A Winter Stale

Hiver, vous n’êtes q’un vilain.

(Old French Folk Song)

Talk of your cold: through the parka’s fold

It stabbed like a driven nail.

The Cremation of Sam McGee

Robert W. Service

Goodbye and good riddance to a very cold, dark, dreary month. Hello to another one. The temperature today was minus 18 Celsius and a snowstorm is planned for tomorrow. The climate in my part of the world is unpredictable during the wintertime: we can have mountains of snow or no snow; deep freeze temperatures or clammy thaws. It is never comfortable. This year we are enjoying what some would call a ‘real winter’, with below normal temperatures and lots of snow. I wonder sometimes at the motivation of those who came here first, and stayed.

I have in the past ridden my bike to work during the winter months, but no more. The combination of utter darkness plus car windshields gummed up with salt and sludge makes me feel invisible on the roads. And it is slippery out there. What few bike lanes we have here are not plowed; in fact the snow from the street itself is plowed onto the bike lanes. I used to tempt both gravity and ice, but their collusion with the visually-impaired car drivers creates an axis of evil that defeats me. In short, I am frightened to ride my bicycle in the city in the winter. I’ll remount in March when Daylight Savings resumes and the roads clear, at which time I might have a chance of making it alive through the streets of this sadly bicycle-averse city.

The winter conditions present a challenge to anyone who is trying to train for a cycling event such as the Death Valley Spring Century. Where would I be without Coach Troy Jacobson and his Spinervals DVDs? Think what you like about Coach Troy’s approach, I am a fan. He gets me spinning on my trainer, gets my heart rate up, works my legs and pushes me to do more than I would just pedalling away in front of Jeopardy every night. Spinervals workouts are not a complete solution, but they contribute strongly to my survival as an athlete at this time of year.

For good measure I managed to contract a personal cold as well, which hit me mid-month. It lingers - as they do - with the nagging vestiges of a cough. I felt the best course was to lie low while I was sick and not to irritate my battered lungs with gulps of furnace-dried air. As a result, training has come to a standstill over the past ten days; with the Death Valley event less than a month away, I need to get back on the bike. I want to get back on the bike; I miss it like anything.

But it’ll be the trainer and rollers I’m afraid, until I get away to Furnace Creek.

Return to Death Valley

“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans”

Woody Allen

A plan is the stairway between your vision and your goal. Each step brings you closer.

For me the past year has been one of plans, mostly interrupted or unfulfilled. Even a planned trip to see a movie the other night was cut short when everything – right down to Yogi Bear – was sold out.

Our family’s most recent plan, to visit New York City this Christmas, was foiled by that most capricious of spellbinders, the weather. The entire Eastern Seaboard was shut down by a spectacular snowstorm. The only way to have gotten into Manhattan would have been to ski in.

But plans continue to well up in my restless and ever-optimistic mind. My indoor training for my planned 2011 events is going beautifully. I have added a little speedwork to my running and I am amazed at how easily my body is adapting. It makes me think of how lazy I must have been for the past twenty-five years.

So that I do not blow my feet out before March by overtraining for my planned spring marathon, I have found another project to keep me focused: I’ve entered the Death Valley Century, the California bike event that I did back in the fall of 2008. There is also a spring version on February 26th, so I signed up. They offer distances of 100, 150 and 200 miles and I opted for the middle one, since 100 miles will not challenge me and 200 miles will seem too much like work at this point in my season. Also the double century requires night time riding, and after my experiences in RAW last June, cycling through the desert night just wouldn’t seem the same without the Scissor Sisters blasting through my walkie-talkie.

The Death Valley Spring Century will give me a non-running event to train for over the winter months plus a chance to take my terrific Cervélo R3 out on the road before getting into the triathlon season. Although the event is not specifically a race and most of the course is new to me, I would like to finish the 150 miles in under 11 hours. Unlike my marathon goals, this one is currently attainable. Yes, riding my bike through the desert does seem to be my idea of an ideal holiday, but I agree that it might not be everyone's.

To me, planning means looking forward, and I am looking forward to getting back to Death Valley. It is an extraordinary part of the world.

Outrunning the Grizzly Bear

Of course I’m ambitious. What’s wrong with that? Otherwise you sleep all day.
Ringo Starr

I’m just in from a killer run. (In 25 years I don’t think I have referred to any run workout by that adjective). Sixty-one minutes at top speed.

I am a laid back - you might almost say lazy - runner. My running has always been like the dancing bear; to me the wonder is not how well I do it but that I do it at all. In a straight marathon I like to push myself, but I have never achieved what I feel is my best. In Ironman I am content to jog and walk the marathon, knowing that there is very little chance I won’t finish sometime before midnight; my Ironman marathon times range from snail-like to glacial.

This fall, perhaps in reaction to the idleness my clavicle injury forced on me, I decided that I would try to leave my comfort zone and try to improve my marathon time. I don’t think I have too many years left to do this so there will never be a better time than now.

They say you should put your goals in writing, for it is only by creating an analog version of your dreams that they will ever materialize. I am not sure if this is always the best way, but I do know that that some of us build far greater castles in our minds than we do in reality.

I am shy about setting specific goals for running these days because so many things have gone wrong in the past few years. Plantar fasciitis, Morton’s neuroma; my feet are a compendium of podiatric pitfalls. But without a goal, I will end up going nowhere. In this case I need to see my goal written down with accompanying metrics.

So my running goal for the coming year is to complete a marathon next May in less than 3 hours and 45 minutes, a time that involves knocking about 20 minutes off my previous personal best. This would be quite reasonable, except for the fact that the previous personal best was set when I was younger…about ten years younger in fact. So in addition to running faster than I ever have before, I need to deal with an aging infra- and superstructure. It could be a mess.

One of the reasons I want to do this is that at the moment I can’t. I couldn’t run a 3:45 marathon if a grizzly bear were chasing me. The killer ‘top speed’ 61 minutes I just ran weren’t even close. So part of the fun will be to see if I can even get myself into the same time zone as my goal. The other part of the fun will be the sheer enjoyment of the training. It’s been so long since I have been able to run injury-free and to train with a purpose I that intend to treasure every minute.

Each of my three triathlon sports has its attractions. But there is a joy and simplicity to running that never leaves me. Like the golfer finding that sweet spot, a good run is indescribably satisfying. When all the components come together successfully, it is a marvelous way to fly across the earth.