A Runner's Paradise

Numbers again...

Monday, August 11: 6:30 AM – 10 Miles, 70 min (Lake Mary)
6:00 PM – 5 Miles, 35 min (Crater Canyon)
Tuesday, August 12: 7:00 AM – 10 Miles, 67 min (Hot Springs)
Wednesday, August 13: 7:00 AM – 10.5 Miles, 70 min (Hot Springs)
5:30 PM – 4.5 Miles, 31 min (Shady Rest Park)
Thursday, August 14: 7:30 AM – 9 Miles, 61 min (Stables)
Friday, August 15: 7:00 AM – 10 Miles, 72 min (Mammoth Rock)
4:30 PM – 6 Miles, 40 min (Lake Mary)
Saturday, August 16: 7:00 AM – Tempo WO (Old Church Rd.)
23 min w/u, 2 x 2 Mile (10:56, 11:21) w/ 3mr, 27 min c/d
Sunday, August 17: 7:00 AM – 14 Miles, 95 min (Stables/Shady Rest)

Week Total = 90 Miles, 10 Runs

Monday, August 18: 7:30 AM - 13 Miles, 90 min (Big Smokey)
5:00 PM – 4 Miles, 28 min (Lake Mary)
Tuesday, August 19: 7:30 AM - 10 Miles, 70 min (Hot Springs)
Wednesday, August 20: 7:30 AM – 10 Miles, 64 min (Old Church Ext.)
Thursday, August 21: 7:30 AM - 10 Miles, 72 min (Big Smokey)
6:00 PM - 5 Miles, 35 min
Friday, August 22: 7:30 AM - 10.5 Miles, 71 min
5:30 PM - 5 Miles, 35 min
Saturday, August 23: 8:00 AM - 10.5 Miles, 72 min
Sunday, August 24: 7:00 AM - 15 Miles, 94 min (33:40, 31:10, 28:50)

Week Total = 93 Miles, 10 Runs

So the more I've had going on, the more I've fallen behind on blog posts... And the more I fall behind, the more I have to talk about on here. This creates a problem! That being said, I'm going to attempt to highlight as much of the last two weeks as I can without leaving out the exciting stuff but also without boring my readers with too much information. Let's see how I do...

To start, the biggest things to talk about have been the events surrounding the Beijing Olympic Games. In my previous post, I talked about how much coverage was expected for these Olympics and how excited I was to see it all. Well, it turns out NBC didn't make them as viewer friendly as I thought. Sure, they've been showing a lot of coverage (on a 3-hour delay for us West Coast viewers), but the events that I want to see don't usually start until around 11pm. I figured I'd have every opportunity to watch these events while up at Mammoth, but since we were getting up at 6am each morning, there was no way I could stay up every night to see these events. I actually made myself stay up past midnight once to watch the Gymnastics All-Around competition, but that was it... every other night was lights out by 11:00 PM. So I spent most of my time at Mammoth trying to avoid all outside contact that might give away the results before I had a chance to see it myself. This was not easy to do, and many times I just gave in and spoiled it by checking the results. I could go on and on about this topic, but instead, I'll let you read Sean's opinion on it since I pretty much share the same view point.

Despite the challenge of seeing all these events, I have seen quite a bit of these Olympics and I have to say that they've been pretty intense. There were certainly a lot of upsets and disappointments, but with every defeat comes another persons victory, so the emotion that we get from these results all depends on who we're rooting for. The Olympics are always a roller coaster of emotions for me as I can't help from becoming attached to so many of these athletes just by watching each of them pursue their own Olympic dream. With so many stories to talk about, I'll just try to highlight the ones that have had the biggest impact on myself.

When I look back on the 2004 Athens Olympics, there is one performance that always seems to stand out in my mind. That is the Bronze Medal performance by Deena Kastor in the Womens Marathon. Whenever I watch this clip of her entering that stadium, I get chills. She is an incredible woman, and in my mind, she is one of the toughest competitors out there. Now, four years later, I found myself in her home town and ready to watch her fight for another medal. However, I was not prepared for what happened. Less than 20 minutes into the race, one of the saddest disappointments of these games occurred. Deena went down and had to drop out of the race before she even had a chance to break a sweat. I spent the rest of the race waiting to see if she had started running again and could somehow catch up to the leaders again. She's probably run over 100,000 Miles and raced over a dozen marathons, but on this day, in what she hoped would be the biggest race of her life, she broke the 3rd metatarsal in her right foot. So now as I watch this latest interview with her, I again get chills... but for a different reason. I don't know Deena personally and she certainly doesn't know who I am (I have met her and have had a few conversations with her, but nothing that I would expect her to remember). Despite that fact, I still feel like I know her because I have gained so much from following her career and therefore, I get a sense of the emotions that she's going through when these things happen. It's a sad story, and again, it's one that will probably stand out as one of my many memories of these Olympics.

