You can also listen to our podcasts on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast…

Visit our website: www.justicerookies.com

Watch the video of this show here on our YouTube channel.

Ten Junk Miles, for reasons no one understands, interviewed Tim and here’s that show.

Gary’s other, more professional (albeit far less popular), podcast and site: https://www.experiencexdesign.com/

Sorry for the delay between shows. I was personally swamped with the academy and the related build up of testing up to and culminating in the state POST certification exam last week. And Gary was constructing a chicken coop. Hopefully, we should be able to be a bit more consistent moving forward.

Gary and I are going to evolve the show a bit. More on that in the next show. Please let us know what you’d be interested in having us research and talk about. Thanks, Pete, for your great comment asking about the impact of technology on sports and hobbies. It’s definitely an interesting topic that we might tackle in the next show.

Oh, and check out Gary’s other, much less popular podcast, Experience by Design https://www.experiencexdesign.com/

Thanks,

Gary and Tim

Thanks for joining us again for another inward glance (read: perverted stare) at our collective emotions related to negativity bias and how it impacts our current views on situations. In this show we discuss Gary’s reality check on his own motivations for putting on races he previously enjoyed, his lawnmower, and Tim’s progression and thoughts on the police academy. Please leave a comment on how you think you may focus on negative feedback in your life or just comment to say HI. We appreciate the feedback.

Gary and Tim

Two shows over a two week period. We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to discuss Gary’s assault on the age group championship in the 8 mile race on Mackinac Island! Hope you enjoy the show. Please leave us a comment and if you have any ideas or things you’d like us to cover in upcoming shows, please let us know. Thanks for listening.

Gary and Tim

Well, Gary and Tim are back with new shows. We’re a little rusty, so it may take a couple (dozen) shows to get polished and into our groove but we needed to start somewhere and that’s with this show.

Today, we discuss what we’ve been up to the last three years, what we are doing now in life, why we miss doing the show, and what we are planning for the future. Please comment with what you all have been up to and let us know of any topics you’d like us to discuss in future shows. Thanks for listening.

Gary and Tim

Helen and Stef Wyman are advocates of cycling, cyclocross, and gender equality in sport. Her list of achievements is impressive, with a Third Place at the World Championships, two European CX championship titles, 9 British national championships, and numerous race wins in World Cup events. More impressive is her work on bringing cyclocross to the masses, running camps, encouraging younger riders, sitting on the UCI Cyclocross Commission, and now having a development team in the NEXT-Wyman project.  It was great checking up with them, hearing about their travels in the US, their frustrations with a slow rate of change, and their hopes for future directions in cyclocross.

We are honored to have them on the show and hope you enjoy it.

Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Elevation Trail Studios World Headquarters

After a six month vacation from producing a show, Gary and Tim return to Elevation Trail with an update on things and delve a bit into what motivates people to do or not do activities in their lives. Really, it’s just another conversation about life in general.

Direct link: https://elevationtrail.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/july-26.mp3

Becca looks nice but she’ll crush you in a race.

Oh, crap, clean up the studio, we have a guest!

Join us on Elevation Trail as we hang out with “faux” Pro cyclist, Rebecca ‘Becca’ Fahringer. We talk about women in sports, women showering, and naked women advertisements. Fun show and learning experience, in general.

mp3 file

Listener, Rodrigo from Germany. Thanks for the support!

Some people quit a sport for no apparent reason and others linger in their sport well beyond their prime. We discuss that topic along with everything from motocross racing to injuries from doing good deeds. We also announce the winners of the hat/beanie giveaways.

Share with your friends (if you don’t like them and want them out of your life).

.mp3 file

Many people have supplies and plans in place in case the world ends. I have a backpack and passport ready in case Trump is elected.

We’re giving away an Elevation Trail trucker hat and two Run Steep, Get High beenie caps. Just comment here about the show and you’re entered for the drawing.

Direct .mp3 file

Didn’t really have a photo to go with today’s show, so here are Cooper and Pippit going for a daily ride.

It’s that time of year when nostalgic thoughts creep into our minds. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of room in our minds, so we need to discuss our strange thoughts in public. Welcome to one of our normal, random conversations.

Reading material for next week’s show: Craigslist

Direct link to .mp3: Past or Future or Whatever

and my new crib.

