The upland portion of the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve is a good place to work on becoming a more resilient runner. Although there are no very long, sustained climbs to be found, the hills are relentless and the footing taxing. For good measure, the brittlebrush and blackbrush will give you a good gash if you’re the least bit careless.

The area also happens to be a great spot to go when southwest Utah gets a bit of winter weather. When such conditions prevail, lower elevations turn sloppy from rain and higher elevations get buried with snow. But the terrain between about 4,000′ and 5,000′ gets nice: it usually doesn’t get much more than a few inches of snow and the deep, abundant sand is much more enjoyable to run when wet than when dry.

One fun option in this category is Red Mountain trail, which makes a north-south traverse of the Red Mountain Wilderness. There are not many trails onto the giant red block of sandstone, but once there, you are rewarded with hours of potential exploration and expansive views in all directions.

The week after Thanksgiving I carelessly slipped on an icy footbridge and took a very hard fall during a road run. The dull ache from the bruises to my hip, knee and shoulder subsided on a reasonable schedule, but something about the trauma badly pissed off my piriformis. So December was spent trying to restore an approximately normal, twinge-free walking stride rather than ramping up my running mileage as I had intended.

Anyway, I made slow and steady improvement during the run-up to Christmas. Finally, cautiously, I ventured back onto the trails the past week for short runs and my arse tolerated it pretty well. As planned, today was the first day I stretched myself out a bit. Having learned that a quicker tempo irritates the injury more than going slowly up or downhill, I opted for a day on the Oak Grove trail in the Pine Valley Wilderness.

Runners who are passingly familiar with the St. George area tend to think almost entirely about the desert terrain at the immediate edge of town. Folks who know the area a bit more may also think about the mesas and big canyons of Zion and its immediate surroundings. But there is much more to the area, as you might imagine once you realize the altitude within a roughly 15 mile radius of downtown St. George ranges from just over 2,000 to more than 10,000 feet above sea level. And a lot of it is gnarly. (Compare a few of the photos below to the Grigne pic at Anton’s post; I don’t doubt anyone so inclined could find a few hair-raising routes twisting up and around the vertical granite spires that dot the Pine Valley like dandelions.)

A hike up the Oak Grove trail typically starts from the Oak Grove campground, but in the winter the Forest Service closes the gate four miles downhill, about where the prickly pear and redrock peter out. Having the extra bit of mileage on the access road is probably just as well, since it gives you time to set your jaw, so to speak, before hitting the truly steep, rugged terrain when you hit the trail.

5,100 feet of gain in seven outbound miles, with 3,400+ doled by the three miles of singletrack. The steep, southeast-facing slopes don’t hold much snow or support much vegetation, so this is an ideal shoulder season trail. It also works straight through winter during a dry year like this one. The majority of the trail was completely dry today and the deepest I post-holed in the small patches of snow under the trees was mid-shin.

2. I’ve still barely scratched the surface of the wilderness running possibilities in the region.

3. The narcissism of minor differences reached maturity in the trail ultra blogosphere.

-  In a similar vein, I’m struggling to figure out how I want the front half of next year to look in terms of racing and adventure. The Silver Rush weekend in Leadville has quite a bit of appeal as a capstone event before taking it a bit easier during the brutal back half of summer in the desert. The back-to-back ride-run nature of Silver Rush is similar to a typical summer weekend for me, just … more. So it has that going for it. Generally, I wonder if I should race more, but I never seem to and don’t really regret it. The pros and cons of being pack fodder, I suppose. I have decided (in pencil) that next fall will be wall-to-wall adventure runs, much like I’ve done the past couple of years but without making any concessions to fall cycling events.

-  In the spirit of the above, here are a couple of parting cycling-inspired observations. It seems like I’m seeing cotton cycling caps pop up here and there on the heads of trail runners. It makes sense. In a sport with a (somewhat) deserved reputation for profligate spending, the $15 cycling cap, with its implicit lifetime guarantee, is utilitarian perfection. A cycling ritual I would recommend even more highly for crossover use is the pre-run application of warming embrocation.

-  Thumbs up to the person responsible for the closing credit bumper music for the second season of How to Make it in America. The Joy Formidable, Washed Out and M83 in back to back to back weeks was especially strong.

-  We have made a fairly significant remodel of the WRC website over the past few weeks. The goals were to streamline navigation, improve the store sort and search functions, and lay the groundwork for additional improvements, some of which will be in front of the curtain, others behind. I’d appreciate any feedback you care to offer. What you like or don’t, as well as any glitches we may have created while making the changes.

-  Our product mix is also in a state of transition. Of note, we have new FW11 apparel from Craft and Icebreaker in stock and have deeply discounted the odds and ends remaining from last winter. Generally 33-50% off. We’ve also priced all our remaining summer-weight short-sleeve tech tees from $10-$20. As usual, opportunists should be able to find a great deal or two for themselves (and size XL men can make out like bandits). Bargain hunters should probably start their browsing in the Screaming Deals section of the store.

-  Thinking of the long game, I’m fine with the way Christmas has extended its reign of terror. On our current trajectory, I figure one of two outcomes is likely, either of which strikes me as progress: (1) Christmas’s colonization of November holiday mindshare will be completely effective, in which case Thanksgiving will be nothing but a footnote, left more or less alone as a relatively uncommercial occasion (cheap lodging and uncrowded trails at your favorite national park!), or (2) Christmas will overplay its hand, consumers will revolt, and its commercial component taken off steroids. As I type it out, it occurs to me that this prediction is probably naively optimistic.

-  Thanks for reading and enjoy your holiday week!

Me:  “…anyone who’s into self-inflicted pain…”  Sounds like runners to me.
Him:  Pretty much, yeah. Or cyclists who keep on injuring themselves …

A few days earlier I had the misfortune of living through what had to be, physically, my single worst day on a trail. So my thoughts have been carried again to the theme of suffering.