Another emotionally disturbing result for me was that of Lolo Jones in the Womens 100m Hurdle Final. She is the fastest hurdler in the world this year and has had a perfect season leading up to the Olympic Games, but in the final steps of her Olympic moment, disaster happened... she hit the 9th hurdle and stumbled to the finish line... failing to win gold and failing to win any medal at all. Again, I don't know Lolo personally, but following her success this year and watching her interviews has led me to believe that she is an extraordinary athlete with a great attitude. Even though her dreams were crushed in a split second, she still took interviews and was able to put a smile on her face.

In a similar situation, Allyson Felix finished a disappointing 2nd in the Womens 200m Final, but still embraced all the positives and was thankful for everything that she achieved. Also, when Laura Wilkinson failed to get a medal in the 10M Platform Diving event, it was obviously a disappointment, but she still managed to have that memorable smile every time we saw her... the same one we saw at the 2000 Sydney Games when she won Gold. Some people get too caught up in their own disappointments and fail to possess that Olympic Spirit that we all look for. Even though these athletes had some disappointments, they didn't forget to grasp onto that Olympic Spirit.

In a more positive light, there were many exciting performances both in the track events as well as in other sports. Again, the ones that stand out in my mind included the following: Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson in their great display of athleticism in Gymnastics, both US Beach Volleyball teams winning Gold, Shalane Flanagan winning Bronze in the 10K, Nick Willis of New Zealand winning Bronze in the 1500M, the Mens Marathon team of Ritz/Hall/Sell putting together some great performances, and many others.

Okay, I don't want to take away from all those performances I listed above, but at some point in this post, I should talk about my own training, so here it goes...

As I started talking about in my last post, I spent about a week and a half (11 days) in Mammoth lakes, CA. And as I appropriately titled this post, Mammoth proved to be nothing short of a Runner's Paradise! I got some great training in with the added altitude stimulus and was able to take advantage of the clear air, extensive trails, and of course the beautiful views. It definitely ranks among my favorite places in the country, joining Boulder, CO; Boone, NC; Bar Harbor, ME; and Park City, UT. I could see myself spending long periods of time in any one of these locations and I hope to visit them all again in the near future.

To give you some perspective of Mammoth Lakes, I'll use some pictures I took to help describe my experiences including many of those locations you see listed in the training log at the top of this post.

Entering Mammoth

Mammoth Mountain

Our current team of Steve Magness, Carlos Handler, Humberto Rojas, and myself stayed in a condo right in the heart of Mammoth and all had the opportunity to get some great training in while also getting some great experiences along the way.

We were joined by our Coach, Marco Ochoa who was up there for most of the trip. I think we all gained a lot from both his knowledge and his many comical stories from his glory days. We were also able to do most of our runs with his Orange Coast College team as they were also up there for the same reasons as us.




For a few days while we were up there, we were also joined by two of our team advisers, Rod Dixon and Lorraine Moller as they stayed in the same condo as us. These two running legends need no introduction and were great company. And yes, that is an Olympic Bronze Medal that Lorraine is holding (Rod has one just like it).

Lake Mary
This was one of my favorite runs as it was fairly flat at about 9000ft and was a great spot for shorter afternoon runs. If you follow the training of Team USA, you'll see that Ryan Hall does many of his workout around this lake.

Hot Creek RoadThis dirt road was set a few miles outside of Mammoth and with it's gradual rolling hills, made for a good spot to some of our easy runs.

Shady Rest ParkThis grass park is surrounded by miles of dirt trails and is a great spot for drills and plyos. Again if you've seen any of the Team USA videos, you may have seen Meb doing some form work in this park

Old Church RoadMike Mckeeman (Deena's training partner) told us about this run and informed us that it was a common spot for Team USA's tempo runs. Mile markers are posted all the way out to Mile 12 (I believe) and it stays pretty flat the whole way out.

Big Smokey This was my favorite run of the trip, but also the most challenging. It's scenic views were unlike any other runs we had been on as the trail winded through the rolling hills and ultimately to the summit of the mountain. Because of the gradual climb throughout the 13.1 Mile loop, it gets harder to maintain pace as the run progresses up to the summit at about the 11 Mile mark. It may not look like much of a climb, but it kicked my ass!

After pretty much all of these runs, we would go down to the creek and soak our legs in the sub 50 degree water, which proved to be very useful in aiding our recovery and preventing us from breaking down up there.

All around it was a great trip with only a couple mishaps (one being the Rodeo breaking down on us and having to walk back to the highway), but I think we all walked away with some great stories. Many of us didn't want to leave so we did everything we could to stay, some of which fall into the great stories category.

On that note, I should probably bring this to an end and leave more of the training specific stuff for next week. As you can see above, my training is coming along as the cross season is fast approaching and will be underway before we know it. I also have a bunch of pictures to put up so I'll try to get those uploaded and post the link here. Steve already put some up on facebook and also posted one of many videos that we took while we were up there. Again, once we get a compilation of our Mammoth Adventures, I'll be sure to post it here for your viewing pleasure.