Hoka runner, Alisha Edmiston

Join us here on Elevation Trail as we chat with Alisha Edmiston, former pro cyclist, elite runner, and object (one of) of Gary’s stalking activities. It turned into a fascinating show of figuring out who we are, what makes us happy, and how we see ourselves. Oh, and we chat about my gym’s mens locker room, Gary’s starvation diet, and tips on how to meet girls.

Direct .mp3: Alisha Edmiston

Hope you enjoy the show and big thanks to Josh for joining us.

Days since trip started almost 500.
Distance covered on  Basil (motorcycle): 72,126km / 44,897miles
Countries travelled: 34
Borders crossed: 40
International Races: 4
Number of haircuts: 3

Lyndon Poskitt from Races To Places takes time out of his 100,000 mile, 50 country three year journey around the world to sit down with us at Elevation Trail for a candid conversation about his racing, the project, and his insights into different cultures and people. It’s a true pleasure to have him on the show. Hope you enjoy it.

Thanks to Motorex Oil, Klim, and AdventureSpec for supporting Lyndon and his adventures.

Lyndon Poskitt

2011

World class cyclist, Garry Millburn, joins us today on Elevation Trail. He’s currently on a world tour with his new wife, Fiona, visiting beautiful areas while racing bikes. Four years ago he was involved in a head on collision with a car that nearly took his life and left him with a couple years of rehab. Now he’s back pushing the limits in races and riding.

Gary and I also talk a bit about PEDs in sports and his recent (very neat) videocast discussion on the same topic.

Thanks for listening.

Garry Millburn

2015 Photo: @davesilverphoto

Tim zipping into mile 30 aid station at Bear 100. And then the race was over at mile 52. Photo: Phil Berghauser

A tub of topics today here on Elevation Trail. DNFs, Boston Marathon qualifying, the stress of big races, punishing your body, not being able to exercise, race directing, broken bikes, thanks to supporters of ET.

Music: LCW, Song: “Lubrication”

https://lcwmusic.bandcamp.com/releases

What’s the Value?

Order a shirt so we can upgrade our studio equipment…

Well, both Gary and I are wrapped up next week, so we wanted to squeeze in a show this week. Jamil couldn’t make it today but, alas, our lives are darn interesting, too. Well, Gary’s is, anyway.

Please consider ordering a new Elevation Trail shirt. Just click on the link on the right hand side of our site.

Thanks for listening.

Music by LCW. Song “Take Back”

https://lcwmusic.bandcamp.com/releases

Racing, Shirts, Annoying Cyclists

Ian Sharman and Mike Aish. The rivalry lives. Photo: Nicole Aish

Ian Sharman joins Elevation Trail for a wide ranging, no punches pulled conversation. Gary (in his slutty ways) is now the number 1 fan of Ian. You won’t want to miss that. We talk Skyrunning, coaching, smart training, hill running, race strategy, living in the USA, Elvis, new running gadgets, his records, and a lot more. Hope you enjoy it.

Music by LCW. Song “Take Back”

https://lcwmusic.bandcamp.com/releases

Ian Sharman Interview

People are getting soft.  Don’t believe me?  Look how much you Ooo and Aah at video and pics of normal little runs [hikes] up mountains by skinny, dirty runners with no jobs or homes, sleeping in the back of a 1978 Vega.  You drool over these images in your grey cubicle, nearly sweating through your Dockers chinos, and then burn the mental image into your brain, replacing the main character with yourself, as you bound up the 100 ft mound in the neighborhood park (that used to be a garbage dump).  Jumping up and down like Rocky among the scent of old oil drums buried deep beneath your dancing sneakers.

Sad.  You could be sharing the same giardia filled streams with any of these guys but quickly justify your grassy toxic dump GPS’d hill run with the fact that you actually have a life and, thus, some semblance of responsibility.  But I digress.

Gain back some of that adventurous youthful ability in the travels and accommodations to your next race.  Fly by the seat of your khakis and wing that shit.

You’ll want to keep your “plans” to yourself or at least somewhat vague.  I mean, no reason to bother your family with silly details like driving 110 mph through the desert half asleep with one index finger on the wheel or spending the night behind a gas station in East Los Angeles.

“Can you fellas point me to the nearest ATM?”