It seems obvious that pain is part of the appeal of running, but it also seems obvious there must be a line, at least for most runners, between courting pain and its lessons, and out-and-out masochism. I will admit that I do not personally think I have a very firm grasp on where that line lies. But that is not the same as having nothing to say on the matter.

For one thing, pain or suffering is too broad a term. Being cross-eyed at the razor’s edge of self-induced hypoxia is one sensation. Being implicated in events that turn intentions of a laid-back 3-hour outing into a 6-hour absurdist play is another.

Likewise, the lessons taught by the different forms of pain are not the same. Sometimes the pain teaches us we are stronger than we thought; sometimes it teaches us we are weaker. Sometimes the lessons are more nuanced or entirely ambiguous. What I was taught most profoundly by my recent painful outing wasn’t even about me, in a way: I learned I will almost certainly sometimes need other people and that they will sometimes come through in ways I would not have dared guess.

It also seems important to distinguish the pain we ordinarily experience through running from the suffering of those who are poor, hungry, sick, mourning and the like. Indeed, though I feel no guilt at the thought, the recreational suffering of a hard run sometimes strikes me as wealthy-nation self-indulgence. Sooner or later, we can all pretty much count on experiencing overwhelming pain at the point of circumstances not of our choosing. Whatever it is, running isn’t that.

By the way, my friend was certainly right about cyclists also having a taste for self-inflicted pain. (Even cyclists who lack my penchant for injury.) They also sometimes write really well about it:

The greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure. That is nature’s payback to riders for the homage they pay her by suffering. Velvet pillows, safari parks, sunglasses; people have become woolly mice. They still have bodies that can walk for five days and four nights through a desert of snow, without food, but they accept praise for having taken a one-hour bicycle ride. ‘Good for you.’ Instead of expressing their gratitude for the rain by getting wet, people walk around with umbrellas. Nature is an old lady with few friends these days, and those who wish to make use of her charms, she rewards passionately.
– The Rider, Tim Krabbé

Greetings From the Fifth Fairway, Sunbrook Golf Course

My running went pretty well this summer. Healthy since early spring, I’ve slowly come to appreciate the importance of variety for me. When I bicycle consistently and mix up the type of running I do — trail, road, fast, slow, short, long — I just seem to do better. My different weak links feel a bit better in balance. For example, cycling unkinks my hamstrings pretty well whereas running keeps my back a bit happier. The variety also seems to keep me a bit fresher mentally.

None of this is guaranteed to keep me healthy, of course, but it seems to improve the odds. And good health has to be goal number one, since you can’t really enjoy a good wilderness run if you aren’t reasonably fit and you can’t be fit without consistency and you can’t be consistent without good health.

I would add that building my routine more explicitly around the avoidance of injury hasn’t been drudgery. Quite the opposite. For instance, one thing I was much more consistent about this summer was a true recovery run at least once per week: super easy for 45 minutes, most of it barefoot at the golf course. On really good days, the sprinklers were on.

Emptying My Shoes

- I’m one for two at local national parks this fall. I had a great time crossing Zion. Two weeks later, at Grand Canyon, I, uh, did not. The tiebreaker will be at Bryce over Thanksgiving weekend.

- I enjoyed this Max King piece about mental training. Very Zatopek.

- Black Diamond is in the process of launching significantly upgraded versions of several of their most popular lamps. We just received the first of these — a more potent Spot. Advances in LED technology mean this little bugger now puts out 90 lumens. Still just $40. A new Sprinter and Icon will be available around the first of the year. (The BD Spot store page is here.)

By contrast, in the early spring of 2008, Kyle put his life on hold, moved to Silverton, and over the course of 5 months whipped himself into the best shape of his life. He learned the nuances of every climb on the Hardrock course and internalized every rock, twig and creek crossing. Then, with the calm and deliberate focus of a monk (emphasis mine), proceeded to run what could go down in history as the perfect race.

Not knowing Kyle personally and given the silence from and about him since the race, I’ve always chosen to think of his 2008 Hardrock not as a supernova but a sand mandala. In this way of looking at it, he painstakingly built a masterpiece of expressive mountain running and then, rather than try to preserve or extend it, swept it up and cast it into a river. The race and its preparations were an accomplishment of supreme mental and physical discipline; eschewing competition thereafter an act of profound humility.

The time Kyle ran is probably the least interesting part of it for me. I suppose the record may, in some way, be necessary to the story. But I honestly would have a hard time caring less about where Kyle’s Hardrock fits within the competitive history of the sport. To me, it’s more beautiful and inspiring as a symbol of the transcendent possibility of loving something completely yet without ego, of the drive to realize our human potential in full acknowledgement of the impermanence of existence.

We just added them to our inventory, but I have been using a pair for a few months. The first time was after a bike event in Phoenix in April. Right after getting off my bike, I put on the leg sleeves, folded my 6’4” into a Prius, and drove the two hours it takes to get across Phoenix and up the hill to Flagstaff. Usually that would be a recipe for at least a few very creaky steps, but not this time. Not at all. In fact, I felt so good it was actually a bit freaky. So yeah, they seem to work. The other thing worth noting is the relative ease of use. Compared with full tights, it’s much less of a wrestling match to put leg sleeves on at the trailhead and you don’t need any special privacy to do so. (Store page here.)

Soft Elastic with Silicone Grippers

Gradient Compression for All the Big Muscles

Ready for the Drive Home

Emptying My Shoes

- Nice blog post here for experienced road runners making the transition to the trail.

- SW Utah gets its own hundred: Zion 100.

- Must read: when he’s not crushing Mt. Washington or the Canadian Death Race, Rickey Gates is a really compelling writer, including at his blog.