (late) lunch run and need to go by the house to retrieve something, so I ended up running from the office, around WP and then to the house.  As I got to the house, I was feeling a little weiry and I still had 2.5 miles back to the office.  That caused me to refelct on the food intake, I realized that I had not eaten anything on Tuesday.  And on further reflection, I remembered that last meal on Monday was around 2:00pm.  So, it had been about 24hr since I had eaten.  No wonder I was low on energy.  I really need to remember to eat!!

The vegetable garden is in the ground!!  After a full weekend of preparing the yard and planting plants and seeds, we are now in the wait and see mode for this year’s garden.  It has been several years since we have done the prepping and planting ourselves (having been in a CSA), but we were excited to try our hand at it again and we will be even more excited if everything that we planted grows.  The plants or seeds in the ground include: beans; peas; carrots; lettuce; spinach; leaks; squash;  tomatos; peppers (bell, jalapeno and cayenne); herbs (oregano, sage, rosemary, basil, thyme, cilantro, parsley); butternut squash; and watermelon.  Obviously if everything grows, we will have lots of produce.  Nothing better than walking out the back door and picking the veggies that you want to have for dinner.