Transportation.  In the true spirit of adventure, leave that 7-year financed SUV in the garage and find some freestyle mode of transportation.  If you don’t have any friends dumb enough to be involved with ultrarunning and can’t sucker anyone into believing this will be “just like a vacation” to drive you to the race, then post some carpooling posts on local running club boards or on Facebook.  Make sure to be clear about the “NEED RIDE” detail.  Otherwise, you’ll end up with two idiots meeting at a coffee shop with all their luggage and gear and neither will have a car, thinking the other was supposed to drive.  Don’t laugh, I’ve seen it.

“You must be here off Craigslist for the ride to that place in the woods?”

Craigslist is an option too.  They have this “ride share” section (at least all the cool dirtbagging-type towns do, anyway).  You’re either going to be riding with a business sales guy chugging pepto bismol and listening to conservative talk radio loudly, or you’ll be in the back of a windowless van that smells like urine and has what appears to be dried blood on the ceiling.  If you make it to the race with all your orifices intact, then anywhere you end up sleeping won’t seem nearly as bad.

Accommodations.  Race Directors will often write on the race website IN BOLD AND ALL CAPS (AND SOMETIMES DIFFERENT COLORS) that you can’t camp here or park there, blah, blah.  It’s dark at night and no one will see you.  Besides, the parks’ budget is smaller than an Arkansas teenager’s weekly allowance, so there’s like one park ranger covering 5 million square miles of land and the chances he’ll catch you (or even be in the same area code) are nil.

Once, when I travelled to a certain race in Pennsylvania, I found an open (or, rather, unlocked) window in a ski hut cabin, so I crawled in and spent the night there before the race.  Some might call this breaking and entering.  I didn’t break shit.  I call it a warm sofa.  Oddly enough, that experience ended up as an article on minimalism in Trail Runner Magazine (last time I talk about my travel experiences on a run with an Editor).

Anton slept on a park’s bathroom floor the night before a race a few years ago.  That’s roughing it.  I’d rather sleep naked on an open boulder field at 13,000 ft in January than be snuggling up with moldy feces.  Geoff Roes had the “roughing it” when traveling to races down to a science.  He’s got all the camping gear shit and he’s a cook that can turn Ramen Noodles into spaghetti con le vongole (I italicized it to make it look fancier), so he’s living it up in the woods while the rest of you soft, 300 series BMW driving, $200 multi-colored hydration vest wearing yuppies are trying to figure out how to open that child-sized piece of soap in your hotel bathroom.

You’re better than this.

If you live to make it to the start of the event, it’ll seem like one of the easiest races you’ve ever run after the hell you put yourself through to get there.

Check out our YouTube channel videos. https://www.youtube.com/user/footfeathers

Direct .mp3 file: UTMB, Prize Money, Denali, Single Life

Mike Aish Interview

Validating my prediction I made back in 2008. Photo JLu

Learn more about Anton Krupicka than any previous interview. Listen in with us as we invite Anton Krupicka into our little studio at Elevation Trail. We talk ultra, trail, sponsors, validity in sport, training, and much more. Tony finds out I’ve been stalking him for nine years, calls me a conspiracy theorist, and Gary pushes Tony to start a book. It’s both your typical Elevation Trail show and one of the most unique. Check it out and share it with your friends.

Photo JLu

Direct .mp3: Anton Krupicka Interview

Nick’s trail and ultra race events: www.gnarrunners.com

Don’t forget to check out the Silverton Alpine 50k: http://www.silvertonalpinerunning.com/events/silverton-alpine-marathon-50k/

Direct .mp3 file: Nick Clark Interview

Tim and RD Phil after finishing Grand Mesa 50 miler

Gary gets his motorcycle and hides it from his mother. Tim returns as an ultrarunning fanboy. We talk about everything and nothing.

Races mentioned on the show to check out:

Grand Mesa 100

Silverton Alpine 50k / Marathon

Summer Catch Up

Going over to Slovakia to race for the USA at ISDE costs a lot of money. Help to send Ryan there by entering for a chance to win his personal Husqvarna 450 MX race bike http://sipesracing.com/

Check him out and follow his racing at Twitter – Facebook – Instagram

Direct .mp3 file: ryan sipes

So, now you’ve made it through the training and have finally arrived in Leadville the week of the race.  Gasping for air while walking to the car concerns you a bit but you hope to acclimatize before race day.  Funny enough, the percentage of oxygen in the air (21%) remains the same up to 70,000 feet.  Interesting…(if you have no friends and thus too much time on your hands and can concern yourself with useless facts).  However, it’s the density (or lack thereof) of the air that makes some people feel like they’re suffocating.  If panting like a porn star isn’t enough of an indication that you’re having a tough time with higher altitude, here’s a list of pleasant symptoms (nabbed off some wiki-crap page)…

• Lack of appetite, nausea, or vomiting
• Fatigue or weakness
• Dizziness or lightheadedness
• Insomnia
• Pins and needles
• Shortness of breath upon exertion
• Nosebleed
• Persistent rapid pulse
• Drowsiness
• General malaise
• Peripheral edema (swelling of hands, feet, and face).

Sounds like side effects of Levitra, “We’ll help you get a chubby but your eyes may start bleeding.”  Those symptoms above will emerge just from standing in line at the one decent coffee shop in Leadville (hint: it’s not the dumb ass yuppie coffee shop you’re thinking of).  Mix in a little 24 hours of nonstop running and you’re in for more suffering than bumping into your insurance salesman neighbor at a bagpipe conference.

The race starts early, like “get your ass out of bed, sailor, you’re in the navy” early.  The 4am start means you have to get up around midnight to fiddle with your gear for the 80th time, eat whatever won’t make your nervous stomach barf, rub Body Glide on every surface of your body until you feel like a glazed doughnut, and pray that your bowels will release before the start instead of halfway down 6th Street.  It’s so early that you’re probably better off just staying up all night drinking.  Any lingering sleepiness at the start will be exploded out of your head by the 12 gauge shotgun blast that Ken Chlouber uses to start the race (and wake up half the state).  Now you’re off and running at a pace more suited to a 5k.  The start heads down 6th St, which is downhill for about a mile until you’re dumped off onto “the boulevard”, a rumbling dirt road that lasts for about 2.5 miles and seems more like 25 miles long when returning to the finish some 20-30 hours later.

You can pretty much predict how people are going to do in the race based on what time they reach Mayqueen aid station at mile 13.  If you see a friend reach that point in, say, 1 hr 45 mins, you yell, “Man, you’re killing this shit!” But really you’re thinking, “That poor bastard will be a salt caked zombie with diarrhea by the time he hits 70 miles.”  “Great job, dude!”

By the time you finally wake up and are conscious by 8 or 9am, you’ve already covered about the distance of a marathon and think, “just three more marathons to go…”  As mentioned, much of the course is mostly open and runnable and, with over a 1,000 people running, you’re never really out there in the wilderness alone like some 100s where you feel like you could be on the wrong end of a snuff movie in the woods at any given time.  In fact, most of the first 40 miles of the course are, well, boring.  Once you reach Twin Lakes at mile 40, that changes.  There are a lot of people, both locals and race related, hanging out, cheering, enjoying the day, and likely thanking God they aren’t moronic enough to attempt something as dumb as what you’re doing.  If you glance up, you see Hope Pass looming tall in the distance and realize you’ll have to get over that thing, twice.  Suddenly, the race has a new meaning and seems much bigger than the 40 miles you’ve been enjoying so far.

All of a sudden, this doesn’t seem like such a great idea.  photo stolen.

To make the climb over Hope Pass (12,600 ft) just a little more interesting, you have to cross Lake Creek (which feeds the twin lakes and is the only point at which you get wet feet, unless you piss on yourself – been there, done that), so you have soaking wet feet before the climb up to one of the weirdest aid stations in ultras.  After about an hour of climbing up a trail that would be beautiful if you weren’t brain dead from being asphyxiated, you pop out onto this beautiful meadow and suddenly feel as though you’re in some cool dream with flowers, soft music, and girls in light sundresses.  Then you see a fairly large animal that looks vaguely like a camel, then another, then several of them.  Just before you’re almost ready to swear off anymore cheap LSD sheets from your SoCal friend, you realize you’re at the Hopeless aid station on Hope Pass and those weird animals fucking up your cool dream are llamas.

WTF.  Looks like a humpless camel with a Bob Marley wig. photo, yep, stolen.

They use the llamas to haul all the aid station gear up the mountain.  You’re so messed up from lack of oxygen that you can barely make small talk with the “interesting” folks who manage the aid station, so you just sip the soup broth placed in your hands, wave weakly to no one in particular, and wander off to complete Hope Pass and make your way down to Winfield, the 50 mile halfway point.

If you’re lucky enough to have tricked one of your (soon to be ex) friends to pace you, Winfield is where the pacing begins (refer to my pacing guide here).  If you turn around and get started out of Winfield quickly enough, you have a chance of not coming to your senses and just ending the suffering and quitting right there.  Dropping isn’t so bad.  It only wears on your mind every day for the rest of your life.  No biggie.  To avoid the guilt a blind Jewish mother would be proud of, you continue on.  By the time you get back to Twin Lakes, the party is pretty much over and you waddle through the aid station, get weighed in, find that you’re down about 10 pounds since starting the race, even though you’re hands are swollen like you got stung on each finger by killer African bees.  Now that it’s night time and cold out, your appetite for certain food changes.  A grilled cheese sandwich cut into four cute triangle shapes and Gold Fish crackers are the best things you’ve ever tasted in your life, even though normally you consider both of them fit for a four year old child.  In fact, I just realized that aid station volunteers treat you more and more like a child as the race progresses.  Says a lot about the mental state required to sign up for one of these things.

The rest of the run is a painful blur until you get to Mayqueen at mile 87.  Depending on your condition (likely shitty), this last 13 miles can take you anywhere from 2 to 16 hours.  If you hit Mayqueen 20 hours into the race, you have a great shot at finishing under 25 hours and getting the big buckle (the entire point of the race and the last six months of wasted life).  The big buckle is, well, big and, as Americans, we always want big.

Here’s my Leadville buckle.  That’s right, ladies, the big one.

The smaller buckle isn’t worth showing a picture of in this post.  It’s like the size of a quarter and comes with a Hello Kitty pink cotton belt.  You get the smaller buckle for finishing in 25-30 hours.  If you finish after 30 hours, you should find another hobby because if you have the 60,000 hours per year of time to spend on a hobby, you could be a kick ass quilt knitter.

Now that you have the big buckle, go back to that holiday party this year and be the center of attention. You will surely lure another idiot who can’t talk to women into wanting to run Leadville for the sole purpose of impressing girls with a shiny buckle.  And, really, do we want a girl who is impressed by a shiny belt buckle?  (yes).

Since finding faith in God isn’t likely, nor is the chance that he may accept your belated and misguided faith, you need to figure out how to actually train for Leadville.  I’ll eventually release the “How to Run a 100 Mile Race” guide that’s already written (and pretty damn awesome), just not down in physical words yet, so for now we’ll focus on the overview of training for Leadville specifically.

The next six months of your mountainous high altitude training.  Good luck.

See, Leadville is an odd race.  It’s an incredibly runnable course yet offers two obstacles, one obvious and tangible (Hope Pass x 2) and one unseen (altitude).  Many of the participants come from Colorado. When I ask them why they run Leadville (when there are so many other badass 100s in the country, I get the obvious(?) response “Because it’s convenient.”  I’ve run a few 100s and I can assure you that no 100 mile run is “convenient”.  Whatever.  The point is that these Coloradans are used to both the climb of Hope Pass and the altitude of the entire race.  I’m assuming you’re from some sea level handicapped, humidity saturated town.  You know, a place where only a tool d-bag would wear a Leadville Big Buckle (we’ll get to that distinction eventually) to a cocktail party.  Wear that thing to a party in Colorado and you’ll be ostracized to the living room off the foyer (hall/entrance) -you know, the room where no one has ever spent more than three minutes, much less sat down and relaxed.  The sort of room your grandparents would have plastic all over the furniture so if you did sit on it, you’d make constant farting and squeaking noises and smell like a new beach ball the rest of the night.  Wear that buckle to a party in New Mexico and you’ll get shot and have the buckle stolen only to be sold for scrap metal with an old radiator and random fence material and your scalp will be spray painted pink and dangling from the rearview mirror of a lowered 1982 Chevy Silvarado.  Regardless, we’ll say you’re from a coastal state or, sadder even, a midwestern state where you have no idea why the air is so fucking thick and your house is ripped up by a tornado every two years.

Xenia, Ohio tornado.  I lived through this bitch when I was a kid. photo Dayton Daily News

Anyway, you need to figure out how to survive at over 10,000 feet, as well as how to run continuously uphill for 3,500 feet (a couple times), just to impress chicks who probably won’t care much because your arms are skinny like a malnourished spider and your feet look like you’ve been spending nights with Kathy Bates in the movie “Misery”.  Whatever, at least you’re interested in trying to impress the ladies.  It’s a start.

If you’re one of those dumb rich guys with a shitty marriage, you could buy yourself a high altitude tent to sleep in like the bubble boy.  Your kids will start doing drugs out of sheer embarrassment.  Or (since you obviously have no sense with your cash) you could fly to Colorado and spend some time in the mountains learning how to breath air with like 2 molecules of oxygen per lungful.  At least there are nice views (and you’re not encased in plastic watching your family live like normal people).

Aside from acclimatization, you’ll need to run a lot and run uphill a lot.  Easy.

Let’s assume you’ve done all the proper training.  You’ll know whether you have if you’ve lost all your friends, you are so skinny you look like you escaped from a concentration camp, and you are tanner than a lifeguard at a nudest colony.  Now you’re ready to race Leadville.

Mining competition, circa 1900-1910.  These guys would kill and eat an ultrarunner.  photo Denver Public Library

The scene in the town of Leadville surrounding the week of the 100 mile run is, well, odd.  There’s this town full of mostly unemployed, deep fried food eating, cigarette smokers, who look like they’d just as soon kick your 2010-model-Subaru-driving self in the teeth, than say hi to you.  And then there’s you and the other thousand quinoa and kale eating, sinewy appendaged, Patagonia wearing, hipster wannabe, bleach white toothed “health nuts” wandering around the main street shops like you’ve never seen a silver necklace with a bear claw pendant before.  It’s like two worlds colliding in some time warp.  It’s really fascinating if you step back from your terribly important life and just observe it.  I often hope something will spark a massive brawl between the townsfolk and the tourists.  I envision the fit runners slapping at the tree trunk fore-armed and walnut knuckled Leadvilleans like five year old girls.  Then they get killed and dumped into Turquoise Lake.  But I digress.

Part 3 of “How to Run the Leadville 100:  Choice, Buckle or Death?” Here

Direct .mp3 file: Things In My Head

Brandon Pooley (in his living room)

Thanks for joining us today here on Elevation Trail as we welcome our guest, Brandon Pooley, who studies chemistry, builds things in his living room, and rides motorcycles. Gary preps for his motorcycle exam, both written and practical. And Tim gets a $300 ticket for his elderly and abused dogs. Also, learn the key ingredients to gaining popularity in social and media outlets.

Brandon’s Adventures In Real Life channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/adventuresinreallife

Please purchase a new Elevation Trail shirt – it’s appreciated. http://teespring.com/elevationtrailshirt

Direct .mp3 file: Exposing Yourself

Shawn “Sarge” Wentz

Join us today on Elevation Trail as we talk everything Crossfit, with our special guest, Shawn Wentz, Co-Owner and Coach at Crossfit Longmont. We also roped Brandon Fuller into the show to talk about his last six months since starting Crossfit. Please fee free to leave suggestions, questions, and/or comments here or on our Facebook page. You may also email Shawn directly at: admin@crossfitlongmont.com

And the website is: www.crossfitlongmont.com

Hope you enjoy the show!

Direct .mp3 Crossfit WOD?

Thanks for listening and if you feel like supporting the show, please click on the paypal button over yonder on this page.

US 100k Champ Camille Herron

Oh, and check out the Elevation Trail videos on YouTube. Subscribe while you’re there. Maybe share them with friends. https://www.youtube.com/user/footfeathers

Boston Marathon Recap

Boston and Elite Runners in Ultra

https://www.facebook.com/kingoftheapples

https://www.bikereg.com/27116

AdamStGermain

Safety at Events – Barkley

Gary on his way to crushing the field in his first 50k xc ski race.

Join us on Elevation Trail today as we chat with Andrew Gardner. And find out how Rob Krar is linked with XC skiing. Gary and I also talk about our normal stew of seemingly unconnected topics, including the PCTA dispute.

Guest Andrew Gardner

If you want one of the new high quality vinyl Elevation Trail stickers, just donate at least $11. If you want an Elevation Trail hat, $25. Any amount is much appreciated!

Being a Noob Runner

If you want one of the new high quality vinyl Elevation Trail stickers, just donate at least $11. If you want an Elevation Trail hat, $25. Any amount is much appreciated!

Being a Noob Runner

1995 Leadville champion trophy for sale

1995 Leadville champions trophy up for sale. Promoting yourself as though you’re a professional athlete and, in contrast, real pros who are very quiet. Getting waxed for a 50k XC ski race. Movie screening was a big hit. Weather.

We got it all (and, some may argue, nothing).

Self Promotion of Yourself

JV appropriately geared up!

Join us today on Elevation Trail as we welcome my long-time friend, Jeff Valliere, who is an accomplished mountaineer. We recall an adventure he and I had climbing Longs Peak (14er in Colorado) and how our decisions that day were critical.

The report of the day on JV’s blog: http://jeffvalliere.blogspot.com/2009/03/longs-peak-full-version.html

Direct .mp3 file

The 3,000 ft Trough.

Tim climbing up the Trough.

Tim after climbing through the Key Hole.

Tim walking around the exposed ledge just after falling.

Over the years I’ve blogged about several things, a lot about running, but also a lot about other topics in daily life (some a bit too personal and thus pinched from public view after a scant few hours).  Seriously, though, how many times can one write about the eight mile run he does routinely without lulling even himself into a deep sleep?

This is where the humble race report shuffles out onto the stage from behind the black velvet curtain and shyly acknowledges the audience of blog readers who’ve grown accustom to following varying levels of blog reading etiquette and mores.  They question ideas when appropriate, plump up the original context with their own comments, and often rally to the defense of notions and even other people whom they will likely never meet in real life.  The diversity and anonymity of the blog reader is not always for the thin skinned.  But the race report seems to bring readers together in a like-minded circle of campfire warmth to share in the recount of self imposed race struggles.

Our friend, the race report, serves as reporter, lamenter, cheerleader, and historical reference.  Races are unique, even the same event from year to year is unique.  Players change, crowds grow, the venue morphs.  And yet they are similar.

Other than the bib number, medal, or belt buckle (if you’re nutty enough to finish a 100 miler), the only thing that stands as a tangible reminder of the event is the race report, so respect and effort must be given to produce the best place holder possible of your great achievement, or, unfortunately sometimes, your suffering defeat.

So, what exactly makes a great race report, well, great?

For me, the prospect of death (like mountaineering) or at least scary close encounters with death (like Putnam Pass in the San Juans) seem to evoke the most memorable and lucid writing from me.  There isn’t a lot of intrigue in the local trail half marathon just a mile from a large city, aid stations every 3 miles, and spectators at several trail intersections.  However, consider a tough, remote mountainous 100 miler and now you’ve got a good shot at finding a way to kill yourself, or at least suffer tremendously, and terrific fodder for your race report.  Other situations that virtually guarantee a good report are a competitive race to the finish, wardrobe malfunction, wildlife encounters, and crapping your pants.  I’m not saying you can’t create a great race report on a shorter local event, you can.  It just takes more work to squeeze the interesting parts (i.e. fabricate) from the experience.

There are varying approaches to the race report.  Gary Robbins is adept at the humorous report, typically in a humbling, self-deprecating way.  Geoff Roes lays it out in a realistic, journalist manner, leaving you knowledgable about the mundane facts of the race as he experienced it.  Some reports are so overly detailed (dragged out) that you wonder how the person ever made to the start line after exhausting himself in the pre-race preparations, while others seem to be written by a half-witted sloth – “I tied my shoes and ran.  The end.”

The astute reader will eventually see patterns to all race reports.  There are ingredients that have become  fundamental.  Some of these include sandbagging, excuses (Major = I got hit by a bus walking to packet pick up.  Minor = my iPod broke half way through “It’s Raining Men”), pre-race bowel movement details, running out of water, feet hurting, trouble with pre-race sleep, etc.

In part 1 of this post, I’ll layout my guide to writing a good an amazing race report.

The Build Up.  Me on an exposed wall at 14k ft.  I do epic shit.

You’ve just run an epic race, whether it be a half marathon in a local park or an ultramarathon in a place so remote that the pre-race briefing included costs involved in search and rescue operations.  You planned, trained, worried, talked about it until friends’ ears bled, then lined up and did it or, maybe, didn’t get it done.  Either way, it was an adventure and you need to do something to capture the details before they are diluted by the thin liquid of daily life.

If you ain’t so good at writing but good (and prolific) with a camera, you could put together a photo album of the race and call it a day.  Photos say a lot but only you can personally and completely express how you felt during your race and words are the way, my friend.

It’s not difficult.  You have the hardest part out of the way: the experience itself.  You simply need to lay it out in a somewhat organized and hopefully entertaining way.  Even if it’s not that entertaining, you’ll at least be able to go back to re-read it and relive the experience.  It’s more fun to make it entertaining, though.  Here’s how to do it.

1.  The build up.

I like to use snippets from conversations with others about the race or quotes from emails, race reports, and/or the event website.  This is the first opportunity to make people aware how difficult the race is and how your level of awesomeness for taking on such an impossible task is off the human charts.  It’s also the first chance you get to slip in a little sandbagging.  I like to use, “My training wasn’t great.”  This phrase is so vague that it could mean you’ve only been running 98 miles a week instead of 100, or that you’ve been eating 98 delicious cream filled Twinkies a week and running 20 miles.  Either way, the purpose is to soften the reader’s expectations of your pre-set abilities going into your epic race.  Here’s an example:

“In the weeks leading up to the race my training was lackluster and I missed some sleep.  I felt ok but something was missing.”

Read in context with preparation and build up to your race, those sentences blend in and subconsciously set the reader up beautifully for either a triumphant or disastrous outcome.  “Man, he killed that race even though his training was lackluster and didn’t get much sleep!” or “Well, of course he had a bad race.  His training was lackluster and probably didn’t sleep since January.”

Ok, let’s dissect that phrase.  “In the weeks leading up to the race my training was lackluster (lackluster?  what are we, like 90 years old – who talks like that?  What is lackluster?) and I missed some sleep (like entire weeks of sleep or 15 mins one morning when the garbage truck woke you?).  I felt ok but something was missing (WTF? something was missing, like a lung or your car keys?).”  

The beauty is that it’s so vague you can twist it’s meaning when questioned post race.

Another key during the build up is making sure people understand that you’re probably the only human who’s badass enough to undertake such epic shit like this race.  Any cool race has warnings; these are great to add to your build up.  Here’s one (of many) taken from the awesome Hardrock Runner’s Handbook:

“The weather is a dominant factor for this run and can be at least as formidable as the terrain, remoteness, or high altitude. It is our general opinion that the first fatality we may have will be either from hypothermia or lightning! We would rather that there never be a fatality, and so we will continually be giving you warnings, cautions, updates, and suggestions regarding the exposure you must face when attempting this run.”

They all usually have warnings about wildlife encounters (more frequent than you might imagine), like bears, mountain lions, elk, buffalo, snakes, and other scary stuff (wait ’til you see the reflection of eyes in the woods on your first night run in the wild…).

Quotes from friends warning you of imminent death are great.  Here are just a few from my Hardrock Race Report from 2011:

“Be careful crossing above the waterfall, it’s a fatal spot.”  -Karl Meltzer

“Watch out for cliffs on the left.  Fatal spot again.”  -Karl Meltzer

“There is always one more climb.  You will feel the worst when you are high on the passes so get off of them quickly, your condition will return to good quickly.  I know this.  I have sat there on the passes with death coming soon but just know it will be a matter of minutes before you feel better if you get down.”  -Scott Jaime

“Virginius Pass, go across the Talus slope and pick up the route through the notch, it is steep, slippery, brutal.”  -Karl Meltzer

How great are those!?  Other guys telling your readers how badass you are for even thinking about doing this death defying event.  It serves a couple purposes.  It validates the difficulty and your bravery and it bolsters the sandbagging/excuses angle, sort of an ancillary benefit.

The rest of the build up varies in depth.  This is where you write about the details of preparation.  Write about some big training runs, about family and friends sacrificing for your self-centered venture, lists of every item you packed in drop bags, what you plan to start with, what the weather was like, things like that.  Over time, I’ve gone from long lists of things I “need” for races to now when I basically make sure my privates are covered and I have some water.

Next up:  The race itself…